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I have a couple of reasons for opening this thread. For one thing, I'd like to dispel the myth that I'm a Firaxis agent or sycophant. But more importantly, these are game issues that are not being addressed — at least to my satisfaction — by the good people at Firaxis. Note that my criticisms are of the game, and not of them.
I would appreciate answers from Dan or someone right here so that we'll have a single organized source of reference.
City Population Numbers
All these numbers, except for 1s, are utterly unreadable. Their drop shadows are not rendered properly. In fact, they are hideous, and I believe the eyes make an unconscious effort to avoid looking at them. This attribute hit me like a brick the moment I loaded a file into the patched game.
Questions
How did this get missed? Why was it allowed to pass muster? And when will it be fixed?
No Stack Movement
As a professional developer with experience going all the way back to Timex Sinclairs with 8K of RAM, I've been through the whole drill of software development from design to implementation to maintenance. Sometimes, a missed feature can nearly cripple an otherwise stellar application. This comes close.
I like the idea of workers as opposed to some synthetic and abstract public works model. However! Having to move more than a hundred workers one unit at a time is simply insanity. It is like having a beautiful suit with a gaping hole in the crotch.
This well documented and ubiquitous tedium is multiplied when combined with my next criticism, but it is a separate issue.
In my opinion, any nondeterminism issues with respect to stack movement are trivial to minor. This would not be difficult to design and implement with simple properties and methods that are coordinated between the unit objects and the tile objects (assuming an object oriented design).
Questions
Do you or do you not believe that the ability to move all units on a stack at once would greatly facilitate game play, and would greatly enhance the civ playing experience? If not, why not? If so, is this an item on the table for you to implement?
Unit Activation Order
Whatever rhyme or reason there is with respect to what unit is the next to be activated, it is a hard nut to crack. Just when you seem to have a handle on how this works, you get torpedoed by a surprise activation of some irrelevant unit far away from the area where you are currently working.
There are two contexts in particular where this is so annoying as to cause me to curse and rant out loud.
1. Say that I have put together an array of building brigades with my workers: a couple of mountain brigades, a hill brigade, and a loose cannon or two for pollution mop-ups, etc. With Replaceable Parts for an industrious civ under democracy, it takes exactly 9 foreign workers to build a road/railroad combo on a mountain. My mountain brigade stands ready. I order the first worker to build. Then the second. Then the third. Suddenly, without warning, a unit outside this brigade is activated. One of two annoying things happens: either I must find my way back where I was, if I am lucky enough to notice the abberation; or I give the wrong order to the wrong unit, and must decide whether to reload and do over, or forget about it.
2. Say that I am in the middle of a battle. The entire battle has been meticulously planned beforehand. There is a continuity of thought, movement, and attack. I order my first unit to attack. I order my second unit. Woah! That wasn't my second unit! That was some horse's ass worker way back in my homeland who has now been moved to a mountain tile where he has wasted a move and now must waste a move to get back. Once again, I have to muddle my way back to the scene of battle and try to recover the train of thought that was jerked from my head by this bizarre implementation of unit activation.
Questions
Can you and will you implement unit activation such that all units in the current stack are exhausted before focus moves to another stack? Can and will you further change this item such that once one stack has been exhausted, the next stack or unit to be activated is the one in closest proximity?
I suppose these are my primary criticisms and questions, as they are the things that most affect my enjoyment of the game.
May I get answers, please?
(edited for spelling)
I would appreciate answers from Dan or someone right here so that we'll have a single organized source of reference.
City Population Numbers
All these numbers, except for 1s, are utterly unreadable. Their drop shadows are not rendered properly. In fact, they are hideous, and I believe the eyes make an unconscious effort to avoid looking at them. This attribute hit me like a brick the moment I loaded a file into the patched game.
Questions
How did this get missed? Why was it allowed to pass muster? And when will it be fixed?
No Stack Movement
As a professional developer with experience going all the way back to Timex Sinclairs with 8K of RAM, I've been through the whole drill of software development from design to implementation to maintenance. Sometimes, a missed feature can nearly cripple an otherwise stellar application. This comes close.
I like the idea of workers as opposed to some synthetic and abstract public works model. However! Having to move more than a hundred workers one unit at a time is simply insanity. It is like having a beautiful suit with a gaping hole in the crotch.
This well documented and ubiquitous tedium is multiplied when combined with my next criticism, but it is a separate issue.
In my opinion, any nondeterminism issues with respect to stack movement are trivial to minor. This would not be difficult to design and implement with simple properties and methods that are coordinated between the unit objects and the tile objects (assuming an object oriented design).
Questions
Do you or do you not believe that the ability to move all units on a stack at once would greatly facilitate game play, and would greatly enhance the civ playing experience? If not, why not? If so, is this an item on the table for you to implement?
Unit Activation Order
Whatever rhyme or reason there is with respect to what unit is the next to be activated, it is a hard nut to crack. Just when you seem to have a handle on how this works, you get torpedoed by a surprise activation of some irrelevant unit far away from the area where you are currently working.
There are two contexts in particular where this is so annoying as to cause me to curse and rant out loud.
1. Say that I have put together an array of building brigades with my workers: a couple of mountain brigades, a hill brigade, and a loose cannon or two for pollution mop-ups, etc. With Replaceable Parts for an industrious civ under democracy, it takes exactly 9 foreign workers to build a road/railroad combo on a mountain. My mountain brigade stands ready. I order the first worker to build. Then the second. Then the third. Suddenly, without warning, a unit outside this brigade is activated. One of two annoying things happens: either I must find my way back where I was, if I am lucky enough to notice the abberation; or I give the wrong order to the wrong unit, and must decide whether to reload and do over, or forget about it.
2. Say that I am in the middle of a battle. The entire battle has been meticulously planned beforehand. There is a continuity of thought, movement, and attack. I order my first unit to attack. I order my second unit. Woah! That wasn't my second unit! That was some horse's ass worker way back in my homeland who has now been moved to a mountain tile where he has wasted a move and now must waste a move to get back. Once again, I have to muddle my way back to the scene of battle and try to recover the train of thought that was jerked from my head by this bizarre implementation of unit activation.
Questions
Can you and will you implement unit activation such that all units in the current stack are exhausted before focus moves to another stack? Can and will you further change this item such that once one stack has been exhausted, the next stack or unit to be activated is the one in closest proximity?
I suppose these are my primary criticisms and questions, as they are the things that most affect my enjoyment of the game.
May I get answers, please?
(edited for spelling)
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