Best User Interface

[SirMaru]

I've been playing Civ V with the standard User Interface for over year now with full animations.

However, I tried a change today and I am awed. I changed to the following UI instead:

Use Strategic View.

Toggle MapOptions: Icon Mode shows All; ShowFeatures; Show Fog of War; Hex Grid. Have Active Overlay show Resources.

The old way I used to start getting dizzy after 2 hours of playing straight. Now I can go up to 6 hours and not notice any problems. I can see everything in every revealed hex with the colors different for each hex with a different class of resources. One can even show trade routes highlighted in yellow with a slight change.

In fact, this UI reminds me of the old board games produced by Avalon Hill but they are now in a PC.

I'm posting this to give others a clue if they are locked into the standard UI with the animations. Try it and it will be like playing a different game.

[Shiav]

i really do love strategic mode. my laptop can actually play the game in that mode

[Bomberross]

It is nice for a change. Plus the graphics required to play are super low which is cool for those of us with crappy PC's

[eastkitton]

Sir Maru, it's a bit strange that you can play for a year and not be aware of the existence of Strategic View. If, as you said in another thread, you previously didn't want to play larger maps because of possible late game crashes... well, you could always have avoided them by using this mode you know.

The two things I dislike most about Strategic View:

* The method of highlighting tiles (thick tile borders) obscures rivers and national borders along the tile edge. You try to attack someone and your unit stops after one tile, Oh, I've crossed an invisible river have I?
It's a bad method of highlighting.

For that matter I've never been fond of Civ's "beam of light" highlighting. When two units are over one another it is hard to tell which one is being highlighted.

* Roads and railroads are hard to tell apart. Dark blue and black - I have to look carefully, at least on my monitor. It's surely intended to be a simple clear display but it still has ornamental curly fronds of road. I'd just join two tiles centre to centre to show a road and use two close-together parallel lines for a railraod.

--

Still, as far as I can recall, no suggestion about Strategic View has ever been implemented. So I guess it's very low priority at Firaxis.

[Jazzterisk]

I use strategic view in several ways. First, near the end of the game the time between turns can get quite long. Switching to strategic view cuts the waiting time down by perhaps 90%. I'd say from 20 - 30 seconds per turn down to 5 or so at the most. Second, with air animations taking so long to complete, turning to strategic view makes the waiting negligible.