City building visuals

[bitula]

Hi,
Can someone tell me that do city buildings, like granary have 3D visuals like districts do? I mean do they appear on the map, like near the city center or inside districts? Or it's like in Endless Legends or EU4, just a bunch of 2D icons in a list?

 

[Atlas627]

I have not noticed the Infrastructures appearing on the map, but honestly I haven't looked. The graphics are very busy, which is quite beautiful, though hard to read. So I just admire them from afar without looking so closely most of the time.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Hi,
Can someone tell me that do city buildings, like granary have 3D visuals like districts do? I mean do they appear on the map, like near the city center or inside districts? Or it's like in Endless Legends or EU4, just a bunch of 2D icons in a list?

No, they don't. I've been looking since the first available Open Dev, and none of the Infrastructure developments show on the map. The Quarters, once you place them, do not add any graphical indication of any Improvement/Building that affects them. They do change appearance every Era/Age based on the new Culture you choose, but as far as I can tell that is strictly cosmetic, with no effect on actual game play. Given that there are about 3 times more 'Buildings' you can build in a city compared to Civ VI, this lack of graphic indicators makes Infrastructure Improvements a real pain to keep track of: almost as bad as, say, ever Civ game before VI . . .

 

[8housesofelixir]

No, they don't. I've been looking since the first available Open Dev, and none of the Infrastructure developments show on the map. The Quarters, once you place them, do not add any graphical indication of any Improvement/Building that affects them.

If you build more infrastructures for a quarter, the visual of the quarter will become much denser, as a lot more small buildings will be added to the model.

For instance, after building a Food Market, your Market Quarters will suddenly have more small buildings inside it, and makes the Quarters look more developed.

On the other hand, these are all cosmetic visuals of course. They cannot indicate which exact infrastructures you have built.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

If you build more infrastructures for a quarter, the visual of the quarter will become much denser, as a lot more small buildings will be added to the model.

For instance, after building a Food Market, your Market Quarters will suddenly have more small buildings inside it, and makes the Quarters look more developed.

On the other hand, these are all cosmetic visuals of course. They cannot indicate which exact infrastructures you have built.

In general, as you progress through the Ages, not only do the basic building styles within the Quarters change to 'match' the Faction chosen, but the Quarters get denser, as you noted. Unfortunately, as we both noted, there is no indication of which or what or how many Infrastructure improvements have been built or which Quarters they influence.
Given that in the first 4 Ages/Eras of the game, Humankind offers you 47 different Infrastructure improvements (as of the Victor Open Dev, anyway) while Civ VI offers 16, the problem of keeping track of what you've built in each city is not a small one!

 

[bitula]

Thanks All for the feedback!
One thing I dislike about Endless Legend is that, say, I manage to finally build a seed storage and then: oh where is it???? Just the same city not a pixel changed. Same for EU4, Warhammer etc. Not bad games, but unfortunate that no effort is made toward city infrastructure visuals - just list or rows of icons. I really liked how in Civ1 there was a separate city screen just to show these building. And Homm5 - well that was gorgeous. Civ6 at least shows some buildings in the city on the map and all buildings in the districts.

 

[Narcisse]

The visual variations are output based. It can be really noticeable on some of the aesthetic, like the Aztecs markets. So there is different level of density, but of additions of buildings too (depending the aesthetic again and the era ; it's more or less noticeable).

With the balance change, some of the aesthetic didn't appear in the closed beta and victor, probably waiting to be resetup.
For exemple, the Commons Quarters were always the same iteration when I know they are multiple aesthetic for them (4 or 5). Maybe because with the balance the outputs are way lower than before ? Or I rarely get the "level two" for research quarter.

But so far, no variations directly related to a specific infrastructure, I think.

 

[bitula]

Can someone give me a concrete example?
For example what happens after you build a granary (AFAIU this is a "global" building, not a district which you put on a specific tile)? What will change on the map? Will there be little granary buildings added to some random "districts"? Possibly a screenshot before and after could help.

Edit: or by output based you mean the amount of yields (like food) per turn? So eg.: granaries and markets are already on the map, but if you increase output there will be just more of them or they get bigger, prettier etc? So not tied to the construction of these buildings directly?

 

[Narcisse]

but if you increase output there will be just more of them or they get bigger, prettier etc? So not tied to the construction of these buildings directly?

This. Infrastructures don't directly add the buildings, but the infrastructures improving the yields and output would eventually induce the visuals changes, as the adjancencies. With density and sometimes the addition of buildings. So yeah, to explaining it simply, they get densier, bigger, prettier (depending the tastes I guess), but small fountain will not appear because you build the "public fountain" infrastructure

 

[bitula]

This. Infrastructures don't directly add the buildings, but the infrastructures improving the yields and output would eventually induce the visuals changes, as the adjancencies. With density and sometimes the addition of buildings. So yeah, to explaining it simply, they get densier, bigger, prettier (depending the tastes I guess), but small fountain will not appear because you build the "public fountain" infrastructure

Oh, that's unfortunate
Thx for the info!

 

[bitula]

Just another question (don't want to create another thread just because of this): Playing endless legend I see I am forced to use simultaneous turns in SINGLE PLAYER!!!! There isn't even an option to turn this off. Is it same with Humankind?

 

[Atlas627]

Just another question (don't want to create another thread just because of this): Playing endless legend I see I am forced to use simultaneous turns in SINGLE PLAYER!!!! There isn't even an option to turn this off. Is it same with Humankind?

Correct. The game is designed that way on purpose. You aren't "forced to use simultaneous turns" in a game designed for sequential turns, you are simply taking turns. Don't think of it like Civ!

 

[bitula]

Well, I don't even know then how is humankind competitor to Civ, if not just the settings: grand scale history. So different concepts and mechanics otherwise. I could say then, that EU4 is also a competitor. At least in EU4 you can always pause the game to make decisions. Endless Legend is a nice game otherwise BTW. I use to just mostly ignore the simultaneous turns, by letting AI make all his moves, let it be its advantage. Anyway on lower end PC it is clumsy, I need to click five times to make a unit move during the simultaneous phase. Anyway, I think this is a very bad design for single player. I can't even imagine somebody really likes or prefers this... But it can just simply be ignored.

 

[Kwami]

The only real advantage of simultaneous turns is that the time in between turns is almost nothing, which is nice. In the last beta, I had almost instant turn timers for the first 150 turns or so, but then some back-end processing started to increase the timer despite the simultaneous turns. But, for a single-player game, everything else about simultaneous turns is pretty much a negative compared to ordered turns. The movement is awkward and clunky, you have to click like a crazy person to move an army first when the turn rolls over, and you have to deal with too much stuff happening at the same time (trade routes breaking, attacks, people moving into your path) while also just trying to take your turn. It's just annoying, really. I got used to it with Endless Legend, but EL would have been better with ordered turns and Humankind would be, too. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen.

With regards to city visuals, I don't mind too much that the infrastructure doesn't appear as a concrete model somewhere in the city. But, overall, I find the city graphics to be lacking. They did a good job making different graphics for each culture. But, the non-emblematic quarters don't look distinct enough. And I'd like to see scattered lumberyards in the forests when I build the lumberyard infrastructure. Maybe some aqueducts here and there when I build that infrastructure. Stuff like that. Right now, cities look like a disjoint bunch of hexes that don't flow nicely together and don't "level up" in obvious ways. And they all basically look the same.