posted May 19, 1999 23:34                

You should have the ability to put different events (with optional notes) into the "queue" that moves you through each unit. For example, if you started mobilizing units for war from a city, you might want to mark the city to come back to at the end of the turn so that you could see if you needed to deal with any unhappiness effects that would put your city into a riot. Many times in SMAC I would see a mindworm boil spawn somewhere, and say "I'll have to deal with that later", but then my focus would be drawn to more pressing matters in my overall plan (say, a major attack on another faction) and I would sometimes forget to come back and deal with the worms.

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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

posted May 20, 1999 12:23                

2) The total annihilation idea of being able to view the details on anything under the mouse cursor in a special window at the bottom of the screen is worth including. Means you don't have to click on each square to find out what's in it, what the terrain does, etc.

3) A proper unit stacking system MUST be available for CivIII. But I don't like the idea of using combined arms in a warcraft/HOMM kind of way. You can still do a great deal with units in the main screen, especially by having other units in the same square to convey benefits on that unit.

posted May 20, 1999 06:39                

1. There should be a way to group units together so that they act as one unit. For example, group 2 rovers, one probe team, and three infantry units together. They would move as one unit (with the slowest unit determining movement rate), and if you didn't ewant to move theunit at all, it would only take one spacebar, not six, to not move the units.

2. A way to customise the right-click menus. I'm sure that some people have favorite orders that they like to give. It would be nice if the player could choose what to include on the right-click shortcut menus. Note that this could change during the game sothat "plant forest" could be included early in the game, while "build magtube" would be added later.

From CyberShy:

• Option to set out an entire route for a unit, now you can only set a 'go-to target' and then the computer finds it's way. Why not a 'first goto #, then goto #, then goto #' option, and even repeat if visa versa so you can create 'units that control a special area and keep track of it' And you can make sure that your units won't get lost.

***** note to Cybershy - This is possible in SMAC, the player is able to set waypoints on a go-to order or on a patrol order.*****

• Combine the 'public work' concept and the old, but great settler concept, by being able using your right mouse-button to click a tyle, then a drop down gives you the choise "terra form" / "improve tyle" / whatever else. And then give your option, in example "Forst / Irrigation / road" etc. etc. Then the settlers will take care of it. Now you can make plan for improving the area of your city at once, and in the coming 1000 years your settler(s) will handdle it. Of course you can change the tyle-plan during the game.

In fact the settlers still do the work, but you can programm them very easily.
You must even be able to tell a settler to only work for city 'a' or work for every city. To make a 'que' for this improvements-list. Now you can macromanage micromanagement. It works even easier then the pw system, because you can plan your improvements even when you're not able yet to perform the improvement.

• When I'm able to build SDI in a deity level, all my cities start to build this at once, because of the danger of nuke-attacks. There must be an option "Let all cities make SDI asap" or "Now" or "Use all my money to finnish SDI ASAP" etc.

When you're at war give the option "I need 10 armors and 20 bombers in the area of Amsterdam ASAP. Then the cities surrounding Amsterdam will work on it, and after they made it, they continue their current job. It must even be possible that the created units all move to amsterdam as well automaticly. This works ways better then going from city to city to change their production target, and then set it back later again.

Of course you can micromanage later the city of Rotterdam in example to continue builing on the Oracle, while the other cities near Amsterdam make the army

• It must be possible to make laws. A law gets reflection on the society as well. When in 1800 the law starts to work that forbid kids below 16 years to work, but says that HAEV TO study, then production will go down for a couple of years, but soon the people will be smarter, and higher educated, which will improve your society and science rate.

Other laws are possible as well. All boys between 18 and 21 have to go into the army. Drugs are not allowed, Gay-mariage, 3-day workweek, raise vacation days, forbid swimming, give drugs free, forbid divorcion etc. etc. etc. (whatever can come up in your sick mind, mister dictator hehe)

From don Don:
1. In Civ the Attitude Advisor space on the right for a row of icons showing city improvements. Happiness improvements in particular (Temple, Cathedral, Coliseum) but also certain others (my mind draws a blank here).

Now I load up a spreadsheet and keep track of what's been built in what city. (I do it for MOO2 also.) What I want is a civilization spreadsheet showing size, production, key improvements, etc., from which I can access the production queue directly without going to the city screen.

Direct access to the resource map would be nice too, so you could open two or three neighboring cities up and swap squares.

2. Mmmmm, while we're at it, make the list and order of improvement icons customizable, too. Throw in a toggle for Tax/Lux/Sci and Supply/Demand displays to replace production and improvement displays. Naturally make it sortable by age, alpha, size, happiness, shields, etc. And fix it so it responds to up/down pg up/pg dn and doesn't lose its place when you do jump to a city screen and back.

posted May 20, 1999 06:48                

If you are referencing a particular game (e.g. Civ, CivII, SMAC) let us all know so we know what you are talking about.

Include examples to illustrate points, I think this makes it easier on everyone.

