How to disable popups?

[michal.lewtak]

I got Civ4 Complete and it seems like a really fun game, but the popups and advisory in them is a stressful factor to me. I would prefer to disable the popups and keep track of things on my own (maybe turn that on later when I get experienced with the game) than being asked to make decisions, and even have some advice on them. It feels like i could just roam around with a few soldiers and click on whatever the game advises. It's just too hard to learn to play this game correctly with these aggressive popups. Can I disable them completely somehow? (Not just minimize until end of turn)

 

[Oishi]

uh. wrong forum dude.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Ya hes in the wrong place, but you couldnt just tell him what do do?

In the options menu you can turn off Sid's Tips and Advisor pop ups. If your unsure hover your mouse over options and it will describe them.

 

[michal.lewtak]

Ya hes in the wrong place, but you couldnt just tell him what do do?

In the options menu you can turn off Sid's Tips and Advisor pop ups. If your unsure hover your mouse over options and it will describe them.

Might as well continue posting here...
I turned off both things and I'm still having the popups and the choice advice on them. Is this some known bug?

 

[Tylerryan79]

When you say pop ups do you mean build/ tech screen? You cant turn those two off, you need to research techs and build buildings or units ect. Its the point of the game, without that theres not much else to do.

As for the recomendations, you dont have to build those, and they arent always right. Just ignore them. I dont know if you can turn those off.

There are also random events, they can be turned off in custom game.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Let me give you the basics, you start off with a settler and warrior(or scout depending on what civ), you build your first city with the settler, dont move around with him, unless a few spacew away you think theres a better city site. Explore the area with warrior. Select your first item to research, and your first improvement or unit for your city to build. I usualy start building a worker to improve my cities land(known as a big fat cross, 2 tiles out, 3 wide in all directions forming a cross). From there pick and choose what you want to build/ research. Buildig settlers for more cities, units to protect them, workers to build improvements so on and so forth.

Read the civlopedia and manual. I played this game for so long thinking i knew what i was doing, but then i read up and looked at guides here, and realised i had no clue. Good luck, and welcome to CFC!

 

[Shurdus]

Might as well continue posting here...
I turned off both things and I'm still having the popups and the choice advice on them. Is this some known bug?

Welcome to civfanatics, michal.lewtak!

It is unclear to me wether you mean popups for techs or buildings in a city. Tech splashes - the screens where they show a pic of the wheel and then what that tech does - can be disabled in the .ini file in your games folder. It can be found in the folder you installed civ in, and it can be found in the my documents/my games/civ4/BtS folder. There is a tech splash value in there that defaults to 0. Set it to 1 and you will no longer get tech splash screens.

As my pc is in the shop for repairs right now I am afraid I cannot specifically help you with the city queues. I recognise the tick box on sight although I do not know what it is called. It is not the Sid's tips or advisor box. It is called pop-ups or somehting on the options page. If yu can post a screenie from the options I can tell you what to tick. It may be either on the first or second page, I just do not know.

 

[CTH]

To make this a little bit CIV 5, the developers has said that the pop-ups wont pop up anymore but rahter place a small baloon on the side of the screen. At least that is how I interperate it.

 

[Shurdus]

To make this a little bit CIV 5, the developers has said that the pop-ups wont pop up anymore but rahter place a small baloon on the side of the screen. At least that is how I interperate it.

Indeed, and there is the option of doing just that in civ4 as well.

It would be awesome to have a city defaultiung to building gold - or something user-defined on a per-city basis - after depleting it's queue. That way you can indeed control every city, but you need to pay far less attention in the later stages where the game becomes a grindfest. It would be double as awesome if you can even automate some of the units, so that the player needs to focus maybe on one front, while the AI handles another for you.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Yes, Ive played with that option checked in Civ iv, and I personally liked it. I hate when im trying to do something, and the pop up rips me away! Also if I can click on the box at the side if i have a pressing thought to build something so I wont forget.

@ the ops question, beyond disabling sids tips, advisor pop ups, as shurdus mentions the tech splash screens in the .ini(thanks also, never knew that) I dont see an option for disabling build ques beyond having them pop up at end of turn. But it sounds like you already had that checked. Im sticking with my statement that if that is what you mean(tech and build que) it cant be turned off. Post a screen shot here and show us what you mean as shurdus suggested, just to be sure.

 

[PieceOfMind]

My understanding is that the new build prompt window cannot be disabled because it is locked into the exe. I think modders were disappointed this game feature could not be altered. Minimize Popups option just makes them appear at the end of your turn instead of the start.

 

[ori]

Moderator Action: moved

 

[michal.lewtak]

I'm talking about these popups:

They basically try to simplify my game because I don't have to click on a city and choose what to build there, or click on one of the technology icons on the top of the screen, but these popups are just too agressive for me. I can't close them, I can't minimize them, I can't do anything else while they're there, I'm forced to make the decision RIGHT NOW. I can choose "minimize popups, and that's a bit less agressive, I can see the little icon and be informed of the need to choose a new technology to research, and to do something in a city, etc., but it's like seeing a menace that an evil popup will appear sooner or later.
I'm a beginner, I don't know 95% of the game's content and 60% of its mechanics, so I'd like to play it on my own and learn on mistakes (like forgetting about building things in a city) and maybe Then turn these popups on, when I'm comfortable making decisions on the fly.
So far I've played a few regular games up till the classical era, and each time I reach that point I realize I have no idea what my choices really were, since I was too pressured with the need to choose something all the time (it makes me too lazy to devise a plan for the future and I just walk around with units and click on whatever the game recommends).
If there's no way of disabling these popups, where can I post a request to add that option in a future patch? Thanks.
BTW, here's my options screen just to be sure:

 

[ruff_hi]

what you want is 'minimize popups' - check that sucker. with that option checked, you get an icon on the right of the screen at the start of your turn and all of the pop-ups occur at the end of your turn (you can click or double click on the icon to see the popup if you want to). If you have selected your tech and / or your city builds, then you just see the pop ups scroll past really quickly.

 

[God-Emperor]

I'd like to play it on my own and learn on mistakes (like forgetting about building things in a city)

Except that you can't do that. Every city must always be producing something. Always. It's the way the game works.

If you don't want to be bothered so much, put more than one thing into the build queue. Then it will only bother you when everything that was enqueued is done. You can also set a city to build a unit repeatedly forever (until otherwise instructed) by holding down ALT when you click on the icon to add it to the build queue (not at the pop-up, but when the city is selected).

Likewise, you must always be researching a tech (if there is one - in some mods the tech tree just ends with no tech that is repeatable, at that point you can drop your research to 0% and use all of your commerce for other things). But you can also reduce how often it asks you about this by pulling up the tech screen and picking more than one while holding down the SHIFT key as you click on them, and it will then proceed to research them in the order you clicked on them.