Civ 4 graphics compared to 5

[AlpsStranger]

Originally Posted by lschnarch

Rivers and river mouths?

Mixed. Civ4 for having eyots and deltas, Civ5 for having smooth curves.

[kossmikman]

Hexes also make the map in Civ5 more appealing.

[Guardian_PL]

I like Civ4 graphics more. Jungles, rivers, food/commerce icons - it's just better polished for me.
I've expected a lot more improvement in graphics in Civ5.

And forget about tutorial, I've never used it, preferred to check on my own and then come here. ALC series forever!

[vandyr]

I find myself amused that some people claiming graphics have little impact on the game are also some of the same people complaining that there's no graphical tidbits rewarding them for successfully winning the game.

[lschnarch]

Originally Posted by vandyr

I find myself amused that some people claiming graphics have little impact on the game are also some of the same people complaining that there's no graphical tidbits rewarding them for successfully winning the game.

I think, here you are mixing two things which don't belong together.

A TBS game doesn't need graphics which would make an ATI 5970 go up in flames.
But taking away the little rewards for having achieved a victory really even shows some kind of disrespect for the player. And after all, the player not only is a player, he was a customer, too.

He *was* the one who pays the bills for the developers. And I emphasized about the past tense, since I feel that this is Firaxis' attitude now, too.
They've got the money, that's all what counts.

[vandyr]

Originally Posted by lschnarch

I think, here you are mixing two things which don't belong together.

A TBS game doesn't need graphics which would make an ATI 5970 go up in flames.
But taking away the little rewards for having achieved a victory really even shows some kind of disrespect for the player. And after all, the player not only is a player, he was a customer, too.

He *was* the one who pays the bills for the developers. And I emphasized about the past tense, since I feel that this is Firaxis' attitude now, too.
They've got the money, that's all what counts.

I suppose you're right, there. I personally don't care if there are wonder movies or victory movies, as seeing those aren't my ultimate goal, but to each his own.

[Le Sage]

The graphics in Civ5 look a lot better in non-animated screenshots, while the Civ4 graphics look a lot better in-game (especially with Blue marble applied). That tells you something.

[TheMeInTeam]

Both games sacrifice gameplay for graphics.

In my mind, that makes the graphics some of the ugliest I've ever seen in my life, just knowing that. Controls first plx .

[Zyxpsilon]

The perfect balance will never happen, forget it.
There's a darn good reason for this assumption of mine; people_users have personal opinions so deeply buried in their emotional state that even if we had 400giga_mega_3d_sli_256bits VCards -- we'd STILL complain about how ugly such & such features are in the latest installment of our precious games.

You see, Civ5 took a leap into diplomatic Leaders reality & art-deco-painto-bonzo splasher screens for everything from Wonders (no amination) to the smallest Icons (Tag an helmet to the Infantry unit, etc)... and *still* some people will stage a war with pitch & forks at designer decisions.

I've played them all, 1-2-3-4 and now 5. I modded for cEvo (XWorlds6), GC2/DA/TA (X-Worlds & CoSH) with only one goal in mind; make the gameplay experience feel like i wish.

It's never perfect enough.
Cuz- that's human. Fundamental concept of Reason aside, your emotions still have a say.

Go ask some Hollywood producers why their films have incredible success at the BO (Avatar, comes to mind) and they'll insist that people are --primal--, reactive machines that yearn for the best.
So, does the gaming market.
Civ5 is no different & the best (or worst) graphics will never change the fact that luck matters when meeting or trying_to consumers' needs.
GDR, Nukes, Hex tiles -- it's all part of a recipe, sauce, spice & hopes in the mix.
I'm completely satisfied with this purchase. It's nice, it's fast, it works.
BUT it's still not perfect - i understand why.

[bruntfca]

CIV5 graphics are very poor IMO, and it's one reason I don't play it.

1 One Hex towns that don't really a give feel of progression.
2 Ugly "Tent" cities everywhere called the laughable, "trading post"
3 World pretty much looks the same in 10AD as it does in 2000AD. Wait the city style is slightly different, and the Tent cities graphics looks even worse!
4 Amateurish, non scaling interface. I play in ultra High Resolution, the tech tree fills 1/3 of screen with 1/3 black at the top and 1/3 black at the bottom. I call it the "toilet roll" effect, a fitting metaphor for this game.
5 GIANT icons in some places, with tiny non-scalable icons for others, makes game eye-bleeding and unplayable at higher rez.
6 STATIC boring maps, with little or no animation.

Seriously this game is terrible, I only visit these forums to see if a "Nirvana" patch or mods been released. While I'm whining, what happened to period specific music. I like Peer Gynt, but it gets *old* listening to the same loops though all stages of history - stages where the map hardly changes.

Too bad the dev of Fall from Heaven is now working on another fail game called "Elemental War of Bugs". It gets worse, Brain Reynolds of AC fame is now working for zynga on Farmville type games. We're left with the 26 year old in charge of producing the fail that is Civ5.

[vandyr]

Originally Posted by bruntfca

CIV5 graphics are very poor IMO, and it's one reason I don't play it.

1 One Hex towns that don't really a give feel of progression.
2 Ugly "Tent" cities everywhere called the laughable, "trading post"
3 World pretty much looks the same in 10AD as it does in 2000AD. Wait the city style is slightly different, and the Tent cities graphics looks even worse!
4 Amateurish, non scaling interface. I play in ultra High Resolution, the tech tree fills 1/3 of screen with 1/3 black at the top and 1/3 black at the bottom. I call it the "toilet roll" effect, a fitting metaphor for this game.
5 GIANT icons in some places, with tiny non-scalable icons for others, makes game eye-bleeding and unplayable at higher rez.
6 STATIC boring maps, with little or no animation.

