Civilization colors

Not during the course of the game, but if you have DA you can simply change the colors on the Appearance tab when customizing your opponents. If you have DL, you'll need to manually change the values in RaceConfig.xml.

Can some of these be changed permanently by the next update, ie. 1.7? I think a lot of people have trouble distinguishing the "gray" civs. It takes a little effort to know if you have the Krynn, Korx or Iconian civs around.

Also, and this just occured to me, can the game be changed so that we can see out opponents, (blind exploration OFF) BUT still not know who they are until we meet? Like we will see shaded blotches for each AI and when we meet them their blotch turns their color.

I somewhat agree on the shades of gray but I'd also wonder what could be done. When I use a fully custom race it's often challenging to pick a color that shows well on the minimap, doesn't blend too badly with existing race colors, and isn't grotesque like hot pink.

In DL the minimap is tons of fun with the red colored races... You dunno if it is Drath, Dreadlord, Thalan, Drengin, minor race or to a lesser extent, Yor!

And when you have tons of similar colored races jostling around on the minimap, it is very easy to overlook that sneaky Drengin fleet heading for your starbase!!

It would be nice if the minimap icons and map colours used the trim colour as well to help make the distinction clear.

on a side note, does the minimap still have that "shadow" of light at the top?

That made it really easy to think one race was another by virtue that the color was shaded a little lighter. Hehe, actually for my first ever galciv2 game, I rmember thing that the "shadow" of light was a range indicator and I cound't figure out why it wasn't changing when I researched new range techs or coloniezed a new planet!! Took me a while to figure it out, lol.

But yea, removing that might also make thimgs a bit easier with race colors.

I would love something to be done about the4 colours. I find it at times very difficult, especialy with the mini map.



What about the use of stripes or something as an option for the colours? I am running out of ideas, but you know something has to be done about it when it gets to the point that you are having second thoughts of starting a game because of the above issue.



I don't claim other people have this problem, just me.

It is funny how small things can ruin a game, but i don't see the color issue doing that, although it certainly does eat into your playing time because you have to stuff around and waste time scrolling around to confirm who owns that little red ship on the minimap.

A good example of how to destroy a brilliant game is provided by Egosoft's X3 with the rampant collisions and freindly fire. By the time i had a nice fleet of capital ships, i was too scared to go to those sectors where my ships were because of collisions and freindly fire, it was quite absurd and i do not bother playing it anymore because of that.

I just dont see why separate colors can't be found. How about pink? Or like a forest green? If there were only 2 grays it would still be better.

What about the idea above of having them be a neutral color until you meet the race?

I edited the other civs to make the colors more distinctive. The Korx are now hot pink, and the Korath sort of a dull green, and some other changes I cant think of at the moment. It's definitely do-able to find better colors to differentiate the civs than the existing defaults.

Sentient species taste better...

Yea, those gray races are rough. I'm playing with 3 of them and I can't tell them apart. I have to mouse-over their ships and look at their planets on the main map. I could spend the time to edit their colors, but I would rather Stardock fix it so I don't have to monkey with it. Certainly game testers would have run into this and made a note about it.