Requests for new components (and features)

[EmperorFool]

City Defense = max(Building Defense, Cultural Defense) + Player's City Defense.

Building Defense is 50% for Walls and 50% for Castle.

Cultural Defense = 20% * Culture Level [0, 5]

Player's City Defense is currently only 25% for Chichen Itza.

If you see 60% or 80%, you know the city is at level 3 or 4. For 100% the city could be at level 5 or have Walls and a Castle. Of course, if the city defenses have been bombarded at all, the value you see on the map will not be the city's actual value.

 

[phungus420]

3 or 4. At least level 5. That's not exact, and is really stretching. Giving the player what Obsolete is asking for is simply not UG. And I don't even like the gameplay alteration in the first place, which is more important to me, because I don't care if it's UG or not. The only way you can know is if you have enough espionage points against the player to see into the city, and I'm fine with BUG giving the cultural information here.

Also what's next? Are we going to have a new window that gives the best cultural estimates of all players? I mean maybe you go and raze a city from one player only to find that another player is close to winning a cultural victory, but the interface doesn't tell you that, so BUG should make a new rule where we can see the culture of all player cities. Might as well if this rule change is made here.

And again I wouldn't be so vocal about it, except I hate the idea behind this rule change in general. And want to nuke it from orbit before it develops any further.

 

[ruff_hi]

I guess I am not explaining myself well enough. We both agree that showing a '4th' city is ok if you have enough espionage. What I am suggesting is that we also show the number of cities that are in the 'influential' level. You can work that out by looking at their defensive modifier ... information that you can pick off the map.

<CultureLevelInfo>
	<Type>CULTURELEVEL_INFLUENTIAL</Type>
	<Description>TXT_KEY_CULTURELEVEL_INFLUENTIAL</Description>
	[COLOR="Red"]<iCityDefenseModifier>80</iCityDefenseModifier>[/COLOR]
	<SpeedThresholds>
		<SpeedThreshold>
			<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_MARATHON</GameSpeedType>
			<iThreshold>15000</iThreshold>
		</SpeedThreshold>
		<SpeedThreshold>
			<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_EPIC</GameSpeedType>
			<iThreshold>7500</iThreshold>
		</SpeedThreshold>
		<SpeedThreshold>
			<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_NORMAL</GameSpeedType>
			<iThreshold>5000</iThreshold>
		</SpeedThreshold>
		<SpeedThreshold>
			<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_QUICK</GameSpeedType>
			<iThreshold>2500</iThreshold>
		</SpeedThreshold>
	</SpeedThresholds>
</CultureLevelInfo>

Edit: I added the above before I saw the above 2 posts.

 

[ruff_hi]

If you hate this idea - what about this one?

I have been thinking that we should expand the foreign advisor to include information that you can pick off the map (defense level, religions, anger, unhealthy) as well as buildings that you can see in the city. Also add stuff that you can pick off the city screen if you can investigate the city.

 

[phungus420]

I have been thinking that we should expand the foreign advisor to include information that you can pick off the map (defense level, religions, anger, unhealthy) as well as buildings that you can see in the city. Also add stuff that you can pick off the city screen if you can investigate the city.

That all makes sense, and could be done reasonably and stay UG. The component idea I am against is creating a sort of warning system for impending cultural victories for the player (which is what Obsolete's request is all about), especially since the rational and justifications for how they could be implemented seemed downright gamey to me. That's what I'm trying to get across.

 

[naterator]

Hi everyone, thanks for all the hard work, you really have done us (and firaxis) a huge service.

Just a couple suggestions:

1. In the popup window asking what you would like to build next, it'd be great to have the city bar hover info (BULL) appear when you hover over the "go to city" icon (like in the domestic advisor). Not sure if the popup itself screws that up since, as was said earlier, alt-click won't work with production orders from there, but if it's possible it'd save me alot of trips into the city screen.

2. It would be nice to get the yellow borders back on forced specialists, so as to be able to spot them easier. (so i know at a glance if the governor is an idiot or if i am.)

 

[ruff_hi]

2. It would be nice to get the yellow borders back on forced specialists, so as to be able to spot them easier. (so i know at a glance if the governor is an idiot or if i am.)

You can get the forced borders - just disable all of the BUG methods of showing specialists (IIRC).

 

[ruff_hi]

And another thought ... there are things in BUG that require the player to know some stuff (eg the espionage equations for showing research) and perform some simple calculations (the amount of culture an AI city is generating). We could put in some form of 'reveal' indicator ...

1. All BUG stuff off
2. See Stuff already shown on other screens
3. #2 plus see simple calculations
4. #3 plus complex stuff

Then we have BUG decide what level of player the human is and set the 'reveal' level accordingly.

