Requests for new components (and features)

I have heard about these other modifiers too. Some have to do with personality traits (warmonger or not) and some have to do with the relative power rating. Would it be possible to add these modifiers to the list of modifiers that are visible to the player? It wouldn't really help you with playing or give you extra information, but it would give a more meaningful number that actually determines the attitude of the various civilisations.
 
I have heard about these other modifiers too. Some have to do with personality traits (warmonger or not) and some have to do with the relative power rating. Would it be possible to add these modifiers to the list of modifiers that are visible to the player? It wouldn't really help you with playing or give you extra information, but it would give a more meaningful number that actually determines the attitude of the various civilisations.
We would could add this but first, you have to provide a screenshot (or similar) of where in the vanilla game this info is available. We are trying to provide an unaltered mod. So, short answer (because I don't think this info is available) ... NO. Sorry Roland Johansen :D
 
I'm with Ruff on this one. If you knew all their hidden modifiers, you'd know their final attitude number, and this would tell you for sure whether gifting them a tech would raise their actual attitude (e.g. from furious to annoyed).

The game doesn't let you see this, and therefore neither will we.

That being said, I haven't found a way in the API to get the individual modifiers from Python. If you do, please let us know as I'd like to be able to get the visible modifiers for some new Civ4lerts.
 
I have a small request:


In the City Screen, on the right were it shows the Religions/Corporations... could you make it so that it only shows the Religions/Corporations that are in that particular city, instead of showing all the Religions/Corporations in the game?
 
In the City Screen, on the right were it shows the Religions/Corporations... could you make it so that it only shows the Religions/Corporations that are in that particular city, instead of showing all the Religions/Corporations in the game?
I can do that without even touching the code ... start a game, open a city, look at the top right ... if the religion is transparent, the city doesn't have it ... if the religion is solid, the city has it, if the religion has a box around it - the city is the religious holy city. IE - this feature is already in the game.

PS - careful of the signature length police! limited to 7 lines- depending on font size.
 
I can do that without even touching the code ... start a game, open a city, look at the top right ... if the religion is transparent, the city doesn't have it ... if the religion is solid, the city has it, if the religion has a box around it - the city is the religious holy city. IE - this feature is already in the game.

Sorry, what I mean was... if the religion wasn't in the city, then there would be an empty space. The only reason I bring it up is because say you merge this with another mod, that has added extra religions/corporations. The way they're set up now, you won't be able to see any extra religions/corporations.

I know this is mod is meant to be "Unaltered" gameplay, but if I wanted to add a few religions to the game, they all won't show on the city screen.


Or maybe perhaps making the icons smaller?

PS - careful of the signature length police! limited to 7 lines- depending on font size.

:satan: :shifty:
 
We would could add this but first, you have to provide a screenshot (or similar) of where in the vanilla game this info is available. We are trying to provide an unaltered mod. So, short answer (because I don't think this info is available) ... NO. Sorry Roland Johansen :D

I'm with Ruff on this one. If you knew all their hidden modifiers, you'd know their final attitude number, and this would tell you for sure whether gifting them a tech would raise their actual attitude (e.g. from furious to annoyed).

The game doesn't let you see this, and therefore neither will we.

That being said, I haven't found a way in the API to get the individual modifiers from Python. If you do, please let us know as I'd like to be able to get the visible modifiers for some new Civ4lerts.

Yes, I know it is an unaltered gameplay mod. :D

The reason why I would like to see the hidden modifiers is because they can be calculated by a player who wants to spend the effort to do so.

In this thread (post 7 and 1) all the relevant data to do so can be found. Of course, it might be tedious to calculate some of these modifiers (some are easy to calculate, for some you need to look in some excel personality data sheet), but all the needed data can be found in the excel personality data sheet and in-game rankings.

By the way, I've never really understood why Firaxis added a numeric diplomacy modifier system if in the end, the numbers aren't that meaningful as the final relations are dependent on hidden modifiers. It's quite misleading especially for players who don't read a lot of stuff on this forum and I still often find people asking questions about why one civilisation is pleased at +3 and another cautious. It makes players wonder what is more important, the modifier or the name of the relation. I know it is the name of the relation (furious, annoyed, cautious, pleased, friendly), but it is confusing for new players.
They could have left out all the numbers, that would have been less confusing:
Pleased: You shared resources with us, we enjoy the open borders, we're brothers of the faith (strongly positive), you shared your technological advances with us.

Ok, I should stop this complaint. It has nothing to do with this mod. :p

Oh, and I'll accept that it won't be added if that is the decision. You'll have to draw the line somewhere. You can find out the worst enemy of a civilisation by repeatedly entering diplomacy with them and asking them about every leader (also tedious though), so that can be added to the mod. The excel sheet diplomacy info comes from xml-files and thus might be considered differently. Still many players (over 22000 downloads) use the Civ4 BTS reference sheets which are available for download from this site and they contain lots of leaderhead diplomacy information which cannot be found in-game.
 
