Draft Assist

[EmperorFool]

I was lamenting recently that I have never, ever applied drafting in any of my games, and that needs to change. How can BUG help?

The following was inspired while reading PieceOfMind's thread on the Globe Theater Draft City.

I'd like to do more than just add the charts to the game as you can easily ALT + TAB out to see it. Rather, what I'd like is to add a feature to the city screen that will calculate these values for you.

• I can easily inspect the output of all the tiles controlled by the city.
• I can easily write a function to calculate S(x), G(x) and R(x).
• I could add a button that shows you the values for all x.

What I'm thinking would be cool is a button you press that shows you the values and lets you click the X at which you want to draft. Then the city will be drafted at the end of every turn if the population is X. Clicking the button again would turn it off. It'd draft at the end of the turn so you have a chance to cancel it during the turn if necessary.

How does that sound? Can you think of anything else that would help with drafting?

 

[The Sansman]

I have a suggestion for your proposed draft assist. By the time a player gets to the point that they can draft they may/will have quite a few cities (>10). I find flipping between more than 5 cities tedious for seeing or setting things of this nature up. Perhaps you could add a panel to the Domestic Advisor labeled (Draft Assist) where the relevant information for drafting is displayed and this is where I am not sure if it is even possible, draft from the cities within the panel without entering the City View. One of the main reasons I don’t draft is amount of time I need to spend flipping through every city to make sure I do not miss one that could draft.

Other suggestions not strictly related the draft assist idea

Also I have another suggestion for the Domestic Advisor. I would like to have “Whip Assist” panel that would show with the cities the current production bar (showing the ‘whipping tics’ and hammer overflow), population, food, Happiness condition, current # of angry person due to whipping (with the number of turns left).

City Name [Population] [Food bar] [City View Production bar] [Happiness condition] [# of angry persons from whipping(# of turns left)][whip button] [buy button]





The kicker on this panel would be if we could also whip the cities without entering the City View. If this can be done it would save a HUGE amount of time for those of us that have a lot of cities to go through. I see using this to sort by hammer overflow and then whipping the appropriate cities all within the Domestic Advisor. If this can’t be done is it possible to maintain the sorted list of cities after you enter the City View. I find it really annoy that it resets after leaving the City View and to have to resort the list.

 

[EmperorFool]

Perhaps you could add a panel to the Domestic Advisor labeled (Draft Assist) where the relevant information for drafting is displayed.

Sure, we can add columns to the CDA. Can you define what that relevant information is? Certainly angry population from drafting and the timer, but what else? There is already a column showing what unit will be drafted.

. . . draft from the cities within the panel without entering the City View.

As you can see from your screenshot, the bottom panel of the main interface is active for the selected city in the CDA. If you could draft from Dur-Kurigaizu, the Draft button would be enabled. The same holds for whipping, buying, governors, and changing the build queue. You can select multiple cities here just as on the main interface by using shift, alt and control.

I would like to have “Whip Assist” panel that would show with the cities the current production bar (showing the ‘whipping tics’ and hammer overflow), population, food, Happiness condition, current # of angry person due to whipping (with the number of turns left).

Some of these are there (population, food, happiness), and others could be added (angry pop from whipping and timer). I haven't tried adding a food/production bar to the table, and I doubt it will work, but I'll give it a shot when I get some time.

If this can’t be done is it possible to maintain the sorted list of cities after you enter the City View. I find it really annoy that it resets after leaving the City View and to have to resort the list.

You and me both. Unfortunately, there's no way to find out how the list is sorted so that I could resort the list later. The lists also revert whenever you change a city from the CDA screen using the panel at the bottom of the main interface. The best I can do is add a feature where you can assign a default sorting that is applied whenever the screen is (re)drawn.

 

[Iranon]

The only things I'm really missing are turn counters for the unhappiness assorted with whipping and drafting in the domestic advisor. (tbh, I was very surprised not to find any... that's some information I want very frequently and I suppose I'm not the only one).

Iirc, the amount of unhappiness is a direct function of the turns of unhappiness... but a separate option would also be nice (for modded games if nothing else).

 

[EmperorFool]

Those wouldn't be hard to add. The only reason they aren't there is simply a matter of time. I am being stretched pretty thin lately.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I think I already said this to you EF, but just to chime in on this thread...

I really like the idea of adding a button that lets you repeatedly draft at a city size you can set. Regardless of whether I have analysed the potential output of the globe theatre city, when I get to rifleman and if I'm in Nationhood then I am going to want this city drafting riflemen non-stop to make the most of the unbelievable conversion rate.

 

[obsolete]

I have to admit, I often find myself wishing there was an auto-draft feature like that. Too many times when you have a large empire and MANY things to micro-manage each turn, you have a habbit of always missing a draft and only realizing the turn after...