Civ7 Visuals Thread

[Boris Gudenuf]

I posted several years ago, use the Romantic landscape painters of the 18th - 19th centuries for inspiration: dramatic lighting, details on rthe landscape, if necessary exaggerated height effects to make hills, mountains, etc distinctive:

Any doubt that those are Mountains in the distance?
And even open fields have stray animals, rocks, individual trees and brush - detail keeps the map from being Bland.

Dramatic lighting of the terrain/map can emphasize differences in terrain as well as the details of the terrain itself: no question that those are mountains again, and a river/stream in the foreground that is not just a dull blue line.

And this is from a game Older Than Civ V by years. It is on a much lower ground scale (City Builder) but shows how brighter colors can be combined with detailed terrain to our advantage.

 

[Quintillus]

I think the reason VI's cartoonish style bothered me but IV's cartoonish elements didn't is that VI makes the leaders unrealistically youthful in appearance, whereas IV tends to be humorous in the animations leaders choose, while still having the overall appearance (Gandhi excepted) be plausible. The youthfulness may work in manga, but IMO it does not work in a game like Civ that is attempting to portray iconic leaders of historically important countries.

Beyond that... I think there should be a balance. Being able to easily distinguish hills from flatlands, and forests from jungles, for example, is important, and over-realisticness may inhibit that. III is over-saturated but with clear distinctions, IV is more realistic but still with clear distinctions, I had no complaints about either. Hills are too difficult to distinguish from flatlands in VI.

 

[pokiehl]

I don’t think hills being hard to distinguish in 6 has anything to do with the art style. It was just a misstep in designing the hill height map. Could’ve easily happened in another style.

I also don’t think leaders in 6 look particularly youthful…Gandhi and Pericles both look elderly for example.

 

[Uberfrog]

I posted several years ago, use the Romantic landscape painters of the 18th - 19th centuries for inspiration: dramatic lighting, details on rthe landscape, if necessary exaggerated height effects to make hills, mountains, etc distinctive:
View attachment 693827
Any doubt that those are Mountains in the distance?
And even open fields have stray animals, rocks, individual trees and brush - detail keeps the map from being Bland.
View attachment 693828
Dramatic lighting of the terrain/map can emphasize differences in terrain as well as the details of the terrain itself: no question that those are mountains again, and a river/stream in the foreground that is not just a dull blue line.

View attachment 693829
And this is from a game Older Than Civ V by years. It is on a much lower ground scale (City Builder) but shows how brighter colors can be combined with detailed terrain to our advantage.

I am fully in agreement. The gorgeous colours of Romantic landscape lend themselves perfectly to Civilization.

Too often video game art debates are posed as a dichotomy- realistic or cartoony. As if there aren’t a multitude of styles to choose from!

Photorealism is a bit of a nonsense in a strategic game like Civ anyway. Given the need for visual clarity, the scale of scenery, units, buildings etc is nowhere near accurate. I also find that attempts at more realistic graphics generally age much more poorly than stylised art.

Cartoony art isn’t necessarily bad, but I am tired of the caricature-type leader art in Civ 6. I’d also like for AI personalities to be less exaggerated this time around, and so a more restrained painterly art style would reflect that nicely.

 

[HNation]

You can have a style that isn't too drab while still not being cartoony, for example, this game from 2006:

 

[AriochIV]

You can have a style that isn't too drab while still not being cartoony, for example, this game from 2006:

Yes. There are other options different from photorealistic that are not "cartoon."

 

[Potworny]

- Color palette closer to civ5, I have never liked bright happy go lucky Pixar colors for a game which, after all, is about all human history good and bad, with war and tyranny and opression in the background...
- Vibrancy of civ6 (honestly idk how to combine that with the previous point)

I believe what you want may be color accents, a realistic, toned down and not overwhelming color pallete, with colourful elements where applicable consistently with the color harmony on screen. I'm thinking of movies like Pierrot Le Fou, or Jacques Tati's Playtime and Mon Oncle as references - whenever strong color pops up in these movies it's very noticeable, but it always fits the scene and doesn't fry one's synapses. For a colorist to lazily achieve something like this they sometimes dial down the saturation (to bring down the saturation of ALL colors in a scene) and dial up vibrance (to bring up saturation only for the strongest instances of color).

I really liked the realistic aesthetic of Civ V, and I have most attachment towards it. It was so gentle, along with the music. But whatever they do with the style, I just wish that the UI has at least half as much class as V had - the art deco elements with a font based on Futura are engrained in my mind as definition of elegance in video games, it may even have been impactful on me as a person dealing with various visual arts. It will seem like a little much to you all I bet, but I can't express how strongly I feel about superiority of Civ V's creative direction. The leaders have aged not so great I guess, but I think that may be the only thing I consider VI better at. I could go on and on about this, but I think it'll be better I hold myself back a little

I remember that Krajzen used the word "gravitas" when speaking about Civ V's gameplay feeling. It was years ago I read it, but it stuck to me because that's one of the things I look for in Civilization - and aesthetically elegance is very important to achieving such effect. Some of what we've seen indicates that Civ VII probably will be more "elegant", but there are still some things that I feel like could be done differently to satisfy my obnoxious criteria. For example: the forms of people in the teaser could be a little bit sleeker, there could be either less OR more contrast in the lighting, the logotype could be more minimalistic, with no deep blue stroke and one material texture instead of multiple, finally the hex graphic couuld possibly use a slightly thicker outline with more balanced ornaments.

