Screenshot analysis!

[SMcM]

Spoiler :

 

[Frank Sobotka]

We need to get a poll on this. And additional information on how long were they in the development for this monstrosity. I am almost certain everyone here rather play Civilization VI on their gaming desktop. And this doesn't cut the cake!

 

[Cerilis]

I think the city style is early East Asian from comparing it to the Japan pics. Based on the colors and the fact that they get included earlier and earlier with each iteration, I'd guess it's Korea.

Korea is usually red/blue though, or isn't it (not sure about Civ4 and earlier right now)? Maybe some "untraditional" civ from around indo-china? Like Thailand? (lol, I guess it's too early for speculations like that though)

 

[Talcove]

You owning the holy city of the religion of 80% of the world?

Mechanically that seems pretty similar to culture - spread your religious influence across the world vs spread your cultural influence across the world. Of course we don't know how things will play out, how culture and religion will work, or any major details really, all we have are three screenshots.

 

[Gorbles]

Alright, let's actually try this. So this is Civilisation 5 at maximum detail, at 1080p. Fully-zoomed in.

Spoiler :

(click for full size)

Let's ignore that Venice's colour scheme really doesn't stand out well, and look at the apparent detail available.

1. Woods. That's a flat texture. Corresponding to the camera angle, but that's a texture.

2. The resource to the right. That's an actual model. Not much in the way of contrast though.

3. The minerals to the north. You can see the lack of detail on the ground texture that serves as an underlay. Almost pixelated, and the rocks themselves are pretty low detail.

You can see that everything is, in fact, pretty flat. The texture work itself is beautiful - almost painted in terms of a slightly washed-out adherence to realism (the trees in particular).

This is in no way objectively better than the screenshots for Civilisation VI. In fact, the technology here is a step backwards. There is less mesh detail on display; almost everything has been pushed to textures. The sea is incredibly flat and single-colour (mild light reflection helps offset the viewing angle).

Does it look good? Absolutely.

But in technical terms it doesn't feature anywhere near the level of detail that the screenshots we've seen so far of CiVI. In stylistic terms it matches what people like of "realism", but realism isn't always the best option to pursue.

I am using no mods at all in this game, which I think provides a more fair representation than the curated screenshots people have posted thus far.

 

[Ryika]

me_on_the_left on Reddit posted a 'shopped version with fixed colors.

Spoiler :

Inspired me to quickly do my own version. I personally would probably want it to look a bit like this:

Spoiler :

Probably -too- desaturated for most people, but I like it.

Other changes include:
- Quick and dirty ground textures for the Forests (just to get some color, also didn't do a good job at cleaning up the forests in the distance)
- Sharpened edges (and a tiny bit of depth of field)
- Darker Shadows

Biggest flaw are still the ground textures imho.

 

[shaglio]

Time? (ie score after 500 turns?)

I thought maybe they might separate Domination from Conquest again. One would have you possess all the capitals, the other would require you to own X% of the land and/or Y% of the world population.

BUT . . . this is the screenshot analysis thread, not the game mechanics thread.

 

[hugojackson18]

This is what I was expecting/hoping, for a 2016 Civilization game that took 6 years to come....
With proper mining animation, wind in the trees, the whole package. The more I think I about it, the more it upsets me...

Spoiler :

 

[Samson]

Mechanically that seems pretty similar to culture - spread your religious influence across the world vs spread your cultural influence across the world. Of course we don't know how things will play out, how culture and religion will work, or any major details really, all we have are three screenshots.

I am still thinking of culture like in Civ 4, so 3 high culture cities. I agree, it is very early to there to be any real value in our postulation, but it is all we can do ATM (turns back to Civ 4).

 

[Danmacsch]

Don't know if this has been mentioned already, but doesn't it (vaguely) looks like the world in the screenshots might be spherical? That would be awesome!

 

[cpm4001]

Probably -too- desaturated for most people, but I like it.

Other changes include:
- Quick and dirty ground textures for the Forests (just to get some color, also didn't do a good job at cleaning up the forests in the distance)
- Sharpened edges (and a tiny bit of depth of field)
- Darker Shadows

Biggest flaw are still the ground textures imho.

Seconded, this is what I would prefer my Civ VI to look like. Ah well, I guess we'll see if the graphics get improved on at all as development proceeds (it is still 5 months off, I suppose...)

 

[damnyankees]

Seconded, this is what I would prefer my Civ VI to look like. Ah well, I guess we'll see if the graphics get improved on at all as development proceeds (it is still 5 months off, I suppose...)

I'm confident that Modders could make this happen pretty quickly after release if people wanted it.

 

[AriochIV]

You do realise that not only was XCOM ported to tablets without sacrificing any of the experience when played on a PC, but the development pipelines for these platforms are actually different?

XCOM was designed from the beginning for console as well as PC, so the interface was already simplified, making the tablet port much easier. XCOM2, which is PC-only, would be much harder to port to a tablet.

