Does anyone else think the map just looks really unpleasantly cluttered?

[foggyautumn]

I wish that the features on the map themselves were more readable. I know that Civ 6 leaned hard into the cartoonish color-coding, but now that I'm used to that it now feels like looking at a Civ 7 city is drab and difficult to parse at a glance. Even the difference between a rural improvement vs an urban quarter is hard to read, because the sprawl touches the edges of every tile, and the buildings are all around the same color and shape. This is made even more difficult by every civ having themed building styles, so my Bank and University look different from my opponents', so it's even harder to understand what's going on in an opponent's city.

That being said I do love the idea of the themed building styles, I just wished that there was a bit more abstract graphic iconography on the map. Or maybe I'll get used to it.

 

[bbbt]

I mean, on the civ map scale, even a city like Paris or New York wouldn't even fill a tile. If Paris was actually 3 tiles wide in each direction, the Atlantic Ocean would have to be like 150-200 tiles wide to fit on the same scale.

My favorite in Civ6 is how Delicate Arch - which is like the size of a house, and Ruhr Valley, which is a 50 mile long region containing multiple cities, both take up one tile.

 

[queenpea]

I really think the map would benefit from a strategic view lens. Some creators have remarked that the map is very hard to read with all of the clutter.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

Yes, I've thought this since Six came out.

I think I'd prefer the current rural district system, but for urban districts to stack into the city tile rather than sprawl. It wouldn't be represented this way visually, but the way I think about it is like a board game, and a rural district would be a hex token you put on top of a hex on the map board, and city centers would be the same way, but urban districts would instead stack on top of the city center.

That is, urban districts would be "vertical growth" and rural districts "horizontal spread." Ballooning cities just doesn't look right to me, IMO. Not like, a dealbreaker or a major complaint, I just feel like it throws off the sense of scale and visual cleanliness too much.

I basically agree, but this just sounds like the Civ5 system of "urban districts" = buildings and "rural districts" = tile improvements. Which I would prefer - I prefer the Civ5 system over what I've seen for Civ7 - but at that point, why continue to pretend that "districts" even exist?

 

[Ornen]

I mean, on the civ map scale, even a city like Paris or New York wouldn't even fill a tile. If Paris was actually 3 tiles wide in each direction, the Atlantic Ocean would have to be like 150-200 tiles wide to fit on the same scale.

are you accounting for sprawl? because the five boroughs are much smaller than the metro area itself, especially in terms of geography. by my count, even if just north Jersey to LI were 3 tiles, we'd still be looking at a roughly 50-tile Atlantic

civs maps are stylized anyway, especially when it comes to ocean vs continent

 

[Professor Phobo]

I basically agree, but this just sounds like the Civ5 system of "urban districts" = buildings and "rural districts" = tile improvements. Which I would prefer - I prefer the Civ5 system over what I've seen for Civ7 - but at that point, why continue to pretend that "districts" even exist?

True, though I'm sure they could come up with something. Maybe you're limited to a set number of urban districts per population count, fitting two (or three or whatever) buildings each for various bonuses, so you'd still be specializing your cities to some degree?

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Absolutely yes. Those huge cities are awful and completely ruin any fun of playing real Earth maps as cities on such map will be totally out of scale. They also ruin fun for those who like historical immersion where cities were an important dots in the sea of farms and forests. I absolutely prefer Civ5 one-tile cities (and no wonders occupying whole tiles) surrounded by farms, plantations, quarries, mines and woodcutters. When I think of the map cluttered by insanely huge cities bordering each other... Oh, God, it's awful.

I wouldn't mind limiting districts to one per role (industrial, science, money and so on) per city, but this new uncalled system of placing buildings in the districts makes it impossible. Yet another reason to pass.

 

[TreVor_ish]

Sprawl is great, if it's not over most of the land, because then it creates clutter and megalopolis which blurs the readability of which one has which tile on first glance.
It would look so much better, if settlements could occupy/work beyond 3 tiles scope on bigger maps.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

In a world where an archer can shoot an arrow over the Great Lakes, the size of the cities don't really bother me . . . as long as they're readable, etc.

 

[Unaha-Closp]

I'm hoping readability increases when I play, as I can't really tell urban from rural from a hole in the ground when watching videos. And without hovering over tiles am I supposed to know what a tile with a saw pit looks like versus one with an alter, or whatever, I assume with time I will, but as it stands, with 6 in mind, it's a little cluttered to my eyes. I started on 6 and when I went back to 5 I was very confused as to where all the things I was building were, so I assume it's going to be the same with 7, where did I put that building, do I remember if it's ageless or not, will it be clear in-game or do I need to alt-tab to a wiki or, be always hovering? Will I play this game with yields off? It's not how I played 5 or 6, it might clutter it even more.... Soon I'll know, I guess.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not a fan of the sprawl
I'd much rather have only farms/mines/port (actually the latter too can just be a 'city') visible outside the city tile, with the actual city buildings being inside the city - and thus either not shown or be part of the changing city tile graphic.
You can't present even a town, in games like AOEII that literally give you an entire map to do so for one settlement. Of course it will look goofy in a Civ game.

