Screenshot of the week: 10/26

[Wittlich]

I concur with SerapisIV, I too believe this map only shows the "cutural borders' and not all "city borders"

[Sandman]

Yuck.

The terrain improvements are rancid.

There is a wide variety of mountains and coastlines, but every single irrigation and mine is the same.

The modern cities are not exactly inspiring either, a pile of grey boxes, some of which jut out onto the water.

In general the grey on green colour scheme is not very pleasant to look at.

Still, we can take heart from the fact that these are old screen shots - the mountains have not aquired their snowcaps yet, and Dan Magaha said that these are in.

[FrostyBoy]

sandman, the snowcapped mountians are only in cold areas I think

[dasaecorvic]

Well guys, I have spent some time calculating the size of the map showed in the SOTW, and it seems to have 72 tiles height.

[IMG]c:/basura/xx.jpg[/IMG]

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by dasaecorvic
Well guys, I have spent some time calculating the size of the map showed in the SOTW, and it seems to have 72 tiles height.

[IMG]c:/basura/xx.jpg[/IMG]

Wow, thats dedication dasaecorvic.

We know small maps are 80x80 tiles, so an estimated 72 is close enough to say its a small map.

[El hidalgo]

* The modern age is as ugly as ever

* I hope the AI doesn't build that many railroads, and I hope there is no incentive for the player to build that many

* what's with all the mines??? I'm going to edit the game so you can't build mines in grasslands or plains

* 100x100, the largest map size possible in Civ 2 (without additional tweaking), is still too small

* No Black Sea access to the Mediterranean is ridiculous - this was possible even in the standard large map in Civ 2, which was smaller.

On the bright side, this is the smaller map, and the main problem area seems to be Europe, which is small geographically in proportion to its importance historically (could be a problem with Japan too).

I think the comment referred to earlier about how many cities you could fit in the UK was one made by me (I know I made a comment along those lines; someone else may have too, though).

In the standard Civ 2 large map (9000 squares) you could fit 3 cities in the UK/Ireland. The standard Civ 3 large map is 32,400 squares, which is 3.6 times as big. Thus you should be able to fit 3.6 times as many cities, assuming the proportions hold. That would mean you could place 10-11 cities in the UK/Ireland on the 180x180 map. YMMV, depending on how you space your cities and whether or not the proportions hold between the Civ 2 and Civ 3 large maps. My guess is the proportions won't hold, since in the Civ 2 large earth map Europe was disproportionately large, but I bet you'd be able to fit at least 6 cities.

So a 256x256 map, at double the size, or over 65,000 squares... let's just say even if the proportions don't hold up, there will be a lot of room...

[eNo]

Alrite..the map is ugly yes (very ugly). But honestly it's hard to make a modern environment look nice. Just look any ariel shot of a city. Grey buildings connected by grey lines. Looks ugly.

I guess they could make ht roads thinner and put more variety in the grassland......or make treelined roads...

Sandman - Lionhead Boards?

[Inverse Icarus]

question to firaxis: how come the russian player sees what the other AI players are building? why is there no fog of war? does appolo program make you see enemy production too?

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by UberKruX
question to firaxis: how come the russian player sees what the other AI players are building? why is there no fog of war? does appolo program make you see enemy production too?

No, but an embassy with an Intelligence Agency small wonder and spy mission would tell you what the enemy production is.

[MxM]

No Fog Of War?

[The Rook]

I too sincerely hope that the railroads aren't used to that extent from the AI. Realistically, railroads take direct routes from city to city. Not that spaghetti looking crap.

I like the way the sub looks submerged though.

[squid]

Originally posted by redfox74
Russian city names are not correct, IMHO.

Tblisi is false. The correct name is Tbilisi (3 i's) or Tiflis.

St.Petersburg and Sverdlovsk together are not correct. Either St.Petersburg and Ekaterinburg (before 1914 and after 1990) or Leningrad and Sverdlovsk (during the socialist government) would be better.

Nice research, Firaxis

This is not history. I would not care if the Russians lived in the United States. Furthermore, if they chose city names that were named differently at different times, what is the problem? They are names. And had history had been different, the names would have been different.

Given this is a 100x100 map, it's pretty cool. I like the mountains around Gibralter....how the cities live in the valleys and what all. The railroads curving is very cool, if not a little hard to trace. But since we will have click based movement, the units will find their own path....

[Sandman]

Sandman - Lionhead Boards?

Different Sandman.

[dasaecorvic]

Originally posted by SerapisIV


Wow, thats dedication dasaecorvic.

We know small maps are 80x80 tiles, so an estimated 72 is close enough to say its a small map.

Thanks SerapisIV.

[FrostyBoy]

Ah!! eNo, that's where I have seen you before, at the lionhead forums, my name is Icedan, the 'tattoo designer', heard of me?

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Sn00py
You could put chocolate sprinkles, cream and a cherry on those railroads, and it would still look ugly.

What in the name of God were they thinking when they did that?
What is it like in the USA? Everywhere you go, a railroad? criss crossing everywhere?

