Terra Incognita should be black!

[GenyaArikado]

>Blank parchment without any discernible borders
> "DID I DISCOVER DIS OR NOT?"

 

[demidyad]

So you want someone else to make a decision for you that's entirely up to taste?

So, you never watch a film, read a book or listen to music? The whole point of art is the artist's point of view, the decisions they have made to communicate with me on an aesthetic level. When I pay my £50 I'm paying people to present me with a finished product that they have spent years designing.

I'd rather decide for myself, even if the artsy types could dictate the default look. More aesthetic options are never a bad thing, imo.

Presumably you can easily mod this. So I don't see why the art department should spend the time to create multiple art designs? If you just switch it to black like in the MS Paint picture, it looks ugly and out of place. A major switch in the visuals like that requires balancing in the art design, colour palette, everything. They should pick one and if people want to alter it with mods, that's their prerogative.

Why don't they add a toggle to make units bigger, or smaller? Why don't they add a toggle to switch between realistic graphics like Civ 5 or cartoony graphics like Civ 4? Different people have different tastes after all, and more aesthetic options are never a bad thing

 

[Big J Money]

I don't know if it's my colorblindness or not but I have a lot of trouble, too. Here's to hoping I can become accustomed to it.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Why don't they add a toggle to make units bigger, or smaller? Why don't they add a toggle to switch between realistic graphics like Civ 5 or cartoony graphics like Civ 4? Different people have different tastes after all, and more aesthetic options are never a bad thing

Yes, exactly. Although it took you some time to digest the idea, I'm glad you managed in the final end.

Ofc a toggle for the entire graphical style is too resource-intensive to realistically include, but a slider for unit size and an in-game button to download a custom FOW/map style (made as DLC, and by modders) are perfectly doable and should be included. Unlike books, movies, etc, games are all about interactivity, and customization is a big part of that. Ofc it's Firaxis' prerogative to disagree and lock everything down, but it will drive away some customers, whereas including the options might bring a few more, so it seems clear to me which is the wiser option.

 

[demidyad]

They've included modability (we presume) so there's your customisation. It is better for them to spend their limited manhours on producing a cohesive product with a soul, rather than creating an ugly-but-customisable hodge-podge. It's an artistic product, not an operating system.

 

[Ryika]

Yes, exactly. Although it took you some time to digest the idea, I'm glad you managed in the final end.

Ofc a toggle for the entire graphical style is too resource-intensive to realistically include, but a slider for unit size and an in-game button to download a custom FOW/map style (made as DLC, and by modders) are perfectly doable and should be included. Unlike books, movies, etc, games are all about interactivity, and customization is a big part of that. Ofc it's Firaxis' prerogative to disagree and lock everything down, but it will drive away some customers, whereas including the options might bring a few more, so it seems clear to me which is the wiser option.

Any option you include bloats the code, adds more stuff to the UI and/or the option menus, and generally makes things more confusing for the end user.

While there's certainly big value in being able to to customize stuff, I don't think unit size or FoW-Wallpaper are really things that are of importance to be in the base game.

Particularly the unit example is far more complex than you make it seem, after all, units must still look good when attacking each other, they must still move at a speed that matches their animation without speeding the animations up too much, so just scaling them while not doing anything else would hardly be a sufficient "fix" for people.

Overall, having a variable system to maybe keep some of the 5-10 weirdos who would base their decisions to buy the game or not buy the game based on whether they're able to scale their units, seems ridiculous to me.

 

[Teproc]

I initially had similar concerns, but after watching a decent amoun of playthrough videos I don't find it confusing anymore... and it looks pretty, so there.

 

[Josephias]

Thank you

These screenshots show the perfect balance between FOW and TI.

Which is the same than between the two shades of brown used in the Civ VI maps screenshots shown.

Therefore, no need to change it at all.

 

[Joketa]

I think just a bit of toning, maybe some blush, would fix the issue perfectly. I wouldn't want any plastic surgery on what is otherwise good bone structure.

 

[MistyRonin]

Ok, my last try, I promise, to show you my point of view

Look at this screen, taken from quill18's gameplay video. I really struggle to distinguish TI from FOW as the color palette and texture is very similar in may cases. And because the colors vanish when the unit moves and FOW appears it's even more confusing for me.

Spoiler :

Disclaimer: I work as a photographer and people say that photographers/visual-people can distinguish easily tonalities.

I don't know how to put it. But to me the difference is more than obvious. The colors are different, the background texture too, and the fow has a drawing description of what's below, quite hard to miss IMHO.

As I said, probably a mod that highlights the difference would help people sensible to color-blind.

 

[Uberfrog]

Yeah, it seems obvious to me. It also helps to look at the context, rather than the tiles in isolation: it's very unlikely that those tiles would be unexplored when they are surrounded by explored land.

A few observations:
- Terra incognita has no hex outlines
- The border between fog of war and terra incognita is soft and blurred; the border between fog of war and visible terrain is much sharper defined (even if you ignore the sharp colour change).
- Terrain types are differently shaded in fog of war; in terra incognita it all looks like the same parchment - while the tone does change, it certainly does't follow a hexagonal outline.
- Parallels and meridians (and dragons!) are drawn on the terra incognita.

 

[need my speed]

To actually add to the discussion; I really like the artstyle, but I really dislike that explored-but-not-visible terrain is just as brown as undiscovered terrain. It should be coloured in a darker shade, like it was in previous Civilization games, in my opinion.

 

[Spaceturtle]

If you can see things in the map (terrain, mountains, cities, forests...) it's because you have explored it. It doesn't matter if its black, brown or purple. Unexplored areas are just empty paper texture.

I don't know how that can be confusing.