Do you think GUI of Civ4 is good?

Colossian

Prince
Joined
Nov 14, 2005
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Do you think GUI of Civ4 is good?

1. Yes
2. No
3. I don't know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface

I know that people says Civ4 is a great game ever. I think we have to think about GUI of Civ4. Do you feel comfortable using a mouse in Civ4? Isnt scrolling bothering you? Everything is organized? Hot-key, the options, the buttons and the size of dialog box. Has Civ4 the best GUI ever? Isnt too small or big the size of units and buildings? Isn't the reaction of unit control too slow? How fast can you click, click, click, click, click, click during a game? Isn't there a delay or a lag?
 
yes.


Though, some things need improvement, such as the resource/tech trading interface. Luckily, I think it was mentioned that this was improved upon in the expansion, as well as some other nice tweaks.
 
1. Yes.

I like it welll enough. It makes sense and is easy to use. It's pretty much the same as the CivIII interface as well (advisor screens being the main difference), so I think Firaxis was pretty comfortable with both the old and the new.

About the only thing I don't like is the Foreign Advisor screen - if you're playing with more than 8 people, you can't see everything (the war/right of passage/etc. lines blend in with other leaderheads and it becomes too jumbled). It was an attempt to overcome the problem of being limited to 8 at once in CivIII, but it didn't really solve the problem. I think this is being overhauled in BTS, though, so a better solution may well surface then.
 
I'm kind of disappointed at the computer resources needed. I loath using a desktop computer nowadays but my laptop, while being a pretty darn functional work laptop, is pretty slow with Civ IV....even on low settings. I'd gladly sacrifice some of the asthetics and general GUI to be able to play it on a lesser computer.
 
One thing which would be nice is if you could scroll the map around and inspect cities when its asking you what you want to build or research.
 
I'm getting really tired of the zoom effect every time I open a city screen. Sometimes there are too many zooms between turns as well. I would like some marker on the small map that showed me enemy activity instead of the game giving me only brief glimpses, forcing me to remember this and to track them down later. Otherwise I'm quite happy with the GUI.
 
One thing which would be nice is if you could scroll the map around and inspect cities when its asking you what you want to build or research.

Well you kind of can. Simply click examine city at the top of the list, and then, use the arrows at the top of the city screen to cycle thorugh all of your cities.
 
Well you kind of can. Simply click examine city at the top of the list, and then, use the arrows at the top of the city screen to cycle thorugh all of your cities.
I think what he means is to be able to roam the map like when you have a unit selected. It's easier to look at a continent of cities than each one in the city screen.

And how about a minimap that rotates/moves so that the box is always centered? Like if you zoom all the way out to get the globe view but in the minimap.

The little pictures with arrows denoting important events (so and so born here, city finished building, enemy sighted)... I always get those when I have 10 cities finishing buildings and need to select a new product in each. By the time I finish (with micromanaging and all), the important events are gone, and I have no idea where any of it took place. Then two turns later, a farm and village are pillaged by barbs. I'd rather deal with some things before being forced to select new production for a city.

It's not too bad, all-in-all.
 
I'd rather deal with some things before being forced to select new production for a city.

there is a minimize popups option which helps a bit.

also I like the way it is done in the TotalWar game, every turn the events form a stack on the left side of the screen until you dismiss them, so you dont miss anything.
 
The UI is OK.

The city screen is pretty decent.

The amount and presentation of popup/tooltip info is good.

Some of the info screens are kinda meh compared to Civ III, IMO.

I believe they used an interface package rather than creating everything themselves in Civ IV, and in some places it shows.
 
I'd like to be able to check foreign affairs (diplo attitude, trade) with other civs prior to making a commitment whenever X leader comes up with "DECLARE WAR ON Y" or "STOP TRADING WITH Z".
 
F6, Technology Advisor screen is too wide. Don't you think? Using LEFT/RIGHT CURSOR doesn't work correctly. Do you really think this GUI is correct?
 
I think the Civ4 GUI is quite good, the icons are nice, the colours used and the general look is great (especially the subtle transparencies). It has a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts too, which are easy to remember, and well established from previous civ versions (R for road, B for build city, M for mine, etc being the main ones). I don't have any serious gripes about the interface, it is very well explained and documented with helpful messages that appear when hovering over something unfamiliar.

Also, I don't think the GUI is slowing the game much, it is the 3D graphics.
 
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