Research and building queues

[bonafide11]

We've gotten into many fiery debates about the little information we know about Civ V, but the only topic that really has not been discussed much yet is the research and building queues.

Basically from what I can tell, the change is that now, at the beginning of turns, instead of the "what tech would you like to research next?" and "what would you like to build in this city next?" windows popping up, you'll go right to moving your units and controlling them while on the side or top, icons will appear telling you to research something new and build something new in certain cities.

The reason it hasn't been discussed much yet is because 1.) the information is pretty vague about it and 2). it won't affect gameplay much. But it will have a major impact on the flow of the game. While replaying Civ IV yesterday, I noticed how annoying it got that in the later stages of the game, while I was at war and planning my attack, it got annoying that I kept getting interrupted by 10 windows popping up asking what I want to build next. Now that these are queued and I can do them at the end of the turn, I feel like it'll flow much better because I can get to them when I want to, don't have to them immediately.

This is one change that I think is an all around good improvement, and I think most people would agree, but I'm curious to hearing what other people think of it.

 

[grant2004]

I hadn't thought about this yet, but you're right, this could be helpful. I found that in simultaneous multiplayer games that it was difficult to move your units quickly on turns when you had a lot of cities to manage. Sometimes success in multiplayer comes down to who moves first, with an ability to delay research and city management until the end of the turn it will create a more fair multiplayer environment.

In single player I think this is mostly trivial. As long as there isn't a way to miss a new technology, or a city build I won't mind the change at all.

 

[Shiggs713]

agreed, anyone who didn't know to use control+a or whatever it is, when moving units were at an automatic disadvantage in MP... some good changes it sounds like.

 

[bonafide11]

In single player I think this is mostly trivial. As long as there isn't a way to miss a new technology, or a city build I won't mind the change at all.

Yeah, before they even mentioned it, one of the earlier things I remember seeing is that it won't let you end your turn without first making sure you built something in your cities or researched a tech. I didn't understand why they mentioned it because I never saw that as a problem, but now it makes sense that we've learned about the research and building queues. You're right it will affect -- and improve -- gameplay in multiplayer more, but I think it will help with the flow of single player as well. Those windows popping up and interrupting you at the beginning of a turn get annoying when you're trying to concentrate on moving certain units or doing something while in war.

 

[PieceOfMind]

In Civ4, under the options menu, you could "minimize popups". Isn't this essentially what the OP is describing? The only difference is that if you still haven't addressed the minimised popups by the time you've moved all your units, you'll still get the annoying popups at the end of your turn instead of the start.

Are people actually wondering about how something will work when it's already available to us? With some discipline, it's not hard during a civ4 turn to make sure no popups ever occur.

 

[frekk]

With some discipline, it's not hard during a civ4 turn to make sure no popups ever occur.

True, but that's not a sound reason to have the start-of-round popups. Just because they're easy to get rid of, doesn't mean they should be there in the first place.

 

[PieceOfMind]

True, but that's not a sound reason to have the start-of-round popups. Just because they're easy to get rid of, doesn't mean they should be there in the first place.

I'm not sure how your response follows - seems a non sequitur to me.

Of course it's not a reason (let alone a sound reason) to have start of round popups. I don't see how it could be construed as one.

What I've basically said is that the OP doesn't need to do much to imagine what the new feature will be like given that what he/she has described is already possible in Civ4 through one of its options (the only difference perhaps being that in Civ4 the popups will still be forced at the end of the turn if you haven't already addressed them before you finish moving all your units).

For casual players, I don't see any huge issue with having popups at the start of each turn - it's a pretty logical way to prompt them for the next build or research item. For "dedicated" players like probably you and myself the popups can get a tad annoying so that option is there for us. It was probably an option that was built into one of the expansions or patches based on player feedback.

For those who don't know, with "Minimize Popups" on, next-build requests and research requests appear as little boxes on the right of the screen which you can click on to address at any point during your turn. There are other things like civic change requests that get lumped here too.

frekk, if they shouldn't be there in the first place, are you suggesting that the Civ4 behaviour under the option with "Minimize Popups" should be the standard, or are you saying there should be no such popups at all? If the latter, then there are questions that need to be answered like what do you do when a city has no build item and you end your turn.

 

[bonafide11]

Since they're advertising the research and building queues as new features in Civ V, I doubt they're the same as the "minimize pop-ups" option in Civ IV.

 

[kdr777]

how different can they make it ? I have difficulty imagining something that different and revolutionary to handle those pop-ups.

By the way, thx for the tip concerning the minimising in Civ4, never noticed it before (been a while since I played)

 

[squadbroken]

Assuming Civ 5 still follows the same building scheme, what I'd really like to see is the ability to queue up buildings you don't actually have the tech to build. They'll be suspended in the queue (production will skip to the first available one) and will start building once they are available.

Thus, barring a change of plans, you wouldn't have to mess around with building queues past the initial setup. The ability to save build lists would fit in well with this.

 

[Tomice]

Assuming Civ 5 still follows the same building scheme, what I'd really like to see is the ability to queue up buildings you don't actually have the tech to build. They'll be suspended in the queue (production will skip to the first available one) and will start building once they are available.

Thus, barring a change of plans, you wouldn't have to mess around with building queues past the initial setup. The ability to save build lists would fit in well with this.

They could of course do it, but it might be too confusing for the average player, because you would have laboratories visible and choosable in the iron age! And it breaks immersion. It might be a good option for pros after several playthroughs.

ANd thx for the tip with the minimized popups, didn't know them as well!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They could of course do it, but it might be too confusing for the average player, because you would have laboratories visible and choosable in the iron age! And it breaks immersion. It might be a good option for pros after several playthroughs.

ANd thx for the tip with the minimized popups, didn't know them as well!

Well they could be visible, but say Greyed out... you could still add them, but even in the queue they would be greyed (or redded) out

If there is a tooltip when you mouse over for Why it is greyed out (need 'Industrialization' tech for the greyed out factories or something like that)

That shouldn't be too confusing, and could really reduce some of the micromanagement. (queue your buildings when you found the city... never have to come by again unless something important changes....not having to visit every city when a new tech makes something available)

 

[Woodreaux]

Sounds like they're going with the Total War: Rome model. Yeah, it'll eliminate the pestering popups, but it comes at a cost. If the game allows you to end a turn without en-queuing something or picking a new tech to research you could end up with the old "I finished the Great Pyramids 69 turns ago and forgot to switch to Representation": not times 10, not squared, but e to the power of what ever turn it is. Depending on how this is implemented it could potentially cause epic rage, perhaps enough to rival 1UPT.