Interface Fixes/Enhancements

[Bamspeedy]

The domestic advisor screen currently shows the number of taxmen in your nation.

BUT....finding the number of scientists in your civ is nowhere to be found, unless you manually count them up in each city (which can be a pain with 100's of cities!!!!!)

 

[Lord Protector]

Thanks casual_moose.

Another question, does anyone know whether or not C3C will enhance the vanilla Civ3 + C3PTW game? If 'yes', will it retain/include the prior C3PTW additions? If 'no' and the user does not play multiplayer and the user doesn't care for pre-fabricated scenarios, why should we purchase C3C? In other words, if I only play a heavily customized C3PTW base game, will C3C continue and add to C3PTW's single-player experience...will the C3C .BIX file equivalent include ALL previous single-player enhancements? Sorry about the rambling.

 

[DaviddesJ]

My list of minor interface improvements:

1. When I go to the diplomacy screen, I want to click once on the name of the civ I want to talk to, instead of having to click twice.

2. I'd like to go directly to the trading screen for a civ, instead of going to the screen where I have several options like trade or declare war. Since I almost always want the trading screen. From the trading screen, there could be another way to get to other diplomatic options.

3. Display fractional movement points remaining for units that have moved along roads (already mentioned).

4. A way to find out the amount of work that has been done on a worker project (rather than having to click on one of the workers and get "will be done in 3 turns" and have to figure out how many workers are working and then divide. E.g., the message could instead say "working on mine which is 38% complete".

5. I want to control the order that I cycle through cities. E.g., a popup window where I can drag cities up or down in the ordering, so I control which cities I go to with the next button.

6. When I'm in the city view, I want to be able to click on another city that I can see (or even a space that I can see which is being worked by another city) and immediately jump to the view for that city, instead of having to exit the city view, and click on that other city.

7. In-game popup when I end my turn that tells me a city is about to go into disorder.

8. Be able to display all civs on the F4 screen, instead of 8 at most.

9. Worker projects should complete during the turn instead of waiting until the end of the turn. So if I order two workers to build a road, and it takes 3 units of work, the road will finish in the middle of my 2nd turn, and one of the two workers will be available to move or start another project. Same for irrigation, mines, etc.

10. I'd like to be able to cycle among only workers, or among only combat units. Often I want to move all my combat units, and then all my workers, and this is hard to do. Being able to go to the next unit of the same type, or skip all units of this type and go to a different type, would probably be enough.

11. A hotkey for "fortify and then wake next turn". Often I have movement left, I want to fortify a unit, but I know I'm going to want to move it next turn. This could be a single key that fortifies the unit but remembers to wake it at the start of my next turn.

12. On the F3 screen, it's virtually impossible to scroll among captured workers, even to see how many I have. Improve this interface.

13. Display number of scientists on F1 screen.

14. Some way to list techs that other civs could trade to you (i.e., they are willing to negotiate and they have a tech you can learn) without having to open all the diplomatic screens individually.

15. Display a numerical count of the shields in the production box, as well as the box itself (so it's possible to see just how many you have, even if it's a big number like 538 out of 600).

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
1. When I go to the diplomacy screen, I want to click once on the name of the civ I want to talk to, instead of having to click twice.

But currently, clicking once sets that civ as the "active civ," meaning it shows you its relations with everyone else (and of course shift+click does the same, but keeps all other active civs active). Maybe to do this (make that civ active) you could right-click, and to talk to a civ, you could left-click it. This would also solve the problem that when you use the foreign advisor screen to talk with a civ, it makes that civ the only active one, and you have to set it back up the way you want it afterwards.

And two things that I think would be VERY helpful when you have large stacks of units:

1. When you right-click the stack, a red dot is next to each unit that has already fully moved, and a yellow dot next to each unit that has partly moved.

2. When you right-click the stack, something needs to be done to make it easier to navigate when it's a very large stack. Maybe a seperate little menu where you have a little checkbox, where you can check and uncheck the following:

-Show units waiting for orders
-Show units whose movement has been used up
-Show fortified units
-Show units currently performing a task
-Show transported units
-Show transport units

You could set a default system (the system in place each time you right-click a stack of units), and of course at any time you could change the default option or change the current option (keeping the default one, so that your changes only affect the stack currently selected, and only at that time).

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by WillJ
But currently, clicking once sets that civ as the "active civ," meaning it shows you its relations with everyone else (and of course shift+click does the same, but keeps all other active civs active).

I think you're talking about something different from me. I'm talking about the diplomatic screen that you open with shift-D. This gives a list of all civs, and in order to negotiate with one, you have to click twice on your choice. I don't see any reason why clicking only once shouldn't work. I think you're referring to the foreign advisor (F4). I don't have any big problem with that screen, except that it should be possible to display all of the civs instead of just some of them.

