Interface Fixes/Enhancements

[Pembroke]

Let's list all the "little things" in the game interface, windows, commands, screen information, or lack of them that have been nagging in your mind all the time. We did this with the PTW and amazingly some even got done so maybe this time, too.

Remember: nothing big. This is the list of the "annoying minor details".

Being able to look at the active trades in the tab in the diplomacy screen (F4) is great. However, choosing the trading partner to look at will "unselect" the civs in the main tab so I have to select them all again after looking at the trade deals to get the diplomacy relationship diamond back in view. I would really appreciate it if the selections in the different tabs in F4 did not affect each other.

The option "Always renegotiate deals" is actually "Sometimes renegotiate deals". A bug? (I haven't been able to deduce the logic when the trade window opens and when not after a deal expires...)

The F2 screen shows the resource supply of other civs, i.e. those that you don't have but other civs have but that haven't been sold to anyone currently. This is good. Now, how about doing a similar list that shows the resource demand of other civs? I.e. the list of resources that _you_ have but the other civs don't. Sometimes I am just looking for a prospective buyer.

The F6 screen shows techs that I know with a distinctive color. How about it also showing with a third color those techs that civs _known_to_me_ have researched and which I also _could_ research? In other words: those techs that I could buy and are shown in the trade window under techs. It would be much nicer to see this from F6 instead of opening trade negotiations just to see whether my neighbors have researched a new tech.

If "the German military outnumbers ours" it would be nice if my advisors told me just how badly we are outnumbered. Ok, exact figures belong to the espionage stuff, but just a rough estimate? Like adding 2-3 descriptive levels: "They are somewhat stronger than us.", "We are badly outnumbered!" and "Oh merciful Divine Spirit! Sire, our military might is nothing compared to them!".

If my military advisor had any brains he would deduce that if we _know_ the English know Iron Working (info available in the trade window) and we _know_ they have a source of iron (info available in the trade window) then their "best unit -- that we know of" is the Swordman regardless of whether we have seen any, or indeed regardless whether they have even built one. Once the war starts they will build them if they haven't. The logic would be really simple: the best unit given by a tech they have and that we either have or could research plus resource linkages if needed to build the unit. This information is available to me even in the current game so the mil advisor ought to do some thinking of his own, too...

 

[digby101]

I tend to prefer the keyboard to the mouse, and Civ3 does allow you to do much of the game on the keyboard. However one thing you can't do on the keyboard is select the next thing to build. When you build something, you need to pull down the list and select with the mouse. What I'd like to see is that on the "build next" list, you'd hit "C" and it might go to "Cathedral", and then hit "O" and it would be smart enough to go to "Colosseum". Then hitting "Enter" would lock the choice.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Pembroke
The F2 screen shows the resource supply of other civs, i.e. those that you don't have but other civs have but that haven't been sold to anyone currently. This is good. Now, how about doing a similar list that shows the resource demand of other civs? I.e. the list of resources that _you_ have but the other civs don't. Sometimes I am just looking for a prospective buyer.

If you have PTW, you can sort of already do this. Go to the foreign advisor screen, and on top of the box on the right side where you can check and uncheck what it shows, click "trades." Then hold your mouse over a civ you're thinking of trading with. After clicking "more" a couple of times or moving your mouse in and out of that civ's circle a couple times, the foreign advisor will eventually say in his little box what you might be able to offer them.

 

[dexters]

Pembroke good suggestions.

Just want to add my bit. The new integrated espionage screen in PTW is good, but it looks out of place and seems like put in as an aftethought. A good idea may be to bring in the same paper texture we see in every other menu and rework it a bit.

The Diplomacy F4 screen needs to support more Civs. Hopefully 16 faces. Just shrink the portraits. We now have the potential to have 32 civs in one game, and it's a pain in the behind to change civs either with the change civ tab or shift+rightclick.

 

[Mariusz]

I would like fractions instead of integer numbers in the "move points left" field. Not just 1, 2 or 3 but 1/3, 2/3 or 2 1/3. It sometimes really confuses me, because I don't know exactly how further I can go in current turn.

 

[wilbill]

Originally posted by Pembroke
The option "Always renegotiate deals" is actually "Sometimes renegotiate deals". A bug? (I haven't been able to deduce the logic when the trade window opens and when not after a deal expires...)

I'm pretty sure this depends on whether there's gpt involved in the deal. i.e. if you give the AI 20 gpt for a resource, you'll get the trade window to renegotiate after 20 turns. If you pay a lump sum or a tech for that resource you won't. Haven't conducted research on this, but it appears that's the determining factor.

 

[Pembroke]

Add a tool to the map editor to easily/automatically fix the river bug found in the earlier maps.

