Requests for new components (and features)

[naterator]

had a couple thoughts playing today:

I'd love it if holding shift when hovering over a stack changed the hover display from the default where it displays many individual units to a simple list like:
catapult (15)
archer (5)
axeman (15)

Also, it would be nice if up by the great person / great general bars you could have icons appear for any great people you have currently kicking around your empire. Clicking them could bring you to them. The history of 3 kingdoms mod has something like this and it'd be real handy for when you're saving a GP for a corporation or a golden age, at least if you're forgetful like me (i have to set a reminder to make my workers build railroads, apparently seeing the splash screen for the railroad tech isn't enough).

edit -- oh ya, i love the small build/action buttons! Could we get something similar for the unit icons?

 

[EmperorFool]

i love the small build/action buttons! Could we get something similar for the unit icons?

I'll respond to your other good ideas later, but I wanted to ask what you meant by this? The icons for building units and buildings should follow the same setting.

 

[naterator]

I'll respond to your other good ideas later, but I wanted to ask what you meant by this? The icons for building units and buildings should follow the same setting.

I mean the actual icons where you can select individual units from a stack. I love PLE because once i start getting some large stacks, i have a wall of unit icons blocking my screen and it allows me to select something like "naval units only" on a ground stack and make them disappear until i need them. I see screenshots on the forums and am always jealous of the resolutions other people play on. I'm limited to 9 icons per row, so as you can see it gets a bit clogged up.


Really if i was able to rebuild PLE from the ground up, i would put view mode in the options menu,take off wounded/healthy, moved/unmoved, and military/civilian and have civilian/melee/archery/siege/gunpowder/mounted/armor/heli instead. It would seem more useful to me, but maybe only because of my low resolution.

 

[phungus420]

Wow, never thought of that, but you're completely right. Having some way to hide UnitCombat types would make dealing with stacks alot easier. Seems a pain to code though, especially since BUG is used as a base for alot of mods that add or completely rewrite unitcombat types.

Edit: Also assuming it was doable, what would be a good way to implement it from the perspective of the UI. The PLE buttons are already a bit crowded, how do you see it where this function could be implemented, where it's aesthetic and the user can intuitively figure out how to operate the feature?

 

[naterator]

Edit: Also assuming it was doable, what would be a good way to implement it from the perspective of the UI. The PLE buttons are already a bit crowded, how do you see it where this function could be implemented, where it's aesthetic and the user can intuitively figure out how to operate the feature?

I was concerned about the same thing actually. It would be removing 7 buttons and putting in 8, and making them smaller/closer would make the crowding worse. If you removed the "land units only" button it would be and even 8 for 8 swap (assuming i didn't miss a combat type). Only problem with that is that the land only button is actually useful for galleon stacks; but this would be partly alleviated by the combat type buttons.

By moving the view mode to the options menu, you could move the "remove filters" button to it's spot on the left. Then you could remove all the buttons after the promotion/upgrade group, except for the foreign/domestic ones, leaving those where they are. The space between, currently occupied by 10 icons and 4 gaps between groups could then have the combat types there. Considering there'd be fewer groups (so fewer gaps) i think it'd all fit at least as well as it does now. Depending on how it fit you could include naval and air in the same group as combat types and eliminate the land button, or have a separate group for the 3 domains as it does now.

That's all assuming that others find the buttons i would remove as useless as i do. If there are people using the movement and health filters then they might not like the change, but i figure that info is on the unit icons anyway, so no big loss.

Of course mods changing the types would be a whole can of worms i never thought of...

 

[uXs]

I'm wondering if it's possible to create some kind of unit ferrying system.

Basically what you would do is have some transports that you add to the system, and they automatically pick up units and ferry them over from one continent to the other. This should probably be combined with the regular waypoint system, so you can have a bunch of cities creating units and they automatically arrive at the other side of the world.

Would this be doable?

 

[cripp7]

Something that's always bothered me was the Auto-Explore feature on land units. They just seem to go back and for in no particular direction, sometimes going back through explored areas. Is there a way to have the explore in a circular fashion? Like when you first settle your city, have auto-explore start going in a circle around your city? Or at least make them not so sparatic(sp? )

 

[Cerecel]

One idea about handling worker actions - would it be feasible to add an option to halt workers one turn before finishing any improvement, similar to the prechopping forests option? This would be a helpful prompt for checking that cities are working newly improved tiles right away, instead of not noticing until the next turn when the worker has movement points and is highlighted in the unit cycle again.

 

[EmperorFool]

One idea about handling worker actions - would it be feasible to add an option to halt workers one turn before finishing any improvement, similar to the prechopping forests option? This would be a helpful prompt for checking that cities are working newly improved tiles right away, instead of not noticing until the next turn when the worker has movement points and is highlighted in the unit cycle again.