 

[Qitai]

I just want to know who has what tech to sell/buy without checking each one out. Much of my trading planning is to list out who has what. Showing a tech that has been discovered by a known civ with a different colour helps alot too. Or even better send us an alert. If I recall correctly, Civ2 has this pop-up which says civ xxx invite us to look at their xx tech discovery. Bring that back!

Make F5 show what improvement each city has, not just wonders. I always forgot which city has what and at some point in time, I rename my cities each time I build some improvement just to keep track of that.

Let us take care of the riot before it happen. Give us a warning.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
I think you're talking about something different from me. I'm talking about the diplomatic screen that you open with shift-D. This gives a list of all civs, and in order to negotiate with one, you have to click twice on your choice. I don't see any reason why clicking only once shouldn't work. I think you're referring to the foreign advisor (F4). I don't have any big problem with that screen, except that it should be possible to display all of the civs instead of just some of them.

Yep, you're right; it was late at night and I got mixed up.

The problem I see with this is that you might accidentally click a civ when you didn't mean to. I don't really mind having to click twice, anyway.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by WillJ
The problem I see with this is that you might accidentally click a civ when you didn't mean to.

So what? You can always just go back.

I don't really mind having to click twice, anyway.

Good for you, but I do this thousands of times in a typical game, and it really adds up. (Excessive double-clicking increases the chance of stress injuries, among other things.)
I don't see any reason for the double click in this particular place, as almost all other menus in the game require only a single click.

 

[John Falkner]

1.) I want to deploy my units in the cities of my alliance partner. That makes it much easier to defend his cities!

2.) There should be ultra elite units. They should be very rare.

 

[WillJ]

Okay, I guess I agree, DJ.

 

[Slax]

1. "Dawn of Civilization" popup. Should include name of your civ. If playing random, you have to look down in the corner to find out who you are.

2. Give state of unit when passing over with cursor, ie. 'Road completion in 2 turns', or 'Fortified', etc.

3. Show civ colour somewhere on diplomacy screen.

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
I don't see any reason for the double click in this particular place, as almost all other menus in the game require only a single click.

Caveat: I'm not saying this is a *good* reason, just a reason.

If you notice, you never have to "double-click" the first Civ in the list. That is because it is already selected. The first click selects that Civ to talk to. The second click is equivalent to clicking the "OK" button. This same behavior is evident in many other dialog boxes/menus, as well.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Padma
If you notice, you never have to "double-click" the first Civ in the list. That is because it is already selected. The first click selects that Civ to talk to. The second click is equivalent to clicking the "OK" button. This same behavior is evident in many other dialog boxes/menus, as well.

Yes, I understand how it works. This style of interface has the single advantage that you don't have to use the mouse: you can select your choice using up and down arrows, and then press enter. But given the number of other things in Civ3 that require the mouse (including diplomatic negotiations), I don't really see the advantage of this style in this particular place. It just means a lot of extra clicking. Actually using the keyboard interface (pressing the down key several times) is even slower than clicking.

Another thing I'd like to be able to do is reorder the list of civilizations. If I could group them based on whether they are close to me, or whether they have particular techs, I could use this screen more efficiently.

 

[John Falkner]

- If i choose random opponents, i want to exclude some civs!

- Up to now you need the mouse in the diplomatic menu, thats uncomfortable.

 

[Pembroke]

Sometimes I forgot I have fortified units in some remote place. A global "wake up" command waking all my fortified units everywhere would be useful.

 

[alpha wolf 64]

i wish workers didnt work tiles that dont belong to any cities. sometimes my automated workers are working unused tiles while distant cities go unimproved.

 

[Sanaz]

2 minor worker command improvements:

1. Shfit-C is used for both Clear Jungle/Forest, and Clear pollution. If I have pollution on a Jungle, I usually want to clear the jungle first, then build a RR, then clear the pollution. I hate it when I start clearing the pollution on a jungle by mistake. I'd rather a different keystroke for Clear Pollution (I think it used to be Shift-P).

2. Currently Workers and Slaves all move when using "move units of same type". I'd prefer that they move separately, because there is a 2 or 3 times difference in worker speed. This only matters with RR's, when I'm organizing my tasks and have piles of 50-100 workers/slaves.

 

[Slax]

Originally posted by Sanaz
If I have pollution on a Jungle, I usually want to clear the jungle first, then build a RR, then clear the pollution.

Why would you do all this before cleaning pollution?

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Slax
Why would you do all this before cleaning pollution?

Clear the jungle before removing pollution because it's a lot faster than removing pollution first and then clearing the jungle. And there's no advantage to doing it the other way if you're not working the tile.