Requests for new components (and features)

[Cammagno]

My lack of reply until now is simply due to lack of time. I wanted to a) see what others want as I tend to cater to the wishes of our users' first and b) wanted to be able to reply thoughtfully.

Of course, I was only a bit surprised because normally you and Ruff are quick to comment on suggestions for new features, so it was a bit strange that no answer at all for such a big amount of them

#1: I have been thinking about how to make the alerts regarding happiness and health easier to use. My initial thought was to add icons at the top of the screen (next to the event log button, actually) that would appear if any city is unhappy or if any city will become unhappy this turn. They would have to be different icons, and the second icon would disappear when you fixed the last city.
However, I like the idea of showing the minimum values for each as well. I could use a hover for it, but that's not as nice. Any thoughts on how to combine these?

Icon + text is good enough for me

#3: Yes, I like these a lot. I'm constantly selecting a city so I can hover over the FP/OU/WS to see how many C/U/B I have left to build. Perhaps we can find a better word than "Ok". Do we even need a word? Wouldn't the icon with no info after it be enough to tell you that you now need to build the super building?

I don't see any reason for a different word, IMHO a simple 8/8 (or what it is), maybe green colored, will be clear enough.

#4 and #6: I think for this I would show the values only when both are close. In the screenshot, you're not anywhere close to the land necessary for a victory. It seems a waste of space to show that for 200 turns. Close should mean "close to a victory" not "close to 1 out of 2 requirements for victory".

I agree... but maybe a more complex sistem will be implemented, to show them only if both are close or at least one of them is *very close*... to tell the player to work more in the "slow field".

#7: I'm a little hesitant about using these myself, mainly because in my games once I hit a certain point those icons will always be visible. Most every AI will trade Divine Right (no!), and my friends' enemies will trade gold (no!). But the main reason is that the scoreboard is getting HUGE.

Now, that's me. So I'm quite willing to add them for others to have available.

My proposal is to add to scoreboard everything we can, but enable by default only important things. It is so quickly to remove a column from the scoreboard when its info becomes unnecessary, that it is a pity to deny the possibility to have them when they are more useful.
A linked idea (already suggest, I think) will be to have two configuration boxes for scoreboard, "reduced" and "full", and a button in the main screen and/or a shortcut to altern these two views.
So one can keep the full view at the beginning of the game, then flip to the reduced view in advanced game, but with the possibility to quickly flip back to the full view when it's needed. If we implement this, I suggest to limit the reduced view vertically too, to a set (configurable) number of civs (the top ones, of course).

For 7-9, I wonder if there's an easy way on the F4 tabs to denote techs and resources you don't care to receive and that should be ignored. That would be extra cool. These ones would also heavily benefit from adding multiple scoreboard views with buttons for changing the view on-screen. Heck, maybe even a default-view-by-era setup?

Oh oh...

 

[dimon157]

It would be good to add whip advisor tab (for e.g. to F2).
Show:
*population cost and hummers overflow
*in how many turns whipping becomes available. Consider hammers adding and city growth.
*in how many turns city forget first, second etc. whip
For example,
you'll get +1 in 2 turns
you'll get +2 in 9 turns
and so on.

 

[sagji]

I have a high resolution widescreen display (2560x1600) but in the city view I still suffer from lack of space to display things properly, while having a lot of useless space.

Problem:
It is easy to have sufficient trade routes to need to scroll the list, while it is very very hard to fill the section for buildings.

Solutions:
Add an option to show a trade route total row.
Add an option to show increase the space for trade routes - say times 2, or user specified.

Problem:
The details of buildings gets clipped to the width of the panel, however I have columns of unnecessary tiles to the left of the BFC.

Solution:
Add an option for a wider left pane - probably on by default in wide screen.

Problem:
I can only see two rows of unit / building icons at the bottom, but there is a row of unnecessary tiles below the BFC. Also when I click on a building the list is repositioned so the buildings are the top line, though I am more likely to want to build a unit next rather than a wonder.

Solution:
Add an option for a taller lower pane - Ideally with sufficient rows to show everything, or with a user specified number of rows.

Problem:
Specialists are crowded into a small area, while the area for resources is never more than 1/3 full.

Solution:
Add an option for a taller Specialist area.

Problem:
Resource Icons are small, while there is a column of unnecessary tiles to the right of the BFC.

Solution:
Add an option for a wider right panel - probably on by default in wide screen, and might be the same option as the wider left panel.

Problem:
The popup for total production goes over the figures for the current production. Likewise the food bar isn't as informative as it might be, especially in starvation situations.

