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Civilization 6 announced, out October 21st

You know what... despite my bitching earlier in this thread, who am I kidding? I'm going to get wrapped up in the buzz of the launch of this game and get it anyway. And being that it's built from the ground up with mods in mind, there'll likely be a realism patch before too long after launch.
 
I'm not a huge fan of the graphics, but I think part of the problem is that those screenshots seem to be have been taken with max zoom in.

I thought I would eventually start warming up to the new art style, but it's not happening.

Everything just looks too..."smooth" and toy like. I mean, the mountains in Civ IV (released over a decade ago) are more textured and detailed than the mountains in Civ VI...

Civ4River.jpg


cDX86UE.png
 
A lot of people are saying "graphics" when they really mean the art direction. The tech may not be bleeding edge, but most people aren't complaining about that. The art direction moves in a very cartoony direction reminiscent of freemium mobile games. I just pulled a random Civ V image off of google for comparison.

Civ VI


Civ V

This is true but even art style aside, the graphics in Civ VI are straight up awful for a PC exclusive game in 2016. Hell, the graphics would have been terrible a year or two ago even.
 
One thing I hope they bring back is the ability to halt all research in this game. They took that away in Civ V, and you researched whether you wanted to or not. I hated on easier modes how you jetted ahead of other civs in tech, when you might have only wanted to take your time and test out each tech when first playing the game.
 
The game having a simple graphics style could well be an attempt to pull a Maxis and make a game which runs on a toaster.

If that was a specific design choice then I have no problem with it.

Graphics mods are 100% a thing for Civ anyway, so people can make beautifying things. On Steam Workshop, even.
 
This is true but even art style aside, the graphics in Civ VI are straight up awful for a PC exclusive game in 2016. Hell, the graphics would have been terrible a year or two ago even.

I am really hoping the art style is improved in motion because I cant believe how bad those screens look. Even next to Civ IV they look bad.
 
Complaining about the art direction has to be the most milquetoast complaint of a Civ game I have ever heard. It's readable, and as concerns go it belongs near the bottom... if not at the very bottom.
 
Here is one of the screens reworked I found.
*snip*
I'd be lying if I said that didn't look better.

That does look better: still readable, a bit more fidelity. Nice.

But, as I said before, it's graphics in a Civ game. I couldn't really muster enough damns to give.
 
Complaining about the art direction has to be the most milquetoast complaint of a Civ game I have ever heard. It's readable, and as concerns go it belongs near the bottom... if not at the very bottom.

Very bottom for sure.
 
:) I hope I like it better than 5. 5 made some good changes but fumbled a lot imo. I hope this builds off 5 in a positive direction.
 
I am also mystified with the praise being lavished in Civ V's direction. It was beautiful to be sure, but very cluttered. It was either scrutinize the terrain like my tax return to pick out resource types or turn icons on to cut through the noise. That's not a good thing.
 
Complaining about the art direction has to be the most milquetoast complaint of a Civ game I have ever heard. It's readable, and as concerns go it belongs near the bottom... if not at the very bottom.

I disagree. Just because you play Civ with a low priority on art doesn't mean others do. I like to get lost in the world/gamestate I'm playing through, imagining that these are real civilizations and alternate histories. Beautiful art helps build that feeling of "presence" in the gameworld.
 
I disagree. Just because you play Civ with a low priority on art doesn't mean others do. I like to get lost in the world/gamestate I'm playing through, imagining that these are real civilizations and alternate histories. Beautiful art helps build that feeling of "presence" in the gameworld.
Much of the best and most evocative pieces of Civ's art direction have had little to do with the worldmap at all, such as to do with the tech tree, wonders, UI, and so on. Density of detail on the worldmap is not an intrinsic good.
 
where are those mythical people? all I see is complaining about that art style everywhere

the people who like the art style don't care about mentioning it because it's not an unexpected look for civ

civ is known for being cheery, uplifting, colorful, even cartoonish
same with age of empires / age of mythology

the people complaining that the art style doesn't fit a civ game have probably never played a civ game before civ5.
if you don't like the art style and didn't like the art style of previous civ games, that's fine. but the art style is not some great departure for the series
 
I would be perfectly happy with a 2D, non animated version of the game which ran smoothly with huge maps. I sometimes play 5 in strategic view only and I'm fine with that.
 
