Requests for new components (and features)

[Willem]

Single tiles are marked by Sticky Notes (alt-s).

Well duh! But this new dot map feature is less clumsy, I don't need to type in a message everytime I place one. If we could use a similar feature for tile marking, then we'd only need to use colour coding. Plus the dot maps look better on the map, there'll be less clutter if we can use something similar for tile marking.

 

[Willem]

The city dot we use now is one of them. We can easily replace the numpad keys that you see if you turn on NumPad Help to show which keys to hit to move your units. There are more still that we can replace.

You've lost me here, how does the numpad keys tie into the dotmap feature?

One idea is to allow you to mark improvements. Another is to allow you to mark battle plans, sentry points, rally points, blockade points, etc. The problem is that there are approximately 20 icons we can replace, but many more ideas for what we'd like to use. So we have to spend some time discussing all the possibilities and then prioritizing them.

Wow, sounds like a pretty elaborate scheme. But if you have 20 icons that can be colour coded then your possibilites are pretty broad. If you had 1 icon to represent a certain aspect for the marker, then the player could just select different colours to represent various aspects of that same icon. For instance with what I was thinking of, my irrigation markers could be in green, Preserve markers could be Blue, while Lumbermills could be yellow. So I'd have three distinct markers for my tile improvements using just 1 icon. That's still leaves 19 other icons to be used for other things, like strategy.

 

[EmperorFool]

Yeah, I skipped some background. The tile marker used for the city in the BFC in the dotmap is one icon in a set of 28 or so that we can alter. Think of them as an alphabet. If we don't need Q, we could replace it with a star for our own use. Civ uses a few that we shouldn't replace, like the river placement tool for the WorldBuilder, and a few others that are important to the game.

The numpad keys each have their own icon in this set. You can see them if you turn on Numpad Help in the normal Options screen. These are drawn using the same scheme as the city dot in BUG's dotmap. I doubt any BUG players would miss those numpad help icons, so we have 8 right there that we can use.

Yes, we could use colors to denote improvement type, but then for SGs each player would have to remember the other players' schemes. I'd prefer to have actual icons representing a lumbermill, "prechop this forest", and future rally point. But since we're limited by Civ, we may have to go the color-coding route for some as you said.

 

[Willem]

Wow, just when I thought things couldn't get better! I love being able to see the number of cities in my scoreboard BTW, it really helps when trying to keep up with the other civs. I just had a rather hectic time keeping up to the Dutch in my current game, which was only possible by having that info available. I'm the largest civ now though.

 

[EmperorFool]

I just had a rather hectic time keeping up to the Dutch in my current game.

Well, it has been said that you are your own strongest competition.

 

[Willem]

Well, it has been said that you are your own strongest competition.

Yeah, and I'm still my toughest challenge in the game. We're neck and neck power wise but he has a slight lead in tech. I guess his Financial trait is really paying off this time. I'm playing as Isabella.

BTW, I'm still hoping that you incorporate johny smith's screens into the BUG mod. In particular the city screens that only shows the icons for religions/corporations that you've actually founded. The thread for it is here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=260697

His religion/corporation screen isn't a problem to use with BUG but the city screen conflicts. I'd like to do some modding with Corporations but I'm limited as long as the game shows all the icons right from the start. I've been able to merge the applicable screen code from Crossroads of the World, which gives me room for 4 more Corporations, but the GameFont.tga actually has room for 11 more Corps. If only the icons for founded Corps showed up in the city screen then I'd be able to max them out in my game. I believe he sent you a copy of the screen file he uses quite awhile ago but nothing has come of it so far.

 

[EmperorFool]

I do remember that somewhat. Thanks for reposting the link. When I get a chance, I'll take a look at adding it as it should be fairly easy to do.

 

[Willem]

He actually posted a version that worked with BUG before 3.5 and I believe he also sent you a copy. Or at least brought your attention to it. I was using it for awhile but it no longer worked as of 3.5, and he didn't want to update it. I'm nor sure if it's still online or not but he pretty much did your work for you. It will just be a question of updating it to the latest BUG version.

