My CIV4 Challenge to Everybody: Beat Ages of Man First!

[Sarxis]

Martin, what color red is that you are using for your civ color? And did someone make a way to open the manager windows like that? Or did you just arrange them manually?

[HuangShang]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
And by the [way] HuangShang the number in the playtest version means turns to next pop.

k, I need to go get the playtest.

In CTP2 I just can right click on the messages that aren't important to delete them. The only problem with this is that you don't find it in the manual.

I never knew that. This needs to be written somewhere where people are going to see it.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
Martin, what color red is that you are using for your civ color?

That's my colors03.txt, red is for player 1, that's another red than for player 0 the Barbs. To be precise my redd is 100% red 0% green and 0% blue. However after saving it to a jpeg it is now something else.

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
And did someone make a way to open the manager windows like that? Or did you just arrange them manually?

They are arranged manually, and I don't see any other way to do it for the first time. The windows stay at their positions for the entire CTP2 session, and are set back to their original position, when you start your CTP2 again. Of course we can save the screen position to the userprofile.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Overall, I am a big fan of Civ1's, Civ2's, Civ3's and Civ4's single window approach. But hey you can mimick this by spawning the build queue manager along with the city manager when you make a double click.
Ofc, you'll have to set some special variable so that a closure of the city manager also closes the build queue manager (with the opposite not necessarily needing to hold the same, if this suggests to be somewhat useful)

Originally posted by E
Martin is there a way in the code that when you clock on a city it pops up all the windows like you did in the last post but just change how they are centered (everythingis in the center of the scren currently)

Well we could add a a user prefference to the profile so that the user can set whether these two or three windows should be opened together, of course only if you have to deal with a single city. One thing to note about the current situation is that the build manager uses copies of the city data maybe this could interfere with the city manager. Well of course this can be fixed, just copying the build queues takes less time than the entire city data.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
I see you're already making good approaches, automate specialization is surely badly needed and making the windows non-modal is another great idea! Actually that is a superb idea.

So far I only applied the non-modality to the city related windows but of course I could extend it to the other managers as well, I just didn't see any need for it. So let me know whether there is some need for that.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
And then comes what is mentioned already, that when I select the city again, the unit I just fortified is displayed. This makes me wonder if the fortification order was successful at all and I can remember in the first view games, I fortified the unit over and over.

Well one problem here is that the game only checks whether a unit is fortified and not whether it is being fortified.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
But well, I know at least a lesser important reason why I don't like the message system that much and maybe you've already solved it with the introduction of non-modal windows.
I don't like to open a message, because I have to close it, I've to move the mouse up north and hit the small x and move down again - boring.
It would be perfect if I could close the message with another click on it in the message tab. That way I don't need to move the mouse. So to say:
unopened message: right-click: deletes it, left-click: opens it.
opened message: right-click: closes and delets it, left-click: closes it. right-click on other message: deletes other, let's this one opened, left-click on other message: closes current one and opens other one.

That are some nice additions, by the way I didn't change the behaviour of the message boxes, but if I remember correctly you can move them around as well, but again the new positions isn't stored in the userprofile.txt - not yet.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Also I don't really know why messages are kept over turns. IMO, you could flush all of them every new turn.

Sometimes I like it, to keep some of the messages, in CTP1 they all had a duration, not so in CTP2, and I don't think this feature is broken, just not used, but however what about a preference that forces the duration of each message to one turn, or a maximum duration.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
I think it's better to have it on the map. Thus I can quickly check how many units are produced in the region I currently view. Opening every city to do that and remembering that information is really very tedious.

I thought of painting a white square around the selected city.

Originally posted by Atahualpa
What you could also do is make a button on the national manager that only displays cities that are currently visible on the map. Could be an interesting idea, that probably doesn't need so much coding as implementing it on the map, while providing a similar effect.

You mean the city that you can seen on the part of the main map and that you find in that white rectangle on the minimap?

-Martin

[Atahualpa]

[Q=Marthin Gühmann]Well we could add a a user prefference to the profile so that the user can set whether these two or three windows should be opened together, of course only if you have to deal with a single city. One thing to note about the current situation is that the build manager uses copies of the city data maybe this could interfere with the city manager. Well of course this can be fixed, just copying the build queues takes less time than the entire city data.[/Q]

I think the build queue manager and the city manager belong together. If both would be opened together upon double clicking a city, I am sure this would help greatly.

