SIMPLE and EASY Ideas for the Patches

[fladiv]

To improve performance on older video cards...

1. Add "instant moves" option that skips any animation when moving units. Don't re-render the unit to make it really instant.
2. Add "instant center" option that disables animation when centering map with left-click on tile. Only the final, static picture should be rendered and displayed when left-clicking.

[fladiv]

Oh, and - make an option to disable flashing messages at city screen ("presse esc to return") and at end of turn ("press enter to end turn
). They really do annoy .. Maybe they're removable already?

[potoroo]

I have no idea what number we’re up to, but here are some thoughts in no specific order:

[A] Optional solid minimap colours. This would solve two problems. As the minimap colours seem to be a filtered overlay of your civ’s cultural boundaries over the world map the effect is somewhat mottled. When you have civs with similar colours next to each other, like England and Germany, this can make the borders unduly difficult to see. Removing the overlay filtering altogether (yes, I know about the trilinear/bilinear filtering switch in the ini file) might also reduce the load on lower spec PCs somewhat (HINT! HINT!).

[B] AllowNimoy = 0 switch. Renaming the \Assets\Sounds\Techs folder works but is clumsy and may cause problems with future patches or upgrades. His drone quickly outwore its welcome but I don’t want to turn speech off in the game options and lose other things.

[C] Find Wonder. The Top 5 cities/Wonders screen has a list of all built wonders, etc, who owns them and what they do – but it doesn’t tell you which damn cities they’re in! I know I have Scotland Yard – but where? I had to manually scroll through 27 cities to find mine…

[D] Rebase Same Type/All. Rebasing multiple aircraft (like 20 or more stealth bombers) is a pain, even though I have now found if I (so slowly) shift-select each unit I can move them more easily.

[E] Fleet defence. I built a nice carrier group only to have it picked to pieces by single enemy ships darting in one by one, sinking a ship and then darting away back to their air cover. Hullo! This is just wrong! The whole point of battleships is to destroy those pesky destroyers before they can get close enough to the group, etc.

[F] Civlopedia reader. Sometimes I want to check something in the Civlopedia without having to load the game (thus swapping out every other app I happen to be running).

Other points that have been mentioned but get my vote include:

- saving all custom game settings, including number of civs, difficulty level, no city razing etc, and victory conditions

- saving screen settings like grid on/off, yield on/off, etc

- saving the full last save path instead of defaulting to \Saves\single

- usermasks for savegames file names

- being able to click out of a diplomacy screen to check things like what techs or resources I have, etc, before having to answer the demand/request

[Gaal Dornik]

- make a "wait" ->button<- please.

Its currently bound to W and allows(if someone didnt know) to wait with the turn, until other units didnt move. Which is very useful for support/weaker/worker units to wait and let the strong units first secure the land. Every time i need to use the keyboard :|

[fladiv]

Lock the camera tilt. I mean when you press ctrl+left/right, you rotate camera between Civ2 style and Civ1 style map orientation. Unfortunately you have to do it every time you start playing. Would be better if game remembered this preference.

[fladiv]

Allow for strategical notes and "bookmarks" to be added anywhere on map. These should be just a reminders, not visible by the other players (well maybe by human alliance members) and not serving any other purpose than being there to be seen by the player who added them. They should be represented as some special effect for a tile, which can be filtered out. When the player hovers mouse over this tile, the reminder text should be displayed somewhere at the tile description area.

Example: planning terraforming and city placement. Sometimes I place a city having certain plans about two or more future cities nearby. However when time comes for them, I might forget that original plan, and mess things up. Then I remember and have to reload which I hate to do.

So I want to put some kind of marks saying "this tile is reserved for the city"...

There also may be lots of uses in warfare for this. Various non-obvious strategic possibilities and thoughts can be placed on map to help and plan an invasion, etc.

Perhaps it's not very small improvenemt, but I see this as very important ...

This stuff currently may be replaced with written notes in external application, however there are certain difficulties specifying the particular locations on map. So at least there could be featiure to tell tile's coordinates and to go to specified coordinates.

P.S. I wonder if anyone important is reading this at all nowadays

[sabrewolf]

flavid: with ALT-S you can put up landscape signs

[fladiv]

hmm thanks, I missed that somehow well that voids the above suggestion then, sorry..

[padillah]

Originally posted by potoroo
[B] AllowNimoy = 0 switch. Renaming the \Assets\Sounds\Techs folder works but is clumsy and may cause problems with future patches or upgrades. His drone quickly outwore its welcome but I don’t want to turn speech off in the game options and lose other things.

I've seen others say this too. But what other speech is in the game? I can't think of anythign that's not Mr. Nimoy.

[C] Find Wonder. The Top 5 cities/Wonders screen has a list of all built wonders, etc, who owns them and what they do – but it doesn’t tell you which damn cities they’re in! I know I have Scotland Yard – but where? I had to manually scroll through 27 cities to find mine…

Doesn't double-clicking on the wonder take you to the appropriate city screen? IIRC, it does for me. But, yes, a way to navigate throught your cities better than simply scrolling through each of them one-by-one is much needed.

[F] Civlopedia reader. Sometimes I want to check something in the Civlopedia without having to load the game (thus swapping out every other app I happen to be running).

YES! Here, here!!

- being able to click out of a diplomacy screen to check things like what techs or resources I have, etc, before having to answer the demand/request

And again - here here!!

Tom P.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by padillah
I've seen others say this too. But what other speech is in the game? I can't think of anythign that's not Mr. Nimoy.

There is unit speech...

[Adagio]

I just had another idea I thought would be nice to have (and as a side-bonus making it a bit more realistic I guess, a city with millions doesn't just "go away" within that short period of time?):

Razing cities should take a number of turns to do (to give the other civ a chance to get it back). This could be a simple 2 or 3 pops per turn or so, until there's no pops left. The time it takes should reflect that the people in the city should have some time to leave the city (or being slaughtered to death, one at a time... maybe one civic could double the number?)

Or at least make it at least one turn before the city is rubble, giving the losing civ a chance to come to the resque

[potoroo]

Originally posted by Adagio
I just had another idea I thought would be nice to have (and as a side-bonus making it a bit more realistic I guess, a city with millions doesn't just "go away" within that short period of time?):

If you can't raze a city in a year then you're just not trying.

[Adagio]

Yeah, just after I posted it I considered how long I was talking about in the first part of the idea, but the second one still goes, as one turn is the same year for all players. So to add a little realistic view on it, we could say that during my turn I take over the AI city in january, but when the AI then during his turn takes it back again it could be february, that's not a lot of time to clear a city... if you get my point?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Adagio


There is unit speech...

Yeah, but no one wants to lose the cool Incan phrases.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Yeah, but no one wants to lose the cool Incan phrases.

I've forgotten all my Incan.