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[Kernac]

Hello.

Recently I've been trying out various demos of different city building games, mainly Anno 1404.  However there is something about that games that botters me. 

It doesn't look very good.  I mean, the graphic are ok but one major probleme that I find and that is shared with a lot of city building games is everything has to be placed on a grid, everything is square, I feel like I'm doing some geometric work. 

I really like games where you can rotate your building 360 degree and place road however you like.  For me, the fun doesn't come from managing a city and making it super prosper, but rather to make it look alive, beautifull and real. 

I'm eager to play Tropico 3 where it seem the placement of building and road is flexible, on overall that game looks really good, but does anyone know any other games that are really beautiful?

Also, I'm interested in your oppinion, do you like building a good looking city or does your motivation lies elswhere?

[pad11]

For me it's a combination of gameplay elements, INCLUDING beauty...and I love Anno's graphics!!!

If you're looking for fabulous gameplay and cool graphics, try The Guild series of games!

Anyhoo, thanks for posting and welcome to the forum!

pat!

[City Builder]

If we are only talking about the Anno series then 1404 does have the best graphics to date.  Unfortunately, the game is on a grid, so no curved paths, and no way to rotate the buildings by x degrees.  I guess I've been playing for so long now the anno series that I've never thought of that as being a bad thing.

One of the biggest challenges that players put on themselves when playing the anno series is to build as efficiently as they possibly can, and so the grid system helps them to do that.

If you're looking for other games that are in the same beauty category as Tropico 3, I don't believe you'll find any.  T3 is nice, and curved roads are nice etc, however all buildings are essentially square or rectangular, so much like Cities XL, when trying to place a square building to a curved road it doesn't look all that pretty since it doesn't conform to the road, but this is the nature of the beast I suppose.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to one person what they think their city is beautifully layed out in a grid type of system, others might liek a more natural approach.  Tropico 3 can do either.  You can either use the roads with only 45° corners and make all the buildings have to sit on the edge of a road, or you can simply place buildings out in the open away from roads.

For me, the motivation depends on the game.  In Anno 1404, Itry to build the most efficient city layout that I can (often failing at that), and in games such as Tropico 3, I try to build more natural looking cities (well, as much as the demo will allow right now).  In games that have circle of influence rings (Grand Ages Rome etc), I try to build efficiently.  In SimCity 4, I try to go for beauty and efficiency at the same time.

In the demo of T3, I attempted to leave some space between the buildings and the roads that theya re parralell to, however it doesn't look good to be away from the road. I did this for roads that are not perfectly straight so that the buildings could still line up with each other in a straight line, and for those roads that are a straight line its easy to just snap the building to the road and make it look nice.  I guess its' those darn curved roads that screw up the way the placement of the buildings look.  Still, a nice looking game.  My one gripe would be that I would have hoped that they would have added more buildings to the game instead of sticking to the original so closely.  Perhaps a butchers shop industry to process the cattle, goats etc would have been nice as an example.  More tiered buildings that interweave with each other (example, the lumberjacks supply the mill who supplies the furniture factory, I would have liked to see many more of those 3 tiered systems in Tropico 3).

Welcome to the club.

[Mycroft]

<snip>

I really like games where you can rotate your building 360 degree and place road however you like.   For me, the fun doesn't come from managing a city and making it super prosper, but rather to make it look alive, beautifull and real.   

<snip>

  I'm far from an expert, but perhaps I could suggest downloading the demo for "The Settlers: Rise of an Empire"?  You can rotate buildings, and my recollection of road placement is that it's pretty unrestricted.

  Myself, I do enjoy good graphics, too.   I prefer a game that focuses on economy with not much military, and if I can brew beer or mead that's a big plus.   

[City Builder]

I'd much rather brew beer than go to war, any day of the week.  The Settlers 6 was also a nice game, however not many economical user created scenarios that I've been able to find.  I'd still be playing it regularly if there were some great economic scenarios available for it.  Maybe there are and I've just not found the repository of them yet.

If there are, they'd need to be pretty to look at, they'd need to be functional, and they'd need to be more economics oriented rather than military.

Anyway... Welcome Mycroft, please enjoy your visit.

[pad11]

Indeed, welcome mycroft!  And keep your eyes open as Settlers 7 is on its way soon!

later,
pat!

[Lengo]

Beauty? Bah! Rotate? Yeah, that's nice. But what's important is playability. Does it entertain? This is like "to be or not to be. That is the question".

I've dated lots of pretty girls. Some would rotate, some would not. But the most satisfying ones were capable of stimulating conversation, and could still manage to be fun at the same time. That's where it's at. Forget the beauty. Look for game play.



 

[City Builder]

Beauty? Bah! Rotate? Yeah, that's nice. But what's important is playability. Does it entertain? This is like "to be or not to be. That is the question".

I've dated lots of pretty girls. Some would gyrate, some would not. But the most satisfying ones were capable of stimulating conversation, and could still manage to be fun at the same time. That's where it's at. Forget the beauty. Look for game play.

I've fixed that for you Lengo 

[Lengo]

Ha ha ha ha hah ah haaa!

No you diddent! ha ha ha hahaa. I never dated a gyrator! 

ha ha ha hahha!~  TOo funny!