Fix the Foreign Advisor Screen!

[Spacedog]

I started a game last night on a 300x300 world map (Marla Singer's) with all 24 PTW civs. I quickly made contact with about 16 of the other 23 civs, but the Foreign Advisor screen will only show 8 civs at a time! The rest are in a pull down list. When you click on a civ in the list, it replaces one of the civs on the screen. This makes it difficult to remember which civs you have traded with on a given turn, and which ones you haven't. The screen should be able to handle all available civs.

Also, I kept contacting civs and proposing trades only to then find out that they had nothing to offer. It would be helpful if the Foreign Advisor screen had a spreadsheet showing all the civs and what they have to offer. Then you would only need to contact the ones with something to trade.

Spacedog

 

[Padma]

First, while it is rather unwieldly, it is not "broken" so there is nothing to "fix".

You need to remember that Civ3 was designed to be played with 8 Civs, only. When Firaxis was told to make it playable by more, they had neither the time nor the budget to totally rework the FA screen. Instead, the coded a workaround: the dropdown boxes that let you choose which 8 civs to look at at any given time.

While the spreadsheet you are looking for would be *very* nice, it is rather low on the priority list of what needs to be done. If the developers and artists had unlimited time and money, I am sure they would love to make a better interface. As it is, they have to apply themselves to the problems that *must* be fixed. And this close to delivering a final product to Atari, I am sure they are working on only *critical* bugs any more.

Finally: Welcome to CFC!

 

[Spacedog]

While I understand that it is not technically broken, it could be improved quite a bit. I know that the Firaxis people read these boards but probably can't read every post and figured that a headline saying something is broken would have a better chance of being read.

I work in a software development group, so I understand that any suggestion I make (and I have several ideas that I would like to see implemented) will most likely not be included in Conquests due to the nearness of the release date. However, they might make it into the next expansion pack or even Civ IV! (he says hopefully)

GO AIR FORCE!

 

[Padma]

The developers read these forums A LOT!. And believe me, they have heard an earful on this particular item!

And yes, I, too, would love to see an improvement in this area.