Requests for new components (and features)

Actually - what you say, EF, makes a lot of sense. But then on second thoughts, do we have an alert that CivY just acquired a tech (trade or not). I would like to see that so I know where they are in certain tech races (liberalism, some wonders, etc).

I think the biggest request I am seeing now is the 'can hurry' one. I had a brief look at the alert code today and was glad that you are looking after it.

ruff_hi said:

Do we have an alert that CivY just acquired a tech (trade or not)?

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Not yet, but I'll add that with the other alerts for tech trading.

ruff_hi said:

I think the biggest request I am seeing now is the 'can hurry' one.

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I've chained myself to my desk and queued up a bunch of good music . . . let's see how many alerts I can create.

Cam, please change your first post to request feature request to be sent here:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=202755&atid=982857

Not sure if this has been suggested, or if it would fit under "unaltered gameplay", but I've always hated the rally points in Civ 4. It would be great if they could be improved to be easier to set, easier to see, and easier to remove. Multiple advanced rally points would be great, such as "All marines go to rallypoint X" and/or "All Armored Units from Washington go to rallypoint Y". and also, I wish workers and other civilian units wouldn't run out to the front line!

Also I just want to say when an enhanced military advisor is completed, I will be very very happy. The original one is awful!

Thanks everyone who spent time on this great mod.

I'm not the coding guru, but I'm pretty sure the rally points are controlled within the C++ code, not Python or XML. I could be wrong though.

Totally agree on the Enhanced Military Adviser... I just think the one that's out there now, both the MA and EMA, are slow, and with the EMA you cannot access known enemy units. I'm going to start a thread on what should be included in a BUG version of the EMA. If you want, help contribute at this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6101109#post6101109

EmperorFool said:

Not yet, but I'll add that with the other alerts for tech trading.

I've chained myself to my desk and queued up a bunch of good music . . . let's see how many alerts I can create.

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I'm still seeing tech trade alerts firing one turn late when a rival gets a new tech. (BTS 3.13, BUG 2.10, Bhruic 1.105). Sorry I don't have a savegame file, but I'll try to re-create the situation. Basically all you need to do though is crank up your espionage so you can see what the AI's researching, then check their diplo screen when you see they've finished. You'll see they will actually trade the tech, but the alert doesn't fire until the next turn.

Note that the alert fires correctly when it's a matter of an AI being suddenly willing to trade a tech it's had for a while.

BTW, totally awesome Hurrying alerts and new GP bar!! Those are so cool.

I'll look into that. The trade alerts should fire at the correct times now. They are checked after all AIs have moved and just before you move. The only time this will not work is if you are playing a scenario with a fixed set of civs and aren't playing the first civ (civ 0).

BTW, does anyone want the list of techs an AI will trade spelled out in the message, one message per AI? It seems odd to tell you how much gold they have, but not which new tech they'll trade.

that would be great, actually, EP . . . er, F

though it may be cumbersome to try and read all them if there are several new techs for several different AIs.

EmperorFool said:

BTW, does anyone want the list of techs an AI will trade spelled out in the message, one message per AI? It seems odd to tell you how much gold they have, but not which new tech they'll trade.

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I would have just done it this way without asking, except the original code gets all that info and then drops the actual new techs in favor of just displaying the AI names. I figured maybe Dr. Jiggles had a good reason.

Hmm, dare I say, option?

EmperorFool said:

I'll look into that. The trade alerts should fire at the correct times now. They are checked after all AIs have moved and just before you move. The only time this will not work is if you are playing a scenario with a fixed set of civs and aren't playing the first civ (civ 0).

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Thanks, and I'll try to remember to save a savegame file next time I encounter it. I'm just playing a standard single-player game, no scenarios.

EmperorFool said:

BTW, does anyone want the list of techs an AI will trade spelled out in the message, one message per AI? It seems odd to tell you how much gold they have, but not which new tech they'll trade.

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That would be awesome! FYI this functionality is already done in the ShowInfo mod, which I think is in the BUG Future Enhancements list. The ShowInfo mod also shows which specific resources each civ will trade to you, which technologies and resources they are interested in buying from you, civs ready to make peace, etc. It's quite a stellar mod. There are options to enable and disable all the varieties of alerts. I did a bunch of work to update it to Warlords here, and I'd be thrilled to see it reincarnated for BtS . It would be an excellent supplement to your already kick-ass alert system.

jray said:

The ShowInfo mod also shows which specific resources each civ will trade to you, which technologies and resources they are interested in buying from you, civs ready to make peace, etc.

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Yes, ShowInfo is on our todo list.

Would Civ4lerts still be useful if we included ShowInfo? Can you give me an executive summary of what Civ4lerts has that ShowInfo doesn't? Nothing fancy, as I'll read over the docs soon enough, but just to give me an idea of the overlap.

EmperorFool said:

Yes, ShowInfo is on our todo list.

Would Civ4lerts still be useful if we included ShowInfo? Can you give me an executive summary of what Civ4lerts has that ShowInfo doesn't? Nothing fancy, as I'll read over the docs soon enough, but just to give me an idea of the overlap.

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I think that the difference in how they shows results is enough to have both of them. For example i like alerts but I don't like so much ShowInfo (even if I'm sure that it has to be included into BUG), so I think that even if somehow overlaping, they have not to be considered as rivals

EmperorFool said:

Yes, ShowInfo is on our todo list.

Would Civ4lerts still be useful if we included ShowInfo? Can you give me an executive summary of what Civ4lerts has that ShowInfo doesn't? Nothing fancy, as I'll read over the docs soon enough, but just to give me an idea of the overlap.