Solutions:
Add an option to show the accumulated and target production / food in the bar. So it reads 20/70 (3 turns)
When a city is starving, but still has food, show turns to population loss - "Starvation in 10 turns".
When a city is starving, and has no food, show target population - "Starve until population 10".

Additional thoughts:
A line for total commerce - above the "sliders", probably linked to the taller trade route option.

In the wider left panel add entries for "from commerce, other raw, and multipliers between the slider and the city total.

Highlighted building types. Sometimes it can be difficult to see which key buildings are present - usually finding out that you have already built 2 national wonders. Buildings are highlighted by type - say red for world wonders, orange for national wonders, blue for great buildings (i.e. built by great people), and white for other buildings.

 

[sagji]

By City indicators I mean the icons that appear at the top of the city in the map view.

For example there is no easy way to see if a city has an airport, nor if its capacity is unused. However it has sufficient space to show me all religions and corporations present. IT will show me my best science city but not the 2nd best, which may be important in a large empire.

Suggestions
Option to replace non-state non-holy city religion indicators with an indicater showing number of other religions present, or to omit.
Option to replace corporation indicators with an indicater showing number of corporation present, or to omit.

Option for airport indicator - 2 state present and present but used.

Option for enhanced high production indicator. Hammer + * for best, hammer for others. Based on hammers + building / wonder city specific bonuses, including OR. boundry are set by player for each era.
Same for money, and science.

Indicators for Land, Naval, and Air, unit producing cities - based mainly on dependant XP, but with a bonus for hammers for the unit type.

 

[EmperorFool]

@sagji - These are all great ideas. We'll have to hold off on most of them until I build in a way to install themes on-the-fly as all the panels are handled using themes. We'd also need NikNaks to draw new panels for the wider/taller areas. Otherwise, they all seem entirely doable.

Regarding the taller trade route area, I was planning to have that area resize to the number of rows necessary automatically with a button to collapse it entirely to show as many buildings as possible for those of us that play on a lower resolution.

Likewise the food bar isn't as informative as it might be, especially in starvation situations.

This is already in the latest version available in our code repository (see the download thread). The one thing it's missing is the target population which would be extremely difficult due to happiness effects based on population (WW and homesick anger) as well as choosing the tiles, though the latter could be done fairly easily.

In the wider left panel add entries for "from commerce, other raw, and multipliers between the slider and the city total.

I had planned to add science, gold, culture and espionage views to Raw Yields, but there isn't enough room normally for the buttons. This would show you the breakdowns you're seeking, but you'd have to switch views to see them.

 

[sagji]

Regarding the taller trade route area, I was planning to have that area resize to the number of rows necessary automatically with a button to collapse it entirely to show as many buildings as possible for those of us that play on a lower resolution.

For low res it would be useful to have a building filter, so you can see only national wonders, or only espionage buildings.

This is already in the latest version available in our code repository (see the download thread). The one thing it's missing is the target population which would be extremely difficult due to happiness effects based on population (WW and homesick anger) as well as choosing the tiles, though the latter could be done fairly easily.

It doesn't need to be very precise, after all the WW will also change depending on future events. I think it only needs to consider direct effects - loss of food consumed and food produced, it doesn't need to consider more tiles available from a border pop, or changes due to slavery expiring, buildings built, etc.

I had planned to add science, gold, culture and espionage views to Raw Yields, but there isn't enough room normally for the buttons. This would show you the breakdowns you're seeking, but you'd have to switch views to see them.

The lack of space was why I suggested it for the wider pane - or more precisely the extra space the wider panel would provide beside the sliders has an obvious use.

 

[Cybah]

what about this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=236497 ?

I'd like to see numbers behind the attitude icons (instead of the text which is showed on the screen at this thread).

 

[ruff_hi]

what about this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=236497 ?

I'd like to see numbers behind the attitude icons (instead of the text which is showed on the screen at this thread).

It's a pleasure for me to introduce here at CFC another SDK mod by Blacksun. AI Attude Unfold use SDK function int CvPlayerAI::AI_getAttitudeVal to show real attitude of AIs toward the player. This function exposed to Python and used in the scoreboard along with standard Attitude Types.

Note, it's not just a sum of visible "+" and "-" (as in BtS Foreign Advisor) but final AI feelings about you, including some hidden elements! (bold added)

This feature will not be added to BUG (BtS Unaltered Gameplay) because it displays information that is not available from unmodded BtS.

 

[obsolete]

I am not sure if this has been suggested yet, but what about a list that records what Great Person was popped by Who and When?

I read that some people can not keep track of this without writing it down on paper, haha. It does have it's uses, particularly if one pays attention to shrines built and gold ages that go off, etc.

