Civ7 Visuals Thread

General art style direction

  • Realistic (Civ5 style)

    Votes: 70 46.7%
  • Cartoonish (Civ6 style)

    Votes: 27 18.0%
  • Humankind style

    Votes: 9 6.0%
  • Super Realistic (Unlike previous games)

    Votes: 24 16.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 20 13.3%

  • Total voters
    150
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.
AoE fans don not hate AoE3, is just that AoE3 is not as popular as AoE2 and that is mostly because gameplay reasons not visuals.
Interesting thing is that AoE:Online a game with cartoonish graphics was worse received that any other main AoE game. BUT again not everyting is because visuals, the online model part was in this case its main problem.
 
AoE fans don not hate AoE3, is just that AoE3 is not as popular as AoE2 and that is mostly because gameplay reasons not visuals.
Interesting thing is that AoE:Online a game with cartoonish graphics was worse received that any other main AoE game. BUT again not everyting is because visuals, the online model part was in this case its main problem.

Not to derail this thread too much, but I'm actually curious why that is the case. I started with AoE3 as a kid when it was new, and then later played AoE2 a little, but not quite as much. Admittedly I was still too young to have been playing that seriously back in the 2000s, but they both felt fairly similar to me, albeit with different historical flavor. I'm sure if I got into it seriously later on, some of those discrepancies would become more apparent, but in the vantage of my own memory I don't really see major gameplay differences. Do these mostly have to do with balance?
 
To think I missed that and even played this game a lot. :lol:

Is that modded, however? I don't recall there being any Asian architecture in that game.
Anno 1701 had 4 Groups you could trade/interact with, one of which was Asian (northern part of the map, as I vaguely remember) from which that screenshot is taken, I suspect.

The other three were, I believe, Aztec/Mesoamerican, Indian sub-continent, and North American 'Iroquoish' groups.

The basic architecture for the player was 18th century Northern European, but the fact that they could include 5 different detailed architectural styles in the same game almost 20 years ago affirms my point from the Settlers 6 shot I showed (from 2007) that Civ VII can do a lot better in its graphics than Civ has done for the past 10+ years.
 
Not to derail this thread too much, but I'm actually curious why that is the case. I started with AoE3 as a kid when it was new, and then later played AoE2 a little, but not quite as much. Admittedly I was still too young to have been playing that seriously back in the 2000s, but they both felt fairly similar to me, albeit with different historical flavor. I'm sure if I got into it seriously later on, some of those discrepancies would become more apparent, but in the vantage of my own memory I don't really see major gameplay differences. Do these mostly have to do with balance?
Is a mix of elements but in general AoE2 nailed a set of mechanics that make it simpler but ballanced and accessibe. One of the notable aspects that ended playing againts AoE3 was the Homecity+Cards mechanics since they were part of a progressive design that forced players to play a lot with each civ before even unlock all their best bonuses. This was so obvious that years later when the DE (Definitive Edition) was launched the new devs made all the cards available by default.
There are many others factors like the timeperiod itself that forced most civs to have a lot of guns using units that make the recognition of counters less intuitive, and the less simetrical design of each civ that also need a lot of familiarization to master every one.
Anyway there must be noted that between AoE2 and AoE3 was AoM (Age of Mythology) that is a natural transition between the game mechanics of the other two games.
 
Realistic style for me, perhaps a bit brighter and more vibrant, and more high fidelty than Civ 5. Super realistic might have been cool, but I don't think it would really work in a tile based game.

I've been playing a lot of Ara recently, and I think the visuals are gorgeous, with a realistic style. I can't really post screenshots from the alpha, but did do a couple of captures from a recent video interview. There is some compression involved, it looks even better in real life.
Spoiler :
ara1.jpg
ara2.jpg
ara3.jpg
ara4.jpg


I assume Civ 7 will be tile based, but I wouldn't mind something similar.
 
As long as terrain features, improvements and cities/districts are clearly distinguishable from each other I'll be happy. I think that's easier if you exaggerate things, i.e. more cartoonish, but there's examples where realistic visuals were distinct too. So it can be done for sure
 
I'm not sure what people are seeing when they praise Ara's visuals. It doesn't appeal to me at all. The map graphics are bland, generic, and lacking in a specific artistic direction. The UI looks kind of goofy and doesn't match the vibe of the map graphics. The bright primary colors don't match at all with the sleek material backgrounds of the UI.

The leaders are cartoonish Sims-looking creations with a lower quality Civ 6 feel, clashing with the realistic terrain graphics. The leaders appear to share skeletons and animations too, making them look generic.
 
I'm not sure what people are seeing when they praise Ara's visuals. It doesn't appeal to me at all. The map graphics are bland, generic, and lacking in a specific artistic direction. The UI looks kind of goofy and doesn't match the vibe of the map graphics. The bright primary colors don't match at all with the sleek material backgrounds of the UI.

The leaders are cartoonish Sims-looking creations with a lower quality Civ 6 feel, clashing with the realistic terrain graphics. The leaders appear to share skeletons and animations too, making them look generic.

Bland map graphics like you say, generic designs, Sims leaders, but also I really really don't like its Microsoft - like interface of early 2000s era simulators or Sims games. Very unappealing for me, as much as I am nostalgic for this era :p

Compare with with my beloved Civ5 art deco UI or Civ6 which has a different but still distinctive and lovable design vibe.

