Wait wait wait.... Two civs in the same game of PTW can be the same color? WTF!?!?!

Action · December 9, 2002, 21:27

Thats right, the chinese and the arabs are the same color and right next to each other. Please, please tell me that this is a glitch of some kind. They can't seriously have put this in. Sure, you can read the little text that says (chinese) but what about the military units. This is gonna be horrible in multi.

I'm not using any mods.

EDIT: They may appear slightly different colors but thats becuase one is in the dark fog of war and one is in the light area right by my ship. They are actually the same color.

ACooper · December 9, 2002, 21:45

hmmm....I don't seem to remember the civilization names in parens before....

Inverse Icarus · December 9, 2002, 22:08

Originally posted by ACooper
hmmm....I don't seem to remember the civilization names in parens before....

thats colorblind help, which cant be turned off in PTW.

Action · December 9, 2002, 22:09

Heres a cleaner screenshot.
I've always had the parenthesis in PTW.

So has anyone seen this before?
Bug or feature?

Carver · December 9, 2002, 22:09

Oh, I've heard of that before, just wait till they start lobbing nukes at you ...if you're at war with both you'll never know who to retaliate against.

WarpStorm · December 9, 2002, 22:32

I've seen a game with 3 light purple (all ever so slightly different), 2 redish, and 3 yellowish.

ACooper · December 9, 2002, 22:38

How many Civs were you playing with?

Action · December 9, 2002, 23:02

Originally posted by ACooper
How many Civs were you playing with?

15, huge map of course

ixnay · December 10, 2002, 00:09

If you look in the editor, the same color (Maybe different, though they're extremely similar) is listed twice in the color list. The arabs and chinese each have a different selection of this color. And as for color blind help, just go into preferences and uncheck "Color Blind Help" if you want to turn it off.

Franses · December 10, 2002, 03:05

In one of my last games I even had two civs of the same name! One of which was my own civ.

I must admit that I probably caused this myself thinking I choose the Ottomans I used the "description" box to define the names for the Civ. I was greatly surprised to see two Ottoman civs in the game and it took me while to find out how this came about.

Stuie · December 10, 2002, 08:02

The colors actually are different. The Arab color is a slightly lighter shade than the Chinese.

Regardless, the two colors are way too similiar. And every game I play they seem to end up right next to each other. I thought the Arabs had an entire continent last game and was getting nervous; then I discovered that half of it was actually Chinese. Oops.

There must be some way to get 24 distinct colors for the various civs......

Traelin · December 10, 2002, 12:24

Originally posted by Stuie
The colors actually are different. The Arab color is a slightly lighter shade than the Chinese.

Regardless, the two colors are way too similiar. And every game I play they seem to end up right next to each other. I thought the Arabs had an entire continent last game and was getting nervous; then I discovered that half of it was actually Chinese. Oops.

There must be some way to get 24 distinct colors for the various civs......

Yeah they always end up next to each other in my games too! Weird. I can't imagine it would be anywhere close to difficult to redefine some of the colors.

Brizey · December 10, 2002, 14:21

Color-coding just doesn't work well with more than about 10 civs. Plus, IIRC, they eliminted white and black. The color-blind help makes a difference, but a better system needs to be devised, especially for the new MP "turnless" modes in which speed counts, and you can't reload after an operator error.

aahz_capone · December 10, 2002, 14:50

would it be possible to make more colors in a patch or is it another "hardcoded" thing? I mean there's got to be millions of colors not used. black, white, gray... er...

charcoal black... midnight black... raven black... Gestapo black...

WarpStorm · December 10, 2002, 16:50

IMNSHO, the best solution is to allow the user to redefine the color of any team at any time. In MP this could be done client-side and wouldn't affect the other players' view.

MC Hawking · December 10, 2002, 21:30

Yes the player should be able to modify the colors as the game is being played. Similar to the friend or foe colors feature in Age of Kings (but with more than 3 colors obviously).

Zero · December 11, 2002, 00:26

Even so, theres no problem with cities since civ name is right after a city

For units on field you can always right click if ur not sure.

Stuie · December 11, 2002, 08:17

Well, I went through the default/alternate colors last night and changed them all so that each Civ always uses the same unique color. I think there were enough in the drop down to suitably distinguish between all 24 Civs. Then I turned on the color blind help (just in case) and I'm trying the whole thing out in my current game. Hopefully there won't be two Civs with hard to distinguish colors now, but I was rushing the edit in prior to dinner... so I'll find out later in the game I'm playing.

Franses · December 11, 2002, 09:25

Just noticed that the Carthagians and Japanese also use the same color. In my histograph they are next to eachother and the results melt together. Impossible to see who is who.