BUG Espionage Screen

ruff_hi

ruff_hi

Live 4ever! Or die trying
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This thread is designed to segment the suggestions, draft screens and user feedback (and bugs) for the Espionage screen.

Current Situation
As far as I know, the BUG version of the Espionage screen is pretty similar to the vanilla BtS version except that the espionage costs are color coded.

Possible Additions
  • Glance style tab that records leaders EP spend against other leaders (and the delta from last turn)
    ruff_hi said:
    Can we add a tab to the Espionage screen that is similar to the GLANCE screen except shows EP spend by leaders against leaders and include the delta for the current turn.
    Click to expand...
    obsolete said:
    I would like to see that myself
    Click to expand...
  • Show leaders current EPs against the player (and make it sortable)
    entwood said:
    Can the spying/espionage screen be sorted from high to low showing the leaders that have more spy points over you at the top? This would make it easier to allocate your points against them, especially when you are playing against a lot of other Civs.
    Click to expand...
  • Ability to swap the tables on the main screen (select action, get list of cities with costs) thus making it easier to see which is the most EP efficient city for stealing techs.

Finally, if we already have a thread discussing the Espionage screen, I couldn't find it. If anyone does find it - let me know and I will put a link to it in this post.
 
I would also like to see icons added to the list of cities for the most common missions:

  • Investigate - Eye
  • Steal Technology - Research Beaker
  • Incite Revolt - Orange Fist
You should be able to select a mission in the mission list and have it limit and sort the city list from cheapest to most expensive. No need to move the lists around I don't think, but whatever.
 
(1) Extend the window so that all the missions appear. Very often it's the last-listed that I want to see: at present this means click-on-city, shift to mission list, scroll down, click-on-next-city and so on. Rather tedious for a civ with a lot of cities.
(2) Add display of their EPs against you to the Espionage screen - not just show yours against them.
 
One problem (among many!) is that the EPs shown on the hover (you / me) confuse me. I have to swap to the EP screen to see how many EPs I have against them, then go back to the hover to see how much they have against me.

So ... the big question ... is how do you show me v them (plus delta) so that it is clear? One option is the glance style screen that shows column v row but then you need to look at two numbers to work out how you are doing against an AI.

Would column titles help? Two columns showing 'for' and 'against'.
 
I really like the idea of a GLANCE tab that shows COLUMN vs. ROW. Yes, you need to look in two cells to see the ratio, but this tab isn't for ratio. I also agree that every time I look at the me/them ratio I never know which way it goes. That leads me to believe it's backwards from what I intuitively expect.

The number of missions that don't fit is small, so we should be able to extend the list by shrinking the spacing between lists slightly. The whole screen could use that to allow more space for information.
 
currentespionage.jpg


The above is the current v3.19 espionage screen. Here is my thinking re BUGifying it ...
  • change the table (actually - it is currently a series of panels - change it to a table!) on the left so that it shows the following:
    • leader icon
    • +/- and weight (just the number)
    • cost
    • current EPs you have against them (plus delta)
    • current EPs they have against you (plus delta)
    • icons that indicate the following passive spying (with 'x' for YES and '-' for NO scrub that - just the EP threshold but color coded):
      • graph icon for demos
      • ? for city visibility
      • little house for investigate city
      • beaker for see research
  • move the '+22 per turn' up to the header ... 'Espionage Screen (+22)' to free up screen real estate
  • toggle for 'cities / missions'
  • if cities toggled then
    • list of cities and a table of missions and their cost
  • if missions toggled then
    • list of missions and a table of cities and their cost
 
I guess the Glance model wouldn't be the easiest one to follow. Perhaps something similar to that Sit-Rep tab?
 
I knwo this off topic, but if we create an eye icon, we should use that in the CDA to Examine City.... can we also make an eye for a guy walking, a guy running, a hand, a nose, and a tongue?

(If you didn't play computer games in the early to mid 90s, then you won't get this at all... if you did... ROGER WILCO RULES!)

But seriously about changing the CDA icon.
 
r_rolo1 said:
Dresden touched almost all that I was going to say ( besides that the info we want in current state has to be calculated and recorded by hand if you really want to follow it :cry: ) ( P.S, this part is already covered by later BUG releases ). OFC this intel fits pretty badly in the current espionage screen and it surely needs a new tab or a completely revamped espionage screen ( if you could put also a F5 style map only for spies in a tab, with intel on discounts and what missons they can do individually, it would be very cool too ;) ( very, very James Bondish ) ).

A whole tab seems a little too big for this intel only... unless you put some educated guesses there that you can take out of the EP spendings (like the number of known civs ), pretty much in style of what it's being done here with the UN/AP elections and other stuff.
Click to expand...

r_rolo1 said:
I would add:

-Exact and centralized intel of where spies are and what they can do ATM ( this obviously includes the discounts ). Try to manage 10 or 15 spies in the middle of a war and you'll see what I mean..... :p
Click to expand...
Just because I'm lazy and don't want to write everything again :p

About what ruff sugested, I can't see any points of disagreement. I would just add as well:

- some kind of log history of the spy missions, or atleast...

-a record of the results of missions that have cumulative results, like the spread culture ( Something like "Z year: Your spy have spread 23 :culture: in X city" ). I'm being selfish here, because this feature would be pretty handy for my most recent SG :D
 
hmm - the log of spying activities fits better with the logger. I don't think there is any spy related event. We can put that sort of event into BULL but it would require ... errr ... BULL to get it to work.

@EF - can you add that to the list of events you are creating for BULL pls.

