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

[Professor Phobo]

Yeah, I appreciate the design concept of "put everything on the map" but it's just too complex a game for that to actually work, and a lot of on-map stuff (missionaries!) is more tedious than interesting. A system for Districts internal to a city tile would be my preference.

Wonders I'm 50/50 on, but I guess they can stay on the map? Never quite liked that either but on the other hand when you build the cool unique thing you should get to look at the cool unique thing and say to yourself, oooh, look at that cool unique thing I built.

 

[stealth_nsk]

One of the problem with map visibility is very logical with civ7 design. In Civ6 each district was specialized, so it was easy to just color code them. In Civ7 each district could host any 2 building, so such distinction is just impossible.

 

[Seek]

One of the problem with map visibility is very logical with civ7 design. In Civ6 each district was specialized, so it was easy to just color code them. In Civ7 each district could host any 2 building, so such distinction is just impossible.

Someone, I think PotatoMcWhiskey, suggested just coloring the roofs of the little buildings. If it's subtle and not gaudy like in Civ 6, I could get behind it.

Although I also wonder how much it's needed in general?

 

[stealth_nsk]

Someone, I think PotatoMcWhiskey, suggested just coloring the roofs of the little buildings. If it's subtle and not gaudy like in Civ 6, I could get behind it.

Although I also wonder how much it's needed in general?

Without district specialization, it's not very useful, because I don't think you'll be able to read something useful even if little colored roofs.

 

[UWHabs]

Without district specialization, it's not very useful, because I don't think you'll be able to read something useful even if little colored roofs.

At least coloring the roofs at a glance you'd see a little green roof for your granary, a little orange one for the sawpit, etc... At least if you remember a town only has one production building, you'd notice at a glance where it is.

 

[pokiehl]

Without district specialization, it's not very useful, because I don't think you'll be able to read something useful even if little colored roofs.

It'll lead to an ugly mishmash of colors everywhere since all buildings can be mixed together, like you’re basically saying.

In general the colored roofs of Civ 6 were really silly and cartoony. I don’t want them back.

I also think that there’s no real need for immediate recognition of buildings at a glance, especially with all the streamlining of buildings and districts. That’s what different menus and lenses are for. I really like the aesthetics of cities now, and I think a small sacrifice to immediate readability is a worthy trade off.

 

[Leucarum]

This definitely was a big issue for me with Humankind - though I think it was far worse there. You just couldn't plan very easily because there was too much stuff and it was too hard to parse at a glance. There's an element of being boxed into a corner too since you might mix and match buildings of different types into a single district, and I don't think the graphical style lends itself to solutions like coloured roofs. I think the best idea might be an option to add coloured outlines to hexes based on the districts between them. E.g. a half blue and half red outline if you have a library and a barracks on one hex. Make it toggleable - maybe even add a hotkey?

Will I play this game with yields off? It's not how I played 5 or 6, it might clutter it even more....

I was wondering the same thing... The visual cues look so easy to miss when trying to see what is what. Hopefully it's not as bad during gameplay. One thing I spotted from Boesthius' video is that they added a hotkey for toggling yields! So maybe the answer is that we'll be much more easily able to flip between modes depending on what is useful. I guess this might be a rare example of a good UI change in Civ7?

 

[ehecatzin]

This definitely was a big issue for me with Humankind - though I think it was far worse there.

I always hated how you couldn't build taller there, unlike civ VII.

think the best idea might be an option to add coloured outlines to hexes based on the districts between them

A strategic view could also work.

 

[Leucarum]

I also think that there’s no real need for immediate recognition of buildings at a glance, especially with all the streamlining of buildings and districts. That’s what different menus and lenses are for. I really like the aesthetics of cities now, and I think a small sacrifice to immediate readability is a worthy trade off.

