What Civ 4 needs: New Look

[Brent]

Terrain and Units

Civ2. 2D. No animation.

Leaders

Portraits like in Civ2. No animation. Photos if available, classical paintings or whatever.

Advisors

In general I am antigraphics, or at least I think I am until faced with a specific issue, but I did like the video of real people in Civ2. If it means more available resources for other issues, or lower system requirements, they can be nonanimated drawings.

New Look in General

Light

[Kuciwalker]

Civ2. 2D. No animation.

Ignoring the merits (or rather, the lack thereof) of this, it isn't going to happen. Firaxis cannot sell something with five-year-old graphics.

[Brent]

Why do consumers demand to be forced to upgrade their computer unnecesarily? Apparently most consumers don't want to mod either.

[Kuciwalker]

It doesn't matter if it is a rational decision for them. Don't argue the decision with me. It is a fact of life, and you're just going to have to deal with it.

[joncha]

There's no way I'd pay for a 2-d game that wasn't shareware (and cheap!). I might play it a lot, but pay $30 plus? No way! I might as well just play civ2 and save the money.

Good, animated units that don't distract from gameplay (grunting warriors=ok, screaming fire catapults=not ok) are a must if firaxis wants me to actually pay them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was annoyed with the Giant Aarvarks--err--Ancient Cavalry graphics, etc in Conquests.

As for leaderheads and advisors, they went way over the top. In this case, the animation adds nothing to the gameplay and gets tired fast. Here, I think, less actually is more.

jon.

[Brent]

You didn't explain how animated units add to the gameplay.

[joncha]

Originally posted by Brent
You didn't explain how animated units add to the gameplay.

I never claimed they did. I believe I only called for units that "don't distract from gameplay."

To me, "distracting" includes flat, bit-mappy icons as well as over-done animation.

I think, for the most part, the rendered 3-d units and their movement (including attack, fidget and death animation) were not distracting and looked good.

jon.

[POTUS]

Maybe make them easier for modders, but otherwise, the Civ 3 units were good.

[civman2000]

. IMHO the only thing that really matters for graphics is that they don't get in the way. Neither 3d nor 2d graphics are "distracting" for me, but 3d graphics hamper modding. Thus 2d is better.

[VetLegion]

If someone would bother to add all those little one second delays in screens, all the delays because Civ 3 graphics overtax most machines on the market and all the other unnecessary delays, it would come out that Firaxis stole a huge amount of player's time with suboptimal graphics design.

I am not saying "ugly", heck, I wan't to print the screenshots and put them on my wall, but it is suboptimal.

I suggest simpler, faster graphics.

I think returning to windowed mode would also be a good thing.