A map screen can become very confusing when zoomed out. Take a look at this picture and answer me:



1) Which regions have unexploited palladium?

2) Which regions have Right of Way integrated?

3) What are the current trade routes?

4) Where are the roads, and where are the rivers?

5) Which regions have more than 6 districts?

6) Exactly where are the city centers?



All these questions could be answered quickly if the map have selective highlight modes:

Examples:

HIGHLIGHT RIVERS: a swim overlay would be placed at the map showing the rivers... like this:





HIGHLIGHT ROADS: completed roads will appear in a thick red pattern. Roads not built yet would appear as a thinner, darker red.





HIGHLIGHT EXPLOITATIONS: a stronger, more iconic overlay, would appear at each tile with an exploit. boroughs appear as houses with one, two or three ceilings (depending on level)... boroughs in construction appear in a dotted pattern. Tiles with exploited resources appear circled, tiles without exploited resources appear dotted, and the city queue order appears.





Following the same rationale, the following highlights would be created:

HIGHLIGHT STRATEGIC RESOURCES: strategic resources will appear in double size at the map. A circle around them will show if they are exploited or not...

HIGHLIGHT LUXURIES: luxury resource will appear in double size at the map.

HIGHLIGHT BORDERS: borders will appear in a darker, thicker pattern.

HIGHLIGHT RIDGES: ridges will appear with a thick, dark border around the hexagon faces that are impassable.

HIGHLIGHT TRADE ROUTES: trade routes will appear with a thick border.



The highlights could then be placed as on-off buttons at the screen... They can appear as a foldable menu, or besides the turn time, together with the FIDSI / HEX tiles...

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Good idea, I am for this kind of highlight selection. We could too add : highlight ennemies units, and visual notifications about any ennemy units movements sighted. Because it's not very interesting to have to check by yourself when the ennemy has moved to you (in multiplayer especially).

Jojo_Fr wrote:
Good idea, I am for this kind of highlight selection. We could too add : highlight ennemies units, and visual notifications about any ennemy units movements sighted. Because it's not very interesting to have to check by yourself when the ennemy has moved to you (in multiplayer especially).

What do you mean by highlight enemy units? And movements? Something like this?



This is an attempt to show what your intention would be like: Units have their shield colored according to the relations between the empire and you:

At war: red

Cold war: yellow

Peace: blue

You : green

Allies ( not shown: I don't know... white?? )

Roaming armies: black.

Each army have a "dot trail" showing where the unit have moved during this turn...



About visual notifications, you mean, like, make cold war / war and roaming armies near your territory blink or pulse? Or do you really want a full blown notification appearing?

Yes I mean that, and I mean too notifications for movements. Because in multiplayer you can move during the turn, and it would be important to seeing these movements. It would be really simplier to have this automation of movement detection of cold war or war civ, because you can miss it in multplayer.

One thing that I've seen people complain in other threads is the "zooming in"--"zooming out" we keep doing to see clearly the anomalies sites... So maybe a good highlight mode would be to place an icon over the anomaly sites, even when zoomed in... They would appear in a way similar to a village tag...

Great ideas, we really need this implemented !

abmpicoli wrote:
One thing that I've seen people complain in other threads is the "zooming in"--"zooming out" we keep doing to see clearly the anomalies sites... So maybe a good highlight mode would be to place an icon over the anomaly sites, even when zoomed in... They would appear in a way similar to a village tag...

I like this idea and would hope that the +10/20 happiness anomalies appear slightly different so they can be differentiated from the mediocre ones.

I've been mentioning this time and again in many places, but I never got around to making a proper thread for it.

Yes, we need more information overlays, and we need proper control of those overlays. Why do so many developers think taking away the control over the map visual is good, because "too many map options confuse the player"? Civ4 and CivV work just fine with their information overlays (though slightly better with mods), and even games with as many different map modes as Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis 4 are playable, simply because most of those map modes are specialized and don't come up that often (though some of them could be streamlined, admittedly).



While we're at it: You already let us zoom in ridiculously close, so could we please get free camera control so we can take more interesting screenshots and admire your world from different angles? Also, polar caps that don't look like unfinished placeholders would be great. Just substitute the existing ice mountains or something.