Monitor Resolutions?

[Samvs Avrelivs]

Whoo, so first post here. Been lurking here a while downloadin' mods and stuff, but never really had an intensive to join and post 'til now.

Anyway, possibly buying a new monitor soon and I expect to keep playing Civ IV as much as I do now and I was wondering what kind of resolutions everyone here plays on.

So yeah, is bigger better? Or is compact more your thing? Is your resolution satisfactory, or do you wish it was different?

Thanks!

(Dunno if this was in the right forum, could almost see this as a tech support kinda thing, but thinking about it I think it's more of a discussion. So don't eat me if this is in the wrong place. )

 

[wickedcherub]

I think bigger is definitely better for all games not just CIV because then you can see what's happening on the edge of the screen etc.

I run a 1400 x 900 resolution on my laptop. It's nice but Photobucket rescales my screenshots so that they're hard to see

My little brother has a 26" monitor. It's incredible.

 

[dannythefool]

I tried playing CIV in 1980x1080 on my 37" TV but somehow, large screens aren't for me. These days I play on my 13" Macbook in 1280x800 even though the PC hooked up to the TV is much faster. I don't care about the graphics settings set to low on the Macbook either (I play with CrossOver, with native Windows it'd be faster), as long it's still neater than Civ II. Resolution doesn't seem to matter much to me. I can see all I want to see. The TV is fine from a distance btw., but CIV has too much text on screen that I can't read from very far away. It's different with the adventure games that my wife and I sometimes play together. They don't technically benefit from a large display, but at least we can both watch the game ;-)

 

[Atranox]

I'm playing at 1680x1050, and it's pretty nice. And yes, larger resolutions are much nicer because you can see more, the screen is less cluttered, and the images are more clear. Keep in mind that they also strain your video card & RAM a bit more as well, though that generally isn't much of an issue unless you have a pretty old PC.

 

[Dragonxander PR]

Bigger resolutions are often more enjoyable & practical for gameplay, not for image posting. In my case, I use a 1366 X 768 laptop monitor. For what I want it's OK (I even find OK the minnimum resolution, 1024 X 768 pixels), since it allows me to play comfortably & to post screenshots without much hassle.

 

[Zero-Sum]

I play at 1680x1050 res, on a 22 inch lcd screen as I only play Civ 4 now when I go over my parents house on their pc.

On my computer with a "regular" monitor I was playing at 1024x768, took me a while to get used to it. I haven't played it on my computer for months.

 

[Gorey]

1680x1050.

its my LCD's native resolution, so naturally i play all games at that res for the best image quality with no blurry scaling. the extra screen real-estate in the interface is a welcome side bonus.

back when i still used a 19" CRT.. i played at 1280x960.

 

[Spiceweasel]

One thing worth mentioning: By default, you don't actually see more tiles, necessarily, by having a bigger monitor; you just see the same tiles with more resolution. But the BUG mod has a "field of view" slider that lets you adjust how much land gets crammed into you screen at any given zoom level. I'd recommend playing with it both before and after any monitor change.

 

[Maestro_Innit]

One thing worth mentioning: By default, you don't actually see more tiles, necessarily, by having a bigger monitor; you just see the same tiles with more resolution. But the BUG mod has a "field of view" slider that lets you adjust how much land gets crammed into you screen at any given zoom level. I'd recommend playing with it both before and after any monitor change.

The biggetst difference for me, playing at large resolution is that your HUD takes up a much smaller proportion of your screen. Every time I see screenshots of peopl's games working on smalle screens i wonder how yuo manage to put up with playing in this tiny window surrounded by vast swathes of menus

24" 1920x1200 all the way Smaaaaaalllll menus.

 

[Willem]

24" 1920x1200 all the way Smaaaaaalllll menus.

That's what I play at as well and it makes my HUD so much better. In the city screen, I can get pretty much all of my available units and buildings each on a single line, so there's very little need for scrolling through a bunch of lists. And my SoD stacks are much easier to manage, especially since I use BUG. I can see every unit in a massive stack of 200+ on the screen at once.

 

[Asprilla]

I prefer playing on my 40" TV in 720p (1280x720). I would prefer playing on 1920x1080, but since I use a 10m HDMI I will need to buy a better cable to deal with this. At lengts 10m+ a normal standard HDMI will probably not be able to go beyond 1280x720

 

[Scoottr]

Got a 22 inch wide screen monitor and run all my games on 1400 x 900. Seems to work ok, but always looking to improve. I think if I go any higher my screen my vid card or monitor can't handle it. Not sure which, but it goes black. Running a 8600 GT card....I upgrade my card every few years and try to stay under the curve to cut costs.

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

my monitor is 1400x900 and I like being able to see a lot of what's going on without scrolling way out. Also I like only having one line of commands for units instead of 2 on smaller resolutions.

 

[Pembroke]

I'm using 1920x1080 on a 46" TV screen. It's also the native resolution of my laptop and I connected the computer to tv with a HDMI-HDMI cable so no loss of data there. It's great for watching all kinds of high def internet video streams in full screen mode, too.

 

[Da_V_Man]

I use 1200x1024, my native screen res, or on my laptop, 1280x800. I don't think I would want a big widescreen for several reasons.

-increased strain on graphics card
-I prefer to have more vertial space as opposed to horizontal
-not enough space on my desk.

 

[fantsu]

1024x768 is enough, sometimes 1280x1024

 

[Samvs Avrelivs]

So I just upgraded from an older 11" or 13" analog monitor with a max res. of 1024x768 to a new wide screen LCD 18.5" monitor with a max res. of 1360x768.

And wow, Civ is a lot more enjoyable on the bigger monitor. Everything is much less cluttered and everything looks nicer. Kinda weird that my adviser screens don't take up the entire screen though, that's gonna take some getting used to.

Can't wait to get my new Graphics Card too! Civ is gonna be like a whole new game by the end of the week with that coupled with the monitor!