v1.52: City Screen does not Explain Why Some Buildings cannot be Built (screens)

[fightcancer]

In the city screen, some buildings cannot be built because of prerequisites. For example, the University cannot be constructed until the Library is finished. Those unbuildable buildings are grayed out. When mousing over those grayed out buildings, most of them have red text indicating why they cannot be built--unless those buildings are currently in the build queue. So this post is a bug as far as I'm concerned.

In example #1, I cannot build the Taoist Pagoda (it's grayed out) and there is no explanation as to why. (I still have no idea why I can't build it.)

In example #2, I cannot build the Confucian Academy and there is no explanation as to why not. (I'm still clueless.)

In example #3, I could not build the Red Cross. Eventually, I figured out why: because this particular city did not already have a hospital. (Drawing that correlation took dozens of frustrating turns.)

In each case, it would be infinitely more convenient to ******** players like me if the city screen were to indicate why I cannot build some buildings. It would be ideal if there were red text explained why I cannot build the respective grayed-out building.

 

[MrCynical]

Again, these screenshots are too small to see much of use. In most cases they do tell you what you're missing, but it doesn't cover some of the 'upgrades' in effect. The Taoist Pagoda case I'd put a fair bet is in a city that doesn't have a Taoist temple, and so can't be built. It might be an idea to include the list of prerequisites, which would cover almost all eventualities. There are also one or two weird things like the Space Elevator which have undocumented requirements.

 

[fightcancer]

Again, I'm not sure why the screenshots are "too small".

Screenshot #1 clearly shows that the city in question DOES have a Taoist Temple, yet the Taoist Pagoda cannot be built. Just look at the left side under "Buildings". It's listed there. Screenshot #2 clearly shows that the pertinent city has a Confucian Temple, but the Confucian Academy cannot be built.

Regardless, the bug I'm highlighting is that the game does NOT tell us why certain buildings cannot be built. If the game were to tell us, then we wouldn't have to guess.

 

[MrCynical]

Well in that case the problem must be that you don't have enough temples in other cities (you have to have three temples of the appropriate religion for every Pagoda/Academy etc. you build). The strange point about this though is that, at least in my version of the game, it does display in red if you don't have enough temples. It'll say something like "2/3 temples built" in red when you mouseover it. These are the only requirements I can think of for these structures, and I don't know why that message wouldn't be appearing for you.

As I mentioned in the other thread the screenshots are appearing as 175x131 images, so I can't get any useful information from them.

 

[fightcancer]

Thanks again for letting me know the images were tiny. I've hosted them with another service. Are they viewable now (1024 x 768)?

 

[ZippyRiver]

As for the temples, I think I know. Your right about if you have 2 of the temples built it shows the 2/3 in red. However, if you have 3/3 you can enter the building in a queue. If you have it in the queue of another city, you don't see the red warning. It does not change to 3/6 until one is built (I think). So if you have the pagoda under construction in another city it would be greayed out in this one. Same thing for the academy.

 

[fightcancer]

That makes sense. Thanks.

I still wish the developers would tweak the game to tell us why certain buildings are unbuildable.

BTW, can you see the screens above OK, or are they still tiny?

 

[ZippyRiver]

actually, they are a bit big now. lol

When posting a screenshot, I usually do a border crop and only keep what is pertinent. then upload to this site using the advanced options. Is the easiest for me, and the pic sizes are good.

neway, glad I was able to help.

 

[Salarakas]

I too think it's because you are building (or have them on the building queue, no idea as I never use that feature) them on some other city and they can only be built on one (or the "price" of them goes up as it is with cathedrals... you need 4 temples for the first, 8 for the second or something like that). Or, at least that's the best explanation I could come up with when I first noticed this

 

[LeSphinx]

For me 2 solutions:
- the building is already in the building queue of another cities. You have to look at each city screen in order to found it
- some prerequisite are not match in order to allow you to build the building/wonder

 

[Velvet-Glove]

Re. the holy buildings - I struggled with this just recently and finally worked it out... you need three temples for every larger building you want to build. e.g.:

3 Hindu temples required to build 1 Hindu Mandir
6 temples for 2 Mandirs
9 temples for 3 Mandirs etc.

I don't believe this is documented in either the manual or Civilopedia and really should be shown on the popup.

Another weird requirement is for the Space Elevator - this needs to be built within so many degeree of the equator, apparently. As there is no indication anywhere on the map about a city's latitude (or the latitude of any tile for that matter) it's a bit hit and miss knowing where you can/can't build it.