Eunomiac's Strategy Layer

Is it possible to remove a dot placed with the Dot Mapper?

It works just like ALT + S signs: right-click to remove. I'm also going to make right-clicking an empty tile exit edit mode, again just like signs.
 
This is awesome work you guys are doing. When is 3.6 coming to a store near me?
 
This is awesome work you guys are doing. When is 3.6 coming to a store near me?

I'm hoping to get it out the door within the next two weeks.
 
This strategy layer, even with just the dotmaps, is awesome. Other signs would be even more awesome.
 
Another thing I'd like to see this do is be able to view/place dotmaps in world view.

LOL, I never thought to try that. It doesn't work in globe view? If not, I doubt there's anything I can do to fix it. I use Civ's engine to pick the plots in edit mode. If that function is disabled, there's not much I can do.
 
I'd like to discuss a couple new features I had in mind for the existing Strategy Layer.

Hide/Show Existing Cities

I leave the dots that I've already settled so I can continue placing dots around them and to recall what I chose for their specialization (I color code according to intended use and goodness of the site). I want to add a toggle that would show/hide dots that are on plots with cities. I'm thinking of SHIFT + CTRL + X for this.

Question: How should it treat plots with rival cities on them?

Existing City Boundaries Layer

I'd like a shortcut that would hide/show the outlines of all existing cities, probably using a single color (user's choice, or the Settler founding border color). It would look just like you had a Settler selected and be unrelated to the Strategy Layer. I mention it here because it would be created using this layer. However, maybe people would use it in conjunction with placing new dots?

Question: Should it show the 21-tile or 9-tile BFC for cities that haven't had their first border pop? How should it treat rival-owned plots due to culture? My inclination is to show full BFCs ignoring culture entirely.

Auto-Switch Interface Visibility Mode

You would be able to specify the interface visibility mode (ALL, PARTIAL, or NONE) that is used when you are in edit mode. This would allow you to hide the interface while in edit mode easily. This would be the same effect as hitting ALT + I, ALT + X, placing dots, ALT + X, ALT + I (to restore). It would, of course, restore you to the visibility mode that was in effect when you entered edit mode.
 
I'd like to discuss a couple new features I had in mind for the existing Strategy Layer.

Existing City Boundaries Layer

I'd like a shortcut that would hide/show the outlines of all existing cities, probably using a single color (user's choice, or the Settler founding border color). It would look just like you had a Settler selected and be unrelated to the Strategy Layer. I mention it here because it would be created using this layer. However, maybe people would use it in conjunction with placing new dots?

Question: Should it show the 21-tile or 9-tile BFC for cities that haven't had their first border pop? How should it treat rival-owned plots due to culture? My inclination is to show full BFCs ignoring culture entirely.

I sometimes have trouble with planning cities because some older cities have had 3 border pops moving the cultural borders over the 21-tile BFC. This makes it hard to see which tiles are being used/claimed by already settled cities plus the planned cities because some tiles are also colour coded as they're inside the third border pop of an existing city. If the strategy layer had a mode where it could ignore the true cultural borders and just show the 21-tile BFC's of existing and planned cities, then that mode would be ideal for planning cities.
 
anyway to have a key-combo to show/hide placed signs?

i often put up some signs to remind what a city is specialized for (Commerce, Oxford, Wall Street, Globe etc.).. and i sometimes also put C's, M's, F's, etc. etc. on plots i plan to improve later on when the city can grow bigger. I do this because once i figure out the optimal improvements i want for the city.. i dont want to forget. Once an improvement actually gets built.. i'll remove it's sign. It's like a giant beacon that says "HEY.. dont forget to put a Workshop here!".

anyway.. as you can imagine, as much of a help it is to use it this way, it can become quite cluttered.

CTRL-ALT-S maybe? cant remember if thats in use already.
 
If the strategy layer had a mode where it could ignore the true cultural borders and just show the 21-tile BFC's of existing and planned cities, then that mode would be ideal for planning cities.

If this is different from what I explained, could you please be specific about the differences? What do you mean by "ignore the true cultural borders"? I don't think I can hide the existing cultural borders, if that's what you're asking to have.

anyway to have a key-combo to show/hide placed signs?

This is also on the todo list. I want to have multiple sign layers (EventSigns would be one layer), and I'm even contemplating multiple BFC layers.
 
I sometimes have trouble with planning cities because some older cities have had 3 border pops moving the cultural borders over the 21-tile BFC. This makes it hard to see which tiles are being used/claimed by already settled cities plus the planned cities because some tiles are also colour coded as they're inside the third border pop of an existing city.

Just use a different coloured layer for cities that have had a couple of culture pops. The actual BFC will show up quite clearly in contrast to the culture colour.
 
If this is different from what I explained, could you please be specific about the differences? What do you mean by "ignore the true cultural borders"? I don't think I can hide the existing cultural borders, if that's what you're asking to have.

Yes, hiding the existing cultural borders is what I was asking for. Or more specifically, replacing these borders with BFC's around the already placed cities and the planned cities (all in the layer that you're creating).

