There's been a lot of talk complaining about the transition from 2d to 3d graphics, primarily in screenshot threads. The debate has largely missed the fact that is not the fundamental difference in graphics between EU3 and EU2.
The important difference is the transistion from a pre-rendered map to one rendered in real-time on your computer. This results in a tradeoff between attractiveness and flexibility. Consider the games, Doom and Myst, both came out around the same time, 1993, and both are 3D. Doom renders its scenes in real-time on your computer while Myst uses pre-rendered 3D scenes. Anyone who saw screenshots of the games would tell you that Myst looks far better. The tradeoff is that anyone could create levels for Doom on their own computer (given the right tools) but only people with high-end Silicon Graphics machines could have created new screens for Myst. Myst also had a small set of screens it could display, while Doom had a practically infinite number of different scenes that could be rendered to the screen.
Using graphics rendered in real-time results in much greater flexiblity to the designers. If they want to change a screen they don't have to go through the long process of re-rendering. They don't have to know in advance how many different screens they will need to be able display. However, the quality of the graphics must decrease since you are relying on the user's computer rather than a render-farm to create the scenes.
So the real debate should be, for a strategy game, which side of the tradeoff is best. The answer for first-person shooters is obvious, but for strategy games it is not as clear that the flexiblity is needed.
As an aside, the fact that the map is 3d real-time rendered rather than 2d real-time rendered is not that significant of a difference. Since there is apparently only one camera angle, the 3d effects of the map seem to be largely limited to rendering terrain better. Since the 3d objects (armies, buildings, etc.) could have easily been placed on 2d map. An example of a game where the 2d-3d transition is the fundamental one would be from Civ3 to Civ4, since it always used real-time rendered graphics (think of tiles as textures).
radamanthus
The important difference is the transistion from a pre-rendered map to one rendered in real-time on your computer. This results in a tradeoff between attractiveness and flexibility. Consider the games, Doom and Myst, both came out around the same time, 1993, and both are 3D. Doom renders its scenes in real-time on your computer while Myst uses pre-rendered 3D scenes. Anyone who saw screenshots of the games would tell you that Myst looks far better. The tradeoff is that anyone could create levels for Doom on their own computer (given the right tools) but only people with high-end Silicon Graphics machines could have created new screens for Myst. Myst also had a small set of screens it could display, while Doom had a practically infinite number of different scenes that could be rendered to the screen.
Using graphics rendered in real-time results in much greater flexiblity to the designers. If they want to change a screen they don't have to go through the long process of re-rendering. They don't have to know in advance how many different screens they will need to be able display. However, the quality of the graphics must decrease since you are relying on the user's computer rather than a render-farm to create the scenes.
So the real debate should be, for a strategy game, which side of the tradeoff is best. The answer for first-person shooters is obvious, but for strategy games it is not as clear that the flexiblity is needed.
As an aside, the fact that the map is 3d real-time rendered rather than 2d real-time rendered is not that significant of a difference. Since there is apparently only one camera angle, the 3d effects of the map seem to be largely limited to rendering terrain better. Since the 3d objects (armies, buildings, etc.) could have easily been placed on 2d map. An example of a game where the 2d-3d transition is the fundamental one would be from Civ3 to Civ4, since it always used real-time rendered graphics (think of tiles as textures).
radamanthus
