About to give it another chance

[MidKnight Lament]

After being disappointed with a number of aspects of the game when I first bought it, I haven't played it in over a month now. Most of my gripes were with how many annoying clicks you had to make to get through a normal turn. I left the game alone in the hope that the patch will fix some of it, although I haven't seen anybody mention it so far. Mind you, I haven't been on Apolyton much at all lately.

I was going to give it another shot much sooner but CTP2 seems to have greatly dulled my enthousiasm for the civ genre. There's a sad story.

Anyway, downloading the patch now. I'm greatly hoping that it catches my interest. I'm missing being passionate about civ.

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- MKL
"And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.

[MidKnight Lament]

Ok, I know I'm bring impatient here, but I got about 20 turns into a new game with the patch and noticed that the same things were bothering me all over again. I really want to like this game so I'm looking for a bit of help. So, a few questions which may sound a bit dumb...

Can someone please go through a quick summary of what they do on an average turn? I'm assuming pressing 'o' before the end of your turn is standard practice, because it's so easy to miss a unit's turn. I'm also assuming that people use the National Manager to check whether their cities have build queues empty, because the message system sucks big-time. (Oh, to have those little SLIC boxes back).

Do you not worry about clearing your message listing during a turn? It's so cumbersome to click on a message, get a pop-up, click the eye, do your stuff and then have to delete the message as well.

If you're using the National Manager so much, do you just have it open all the time, or are you getting pretty quick on your F2 key? How much do you rely on the yellow writing for a city name? I'm guessing not much, particularly when your empire gets big.

I can't help but feel there has to be a better way than I'm doing it. I must be missing something pretty simple, because so far it's so much work it's not fun. I love all the new screens and their linkage to each other, but the turn-to-turn design seems to be lacking something.

Please enlighten me with the stupid piece of knowledge I've somehow missed.

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- MKL
"And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.

[Davor]

The first thing I do is read my messages and dont bother deleting them. I noticed they delete themselvs after so many turns. With the patch you always read the latest message.

After reading my message any build queses that are empty I click on the eye and change the production for that city right away before I forget. After that I usually go to the National Manager and make shure My cities are happy or at least above 73 so they dont get unhappy. (I have to build happines buildings. I wunder why others dont have that problem. My gold and food are all the way down and production is all the way up.)
I then move my units to whereever. I also save about every 10 turns just in case my auto save dosnt work. I screwed up once by loading an old game by accident and the auto save erased my game that I really wanted. I also use quick save as well.

I also try to build alot of caravans if possible for lots of money.

Davor

[MarkG]

the best suggestion i can give you when it comes to the interface is to learn the keyboard shortcuts. the most important of them being q/w/e/r/t for the tabs, o for the next unit/city, enter for next turn, space for do nothing , f1-f8 for the various managers and . for the army manager. shortcuts save LOTS of time moving the mouse around


btw, you dont need the national manager to check for empty queues. just using the o key will center to these cities after your units are done moving

[MidKnight Lament]

Thanks heaps, guys. I'll give it a shot tonight. I really want to like this game.

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- MKL
"And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.

[MrLeN]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-09-2001 07:19 PM the best suggestion i can give you when it comes to the interface is to learn the keyboard shortcuts. the most important of them being q/w/e/r/t for the tabs, o for the next unit/city, enter for next turn, space for do nothing , f1-f8 for the various managers and . for the army manager. shortcuts save LOTS of time moving the mouse around

I agree 1000%!!! It is imperative to learn the keyboard shortcuts in any CIV game. (If you like to save time that is)



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It's better to close your mouth and let everyone 'think' you're stupid, than open it and let everyone 'know' you are.

[MidKnight Lament]

I hadn't realised that 'o' moved to the cities after you were done with the units. That was probably the clincher that I was missing. Still haven't played it yet because I've been too busy and too hot (isn't it, MrLeN?), but I'll hopefully get a chance tomorrow.

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- MKL
"And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited January 10, 2001).]

[MrLeN]

Yes, true, very hot!!!


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It's better to close your mouth and let everyone 'think' you're stupid, than open it and let everyone 'know' you are.

[MidKnight Lament]

And 39° tomorrow. What a b1tch! And I'm supposed to running around all day house-hunting!

[MrLeN]

THIRTY NINE?!?!?.... er, STUFF the house hunting!!! I think you should consider 'nice spot at the beach' hunting!!! LOL
P.S.And dont forget your perving glasses, but don't wear jeans, docs and a jacket, coz then ppl will think your a 'computer' nerd, that plays CIV or something!
ROFL


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It's better to close your mouth and let everyone 'think' you're stupid, than open it and let everyone 'know' you are.

[wittlich]

And that's 39 degrees Celsius not Fahrenheit ... What does that equate to in Fahrenheit? Around 98-99 degrees? Yep that's the type of winter I like!

[Dale]

40C is 105F. That's how I remember it.

Oh, and Melbournians, when I came into the city this morning, at 10:15 the Nylex sign said 34C!!! Lucky I'm on Perth shift. Finish after the heat.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[MidKnight Lament]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-09-2001 07:19 PM btw, you dont need the national manager to check for empty queues. just using the o key will center to these cities after your units are done moving

I must still be doing something wrong, or have some setting wrong, because I find I'm still missing cities that have emptied their queues. I'm always pressing 'o' before I end my turn. I wasn't convinced of it until just yesterday when I knew there was city with an empty queue, but 'o' didn't centre on that city at the end of turn.

Must say, I'm a little confused. Other than that though, everything has been going as cool as a mule.



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- MKL
"And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.

[Jen Dragon]

I still like the F2 key and sort by time that way the empty cities are at the top. Just double click on the city and it brings up the buile que, close the que and you still in the ntl manager with empty cities at the top. To sort by time click on the block above the turns to completion column.

[Darkknight]

hmmm 2-3 degrees celsius during the day -4 or so at night.Quite hot yes
I just finished downloading WesW's scenario after 2-3 weeks of downloading various bits
I'll write exactly what i do in one of the turns.
I hardly ever use the Nat. Manager for appending only i just use the mayors in all my cities to avoid having to set the build lists.Most my cities (lowerr production cities) always have something left over from my last few appends.

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" mind over body "