May be it's a way to celebrate the old Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon...

Yeah, the pattern of mines and RR everywhere ruin the map looks quite a lot, IMHO.

[Sandman]

I'll make some suggestions. It's no good just whinging.

An upkeep cost for railroads. This has been suggested many times before. However, with my system, the Mass Transit eliminates the upkeep cost in the eight squares surrounding the city (the suburban communter routes pay for themselves). So the player can have dense rail networks around the city, but then must place them sparingly.

Cities should fit in with their surroundings. So a city built on hills should look different to a city on plains. Also, cities which have one or more sides adjacent to water should not have skyscrapers and factories rising from the waves. A port district or a pleasure beach would look much better.

Get some better irrigation graphics. Those blue scratches just don't cut it. Fields can be any shade of brown, green or even yellow. Or red if you're growing tulips.

And here's something I noticed. See how the railroads are broken up when they pass over mountains or hills? I reckon that they are just about to implement a tunnel graphic which will account for this.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by redfox74
Russian city names are not correct, IMHO.

Tblisi is false. The correct name is Tbilisi (3 i's) or Tiflis.

St.Petersburg and Sverdlovsk together are not correct. Either St.Petersburg and Ekaterinburg (before 1914 and after 1990) or Leningrad and Sverdlovsk (during the socialist government) would be better.

Nice research, Firaxis

With 25+ cities I think that they need all the names they can find .

question to firaxis: how come the russian player sees what the other AI players are building? why is there no fog of war? does appolo program make you see enemy production too?

Dan has stated that his screens are using cheat codes, so you can see the whole map in the SOTW. We don't know about how the real game will look.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Armor, Subs, Stealth Bombers, Mec Inf, Paratroopers

Only units worth building

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


With 25+ cities I think that they need all the names they can find .

Quote:

question to firaxis: how come the russian player sees what the other AI players are building? why is there no fog of war? does appolo program make you see enemy production too?

Dan has stated that his screens are using cheat codes, so you can see the whole map in the SOTW. We don't know about how the real game will look.

i thought there was no cheat mode???

[yin26]

He's just using the programming version of the game, which lets him reveal all the map, etc.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by UberKruX
i thought there was no cheat mode???

Not for public consumption. They have an internal debug version that Dan was using for last week's SOTW (he "created" the army using a cheat). I'm pretty sure this week's pic is from the same game. Guess I'm saying the same thing Yin just said.

As for the crap graphics, we can all feel free to use the editors and do better, right? Someone with some artistic talent please do something about those mines. I keep thinking that Fred Flintstone is taking over the world.

[CobraA1]

Note on the screenshot: The mounted units has a shadow underneath, possibly indicating that artists can do some sort of transparency.

It looks like we've got some sort of unit in the pollution, possibly cleaning it up? And what's that type or resource nearby?

[Solver]

I think it might be a litte bit different with the cheat mode issue. Maybe the game that we'll all going to have will have cheat codes, but they won't be released, thus making us unable to use them. If they implemented those in their builds, they might have not taken it out for the retail game, just not publish the codes. In which case there's a chance of guessing them, or just an information leak.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Sandman
Yuck.

The modern cities are not exactly inspiring either, a pile of grey boxes, some of which jut out onto the water.

Hmm, just like a real modern city! Grey and boxy.

[Sava]

I counted the squares also, that map is 100 x 100, so quit complaining!!!!

Plus, I'm sure there will be a limit modifier like for Civ II TOT, where map sizes could be large...

At least the ugly railroads are less ugly than Civ II.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by CobraA1
Note on the screenshot: The mounted units has a shadow underneath, possibly indicating that artists can do some sort of transparency.

It looks like we've got some sort of unit in the pollution, possibly cleaning it up? And what's that type or resource nearby?

All the land units have shadows. If you look at the various special units on the civ3.com site, you'll see they all have shadows.

That unit doing the grunt work on the pollution is a worker. Funny that even though his clothing changes through the ages, it still looks like he's using a hoe.

The nearby resource is rubber (represented by two tires). You know - the great rubber plantations of Central Europe...?

[ancient]

why do the railroads at points look connected wrong, and going around mountains like the way they were before?

[eNo]

Sn00py - Havn't seen you in a while! Did you leave once they moved the BW forums?

[Kc7mxo]

Talk about overanalization. yeesh. firaxis sure has all you folk on the ragged edge. :-)


1) Like someone else said, the modern age isn't pretty.
2) Quit critizicing the russian player's tactics. No one here SHOULD have any idea on proper strategic thinking for a game that they can't play yet.
3) And foreign city names are hard to translate. One map says one thing, another says different. Give em a break. Now if they misspell Moscow, you can get pissy. But who the hell can even pronounce Tblsi right?
4) The old maps had europe's size wrong. Look at a globe. Europe is TINY. so's the US for that matter.Our 2d maps exaggerate the size of the areas we will mainly be looking at on purpose.


Yeesh. You all need to think about something else. You've all got civ3 fever. Go play aliens vs predator 2 or something.