Enemy units hard to see

[DynamicSpirit]

Does anyone know of any quick ways to see all enemy units in your territory when you're at war?

While the Civ4 UI looks very nice I've noticed a real problem is that it shows so much (irrelevent) detail on the main map view that it's quite hard sometimes to see units. That's not a problem with my units coz I tend to know where they are anyway but it's a real pain when you're at war and enemy units are turning up randomly in your territory. I know you get that report of 'the enemy has been sighted near <city name>' but it doesn't seem very reliable - it's sometimes accompanied by an icon by the units, sometimes not. And you can hit F5 to see the map of all units visible to you - but on my machine, even with the latest patch, that screen is almost unusably slow - far too slow for me to use it every turn (God knows why - surely checking a list of where units are can't take the game longer than a few milliseconds?)

The upshot is I seem to be forever reloading the autosaved game because of some units attacking that I would've dealt with the previous turn if I'd known they were sitting next to my city but their icons in the main screen just weren't prominent enough for me to see easily (no I don't reload the game whenever I made a mistake, but I feel justified in reloading when it's something like that that's obviously a bad UI issue).

OK, rant over <g>, does anyone else have this problem? More to the point, does anyone know any other ways round it?

 

[Meffy]

Not a complete solution but: Go to Globe view, click the "helmet" icon above the mini-map, choose "Enemy military" or "All military" as appropriate. Shows one call-out for a whole stack, but they're visually distinctive -- give you something eye-catching to zoom in on.

 

[jayeffaar]

I always play with the "show enemy moves" option turned on, which makes it hard to miss them when they get close. But if your system is slow, you may not want to do that.

Another way to quickly spot the enemy would be to turn on the health bar display. those bright green, yellow or red bars really stand out from the background.

 

[Thalassicus]

In large, complex wars I also sometimes forget about enemy units, even with show moves turned on. The worst is landing parties. I just get involved in battles other places and forget about some, even moving my units right past them.

There's no obvious indicator that a unit is your enemy, other than a different flag. I wish there was simply a way to display the global layers in normal view! That way you could turn on unit-force display and easily recognize where anything is. Right now, global layer usage is pretty cumbersome.

 

[VetLegion]

I agree with the original poster!

I play on as zoomed out view as possible, and on it it's nearly impossible to tell units apart by type, let alone side.

Firaxis definitely need to do something about it.

 

[Woody]

I find this particular bad when your enemy has one of the green colors, they blend in with forests/jungles too easy. They should put a bright red glow around enemies, like the blue glow you get when a unit is waiting for a promotion. Maybe even have the glow changing in intensity to get your attention.

 

[enchanter100]

I like the red glow around enemy units. But something that would be nice is either a playback function when you click on one of those (enemy has been spotted messages) or just the ability to go to that spot by clicking on the messages.

 

[josephstalin]

You can use military adviser, turn on show individual units and click on enemy, that interests you. But this gives you just general idea.

 

[Willem]

I like the red glow around enemy units. But something that would be nice is either a playback function when you click on one of those (enemy has been spotted messages) or just the ability to go to that spot by clicking on the messages.

There's usually a round red icon that appears when that happens. Just click on it and the map scene will switch to where the unit is located.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I always play with the "show enemy moves" option turned on, which makes it hard to miss them when they get close. But if your system is slow, you may not want to do that.

Another way to quickly spot the enemy would be to turn on the health bar display. those bright green, yellow or red bars really stand out from the background.

Thanks! Ummm - I didn't even realise units had a health bar in Civ4. How do you switch it on?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Not a complete solution but: Go to Globe view, click the "helmet" icon above the mini-map, choose "Enemy military" or "All military" as appropriate. Shows one call-out for a whole stack, but they're visually distinctive -- give you something eye-catching to zoom in on.

Thanks, I tried that. That's definitely better than the F3 screen, I'll probably use that more. Shame that the military view doesn't remain when you go back to normal view - means you still need to swap into globe view each turn.

 

[gettingfat]

Anybody find the gunships very difficult to see. In low-resolution it's just like a blur. One time an enemy gunship got 8 tiles deep (from the border) and I wasn't aware of it till my oil well got razed.

 

[Willem]

Anybody find the gunships very difficult to see. In low-resolution it's just like a blur. One time an enemy gunship got 8 tiles deep (from the border) and I wasn't aware of it till my oil well got razed.

It's not low resolution, it's having animations turned off. I had the same problem until I turned them on and now I can see them just fine.

 

[Willem]

Thanks! Ummm - I didn't even realise units had a health bar in Civ4. How do you switch it on?

It's in the graphic options.