Minimap

[ruff_hi]

As I mentioned in a recent SG report, the game doesn't really give you a good way of getting an overall positional view - sure F5 (Military Advisor) is available, but the minimap is a bit small and it is only concerned with units.

So, I am going to put as big a minimap as I can on the F4 (Foreign Advisor) screen (new tab). The question is ... what do we want to show?

Initial thoughts are as follows:

• ability to dial up / down the civ's colors on the map
• show resources (list of resources to select from)
• show cities (list of cities to select from)
• World Wonders (list of World Wonders to select from)

What I am envisioning is a minimap on the left (as big as I can get it) with a drop down on the right (resources / cities / wonders / etc), then below the dropdown is a list box that lists all of the resources / cities / wonders / etc. Then the user clicks on the item in the list and pixel(s) blinks in the minimap to show the location(s).

Please note that I will not be including units in this minimap tab - that is already well covered by F5.

Anything else I should be adding to this minimap?

 

[r_rolo1]

I also sugested elsewhere to have a minimap in the espionage screen, to be able to keep track of where the spies are. I find this important because, as spies have very peculiar spatial properties ( they teleport to cap every time they suceeed in a mission and have a annoying tendency to disapear without a trace in the IBT ) that can make hard to track where a particular spy is, especially in games with lots of them. Having acess to what the spy can do from the minimap tab would also be very valuable ( like I said in the thread, the current way to know what a spy can do is, to say the least, cumbersome : if you don't remember where the spy is, you need to go F5 to locate it, then go in game , select him, pass by the first set of options if needed.... and this only to know if you can steal compass this turn in that city Now imagine that you have 10 spies in various cities/tiles ... :suicide: )

About what you proposed here ( the above was a response to your pm , ruff ), I wonder if it would be useful to highlight diferent tile improvements ( from roads to forts.... sometimes it makes a diference ) and even maybe disputed tiles between civs ( that is important to both WW and the close borders diplo modifier ).

Maybe you can also add the location of certain bulidings( like academies, Scotland yard or cathedrals ) or Nat wonders, when you have the intel to know where they are ( Ok, you can always know what buildings a enemy city have, but keeping it to what you know via espionage is less prone to UG discussions )....

To end, and linking to the first paragraph, maybe showing the EP modifiers for a certain city ( distance, religion, our culture there, having the shrine city of the state religion.... ) in the city intel could prove valuable.

 

[ruff_hi]

I also sugested elsewhere to have a minimap in the espionage screen, to be able to keep track of where the spies are. I find this important because, as spies have very peculiar spatial properties ( they teleport to cap every time they suceeed in a mission and have a annoying tendency to disapear without a trace in the IBT ) that can make hard to track where a particular spy is, especially in games with lots of them. Having acess to what the spy can do from the minimap tab would also be very valuable ( like I said in the thread, the current way to know what a spy can do is, to say the least, cumbersome : if you don't remember where the spy is, you need to go F5 to locate it, then go in game , select him, pass by the first set of options if needed.... and this only to know if you can steal compass this turn in that city Now imagine that you have 10 spies in various cities/tiles ... :suicide: )

To end, and linking to the first paragraph, maybe showing the EP modifiers for a certain city ( distance, religion, our culture there, having the shrine city of the state religion.... ) in the city intel could prove valuable.

mystyfip is looking at the minimap for the esp screen so I will leave all of this to him.

I wonder if it would be useful to highlight diferent tile improvements ( from roads to forts.... sometimes it makes a diference ) and even maybe disputed tiles between civs ( that is important to both WW and the close borders diplo modifier ).

Good idea - will add that to my list. Could even include tiles that have no improvement where you can now build an improvement (every hunted for a forest when you get the ability to make lumbermills?). I could also add 'valid city tiles' because I sometimes have to hunt for them during the late game.

Maybe you can also add the location of certain bulidings( like academies, Scotland yard or cathedrals ) or Nat wonders, when you have the intel to know where they are ( Ok, you can always know what buildings a enemy city have, but keeping it to what you know via espionage is less prone to UG discussions )....

Good - will expand my wonders to include Nat and Projects. Maybe introduce an 'Opponent Buildings' option with another dropdown to select the opponent.

 

[mystyfly]

I'll be taking care of the Esp Advisor and try to improve it. That includes a minimap as well. I don't think it's a good idea to include that on the minimap ruff is planning here as I plan on displaying lots of info related to espionage and don't make it any more confusing than it'll be anyway.
I'll get back to you (read: open a thread) once I accomplished something to show. Too bad I'll be away for a week or so so you'll have to wait a little I'm afraid.

The point about NWs is really good. I think that'll be one of the more important uses of the screen; handling domestic city specialization.

 

[Liquidated]

Not sure how viable this is but being able to toggle highlighting on areas not scouted would be nice. One way would be to outline larger chunks of fog or I guess the ability to change to color for default black to a user defined color, like garish lime. Just add easy presets to turn the filter off .

Just having a larger mini map would own though. maybe after all is said and done have some key combo on the main world view to temporarily enlarge the final f5 minimap with it's current settings. clicking on an area of said giant minimap would take one to that area of the map.

Cheers!
-Liq