What Should Civ IV's Graphics Look Like?

[Jon Shafer]

Just curious what people think, as quite a few don't like the "feel" of the graphics as they stand right now.

What games do you think have the best graphical feel that would fit Civ IV? Screenshots are certainly welcome to give people an impression of what you're talking about.

[Wycoff]

I personally love the look of Civ 3...

[Solver]

As I've said before... I'll take anything as long as it's not downright ugly and making things indistuinguishable, as it was often the case in SMAC. I'll take Civ1 or Civ3 or CtP graphics happily, they were all clear. I want the graphics to clearly show which tile is which and which tile is what terrain. That's as far as my must-list goes. Other than that, I don't really care.

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by Solver
As I've said before... I'll take anything as long as it's not downright ugly and making things indistuinguishable, as it was often the case in SMAC. I'll take Civ1 or Civ3 or CtP graphics happily, they were all clear. I want the graphics to clearly show which tile is which and which tile is what terrain. That's as far as my must-list goes. Other than that, I don't really care.

Excatly... er almost anyway. Couldn't stand the Civ I graphics...

[Solver]

I couldn't stand Civ2 graphics, as I had problems with the map perspective in its isometric view. Civ1 graphics were not really beautiful, but I never had problems telling my units apart.

[Unspeakable Horror]

More realistic, I don´t want to play with a cartoon game... or at least like CtP2 or early Civ3.

[Locutus]

I don't dislike the current graphics (yet), but if we had a clean sheet...

A Rome: Total War look would be good:







Or something along the lines of the newer Slitherine games: Gates of Troy/Spartan (though with more colour on the main map):



Gates of Troy City Graphics:





So basically fairly realistic and detailed buts still colourful (Civ3 had too much blue and green).

[Trifna]

Originally posted by Solver
As I've said before... I'll take anything as long as it's not downright ugly and making things indistuinguishable, as it was often the case in SMAC. I'll take Civ1 or Civ3 or CtP graphics happily, they were all clear. I want the graphics to clearly show which tile is which and which tile is what terrain. That's as far as my must-list goes. Other than that, I don't really care.

Same here, but I'd add that a spheric Earth starts to itch me...

[Brent]

As I've said, I kinda like the embryonic Civ4 graphics.

My main issue is I think graphics better than Civ2 are a waste of system requirements. I see no point in animation. I want easy editability. I wouldn't mind a map like Civ1 or Colonization. I don't want realism, cartoony isn't too bad. I want the game to be kidfriendly, but I guess that doesn't mean I really want cartoony. I guess it should be fairly colorful. The maps posted in this thread and the embryonic Civ4 maps look good to me, but again I'd prefer they didn't feel the need for stuff that fancy.

To summarize, I'd prefer primitive, simple stuff, but the newer stuff I said I like looks good and I'll settle for it.

[Adagio]

The graphics as they are now are much better than I expected the final version graphics to be... or at least so far from what I could tell from the pictures
Though I wouldn't mind to have Civ1 graphics either, as long as the gameplay is great

[alva]

What Should Civ IV's Graphics Look Like?

What?? No poll!!!

I want some decent ( modern) graphics. Eye candy
RTW style

[Solver]

Modern graphics = more system resources used. One of the things I love about Civ is that you can play it on lower-end computers. Civ3 runs pretty decently on a 300 MHz machine. At least it's playable. No, I'm not worried myself, if my machine can run games such as Doom3 or Half-Life2, I am sure it will run Civ4, but I will still be very happy if the system requirements turn out to be low.

[Alex]

Originally posted by Solver
Modern graphics = more system resources used. One of the things I love about Civ is that you can play it on lower-end computers. Civ3 runs pretty decently on a 300 MHz machine. At least it's playable. No, I'm not worried myself, if my machine can run games such as Doom3 or Half-Life2, I am sure it will run Civ4, but I will still be very happy if the system requirements turn out to be low.

I really don't mind cartoony graphics, I think that I'll get used to them with time, I just don't want monster graphics which consumes all system resources and makes scrolling, for instance, to be a pain in the butt.

[alva]

Originally posted by Solver
Modern graphics = more system resources used. One of the things I love about Civ is that you can play it on lower-end computers. Civ3 runs pretty decently on a 300 MHz machine. At least it's playable. No, I'm not worried myself, if my machine can run games such as Doom3 or Half-Life2, I am sure it will run Civ4, but I will still be very happy if the system requirements turn out to be low.

What I meant by modern is, graphics better than Civ3.

Release is at least another year, I DON'T wont it to be able to run on a 300 MHz 'puter.

One thing 3D offeres though, is that you often can turn off 'fluff' to accomodate your personal preferences and your machines' preferences.

[Locutus]

Indeed. 300 MHz systems are over 5 years old, it's a bit over the top to keep supporting that for Civ4. The people new PCs shouldn't have to suffer too much because of a few luddites. I think P3 would be a reasonable minimum requirement (that's also the minimum spec for Gates of Troy).