Space Race Suggestion

[obsolete]

One thing that burns a lot of people is that the Space-Race view only shows the stats of the top-contender. Thus you can derrive quite misleading conclusions when say, you plan to sabotage him enough to keep you in the lead, then suddenly out of nowhere 3 more AI's over-take him and beat you to a launch, that you didn't see coming.

IIRC in Civ III you had better views of everyone who was building the race. But Firaxis droppe the ball in this version with a very quick & sloppy GUI. At least you can see SOMETIMES in the text relay who and what completed what, so you write that on paper, but it DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK. Also, that method will not let you know when an AI lost a part to another AI's sabotaging.

Would be nice to have a simple screen to list ALL current parts by ALL AIs so no one has to write things down on paper and do all sorts of guessing-game work.

I keep forgetting to bring this up.

 

[EmperorFool]

This sounds a little anti-UG to me. Sure, it could be that Firaxis meant to include a better, more informative screen, but they didn't.

Has anyone in the community built such a screen yet? That would go a long way to getting it included.

 

[r_rolo1]

I don't think it is anti-UG. The warnings already tell you when a known civ ( c'mon, it is highly unlikely to get to Space race and don't know everyone in game ) makes Apollo and the SS parts..... so putting this info in a screen is IMHO not anti-UG.

And No, I don't know any mod that can do that

 

[obsolete]

I think Firaxis figured at the time that the only AI that mattered in the space-race was the AI in first position. Keep in mind, this poor display menu was created long before the new spy system was implemented... and hasn't been really updated since.

Since sabotaging projects is a big new feature... this look-up system surely should have been redesigned better to fit in with the Civ III version.

 

[EmperorFool]

The warnings already tell you when a known civ ( c'mon, it is highly unlikely to get to Space race and don't know everyone in game ) makes Apollo and the SS parts..... so putting this info in a screen is IMHO not anti-UG.

I agree with this reasoning. If there's an AI you haven't met yet, you have bigger problems than their SS parts.

 

[ruff_hi]

We should add (another) SS tab that keeps track of all SS builds by all players. The big question is ...

- should the players go across the page and SS parts down OR!
- should the SS parts go across the page and players down

Edit: I vote for SSparts across the top (using their little icons) and players down.

Edit2: Actually - I vote the other way now after thinking about the current VC screen.

 

[obsolete]

Hmm, I'm not sure, but.... let me install civ III this week, as I am very curious to remember how THEY did it in exact detail now.

BTW, I saw a sale this week, Civ III for just 1$ still in the box.... I felt so bad leaving it behind. Maybe I should go back and get another copy? But do I really need another copy!

 

[r_rolo1]

We should add (another) SS tab that keeps track of all SS builds by all players. The big question is ...

- should the players go across the page and SS parts down OR!
- should the SS parts go across the page and players down

Edit: I vote for SSparts across the top (using their little icons) and players down.

Edit2: Actually - I vote the other way now after thinking about the current VC screen.

Given that the game handles vertical expansion of the screens far better than horizontal( I hate what happens to the glance screen when you meet 15-18 civs ), I would prefer the second option....

And it would be a nice touch to show where the AI SS parts are being built if you can see it in map ( yes , I am a great fan of the big overview screens .... civ IV in that aspect certainly is behind civ III, even with BUG )

 

[EmperorFool]

Parts across the top, no question. Use a regular table with leader/civ names instead of leaderheads so that it scrolls nicely. It should also show how many turns ago they launched once they do.

 

[obsolete]

By the way, one issue with the diplomacy that used to bug me. There is never any indication on when the next secretary or vote-decision is coming up. People who don't keep track, will never know these ahead of time, or be expecting them too soon.

What I do is always jot down on paper when ever the UN first holds a vote. Then I track the number of turns to tell when the next secretary will be up, or other resolution. And rule of thumb, 4 terms = new secretary voting. It's easy enough to keep track of, but still, seems a bit off that someone needs to write on sticky-notes simple stuff like this to keep track of when-what UN (or AP) event is going to come around.

