Issues with the new city build popup

[BlueTemplar]

Potentially relevant old thread :

Incomplete build list for cities in the popup at the beginning of a turn

Hi, I havent played c2c in ... idk how many years so if i apologize if i missed something obvious At the beginning of a turn when the popup for "what to work on next" for a city shows up, i noticed that i only have a few buildings and units there, nowhere near what i could actually build or...

forums.civfanatics.com

While the new city build popup is very exciting in terms of potential-
including the already realized new feature of build history - amazing !
-sadly it has also meant a regression :
1.) it broke the "next idle unit" command (W hotkey) when a city has nothing left in the queue !

Now, as long as you only have a couple of cities it isn't *that* annoying - when W completely fails to work, you can quickly cycle through your cities using Home/End keys... but at 7 cities I'm already starting to have to *search* for cities,
2.) also the popup hiding the city plots by default makes it harder to understand which city you're in.

3.) An additional bug is that if you don't go inside the city, then pressing Escape closes the popup... and then immediately opens it again !
Resulting also in a funny / annoying repetition of build sounds.
(For some reason clicking away doesn't cause this behavior.)

4.) And in the city screen the popup seems to prevent tooltips like detailed to show up.

5.) While the vanilla city build popup could be disabled, I haven't found ways to disable this one ?

 

[Somebody613]

I don't see the connection between idle UNITS and CITY pop-ups, though.
Didn't exactly test it in this context, but you can always go back to the currently active UNIT in question via C(enter).
Basically, I don't understand the subject of your complaint - is it about UNITS cycling in a broken way, or is it about CITIES doing it?
Care to elaborate, huh?

 

[BlueTemplar]

I'm not sure what was unclear about the way I described it ?
(6.) It starts with units, but I guess that I also wanted to raise a discussion of how idle units AND idle cities should be cycled : mixed ? units first ? cities first ? Different players might need different options here...P.S.: also note that cities now (?) have "*really* idle" AND "set to Idle build" states...)

Since it's not as straightforward to replicate as I remembered it, here's a save below (latest SVN) :
click on the Spiked Clubman 4 next to Jade Seal, then try to use W / Enter to cycle to the next idle unit.

(7.) There's also another potential issue that I think remember : the game focusing on idle units on the other side of the map while you're in the process of going through your idle cities ?)

Oh, also 3.1) - Enter has the same issue as Escape when a city is selected and the popup appears (but not W for some reason ?)

 

[Toffer90]

The alternative to insisting that cities must have something in their build queue for it to be possible to end turn is either to allow one to end turn with nothing in the queue of one or more cities, or stop the game from querying the player about what to build in cities without stuff to build as well as disallowing the end turn function from working, in the latter case one might have to go on a search for the city that has an empty queue before being able to end the turn (could be annoying if one have 24+ cities or so on a large map).

1) I guess this is just a general complaint about cities insisting on something being in the build queue, meaning cities without orders will always be the next selection prioritized over units, would be difficult to sort units and cities in the same list the way the code is structured in dll and python (might be an exe complication as well), meaning one list (cities) must be dealt with before the other list (units) can be iterated through. Could look into having the game only iterate idle cities when all units have been dealt with, but there's some issues with doing it the other way again due to the current structure.

2) Doesn't the name of the city display on the popup header, and can't you just click outside the window to close the popup to look at the plots if you want to see them?

3) Hmm, esc doesn't close the pop-up really, it unselects the city that is selected... which then leads to the pop-up closing as a result, but then nothing is selected so the game will automatically select the idle city again.

4) That's the same for all the city tabs, not just the recently added one you're talking about, and it's the case for sanity reasons in the python code.

5) I could add a BUG option that disables it and allows the turn to be ended even if there's cities with nothing in their build queue if it's important for you to have that option.

 

[Thunderbrd]

5) I could add a BUG option that disables it and allows the turn to be ended even if there's cities with nothing in their build queue if it's important for you to have that option.

Isn't 'Idle' still an option? I don't see why we'd want to allow a city to have no selection going into the end of turn...


Does seem strange to me that cycling through idling units and idling cities would be somehow in the same cycle list.

 

[Toffer90]

Isn't 'Idle' still an option? I don't see why we'd want to allow a city to have no selection going into the end of turn...

"Idle" process is still an option just like "wait" (space key) is for units, it is real idle I'm talking about, i.e. nothing in the build queue at all, no orders given to the city at all, like a unit with a green orb status.

 

[Thunderbrd]

"Idle" process is still an option just like "wait" (space key) is for units, it is real idle I'm talking about, i.e. nothing in the build queue at all, no orders given to the city at all, like a unit with a green orb status.

Which would be 'no selection'. I don't see why we'd want to allow any city to have 'no selection' going into the end of the turn, do you? If someone can't be arsed to change it to 'idle', then by all means annoy the hell out of them and don't let them end the turn until they have a selection of some sort, including 'idle' if that's all they stupidly want to do with that city. That's my opinion at least. Is that what we're talking about here is whether to allow 'no selection' or not at the end of a turn?

 

[BlueTemplar]

but then nothing is selected so the game will automatically select the idle city again

This will maybe have repercussions, but why should it be so ?

Especially since C2C seems to have already stopped the behaviour of "automatically select next idle unit once the currently selected unit moves"..?

This might be the cause of :

(7.) There's also another potential issue that I think remember : the game focusing on idle units on the other side of the map while you're in the process of going through your idle cities ?)

?

 

[Toffer90]

Which would be 'no selection'. I don't see why we'd want to allow any city to have 'no selection' going into the end of the turn, do you? If someone can't be arsed to change it to 'idle', then by all means annoy the hell out of them and don't let them end the turn until they have a selection of some sort, including 'idle' if that's all they stupidly want to do with that city. That's my opinion at least. Is that what we're talking about here is whether to allow 'no selection' or not at the end of a turn?

Yeah, that's my take as well, and the reasoning behind the changes I made that made it impossible to end turn if a city had nothing in its build queue at all.

This will maybe have repercussions, but why should it be so ?

Especially since C2C seems to have already stopped the behaviour of "automatically select next idle unit once the currently selected unit moves"..?

This might be the cause of : (7.) There's also another potential issue that I think remember : the game focusing on idle units on the other side of the map while you're in the process of going through your idle cities ?)

Hmm, I would need some better explanation/description of number (7) not sure what you mean.

If the game doesn't autocycle through cities that have no orders, then it would be up to the player to remember or locate the cities themselves before being able to end turn.
Currently I'm thinking that if players absolutely want to delay city build orders until the end of the turn then they can just select the idle process for all idle cities when asked, do the turn and go look for the cities with the red idle icon Ø.
But as I said in my previous post, if you insist on it I could add an option that disables city cycling altogether (should I also have the option make it possible to end the turn even if cities have no build orders?)

 

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, thanks for the discussion, I think I need to play and think about it some more...

 

[Toffer90]

Yeah, thanks for the discussion, I think I need to play and think about it some more...

Affirmative, don't be afraid to bring it up again later if you still have issues with it or have suggestions for improvements.