I don't know why all Civ 4X leaders are stubborn to have this generic "bland blue minimalism" interface style. Humankind, Millenia and now Ara seem to fall again in the trap of losing with Civ on the flavour front.
 
I'm not sure what people are seeing when they praise Ara's visuals. It doesn't appeal to me at all. The map graphics are bland, generic, and lacking in a specific artistic direction. The UI looks kind of goofy and doesn't match the vibe of the map graphics. The bright primary colors don't match at all with the sleek material backgrounds of the UI.

The leaders are cartoonish Sims-looking creations with a lower quality Civ 6 feel, clashing with the realistic terrain graphics. The leaders appear to share skeletons and animations too, making them look generic.
I like the map. Combining that with the UI reminds me more of a citybuilding simulation game, rather than a 4X game, however. But to me that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Agree on the leaders though.
 
Bland map graphics like you say, generic designs, Sims leaders, but also I really really don't like its Microsoft - like interface of early 2000s era simulators or Sims games. Very unappealing for me, as much as I am nostalgic for this era :p

Compare with with my beloved Civ5 art deco UI or Civ6 which has a different but still distinctive and lovable design vibe.

I don't know why all Civ 4X leaders are stubborn to have this generic "bland blue minimalism" interface style. Humankind, Millenia and now Ara seem to fall again in the trap of losing with Civ on the flavour front.
It's not just Civ 4X. All games have this UI, even Sims. It's kinda the corporate minimalism where they onyl care about function, and not at all about the aesthetic.
 
I'm not sure what people are seeing when they praise Ara's visuals. It doesn't appeal to me at all. The map graphics are bland, generic, and lacking in a specific artistic direction. The UI looks kind of goofy and doesn't match the vibe of the map graphics. The bright primary colors don't match at all with the sleek material backgrounds of the UI.

The leaders are cartoonish Sims-looking creations with a lower quality Civ 6 feel, clashing with the realistic terrain graphics. The leaders appear to share skeletons and animations too, making them look generic.
The leaders and UI - okay, I see where you are coming from. They are nothing special. But to me, the map is the most important thing by far, and I really like how it looks. It's organic, varied, detailed and full of life. It also looks good at every zoom level, unlike, for example, Humankind. When you zoom all the way in, it does indeed look like a city builder, with people and animals moving around. Zoomed out it looks like a traditional 4X, and still very good in my eyes.

For UI graphics, Civ 5 wins easily for me.
 
Civ 5 style for sure. I'de even prefer super realistic over 6's style. Most of the leaders look horrible to me in 6, and I despised the flat painting background.
 
It's from the Sunken Dragon expansion campaign, which had a giant Asian holy city


Thank you! I really like the soft, warm colors of Anno. Ironically (and bringing my sidebar back into line with this thread), it kind of feels like a conceptual blend of Civ III and Civ IV, with the color palette of the former and the emphasis on 3D models and a generally more animated environment (trees swaying, waves crashing, subtle ambient noise, etc.) of the latter.

Aesthetically, something along the lines of the graphical tone of Civ III would be great for Civ VII in my opinion. IV is by far my favorite of the series, but the tone of III's graphics are more appealing to me in general. (I did start with III, after all, so maybe there's some bias at play. :D) The UI just really didn't age well.
 
Thank you! I really like the soft, warm colors of Anno. Ironically (and bringing my sidebar back into line with this thread), it kind of feels like a conceptual blend of Civ III and Civ IV, with the color palette of the former and the emphasis on 3D models and a generally more animated environment (trees swaying, waves crashing, subtle ambient noise, etc.) of the latter.

Aesthetically, something along the lines of the graphical tone of Civ III would be great for Civ VII in my opinion. IV is by far my favorite of the series, but the tone of III's graphics are more appealing to me in general. (I did start with III, after all, so maybe there's some bias at play. :D) The UI just really didn't age well.
Agree with most of this. I don't care for the graphics of base Civ 4 at all (although I think Blue Marble is quite nice), I do like 3d, even if it meant a smaller map.
 
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.
Unless you zoomed in.

I think there is a key right there.
 
Unless you zoomed in.

I think there is a key right there.
The problem with 'Zooming in' is, what is the focal distance at which you will normally play the game? If you have to zoom in and out to accomplish everything, that is a major headache - literally: I have given myself blazing headaches doing exactly that on line.

If, on the other hand, you can play the game at one distance and Zoom In just to see the Prettiness, that is much easier on old eyes like mine, but it is essentially an add-on to game-play. Anno 1800 has a Personal mode where you can drop right down to eye-level and'walk around' in your massive production city. It's lots of fun, it's a very attra tive feature,but it's basically a distraction from the game because you can't actually do anything while you are sightseeing.

That doesn't mean I want it left out, but I do want the emphasis on a Playable depiction of the map and the game. I am playing a pre-release game right now that has such a Zoom feature, and it's very good-looking when zoomed in, but it also stresses my computer to the point where I fear it is just short of overheating. Given that no other game in my library causes my computer that much stress, that means a visual 'candy' offering is, basically, breaking the game for me.

And in a game the size of Civ, if you are going to Zoom In on each of hundreds of hexes/tiles, that is going to put a load on any graphics/memory in the average computer (my gaming computer is slighty above average, but 3 years old, so I consider that I am probably right in the middle of most gamers' rigs). For something that is not required to actually play the game, one could question whether it is worth it. If it sells games, of course, it is worth it to the gaming company, but if the average gamer has to buy a new computer to use the feature, the practicality to the gamer becomes questionable.
 
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