New screenshots on Gamespot

[Ekmek]

I just hope Snoopy makes terrain graphics after its released. I'm not a fan of the graphics yet, but I'm a sucker for a Civ game so I know I'll buy it.

 

[Crazy Eskimo]

BTW, anybody else notice the names of the cities? 'The cliffs of insanity'

I saw that too... gave me a warm fuzzy inside.

 

[ironduck]

I'm wondering how many of the graphics are placeholders. Some of the buildings look quite nice, while others (many of the houses and the city walls) look like they were cooked up in half an hour. The glitches with houses in water and buildings inside walls will probably be fixed (since it's so glaringly obvious that it shouldn't look like that).

At least we should be able to make our own graphics, so if Firaxis can't scrap together some decent houses I'm sure someone here can

 

[Leto]

It's true!! In the pre-release article, Babylon is one of the 18 civs. And it seems like the Greeks are definitely not in!!!!

the greeks will ALWAYS be in. how could you justify having a 'philosophy' tech and exclude the greeks?

Leto

 

[Urederra]

the greeks will ALWAYS be in. how could you justify having a 'philosophy' tech and exclude the greeks?

Leto

Well, It seems that they added judaism as a religion and they excluded the jews (Israel).

And, are you sure that there is a Philosophy tech in civ IV?

There are three possibilities:

1. They have increased the number of civs, maybe up to 20.
2. There is another civ that we think it is in, but it is not. (Persia, Russia, Spain...)
3. Babylon is not in. Somebody is trying to fool us.

Edit: I added another possibility.

 

[ComradeDavo]

I saw that too... gave me a warm fuzzy inside.

Yeh same

Well, It seems that they added judaism as a religion and they excluded the jews (Israel).

Perhaps this descion was made due to current world events (the whole Isreal-Palestine conflict), as in they don't want to be controversial to that extent. Maybe they might consider adding the civ in future in an expansion.

I am more and more convinced that they changed their mind again and put 19 civ in again, cause Greece is confirmed by the hoplites and obviously Corinth, if it is really in the sixth screenshot

Agreed.

 

[777]

Qin Shi Huang Leader head looks funny

Yep, grids definitely on!

Graph looks good, I won't complain tho giant units looks bit of amusing. I like how units looked in previous games...

 

[Anguished]

These graphics are terrible. It looks like Sid Meier vomited all over the game. And that's not a compliment.


Am I the only one who thinks the graphics look terrible? I mean jeez, from the threads I've read, and the videos I've seen, everyone who has previewed the game is raving about the game's "top-notch" graphics. You've got to be kidding. These graphics are worse than Empire Earth's. Now, I know graphics isn't what the Civilization franchise is about, but COME ON, graphics is what's going to take a big chunk of my hard drive, so at least make it look presentable. And the game is speculated to be about 1.4 GB. Compared to Civ3, Civ3's graphics were better. And if I'm not mistaken, the unit graphics and whatnot were the files that were making the bulk of the game, it had the graphical quality of Age of Empires II and the gameplay was pretty much like the previous Civilization games.

To top it off, the developers say "I MIGHT NEED TO GET A BETTER GRAPHICS CARD". For graphical quality this bad? I don't think so. If Firaxis wants it's customers to get new graphic cards to play their games, they should make the graphics of their games more pleasing to look at. Otherwise, a new graphics card isn't worth my money, and they will have to make it compatible with older graphic cards.

 

[MeteorPunch]

@Anguished: the funny thing is that they seem to be looking a lot better than they were, but are still terrible.

 

[ironduck]

@Anguished: the funny thing is that they seem to be looking a lot better than they were, but are still terrible.

I haven't seen early screen where they make this look 'a lot better', but it really looks to me like a lot of stuff is placeholder art. If you look at some of the buildings they're quite detailed and nice, but a lot of them are just crude, primitive, grey lego blocks that can be put together in no time. Likewise a lot of the graphics does not fit in with each other, creating weird overlapping and such. At this stage of development I find it rather discouraging, but it should be fixable, if nothing else in the usual onslaught of patches..

 

[Anguished]

Did I say it looks any better? I think I said it looked worse that Civ3. Why should I pay $50, plus a $100-something graphics card, and a bigger hard drive for this crap? Firaxis might as well give me the old isometric two dimensional graphics with the new gameplay.

