Рerception of units on the map

[Henaro]

Two years ago I decided to play Civilization. To choose which part of the game I should buy, I read reviews, watched walkthroughs of the game on Youtube, and, as a result, I chose Civilization V. I liked the game very much, I played it for about 1500 hours, it's almost perfect for me.

But now I wanted to try to play Civilization IV. It has a lot of fans, many fans consider it the best game of the series. I start playing and I have a problem. I have a hard time distinguishing between units on the map.

In V part above the units are drawn pictograms, and I perceive not the 3d models of the units themselves, but these pictograms. Everything is clear, you don't need to spend any effort at all to get a general picture of what is happening on the map.

In the IV part, the units are invisible, the colored flags are small, to understand what unit is on the tile, you need to put the cursor on the tile or zoom. After a turn I have to look at the map carefully to avoid missing animals or units of neighboring civilizations, and yet sometimes it happens.

Please suggest some techniques or mods to better perceive the units on the map.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I find the units very visible and have no trouble distinguishing them. I find the animals very obvious. Also the flags are quite large. Perhaps you are zoomed out too far to see details. Try setting your default view more zoomed in.

 

[Henaro]

Spoiler 4 vs 5 :

Well, look, a concrete example. in civ 5 I throw one look at the map, and immediately see not only all the units, but you can instantly understand which era's units belong to which civilization.

In civ 4 I have to spend 3-7 seconds just to see all the units on the map, and I'm not 100% sure that I noticed all of them. At the same time it is not clear at all what units they are, what era, the general balance of power is not clear. To understand this, you need to spend a sufficient amount of time.

 

[AcaMetis]

See the buttons above the minimap? Click on the helmet icon and it'll put a marker on units. If you zoom out to the global view you can also toggle between putting a marker above all units, all hostile units, etc.

Generally people play with resource markers turned on (the button), but it's advisable to switch to the unit marker set to hostile units during a war, so you don't get snuck up on by stray enemy units.

 

[civac]

This is just a matter of familiarity. I can parse the Civ4 screenshot very quickly while the Civ5 picture is much harder to understand.

One problem Civ4 has is that you have to have to mouse-over units to see if anything else is stacked with the visible unit. Oth, the landscape is much less cluttered with units usually.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This is just a matter of familiarity. I can parse the Civ4 screenshot very quickly while the Civ5 picture is much harder to understand.

Agreed, Civ V just looks like a hot mess to me but I've played less than a 100 hours, I'm sure with time it would make sense.

 

[Marla_Singer]

One problem Civ4 has is that you have to have to mouse-over units to see if anything else is stacked with the visible unit. Oth, the landscape is much less cluttered with units usually.

Actually, you can know if there are multiple units on the tile by looking at the little dots above the unit flag. That's how you spot the large stacks at first glance. You only need to hover in order to see stack composition.

Now the thing is that, as units can be stacked in Civ4, they are generally managed as groups, not individually. As such, there's usually much less visual clutter than what we see on that Civ5 screenshot (which also feels messy to me but certainly because of lack of familiarity).

 

[Henaro]

See the buttons above the minimap? Click on the helmet icon and it'll put a marker on units. If you zoom out to the global view you can also toggle between putting a marker above all units, all hostile units, etc.

Generally people play with resource markers turned on (the button), but it's advisable to switch to the unit marker set to hostile units during a war, so you don't get snuck up on by stray enemy units.

Thanks, I'll give it a try!

 

[ArchGhost]

Well, the forced limitation of 1UPT makes the bubble markers actually work effectively in Civ5/6. They don't make as much sense coming to Civ4 where any number of units can be on a single tile, which makes mousing-over more or less a requirement when dealing with stacks. The UI of Civ4 also tends to be tricky about what avatars are displayed as the visible unit, and can swap in real time depending on what you are doing (selecting an attacker, for instance). The dots next to the flags that track number of units on a tile also exhaust very quickly, maxing at 7. A stack in Civ4 can regularly exceed 30 units, easily. Late game AI stacks can have hundreds of units.

I'll chime in as well that it just come down to being more familiar with one than the other. Even in Civ6 I just look at the models, and I still have trouble discerning units based on their bubbles and I have to select or mouse over them anyway to read a boilerplate or tooltip. In Civ4, a half-second to mouse-over and another to roughly count based on how I know the units are ordered in the tooltip list, and I can scan far more of the map effectively in the same amount of time. But then, I haven't had ~9 years of playing Civ6 to get as familiar with it, I've just started trying to take it seriously since about December last year.

Just a little bit more for you OP, when using the bubbles for units, zoom all the way out and play around with the settings to see the difference. For instance, you can track only military units, only enemy units, domestic units (highlights settlers and workers, and Great People I think) and don't have to always look at EVERY unit with a bubble if you don't want to.