 

[EmperorFool]

Someone posted code to add this to the MEMBERS tab. I had been hoping Ruff would patch it in since that's his tab. (hint hint)

 

[obsolete]

Great, but no rush for now I can use sticky notes in the meantime, and I don't get to play as much as i'd like

Well, one FINAL suggestion that I also keep forgetting to mention; it would be nice to have EXPIRATION notices on all deals when you look at the active screen. They used to tell you the # of turns left for all deals to end in Civ III, but again dropped this great detail off the new version for some silly reason.

 

[ruff_hi]

Great, but no rush for now I can use sticky notes in the meantime, and I don't get to play as much as i'd like

Added to the SVN version.

Well, one FINAL suggestion that I also keep forgetting to mention; it would be nice to have EXPIRATION notices on all deals when you look at the active screen. They used to tell you the # of turns left for all deals to end in Civ III, but again dropped this great detail off the new version for some silly reason.

They include that but it is a hover ... "This deal can be canceled in x turns".

 

[EmperorFool]

It would be nice to have EXPIRATION notices on all deals when you look at the active screen.

I suspect that would be pretty trivial to add. It's available in the CyDeal object that is examined when creating the entries on the screen. I'll take a look later today.

 

[EmperorFool]

Unfortunately, this is going to require DLL changes to implement. Many of the functions on CvDeal are not exposed to Python. But I am adding it to the DLL release now.

Edit: I've got it working. If the deal cannot be canceled due to 10 turn minimum, it shows how many turns are left on the clock after the trade. For example:

Cows to EF for Gems (6 turns)​

For non-cancelable trades (Vassals), it says "This trade cannot be canceled". I think this message is useless as it doesn't say why it cannot be canceled, so I will remove it. You can always hover over the trade to see that it cannot be canceled if you get confused.

Edit2: Done. Annoying that it has to be done in the DLL. Without it, I can see how many turns are left before you can cancel, but I cannot check if the deal itself is uncancelable (vassal/capitulation deal).

As a compromise, if BULL isn't installed, it shows the # of turns until you can cancel, and it's up to you to figure out if you can or cannot cancel it. And now that I say that, I realize that I can probably check if it's that type of deal. Back to work . . .

 

[obsolete]

They include that but it is a hover ... "This deal can be canceled in x turns".

Well hmm!

So then they did put in a useful feature, but made it in a way that a lot of people don't know about it. Ahah, most people don't even check the active trade screen very much, so easy to miss. Anyhow, I feel like we got a free treat now.

 

[EmperorFool]

I updated my post again with the result.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I knew about the information of the expiration dates in the trade screen. But I'd like to see a reminder at the moment that the deals can be cancelled. I sometimes sign deals and want to renegotiate them at the earliest date possible. Such a reminder would be ideal. I now use manual set reminders for this purpose.

I would also like to see a message when the AI has new resources available for trade. That would be very useful in the early to mid game when the AI's are connecting all of their resources and you want to get their sugar/spice/gems etc. in a trade. It's a bit of a hassle to check every turn in the trade screen.

 

[obsolete]

I would also like to see a message when the AI has new resources available for trade.

Yes, that would be handy. And the other step, when suddenly one of them is willing to take another resource from you.

 

[ruff_hi]

Another request for similar information ...

I apologize if someone else has requested this but I just looked on the site of the top 50 requests and couldn't find it.

Is it possible to show the top three cultural cities and/or spaceship components for multiple civs? There could be a way to do this already I just simple don't know. There have been several games where i'm sabatoging a civ's spaceship parts and then another civ I obviously wasn't paying attention to comes behinds and wins by building there ship but the victory screen only shows the one closest. Similiar cases have happened with cultural victories as well where i'm killing one civ to stop cultural and the runner up civ wins. Now I realize that it is my own ignorance that caused me to lose but I was wondering if it was possible?

The SShip request has come up before and should be doable - that information is shown to the user via alerts so BUG wouldn't be revealing new information. The cultural cities are not shown and that would be new information - I don't think we will be showing that. I would suggest you keep an eye on the culture chart for a 2nd AI that is gunning for a cultural victory and then run spies over there to check.