[Q=Martin Gühmann]That are some nice additions, by the way I didn't change the behaviour of the message boxes, but if I remember correctly you can move them around as well, but again the new positions isn't stored in the userprofile.txt - not yet.[/Q]

Changing the position is a start, but I think it's better if you can open, close and delete all messages from the message tab. I don't know how difficult it is to implement that. The message window will have to be non-modal for sure.
That said, I really have to ask myself who thought that it's clever to have the message displayed at the other edge from where you open them. This is really a grave UI design error.

[Q=Martin Gühmann]Sometimes I like it, to keep some of the messages, in CTP1 they all had a duration, not so in CTP2, and I don't think this feature is broken, just not used, but however what about a preference that forces the duration of each message to one turn, or a maximum duration.[/Q]

Great idea, though I'd consider it with lesser priority. If you implement the other one, you can easily get rid of them anyway.

[Q=Martin Gühmann]You mean the city that you can seen on the part of the main map and that you find in that white rectangle on the minimap?[/Q]

Exactly. If you could create a select button in the national manager that would sort others out, you'd have a similar and easy effect to see what each city produces. A downside though is that you'll have to update the list of cities in real time as you scroll across the map.

[Sarxis]

Thanx Martin. I had to ask about the color red because it looks deeper than the default. Also, I just never thought to rearrange the windows the way you did; streamlining.

[nbarclay]

I looked at the AoM web site and decided I wasn't interested. The mod looks to me like a case study in featuritis, with a number of gimmicks that add to the game's complexity without providing anything that I regard as a commensurate increase in fun (and in at least one or two cases that would actually make the game less fun for me).

If I thought the core of CTP2 was good and the game was spoiled only by an inadequate AI, I might be able to live with that complexity. But the game's changes to how city laborers work have always struck me as completely stupid. With CTP and Civ 3, I can plan my city sites on a basis that if there are tiles in the city radius that aren't worth much in the early game, I can work other tiles until I'm ready to improve them. But the way CTP2 does things has laborers waste part of their time working lousy tiles when good tiles are available and waste part of their time working unimproved tiles when improved tiles are available. Worse, the value of a tile improvement depends on the size of a city. The end result is that a labor mechanism that was somewhat time consuming but very easy to understand was replaced with a mechanism that eliminated micromanagement but made it a whole lot harder to understand the relationship between the cost and benefits of tile improvements. Worse, I'm not even sure how much micromanagement was eliminated because of the issue of specialists - especially since the inability to control which tiles laborers work if they aren't specialists provides an added incentive to use specialists. If I'm going to be fiddling with specialists anyhow, what's the big deal about allocating laborers to tiles while I'm at it?

I can see how AoM can appeal to a certain niche of players who like an extremely complex, "realistic" game, and who aren't bothered as much as I am by CTP2's basic design. But personally, I'm not interested.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
That would be a good idea to find out. In fact I don't like the message system in Civ2: For every thing you get a popup message that needs some seconds to pop up and some more seconds to get closed. In CTP2 I just can right click on the messages that aren't important to delete them. The only problem with this is that you don't find it in the manual. Then only a few messages are left, that need to be read like wonder measseges, riot meassages and empty build queue messages. And that aren't much, they can be clicked away in a few seconds, instead in minutes like in Civ2. And from some reading in the Civ3 forum mothing has changed, one more reason not to buy Civ3. Fact is in Civ2 I disabled all the messages and checked my cities manually, whether they don't build anything. In CTP2 I can get rid of the junk very easily.

With the settings I use, Civ 3 does not operate on a passive, "read the messages between turns and deal with them when the turn arrives," basis. When a city finishes building something or riots, I get a pop-up that asks me what I want to do next. The result is that my build orders are already given by the time the main part of the turn starts, and riots that I want to deal with using specialists are already resolved. (If I'd rather deal with riots by spending more gold for happiness, I have to wait for the main part of the turn to change the slider settings.).

I only have two serious gripes about the Civ 3 user interface. One is that it leaves it up to the player to keep track of which cities have grown big enough that they are about to riot instead of giving a warning and allowing the player to go back and fix the problem if the player tries to end the turn when a city is ready to riot. The other is that trying to get the best deal possible from AIs in negotiations can involve a huge amount of trial and error. Otherwise, I regard the Civ 3 user interface as excellent.

[Sarxis]

I had a couple of barbarian heavy horseman coming into my territory - parked right next to a barely defended city of mine. Fortunately I had just built a cataphract unit and manged to maneuver him into the city for at least some defense. I did have enough movement points left to attack the two inferior units (they had a defense rating of 20 each compared to my cataphract's 30 point attack and higher hit points), but because the two horsemen units were flanking capable units, I would have had to deal with them both defending simultaneously against my unit, so I decided against the attack until at least one reinforcement came.