Play Settler level, reveal level is #1. Have 10,000 posts on CFC, reveal level is #4. Win at Emporer, reveal level is #3.

 

[naterator]

You can get the forced borders - just disable all of the BUG methods of showing specialists (IIRC).

Thanks, i like the BUG way better (as usual), so i'll accept the tradeoff. I guess it makes sense that you can't use the 2 together since it groups the specialists, so no individual borders left to highlight.

 

[DrakenKin]

A couple of requests :

1)

I don't know if this enters into BUG's "mission" or scope, but it would be nice if you could make tactical nukes and troops on other islands/continents with airports follow the "goto" (SHIFT+right click) command when a unit is produced.

Selecting all cities and setting up a waypoint so all produced units go to the same place is vital in coordinating war efforts, especially on a big scale. But the game does not make special units like tactical nukes or flying units use their special ability to travel to said place. The game also doesn't understand how to use airports to move troops, which is especially important for cities on different islands or continents.

Adding this feature would remove some of the hassle of warfare (how many of us dislike warfare because of the pain of moving troops around?) and improve the general game experience.

2)

I discovered the show hidden attitude mod recently, and I think it is really good and should be part of BUG.

 

[ruff_hi]

'2) show hidden attitudes' is definitely altered game play and will not be part of BUG.

 

[bestbrian]

I'll throw my two cents in just to say that I agree with Phungus about the "Culture Alarm", but a list of cities with Influential Culture (if Espionage allows) shouldn't be UG.

I'd also like to point out that Naterator's sig is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

PS: And can we please lose the santa hats from the smilies already?

 

[EmperorFool]

3 or 4. At least level 5. That's not exact, and is really stretching.

I was just explaining how you can tell the culture level in some cases, but for clarification . . .

It's not an ambiguous "3 or 4". It's 3 for 60% and 4 for 80%. I thought that was pretty clear.

It's 5 (Legendary) or Walls + Castle. In the former, it's too late (or do you have to have 3 Legendary cities under your control at the same time?).

BTW, I think the idea is mostly UG except using Espionage.

1. In the popup window asking what you would like to build next, it'd be great to have the city bar hover info (BULL) appear when you hover over the "go to city" icon (like in the domestic advisor).

That's already in the next release of BULL, so good suggestion.

2. It would be nice to get the yellow borders back on forced specialists.

I could add this information to the BULL hover I think so at least you can tell when using the BUG views. As well, the Stacked Specialists should show it since they aren't grouped, but it might be hard to see them when you have a lot of specs (Caste System).

I discovered the show hidden attitude mod recently, and I think it is really good and should be part of BUG.

I'll add this once DaveMcW makes the change I requested: hide the random- and rank-based modifiers which are not UG.

 

[ruff_hi]

BTW, I think the idea is mostly UG except using Espionage.

Too many abbreviations

Are you saying that providing a count of the cities that you can see that are at 80% cultural defense level is altered game play or is NOT altered game play? To be honest, even if we did show the count, it would not be very helpful for if the AI is running a high cultural slider, then it will have a fair number over the 2,500 (quick) level.

 

[EmperorFool]

No, I'm saying that Obsolete's original request to show more cities and for all AIs is mostly UG. Showing the count that you can tell by looking at the map and using Espionage is fine, though not very useful I don't think.

 

[civ_king]

I'll throw my two cents in just to say that I agree with Phungus about the "Culture Alarm", but a list of cities with Influential Culture (if Espionage allows) shouldn't be UG.

I'd also like to point out that Naterator's sig is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

PS: And can we please lose the santa hats from the smilies already?

what does it say

 

[bestbrian]

what does it say

Not to get terribly off topic, but it's from this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gpjk_MaCGM

Pure genius.

 

[ruff_hi]

No, I'm saying that Obsolete's original request to show more cities and for all AIs is mostly UG.

It is unaltered gameplay only if you have enough EPs on them.

 

[DrakenKin]

I agree, but would it not be possible to detect if the player has enough EPs and show only the information that would normally be available to him throug them?

Another suggestions : (something that has been bugging me for a while now)... Often the AIs will have similar colors, like brown, light brown, dark brown.. or something like green and dark green for two separate AIs. This make it very difficult to see who's where on the minimap and the culture display. Sometimes also your color and an AI color are too similar, and when you are at war you can't even spot incoming enemy units on the minimap.

It would be nice to detect the color of each player and change those that are too close to something with more contrast.

 

[EmperorFool]

I agree, but would it not be possible to detect if the player has enough EPs and show only the information that would normally be available to him throug them?

Absolutely, and I believe this is Ruff's plan.

It would be nice to detect the color of each player and change those that are too close to something with more contrast.

These are stored in the XML files and cannot be modified by BUG since BUG loads after the XML has been parsed--long before the players for a game are chosen.