Pls don't make me work with the mini-map - I hate it. Once you create it, you cannot get it to go away. The only way it works on a multi-tab screen (BUGs F5) is that we put a panel over the top of the mini-map and then show and hide the panel if we want to hid and show the mini-map.

Re the spy discount - we should add that to the hover (again, BULL required).
 
ruff_hi said:
hmm - the log of spying activities fits better with the logger.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Storing all the spying activities would slow down the game considerably as it gets packed/unpacked every time a value needs to be pulled from the data. This is a Civ4 limitation with how script data is used.

ruff_hi said:
Re the spy discount - we should add that to the hover (again, BULL required).
Click to expand...

This is either in BTS or BULL. I know that when I hover over a spy using BULL I see the current discount, but I don't have it listed as a BULL feature (likely forgot).

I really like the idea of a minimap showing all spys with a list next to it showing the spies and their current discount. I'm not sure exactly how best to show what they can do.

1. Shorten the spy list and add a second list of missions below it with the missions the spy can do.

2. Pick a few missions to add as icons next to the spies in the list.

People do run at 1024x768, so don't suggest having one list next to the other. Though since we don't need the list of leaders at the top, we could do it like this:

Code: 
MAP      MISSIONS
         MISSIONS
SPIES    MISSIONS
SPIES    MISSIONS
 
Hovering over spies to check the discount doesn't seem to always work I noticed for some reason. I also find it annoying that when I have a group of spies selected, and try to do a job like revot city, etc. that it doesn't always select the 50% discount spy in the group, what a waste.
 
obsolete said:
Hovering over spies to check the discount doesn't seem to always work I noticed for some reason.
Click to expand...

I'll check this out and see if I can find what's happening. Do you have any idea of when it doesn't work? Is it only when you have multiple spies on the plot?

obsolete said:
I also find it annoying that when I have a group of spies selected, and try to do a job like revot city, etc. that it doesn't always select the 50% discount spy in the group, what a waste.
Click to expand...

This might be tricky to solve. The SDK applies the mission to the group of selected units, and the "first" one in the stack does it. We would need to make special allowances for espionage missions (there may be already), and pick which to operate. This would be an excellent fix for the Unofficial Patch.
 
I already stumbeled once or twice in the phenomenon that obsolete is describing and it is hard to reproduce as far as I noticed. My bet would be that it is similar to the ( arbitrarily big number of ) turns to build road that sometimes shows when you pass from a worker to another unit, just some kind of defective refresh of the hover ....

And yes, I would love to see a feature that cycled the spies in a city per discount bonus as well ;)
 
Here is some work in progress. The current Espionage Screen ...

currentespionage.jpg


And the new BUG version ...
espionage1.jpg


espionage2.jpg


Still to do ...
- left leader panel
- glance style EP spend tab
 
A couple ideas:

1. Put the Cities / Missions buttons above the left panel where it lists them and use them as the heading for the panel. This way it's easier to spot what's happening. Dunno if other languages will have a problem with wrapping though. Or we could create some graphical buttons to put next to the heading text which would change as you click.

When showing the Mission view, color each mission the same way the costs are colored: If you can perform the mission in any city, make it the "can" color (green). If not, if you are close to being able to in at least one city, make it the "close" color (cyan). Otherwise leave it alone.

You could do the same with the Cities view, and probably should for consistency if you do the above, but it probably wouldn't be as useful.

Hmm, for the Missions view you could also show the # of cities in which you can perform the mission. If we get rid of the trim and expand all the panels to a more desktop-application look with only small spaces separating them, we could expand the list as we talked about:

Cities: put icons for the passive missions next to the city names.
Missions: # of cities, and gold star if you can do it in the capital
 
I like moving the toggle to the top but not sure about using them as headings. What about I make the heading of the second table 'clickable' and when clicked, that becomes the heading of the primary table.

Noted on expanding the color coding to include the mission / city.

I'll suppress the passive missions that are city focused when in mission view.
 
ruff_hi said:
What about I make the heading of the second table 'clickable' and when clicked, that becomes the heading of the primary table.
Click to expand...

It seems odd that you click on the heading for table B to select the view of table A. Yes, both tables are swapped, but I tend to think of the left table as primary. You want to see the missions? Click the Missions button, above the table that will show the missions.

Another option would be a little <--> button that swaps the tables, placed between them (maybe swap the passive and active tables).

Or how about this. When you click on a mission in the right-hand table, the cities table updates to show the cost of that mission in each city. This way the tables never get swapped, they just calculate their costs based on what's selected in the other table. Each table will always have a selected row (default both tables to the first row when the screen is initially drawn), and both tables will always show a cost for each row.

Code: 
  Cities                    Missions

  London       98           Steal Technology       432
  York        107         > Poison Water           124
> Edinburgh   124           Foment Unhappiness     285

I like this way the best. I should have led with it. ;)
 
The only problem with that is that the 'selected' city or mission isn't really obvious.

Re swapping - I think that I'll just make both headings 'hot' and clicking on either will swap them.

Edit: Latest ...

espionage3.jpg


Clicking on either heading swaps the tables. Note that I have included in the missions, any mission that targets a city (active or passive). The city names with '--' near them aren't revealed, so you cannot get spy info about them.

Re fonts - I want to use the beaker for 'can see research'. I'm not sure about 'can see demographics' - what do you think about the screen icon with the wavey green line?

fontss.jpg
 
You can set the table up so that the row of the selected city/mission is highlighted, just like the CDA.
 
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