Just because the gameplay may be good does not give the developers an excuse to have bad graphics. It should at least be decent. The graphics for Civ4 looks like something I would have seen on my Nintendo 64.

Seriously though, I was hoping Civ4 would look something like this.

http://www.bighugegames.com/riseoflegends/popup_screen_5.html

Also, I think Firaxis has to stop with those ******** gigantic units on the map thing. Unit battles should look like something someone would see on Ogre Battle, or one of the Romance Of The Three Kingdoms series. You'd have a sprite that looked like one unit, but when it meets another sprite, a box would open up, and you'd see a thousand of those soldiers fighting it out.

 

[MeteorPunch]

@Anguished: I meant it looked better than earlier Civ 4 pics...a lot better in fact.

Man, that is a beautiful screen. It's even sized porpotionately well for the Civ-world. I am posting it here in case they take that one down. Hopefully everyone sees this so they will know what civ 4 could look like.

 

[ironduck]

Civ has always had simple graphics, but I quite like the look of Civ 3, it strikes a nice balance between simplicity and realism. I actually think the distant views of the map (Civ 3 like) looks much better than these closer views. And since we will probably play more in the distant mode that's always something. As for the Rise of Legends screenshot, that would be amazing, but it would probably also put some serious demands on hardware.

My real objection is that they have these crazy bugs at this late stage of development, and that many of the graphics look like placeholders (which, if true, means they have a lot of work ahead of them).

 

[Anguished]

Civ 4 is going to make serious demands on hardware also.

By the way, most games on the market now take AT LEAST more than 500 mb on your PC.

Hopefully, we will have a modding community that will either match or exceed the graphical quality of that screenshot I referenced to.

 

[Urederra]

Jeezzz.... Rise of legends rocks.

So, It will be on stores by Spring 2006 as I have read in the webpage. The release date is later than Civ IV, but the are more advanced in the development of graphics. The graphics are awesome. You'll need a veeeery good graphics card, though.

It is another game I have to buy for the next year. They will be:

-Civ IV, of course. No matter whether the graphics are deleted or not.
-Spores. Looks nice.
-GalCiv II. I have money, so, let's see.
-Rise of Legends.

Anybody knows how good Rise of Nations is?

EDIT: It is GalCiv II, not CivGal II.

 

[jeffelammar]

Obviously I can't make a judgement till I play the game, but the screenshots I have seen so far do give me reason for concern.

In a recent poll at firaxis, it came across pretty clearly to me that Strategy gamers consider the game play to be more important than graphics.

So far, the graphics for Civ4 seems to be more distraction than help in the gameplay.

Again, until I play it, I won't know if my concern is warrented.

 

[ironduck]

Civ 4 is going to make serious demands on hardware also.

By the way, most games on the market now take AT LEAST more than 500 mb on your PC.

Hopefully, we will have a modding community that will either match or exceed the graphical quality of that screenshot I referenced to.

The specs Firaxis have listed have been relatively mild considering it's 3D, and it runs on the same engine as Pirates! which apparently isn't too demanding, so I think we're talking a rather different league of hardware than Rise of Legends..

As for the graphics that looks like placeholders, it's hard to make anything that would look worse! So yes, people should be able to make a lot of stuff look nicer if Firaxis don't (but really, it's so ugly they have to improve it, which is why I'm thinking it's placeholders).

 

[MeteorPunch]

The whole gameplay vs. graphics arguement is rediculous. Of course gameplay has to be first, especially in a strategy game. Firaxis has to remember that graphics help sales, and they will lose $$ based on releasing the crap they've been showing so far. I couldn't believe those ugly pre-beta-beta looking pics they had in PC Gamer "world exclusive." Embarassing really...I hesetated to show them to my friends (other Civvers), and made excuses that these were still early in developement (hopefully true).

Graphics are essential to the immersive experience. We have the technology, use it.

 

[sir_schwick]

I am more worried about what I heard from the E3 presentation rather than the graphics, which are not that bad. Like I said earlier, reminds me of Black and White in an odd way(the borders, buildings, and 'creatures'/units). Sounds like mostly the same gameplay, although if they smoothe out the bad parts than nothing is really lost. Civ 3 was good except for some of the glaringly bad portions.

 

[Carver]

Like ironduck said, the distant views are rather nice, better than Civ3; and since this is the view I (and probably a lot of other people) will be playing at most of the time, I'm not worried.