Modal Pop-up Dialogs

[Aesir Rising]

One UI feature of Civ IV was its modal pop-ups. I would like to see this changed in Civ V so that only those dialogs that require immediate action are modal.

Many of these pop-ups prevent map zooming and scrolling, selection of units and cities, and map layer selections (e.g., resource display toggle).

Examples from Civ IV
Research pop-up: Presented with a list of available research options and a big picture option allowing a view of the research tree. However, you can't change the map view to see what resources are nearby, inspect units (friend or foe), current civ selections, and the civilopedia (among other things). You are prevented from seeing information that may be relevant to your research choice.

Talking head dialogs: You can't look at any information relevant to your standing with any civs, including the one that is in your face at the moment.

Build orders: You can look at a given city to see information about what has already been built. You can look at information relating to your other cities, but I don't think you can get a civilopedia article by selecting any of the units or structures pertaining to a city while the city build order pop-up is present. You can't inspect units outside of cities to see what's there, or what is heading your way.

There are other examples. As a general rule, and there may be exception cases (though I can't think of any), I don't think parts of the UI and reference/data should be blocked off when being asked for a next action. At the end of a turn, when all other actions are completed, those pop-ups should make themselves known and perhaps block the End of Turn button/keys so that you don't inadvertently skip a dialog. But during the turn, and while the pop-up is prompting for information, you should be able to interact with the game so that you can make informed decisions.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

A few points:

1. Some of these are in fact very annoying, and pointlessly so.
2. I distinctly recall being able to scroll around the map when the popup for research shows up. You can also access the civilopedia by right-clicking on the rounded-square icon for the technology; within the Science Advisor screen, right-clicking on the box for the tech in question does the same thing.
3. You can in fact show your diplomatic stance with respect to the leader you are currently talking to if you hold your cursor over their leaderhead or the bar where it gives you their name, status, and civics. However, it is very annoying (and pointlessly so) that you cannot consult the Foreign Advisor during negotiations. If you can't access the Civilopedia while the AI is making a demand (I can't recall whether or not that's the case), then I suspect the dev team wanted us to treat demands as ultimatums (which they aren't but whatever) where our fear of going to war with this pushy AI would be balanced by how loth we are, at a gut level, to part with our precious (whatever).
4. You can access the Civilopedia from the Build Orders dialog by right-clicking on the icon for the building/unit/wonder/whatever that you're interested in. From there, you can access any part of the Civilopedia. This is true of most instances where you are faced with those rounded-square boxes.

 

[mjs0]

The interface in Civ4 was erratic at best in its handling of modal popups.

There were several cases (such as when an AI attempted to start a conversation with you and the diplomacy popup appeared) where the appearance of the popup prevented any interaction with the background map or interface buttons but...it was still possible to bring up some advisor screens by using your function keys. Of course this led to further annoyances whereby hitting esc in an attempt to dismiss the advisor screen actually dismissed the now hidden diplomacy dialog.
For some reason I do this a lot, I guess I'm over the age where I can learn new tricks.

 

[LDiCesare]

The only one I'm really annoyed with is the diplomacy. The talking head dialogs are bad because, contrary to tech or build orders, you can't go back and change what you decided (and you can't see the map during that time). I don't remember if quests with choices suffer from the same problem.
It would be good indeed if you could postpone all those screens but have to "answer" them before ending your turn.