Seriously this game is terrible, I only visit these forums to see if a "Nirvana" patch or mods been released. While I'm whining, what happened to period specific music. I like Peer Gynt, but it gets *old* listening to the same loops though all stages of history - stages where the map hardly changes.

Too bad the dev of Fall from Heaven is now working on another fail game called "Elemental War of Bugs". It gets worse, Brain Reynolds of AC fame is now working for zynga on Farmville type games. We're left with the 26 year old in charge of producing the fail that is Civ5.

I think you might enjoy a nice game of Sim City.

[Haig]

I think that the missing victory movies are a decisive proof of the game being rushed and not having enough time to do them, at least I hope that's the reason and not that they just didn't care about making them.

I mean the intro animation is AMAZING, they should have made the victory movies and wonder movies in the same detail and that would have been very cool!

Now it's like winning a Commodore 64 game and getting a "congratulations! press joystick to restart" text into the screen..

Otherwise graphically I got to prefer Civ IV for the more living and breathing feeling that the world gives, in Civ V I like the oceans and mountain ranges a lot though.
Also I like that there are more soldiers in units.

[lschnarch]

Originally Posted by Haig

I think that the missing victory movies are a decisive proof of the game being rushed and not having enough time to do them, at least I hope that's the reason and not that they just didn't care about making them.

They have said that they've been working on Civ5 for two years.
The small number of animations (apart from the leaders) is not a matter of missing time, but of missing budget, if not intention.

Now, that they've got our money anyway I don't see any more animations (except in form of paid-for DLC) coming. In other words, no victory movies ever.

[cephalo]

I'm one of those who prefers the graphics in Civ4 for their liveliness and animation. Swaying trees are immensely important to me lol. Civ5's terrain graphics are good too but in no way worthy of the gigantic performance hit.

That's my big beef with Civ5's graphics. They are little improved over Civ4, and yet offer such abysmal performance such that I can't even play huge maps. Every time I move the map the 'normal maps' pop in one at a time over 10 seconds or so, which looks terrible. Any impact that was supposed to come from the art direction is ruined when its as if you have to sit and wait for the artist to paint it by hand when you click a new place on the map. Anything larger than huge (like huge Terra) and I can't even look at it without the game crashing.

[atteSmythe]

I couldn't care less about the ending movie. Pre-rendered movies end up full of MPEG artifacts anyway, even the opening movie in Civ V is. I actually prefer the static wonder paintings over videos.

I do miss the endgame replay, however.

I think that Civ V's gameplay graphics look better than IV, but are less useful - the emphasis on realism makes the gameplay UI not iconic enough to separate out important elements at a glance.

[Scout4536]

Blue Marble for Civ IV is a great addon.

[Neomega]

Originally Posted by Akka

I agree that graphics, though secondary, are still important.
What I'm scratching my head at is how it's possible to love Civ5 graphics and hate Civ4 ones.

Maybe I'm weird, but I find Civ4 graphics superior. They feel much more alive and they are much more animated. The improvements are better, the cities are better and the rivers are better.
The only part I feel truly superior in Civ5 is the reflections on the ocean, and that's much less important than tree swaying in the wind in my mind.

I think graphics are very important. You may think civ IV's graphics are better because you play FFH. The tile set for FFH is simply divine. I love it. I look at 5's graphics and mourn. I saw the computer requirements and thought, "oh yeah, this is gonna LOOK great"... I saw the screenshots and thought... oh... "its gonna have great DETAIL!" I saw zooming in was pointless and ugly and thought... "I wanna play FFH"

[bitula]

Originally Posted by Neomega

You may think civ IV's graphics are better because you play FFH.

Actually I as one do play FFH (Fall Further) and my latest impressions are all from there. So graphically maybe Civ5 is slightly better as compared to BTS, but definitely inferior to FFH. Probably Civ5 engine is more robust one, although I had the impression that the zoom levels are inferior, you could zoom out until you see the map on a spherical planet in Civ4, can you do it in Civ5, I don't remember? And the zoom in seemed to be at most of an equal scale, but not superior. So well if hopefully the engine is better, then we may in a year or so see truly nicer visuals from modders or expansions. I hope, that adding 3D models is made easy for modders and does not require costly software (hopefully can be used with a free 3D studio, like Binder). I also hope that you can create idle animation like in Civ4, I don't remember seeing any in Civ5. Actually the game is not slow for me with DirectX11 Nvidia 9800 SLI on notebook. I didn't experience any serious problems, and I maxed out everything. I suspect people complaining about slow graphics use directX 9.

[Akka]

Originally Posted by Neomega

I think graphics are very important. You may think civ IV's graphics are better because you play FFH. The tile set for FFH is simply divine. I love it. I look at 5's graphics and mourn. I saw the computer requirements and thought, "oh yeah, this is gonna LOOK great"... I saw the screenshots and thought... oh... "its gonna have great DETAIL!" I saw zooming in was pointless and ugly and thought... "I wanna play FFH"

The Blue Marble mod is sure gorgeous (it's not FFH itself that changes the graphics, it just include Blue Marble ^^), but I only discovered it very recently (after being disappointed in EWoM and in great need of something to satiate my Civ-in-fantasy hunger ). And when I play unmodded Civ4, it's with the basic tileset - I've yet to kick my lazyness out of the way and actually install Blue Marble on the regular game.

And still I prefer Civ4's graphics over Civ5's, even with the vanilla tileset. It's not even a contest with Blue Marble.

[mihaifx]

Spoiler:

Looking here at these two images I don't think there's any comparison at all (in terms of terrain) for someone who enjoys modern graphics. Civ4 terrain looks to 'cartoonish', and if you look at the mountains/hills, they pretty much look alike, while in Civ5 they're heavily relying on fractals to make things look random.
Anyway it all comes to everyone's taste.