What is your greatest wish for Civ 4?

[xen001]

Here Here, I agree with tommar on the pet peeves for keyboard commands not having any graphical interface counterpart..

[Adagio]

I agree, everything should be doable both via the GUI or by shortcuts, it's often via the GUI I learn the shortcuts

[Tommar]

I forgot to thank you for the info, Adagio. I really do appreciate it.

My foray back to Civ3 has been both frustrating and fun. Frustrating mostly because of interface issues, but once learned, it does have the "just one more turn" aspect that Civ2 and SMAC has.

I'm learning it, but still haven't found a way to flag events, like riots. In SMAC, you could set your Warning Preferences to call up you city screen for rioting cities. Anyway to do this in Civ3? It's a pain to have to watch this between turns, and try to remember which cities it was, or try to search for them later.

Add this to my wishlist for Civ4.

Other than rare resources and penalties for large empires (which I can get over and learn to deal with) my biggest wish for Civ4 is to have all the interface options that SMAC has at the very least (which I can't get over, because I only play games for fun, and the amount of time I have to spend looking for things and making repetitive commands is way too high in Civ3. And my tolerance is low, after SMAC. )

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Adagio
I agree, everything should be doable both via the GUI or by shortcuts, it's often via the GUI I learn the shortcuts

RTFM!

[Adagio]

I hate manuals, the only thing I ever read in the manuals is the shortcuts, but often that part sucks. I remember when I got SimCity 4 (bought the danish version... installed the American version) the manual was in danish. I spent a long time searching the manual for a certain shortcut but with no luck. After asking on a forum for that shortcut I checked the manual and was not suprised that I couldn't find it since the danish translation for the function didn't have anything to do with what it actually did
And since most manuals are in danish this happens quite a lot

[Adagio]

Not to mention that often the games doesn't have a manual

[Tommar]

Originally posted by DrSpike


RTFM!

Reading a 170 page manual seems a bit too much like work. That's not why I play games. I do read them, that's why I know that there's stuff in there that are not availble via the GUI.

And then heartedly despise the game devs for being so freaking lazy. It's not like I owe them anything. I'm the one paying them to entertain me. Not spend days reading their FM.

It's worse in the case of Civ3, since they did a major back-slide or deliberately ignored the interface improvements in SMAC.

They need to fix this in Civ4, and the SMAC interface needs to be their baseline.

Finding out that flying SAM units take a penalty when attacking ground units is worth reading the manual for (SMAC manual). Finding out that units can explore by hitting "e" (Civ3), is not.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Adagio
Not to mention that often the games doesn't have a manual

whats your take on civpedia?

[Tommar]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex



whats your take on civpedia?

You didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyways. Civpedia (and it's Alpha Centauri equivalent), is great for finding out info about the items you can build.

If it provides info about what keyboard commands, like "e", "cntrl-r", "cntrl-shift-r", "shift-i", "shift-p", "shift-a" are used for, I haven't found it. These abilities should be available from a unit command menu, not Civpedia, anyway.

They are in the manual *yawn*.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
whats your take on civpedia?

I love it

I wasn't talking about any Civ games as I posted the above comment though

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Adagio
Not to mention that often the games doesn't have a manual

Yes, if you don't pay for them.

[Tommar]

Originally posted by DrSpike


Yes, if you don't pay for them.

For old, esoteric games, you're lucky if you can find the games period. Still trying to find a "legal" copy of SMAX for my husband. My legal copy of it did not come with a manual (no complaints there, SMAX didn't need it, and I've got the SMAC manual, as well as Civ3, but you really need the Civ3 manual, since it's GUI sucks compared to SMAC).

All the more reason to despise an incomplete GUI. and those who advise RTFM.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Tommar

For old, esoteric games, you're lucky if you can find the games period. Still trying to find a "legal" copy of SMAX for my husband. My legal copy of it did not come with a manual (no complaints there, SMAX didn't need it, and I've got the SMAC manual, as well as Civ3, but you really need the Civ3 manual, since it's GUI sucks compared to SMAC).

All the more reason to despise an incomplete GUI. and those who advise RTFM.

Normally, if a paper-version of the manual isn´t included,
it comes as pdf-file on the Game-CD itself.
Most of the times within a folder called "manual",
but sometimes more hidden.

I never encountered a legal version of a game,
which contained not even an electronic version of the manual..
(Of course if you bought it secondhand from ebay and the original owner lost its manual that´s another story )

[Tommar]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


Normally, if a paper-version of the manual isn´t included,
it comes as pdf-file on the Game-CD itself.
Most of the times within a folder called "manual",
but sometimes more hidden.

I never encountered a legal version of a game,
which contained not even an electronic version of the manual..
(Of course if you bought it secondhand from ebay and the original owner lost its manual that´s another story )

Well, as I noted above, I have the manuals for SMAC and Civ3. It's only SMAX that I don't have the actual book for, but I never worried, since I got the SMAC manual.

I bought SMAX from Amazon, Laptop Collection, brand new. It came with no paper manual, but I never looked for an electronic version. SMAC and SMAX both seem to incorporate the most useful commands in the user interface.

But this is all stupid fluff that diverges from the point. The point is that the Civ3 GUI is deficient, because there are unit commands that are NOT available in the game interface.

They are in the manual. I know, because I read it. Which as I stated, I don't wanna read 170+ pages for basic stuff (yeah, I'll read it for something more interesting. OK, I read the Civ3 manual, but I'm really pissed that I did.)

[DrSpike]

Most manuals have a page or pullout which has all the keyboard shortcuts on it. It's been a while - doesn't Civ3?