Need feedback on "Lock Specialist" feature

[balparmak]

This feature was added back in 2.2.1, if you haven't tried it, it allows you to "lock" important specialist slots without taking full manual control, so the city governor still manages the other slots. I've had some reports of glitches on discord, but haven't received a proper bug report with saves&logs yet. So how it's working for the forum people, is it glitchy, if so how much, and most importantly, which version (EUI/nonEUI) are you using? I completed two games since 2.2.1 (EUI), had it glitch only once and it was easily cleared by taking/giving back manual control. A "reset specialists" button to easily clear glitches will be available hopefully in the next version, but I need more information before I can stop glitches from happening.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

I haven't encountered anything yet, but I'll try to take a closer look from now on.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

A minor issue is that when you use the Lock Specialist Checkbox is that it removes what Specialists are already locked.

 

[Solic]

Haven't been using it, since it's not compatible with Improved City View at the moment to my knowledge.

 

[looorg]

Can't say I have noticed any issues. I have not been playing that much during the last couple of weeks tho due to the heat. But I think most of the issues with locked specialists now have to do with them being ejected from their tiles due to enemy units, as the enemies appear to have a great range of influence before and they seem to not really snap back correctly to their previous positions when the enemy is gone. Is it that?

 

[usadefcon1]

Is this available for Improved City View?

 

[balparmak]

Can't say I have noticed any issues. I have not been playing that much during the last couple of weeks tho due to the heat. But I think most of the issues with locked specialists now have to do with them being ejected from their tiles due to enemy units, as the enemies appear to have a great range of influence before and they seem to not really snap back correctly to their previous positions when the enemy is gone. Is it that?

You're talking about locked tiles/citizens though, but I can see how it could get confusing. Locked specialists are the ones employed by buildings (e.g. guilds)

@usadefcon1 @Solic Yeah I haven't got around to implement that in ICV, hopefully I'll do that soon.

 

[pineappledan]

Sometimes specialists will switch between locked and unlocked, but never taken out of the slot. Happens to me all the time. The problem disappears if you activate manual specialist control

 

[balparmak]

Sometimes specialists will switch between locked and unlocked, but never taken out of the slot. Happens to me all the time. The problem disappears if you activate manual specialist control

That may not be a bug. You can't empty a slot that the city governor wants to work, but you can lock it so that it won't be affected.

 

[pineappledan]

That may not be a bug. You can't empty a slot that the city governor wants to work, but you can lock it so that it won't be affected.

If that’s the case then manual specialist control should be the default or something. Having to tick an extra box in another part of the UI before I can unslot specialists is bad.

 

[Rekk]

That may not be a bug. You can't empty a slot that the city governor wants to work, but you can lock it so that it won't be affected.

You can do so with tiles.

 

[balparmak]

You can do so with tiles.

Fair enough. Do you know whether a tile remains unassigned after the city governor is updated, like after a citizen birth? I'm not 100% sure but my guess is it doesn't, because I remember changing city-focus could fill those tiles again. I can implement it similarly for specialists, but as with tiles, the emptied slots could get re-filled after governor updates.

If that’s the case then manual specialist control should be the default or something. Having to tick an extra box in another part of the UI before I can unslot specialists is bad.

My first iteration was like that, left-click worked exactly as before and right-click locked/unlocked specialists (instead of opening civpedia). That was inconsistent with tile-locking though as there isn't a left/right click differentiation there. This also kept the old behavior of left-click automatically giving manual control, similarly inconsistent since you don't unassign all tiles when you click on one. I think that's worse than the current version as having to re-assign all specialists manually was pretty tedious. I can think of several workarounds:

a) Tile behavior: Left-clicking on a (governor) filled specialist slot removes the citizen, making it a laborer/unemployed. But this wouldn't be a solid "don't work this slot" command and the governor could re-fill it upon update. Left-click on an empty slot fills&locks it. I'm leaning towards this.

b) Left-clicking on a "locked" specialist removes the citizen and enables manual control without dismissing all other specialists. This would assure the unslotted specialist wouldn't get worked, but it turns manual control on so you'd have to update your specialists manually.

c) Left-click works exactly like before, specialists are locked with ctrl+click, or right click or whatever. Obviously I'm not a fan of this, it's inconsistent with tile-locking behavior and hides the feature deep.

 

[Workerspam]

This feature was added back in 2.2.1, if you haven't tried it, it allows you to "lock" important specialist slots without taking full manual control, so the city governor still manages the other slots. I've had some reports of glitches on discord, but haven't received a proper bug report with saves&logs yet. So how it's working for the forum people, is it glitchy, if so how much, and most importantly, which version (EUI/nonEUI) are you using? I completed two games since 2.2.1 (EUI), had it glitch only once and it was easily cleared by taking/giving back manual control. A "reset specialists" button to easily clear glitches will be available hopefully in the next version, but I need more information before I can stop glitches from happening.

I encountered a bug in a few games. I would lock one slot in a guild (i.e. 1 Writer locked, the second empty). Several turns later I would attempt to lock the second slot but could not. I could unlock the first and relock it in the second spot but was unable to lock both slots. Later in the game the issue went away; not sure if it was after a Save/Load. This was on the current version with EUI and occurred in several games though I don't believe I've seen it in the past few games. If it happens again in a replicable way I'll try to post a save game to github.

 

[balparmak]

@Workerspam Thanks for reporting! I had a similar thing happen, was able to clear it after enabling and disabling manual control. The next version will have some backend changes, hopefully it'll be less glitchy

 

[DeAnno]

I tend to find manual control more intuitive but that's not a problem per-say.

 

[abulafia77]

i haven't got around to implement that in ICV, hopefully I'll do that soon.

I would love that feature but don't want to give up ICV - so pretty pleeeease get that implemented!

 

[azum4roll]

I tend to find manual control more intuitive but that's not a problem per-say.

I often forget to update the worked specialists on new buildings/new population so the citizens sometimes work useless tiles. With this function it should at least place the new citizen on a specialist instead of a 3 food farm.

 

[DeAnno]

Something in the new version really messed up locking for me, I think it's trying to remember too much and preventing me from locking tiles in too many cases. I was playing Way of Renewal and it just refuses to lock on a jungle sometimes. TBH I would prefer if it never ever remembered anything and 100% always let you lock tiles, and never ever had the mode where you click on a tile and get an unlocked citizen (which will always just reassign itself according to its own wishes at the start of your next turn)

 

[balparmak]

Thanks for the feedback but this only affects specialist slots. Nothing I've done should change tile locking behavior, but I'll check whether I messed up the code somewhere

 

[DeAnno]

Nothing I've done should change tile locking behavior, but I'll check whether I messed up the code somewhere

I think there may be new code due to the new way enemy units blocking tiles works, to make the blocked tiles remember they're supposed to be locked, and my suspicion now is something is going very wrong in there. The specialist locking code probably has nothing to do with it, but maybe there was some issue of this and the new thing poking around at locking at once?