 

[ThERat]

When I look at some of the screens from later ages, my eyes are bleeding. Maybe I am too old but I cant see anything. Might look gorgeous, but we are playing a strategy game where troops movement should be easy. I really prefer civ3/5 style, but then it's a matter of taste I guess.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

I wish they'd take a serious look at civ3. It is the most readable entry in the franchise. You can open any game and at a glance see the game state.

 

[Hajee]

I'm watching some gameplay footage by reviewers, and once the urban sprawl gets into full swing and cities start spreadout two or three tiles away, it just gets kind of... exhausting to continue to look at. It's hard to tell what any tile is, it's hard to tell where one tile ends and another begins, and honestly it kind of breaks the immersion for me that such a large population can be sustained off of seemingly little to no farms.

I vastly prefer the farm sprawl I produce in Civ5 and CivBE - since 90% of the model is at terrain-level it adds minimal clutter to the skyline and makes it more easy by contrast to pick out the fewer things that do rise above the skyline. Or even just keeping forests around that I never chopped down.

I have never really liked the concept of wonders having to take up a whole tile, as we see in Civ6 and Civ7, and I think that definitely adds to the visual noise. It was tolerable in CivBE when it only applied to endgame wonders that were not only few in number, but kind of had to be as large as they were because of the enormity of the undertaking they represented - not just literal game enders, not just the expense all of the energy your civilization produces in the case of the Beacon, but literally the end of humanity as we know it in the case of the Mind Flower. I see no analogous compelling reason why, say, the Eiffel Tower or the Hagia Sofia, which manifestly fit entirely inside a city (source: Paris, Constantinople), would need not only be placed outside the city, but take up as much space as a farm.

So I'm eager to see if it will be technically possible to make a mod to replace all the wonder tile improvements with wonder buildings instead - less in line with Civ6 and a return to Civ4/Civ5 roots. Urban tiles and districts, though, also significantly add to the visual clutter of the map, and I don't know that those are going to be able to be eliminated. I can't quite articulate why they look cluttered, and so I don't know what I should expect to edit about them. Is it the scale of the buildings? Is it the number of buildings? Is the color contrast of the textures?

I think a quick and easy improvements, though not a complete solution, will be to simply significantly increase the number of buildings per urban tile (which I imagine will be an editable global setting, surely it won't be hardcoded), perhaps as many as 4 or 5, so as to cut down on the number of urban tiles that need to be built in the first place.

100% this!!!

in Civ 6 it was horrible and i wished civ 7 reduced the world cutler. there should be a lot of empty space in-between cities. if those spaces were farms and small towns sure that's fine.

I don't mind districts, but only two buildings is awful, and I agree wonders are too large and shouldn't take up a whole tile.

if it were me, I would have done districts as 5 buildings in a district and in the middle of each districts can house one wonder.

 

[ehecatzin]

I think the sprawl betwen cities works mostly fine, I also agree in that reviewers seem to be setting towns to close to cities. Maybe It's playstyle? every time I see them I would have liked them to settle a bit farther.

As for readibility, yes it can be improved, I hope they add color coding to buildings as an option. I'll know when I play it, but I think we'll get used to looking at certain shapes rather than colors when it comes to buildings. Also, yes, rural tiles look a bit too busy and upscaled (same problem walls have really). I think just downscaling a bit the rural buidlings would help a lot.

2 buildings per urban district seems fine to me for now, but it seems inhebitable that with more and more added we will need a way to build taller and add 3 buildings per urban district. maybe we could expect to see a district "tier" system for dense cities later on?

 

[Taefin]

add 3 buildings per urban district

This might make sense already. I guess it would increase the benefit of adjacencies, but it would make unique quarters more of a trade off, if they took a third building slot otherwise available.

I’ll be interested to see what the game looks like with bigger maps and mods that increase city spacing and improvement radius.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This might make sense already. I guess it would increase the benefit of adjacencies, but it would make unique quarters more of a trade off, if they took a third building slot otherwise available.

I’ll be interested to see what the game looks like with bigger maps and mods that increase city spacing and improvement radius.

Yeah. There will clearly be bigger maps incoming (with the largest one being called "medium" and all).

 

[wesplaysciv]

In potato mcwhiskey's "what I don't like" review he definitely agrees that the readability of the map has taken a huge step back. That and the UI are his biggest complaints...

 

[friendlysavage]

Honestly? I have a hard time looking at the Civ 5 and 6 maps because I just find them so ugly and almost "out of focus" in their graphics.

I love the look of these new sprawling cities, but it does seem like it's hard to read which buildings are where just by looking at the map

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Remove the districts game from the map and place it back inside the cities where it belongs. Imagine how beautiful these maps could potentially look!