{The List]} Updated Regional and City Menu Ideas

[Addled Platypus]

This is replacing the older Regional and City Menu thread

Link to old thread

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104229

Thread Master platyps Rex

[Addled Platypus]

Introduction

Welcome Aboard to {The List} for Civilization IV.

The Ideas being discussed here are for Regional and City menus

A big part of playing Civ games has always been the city screen. This is traditionally where you set production for your cities. Where you check on a city's status, etc. What could we envision for Civ IV? Perhaps new features. New ways to make cities interact with the rest of the game. Perhaps divide the nation into regions, each with their own screen. Post your ideas here


Summary
A lot that is suggested here will be new to the game "and hopefully added"
Help think of the ways these changes should look, what information is needed on the screen. If all possible add screen shots.

The term Region will represent the terms region and state in this thread.

Thanks for reading, participating
Threadmaster Platypus Rex
(thoughts and questions)

NOTES


RED signifies a radical idea that could add a lot to the game. Editor's choice.

LIME font color= editorial comment

BLUE font color= editor's choice!



Table of Contents

1. REGIONAL MENUS
2. CITY MENUS
3. OTHER

The table of contents is broken into the next two seprate post blocks to allow for growth.

The Ideas

1. REGIONAL

1.1 Have a big screen with everything a city is building and have the option to copy and paste build orders.
This would work well for both city and region.

1.2 Assign some of your workers to regions, if we still have the Civ3 worker system, and have the regional menu govern the workers (or public works).

1.3 i am sure this has been addressed elsewhere, but it is relevant to this topic as well. i like the idea of being able to subdivide your empire in states (maybe as a product of a tech, like federalism). the state would be four or five cities, bound together (the sum total of their cultural influence would determine the border), with a designated capitol. the border would have to continuous. this state capitol help off-set corruption, and it allows you to bring up an in depth menu for the cities in that state. so rather micromanaging on 6 different city screen, you could micromanage all six cities (and indeed the state itself) from the state screen.

Should there be a region wide unhappiness for loss of a city?
Editable, change to/from a region?
Limit number of Regions


1.4 More options for automating build queues would be nice. They might not be important for games on small maps and/or for games on very high difficulty levels, but average level epic games (huge map) really suffer because of horrific amounts of micromanagement.

The MOO3 system, allowing different priorities based on the role of a planet (a city or a region in CIV), works very well. Something along these lines exists in Civ3, but in order the empire to function properly, you'd have to set those priorities for each city individually and then change them as the game progresses and cities change their roles in your empire. So basically, though there seems to be a system implemented in Civ3, it still forces you to manage each city individually. That's a thing MOO3 is way ahead of Civ3 and something that could really improve epic games.

Or, if a similar system can't be implemented in CIV (there could be trouble with it, I know that), at least do two things:
2.1Add the possibility to have multiple build queues designed by the player.
2.2Allow adding any buildings and units to such queues. If by the time the city tries to build them they are not allowed, just discard them and move to the next position in queue or ask the player what to do. The current system won't let you add a Cathedral after a Temple, so you are bound to have to set the production manually. And it's no fun once you have 40+ cities...

3.Be able to specify to your governors specific favorite construction projects and specific things to never build.

4. I'd also like to think about some levels of national management, which would introduce alot of simplicity. There is already a precedent for it in the Ministers, but I think maybe adding some ministers and expanding their role would really reduce micromanagement.

For instance, the Minister of Labour could replace the current worker model with a national workforce of some sort to do tile improvements. I think this would be a better solution than regional workforces, because that's still alot of micromanagement. You could manage the entire national workforce as a whole from the Labour Ministry, if you had to really manage it at all. Tile improvements you could just do with a right click on the the tile you want to work, limited in some fashion by the manpower available in your workforce.

Regional Related Threads

Recommend City Pollution Managers

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...threadid=112988

Respectfully compilled by Platypus Rex
With special thanks to: Nikolai


Will update 2+ times a week

[Addled Platypus]

2. CITY

2.1 I would like to see some automation of tile usage placement. I think the easiest thing would be three sliders - growth,production,commerce. If you peg the production slider, it uses the tiles that will produce whatever is in your que in the shortest time. This includes knowing when to work a food tile so that the city will grow and be able to work 2 production tiles. That's the sort of micromanagement that, though I am capable of doing, I find extremely tedious.

The sliders could have a green/yellow/red range such that if all the sliders are in the green, the city never starves. But if you put the production slider into the yellow, you're saying that you're willing to let some population starve by working only production tiles if it will get it done faster. Red means that you'd even be willing to Pop Rush, or Pay Rush the production.

2.2 This is not an idea about adding new features but it's about city screen. How about linking city screens background (something like Civ3 uses) with culture groups, like it was done for city graphics on map in Civ2 + Civ3? This way viewing in cities will be different for different culture groups (for different Civ4-games or simply in one game during espionage/building embassy). It adds a little more atmosphere.
Conclusion

2.3 And maybe a tile que, hold down the shift key and click in order of the tiles with the same improvement?

2.31 How about using the same buttons that control the workers be used for city improvements and tile improvements, etc... see image in the posts below

Each button opens another seriers of buttons. The mini map could turn into the que list?