I'm basing my experience off humankind here, but it was a bigger problem than I expected there. City planning was almost non existent for me because the map was too hard to parse. As goofy as Civ6 looked at times, humankind's graphics made me nostalgic for its clarity very quickly. I don't think 7 is as bad, and I agree that lenses offer a solution, but firaxis have a laundry list of UI requests at this point... I hope this one doesn't languish, I expect it's going to be a bigger problem than expected.

 

[Turrdy]

I think accessability in visuals is more important than one would think. One of the key factors that Civ6 was so successful for such a long time, also with new players, is that it looked so friendly and inviting and readable and uncomplicated. Civ7 looks way more earnest and serious and complicated and hard to get into.
Same as with games like Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings. They don't look inviting, they look complicated! And a casual player might think: "Uh-oh. That looks complicated, and I don't have time learning that game..."

 

[Ornen]

It'll lead to an ugly mishmash of colors everywhere since all buildings can be mixed together, like you’re basically saying.

In general the colored roofs of Civ 6 were really silly and cartoony. I don’t want them back.

I also think that there’s no real need for immediate recognition of buildings at a glance, especially with all the streamlining of buildings and districts. That’s what different menus and lenses are for. I really like the aesthetics of cities now, and I think a small sacrifice to immediate readability is a worthy trade off.

fullu agree with this. wouldn’t mind some form of color coding / highlighting when specifically in city view.

 

[Josephias]

After playing a bit, I have to agree we here need a compromise between gorgeous graphics, gameplay value and visual stress.
I already had a big issue with the cluttered map in the final stages of Civ VI, so it is not only Civ VII. And color-coding, while helped the underestanding, made it even more unconfortable to look at (altough, if I have to be honest, the biggest offenders there were late-age improvements such as mills and solar plants (and sky resorts!) that were in such a big scale and so repetitive that, at least to me, caused visual stress).

Haven't reached modern age yet in Civ VII, but the level of detail only of the terrain in the game makes it gorgeous, but also not that easy to identify or to clear the big picture. Not a big difference at the moment of having the buildings and improvements over that, but that is also a gameplay minus, as it means their noticeability is not that big. Definitely we may need some lenses and visualization levels (or just to get used to it), but indeed it is a pity that it seems we cannot get all (beautyness, strategy and confort) in the same pack. In certain way, it is the problem of the WYSIWYG route started in civ IV: trying to get it all in the same view.

In civ I and civ III specially, the city view had no strategic value, but it was there to have those relax moments and get the reward of what you built (civ II city view was meh). Not to say the city view has to be back there but maybe getting a "gameplay view" with more simple models / generic graphics, that could be switched/transitioned* a "bird's view" of your empire, not used for gameplay, but were models were more detailed and at scale and you could fly around the same map you are playing, that could be a great way to recover that experience.
*Note about transitioned view: If you played any of these remakes of old games that let you switch seamlessly from pixel view to modern cel-shaded view, these transitions would be ideal.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

After playing a bit, I have to agree we here need a compromise between gorgeous graphics, gameplay value and visual stress.
I already had a big issue with the cluttered map in the final stages of Civ VI, so it is not only Civ VII. And color-coding, while helped the underestanding, made it even more unconfortable to look at (altough, if I have to be honest, the biggest offenders there were late-age improvements such as mills and solar plants (and sky resorts!) that were in such a big scale and so repetitive that, at least to me, caused visual stress).

Haven't reached modern age yet in Civ VII, but the level of detail only of the terrain in the game makes it gorgeous, but also not that easy to identify or to clear the big picture. Not a big difference at the moment of having the buildings and improvements over that, but that is also a gameplay minus, as it means their noticeability is not that big. Definitely we may need some lenses and visualization levels (or just to get used to it), but indeed it is a pity that it seems we cannot get all (beautyness, strategy and confort) in the same pack. In certain way, it is the problem of the WYSIWYG route started in civ IV: trying to get it all in the same view.