 

[EmperorFool]

I am not sure if this has been suggested yet, but what about a list that records what Great Person was popped by Who and When?

This is a great idea. I'd love to go even further and have an event log that is filterable by various event types such as GP, war, GA, etc. My guess is that the event log is a processed view of the replay, but I don't know if that information is available during a game or from Python.

I do recall that Dresden's fix for the extra colors CTD was to go through the event log and remove non-standard colors, so this information must be available from the DLL.

 

[Dresden]

There is an individual event log kept for each player and those are separate from the global replay log. The thing you see with CTRL-Tab is the event log for your player. The replay log appears to be available through Python with various CyGame.getReplayMessage* functions, but the per-player event logs do not seem to be Python accessible which limits things somewhat.

 

[EmperorFool]

And the replay log messages are simply strings, correct? That means we'd have to parse them in each language--not fun. It would be better to have Autolog log events to a data format for use in a screen.

If we kept that data in the saved game (ideal from a coding standpoint), I wonder how long pickling it each turn (autosave) would take towards the end-game.

The other option is to store it in a file alongside the saved game. This would be very fast as we would just append a new "record" for each event to the end of the file--just like Autolog does now with text/HTML.

One great feature that this would allow is the ability to take the data file and generate an HTML version of it for any language. For example, the file would store "tech" "acquire" "the wheel"--each being unique number constants. The processor would turn that into English, French, etc. I know Cammagno would love this.

Alerum and I discussed this a while ago. I wanted to have a very detailed log kept of your entire empire that we could load into a Javascript page to allow replays over the web. I wanted this mostly so people could see the evolution of a single city for explaining things like an effective SE or city specialization. That would require much more data though: assignment of citizens/specialists, build queue, etc. I suppose this part could be yet a separate logging facility: CityLogger.

 

[Dresden]

Replay log messages have some extra data associated with them but you're right that at their heart they are mostly just text strings. Interesting ideas with the custom event record...

 

[EmperorFool]

Interesting ideas with the custom event record...

This relates to one of my earliest gripes with XML: the requirement for a root element makes appending to an XML document impossible. You have to first remove the closing root element tag, append your new record, and readd the closing document tag.

To do this through an XML API would require parsing the entire file, adding an element, and rewriting the whole thing. Yuck! So I'd probably go with some simple line-based approach, but of course that makes parsing it a little more complicated. I suppose I could open the file, seek back X chars from the end to remove the closing tag, write the new record, and add the closing tag. Or leave off the closing tag and add it when parsing the file in the tool.

</random-gripe>

Merry Christmas!

 

[alerum68]

What do y'all think about this:

When you use the Main Interface city cycle arrows it will make an overlay, similar to the one when a settler is selected, around the city. This will allow you to know the cities 'fat cross' for us with workers.

 

[Nishdog]

What do y'all think about this:

When you use the Main Interface city cycle arrows it will make an overlay, similar to the one when a settler is selected, around the city. This will allow you to know the cities 'fat cross' for us with workers.

I like it...I also made a suggestion regarding a Worker Advisor screen over at the SourceForge site. Not sure if it's doable, but I figure I'd ask

 

[r_rolo1]

A request that I'm not sure if it is possible to fulfill without messing up with the dll:

-WFYTA countdown. I HATE to need a sheet of paper next to the computer for that

 

[EmperorFool]

-WFYTA countdown. I HATE to need a sheet of paper next to the computer for that

Well, this information isn't displayed anywhere in the normal game, but we have added at least one piece of information like this (whip overflow) in the past. Is this a straight-up calculation, or does it depend on each AI (the counter, not the threshold)?

If each AI has a different countdown behavior, then I think it falls on the non-UG side of the fence. If it's merely a matter of static bookkeeping, perhaps we can add it. I'll take a look at the API to see if the info is even available without modifying the DLL. I doubt it is, though.

 

[ruff_hi]

Each AI has a different WFYTA threshold so actually displaying that information would but anti-BUG. However, I think it would be ok if we simply counted how many techs the player has traded to each AI and leave it up to the player to research the WFYTA limit.

 

[EmperorFool]

Yes, each AI has their own threshold, but if each AI counts down the same way, could we not display this counter in the same way we display the whip-anger countdown? So while we can't tell you that you are 2 techs away from reaching Boudica's threshold, can we tell you that you are 5 turns away from having her forget one of your traded techs?

The input information to this equation is the turn on which you traded each tech (known to the player) and the rate at which the AIs forget techs. My question is whether this latter information is deemed UG or not. We've avoided giving information from the XML files about individual leaders, but we have so far allowed displaying XML knowledge that is non-leader specific, i.e. only related to the core game rules, such as whip anger decay.