Graphics: Should bldgs in city tile be "bigger" than bldgs in surrounding tiles?

[Stringer1313]

Love everything about the unstacking cities concept but a quick question. In all the screen shots the graphics representing the "city" center has the stuff in the city tile around the same size as something in a tile outside the city like the campus. This creates the appearance of having many "city-like" things clustered together without much unifying continuity between them.

It would be great if: a) the buildings in the city tile could be larger, or more domineering, than the buildings in the surrounding city tiles to create the sense of a proper city center / focus point; and b) the graphics could somehow connect the different districts/surrounding tiles together so they don't all seem like standalone entities (admittedly, (b) is much harder to do than (a).)

 

[nyyfootball]

Scale is all screwed up in Civ VI. The pyramids now appear to be several thousand feet tall, instead of only 300 feet.

I personally would prefer scaling more similar to Tropico or Cities: Skylines. The zoom function is there for a reason.

 

[Syon]

Yeah I also had the same idea and if you create a city on a small tile it just expands and becomes a big tile. But I also think later in the game the city will become way bigger (a city is now bigger than one tile) so maybe it doesn't look that weird anymore.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Scale is all screwed up in Civ VI. The pyramids now appear to be several thousand feet tall, instead of only 300 feet.

I personally would prefer scaling more similar to Tropico or Cities: Skylines. The zoom function is there for a reason.

Yes, strange scale is definitely something new to Civ VI.

Wait, what?

 

[nyyfootball]

Yes, strange scale is definitely something new to Civ VI.

Wait, what?

In one of the interviews with Ed Beach, the interview said that he was confused by the scaling and that it made the game harder to play.

I don't understand the rationale for such cartoonish scaling, when a functioning zoom function is completely within technological capability.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

In one of the interviews with Ed Beach, the interview said that he was confused by the scaling and that it made the game harder to play.

I don't understand the rationale for such cartoonish scaling, when a functioning zoom function is completely within technological capability.

It's all so we can understand what's going on. With so many districts, units, buildings, wonders, and everything inbetween now displayed on the map is going to make the map VERY hard to distinguish.

It's there so we can understand, without it it's going to be a bloody gloopy mess and make it very difficult to understand what the hell to do. I just don't understand how people are not getting this idea at this stage.

 

[nyyfootball]

It's all so we can understand what's going on. With so many districts, units, buildings, wonders, and everything inbetween now displayed on the map is going to make the map VERY hard to distinguish.

Isn't that what the zoom function is for though? Have you ever played Cities: Skylines before? There are thousands of buildings on the screen at any given time and they are not hard to distinguish.

It's there so we can understand, without it it's going to be a bloody gloopy mess and make it very difficult to understand what the hell to do. I just don't understand how people are not getting this idea at this stage.

I don't want my hand to be held. I would rather the scaling make sense given the gameplay and not be arbitrarily and cartoonishly big.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Isn't that what the zoom function is for though? Have you ever played Cities: Skylines before? There are thousands of buildings on the screen at any given time and they are not hard to distinguish.

I don't want my hand to be held. I would rather the scaling make sense given the gameplay and not be arbitrarily and cartoonishly big.

If you want to zoom in and out 8,345,678 times during a game, be my guest... But don't make me do it. I'm sure there will be mods that alter the scale of the buildings, if the game is anywhere near as moddable as they say it will be.

 

[nyyfootball]

If you want to zoom in and out 8,345,678 times during a game, be my guest... But don't make me do it. I'm sure there will be mods that alter the scale of the buildings, if the game is anywhere near as moddable as they say it will be.

I have no problem with zooming in and out. Google earth does me just fine.

Civilization is supposed to last a long time and take deep thinking.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

I have no problem with zooming in and out. Google earth does me just fine.

Could that be because it's an application that demands zooming as part of its inherent function, perhaps (due to the scale of the planet Earth)? As opposed to a game whose scale can be balanced so that you almost never have to zoom in or out (or very rarely).

Civilization is supposed to last a long time and take deep thinking.

As opposed to rote, mind-numbing pushing of the zoom buttons, yes. Thanks for proving my point.

 

[nyyfootball]

Could that be because it's an application that demands zooming as part of its inherent function, perhaps (due to the scale of the planet Earth)? As opposed to a game whose scale can be balanced so that you almost never have to zoom in or out (or very rarely).

One of my favorite parts of Civ IV was the google earth style zooming.

As opposed to rote, mind-numbing pushing of the zoom buttons, yes. Thanks for proving my point.

I have no issues with implementing a zoom function, so I don't have look at 5000 feet tall pyramids that take up the same area as an entire city.

 

[AriochIV]

The new Master of Orion is a good example of how constant required zooming can really break the interface. You have to zoom way in to manipulate units and planets, then in the middle of an operation zoom way out to see the strategic picture, and then zoom back in again... it's quite tedious and compartmentalizes the different levels of play, making it seem more disjointed.

 

[m15a]

I'd be interested in trying out a real life scale graphics mod. It'd be so absurd that it might look kind of interesting.

 

[Stringer1313]

I'd rather not have to zoom, and I'm not asking for larger non-city buildings --- I just want the city itself to be bigger (maybe only slightly), so that the campus isn't like the same size as the city. This also has a playability element --- right now, when I see some of the screenshots, it takes me a second to figure out where the actual city is b/c all the stuff is the same size. If the city were a little more prominent that would helpful. I know, the city will have a name over and stuff..

 

[m15a]

I agree that the center tile is not so distinct. I don't think having bigger buildings in the center tile is necessarily a good fix though. If you're talking about building you actually build like the granary, it'd be kind of backwards because those are the buildings that are not that important to see on the map.

But I think spreading the random houses slightly into adjacent tiles like in past games could be good. Maybe more dense (less green) rather than bigger would work well. (EDIT: nm. That's what they actually did in Civ VI.)

 

[AriochIV]

I agree that it would be nice if the city center was more prominent. Perhaps it could spill out of the hex a bit, but there's a limit to how much it can do that without interfering with the structures in other tiles.

It would also be nice if the city center blended in better with the districts visually, like the cities and cottages in Civ IV, but I think it's pretty clear that they're not going to do that. The districts are deliberately color coded so that they stand out and are easily distinguished from each other and the city center. It's unfortunately another case of clarity over aesthetics.

 

[Eklabiaan]

Don't forget that the screenshots & video's we have been shown so far are early game. Not to many buildings in a district and no full army placed in those tiles to defend them (1 or 2 units / tile) In the mid/later game the map will get crowded enough, without an accentuated city center or a campus with denser placed buildings.
I think the dev/art teams are striking a good balance here.
We'll see.

 

[Atwork]

It would also be nice if the city center blended in better with the districts visually, like the cities and cottages in Civ IV, but I think it's pretty clear that they're not going to do that.

Perhaps that will change (and I hope it will) after folks are more acquainted with the distinct look of each district. Once we're all well acquainted, hopefully the devs/modders will feel comfortable adding some visuals around the margins knowing we're trained to find what we need based on prominent visual cues.

 

[Carver]

Scale has always been off in Civ, you have giant warriors towering over giant sawmills. It's a question of: do the graphics look nice as a whole, and are the graphics useful (do they easily display info and allow you to control the game?).

What we super-analyze here will probably seem normal and appropriate while plating the game. Also, like Eklabiaan said, we've mostly seen early small cities. As they grow the map will fill in and look more appropriate.