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My memory might be a bit fuzzy since it's been a while since I used it myself, but the paradigms are quite different in that Civ4lerts is based on turn-to-turn changes, and ShowInfo is based on current turn information only. For example, Civ4lerts will tell you only the first time (or a turn after the first time, until the bug is fixed ) that "New Techs to Trade: Mansa," but ShowInfo will display every turn from then on "Mansa: Economics" until you get Economics yourself or Mansa becomes unwilling to trade it. What would be really cool is to add an option to toggle between paradigms. Sometimes I feel like a reminder each turn of all the things I could buy, and sometimes I don't want the spam. It would be especially cool to have ShowInfo's alerts for resources, because often you have a 1-turn window to snag a newly available resource trade before someone else does.

FYI, ShowInfo suffers from the exact same problem of certain alerts being a turn late. But it comes with a hotkey (Shift-I, I think) that displays it on demand. So once you begin your turn, you can hit Shift-I and see correct info.

Instead of an option that showed all trades every turn (it looks like it only shows the top X civs sorted by various columns you can change), how about just adding the hotkey?

Well, okay, I can see the value of the alert every turn I've been trying to think of other ways to display the data. For one, I really like the use of icons to shrink the volume of information displayed. They provide the same amount of information in less space.

One big difference between the two mods is that Civ4lerts is geared around the item to trade (showing all tech trade messages, then all DP messages, then all gold trade, etc) whereas ShowInfo shows all information for a single civ in a single message. I see the value of both and can't decide if one trumps the other. Sure, the more options the better in most cases, but more options come at the cost of fewer options for something else (and complexity). I can only code so fast.

Ooh, and a new alert possibility: showing when AIs learn techs that you already know. This would help you track their progress and know when you lost a sale opportunity (less important since it's lost after all).

Anyway, lots to think about...

I have some ideas for the Alt-M reminders function, which is an absolute godsend. I posted a thread awhile back expounding on the virtues of this little-known function, when I thought it was part of the game itself and not the BUG Mod, and a lot of people were very excited about it. Definitely one of the lesser-known treasures of the BUG Mod! I think it could be made even better with reasonably little work. Specifically:

1) Could you add a recurring reminders function? That way you can set things up at the beginning to make sure you aren't neglecting elements of your empire (i.e. every thirty turns, I have a "check Espionage ratios" reminder pop up - but I have to manually recur them by setting multiple ones at 30 turns, 60 turns, 90 turns, etc.)

2) Would it be possible to have it work as a single string? So you could define some simple syntax form such as "[# of Turns]@[Reminder text]" for a normal reminder, and "[# of Turns]*@[Reminder Text]" for a recurring reminder. That way you could Alt-M-->type-->ENTER, instead of having to fumble for the mouse to move the cursor to the number field. Also, it would be easy to save a list of reminders to load up each game in a simple text file with each reminder on a new line:

10*@Stop, take a breath, review your plan!
20@Dotmap likely 2nd city locations
30*@Check Espionage sliders
70@Getting too late to neglect Barbarian defenses...

I'm trying to be conscious of amount of effort, and hope I've suggested ideas that aren't too onerous. We all appreciate the work you guys are putting into this!

EmperorFool said:

Instead of an option that showed all trades every turn (it looks like it only shows the top X civs sorted by various columns you can change), how about just adding the hotkey?

Well, okay, I can see the value of the alert every turn I've been trying to think of other ways to display the data. For one, I really like the use of icons to shrink the volume of information displayed. They provide the same amount of information in less space.

One big difference between the two mods is that Civ4lerts is geared around the item to trade (showing all tech trade messages, then all DP messages, then all gold trade, etc) whereas ShowInfo shows all information for a single civ in a single message. I see the value of both and can't decide if one trumps the other. Sure, the more options the better in most cases, but more options come at the cost of fewer options for something else (and complexity). I can only code so fast.

Ooh, and a new alert possibility: showing when AIs learn techs that you already know. This would help you track their progress and know when you lost a sale opportunity (less important since it's lost after all).

Anyway, lots to think about...

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Don't you think you could be providing TOO MUCH info's? This could info could influence the game. E.g. the AI's learn techs that you already know: that way you don't have to use the espionage anymore or diplomacy to see what techs you can offer (thus they don't have). Now you have to keep track of their research yourselve, providing you allocate enough recources towards espionage, and keep looking in the scoreboard who is researching what to get a general idea where "they" are in technological tree or contact your "neighbours" once in a while to check up on them. And of course that way you'll never get a complete picture, 'cause you'll always miss some... If you were really a leader of a great civ, you don't know everything the other knows or has either. And the "getting to know" is part of the game.

The recources (and what recource) "will trade" info could be usefull though. (EF: I agree on the using on Icons part! much clearer I would asume) . I'm less enthousiastic about the tech trading part.

My motivation for the BUG mod is that I enjoy playing the game and micromanaging my empire, but it gets old going through all the UI screens and counting. I learned to count when I was a toddler -- I don't need any more practice.

You can always figure out what techs the AIs have to trade using the trade screen, as you said. Sure, you won't do that every turn but you could. And sometimes I used to, but that got old fast.

I have limited time to play the game, so I look for ways to make my games quicker so I can play more instead of monitoring the UI. This may not be your motivation, and if it isn't, just turn off those features you find egregious.

@EF:

You're right. And therefore go coding that PA turncounter

The features request page(on sourceforge) has some very good suggestions. Although I don't understand the priority value. Does the administrator assign this after it has been reviewed? Is there a way to have a better idea on if/when it might be implemented?

Thanks