PS: I just had a look at the thread. He posted a working version on the second page, on the second to last post. It's still downloadable too.

 

[zulu9812]

I've posted this on the Sourceforge Feature Tracker, but I figure that there's no harm in posting it here as well.

For the unit auto-naming feature:

[/B]I think an excellent addition to the BUG's unit naming feature would be a
tag, similar to the ^rc^ tag that would call a random name from a
designated list.

The reason for this is that I like to call my ships by unique names, rather
than a numerical identifier. Additionally, I tend to assign masculine names
to warships and feminine names to transports. For example:

Masculine names (Trireme, Frigate)
- Dauntless, Aggressor, Excelsior, etc.
Feminine names (Galley, Galleon)
- Queen Anne, Godiva, Victoria, etc.

Obviously, this function would require the user to be able to customise the
tag to point to a text file where those names can be randomly called from.
Perhaps something like ^x^ where x is the file name containing the names,
e.g. ^WarshipNames^.

This feature could similarly be used for historical names for infantry
units, knights, artillery, and so on. I really think that this could open
up unit auto-naming to a wider user base who would enjoy this feature, and
it would be a lot more user-friendly, customisable and flexible than going
through the UnitInfos xml file.

Any thoughts? Is this idea a go-er?

 

[EmperorFool]

I like the idea of unique name lists. Probably the trickiest part is making sure the random choices don't repeat until you run out of names. It's not necessarily difficult to do that, but it will require tracking all the names that haven't been used yet. I don't think that should take much time to process or store, so I think this is entirely doable.

I'd go with a tag like ^n:<filename>^. There must be a prefix to say "use a name list file."

BTW, posting to both places is the best way to get it discussed and addressed. The SF.net tracker ensures that we won't forget about your idea, and this thread lets everyone discuss it.

 

[mystyfly]

Probably the trickiest part is making sure the random choices don't repeat until you run out of names.

If I may make a suggestion here: What about generating a random number sequence, calculated by a simple (linear) RNG? I have done a paper on RNGs, this isn't hard to do. You could use another RNG to pick parameters for the RNG while ensuring the sequence reaches a certain lenght (which is preferabely just as much as you have names ). If the parameters are picked correctly, every number up to one of the parameters is picked (a permutation) so there is a number for every name.
A good idea is to read line XX of file YY and use the name on that line, where XX is the "random" number and YY the file where the names are stored.

(I have no knowledge of xml or other programming languages used in civ so I can't be too specific. If you like more info, EF, PM me.)

 

[EmperorFool]

I'm familiar with RNGs in general and a few algorithms for creating them, but not the one you're proposing. It sounds like I'd need to store a number for each item in the list; is that right? If so, that's the same requirement that I'd need using a normal RNG (or the game's built-in one).

What I was going to do is create a list from 1 to N (number of names in the list) and shuffle it using an RNG. Then I'd store that list and pull values from it. Once exhausted, I'd create a new list and start over. This ensures that I use every name before repeating.

Could you give me a little more detail on your proposal? My goal would be to lessen the data requirements because this data needs to be pickled (converted to a string) every time the game is [auto]saved (every turn for me). However, even a list of 100 names would probably not be noticeable by humans, so I bet that I'm worrying about nothing.

 

[Willem]

There's another thing that seems to have been left by the wayside. Awhile ago there was some discussion about having the chance for a cultural revolt displayed on the city bar. It sounded like it was certainly doable but it seems the idea was dropped for some reason. In my current game I ran into a situation where a city of mine was in danger of flipping to the Ethiopians, and I had to place units one by one into the city, then open up the city screen each time to see if that last unit I just added was enough to prevent it from revolting again. Then after I had started adding my own culture in the formerly Egyptian city, I had to move the extra units out again one by one, again checking the city screen each time. The whole process was rather a pain and could have been made much easier if I had been able to see the percentage on the city bar itself.

 

[EmperorFool]

It's still a great idea. Here's the problem: there are only 24 hours in each day, and I cannot work on BUG all of them. I have to prioritize features and other activities. I can say that posting these ideas to the SF.net tracker is the best way to ensure they don't "fall by the wayside" and instead can get prioritized quicker.

