Hey guys.
So I finally survived to the modern era on Noble, and this was where my epic game settings would make things really interesting! I was playing on marathon speed, a huge terra world (the biggest) with 18 other civs...none of whom were dead.
But then it something unexpected happened.
It was boring as hell, and I stopped playing it.
There's a multitude of reasons why this happens, but a lot of it has to do with how hard it is to manage a large empire. The game's UI is actually missing a lot of important things, but usually empires are small so it doesn't matter. I think a lot of the changes could benefit games of any size though.
By the way, first let me say that I use BUG and thank you for making it! It's awesome. I probably couldn't play Civ IV at all without it now.
Anyway, I think there are 3 remaining problems with the Civ IV UI right now.
Opportunity costs
People make decisions at the margins, but a lot of this information is not directly available in the game. A perfect example would be switching from Hereditary Rule to Representation. HR gives me +1 happy for each military unit (a great bonus) whereas rep gives +6 happy in the largest cities. But what effect would switching have? To figure this out, I have to go to every city and do a lot of computations. What I really want to know is, if I switched right now, what would happen? Not in a global sense either, but to each city.
The UI focuses a lot on doing things. But this misses a big part of what Civ is about: making decisions. It would be nice if the UI focused on what will/might happen if you did something. You can figure this out yourself, but you need to get out Microsoft Excel or a calculator. But you're supposed to be the decision maker, not a bean counter! This gets exponentially worse as the number of cities grows because it gets really annoying, really fast.
The AI is probably doing a lot of these calculations for itself (I've looked briefly at the SDK source code), but it won't share them with a player. Or sometimes it does, but it won't tell you why. For example, sometimes it suggests I improve certain tiles. How come/what's the rationale? The advanced combat statistics, by the way, is an excellent step in this direction: it gives you great idea of what might happen if you did something. This is one of the only places it happens though.
Here's a neat idea for a feature: what if in the city screen, you could enter a mode you place any improvement on any tile instantly. This wouldn't actually do it of course, but it would preview what effect it would have if you did it. It would replace a whole lot of tedious math.
Empire-wide Management
This would be the hardest to implement, but for managing a large empire it would be the best thing ever. I would even finish my game if it existed.
The problem is that when an empire gets bigger, you can't take a larger view of production than individual cities. It would be cool if there was such a thing as empie-wide production. Here's an example of what I'm thinking: suppose I want to produce 4 pillaging stacks, each one has 1 tank, 1 SAM infantry, 1 anti-tank, 1 marine, or whatever. It would be cool if you explain what I want to do, where I want everything to move, and what cities should be involved in doing the production. The computer will then figure out the best way to build everything and move everything where it needs to go so that it finishes in the best number of turns, without you going to each city and setting way-points, setting up build queues, etc. It doesn't matter how incredibly complicated it is to use; it's worth learning it just once to not be bothered with the details every single turn. Oh, and every unit would fortify/sleep until the entire "project" is done. The point is not to bother the player until the plan is ready to go.
Performance
Out of curiosity, why does the game slow down so much as it goes on? Is it in the engine or the game logic DLL where all that time is being spent? If it's game logic, then technically the community could fix it by rewriting a lot of the algorithms to be more efficient, although it would be a huge undertaking.
So I finally survived to the modern era on Noble, and this was where my epic game settings would make things really interesting! I was playing on marathon speed, a huge terra world (the biggest) with 18 other civs...none of whom were dead.
But then it something unexpected happened.
It was boring as hell, and I stopped playing it.
There's a multitude of reasons why this happens, but a lot of it has to do with how hard it is to manage a large empire. The game's UI is actually missing a lot of important things, but usually empires are small so it doesn't matter. I think a lot of the changes could benefit games of any size though.
By the way, first let me say that I use BUG and thank you for making it! It's awesome. I probably couldn't play Civ IV at all without it now.
Anyway, I think there are 3 remaining problems with the Civ IV UI right now.
Opportunity costs
People make decisions at the margins, but a lot of this information is not directly available in the game. A perfect example would be switching from Hereditary Rule to Representation. HR gives me +1 happy for each military unit (a great bonus) whereas rep gives +6 happy in the largest cities. But what effect would switching have? To figure this out, I have to go to every city and do a lot of computations. What I really want to know is, if I switched right now, what would happen? Not in a global sense either, but to each city.
The UI focuses a lot on doing things. But this misses a big part of what Civ is about: making decisions. It would be nice if the UI focused on what will/might happen if you did something. You can figure this out yourself, but you need to get out Microsoft Excel or a calculator. But you're supposed to be the decision maker, not a bean counter! This gets exponentially worse as the number of cities grows because it gets really annoying, really fast.
The AI is probably doing a lot of these calculations for itself (I've looked briefly at the SDK source code), but it won't share them with a player. Or sometimes it does, but it won't tell you why. For example, sometimes it suggests I improve certain tiles. How come/what's the rationale? The advanced combat statistics, by the way, is an excellent step in this direction: it gives you great idea of what might happen if you did something. This is one of the only places it happens though.
Here's a neat idea for a feature: what if in the city screen, you could enter a mode you place any improvement on any tile instantly. This wouldn't actually do it of course, but it would preview what effect it would have if you did it. It would replace a whole lot of tedious math.
Empire-wide Management
This would be the hardest to implement, but for managing a large empire it would be the best thing ever. I would even finish my game if it existed.
The problem is that when an empire gets bigger, you can't take a larger view of production than individual cities. It would be cool if there was such a thing as empie-wide production. Here's an example of what I'm thinking: suppose I want to produce 4 pillaging stacks, each one has 1 tank, 1 SAM infantry, 1 anti-tank, 1 marine, or whatever. It would be cool if you explain what I want to do, where I want everything to move, and what cities should be involved in doing the production. The computer will then figure out the best way to build everything and move everything where it needs to go so that it finishes in the best number of turns, without you going to each city and setting way-points, setting up build queues, etc. It doesn't matter how incredibly complicated it is to use; it's worth learning it just once to not be bothered with the details every single turn. Oh, and every unit would fortify/sleep until the entire "project" is done. The point is not to bother the player until the plan is ready to go.
Performance
Out of curiosity, why does the game slow down so much as it goes on? Is it in the engine or the game logic DLL where all that time is being spent? If it's game logic, then technically the community could fix it by rewriting a lot of the algorithms to be more efficient, although it would be a huge undertaking.