Most of these are irrelevant nitpicks, because what they're going for isn't meant to satisfy my specific interest exactly and frankly Civ V will be favoured by me anyways because I associate it with a little bit with carefree hundreds hours of childhood. In terms of direction, I'm honestly very much satisfied with what they seem to be going with. I just hope it will stray away from overwhelming-ness and that UI is pretty and smart - these two are the things I feel the strongest about, along with Civ emblems and colors I obsess about :v

 

[Futumch]

This is just an aside, but related to the visuals of the series:
WRT Civ6's map, I always thought it would be great to be able to have a full map of the world, but in the fog of war mode. It looked a lot like a parchment map. What I mean is - being able to save the world map at a decent resolution in that wood-cut / parchment style once you have won the game. Some of the maps I've played in the last few years would make for teriffic little wall posters when printed out.

 

[HNation]

Yes. There are other options different from photorealistic that are not "cartoon."

Still, photorealistic would be my preference. It's 2024, we have the tech for it.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Still, photorealistic would be my preference. It's 2024, we have the tech for it.

Why? What does that geniunely achieve?

Just because we can doesn't mean we should.

 

[HNation]

Why? What does that geniunely achieve?

Just because we can doesn't mean we should.

I prefer it aesthetically, and it makes the game seem more serious than Civ 6's cartoon garbage. Why don't you like photorealistic?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I prefer it aesthetically, and it makes the game seem more serious than Civ 6's cartoon garbage. Why don't you like photorealistic?

Because 'real' photorealistic would be incomprehensible to most gamers. Remember that each tile/hex on rthe map represents a hundred or more square kilometers in open country, probably several square kilometers of City. So unless you zoomed in on it considerably, what you would see would be a photo-realistic aerial photograph of the terrain. Interpreting those IRL requires specialized training and instruments and even then it is not easy to tell what you are looking at in every instance.

So, as part of a GUI photorealism would be a negative factor, reducing comprehension and playability. Photorealsm in Units without massaging the scale would also result in a mass of ant-like forms on the tile impossible to distinguish as to nationality, weapons, or intention - again, a negative influence on legibility of the game.

And don't get me started on photorealism in a City depiction: districts wouldn't even be defined, individual buildings would largely look alike, and the entire city would become one great blob of concrete.

To make the map and everything on it useful to the gamer, a photorealistic depiction would also have to have pop-up or mouse-over legneds on everything for the gamer to tell what he is looking at, unless he's attended a Photo-Interpretation Course from the military before playing the game.

 

[Kjimmet]

I prefer it aesthetically, and it makes the game seem more serious than Civ 6's cartoon garbage. Why don't you like photorealistic?

While this wasn't directed at me, and I'd like to stay out of the topic of artstyles as much as possible. I'd like to offer few reasons why someone might not like realistic (or photorealistic) graphics.
1. The realistic graphics can be generally replaced with any other artstyle and not will the feel of the game not change, sometimes it's improved! An example of game with realistic graphics where you CAN'T change the artstyle without loosing the feel would be Dark Souls. Try as I may, I can't imagine Dark Souls with any other artstyle without it loosing something. The same can't be said with Last of Us. I can imagine Last of Us with other artstyles and not only that, I think different artstyle would IMPROVE what the game is trying to do.
2. Realistic graphics tend to look samey. A lot of times I can't tell different games with realistic graphics apart. This I believe is detrimental for the success. I am looking for something new. I wouldn't want Civ7 with same artstyle as in Civ6 but I don't want realistic either because we already had one with the style (Civ5). This is also why my gaming repertoire has little to no games with realistic graphics. I've played one with the style, time to move on with something new. (The other reason is that realistic games seem to always be in genres I'm not interested in.)
3. Realistic graphics aren't realistic enough/are ugly. I live in countryside. I'm used to seeing highly colourful environment. Many realistic games have such a wide colour scheme such as brown, grey, brown, gray and brown. This isn't how reality looks like. My home is predominantly surrounded by green and yellow. This makes me completely ignore games with realistic graphics as uninteresting and boring.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I prefer it aesthetically, and it makes the game seem more serious than Civ 6's cartoon garbage. Why don't you like photorealistic?

It's often just bland. Done badly art style.

Not only that, it is generally expensive, because you need to waste a lot of time on making sure the details look good, because if you don't and fail at that you end up with a creepy uncanny valley mess.

It's also fails readability almost immediately, for some games, like first shooters? Absolutely, I can see the appeal and I'd probably enjoy it more.

But for something like Civ? Honestly, Potato McWhiskey has the right idea: Could really get away with a digital boardgame aesthetic if needed.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I'd like to see specific tile animation for weather. Trees blowing in the wind. Sandstorms and Snowstorms that cause limited visibility. Cloud covered mountains.

 

[civPeter]

Glad you brought up this topic. I really didn't like the over exaggerated style of Civ 6. So hard to see what was on each tile, and proportions were out of balance. The leaders were just too cartoony for me. I hope they go back to a more realistic style.. that screenshot that was posted looks better to me than Civ 6.

 

[AspiringScholar]

You can have a style that isn't too drab while still not being cartoony, for example, this game from 2006:

Which game is that?

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Looks like Age of Empires 3.

Series fans seem to hate it, but eh, it's the only one I played and I like it.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Looks like Age of Empires 3.

Series fans seem to hate it, but eh, it's the only one I played and I like it.

I enjoyed it as well at the time, but RTS (aside from Total War) tends to be too "clickfesty" and often is more stressful than fun.

Ah, that must be that Asian Dynasties expansion or whatever it was called.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Definitely like what I see in the screenshot. Hopefully this is what they've decided upon. Other than that, the Civ 6 approach with three buildings in each district dominating the visuals looks a bit silly to me. I don't mind if the buildings are visible but blending them in to a more realistic city aesthetic would be preferable.