Death's lawyer
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2004
- Messages
- 11
Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time, Julius Caesar of Rome decided to declare war on Egypt. So he declared war, but wanted some backup, too. So he went to click on the miniscule 'D' at the bottom-right corner of his screen to call up a list of other civilizations he could get on his side.
Instead, he clicked a few millimeters to the left of it. Because it was the end of his turn, this click ended his turn and thus gave him no time to do all the rest of the things he wanted to do, like get his workers somewhere safe, move a Stack of Death into Egypt, and ally with other civilizations. It was now Egypt's turn.
Egypt, of course, snatched about a dozen workers right off the bat. Because Egypt had so many units, it took almost ten minutes for it to be Julius' turn again. He would've turned off Enemy Unit Animations, but he couldn't do anything during Egypt's turn.
At this point, he was so distraught he decided to reload from right before he declared war on Egypt. It happened again. This time, he just restarted his computer, as that took much less time than waiting for all Egypt's moves.
Yes, this is mostly my fault; I should've been a better clicker. But still, this isn't the first time I've done this, and I'm sure others have done it too. My suggestions are:
1). Make the large information box at the bottom-right corner of the screen unclickable, i.e. make it not skip to the opponents turn if you click on it. If I wanted to do that, I'd click the orange-flashing oval or hit Enter.
2). Make the "D" "E" "P" and "V" buttons much larger, or relocate them. Not all of us want to memorize the shortcut keys.
3). Allow players to access the menu during their opponent's turn.
Number 3 certainly applies to Civ4, the others most just apply to Civ3. Still, the designers should keep 1 and 2 in mind when they're designing the interface for Civ4.
Instead, he clicked a few millimeters to the left of it. Because it was the end of his turn, this click ended his turn and thus gave him no time to do all the rest of the things he wanted to do, like get his workers somewhere safe, move a Stack of Death into Egypt, and ally with other civilizations. It was now Egypt's turn.
Egypt, of course, snatched about a dozen workers right off the bat. Because Egypt had so many units, it took almost ten minutes for it to be Julius' turn again. He would've turned off Enemy Unit Animations, but he couldn't do anything during Egypt's turn.
At this point, he was so distraught he decided to reload from right before he declared war on Egypt. It happened again. This time, he just restarted his computer, as that took much less time than waiting for all Egypt's moves.
Yes, this is mostly my fault; I should've been a better clicker. But still, this isn't the first time I've done this, and I'm sure others have done it too. My suggestions are:
1). Make the large information box at the bottom-right corner of the screen unclickable, i.e. make it not skip to the opponents turn if you click on it. If I wanted to do that, I'd click the orange-flashing oval or hit Enter.
2). Make the "D" "E" "P" and "V" buttons much larger, or relocate them. Not all of us want to memorize the shortcut keys.
3). Allow players to access the menu during their opponent's turn.
Number 3 certainly applies to Civ4, the others most just apply to Civ3. Still, the designers should keep 1 and 2 in mind when they're designing the interface for Civ4.