Hi BUG team - here are some feature suggestions from someone who can't play without your mod anymore. :goodjob:


1. scrollable mini map

In my current game, my homeland is right on the "seam" of the map. So on the minimap, one half of my country appears on the left edge of the map, and one half on the right edge. Apart from looking ugly, this also makes it more difficult for me to estimate distances. For such situations, it would be great to have some functionality to move the center of the mini-map (for example, right-clicking somewhere on the mini-map centers it on the spot you clicked on. Or, alternatively: switch between "regular map center" and "center on latitude of player capital".


2. Better usability of "reduced UI" for players who mostly use the mouse for input. Reduced UI works very well without the keyboard already, most of the important functions can still be accessed without the keyboard. But this makes it even more annoying that some can't:
- the "Main Menu" and "Civilopedia" buttons disappear in reduced UI. I don't see a good reason for that since they don't need much space, and the space that's freed by removing them doesn't even increase the visibility of the map, because the view in the upper right corner of the screen is still obstructed by the advisor buttons. It would be great to have these two important buttons active in reduced UI.
- There is no "End Turn" button in reduced UI, which is a bit silly for a functionality that is used undreds of times in a single game.
- "Switch Interface" button: Currently you need the keyboard to switch to and from reduced interface. It would be great to have a way to do this with the mouse, because sometimes UI switches are inevitable.

These three additions would make "reduced UI" just perfect for me. :)


3. Add a "wait" button to unit orders.

4. Don't display techs of our enemies in the "will trade" column. When you'r eat war with someone, all his techs that you could theoretically trade for are displayed as "will trade", which makes no sense as most of the time they *won't* trade them to you (even when you reach a peace agreement). I think these techs should better be displayed in the "won't trade" column.

5. Notify the player when the Apostolic Palace Resident has changed (witj Civ4lerts). When you aren't a member of the AP, then you don't get a notice when a new resident is elected. But this information *is* always available under "members" in the victory screen. Hence turning it into an alert should be okay. (Sometimes it's good for strategic planning to know when your enemy suddenly becomes - or ceases to be - head of the AP). The same goes for membership changes, i.e. alerts like "Civ X has been demoted from full member to voting member", "X has been promoted to full member", "X is now member of the AP", "X has lost AP membership".

6. Add an alert for "10 turn grace period will run out next turn".

Any chances of adding some of these to BUG? Who do I have to bribe? :D
 
@Roland - You make some very good points, but the sad truth is that I haven't found a way to access any of the modifiers from Python. If you can find an API that gives that information, we can talk. :)

@Psyringe - You've got some good ones there. Let's see...

1. Part of the EXE core engine -- not moddable, sorry. I agree this is L A M E that the map doesn't stay centered horizontally on your capital. Zero Longitude is a completely human-invented concept (unlike zero latitude which can be measured against magnetic or spin poles) which should show up as a possibility only with map trading, and then only if you want it.

2. This could be done, and I'll add it to the list, but I gotta be honest it's lower on the priority list right now. If you can find someone to create a nice button for switching modes (2c) and point out where to put it, it'd make it more likely to get coded up.

Having the two menu/pedia buttons remain visible is probably pretty trivial. I've mucked around in that code recently, so I think it's just a matter of moving a couple lines. No promises, but much more likely to be done since it'd be quick.

3. Would rock. I need a graphic for it and I'll need to see if it's possible. The thing is that Ctrl-W doesn't actually issue an order -- it tells the interface to cycle units. Same with keys like / and \. The game gives you less control in this area.

4. I agree. I've actually thought of this before but never got around to it. In fact, I think you shouldn't get to see any information about techs for enemies that you can't speak with. How would you know what techs they know? I'd make that latter part extra optional since our aim is not to remove information already present in the game.

5. These are good ideas as long as you really can see this without being a member.

6. I have no idea if this information is available, though it displays in the Foreign Advisor ACTIVE tab, and that's built by Python, so it probably is.

Kudos! :goodjob:
 
@Roland - You make some very good points, but the sad truth is that I haven't found a way to access any of the modifiers from Python. If you can find an API that gives that information, we can talk. :)

Sorry, I'm not a real modder myself (only some xml-modifications and never needed more than that for my personal modifications). I looked around a bit and found out that Fall From Heaven created its own set of new diplomacy modifiers from scratch. I guess the modifications which are needed for this unaltered gameplay mod are only a section of that work since the modifiers themselves exist, only the text links are left out. It does seem to be SDK-work though...

Kael wrote down an entire case study of how to do this and maybe it could be useful to modding some of this stuff. It's a bit hard for me to judge how much work it would be. I can imagine that you think there are more important things to change. You can find his case study here.
 