The graphics aren't my favourite, but I imagine the visual *pop* will help a lot with map readability when actually playing Civ6. Hopefully the days of using tooltips to identify everything piled onto a hex are behind us, now. Plus, depending on how much biome variety there is, it could lead to some really nice looking world maps, especially with multi-hex civ cities covering the landscape.

Not sure what to think about the tech changes. It'll either be great or a disaster, depending on how much it binds the player. Like, the devs mention how they want to push people out of their tech path rut, but if that just leads to If Mountains, Then X; or If Seaside, Then X, it'll be the same binary problem, only in a different form. It will also inadvertently homogenise the different civs, assuming UUs, UBs, and civ abilities function as in previous games, bound to specific playstyles.
Yeah, Age of Wonders 3 is criminally underrated. It's a pretty amazing game and for some reason it never gets mentioned.

Thirding Fourthing this mention. Great game! One of my favourite 4Xes of the last few years.
I thought I would eventually start warming up to the new art style, but it's not happening.

Everything just looks too..."smooth" and toy like. I mean, the mountains in Civ IV (released over a decade ago) are more textured and detailed than the mountains in Civ VI...

Civ4River.jpg


cDX86UE.png

It's time to put the hyperbole down before someone gets hurt.
 
What's with the crazy price? It's £16 more than I paid for the last game at release and god knows the last 2 games were pretty poor until the (not so cheap) expansions sorted things out.

Was ready to pick it up with the controller but £50 for a Base civ game is nuts. What's the justification for it?
 
What's with the crazy price? It's £16 more than I paid for the last game at release and god knows the last 2 games were pretty poor until the (not so cheap) expansions sorted things out.

Was ready to pick it up with the controller but £50 for a Base civ game is nuts. What's the justification for it?

Probably that they have all the systems in place this time round from prior games, all tweaked a bit for this along with the new mechanics - that and they know they Civ fans will bite for more Civ - which is a shit justification since I am also not willing to spend that much - but if the people I trust review it and receive it exceptionally well (unlike previous games), then my dumb arse will end up buying it...
 
Definitely give it a shot. Endless Legends has several gameplay elements that should be brought into Civilization because they're flatly superior. It has a much better take on "city states" and war, for example.

I'm a bit worried about the visual style, but then again I can't think of a single time that a Firaxis game had good looking initial screenshots. They always improve once they release actual gameplay screenshots with the proper angles, HUD, etc.

Age of Wonders 3 is my favourite recent fantasy 4x game. (It's also quite beautiful)

Thanks, I can already tell I'm going to love them by what I've seen. I think I'm going to play both waiting for the first DLC of Civ6, starting with Endless Legends. After years of Civilization, Total War and Age of Empires, fresh air is more than welcome.
 
For what it's worth, as a guy who plays mostly indie pixel art games and handheld games nowadays, the screenshots look great
 
Here is one of the screens reworked I found.

Screenshot_Civ.jpg


I'd be lying if I said that didn't look better.



Comparison with the original image -

Untitled_1.jpg





It looks much better. More textured, gritty surfaces and dialed back color saturation is all it takes.

Hopefully Firaxis makes adjustments. If not, there will surely be a mod that does.
 
Comparison with the original image -

Untitled_1.jpg





It looks much better. More textured, gritty surfaces and dialed back color saturation is all it takes.

Hopefully Firaxis makes adjustments. If not, there will surely be a mod that does.

He'll other than the tilt shift filter, a simple reshape filter will achieve the better colors.
 
Ah, I noticed they're still using hexagons. I was hoping they would do octagons.
But you can't tile octagons like that? They pack in a way squares would, effectively giving you four immediate neighbours, as opposed to the six of hexagons:
Unless you made them have varying angles at which point it would look wonky like the right one.
 
Comparison with the original image -

Untitled_1.jpg





It looks much better. More textured, gritty surfaces and dialed back color saturation is all it takes.

Hopefully Firaxis makes adjustments. If not, there will surely be a mod that does.

Most of the differences I'm seeing are a slightly more washed out color palette and the tilt shift.

The only detail change is to the mountains, which I agree look better, but I prefer the brighter colors of the first pic, so it's kind of a wash.
 
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