Fat Cross view toggle

[shinnl]

Is there any way to toggle a view on the map that only shows the fat cross for each city? This would be useful when trying to pick the site of a new city. If not, any suggestions other than just eyeballing it?

 

[Reinhard]

I don't think there is one. I always zoom out to an orthogonal view to evaluate the fat cross, it's slightly easier to spot.

 

[Mahatmajon]

That would be very helpful. I don't think there's anyway to do this currently but maybe someone can make a mod to have a fat cross follow your settler units around.

You'll get used to it pretty quickly but I'd suggest turning the grid on to help (if you haven't already) and if you REALLY want something to help cut out a template in a clear material that's sized to your normal zoom in level.

 

[Proteus]

You could also paint all Fat Xses onto the map with the Draw Line function of Globeview (although this will only last for your current game and will be gone if you end the game and reload it).

 

[spikeyperson]

Ah im glad someone else has this problem. Its easy to work out if the cities are directly opposite each other, just the usuall 4 spaces. Its when you want a city at a diagonal from another city -I might be a bit slow on the spacial awareness side but i just find it difficult/complex to work out. Might have to go with the grid papercut out suggestion until someone mods/patches it!

 

[civilnaut]

I usually build my first few cities based on resources available and sometimes large chunks of land is currently unworked on inbetween the cities. At a later point I normally like to backfill by building cities to take advantage of the unworked land. A fatcross toggle on the main map would be very useful so that I can quickly see which areas I should go back to build cities on. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

 

[Oggums]

Zoom out to global and use draw line. I also like to draw a big dot where I plan to drop a settler. It stays until you exit the game or reload, or you delete the line.

 

[Astax]

You could also paint all Fat Xses onto the map with the Draw Line function of Globeview (although this will only last for your current game and will be gone if you end the game and reload it).

That's what I do, works if you paly games in one sitting. But also it depends what color I am. If it's too ugly to bear I go without, aslso if I have lot of clustered cities I go without it.

 

[Thalassicus]

I take a screenshot and drop cross templates onto the screenshot in a photo editing program, then move them around to see where the best arrangement would be. It's faster than drawing lines by hand

 

[Crimso]

I zoom in and eye-ball all of my city placements.

 

[Seven05]

Count tiles

For no overlap you want it 5 tiles in the "straight" directions (as was pointed out already) or 4 tiles out and 3 tiles off in a perpendicular direction. Another way to picture it is to find the corner of an existing city's "fat cross" and place the next city 2 diagnal tiles away and out from the center. If you place them with no overlap you'll end up with a bunch of unused tiles between cities. If you let the computer recommend city locations for you it will normally recommend them at 3 out and 3 away with will result in one overlapped tile in most cases but no empty ones. Another easy way with some overlap is three tiles diagnally from the city, you'll get some overlap but it'll still allows for some decent sized cities. From my experience it's best to place them based on usable tiles rather than worrying about overlap, if a couple of tiles overlap but I get a city with 3 resources rahter than 1 resource and 2 outside any city's workable zone I'll take the overlap in a heartbeat.

 

[Stageon]

Good idea, maybe someone could mod this or maybe it'll appear in a patch. Would be useful for many people, I believe. Shinnl for the win!

 

[Flendon]

Yea I always count by eyeballing it, but it would be so much better if I could have it shown to me.

 

[bobtheflob]

I right click and drag to move my settlers. It doesn't show you the fat cross, but it does show the original box and makes it easier to visualize the cross.

 

[cleverhandle]

I use the draw line function in the strategy layer also, but it would certainly be nice if "fat cross" were a drawing option to save some trouble. BTW, what does the "view" option do? I would think it would toggle the lines on/off, but it doesn't seem to. Would also be nice to save your strategy layer lines with the game - that wouldn't appear to be too much work. Or to be able to keep the resource flags on while your drawing.

I really like the whole strategy layer idea, but it seems like it could be implemented so much better than it is.

 

[Plug]

This feature was available in Alpha Centauri. Is there a way we can send the message to Firaxis that we would like it back? I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for them to put it in a future patch, but that might take a while to come about considering they released one just before Xmas.

 

[dirtyparrot]

It would be a nice thing to have. Might be included in the next patch.