What are all those buttons?!

[Chinghis]

WARNING: Big newbie question coming!

OK, this is strange. I've been playing Conquests (and Civ 3 in general) for a few weeks.... patched to 1.22. Tonight, I thought I'd download the COTM for kicks, since I like Mongols. Only thing I changed was the Barbarian fix in conquests.ini. When I started up the game, I see a whole additional row of new buttons that I've never seen before. The top row in the screenshot below - a whole bunch of cool options for my workers (most of which I'm still trying to figure out!).

What gives? Why don't I see this in a regular game? Do those only show up if you're playing a Conquest, as opposed to a regular game?

Yes, I'm a newb!

 

[QuantumEleven]

They were added in Conquests 1.22 (I think - either that or one of the earlier Conquest patches) - and you can switch them on and off in the Preferences menu, if you don't like them. Almost all those advanced worker actions were already present in vanilla Civ III, it's just that you had to remember key shortcuts instead of being able to just press a button - so they decided to add them as buttons. A great move, IMHO

And, yes, they appear regardless if you're playing a scenario or an epic game, once you have installed the 1.22 patch.

 

[mikezang]

They don't support to in general game.

 

[azzacanth]

Been able to turn those on for a long time - certainly longer than 1.22. But 1.22 might have set them to be on by default, I don't know.

They are advanced unit orders buttons and as others have said they can be turned on and off via the preferences menu.

 

[Rwedgie]

They've been in Conquests since the original release i know that much...

since the cotm is a sav file whoever created the save prolly had them on in their preferences so when you opened it up you had it on. It took me a while before I found them too but they are pretty useful, if only to save some time and energy.

 

[Zakharov]

They've been in Conquests since the original release i know that much...

Correct. They are in the manual on page 31 so they have always been in C3C.

Whenever you download a .sav file from this site (eg. GOTM, an SG etc.) the first thing you should do is set the preferences to your liking.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

They actually came with PTW v1.00 ... all your games must've had them turned off in the preferences. When you download a game of someone else, it uses their preferences.

 

[QuantumEleven]

Thanks for correcting me, everyone! On CFC, you never stop learning!

 

[Turner]

It should be noted that if you hover your mouse over a button, it will display a tool-tip saying what it does, and the keyboard shortcut for it.

 

[Chinghis]

Ah, cool. Many thanks, folks. Guess I should have read the manual, eh? Always kind of figured I'd go back to it after playing a while.

Relieving my newbiness, one question at a time....