Civ 4's Poor Graphic Design

[Yxklyx]

I played Civ 1 and Civ 2 a lot. I skipped Civ 3 because of the poor graphic design but due to a lack of any turn based strategy games in this day and age decided to overlook that in Civ 4.

OK, so what can I do to make the game graphics more usable. The main problem is spotting enemy and friendly units - they blend in with the terrain graphics. I've set the graphics to single-unit. Is there anything else I can do to improve their visibility? Can I display a color coded stand underneath the unit graphics? I'm using the strategic view more now (very handy) but I'd like to be able to look at the normal map and see the situation. There's been several times where an enemy army has landed next to my city and I missed it because the unit graphics blend into the terrain.

Is there anything that can be done to speed up the interface? I've got a top of the line graphics card but for instance when I click on the little hammer symbol in the city view (set people to work hammers) it takes a second for the window to refresh. This kind of thing should be instantaneous. Also, when moving from city to city with the arrow key it takes way too long to display the next city. There's gotta be a way to speed the interface up. Maybe I've got the graphics on too high? Turn off Anti-aliasing?

Is there an easier way to spot hills, especially those covered with jungle? I find that I have to hover my mouse over every tile to see what's there. This was not the case with Civ 1 or Civ 2.

Is there a way to see your units that are set to auto-move actually move? There's a setting for seeing Friendly Moves - but it's not working or doing what I think it should be doing.

Finally, when I select a stack of 8 or so Galleons, the ships go through this whole graphic thing that takes 2 seconds sometimes. Selecting a unit should not take this long!

 

[Comrade Alex]

I skipped Civ 3 because of the poor graphic design but due to a lack of any turn based strategy games in this day and age decided to overlook that in Civ 4.

Strange reason to bypass a turn based strategy game :/
I generally don't really bother about such matters. meehh

Won't help you with your query, but I just though I'd force my massive, uninvited, ad hoc opinion on you.

soz

 

[Yxklyx]

Strange reason to bypass a turn based strategy game :/
I generally don't really bother about such matters. meehh

Won't help you with your query, but I just though I'd force my massive, uninvited, ad hoc opinion on you.

soz

Well, the game is much more of a chore to play than it should be. I spent very little (if any) time thinking about the interface or the graphics when playing Civ 1 or 2. Poor graphic design makes you doubt the overall quality of the game.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

It's pretty obvious you have an old, slow computer. Upgrade your computer to one that runs the full settings well and all your problems will be solved

Beyond that, quit being anal retentive and enjoy one of the best strategy games ever.

 

[T.A JONES]

It's pretty obvious you have an old, slow computer. Upgrade your computer to one that runs the full settings well and all your problems will be solved

Beyond that, quit being anal retentive and enjoy one of the best strategy games ever.

AH Nah Ive seen many tricked out and the deley they have (not countin going over huge map and civ deafult) is a split second ill response when you move units.
So naturally I assume you havn't played civ3 or any other non 3d strategy game Otherwise you'd be able to tell instantly civ4 has a problem

The OP is expecting the type of speed/rapid response you want when you make 10000 moves in the course of a game.

You want to see the diffence between a good strategy response compared to a weighed down candy cart like civ4?
Simple, IN civ3 you can conduct 10 trades with 10 differnt civs n about 15 seconds. Likewise move 10 units in ten seconds. Best, chop 10 trees in 2 seconds using rapid click response. This means hit the "chop" button 10 times super fast and the program remembers, transferring exact number of clicks almost instantously without you having to wait for each 'chop to finish before you start the next one.
All these response attributes are critical to a massive repititivly natured game, making huge epics great fun in the longrun(mybe why civ4 is set to be so so short!)

If you still have civ3 go in and out of the diplo screen with the different civs making 10 deals( shoot for any deal don't matter) OK see how long it takes compared with proper strategy games responsivness?

ITs same with pedia access, advsor menu, Man just bout anything you can think of. Sometimes its only millseconds on every move but it adds up over the turns or 10000 moves. Like on your nerves the patience facter plays out a lot with this type of drawn crap

So mybe they should look at improving, interface response for next time around
This is what everyone says is wrong with civ4. Its why many can't give civ4 a chance.

