Anyone else think Civ4 graphics are kinda ugly?

[bt_oz]

Well i agree with a few members, I'd like to see the units be able to be make them any height from tiny through to large,
then it should be fine,

bt_oz

 

[fishlore]

I detest the look of Civ 4. I think it's probably the worst looking game I've seen. I hope the gameplay can make up for it. I've moved this from the "no-brainer purchase" category to the "play a few hours of someone else's copy" category before I even consider buying it.

 

[Drakan]

Yeop I hope the gameplay makes up for the horrible graphics.

I would have thought that Civ IV's graphics would follow from RTW's campaign map or something of the likes. Kinda dissappointed. Well we all voted at Firaxis poll that gameplay was more important in TBS than graphics and that there had to be a balance.

Take CTP II. It had much better graphics than Civ II (it was released two years later) but Civ II still managed to beat it with a compelling gameplay that had you hooked, whereas the AI of CTP II was a complete pushover.

Even RTW is superior graphically than Civ III but still, you grow tired of RTW after a month or two and need to leave some time until you go back to it (I love RTW btw).

Whereas with CIV I'm still hooked after 4 years because it really has infinite replay. Heck, we're even seeing four years after it's release new strategies being posted everyday at CFC and Poly. That's a tribute to this game.

I agree with JavalTiger, with Civ IV they've made a move to appeal to the broad RTS fan-base to try and take a bite at the huge RTS cake. RTW blends very well TBS strategy (in the campaign map) and RTS tactics (in the war map).

Civ IV is a rare gem in a dwindling world of TBS games. we must support the TBS game developers (as long as the games are good, obviously) because they are under so much pain from the RTS developers. If you cannot win them, join them they've seemed to have done.

Brian Reynolds moved on from TBS games to RTS games.

Still I like the deepness and complexity of TBS games as Civ but saying this nowadays doesn't sell. Even Sid Meier himself in an interview says he dislikes Firaxis getting pigeonholed for making all these impressively complex TBS games.

I want the Civ series to survive (to stand the test of time, he he), and I'm quite sure it'll manage to. the fan base is strong although we are getting older and they need to appeal to a younger range of fan base in their teens which are used to playing RTS games. This will ensure the survival of Civ in the future. But this doesn't mean they should dumb down the game as I've seen in some interviews at Gamespot.

 

[sassoundwave]

imagine you could zoom in that close in Civ3 as you can in Civ4: you wouldn't see cities either, the units would be gigantic, and the environment would look silly.
So just don't zoom in too far. And it all will look nice and cool.

 

[frekk]

The thing is things look pretty ugly zoomed out, too.

All in all it is too cluttered, the leaderheads look like they belong to a Saturday morning cartoon, it does not have a clean or straightforward feel to it. The only thing that looks better, imo, is the water and the grass: everything else looks horrible. If I do end up buying it, I will probably mod most of the default graphics out immediately.

 

[Bathory666]

Is anyone from Firaxis reading this thread? We'd all love to read some feedback, please!

 

[warpstorm]

There is the possibility that their artists like the graphic look.

 

[IATyco]

Seems like I am one of the few people who actually like the graphics in Civ IV. The graphics don't have to be realitisc to look nice, in my opinion. You can't really judge the graphics until you have seen them in motion. The only possible problem I see, as other have mentioned, is the city-to-unit scale, which make the cities a little hard to see. However, I had also seen the extreme opposite in some other startegy games with "realistic" proportion and colour, which just made the units blend in too much with the surroundings, making them hard to tell apart from the buildings. At least you can immediatly recognize the units in Civilization 4.

Also, graphics itself is kind of subjective. Everyone have different preference. Some people like myself, for example, happen to find those pixelised old dos games' graphics appealing.

I find that some people are too quick to judge the game before even playing it.

 

[Smidlee]

Seems like I am one of the few people who actually like the graphics in Civ IV.

I'm sure there many who like the graphics who don't post it. I don't even mind the big units which make them look like they are pieces place on a board game.

