Signs of a better graphics (i think many of you will agree with these):
Details, edges, vectors, terrain, curvature, lighting, and color pallets etc. etc.
Doesn’t get in the way of environment, objects, and effects
Doesn’t create eye strain when looking at the game and playing it
Ability to tell objects despite of a camera angle
It has a survivability factor meaning, it will age well into the future.
Now rank these shuffled games (AOE IV, Cossack 3, Settlers remake, Civ6, Stronghold:Warlords, Warcraft 3, Age Online, StarCraft 2, Spellforce 3) here based on how cartoony they are. I respect your opinions, no matter what.
Edit: Clash of clans, Ancestors Legacy, Lotr reforged and iron harvest been added. I don’t even know why clash of clans is in the list, but hey, people are comparing AOE4 to it.
Thank you for taking the time to compile these screenshots. I don’t think Age IV looks cartoonish. Age of Empires Online IS very cartoonish. This looks nothing like that, as the screenshots show.
Hopefully Age IV has variable weather and day/night. That would help make it look more realistic.
Your welcome. I sat down and screenshotted everything in AOE4. I had to do it, people are just saying it looks like that, therefore it is cartoonish. I will repeat again, having a different color scheme is not what makes things cartoonish. Age IV has realistic factors too, the object scaling and color factor is throwing many of us off. It is more of a pastel/matte tabletop game than anything else. Good enough for a history game. Gameplay is what counts and makes or breaks the game.
I HATED Civ6, I HATED DoW3, and hated CoH2 (multiplayer) even though I played every entry on these franchise. The major contributing factor was gameplay, and then the graphics.
This is how this usually work, people like gameplay but hate the graphics, or they hate both, or they like graphics and hate the gameplay. Now the question is, which scale this fanbase will lie on.
LEL!! You sound irritated. Anyways here is my ranking from cartoonish to realistic:
Civ6
Age Online
Settlers new
Warcraft 3
Stronghold:Warlords
StarCraft 2 (character modals, and building),
AOE IV
Cossack 3
Spellforce 3
As far as ranking goes spellforce 3 looks most realistic but when you watch its gameplay then sometimes foliage creates disturbances in watching your units
Yes, that’s the tradeoff of looking realistic. Spellforce and CoH2 both suffered from this problem. Color scheme is working for Age IV to say the least. It is balanced itself well.
Welcome back, I see it has been an year. You don’t come where there are no contest around. Thanks for ranking, your bottom 3 can use some re-arranging , but it is good.
That is true, I am not an artist, but neither any (unless you’re secretly) of us here. So it’s better to let the Relic do their hard work. They have people who have been working on this field since ages, and know what they’re doing. My only concern is gameplay, nothing else.