In civ I and civ III specially, the city view had no strategic value, but it was there to have those relax moments and get the reward of what you built (civ II city view was meh). Not to say the city view has to be back there but maybe getting a "gameplay view" with more simple models / generic graphics, that could be switched/transitioned* a "bird's view" of your empire, not used for gameplay, but were models were more detailed and at scale and you could fly around the same map you are playing, that could be a great way to recover that experience.
*Note about transitioned view: If you played any of these remakes of old games that let you switch seamlessly from pixel view to modern cel-shaded view, these transitions would be ideal.

Civ 1 has the best city screen to date

 

[foggyautumn]

I think that now that I've gotten my hands on the game, the buildings are pleasant; my eyes are getting used to seeing the dividing-line down the middle of urban districts and picking out the buildings on each side.

I still think there's a little more they could do to make the buildings more distinct from each other, and especially I think that they could make better icons for these buildings. In the tech tree, each circle icon is a blob or grey and brown, and it doesn't help me intuit which techs are relevant to which resources or focuses. I think color-coding and abstracting in the iconography, instead of just a section of the render of the actual model, could really help here, and maybe also contribute to a more readable "Strategic View" that people liked about previous games.

 

[Mezmorizor]

I also think that there’s no real need for immediate recognition of buildings at a glance, especially with all the streamlining of buildings and districts. That’s what different menus and lenses are for. I really like the aesthetics of cities now, and I think a small sacrifice to immediate readability is a worthy trade off.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a big fan of the aesthetic in general, I didn't like humankind's very similar vibe either, but not being completely aesthetically optimal is a very small concession to make for the sake of not having to constantly use lenses which are almost assuredly going to be uglier.

Edit: Grammar.

 

[foggyautumn]

Agree; I even don't like playing with Yields on most of the time for aesthetic reasons; although the Exploration Age Science legacy path kind of demands this. With a whole legacy path dedicated to it, it would be cool if there was some visual expression of an Urban District reaching 20, 30, 40 yield without needing Yields on.

 

[JNR13]

Hot take: I don't think being able to identify buildings at a glance is that important anymore. Whenever you build stuff, you are guided by yield indicators and the difference in value between placing something here or there are much smaller. And with the age transitions and overbuilding, you don't have to plan that far ahead anyway.

Placement in Civ VI was a tight puzzle where that quick identification was important. In VII, I can live without. I think a lense which colors tile halves according to the building would be completely fine and sufficient for when you try to plan a "adjacency from all Gold buildings" unique building or so.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Hot take: I don't think being able to identify buildings at a glance is that important anymore. Whenever you build stuff, you are guided by yield indicators and the difference in value between placing something here or there are much smaller. And with the age transitions and overbuilding, you don't have to plan that far ahead anyway.

Placement in Civ VI was a tight puzzle where that quick identification was important. In VII, I can live without. I think a lense which colors tile halves according to the building would be completely fine and sufficient for when you try to plan a "adjacency from all Gold buildings" unique building or so.

"Where's my Building X? I need to put building Y there too so that I can get the unique whatever."

 

[Aquila SPQR]

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.

I always rationalized it as "a unit composed mostly of archers is attacking the enemy on the other side of the lake". Not perfect, but playable.

But how can people rationalize what we got in Civ VII? You can found a capital city. It's called, let's say, Paris (let's pretend it's classical civ and cities are French). Then you found Orleans next to it. Then Lyons. And so on. In 100 turns those cities grow and merge into one, huge city, at least visually.

So - should I consider that all my cities in the empire literally merged into one?
Because, visually, it looks like Paris merging with some nearby villages with them becoming its districts.

And if so - what my empire really is - a huge chunk of land full of cities, like the old Roman Empire, or just a capital city which swallowed nearby villages and spans 20 km across max?

Cities in Civ series were always abstract and out of scale, but Civ VII made it even worse.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

suggested just coloring the roofs of the little buildings

100% agree, give us some clue please!!