Strategic View

[Amrunril]

Amid all the new content in this week’s videos, we also got our first look at strategic view, which Quill 18 showed briefly in his let’s play (Episode 4, 2:30, image below), unfortunately, I’m not sure how to take screenshots from youtube). Having played Civ V primarily in strategic view and not being very happy with Civ VI’s art style, I was very interested to see this. Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed by what I saw. The new strategic view does an excellent job of translating the new graphics into 2D, which will likely be appreciated by those who like Civ VI’s graphical style and play in strategic view for performance reasons. Where I think it falls short is in creating a simple, elegant interface for those of us who enjoy Civilization as a complex strategic boardgame.

Most obviously, the highly saturated colors of the default view are retained (and unlike inn the default view, I assume there are no day/night cycles to mitigate them). This seems like a small quibble, but it makes it significantly harder to get anything besides the underlying terrain to stand out. Meanwhile, tile improvements are presented as full hex illustrations. As stand-alone features, these fit quite well into the landscape. However, taking up a full tile and using a diverse color palate, they quickly become jumbled when any other feature is present on the tile. Even a simple resource icon becomes harder to distinguish, and adding units into the picture will only further complicate things.

Yet, while I disagree with the color saturation and the full tile improvement illustrations, I think I at least understand the reasoning behind them. What makes no sense at all is the depiction of the hex borders. The edges are distorted as if someone cut them out with a jigsaw, and if you looked at one alone it wouldn’t even be clear that was a hexagon. Even looking at them together on a map, it takes a second or two to figure out which way they’re oriented. Yes, it’s relatively easy to figure out how the hexes fit together, but there’s no reason for there to be anything to figure out. Civ VI is a hex-based game, so when I look at the map in the specifically designated strategic view, I should see hexagons.

I used strategic view extensively in Civ V, despite being quite happy with the default graphics. Yet even though I’m far less happy with Civ VI’s default graphics, I doubt I’ll do the same in this edition. Strategic view is absolutely a wonderful addition for the benefit of lower end computers, but it has the potential to be more than that, and Civ VI’s version simply doesn’t seem like it’s designed with that potential in mind.

 

[Acken]

I dont understand how someone can find the one from civ5 clearer but oh well...

 

[smartcanuck1988]

First, I think this view is gorgeous. The units are slightly hard to see, but otherwise the colors and depictions of the gameplay elements are really nice! I think I'll be playing on this in touch mode maybe.

That being said, I agree that this should've been a "2D Mode" and there should have been a plain hexagon-based, simple and proper strategic view for the reasons you outlined above.

 

[Haggbart]

It's beyond me how someone can prefer CiVs strategic view to this. However I didn't use it, and probably won't in cVI either.

 

[Barathor]

Ooh, that's pretty; I really like it. I'm glad it's back. I hope we'll be able to zoom fully out with it this time, even if the map has to become much more abstract and show less. That, or you click the minimap to pop it up in the middle of the screen, within a window, but much larger and a bit more detailed. The latter may make more sense, since it would be only for observation at that scale, you wouldn't be interacting with it like you would on the strategic view.

"Prettiness" aside, I see your point about the jagged, jigsaw borders. It makes it a little more difficult to make out the individual hexes and probably defeats the main purpose of this top-down, strategic view. But, maybe we'll get used to it.

Also, I do see very faint, jagged borders to define each tile, but maybe that's just the default view since they're so faint. Perhaps when the grid layer is activated you'll see a semi-transparent, straight-line grid overlay.

 

[King Jason]

I'm sorry, but I'm not on the same page at all. Civ6's strategic view is practically perfect and I'll probably play the game entirely in this mode. This is also coming from a player who literally could not play civ5 outside of strategic view when I first purchased it upon release as my compute couldn't handle the game. So I've played a lot of civ5 purely in strategic view.

The only addition I would love to see would be painted units too. This is the first thing I'm going to hope to see modded by the community, because this is practically what I've always wanted a civ game to look like.

 

[smartcanuck1988]

Off topic: I kind of wish the borders in the normal 3D view were like this. I dislike the straight lines.

