Graphics: Units are hard to differentiate on tiles

[rschissler]

There has been complaints about the graphics, but mine is that units are hard to differentiate on the tiles. Since there is only one unit per tile, they have put a bunch of small figures on tiles to make it look like there are a lot of units in the game. The result is that they are so small and crowded that it's hard to tell what is what. The little round silhouette icon doesn't help much either, especially since the icon for a warrior looks like a worker. I have a 24" monitor at 1920x1200, but a lot of the time I find myself zooming in to really see. Although the graphics look great zoomed in, it's a lousy way to play this game.

[phun4me]

I to use a large HD monitor. The default setting of 1900 x 1600 made graphics too small to easily read from 4 feet away. So I chainged the game video settings to something like 1600 x 1000 and it was much more enjoyable.


Sent from my iPad.

[S.ilver]

This is one thing I immediately noticed upon having more than 2 units. The figures are pretty small even on a standard monitor. What they need is a "single unit graphics" option like what Civ4 had, where we have one large unit. Not saying I'd use it a whole lot, but it would be a good option to have rather than zooming and squinting.

[Dearmad]

and the icon above the unit doesn't help?

[S.ilver]

The icons help somewhat... I guess I just need to get used to them. I dunno. The graphics in this rendition just seem a bit... busy to me (I completely despise the city screen and the "green citizen coin" idea). Switching it to strategic mode makes it a bit easier to understand what's going on.

[Shillen]

Originally Posted by rschissler

The little round silhouette icon doesn't help much either, especially since the icon for a warrior looks like a worker.

Hmm, the worker and warrior icons look incredibly different to me.

[duxup]

I go by the icons. IMO Civ IV geography was a pain to see after the land was all developed too.

[Buccaneer]

That's why Kael's mod should be a must. In the Celts mod, he also included Single-Unit Graphics.

[TLF]

The units should be larger and 1-3 figures so they can be seen easily.
Aren't the units the important thing.

To make it worse, they take up all that screen space in the corner with a stylized version of the unit in a huge circle.
I'd rather see a large unit on the playing field where I'm actually playing the game.

The colors are part of the problem. There isn't enough distinction between tile and unit colors.
It's like it was designed by a camouflage expert.

[Wulf38]

While the game is very pretty, I do find it hard to distinguish most things in the game. Terrain, tile yields (the icons are tiny and all the same shape), improvements, units... And strategic view is even worse, so many overlapping icons. Managing worked tiles in the city screen takes quite a bit of close scrutiny to determine which tiles are being worked and which are available to work, something which should really be possible to read at a glance.

[TLF]

The units should be larger and 1-3 figures so they can be seen easily.
Aren't the units the important thing.

To make it worse, they take up all that screen space in the corner with a stylized version of the unit in a huge circle.
I'd rather see a large unit on the playing field where I'm actually playing the game.

The colors are part of the problem. There isn't enough distinction between tile and unit colors.
It's like it was designed by a camouflage expert.

[HamTard]

I hope they patch back in the Civ IV feature of making your unit be represented by a single large figure instead of a bunch of smaller ones.

[UNIT 666]

I would have agreed with the title on the first day I bought Civ5, but now I'm starting to adapt to the units' icons and because of this, it's a non-issue.

I think they realized that units were hard to identify visually (at least in some cases), and added the unit icons for the exact purpose of quick identification.