Civ4 is incredibly ugly

[Saurus]

Re: Civ4 is incredibly ugly

Originally posted by Wiglaf
I have just started playing civ 4 again after not playing it for about a year.

And wow, is this thing hideous.

Especially in the later ages, there are roads almost everywhere and it just looks like a mess. Cities don't look like cities, and the terrain is just bland.

Blue marble in my opinion makes it even worse. At first it's nice but it just darkens things way too much.

Is there anything to do to pretty this up?

I do have to agree that the roads in CIV 4 are not pretty.(in fact the roads do not even make sence most of the time) Yet, in fact, compare the roads to the horrible, horrible road-spider you find in CIV 3 and you see some imrpovement in CIV 4 compared to earlier versions.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Solver
Funny, I think upgrading to a new age is more noticeable now. Your cities may only marginally change graphics, but your terrain improvements do change, which is very visible.

Yeah! Roman cottages...towns before industrial era are pretty, maybe even realistic. Then in industrial/modern they get UGLY, representing only the industrial or high-rise business districts.

I need to figure out how to stop that transition.

[Harovan]

Re: Re: Civ4 is incredibly ugly

Originally posted by Saurus
I do have to agree that the roads in CIV 4 are not pretty.(in fact the roads do not even make sence most of the time) Yet, in fact, compare the roads to the horrible, horrible road-spider you find in CIV 3 and you see some imrpovement in CIV 4 compared to earlier versions.

Actually, when you built a single road or railroad in Civ3, you got a graphics that at least made sense. The spider came from the design flaw that roads gave commerce and you wanted commerce everywhere, so you put down that horrible road+RR sleaze.

Civ4 went a big step forward (following the CtPs) and introduced commerce improvements, taking that duty away from roads, leaving them with their main purpose, making travel faster. So theoretically, it isn't a necessity anymore to put down roads everywhere. Except that if you do just that and put roads only where it makes sense (connecting cities and resources), their graphics become a hideous, uncontinuous mess, interrupted at every river and often at diagonal connections. So what do people do? They again road/railroad everything.

I would be fond of getting completely rid of roads. They just F up the game graphics. Why not give all units 2x movement on own territory, after a certain tech is discovered? This could be increased to 3x movement somewhere with another tech in the renaissance or industrial age (something like "diligence"). For yet faster travel, leave railroads in, but make them really really really expensive. They're way too cheap to build and after that cost nothing. Let them cost a fee per turn, say, 1 gold per 2..5 railroaded tiles, so that people take pride in maximizing connectivity and troop movement while minimizing cost. For pre-RR overland connections you could build overland roads (implemented like "poor man's railroads"), which offer increased movement but again, cost a moderate fee (like 1 gold per 5-10 tiles). They also would keep serving a good purpose for people who don't have coal.

I was so happy when I heard that roads don't bring commerce anymore. Gone is the railroad sleaze, so I thought. I was wrong, unfortunately.

[Jaybe]

Another way to make rails (and other improvements) expensive is to prohibit (or severely limit) stacking of workers on the same job.

[LordShiva]

As usual, I agree with Wiggy

I find Civ4's graphics to be insultingly cartoonish

[yin26]

I imagine (or read?) they used the same engine that they had for Pirates 2. I railed against this during the preview stages but have since come to enjoy certain aspects of it. For example, untouched terrain looks nice. The zoom takes getting used to, but I enjoy that now, too, along with the 45 degree tilt views that come in handy sometimes.

However, "cartoon" does fit the leaderheads. They are done well in their way. And, as has been said, once you have roads everywhere, things start to get out of hand. I actually like BlueMarble because I can at least scale things as I like them, which I guess is another benefit of the move to 3D.

All that said, I can't help but feel that the game would have run faster in the end game without the move to 3D. I can appreciate some of the benefits it has given (not least of which is the ease with which modders can add new content, which is exciting), but it still feels at points that they had the engine first and made the game fit to it second.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by yin26
However, "cartoon" does fit the leaderheads.

More than that, I dislike the overall scale of the visuals - the forests should be rolling expanses of green, not one or two oversized trees. The units shouldn't be three giants towering over everything else on the map. The "epic feel" of the visuals is lost thanks to this engine - somewhat like what happened with WarCraft 3 (and don't get me started on the parallels with the unwelcome, creeping influence of RPGs on the genre).

[Oldphart]

The problem with roads and railroads is that they are per tile constructions, not per tile-edge or corner. And railroads should not REPLACE roads! Actually, there ought to be a changeover cost for switching between rail and road.

[yin26]

Originally posted by LordShiva
More than that, I dislike the overall scale of the visuals - the forests should be rolling expanses of green, not one or two oversized trees. The units shouldn't be three giants towering over everything else on the map. The "epic feel" of the visuals is lost thanks to this engine - somewhat like what happened with WarCraft 3 (and don't get me started on the parallels with the unwelcome, creeping influence of RPGs on the genre).

This is where I really like Blue Marble, even if it can't adjust every feature. I have spent quite a bit of time making cities and units seem plausibly scaled, for instance.

[LordShiva]

Maybe I'll give Blue Marble a shot.

That is, when I decide to start playing again.

[yin26]

By the way, I just started playing Europa Universalis 3 seriously (having already been a fan of 1 and 2). That's some old school graphic goodness. EDIT: However, units there, too, are HUGE!

[Harovan]

EU3 rocks

[Wiglaf]

Eh on second thought Civ isn't as bad as I thought. It's not great but maybe I was over the top in the first post.

I think vanilla terrain > blue marble. more lively, less depressing.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Railroads are pitiful because at far zoom, I often have problems making the difference between a tile with railroad and a tile without (particularly forest tiles).

Now wait a minute...

You're complaining because you have trouble telling the difference between a road and a railroad from orbit?!???

Wodan

[Xorbon]

My main complaint with the appearance of railroads is that the light grey colour is difficult to see on certain terrains...at least with the lowest possible graphics settings. I should probably get a new computer, but the main thing is the game runs!