And now a question. I have not bought (or played) CTP, should I get this game? I guess my question boils down to: Are there improvements to the player interface in CTP that should be used in CivIII, or are there no real improvements?

posted May 20, 1999 16:45                

There have been many times when I meant to press 'w' to delay moving a unit and pressed SPACEBAR instead. Argggh. Just lost the ability to move that unit this turn!

posted May 20, 1999 16:58                

- Let players store a note in the game when they save it that will pop-up when reloaded.

posted May 20, 1999 17:07                

Custom context menus, yes! Another excellent idea. Those useful menu picks are always "squirreled" one or two levels down.

>>>>> Fugi the Great

Building on your key standardization:

Allow player to choose and customize the binding of keystrokes to various commands and menu picks. I think CtP does this.

posted May 21, 1999 10:20                

By that i mean: standard dropdown-menus, toolbars, right-click menus, drag-dropping and so on - but also like in CIV-2 (but unlike SMAC); making CIV-3 switch-able trough the Win-95 taskbar, so the player can interact with any self-designed Civ-3 help-programs or strategy-guides.

posted May 22, 1999 04:05                

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CIV3 DEVELOPMENT LIST COORDINATOR

posted May 23, 1999 13:53                

It was a disappointment to discover that CTP only had its Powergraph. SMAC had more then that, but not enough.

posted May 24, 1999 12:34                

Possible problem: I think it's important to keep the toolbars small so they don't cover much of the main map(in the end you'll have a lot of buildings to build in new towns). This could be solved with a "More" button which will show the other half(or how many they are) of the build buttons instead.

posted May 24, 1999 12:43                

SMAC had 50 million different stuff in the right click menys which made everything really hard to see.

CTP had a slick interface, and those who complained over the sending units the wrong way had obviously never changed the mouse click options in the options meny. Then you got a Age Of Empires interface, select with left and send with right, worked great.

posted May 25, 1999 12:27                

IMPROVEMENT FOR DESIGN WORKSHOP - The design workshop should be able to display many more units at one time, not just the scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen. IMHO the DW shoyld not be a popup, but the entire screen itself. I think this would allow the player to see most (if not all) of his units at one time w/out having to move the mouse over them to see what the unit is.

FILTERING IN DESIGN WORKSHOP - It should be easy to be able to just display air units or naval units, so that all of a players units of a given type could be displayed on the screen at one time.

Thats all for now, I'll try to have a summary put together before this thread gets too long.

posted May 26, 1999 03:24                

in smac everything is so slow, you gotta hold down the mouse button to do thing and half the time you come to the scouting mode where you can´t actually send the unit anywhere, you gotta do it all again.

And the pathfinding in CTP is the only good civ/smac pathfinding there is, and you see exactely where it will go too, and when it will reach certain points.

Well, no use arguing about this. When i first played the game i was dissapointed because everything was so different. But after playing a game i kinda began to like it and after another game i realized that the interface is very efficeint. It´s just different, and most people can´t take that. But if you have patience you will discover that it is really an improvment.

I have found that this is why many dislike CTP and only play it one hour, it´s not civ 2. But it was not supposed to be....

posted May 27, 1999 11:18                

I would also like to have the option of precluding goodie huts from giving you advanced tribes. They can really screw up one city games.

posted May 28, 1999 09:28                

A real time clock, possibly with an alarm clock feature.

There may be a reason that game developers do not include this in the game, but I would really like this feature. Do you folks agree or disagree?

posted May 28, 1999 09:51                

In SMAC at least one can just pick "start new game" and then start at the main menu. Are you refering to CTP?

ml_4da3,
What game are you referring to? CTP?

General note to everyone: Please let us know what game is being referred to. Especially if it is a "do it this way" idea.

Tanks

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Frank Moore - Civ3 Player Interface Thread Master

posted May 29, 1999 08:50                

(on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic)
iainQlang@enterprise.net wrote:
>Would it cost too much in hard disc space to have a scratchpad for
>each city? By the time I get a civilisation to a reasonable size and
>spend ages visiting each city checking management, I can forget that I
>may be trying to combine the output of neighbouring cities for some
>specific end - defence units in border locations, versus wonders in
>safe interior sites, f'rinstance. A scrathchpad / aide memoire
>thing-y would satisfy. Often a game can stretch over weeks with
>long-ish intervals between sessions and it can be difficult to retain
>themes.
>Yooors, Iain.

...

and I answered:
For Civ3 I'll suggest Iains scratchpad / aide memoire thing-y:
one for every city (by default empty)
and one for the whole faction (check tax-rate, government,
distribution of transports ...).

This thing-ys should also be able to pop up (at the end of the turn)
after a selectable condition is met (X turns passed by, Year Y is reached,
change of government, city growth beyond size Z ...).

...

The production box could show the collected shields (as it is) and
additionally the missing ones in two shades of grey as multiples of
the current production per turn
Will the production boxes learn to wrap around exceeding shields? When
not, why?

posted June 01, 1999 17:43                

Yes, and I would like to read and print my production queues from entire empire. If the various charts in SMAC (F2, F3, etc.,) were printable that would be excellent.

I want all city, production, Resource and current unit lists to be printable. Surely this is possible, and it would make those bathroom breaks so much more enjoyable.

posted June 10, 1999 14:48                

If they don't want to give this info, then make it so the 1350 beakers are not wasted.