jray
Mar 09, 2006, 10:58 AM
Some kind of "Babysit" toggle feature for units would be awesome! I posted a message about this in the Creation and Customization forum here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=162428) to ask anyone if they had ideas on how this can be modded, but I'm not optimistic that it's possible. So I thought I'd add it as a feature request and hope that Firaxis will pick up on it!
Enabling the Babysit feature for a unit would force that unit into the cycling queue, even if it is busy doing something like healing or building an improvement. It would stay in the active cycling queue until you disabled Babysit. And on each turn you would get focus on that unit before it performed whatever action it is set for, so that you have a chance to change the action. If you don't want to change anything, you could re-enable Babysit to ignore it again until the next turn (or maybe click on some accompanying "Ignore Until Next Turn" feature).
Better yet, there could be an optional "Babysit in <n> Turns" extension.
Here's the motivation:
1. Easier chop synching! Babysitting a forest chopper can guarantee that it won't accidentally clear a forest before you get a chance to change the production for the affected city. The best alternatives I've come up with are (a) cancelling the forest chop every single turn, which is tedious, and (b) setting a reminder using eotinb's Reminder mod, which is also tedious although less so. Additional problems with (a), assuming that you have the Minimize Popup Windows option enabled, are that if your forest chopper is the last active unit for the turn, then as soon as you hit Chop (even with the shift key down), the popup windows start assaulting you before you get a chance to hit Cancel. So it's easy to forget to cancel later. BUT, setting a forest chopper on Babysit in 3 Turns (for normal game speed) guarantees that you'll get a chance to change your production queue just before the clearing occurs.
2. More reliable sentries! If you really want to watch an area to make sure that no enemies are near, the Sentry mode isn't good enough. That only alerts you if an enemy STOPS on an adjacent square. And you only get the message "The enemy has been sighted near..." if the enemy is within 1 square of your territory. Sometimes you just want to check a particular location every single turn to make sure there are no enemies nearby. Often you can see them even when you didn't get the enemy message or get a sentry activated. Of course, putting a unit on Sentry or Fortify takes that unit out of the cycling queue so that you would have to remember to check that area every turn. But enabling Babysit would let you check up on it every turn automatically!
3. No more "Eternal Fortifiers"! Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I fortify a warrior somewhere in 3000 BC, forget about him, and finally notice him again sometime around 1800 AD, still guarding that now-insignificant hill like his life depended on it! Set this unit to Babysit in 10 Turns if you know you won't need him there after about 10 more turns. So when the 10th turn comes around, you'll automatically have your attention brought to that unit.
Enabling the Babysit feature for a unit would force that unit into the cycling queue, even if it is busy doing something like healing or building an improvement. It would stay in the active cycling queue until you disabled Babysit. And on each turn you would get focus on that unit before it performed whatever action it is set for, so that you have a chance to change the action. If you don't want to change anything, you could re-enable Babysit to ignore it again until the next turn (or maybe click on some accompanying "Ignore Until Next Turn" feature).
Better yet, there could be an optional "Babysit in <n> Turns" extension.
Here's the motivation:
1. Easier chop synching! Babysitting a forest chopper can guarantee that it won't accidentally clear a forest before you get a chance to change the production for the affected city. The best alternatives I've come up with are (a) cancelling the forest chop every single turn, which is tedious, and (b) setting a reminder using eotinb's Reminder mod, which is also tedious although less so. Additional problems with (a), assuming that you have the Minimize Popup Windows option enabled, are that if your forest chopper is the last active unit for the turn, then as soon as you hit Chop (even with the shift key down), the popup windows start assaulting you before you get a chance to hit Cancel. So it's easy to forget to cancel later. BUT, setting a forest chopper on Babysit in 3 Turns (for normal game speed) guarantees that you'll get a chance to change your production queue just before the clearing occurs.
2. More reliable sentries! If you really want to watch an area to make sure that no enemies are near, the Sentry mode isn't good enough. That only alerts you if an enemy STOPS on an adjacent square. And you only get the message "The enemy has been sighted near..." if the enemy is within 1 square of your territory. Sometimes you just want to check a particular location every single turn to make sure there are no enemies nearby. Often you can see them even when you didn't get the enemy message or get a sentry activated. Of course, putting a unit on Sentry or Fortify takes that unit out of the cycling queue so that you would have to remember to check that area every turn. But enabling Babysit would let you check up on it every turn automatically!
3. No more "Eternal Fortifiers"! Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I fortify a warrior somewhere in 3000 BC, forget about him, and finally notice him again sometime around 1800 AD, still guarding that now-insignificant hill like his life depended on it! Set this unit to Babysit in 10 Turns if you know you won't need him there after about 10 more turns. So when the 10th turn comes around, you'll automatically have your attention brought to that unit.