 

[zulu9812]

There's another thing that seems to have been left by the wayside. Awhile ago there was some discussion about having the chance for a cultural revolt displayed on the city bar. It sounded like it was certainly doable but it seems the idea was dropped for some reason. In my current game I ran into a situation where a city of mine was in danger of flipping to the Ethiopians, and I had to place units one by one into the city, then open up the city screen each time to see if that last unit I just added was enough to prevent it from revolting again. Then after I had started adding my own culture in the formerly Egyptian city, I had to move the extra units out again one by one, again checking the city screen each time. The whole process was rather a pain and could have been made much easier if I had been able to see the percentage on the city bar itself.

To be honest, if such a feature were available, I would probably choose not to use it. I prefer a role-play approach to running my empire, rather than a numbers-game.

 

[Perplexity]

Hi, I request the following:

In trade screen, show the cost of techs available for trading on both sides. In beakers and/or turns of research.

It's sometimes annoying to have to mouse over each tech to get that info when you're mostly interested in getting the most expensive / giving up the least expensive.

Thanks!

 

[mystyfly]

@Perplexity:

How would you do that? Add a 3-4-digit number somewhere near every tech? Don't you think that would be... messy?

Also, beaker cost isn't exactly what you have to pay to the AI. A tech that is known to few civs is worth more (and it is quite a factor) and knowing prereqs of a tech lowers the beaker cost of a tech (the one displayed when mousing over a tech IIRC) so it easily gets confusing.

How did you have this in mind exactly?

 

[EmperorFool]

Even if we could come up with something, the trade screen is not moddable. It's in the EXE game engine.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, related to this.....

It would be interesting to be able to see in the F4 what are the techs that we can know the AI has, adding to the "can research" and "will/won't/can't trade". The intel is there, but sometimes it is not easy to extract if you're not a MMer extraordinaire.

It would even better if you could costumize it in game, for those ocasions you know that the enemy has a tech, but it doesn't show in F4 ( like a AI having knights when you don't have MC and Monarchy : you know that they have Guilds, but you won't be able to deduce that from there )

P.S In a completely unrelated matter: would be nice to be able to ,in some way, sort or filter the buildings in a city in the city screen ( like military, culture, wonders... well, you got the point ). It becomes increasingly hard in the late game, to see if a city has a certain building or not ( besides using BUG F1 , but you can't MM from F1 )

 

[EmperorFool]

It would be interesting to be able to see in the F4 what are the techs that we can know the AI has, adding to the "can research" and "will/won't/can't trade". The intel is there, but sometimes it is not easy to extract if you're not a MMer extraordinaire.

How do you know they have the tech? If you mean because you see a unit that requires that tech (your Knight example) or an improvement, then I understand. If there's some other method you're thinking of, please explain.

One thing about making that guess from units is that the unit could be gifted. Sure, the AI isn't programmed to do that, but it could be. I would be hesitant to have BUG make this determination, however I have toyed with your idea of letting the user pick techs (and resources) they believe the AI has. It would be neat, but it would require a good bit of coding on our part to make it happen.

. . . sort or filter the buildings in a city in the city screen ( like military, culture, wonders).

Yes, this would be a great feature. We could add buttons like the Raw Yields buttons (where the trade routes are) to do the filtering. What exactly is the list of filters?

• Food (Lighthouse, Supermarket)
• Production (Forge, Factory, Power, Laboratory, Drydock, IW, HE)
• Commerce (Palace, Harbor, Airport)
• Gold (Market, Grocer, Bank, Mint, WS)
• Research (Library, University, Observatory, Laboratory, OU, TGL)
• Culture (Theatre, nearly everything)
• Espionage (Courthouse, Jail, Security Bureau, Intelligence Agency, SY)
• Military (Barracks, Stable, Drydock, HE, MA)

That's eight categories so far. Any others? The RY bar has eight (seven now, one to be added) icons that just fit. We'll also need an All button to unfilter the list. I hope they fit!