Which ressources are shown? . . . All ressources any unit need?
This is exactly what I do. Any resource that is required by at least one unit is added to the set of "strategic resources" in UnitUtil.
However, do you account for trading? What if Qin who has no iron later trades for iron and builds swordsmen? . . . How do you treat the situation when the player has briefly seen that the AI has a certain unit (let's say a swordsman), but has not seen whether the AI has the necessary resource (e.g. iron)?
The approach I take is very naive, unfortunately. Here's what I do:
- If you are connected to their trade network, I check if they have access to at least 1 of the resource. This ignores the source of that resource (not that I can find that out anyway), whether it be from their own territory or a trade with another civ.
- If you are not connected, I assume they have no resources. Every unit that requires at least one resource gets put into the "Needs Resource" column.
The problems with being trickier include
- If you see a Swordsman, maybe it was a gift from another civ.
- If you see an Iron mine with a road, maybe it's not hooked up to their trade network.
- If you saw an Iron mine that is now in the fog of war, maybe it's been pillaged since you last saw it.
Ideally the player would be able to select the resources that they believe each rival has and have the screen use that information to determine which units are available.
For example, you might say that Qin has Iron and then deselect it once you've pillaged his mine. Sure, he might have another Iron mine you don't know about, but when you saw him sending more and more Swordsman to the front line as reinforcements, you could again select Iron for him.
One thing I might at least be able to do is check the known deals (visible when hovering over an attitude cell on the Glance tab) to see if Qin is getting Iron via a trade. Does anyone know if this information is always available regardless of the war situation?
btw: Is it possible to extend the rows for each leader to the left and the right so that they make full use of the blue box they are in?
I'm waiting to complete the functionality of the screen before making it pretty, otherwise I'd have to make it pretty several times.
The problem with the Sit Rep tab is that the number of columns varies, and doing auto-expand is a PITA. This Strat Adv tab should be easier since the set of columns is static.
BTW, what should I show then on the Sit Rep tab for the Strat Adv columns? Just the Definite columns for Us and Them? Or should we remove them entirely from that tab and add things like Attitude, possible DP/PA, possible embargo?