First Civ 4 Screenshots!

[Yuri2356]

It's so... beautiful.

Sid, you've done it again!

 

[Chieftess]

It's a 3D engine. It's probably going to have some of the same features as Warcraft III, Pirates!, etc.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Also notice the buddha icon by one of the cities. Religion in the game, perhaps?

I'm glad the larger pics were shown, because I couldn't tell what that was in the first pic (I thought it was a sack of gold).

 

[Jon Shafer]

Comparing the quality of the early Civ3 screenshots to the final result, yeah, the final version looks better, but they look similar.

They have a similar structure, yes, but you can tell that pretty much everything was tossed and "rebuilt." The point I was trying to make is that the look and feel of the graphics can change drastically even in a short amount of time.

The second pic looks zoomed out, but the caption implies it is zoomed in.

Yeah, looks like they got the captions mixed up on the shots.

 

[Pounder]

Gah! I want hexagons! Gimmie gimmie gimmie!

Squares are better than hexagons.

Hexagons only allow you to move in 6 directions.

Squares allow you to move in 8 directions.

 

[Chieftess]

They have a similar structure, yes, but you can tell that pretty much everything was tossed and "rebuilt." The point I was trying to make is that the look and feel of the graphics can change drastically even in a short amount of time.


Yeah, looks like they got the captions mixed up on the shots.

Atleast you can get up close and personal with your game now.

 

[Jon Shafer]

I think the people here have spent too much time with Civ from a normal distance.

 

[Albow]

so, why do we need 3D then?

ah well, I must admit, I really don't care ... as long as the game has lots of depth, cool features, awesome gameplay etc etc I won't care if they make it look like someone had too much booze and went to the corner ...

Thanks for the screenies, always good to know there is something to wait for ... this does pose an interesting new question. Do we stop posting here and start making a "what we want in Civ 5" thred?

 

[Jon Shafer]

so, why do we need 3D then?

It's easier to develop and more flexible to work with.

 

[Justus II]

Just a couple uneducated guesses as to what we can see from the screenshots. Notice how two of the warrior units have 4 figures, and one has 3? And the spear unit has 3? I wonder if instead of showing hit points in a seperate bar, the number of figures in the unit IS the hit point indicator. (Whether it's 2-3-4-5 hp's based on experience like Civ3, or just proportional, I don't know).
Edit: Nevermind, after closer examination of the bigger pictures, it appears that they do have some kind of HP bar or health indicator above the units, and that the unit figures all have 4 figures (assuming one of the warriors in the unit on the right is cut off). It would be much harder to allow modders to create units if they had to develop graphics for an unknown number of figures per unit, anyway. IT would have been nice, though...

As for the city bars, my guess is the top is food growth, as the food bin fills up, that yellow bar fills across the screen, when it's complete, the city grows. The dark yellow square might be an indicator of how much surplus (i.e., how far the bar moves per turn). The bottom would be shields, showing progress toward the construction of the current project.

As for those concerned about being able to see 'the whole empire', one of the bullets is that the 3D engine will scale from a full-world view all the way into city view. I'd say these are both fairly zoomed in compared to the world view.

 

[searcheagle]

Why 3-d for zoom?

Well I know I run into problems where I want to see more of the map, but the zoom doesnt go out far enough. With this, that won't occur.

 

[Grav]

Squares are better than hexagons.

Hexagons only allow you to move in 6 directions.

Squares allow you to move in 8 directions.

Not true, if you have 8-directional squares, four of the directions are 'cheating'. IE, if you need to go diagonally in a civ game (say... north-east), you've be an idiot to actually go directly diagonally, because if you just go north, THEN go east, you've uncovered about twice as much land, but you've used the SAME number of movement points. In an 8-direction square game, oddly enough, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. This issue surfaces because the tiles allow you to travel off them by using their corners, and not just their flat sides.

Hexagons do not have this issue, and hence are much more... logical.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Just a couple uneducated guesses as to what we can see from the screenshots. Notice how two of the warrior units have 4 figures, and one has 3? And the spear unit has 3? I wonder if instead of showing hit points in a seperate bar, the number of figures in the unit IS the hit point indicator. (Whether it's 2-3-4-5 hp's based on experience like Civ3, or just proportional, I don't know).

Actually, there's 4 Spearmen, not 3... the fourth is kind of camoflaged, I had trouble seeing it at first also.

As for the city bars, my guess is the top is food growth, as the food bin fills up, that yellow bar fills across the screen, when it's complete, the city grows. The dark yellow square might be an indicator of how much surplus (i.e., how far the bar moves per turn). The bottom would be shields, showing progress toward the construction of the current project.

Seems reasonable.

As for those concerned about being able to see 'the whole empire', one of the bullets is that the 3D engine will scale from a full-world view all the way into city view. I'd say these are both fairly zoomed in compared to the world view.

Yup, exactly.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Why 3-d for zoom?

3D makes zooming much smoother. If you'll notice, when you zoom out in Civ 3 it looks kind of pixellated and distored. That's because you're basically blowing up or shrinking the pixels that already exist. With 3D, all of the graphics are created AFTER the game determines how large everything is supposed to be.

 

[Justus II]

Actually, there's 4 Spearmen, not 3... the fourth is kind of camoflaged, I had trouble seeing it at first also.

Yep, noticed it "upon further review", and I edited my post. Too bad, it seemed like a cool way to represent unit strength.

 

[mortichro]

It looks pretty but... looks kinda crowded and complicated.. i hope they improve on the graphics even more so gamplay and camera angles are much more pleasant to see.. the way the screenshot showing units in 4 just makes the game too crowded.. i cant figure out what and where..

 

[Jon Shafer]

Yep, noticed it "upon further review", and I edited my post. Too bad, it seemed like a cool way to represent unit strength.

Doesn't look to me like anything is cut off to the right...

 

[Jon Shafer]

It looks pretty but... looks kinda crowded and complicated.. i hope they improve on the graphics even more so gamplay and camera angles are much more pleasant to see.. the way the screenshot showing units in 4 just makes the game too crowded.. i cant figure out what and where..

Part of the problem is that the shots are very blown up (after TF zoomed in on them to give people a better view). It's probably easier to see in the game itself.

 

[croxis]

One of the advantages of a 3D engine is that it will be very easy to make the game isometric. Looking at the early civ 3 shots it looks like the tiles were a straight down angle instead fo isometric. Also the visual style of the game is very much subject to change was well. As it has been stated many times, the current graphics are probably placeholders, nothing more than a step above stick figures probably used in the first builds. Don't read into the eye candy department. SMAC had drastic visual changes just months before the game was releaced. Heck I think they even delayed the game to make the game look better.

 

[Justus II]

Doesn't look to me like anything is cut off to the right...

The warrior unit on the right, above the spearmen, shows only 3 figures, at least in the shot in post 2 of this thread. The flag bearer, and two behind him. However, I could see that the 4th might have been cut off by the edge of the picture, as the whole tile isn't shown.