Minimap is gonna suck

[Xur]

Sea-tiles are colored the same as land, so any contours of landmass will eventually render the minimap useless. CIV5 had the same problem with the endgame replay - you would end up with a couple of big colored blobs. If you played an earth map, you wouldn't recognize the map in the replay. If this bleeds over to the minimap in CIV6, then it's basicly useless.

This how CIV5 does it:

This is what CIV6 might look like if nothing is changed:

 

[malekithau]

I'm constantly amazed at the things other players worry about. The only thing I ever use the minimap for is to keep track of where the enemy cities are being planted early game or to spot borders I missed during scouting. After that I may glance at it occasionally when a war is taking place to see what cities have changed hands but otherwise I just don't use it.

That said perhaps it should be a little more opaque to cater for those who do use it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Ideally areas that have been revealed would have certain features that would show through both the 'faded out' area and cultural borders.

such as
Coastline (an actual landmass border outline)
Mountains
maybe rivers


(For visibility they also should consider some terrain things like cutting plains... let grassland be 1 food 1 production away from rivers and 2 food adjacent to rivers..like deserts and floodplains)

 

[Dray]

Hopefully this is fixed before release.

 

[Slayan]

Yep gonna suck
I would rather they spend time and money on gameplay not mini map

 

[Xur]

Yep gonna suck
I would rather they spend time and money on gameplay not mini map

Gameplay looks perfect so far - why settle for a useless minimap? The guys that are creating gameplay is most likely not the ones handling a simple minimap anyway.

 

[Lucius_]

Wait, I've seen and made plenty of minimap complaints, but to be clear, the OP is talking about cultural borders (civ colors) showing on the water in the minimap, yes? Same as CiV. Of all things that would make the map useless, THAT's the thing being pointed out?

 

[Amrunril]

Wait, I've seen and made plenty of minimap complaints, but to be clear, the OP is talking about cultural borders (civ colors) showing on the water in the minimap, yes? Same as CiV. Of all things that would make the map useless, THAT's the thing being pointed out?

Yes, because it renders coastlines invisible. Having a map of the world in the corner of the screen doesn't do you much good if you can't even tell what's land and what's water.

 

[Gintoki89]

I don't think showing the cultural borders as solid is much of an issue. However, I notice here it looks like the minimap is shading fog of war on it, and that doesn't make sense to me, and it blends a bit with the unexplored terrain. There are no details the minimap shows that are obscured by fog of war, so why have it reflect fog of war?

 

[DJ_Tanner]

How is colonized land(and sea) being shown the color of the civ a bad thing?

 

[Ryika]

How is colonized land(and sea) being shown the color of the civ a bad thing?

Because information is lost the way they do it, the coastline goes completely invisible.

It's easy to fix, too (in terms of design), just make the water somewhat transparent so the water can shine through, or add a slightly blue tinted version of the Civ's color to the mix.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Because information is lost the way they do it, the coastline goes completely invisible.

It's easy to fix, too (in terms of design), just make the water somewhat transparent so the water can shine through, or add a slightly blue tinted version of the Civ's color to the mix.

Actually a border line would work fine...dark border outlining all known landmass/water edges

 

[Ryika]

That works with big continents, but can become confusing on maps with smaller islands, especially if not all of them are completely within your borders. Color Coding is efficient and obvious at first glance, only problems are some color-schemes that they'd simply need to avoid (a problem with doesn't exist with the tinted version).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

That works with big continents, but can become confusing on maps with smaller islands, especially if not all of them are completely within your borders. Color Coding is efficient and obvious at first glance, only problems are some color-schemes that they'd simply need to avoid (a problem with doesn't exist with the tinted version).

As for area not in your borders, I would give the outline to every bit of land mapped. (simple black lines=coast/land border hexes) much clearer if you are looking at a minimap...especially if it also shows mountains + cities... only on the land

so you have an immediate view of the "landmass outline" both in your borders and in the 'explored fog' without needing a particular shade on particular hexes... which will cause problems in terms of certain civs/cs.

 

[Zaarin]

Wait, I've seen and made plenty of minimap complaints, but to be clear, the OP is talking about cultural borders (civ colors) showing on the water in the minimap, yes? Same as CiV. Of all things that would make the map useless, THAT's the thing being pointed out?

...But Civ5's minimap does not show culture borders on water, which is a lot more realistic and useful.

 

[Spaceturtle]

Saying it's "useless" is going a bit too far. It's mostly an aesthetic problem.

It's important to see what tiles are owned by another civ (even water tiles, as borders can affect the movement of our boats), so this might be the best choice from a gameplay perspective.

I think the minimap serves its purpose well enough.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Gameplay looks perfect so far - why settle for a useless minimap?

Yeah, agreed. As far as QoL goes, it would be amazing to learn what tiles are within an AI's borders from a quick glance to the minimap as opposed to mousing over, especially in MP.

P.S. I hope you're selling the Trespasser this week since it's now in the loot pool

 

[Martinus]

I'm constantly amazed at the things other players worry about. The only thing I ever use the minimap for is to keep track of where the enemy cities are being planted early game or to spot borders I missed during scouting. After that I may glance at it occasionally when a war is taking place to see what cities have changed hands but otherwise I just don't use it.

That said perhaps it should be a little more opaque to cater for those who do use it.

I think it's just the cycle this forum goes through.

When a new game is announced, the initial phase is all enthusiasm and speculation, followed by formulation of strategies as more features are being announced. But eventually it reaches a stage when the forum begins to essentially eat its own tail, when the complainers and worriers come in.

 

[Krajzen]

That's neither the thing present in civ5 (where sea was always marked as sea, not under cultural borders) nor the nonsignificant "aestethic" issue (it makes map much less readable when sea and land by mid-late game blend in one colorful blob). Maybe that's minor, but interface is built of minor things and when you apply the logic "thats insignifivant" to many of them then you suddenly get terrible UI.

Anyway, I hated how on civ5 replay map water tiles were colored by cultural borders, it looked both aestethically terrible and confusing by the late game.

I just hope there will be much less water tile expansion this time due to the unecessity of coastal settling and water tiles being mostly worthless.

 

[cazaderonus]

Isnt the mini map basically useless anyway ? Beside using it to go quickly to a specific part of the map, what use of it do you really have ? I know i have zero, none, nada.

An option to have it off and appear only when pushing a specific button, that would be a real enhancement.