5. These are good ideas as long as you really can see this without being a member.
I just made a test savegame to check which information is available to the player at which point. I'll attach the save to to this post in case you want to use it for checking / testing.

In the test game, you're Mansa Musa, the only Islam country in the world, surrounded by four Christian nations, of which only Bismarck (east of you) is known to you.

Hit "End Turn". The Apostolic Palace will be built. The game does not tell you who built it (it's Caesar, but you haven't met him yet, and the victory screen says "built by an unknown civilization"). The game does tell you (in the alert as well as on the "Victory -> Members" screen) that the AP religion is Christianity. You'll also see Bismarck (the one Christian nation you already know) listed as a full member in the Members screen.

Hit "End Turn" again. The Christian nations will now elect the AP resident. Caesar will win the vote. The game doesn't give you an alert about it, but the information is available on the "Victory -> Resolutions" screen as soon as the resident is elected.

Now, move the ships you have straight north, west, and east. Check the "Victory -> Members" page after each move. You'll see that every civ gets listed on this page (with their membership status) as soon as you nake contact with them.

Now, reload the game, activate the Christian missionary I put in Timbuktu, and spread Christianity to the city. Hit "End Turn". Again, Caesar will build the AP. This immediately gives you contact with every other Christian civ, even before the vote starts.

In conclusion:
- You can always look up who the current resident is (on "Victory -> Resolutions"), even if you haven't met him.
- You can always look up to which religion the AP belongs (on "Victory -> Members")
- You can always look up the membership status of every civ you have contact with (on "Victory -> Members")
- As soon as you become a member yourself, you automatically make contact with all other civs oin the AP.

This means that alerts about "Leader X has been elected resident of the AP" does only offer information that is already available elsewhere (as long as the alert only tells you about the leader name and not about the civ he/she rules). As long as you already have contact with a leader, the same goes for alerts like "Leader X has entered the Apostolic Community", "Leader X has left the Apostolic Community", "Leader X has been promoted to Full Member of the the Apostolic Palace", and "Leader X has been demoted to Voting Member of the Apostolic Palace".

Hope this helps. :)
 

Attachments

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Hope this helps. :)

Um, it helps about as much as it possibly could help without actually writing the code for me! :goodjob: Are you a QA engineer IRL, as that was very well thought-out and from what I can tell quite thorough.

BTW, how did you create the test game? I can't imagine you could do it all with WorldBuilder as it's rather limited I think (can't set partial builds). Again, nice job.

Wanna learn Python. :)
 
Are you a QA engineer IRL, as that was very well thought-out and from what I can tell quite thorough.
I'm not a QA engineer, I just really enjoy doing thorough analyses ... I do have some experience with beta testing though. Thanks for the compliment. :)

BTW, how did you create the test game? I can't imagine you could do it all with WorldBuilder as it's rather limited I think (can't set partial builds).
I gave Caesar Theology and a couple of Great Engineers and then advanced some turns, checking in the worldbuilder what Caesar was doing with them, and saved the game when he was one turn from completing the AP. But yes, the worldbuilder can be pretty unwieldy. Editing the WBS save opens up more possibilities than the rather spartanic worldbuilder interface, but doesn't remove the limitations of the format (like, no partial build information saved).

Wanna learn Python. :)
I actually thought about it after buying Civ4, but haven't gotten around to it. I might try to at some point, but won't have much time for anything in the next months. But thanks for the encouragement. :)
 
It would be cool to move all the Privateer blockade messages to the beginning of the log. As it is now, they're always occurring last, and when I have lots of blockading Privateers I need to go check the event log and scroll waaaaay down to see Civ4lerts, spy notifications, etc. Thanks!
 
@jray - Yes, great idea. Unfortunately, it's yet another thing we have no control over. Well, that's not entirely true. It's possible this could be addressed in the DLL, but I'm just guessing.
 
@jray - Yes, great idea. Unfortunately, it's yet another thing we have no control over. Well, that's not entirely true. It's possible this could be addressed in the DLL, but I'm just guessing.

Ah, I see. I'll try tempting Bhruic then :).
 
We just added a new road mod that connects deadend roads. I'll see if the two play nice together, and if they do I'll add them... if not, I'll beg the creators of both mods to work together and see if we can get one that does both.
 
Here's something that is the very definition of a superficial complaint. In a library the alphabetical list of titles disregards the word "the", because if it didn't the T section would be huge. The wonders section of the civilopedia looks just like that. This seems like the kind of thing that could be fixed very well. I doubt it could be made to dissregard the word "the" and the only other way would be to change everything to be like "Pyramids, The" and that would look just as bad. Of course it seems trivial to complain about the loss of at most ten seconds every few weeks but... well I can't really think of a defense.
 
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