Yes it seems graphics related. OH ya Anyone who says " Gee it runs great for me" hasn't seen how much better it could been simple as that.
For these guys I say OK NOw use that super computer load up civ3 stack it with 31 civs and blow up the boundries of the default huge near 30% more. NOw you'ss see "Gee runs super faboulous great for me"

 

[Yxklyx]

It's pretty obvious you have an old, slow computer. Upgrade your computer to one that runs the full settings well and all your problems will be solved

Nah, I play Crysis on my computer with the graphics set on the high end. Are you saying that Civ 4 requires a better system than Crysis?! I find that very hard to believe.

 

[Sisiutil]

Nah, I play Crysis on my computer with the graphics set on the high end. Are you saying that Civ 4 requires a better system than Crysis?! I find that very hard to believe.

I'm not familiar with that game but your computer's response time does sound slow--positively glacial compared to mine, even compared to my previous computer. Civ relies on more than just the graphics card--what do you have in the way of RAM and processor?

And are you playing huge or even large maps? Even on my new, very modern and slick system, huge maps can be a burden and slow things down, especially in the late game. You might need to reduce the size of the map by one iteration, and also, perhaps, the number of civs if you've been topping those up. I find that an extremely large map and high number of civs place a heavy burden on the processor, and that can account for excessive screen lag.

As for the interface, I also am sometimes surprised by having an enemy unit in my territory--but frankly, the game gives me plenty of audible and visual clues (the sound of marching troops, the clickable enemy troop indicator graphic, the bright red highlight around said troops). It's just that with so much going on, I get distracted and miss or forget things sometimes.

I myself think the game designers found a good balance--I think if they tried to be more "in your face" with these sorts of alerts, people would complain about how distracting they are. I'm one of those people who's a fan of the look of the game--which is important, since I look at it for hours on end. Then again, I'm not a game designer, and Civ is the only game I play, so I have very little to compare it against.

 

[Sonereal]

Nah, I play Crysis on my computer with the graphics set on the high end. Are you saying that Civ 4 requires a better system than Crysis?! I find that very hard to believe.

I find it hard to beleive that you can run Crysis with the graphics on the high end and can't Civ 4 to work on the uber high end. My computer is old as dirt (Dell Dimension 3000 ftw) and I'm running mostly on the high end. Graphics card is outdated too. I play on the larget map possible (not max Civs 'cuz I can't get colonies to work) and can see units. Like all of them....

 

[warpus]

Here's another vote from somebody who thinks that the Civ4 is not optimized very well. Some things just take way too long (ie. pressing F4 in late game, on a huge map)

It's like the game is putting the entire map in cache each time you do that.. or something.. what the hell is it doing??

 

[Comrade Alex]

It's not all bad, Civ4 effectively trebled the amount I read thanks to the ungodly time taken to advance one turn in the late game; it used to take close enough to 10 minutes... enough time to read about 1 book/game inbetween turns.

Then I got a new computer. Exxxxxxcellent.

 

[Balderstrom]

Try BlueMarble, install the lowres graphics, and civScale.exe - lets you adjust the size of quite a few things, namely unit Flags can be upped so they stand out more.

 

[6-Star General]

No... it is kind of slow. For instance: send a worker to a different square, and you have to wait for the animations to play out before you can give it a command. Same thing with all units, actually. There are plenty of times in the game when you have to wait for the game to finish playing with itself to enter commands.

Still, it's not that bad.

 

[Balderstrom]

Well BTS is slower than vanilla and BTS for sure. But Yxklyx did ask:

The main problem is spotting enemy and friendly units - they blend in with the terrain graphics.

Which civScale and larger Flags WILL help with.

There's a setting for seeing Friendly Moves - but it's not working or doing what I think it should be doing.

I turned that off a long time ago, it was nothing but an annoyance, with the map jumping around over and over. Turns took waaay too long.

Also with civScale.exe I recommend to turn Clouds down, or completely off - improves responsiveness of worldView immensely. Its nearly impossible to "draw lines" in larger maps in BTS compared toi Warlords/Vanilla -- Turning clouds down/off fixes that.