A pity if it isn't possible.

Just use a different coloured layer for cities that have had a couple of culture pops. The actual BFC will show up quite clearly in contrast to the culture colour.

Yes, that's what I do at the moment, but it's not ideal. The clarity of the contrast depends on the colour of your civilisation. Sometimes it isn't possible to find a colour in the strategy layer that provides a clear contrast with the civilisation colour. It's workable, but this mod is about making the user interface more helpful and this would be one way.
 
I tried hiding the cultural borders but cannot. :(

No problem. Nice that you even tried.

Another way to circumvent the problem would be to set the culture of cities to a different value in the layers. That would change the borders. But I have no idea if that's possible and it might lead to nasty side results.
 
Sometimes it isn't possible to find a colour in the strategy layer that provides a clear contrast with the civilisation colour.

I believe EF was working on a colour picker so you can use any colour that you wanted to. That would probably solve your problem.
 
One of the requirements for releasing BULL is to release a new version of BUG, and that means cleaning up all the half-done stuff I have in my local development branch. One items is the color picker Willem just mentioned.

In poking around it today, I solved one past issue: how each city needs to be placed on a different layer so they overlap visually instead of merging together. As often happens, time away from the problem gave me a chance to look at the problem with fresh eyes, and the solution is so simple it's embarrassing: assign the layer based on its location on the map so that overlapping/adjacent BFCs are on different layers.

So I created a 6-tile grid and assign the layer based on the x and y coordinates of the city itself. Problem solved--and I no longer need to store the layer with each city. This also decreases the data requirements.

But that's a side-issue that is probably uninteresting to you. The point of this post is to get some feedback on the color picker and a new way to choose colors. Here's what I have now:


You can pick whatever colors you like and choose the window width in the XML file:

Code:
<init>
	<arg name="colors" type="tuple">
		"COLOR_PLAYER_RED",
		"COLOR_PLAYER_PALE_RED",
		...
		"COLOR_WHITE"
	</arg>
	<arg name="colorsPerRow" type="int" value="3">
</init>

One option I was thinking of adding is a way to have BUG pick the color when placing a city based on its x/y location (just as it does the layer above, which is why I described it here) so that you don't have to pick colors yourself if you don't want to. If you use this method exclusively, you'll never have two cities with the same color overlap/touch. If you mix in a few cities with hand-picked colors, you may get overlap.

Is this desired? I use the colors to denote city purpose, so I would never want it to pick colors on its own. If I don't know how I'll use the city, I'll just choose a single color to use for all unspecialized cities.

How would others use the colors now that they aren't necessary to avoid merging of city borders that overlap/touch?

Default BUG Colors

Now comes the tough part. I assume a lot of players will want to customize the colors they can choose from, but I also don't want to show every color in the panel (approx 128).

The only case where there might be trouble is in SG games. If each player in the game picks a different set of colors, they'll see different colors for each city from what the others see.

For example, say color #5 is pink. One player hates pink, so he changes it to red and places a bunch of cities using red. All the other players will see those cities as pink. This would be bad if you were playing as Isabella.

Oh, I just thought of the solution. Instead of storing the DotMap palette's color index with each placed city, I'll store the Civ color index. These don't change as long as you're using the same CIV4ColorVals.xml file, and you'll get crashes with the CTRL + TAB event log if you're not.

This way, people using different palette colors will see colors for cities not on their palette, but they'll see the color the other player selected. You may not like the color, but it will be what they selected so you should be able to avoid problems with using colors that match the civ's color. Yay!

So the only question left is What colors should BUG ship as default? I tried above to have each row be varying shades of the same color, with the whole palette fitting into the ROYGBIV thing (kinda) plus white. Anyone have any other suggestions?
 
I'll usually pick one colour (that resembles my civ colour) for all my placed cities. Only when I need to see the overlap between various cities, will I use different colours. So I would prefer a palette that has colours that resemble all the civ colours (which is the case now).

I will still use signs to signify a city's purpose because I delete the dotmap when the city has been placed and its border has expanded to the big fat cross. But that's all personal preference.

In the currently shown palette, colours 1,3 (row number, column number) and 3,1 seem very similar. I'm not sure how it would look when cities with these colours are placed next to one another. In general, I would say that the first three rows could use a little more variation in colour, make them a little bit more different if possible.
 
I will still use signs to signify a city's purpose because I delete the dotmap when the city has been placed and its border has expanded to the big fat cross.

It sounds like you could use the feature I suggested above that allowed you to toggle BFCs of cities you've already founded (not their cultural borders which I cannot do, but their placed dots).

In the currently shown palette, colours 1,3 (row number, column number) and 3,1 seem very similar.

Here's the full BTS color palette (127 colors):


I'm not sure how it would look when cities with these colours are placed next to one another.

Now they overlap with distinct outlines. You'll never see two BFCs "merge" together into a single shaded area anymore. Feel free to suggest a different set of default colors. I can of course show the whole palette, but I think that's a) overkill and b) not organized well. So many colors are barely distinguishable as you say, and it takes up a lot of screen real-estate.
 
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