GRAPHICS REQUEST: Toggling off certain things...or graphic overlays

[yin26]

Dear Firaxis: Any chance we can have 'Improvements/Graphics Toggles' that will allow us to customize what we see on the map? I really think that would keep things looking much nicer in the mid to late-game.

Look at picture below. By the end game, the map is just too loaded with horribly repetitive graphics. The mines are just dreadfully dull looking and the rails make my head hurt (though some other people like the rails).

Any chance the following good be toggled on/off? I think it would be outstanding to be able to filter out some or most of the items on the map as it gets more and more crowded. Many thanks. Some possible items:

1. Mines
2. Roads
3. Rail
4. Units
5. Irrigation
6. Resources
7. Text: The city names, population, what it's building etc.
8. Cultural borders

[Robert Plomp]

uh, pherhaps it's a little too late to request new features after the game has gone gold ?
What if you start The List for civ4 ?

[yin26]

I think this could be done in a patch rather 'easily'?

[Skanky Burns]

Id have to agree with Yin here. The terrain starts off without any improvements visible, they have code to make resources invisible unless a certain discovery is made, so this in a patch is possible. Note that i didnt say it would be easy though.

And a feature to turn irrigation/mines off would be useful. After all your land is improved, its only in your cities that you will care exactly where mines or irrigated squares are. Not too sure about turning rails off though, as you would want to know where they are for unit movement purposes. And i personally like how the rails look

[yin26]

So we could toggle:

Resources
Mines
Roads
Rail
Units
Irrigation

anything else?

[Skanky Burns]

Cultural borders. Might as well make it a complete set

[Immortal Wombat]

Text. The city names, population, what it's building etc. That could be irritating.

[yin26]

Thanks guys. I've added those in my original post, which I'll keep updated if people have more ideas.

[Steve Clark]

Actually, there is a work-around. In the terrain gif file, just edit the mines to where it blends into the grassland (like the shield symbol in Civ2). The same for roads, railroads, irrigation, etc. where you can very easily change the color to some sort of green or something to where you can still see it but it blends in better.

Oh that's right, that means thinking of Civ3 in terms of it being customizable. Can't do that, right yin?

[yin26]

Oh that's right, that means thinking of Civ3 in terms of it being customizable. Can't do that, right yin?

Ah, c'mon. No unfair baiting. I'm talking about an entire team of programmers doing it for us rather quickly ... not hoping a few dedicated fans ONE DAY figure out how to make passable hacks.

[Comrade Tribune]

Why, oh why, must the AI build mines/irrigations in such an annoying geometric shape? Couldn´t they randomize it somewhat?

How come CivI/II did not have this particular problem?

[Steve Clark]

Because the terrain is based on a very regular grid of tiles. The center point of any tile is exactly the same distance from all the other tiles horizontally and vertically, and another equal distance diagonally. Each tile represents exactly the same area, thus irrigation that fills up a tile would be in a regular pattern.

If you look at the AI building pattern in Civ2, all the cities were evenly spaced. The AI cities in Civ3 appears the same way.

[Comrade Tribune]

You didn´t get me. I was talking about this:






Why can´t it look like this:





Much more natural.

Thanks to Wombat for the smilie tip.

[yin26]

It seems quite a few people don't like this screenshot either (see the 'modern screenshot' thread). I understand the limitations of map size, etc. I just feel the only way around this is to give the player some control over what gets displayed.

Preetty pleeeease.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune

Sorry, it doesn´t work out with letters; I hope you still see what I mean.

Use the banned smilies. They are regular. The pattern does indeed look really stupid. Isn't the terrain underneath in any way varied?

mine
irrigation