I was playing on an Earth map yesterday and succeeded to block the French and the Germans to South America leaving North America entirely to myself. "Yes!", I thought, and proceeded to Settle The West and then to my horror I discovered that the map was full of "river holes" (a bug in the old map editor). And there went my game. I want to win fair and square, dammit!

So, please add a tool to the map editor that goes through an existing map and checks for any "river squares that aren't really rivers" and fixes them to good honest hard-to-cross rivers. This must be possible, because the buggy river square includes the river graphics but the path-finder algorithm still finds the holes, so the info has to be in the map data meaning you can build a tool to find these inconsistencies.

There are a lot of good maps in CFC map library but, alas, that have been designed with the old map editor. I would like to play them without this utterly crashing feeling I went through. Ought to sue someone for damages for Experiencing Pain And Suffering <mumble> <mumble>...

 

[John Falkner]

- Fix the units list, please! (right mouse button on multiple units)
I cannot understand why the units are not in alphabetical order?!

- If i put a jetfighter with button "s" in the intercept modus, i don´t see it anywhere that it is done.

- If i use a plane i don´t see in the unit list that it was used. That is uncomfortable when you have 48 planes in the same city.

- I think the computer randomly chooses the next unit you can move. There must be a better system (city to city or somewhat)

 

[WillJ]

I guess this would be the right thread for these:

• Make the little list that comes up when you right-click a tile with your unit(s) on it easier to navigate when there are bunches of units. Make it so that it all fits on the screen at once, before having to scroll up and down.
• Make it so that you can easily activate all the units of the same type on a square.
• Add a hotkey that, when held when making a unit do a task, makes all the units in that square that can do that task work on that task. For example, if they decide to make Y this key, when you have a worker activated, Y+I will make the workers on that square irrigate it.
• Add a hotkey that, when held when making a unit do a task, makes all the units of the same type in that square work on that task. For example, if U is this key, when you have a spearman activated, U+F will fortify all the spearmen on that square.

 

[Pembroke]

The map-editor has the option of toggling polar ice-caps on and off. It would be nice if you could toggle the north and south ice-caps on and off independently of each other. For example, if you wanted a map from the Antarctic in the south to the Equator in the north you would check the "south polar ice-cap" but not the "north polar ice-cap".

Also, when you play on a map that has the polar ice-caps off the southernmost squares are not visible in the game although you can still move your units there. Perhaps you could add a "Here Be Dragonnes" map picture to the south so you can scroll the map all the way down.

 

[John Falkner]

I think we need a button, as WillJ said above, to activate all units of the same name. By name, because i use the rename function and if i want to activate my 1st Division 8th U.S. Marine Corps i don´t want that the 1st Division 13th U.S. Marine Corps is activated too.

 

[MarineCorps]

I don't like how in the city que if if you have like a rifleman qued and then you discover infantry and if you don't change the rifleman to an infantry then it skips the rifle man and goes to the next thing in line.

 

[casual_moose]

instead of moving one stack at a time, be able to move multiple stacks like a formation, ex say you have two stacks close together, instead of moving the both seperately you could move them both by selecting the both and moving them

 

[John Falkner]

I want to fly CAP missions with my jetfighters to pave the way for my bombers and shoot down enemy interceptors!

 

[Pembroke]

The trade advisor and the military advisor ought to at least have the same opinion. The military advisor was improved in one patch to calculate the relative military strength based on the power of units instead of on just the number of them. However, I think the same fix didn't apply to the trade advisor, because especially after unit upgrades my military advisor assures me that we have a "strong military compared to them" yet my trade advisor warns me in the trade window that they "outnumber us".

I really wouldn't like to pay tribute if it's their 100 swordmen against my 50 knights...

 

[Pembroke]

When you trade workers in the trade window it would be nice if:

1) There was info on the worker nationality. On both sides. I might be sentimental sometimes and buy back my captured people as well as to consider which workers I wish to give to them.

2) Especially when you are negotiating for peace there's usually a lot of workers available for trade because they have been brought in for safety during the war. This gets the trade window very crowded. How about having just one line for the workers and in parenthesis the number of them instead of having each worker in his own line? Or if #1 is implemented then one line per each nationality?

 

[John Falkner]

It would be nice if you can see when an airport was used and when not. An option is to change the color from the airport symbol, from white to red.

 

[Lord Protector]

(Is there/Could there be) a way to shrink or hide the lower right-hand corner info box and the lower left-hand corner minimap?

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'd like pop-up to inform me of any and all trades I'd break by, f'rinstance, declaring war on someone, and giving me the option to backtrack on my decision. I also want to be informed when any trade I'm involved in is broken by someone else. Eg, if I'm selling Ivory to Gandhi, and Xerxes captures India's last harbour, I want to be told of this.

 

[casual_moose]

same here i want them to tell me when "ive" broken the treaty. and lord protector, cant you press delete to hide the minimap and info box?