City Related Threads

[Addled Platypus]

3. OTHER

3.1 This is not an idea about adding new features but it's about city screen. How about linking city screens background (something like Civ3 uses) with culture groups, like it was done for city graphics on map in Civ2 + Civ3? This way viewing in cities will be different for different culture groups (for different Civ4-games or simply in one game during espionage/building embassy). It adds a little more atmosphere.


Related Threads

Game atmosphere

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...threadid=105317

[Addled Platypus]

CONCLUSION


The biggest change that could happen, that I can not remember being in any other game, is the option to set up regions, and then control what happens within that region.

Another feature that I would consider a first would be the ability to customize any build que.

With the news of C4 in the process, lets hope these ideas have some impact on the final look.

Threadmaster Note:
Being a threadmaster has been a first for myself. If I did not provide the proper enthusiaism or motivation, the blame falls on myself. I would still voulnteer to do this again without question.

[Modo44]

Ok, here continues the talk about the priority system for cities, based on planet classifications and policies implemented in MOO3. I was asked in the previous thread to explain the system, so here it goes. This is not from any manual, just from gameplay experience and in-game help. If a similar system would be implemented in CIV, the city classification should be easy to read and set in the city screen. Or, if we have regions, policies could be set for regions and in regions - for different cities with different roles in region.

The pic shows what you get in MOO3. To the left is a menu for adding new policies. To the right are those planet classifications that have policies set.

A Classification is what the planet was recognized as. AI does this, giving two classifications to each planet. The player can add own classifications and then set them manually for each planet.

A Policy tells the planetary AI, what production to emphasize. In Civ3 terms it is similar to the settings you can give to city governors ("build often", "build never" and the like). There are many policies defined, all of which represent changes to the build queue.

Emphasis tells the planetary AI how important this policy is. The more emphasis, the more strict this policy will be implemented. If you have a basic build queue (standard choice of improvements and units from the currently available), the policy is something that can move certain buildings and units up that queue, or even add and delete them. There are 3 levels of emphasis.

"Primary" goals are supposed to be satisfied at all cost. "Secondary" are important goals that the AI looks after when basic needs like some food, some production and such have been satisfied. "Tertiary" are things that we'd like the planet to have, but only after more important ones are done.

[Modo44]

D'oh. Having a preview of the post cancels the attachment. Sorry, and here it goes.

[Addled Platypus]

Thanks for the quick reply

Seeing the design helps alot

Out of curiosity, how often do you tinker with this during game play?

[Modo44]

As little as possible. Once set, the rules set a direction for planet development that is based on my plan for the game. Builder style, as you can see. Usually the policies can be left alone, because planet classifications change automatically as the empire grows, thus adjusting the actual build queues accordingly.

For example if a system is gained, some planets change classification from "frontier" to other and stop producing planet defenses. Without me having to actually change the build queues by hand. A really good thing that keeps micromanagement low.

[Addled Platypus]

I Included your idea into Regional (1.4)

If something like this is to be used for regional control, what would you like to included?

Now you got my juices flowing.

I like the idea of the drop down menu.
On the left hand side where the planet classification is, i could see that being the region pull down, the list of cities would be in the first column.

I am thinking about the other cloumns could be used for city information Happpines, Production, etc...a one stop visual for a region

comments questions welcome

[Modo44]

If there was a policy system, you'd need following options added to the regional/city screen:

Current classification With the possibility to change it. If there are more classifications per region/city, we need multiple fields here - one for each of those classifications. You should be able to set all classifications manually, but if it is used often, that would mean the classification AI is badly broken..

Current policy Showing what the current regional/city policy is, based on Current Classification. With the possibility to change it, thus turning automatic management off.

I should note that I almost never have to use this in MOO3, because the AI does a good job classifying planets and I choose the policies at empire level, not bothering with planet micromanagement. So for some players these buttons would be more of an information at the seldom ocasions they visit cities, rather than actually for changing settings.

You need multiple classifications per city/region. They allow to customize each city/region to it's special needs. Some combinations can be redundant, but it's the players challenge to make those rare. In my example 11 classifications are used, which gives 121 possible planet types (primary and secondary classification) that the AI actually treats different. And I don't even have that many planets. At the same time this system leaves a single classification as a very simple set of rules, which is extremely important for the AI to use them correctly.

[Addled Platypus]

My approach to using MOO3 is souly for interface, not as much for micromanagement

If one was to have 5 regions with 10 cities each...
I would rahter go to a screen simular and select the region to see all 10 cities and how the are doing in growth, production etc.

Maybe link/select from there what ever else pleases you

I am art chopping my version for your viewing pleasure,

see next post

[Addled Platypus]

Here it is, in all its ugliness...

Maybe even get to choose what you want to display along the top?

[Modo44]

Now I see what you mean. Choose a region and see what's going on in it's cities at a glance. And, if there's an option, set the policy for the region. Cool.

I would add an aerial view of the region, showing a zoomed out view of it. Being able to take a look at the locations of cities and what tiles they work would be much appreciated, when setting policies.

Just kill the blue. It gets old after a while.

[Brent]

Heh heh. I guess my main reason for wanting regions is to group city names by region and keep cities in the same real world region near each other in the game.