Colour of the Civs

[Fistleaf]

Currently, each Civ has a chosen colour but quite often I see neighboring civs with similar shades of blue, red, green. This makes it hard to determine which city belongs to which civ especially when you look at the minimap or when the cities are covered by the fog of war. It irritates me when a neighboring civ has the same colour as my civ and makes me want to destroy them.
Why not just make the colours random and choose 7 distinctive colours (on standard) each time (red, yellow, green, blue, violet, white, with black for barbarians)? This adds some randomness instead of seeing a red civ and knowing that it is probably Tokugawa.

[Seedle]

The reason the colors are the same each time is exactly so you know who each person is by color. This makes it easier to keep tabs in the minimap and tell at glance who just founded a city off your border. If colors changed each time, it could get confusing as to who is where. Once you see their color, you're gonna find out who they are in a turn or two anyway, so I think the ease of recognition trumps variety. If you want to have an element of this, turn on random leaders in the custom start menu. Whenever I play this, I always get confused, cause I'll know, for instance, that I'm at war with Bismark, and send my troops to German lands, but I forgot Bismark rules Japan!

As to the colors being too similar, I agree. It gets even worse as you play with more civs.

[Adagio]

Re: Colour of the Civs

Originally posted by Fistleaf

Why not just make the colours random and choose 7 distinctive colours (on standard) each time (red, yellow, green, blue, violet, white, with black for barbarians)? This adds some randomness instead of seeing a red civ and knowing that it is probably Tokugawa.

I completely agree

IMHO having random colors has a lot of positive sides, without any negative sides, while not having random colors has a lot of negative sides, without any positive sides

Why not have a checkbox in the start new game menu, that allows you to play with random civ colors
In Civ III I did randomize the colors from time to time in the editor, it made the game much more fun

[Addled Platypus]

shades of gray could be fun

[Scooby_Doo]

I've also noticed in a new game that Survaryman (sp?) has a different coloured border to the colour of his name on the score list on the right hand side. It got a bit confusing until I realised!

[rah]

and get rid of the light grey that the germans have. I don't know now many time I send a settler out and not even notice their culture border.

[Julian Delphiki]

"Blue" civs are sometimes really hard to separate from each other.

[mkorin]

With 32 million color choices available to my computer, maybe 16 million if your video card is not high end, they should be able to pick out a color for each civ that is not close to another.

Mike

[Ming]

Re: Re: Colour of the Civs

Originally posted by Adagio
Why not have a checkbox in the start new game menu, that allows you to play with random civ colors

I agree...
I'm sure some people like the consistent colors. But I'm not one of them. I would prefer clearly different colors to make life easier. Granted, this would be a problem with a huge map and 18 civs, but many of my games only include 7 to 10 civs, and it wouldn't be too hard to have that many distinct colors.

[Supr49er]

England's white color makes it tough to see their cities on the minimap.

[Yaga]

Originally posted by mkorin
With 32 million color choices available to my computer, maybe 16 million if your video card is not high end, they should be able to pick out a color for each civ that is not close to another.

Mike

While I *do* like the consistent colors (Red is either Toku or Catherine == BAD) I am amazed they couldn't find 18 or even 24 of 'em that are different enough from one another.

[Yaga]

Re: Re: Colour of the Civs

Originally posted by Adagio
Why not have a checkbox in the start new game menu, that allows you to play with random civ colors
In Civ III I did randomize the colors from time to time in the editor, it made the game much more fun

How about whenever you discover a new Civ you can either use the default color (good 9 times out of ten) or pick a color from a drop-down menu.

Even better -- somewhere on the Relations screen should be a drop down menu for each Civ. That way you can change them on the fly.

And while I'm at it, vassals should should striped with their master's colors. It shouldn't be too difficult and it would certainly help.