New Mana Bar

[xienwolf]

Meant for the team mostly, but feedback from others would be MUCH appreciated. My ideas tend not to always be completely thought out, and always exclude MP (though in this case it shouldn't matter).


In the screenshots where we can see the new mana bar (mana cube?) it has 1 "free slot" sitting around.

Now, that might be intended for Metamagic later on, but I would humble BEG that for now, could you find a way to put Raw Mana in that spot?

Sometimes your cultural borders expand, and you encompass a new mana source. Or after Rites of Oghma you might not know how many to look for. Or if a worker destroys a node....


Point is, I'd dearly love to have an indicator for what mana I have in my borders that I am not making proper use of

 

[Nikis-Knight]

It would be useful, but more complicated, I think, since resources aren't counted as yours unless they are improved. But if anyone can do it...

 

[Kael]

That is a cool idea, unfortunatly as Nikis-Knight said its easy to pull the amount of bonuses you have linked (because the game tracks that). To do what you suggest I would need to write a fucntion to go through all the plots and see how many belong to you and have unimproved mana on them. It wouldn't be hard to write but I worry about the processor cost of cycling through that frequently.

 

[xienwolf]

Actually, could you recode raw mana to provide a resource (which just happens to be worthless) without any improvement or connecting road?

I know that corn will count for me without having a road connecting them, just having them in cultural borders and properly improved, can raw mana be the same (or like crabs/fish/whales... but coast might count as connection)


Edit: I guess it would also have to be set so you cannot trade raw mana, just to keep the AI from trying to offer it to you.

 

[Kael]

Actually, could you recode raw mana to provide a resource (which just happens to be worthless) without any improvement or connecting road?

I know that corn will count for me without having a road connecting them, just having them in cultural borders and properly improved, can raw mana be the same (or like crabs/fish/whales... but coast might count as connection)


Edit: I guess it would also have to be set so you cannot trade raw mana, just to keep the AI from trying to offer it to you.

Even in that case it wouldn't show up on the display until a road was built to it. Which wouldn't accomplish most of your goal.

But either way be careful about implementing system to get results that cause further problems. As you noted adding it as collectable so it shows up as a resource, would require an ai block to keep it from being traded. You would also need worker ai adjustments to keep them from going out and building roads to raw mana instead of more valuable resources. After that tinkering (and new issues those changes bring up) you wonder if its worth the effect.

 

[Calavente]

doesn't the world view with ressource pointers "on" already classify the ressources as being in an empire or not, even if the ressource is neither improved nor linked through road ???
does that mean the activation of "ressource pointer" does a complet check of each tiles in the empires ? or that it only calls values that are already gathered somewhere?

won't it be possible just to run a short check : "count number of raw mana with [civ color] ring" ??

(when you discover gunpowder (or iron, copper, horses) enabling tech, even if not linked nor improved, you have a prompting saying 'we have a discovered gunpowder near XXXXX city'.... same info... it seems to me that the game doesn't check all tiles, merely grab the information that is hidden somewhere : "gunpowder is in XY tiles, owned by 'CiV' empire, near XXXXX city")

or if none of thise before are true : work in reverse : do a check of all raw mana ressources (the info is somewhere) and check each plot with regard to cultural borders...

 

[Kael]

doesn't the world view with ressource pointers "on" already classify the ressources as being in an empire or not, even if the ressource is neither improved nor linked through road ???
does that mean the activation of "ressource pointer" does a complet check of each tiles in the empires ? or that it only calls values that are already gathered somewhere?

It does a check of every plot on the map.

won't it be possible just to run a short check : "count number of raw mana with [civ color] ring" ??

(when you discover gunpowder (or iron, copper, horses) enabling tech, even if not linked nor improved, you have a prompting saying 'we have a discovered gunpowder near XXXXX city'.... same info... it seems to me that the game doesn't check all tiles, merely grab the information that is hidden somewhere : "gunpowder is in XY tiles, owned by 'CiV' empire, near XXXXX city")

It does a check of every plot of the map, changing the display on each that the player new tech allows him to see.

or if none of thise before are true : work in reverse : do a check of all raw mana ressources (the info is somewhere) and check each plot with regard to cultural borders...

There is no index of bonuses.

Keep in mind Im not saying it cant be done, scrolling through all the plots is the best way to do it. Im just saying that attaching a function that scrolls through all the plots to the primary display (which is refreshes constantly) is a bad idea. If it was a big deal we could get fancy with it, write a seperate refresh interval just for this function, store a value for this amount and only refresh that number once each turn, etc. But thats probably to much for this request.

 

[onedreamer]

well, for me Mana is a very important resource, and I don't expand randomly, so it seems very unlikely at least to me that my borders encompass new mana sources without me realizing it. Anyways if you press F11 you can easily see which raw mana are colored with your civ color. You can even select the type of resources mana belongs to (I don't remember if strategic, luxurius or what), and perhaps an easier implementation could be to create a new resource type (if possible) that includes only Mana.

 

[xienwolf]

Aye, it does seem a bit much of a bother, but I do not notice workers building roads out to Corn, and it does show up in your city display without a road. So I do not think that those 2 would be issues. The rest, and anything we haven't thought of yet... probably.

@onedreamer: Yes, F11 is nice, but when you play on a Huge map, there are so many hundreds of resources that it is very easy to miss spotting 1 mana (especially if your color matches closely to a neighbor, or neutral/unowned)

 

[Grillick]

The only way a resource will show up in your resource box without a road is if it is on a river. Rivers count as a Route, inside your borders, and outside if you have Sailing.

 

[xienwolf]

Dang, you are right, it was a river that was connecting me I had thought I set up worldbuilder to ensure that it was just inside the cultural borders, but I wasn't watching the water

 

[onedreamer]

@onedreamer: Yes, F11 is nice, but when you play on a Huge map, there are so many hundreds of resources that it is very easy to miss spotting 1 mana (especially if your color matches closely to a neighbor, or neutral/unowned)

Did you read the part where I said to choose the resource type Mana belongs to ? You can exclude a lot of resources that way, and I even proposed to make a resource type for Mana only.

 

[xienwolf]

Never noticed that functionality, almost mentioned how that'd make it nicer. Gotta clear the sleep out of my eyes and read closer

 

[Dora190]

For my tuppeny worth. Can you put the mana bar on the opposite side of the screen to the relations list?

Previously the two overlapped and made reading either difficult.

 

[xienwolf]

It already is, and it is more compact (now 3 columns, just below the science/culture/espionage sliders)

 

[zxcvbnm]

It looks like it's going to be in the upper right corner

 

[Dora190]

It already is, and it is more compact (now 3 columns, just below the science/culture/espionage sliders)

Given in BTS you can have countries spawning later in the game, I've had it go to 28!! will the mana bar still clear the countries list? There is a theoretical limit of 38 countries.

 

[zxcvbnm]

mana bar here
000
000
000
000
000
000








[TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB]civ1
[TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB]civ2
[TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB]civ3
[TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB][TAB]civs list here

I don't think those are going to overlap.

You would need them to fill the whole game screen

 

[Dora190]

I thought you said top right?

 

[zxcvbnm]

Sorry, top left of course