 

[Mirc]

I don't like at all the graphics from civ4. The terrain is way too coloured, the trees are ugly, the humans are bigger than cities and that horrible multi figured units are making me dizzy! I see even humans higher than mountains!

 

[ForbiddenPalace]

If the units and the railroads are taken away, the scenes are actually not bad, even though it is still nowhere compared to AOE series.

 

[dannyevilcat]

I like most of the graphics, such as the terrain, improvements and cities. I like the sketch book "look" for the wonders in the most recent screenshots. But then, I didn't like Snoopy's terrain for Civ3, and so many of you guys loved it, so...

However, I really hate those teal-shirted riflemen they keep showing off.

 

[ThERat]

with every new set of screenshots, the sinking feeling gets worse. What are they thinking?
Cities look still ok to me, the landscape itself will be ok with mods, but what I really can't stand, is the look of the improvements (farms, roads and RR) and those freaking units. The worst are those giant multi-workers. My only hope is that once zoomed out to a level you can actually play the game, that things gonna get better.
I hope there will be 2 options:
- get rid of the multi units
- scale all units down

And to our great mod community, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Though this game is not about graphics, it should still appeal to the eye.

 

[warpstorm]

Actually, looking at the screenshots where you are zoomed out at roughly the same level as you would be playing Civ3, the graphics look pretty good. It's only when you get too close that they seem to break down to me.

 

[Snoopy]

Try to envision this: Take everything off the land, all the cities, tre,es units, etc.

You are left with just land, now, zoom in so that you're viewing from the ground level.

The way our brain works out how big or small something is, is by comparing two known objects together.

Now, if I put a unit on the land, the unit will appear to be a giant, and the planet is going to seem small.

If we shrunk the unit 100x its original size, the planet is going to appear much larger; the more we shrink the units size, the larger the planet will seem to be, that's because our brains will be comparing the two objects.

I don't know to what extent we can zoom in before the textures start to blur, but if we can shrink the units 100x their original size, we will then have room to shrink everything else, but making them proportionate to the units size.

Some of you might be thinking "But now everything is so small, I can't see anything". You'd be right if your zoom level is at the default. You just simply have to zoom in closer to the land.

The pic below, I believe was created using the same game engine. The pic shows you clearly what I mean.

 

[Snoopy]

Firaxis, Soren, Mike, whoever; why don't you release a screenshot showing off what you can do with XML. I'm sure it will ease a lot of people's minds, you need to secure your profits right?

 

[joethreeblah]

Try to envision this: Take everything off the land, all the cities, tre,es units, etc.

You are left with just land, now, zoom in so that you're viewing from the ground level.

The way our brain works out how big or small something is, is by comparing two known objects together.

Now, if I put a unit on the land, the unit will appear to be a giant, and the planet is going to seem small.

If we shrunk the unit 100x its original size, the planet is going to appear much larger; the more we shrink the units size, the larger the planet will seem to be, that's because our brains will be comparing the two objects.

I don't know to what extent we can zoom in before the textures start to blur, but if we can shrink the units 100x their original size, we will then have room to shrink everything else, but making them proportionate to the units size.

Some of you might be thinking "But now everything is so small, I can't see anything". You'd be right if your zoom level is at the default. You just simply have to zoom in closer to the land.

The pic below, I believe was created using the same game engine. The pic shows you clearly what I mean.

That would be really cool, especially if you could zoom it in enough so that it looks exactly like it does now

 

[Snoopy]

That would be really cool, especially if you could zoom it in enough so that it looks exactly like it does now

I'm assuming you mean maintain the scale of the units/buildings/tree's as they are now, but make the planet larger? If so, then yeah of course.

That's the beauty of vector. A lot of people have said that 2D is easier to mod; how little they know. Granted, 3D models in games cannot match 2D graphics yet.

 

[Kyriakos]

constistency is one of the most determining factors of whether the graphics look good or not. 3d graphics would suck in civ2.
Btw civ2 TOT still looks better than civ3...

 

[I am the Future]

this thead has come up like 5 times in the past few months. lets just try and keep it up for now