Trying to play from the cloth map (v914)

from Elemental Forums

The cloth map is a pretty cool idea. It looks cool, and is ok as a strategic zoom option for general navigation, but it needs a lot of work to really be playable on.

* Roads don’t show up on the cloth map(correction technically they are there on my screen just very faint and flicker? (maybe an issue with my graphics card? Gforce8800 GTS graphics card, latest drivers, 64bit win 7)

* each shrine should have its own symbol so you can tell which type it is, <correction the symbols should be distinct/intuitive>, color wouldn’t be a BAD thing say: white, black, yellow, green, red, blue, I assume you can figure out which shard types those correspond to w/o even knowing the symbol they would be attached to?

* hover popups should be available for towers and such that tell you who owns it ect. (less necessary if faction color and symbols is fixed)

* the build-in-progress cloth map symbols for various things are not very intuitive.

* chasm artwork needs to be re-done.

* water terrain work poorly for lakes, but well for oceans, probably just making the ripples more frequent would fix this.

* city name text works poorly when displayed over forests (tends to blend into the forest too much making it unreadable)

* it should probably do faction symbols next to city names and under watchTowers

* w/o cloth map cities display what they are building, how long and also what enchantments are active. With the cloth map you can get build info but you have to click on the city, a list of active enchantments I don’t think is available via the cloth map

*proportional unit scaling makes caravans disappear almost entirely- there should probably be a min size for some of these things.

*wild-lands(dead forests where nasty monsters like to hang out) and live forests are hard to tell apart

* Arcane monoliths should possibly have their own symbol so they can be told apart from regular watchtowers like on the regular map

 

Background: this is broken out of a super long post I did on my 1st impressions of the game, more will come to your delight or horror :P

https://forums.elementalgame.com/425000

15,075 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

there were big improvements over WOM - more details, more variations in terrain, more buildings - but the game is confusing on both levels for me

map is confusing, I can't tell units apart from forest, are they monsters, enemy units or mine, I have to squint or mouseover, color choice is difficult to understand (violet forest? terrain changing color to what purpose?) - the visual effects make the map even less readable (road glittering under the forest while you move the map)

cloth map allows to see where units are but you lose all the other details like city names/production/spells or forests/hills (which slow down movement) - also the cloth map shows tiles where mountain are, as if you could go through them, this is a quite annoying bug when you try to escape from a roaming monster and find yourself blocked between a mountain and a monster (you're dead)

I constantly switch from one to the other to understand where things are

roads are invisible on both maps, it seems that they become more apparant turn after turn, they grow larger, the irony is that when you finally know the map by heart and you don't need to look for a road, they are visible, but at the beginning, when monsters are everywhere and you need to move faster, they are invisible - what's the point of making roads more visible at the end of the game, show them when we need them !

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

* I agree cloth map mountains are ambiguous about where exactly they start

* technically hills are there on the cloth map (rounded humps == hills). yeah, definitely more defined and easier to see in the 3D version though

* for finding units I've decided that going into "options->video->unit scale" and selecting large works best (also makes caravans visible on cloth, they are too small for proportional)

* roads slowly growing is something I haven't noticed, I'll have to watch for that... for me they have always appeared instantly upon certain tech and establishing trade, glittering roads sounds bugish to me, but I never really noticed- only been playing about a week.

 

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice post, I rarely use the cloth maps because I like the graphics, (and the cloth map lacks important information like roads)...
Well roads might be there somewhere, but I cant spot them! :)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I find the scaling frustrating from cloth<->3D.  When selecting a model scale it doesn't seem to match.  I can't think of the size, but lets say "large." On the 3D map the large figures will just fit in the map squares.  On the cloth map they take up an additional half square or more and can't see what they are near or able to tell what I click on when two armies are adjacent.

If you select a scale where the cloth figures fit on their squares, the 3D versions get lost in the terrain, while the new terrain hiding helps the scale doesn't seem to translate.

Also, icons.  I'm not sure how to describe the problem, but I get confused on who owns what at a glance.  This is partially due to the fact I'm not sure how the color selection works while creating a faction.  My faction was mostly blue, green and black.  Some of the resource icons were blue with black and some were just black.  So I'm not sure if some icons are not two tone or if I need to pick the same color for two swatches while customizing...just something that at-a-glance wasn't clear.