At first glance, a lot of people assume that making the graphics engine for a strategy game like Civilization V is easier than an FPS, but in some ways it’s actually harder. Most games on the market today are careful, hand-crafted experiences. This means that the graphics engine knows exactly what it needs to render at any point in time. Each level is carefully built and enemies are carefully placed. Civilization, however, is a user controlled game, where we have to be prepared for all sorts of scenarios. For example, at max zoom in, the player can see around 20 tiles. Each tile can have a unit (with multiple characters), a forest, perhaps buildings, resources, and a few other graphics elements. Zoomed in, this isn’t a huge problem, but when we zoom out, we can see around 500 tiles. Since it is a strategy game, we have to show everything, every frame.” Although players might not think about it, most strategy games feature hand-made maps. Every map in Civilization V is procedurally created. Baker believes this makes a huge different in replayability, especially since the Civ V engine allows these random maps to appear hand-made. “Nothing will ever beat the human touch, but random maps are such a huge part of games that we will likely never give them up,” said Baker. “I’m proud of the way we are able to randomly create the terrain. We have one of the best procedural terrain systems ever built. This gives players a unique, rich experience every time they start a new game, giving Civilization V a lot of replayability.
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