I agree that there's a lot of knee-jerk "looks mobile" reactions going on here, sure. But to say that you don't sacrifice anything when you move from the PC to a mobile platform just isn't true. Good gameplay often has a lot to do with the UI, and good UI design for complex systems is hard enough when you have all of the tools of the PC at your disposal; it becomes much harder when all you have is touch and drag.

 

[learner gamer]

Looks like I'm in the minority based on the comments to date, but I quite like those Civ 6 screenshots. What's more, some of the gameplay mechanics (for instance described here: http://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/civilization-6-release-date-gameplay-system-requirements) sound quite promising. I think there are some nice ideas in there. As for this meanwhile:

From VentureBeat: " The happiness level will be focused on a city level, rather than on a global basis across your civilization."

I agree wholeheartedly: So glad to see the back of global happiness!

 

[DocRock]

I'm really, really, reeeeealllllyyyy worried that they are trying to expand the series to mobile (edit: and console) devices to "open it up for new customers" and therefore the graphics are a first step to make a conversion as easy as possible. Well, I hope that I'm wrong.

Not pre-ordering because I promised it to me after the release of Civ 5. Never again. I will wait for some good reviews and then decide.

 

[Frank Sobotka]

Inspired me to quickly do my own version. I personally would probably want it to look a bit like this:

Spoiler :

Probably -too- desaturated for most people, but I like it.

Other changes include:
- Quick and dirty ground textures for the Forests (just to get some color, also didn't do a good job at cleaning up the forests in the distance)
- Sharpened edges (and a tiny bit of depth of field)
- Darker Shadows

Biggest flaw are still the ground textures imho.

I really like it. I wish there would be an option in your settings to turn off or on for grasses. This being off for lowrange cards.

 

[Gorbles]

XCOM was designed from the beginning for console as well as PC, so the interface was already simplified, making the tablet port much easier. XCOM2, which is PC-only, would be much harder to port to a tablet.

I agree that there's a lot of knee-jerk "looks mobile" reactions going on here, sure. But to say that you don't sacrifice anything when you move from the PC to a mobile platform just isn't true. Good gameplay often has a lot to do with the UI, and good UI design for complex systems is hard enough when you have all of the tools of the PC at your disposal; it becomes much harder when all you have is touch and drag.

I've never seen anything that supports that statement, sorry. The gap between the PC release (October 2012) and the iOS release (June 2013) is more than enough time for a separate port (or perhaps, just about enough time).

And again, Civilisation 5 had a touch-based update that didn't impact the design of the base game in the slightest.

To clarify, though, I did not say the gameplay didn't suffer upon moving it to mobile. I said the gameplay of the original game on the PC platform, having not being altered in the slightest, would not be affected. You wouldn't be using touch-and-drag on the PC version of the game, would you?

 

[warpus]

I looked at the screenshots and if this game came out tomorrow looking like that I would probably continue playing Civ5 for the time being and get Civ6 on sale a year from now or something similar.

Not sure why they'd release screenshots like that to get us excited about the game, they seem really underwhelming.

 

[ehecatzin]

To be honest I dont mind the style, its the colors that are a bit jarring. Im hoping the graphics will get improved by release date, even in the screenshots it seems some elements have got a lot of detail already (like the cliffs) and other barely any, like the mountian range, my guess is that they've still got a lot to work on.

 

[Sporally]

Gameplay is what matters most to me, but I would really have loved at less cartoony graphic. I doubt much will be changed before launch, but I'm not a developer so I don't know how much can be changed in just a few months. What dissapoints me the most is looking at the texture (or whatever it is called) of the rivers and mountains. They are worse than anything else in the screenshots in my opinion.

I'm not at all arguing objectively that Civ5 had better graphics. I'm just worried what the graphics will do to the sale numbers and thereby the future of Civilization. Reading the initial reactions I think Firaxis will lose quite a handful of mediocre Civilization players. I'm not talking about their fans - they will surely buy it. But fans aren't enough. You also need the players that were just willing to put their money in a good Civilization 5 game. I have a handful of friends that I don't take for granted they will buy every upcoming edition of Civilization.

Before Civ6 was announced I was around 95 % sure I would buy it on release. Maybe even more than 95 % sure. Now after 3 screenshots I'm still at around 95 % sure I will buy it. Though the graphics are in question I'll admit the game concepts and the facts that a lot of features (religion, espionage etc.) will be available from vanilla sounds amazing! I was pretty sure the game was not that great before at least the first expansion came out. Now I'm not so worried anymore though I guess there'll still be stuff to long for after vanilla is released.

This art style makes me suspect that they plan to port the game to next gen mobile devices at some point after launch.

This could easily be the case. If not only the game is ported to portable devices but allowed players to cross platforms (starting a game on PC and ending it on mobile device) I could surely like with what I too consider at downgrade comparison to Civ5.