It's certainly possible, but would it be better to simply post a message to the event log (top-center of screen) as well as display the little flag on the map for a couple seconds like other on-map events?

 

[Elkad]

Graphs. I like the fact that I need EPs to see them, but if I let my point ratio fall I lose access to graphs I had on prior turns.

Since I could reference them if I took screenshots or something, keeping the (now outdated) info on the graph would not have any gameplay impact.

Could BUG/BULL change the graph to either leave blank spots for turns without enough EPs, or a dashed horizontal line or something, rather than just disappearing and reappearing as my point ratios change?

 

[Cerecel]

It's certainly possible, but would it be better to simply post a message to the event log (top-center of screen) as well as display the little flag on the map for a couple seconds like other on-map events?

ahh, I didn't think of that - maybe even do both? Personally, I would get more use out of the prechop/prebuild behavior, but the event and map alert could be helpful as well.

 

[ruff_hi]

Could BUG/BULL change the graph to either leave blank spots for turns without enough EPs, or a dashed horizontal line or something, rather than just disappearing and reappearing as my point ratios change?

Anything is possible but this might be a touch too hard. We would have to remember when you lost demo view and over-ride the values for the teams that you lost.

 

[EmperorFool]

Graphs. I like the fact that I need EPs to see them, but if I let my point ratio fall I lose access to graphs I had on prior turns.

BUG could keep track each turn of the players against whom you have enough EPs and use that to draw the graphs. I think the ability to run the demographics mission against any particular rival shouldn't change that frequently. If it does fluctuate a lot, it will start to increase the size of the saved game and slightly slow saving/loading (probably not noticeably to the player, however).

 

[ruff_hi]

You don't need each turn ... just if you lost them, when you lost them. You gain the whole line back if / when you recover the demographics.

So, ...
1) if you lost demographics against Civ A 10 turns ago, the Civ A lines would not show the last 10 values
2) if you currently have demographics against Civ B, all values would be shown for that civ
3) if you never had demographics against Civ C, then you would get nothing

You can extend this to city visibility and city investigate (I could see the city 5 turns ago so just show me the city as it was) but that would just be too nasty.

 

[jray]

I'd like an option to make the autosaves occur at the end instead of beginning of a turn. I have a tendency to either end my turn accidentally or forget to do something important first. If I decide to go back to correct the goof, then I need to replay the whole turn up to that point again.

Thanks,
jray

 

[EmperorFool]

You don't need each turn ... just if you lost them, when you lost them. You gain the whole line back if / when you recover the demographics.

Ah, good point. I was thinking I'd show all the gaps where you didn't have demographics, but since you can see the entire history when you have it, past gaps "disappear" whenever you regain visibility.

You can extend this to city visibility and city investigate (I could see the city 5 turns ago so just show me the city as it was) but that would just be too nasty.

Haha, ya that's not gonna happen. First of all, city visibility is a binary thing: you can see the city now or you cannot. The only place Civ4 keeps any memory is in those demographics for the graphs.

I'd like an option to make the autosaves occur at the end instead of beginning of a turn.

I think the best I can do is to have it save the first time the End Turn button turns green (you've moved your last unit that is awaiting orders). I added an event for this to BUG, so I could easily fire off an AutoSave at that time. if you selected a fortified unit, for example, and told it to move somewhere after the save had already fired, that won't get saved again.

I can also look in the SDK to see if the End Turn button action is kicked off there or in the EXE. If in the SDK, I can do the AutoSave right then so that it's always saving the final turn state. Doing it in the BeginPlayerTurn event is too late since the game is in motion at that point.

 

[dmoxbro]

Is it possible to export the statistics that is exhibited at the end of the game to a text file for a later analysis that shows all the detail about how many particular types of units were produced, killed, lost, etc.

 

[EmperorFool]

Is it possible to export the statistics that is exhibited at the end of the game to a text file for a later analysis that shows all the detail about how many particular types of units were produced, killed, lost, etc.

That's a great idea for the Autologger. Ruff started a module called Dump Stats, but unfortunately all it does right now is write to the logs saying that it's about to dump the stats . . . but nothing else. I think he's still working on it.

 

[Caboose]

First of all, I can't thank you enough for making this amazing mod. I've been using it ever since I knew about it and boy does it improve this game!

I was wondering whether you could add a thing to the custom Domestic Advisor? You already have HURRY_POP_ANGER, which is great when whipping in peacetime (when I don't desperately need the hammers, and don't want cities to become too angry from whipping).

I was wondering if you could make a similar thing for Draft Anger? I'm in a game now where I just started Nationhood, and I wanna draft from cities with no anger from it first, then return to drafting from the cities with the least anger duration left. This would help me immensely! Thanks a lot.

 

[EmperorFool]

I was wondering if you could make a similar thing for Draft Anger?

Added to the Customizable Domestic Advisor in r2181.