 

[Barathor]

I'm sorry, but I'm not on the same page at all. Civ6's strategic view is practically perfect and I'll probably play the game entirely in this mode. This is also coming from a player who literally could not play civ5 outside of strategic view when I first purchased it upon release as my compute couldn't handle the game. So I've played a lot of civ5 purely in strategic view.

The only addition I would love to see would be painted units too. This is the first thing I'm going to hope to see modded by the community, because this is practically what I've always wanted a civ game to look like.

Painted unit sprites would also be pretty cool!

Also, does anybody else think of "At the Gates" when they see this?

 

[stiiknafuulia]

The jigsaw borders are a travesty... A totally unnecessary visual complication. Otherwise I'll reserve my judgement, but I like the overall look of the strategic view (that we've seen so far).

 

[Sherlock]

This looks great, I may actually use this one.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

The strategic view for Civ VI is so detailed and artistically appealing it almost looks like it's own game...I will definitely be utilizing it a lot more then I did in Civ V, which was basically never.

 

[Aldor]

I used Civ5's strategic view occasionally. Graphically it is at least as good as Civ6's, IMO. The one thing that Civ6 does better is that improvements aren't rendered as white icons, so they don't "litter" the view as they do in Civ5. Otoh in the few samples we've seen so far, there were very few improvements so its hard to judge how a "filled" map will look in Civ6.

I don't mind the jagged borders much, in fact they look more realistic to me.

 

[evanaurora]

Not to echo the general consensus, but gosh is it lovely. I probably will stick to the regular art because I love that sense of immersion- that said, this actually feels like part of the game, instead of the strange blocky thing that was Civ 5's strategic view. If it turns out this is the only way I can run the game on my computer, I won't be miserable.

 

[Amrunril]

Well it sounds like I'm pretty clearly in the minority here. Just to clarify why Civ V's strategic view appeals to me, I like that it provides all of the relevant information about the map (removing city details when zoomed out is its one major weakness) in a clean, well organized form. Instead or overlapping, resources, improvements and units each have distinct positions and color schemes. The background is clear enough for each terrain type to be distinguished at a glance (in some cases more so than in the default view) while also being subdued enough for units and cities to stand out. I also prefer the more subdued colors in their own right, as I think they makes for a more dignified look in contrast to Civ VI's garishness, but this is obviously a subjective opinion and possibly something of an acquired taste.

 

[Battlehelm043]

Off topic: I kind of wish the borders in the normal 3D view were like this. I dislike the straight lines.

Agreed, it looks amazing!!!!!

 

[smartcanuck1988]

Well it sounds like I'm pretty clearly in the minority here. Just to clarify why Civ V's strategic view appeals to me, I like that it provides all of the relevant information about the map (removing city details when zoomed out is its one major weakness) in a clean, well organized form. Instead or overlapping, resources, improvements and units each have distinct positions and color schemes. The background is clear enough for each terrain type to be distinguished at a glance (in some cases more so than in the default view) while also being subdued enough for units and cities to stand out. I also prefer the more subdued colors in their own right, as I think they makes for a more dignified look in contrast to Civ VI's garishness, but this is obviously a subjective opinion and possibly something of an acquired taste.

No I agree with you. We need a view mode for low resource consumption so people can still enjoy the game on a low end machine (or just for people who want a boardgame-like feel for the game). At the same time, we also need a separate view without bells and whistles to purely look at the resources/units/improvements to decide on strategy.

Perhaps a mod can clean it up a bit?

 

[DeathGOD1235]

I absolutely loved this strategic screen. The switch from the normal to the strategic view will be much more smooth now. Since I only play civ on a notebook nowadays, I'll probably be playing on this screen for most of the time.

I liked the colors, as I also enjoyed the overall color scheme, but I have to agree with you on the hexes, for something called 'strategic view', I was expecting a bit more of information than the standard screen.

 

[AerisDraco]

Perhaps there'll be a Lens for that? A lens that creates clear dilineations between tiles, probably in a bright color, like bright blue or cyan?

 

[Cyon]

With painted sprites, 2D leader heads this would make a perfect visual stile for a mobile game (in a positive way)

 

[Monado]

Off topic: I kind of wish the borders in the normal 3D view were like this. I dislike the straight lines.

Agreed.


I didn't play more than 10 turns in strategic mode in Civ V. After just seeing this single screenshot though, I am very intrigued to see more. That looks great.