I find that AoM's combat system is - by far - superior to any other CIV game I've ever played, even SMAC's! Stacked combat gives life to the otherwise two dimensional combat portion of the series.

[HuangShang]

battle isnt just attack versus defense. the attack and defense counts for both sides. the damage dealt depends on attack and firepower; the damage suffered depends on defense and hp

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Sarxis
I had a couple of barbarian heavy horseman coming into my territory - parked right next to a barely defended city of mine. Fortunately I had just built a cataphract unit and manged to maneuver him into the city for at least some defense. I did have enough movement points left to attack the two inferior units (they had a defense rating of 20 each compared to my cataphract's 30 point attack and higher hit points), but because the two horsemen units were flanking capable units, I would have had to deal with them both defending simultaneously against my unit, so I decided against the attack until at least one reinforcement came.

I find that AoM's combat system is - by far - superior to any other CIV game I've ever played, even SMAC's! Stacked combat gives life to the otherwise two dimensional combat portion of the series.

Yes it is, though it has its flaws as well, it's not really realistic. In reality you can flank with every unit type, there is no such thing as a "flanker". If you have enough units left over you put them on a flank and send them in at the right moment.
In CtP2 theoretically you could lose a 12 sized meele stack to a single unit, because only one unit is fighting at the same time. I wonder what the 11 other units are doing.
This is practically the same as Civ3 combat and thus not what you want to see with stacked combat.

Ofc, I can see why the introduction of flanker units is necessary and it forces you to build more tactical stacks as you'll achieve more with 1 meele, 1 flanker and 1 ranged, than with 3 meele units. So for this game it's a good thing. In some cases though, it looks exceptionally stupid.


I think it would be better if every unit can flank, though non-flanker marked units would work at only half or one third of their strength, when flank-attacking. Ofc, this makes stupid-built 12 spearmen stacks a more viable choice, but I never believed it was good to force people to do something. Rather they player should learn to see that a clever thought out stack is more successful, but if he still doesn't care to much about this, why ruin all the fun for him?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by nbarclay
With the settings I use, Civ 3 does not operate on a passive, "read the messages between turns and deal with them when the turn arrives," basis. When a city finishes building something or riots, I get a pop-up that asks me what I want to do next. The result is that my build orders are already given by the time the main part of the turn starts, and riots that I want to deal with using specialists are already resolved. (If I'd rather deal with riots by spending more gold for happiness, I have to wait for the main part of the turn to change the slider settings.).

That rather sounds like the old dusty Civ2 message system: Hey your city celebrates the king day. Do you like to fix it? Yes. No. Hey your city riots. Do you like to fix it? Yes. No. Hey your city doesn't build anything. Do you like to fix it? Yes. No.

Probably there are some more messages, and if there are just three of them it is managable. But what happens if you have not only 3 cities but 50, 100, 200 or 254? By the way I had to leave one city to my opponents so that the score is still counted and my empire can grow and prosper. And 255 is the maximum you get then a nasty popup if you try to found another city. Well with so many cities it gets boring, espeacilly if you have to give build orders each turn for all these cities.

In CTP1 and CTP1 and empty build queue is a rare event, you just get a message that something was built and the next item is unit xy. And what do you have to do in Civ2 give the build orders. That means selecting the right option on that popup press the OK-button, waiting for poping up the city screen selecting the right build item and clsoing the city screen. And in CTP2 just right click on the message and it is gone, so your build orders are already given long before the item has been built.

Actually I don't consider the message system as good if you tend to disable the messages in the late game. I did this in Civ2, I read a recommendation in the Civ3 forum, but I don't think it is necessary in CTP2, if you know about the right click thing. I think this is also available in CTP1.

Originally posted by nbarclay
Exactly. If you could create a select button in the national manager that would sort others out, you'd have a similar and easy effect to see what each city produces. A downside though is that you'll have to update the list of cities in real time as you scroll across the map.

Maybe a little check box for the national manager, show only cities on the visible part of the map.

-Martin

[Ekmek]

I did like the idea of closing messages by pressing "enter" though. other than that i don't have a problem witht he message boxes

[Harovan]

I have never -ever- seen a city in Civ3, and if I recall correct, neither Civ2, with an empty build order. They always build something, and be it wealth. Empty build orders are a design flaw of CTP games exclusively.

[Ecthy]

I always just found CTP to be quite boring to play, same for CTP2. Need no reasoning here.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I have never -ever- seen a city in Civ3, and if I recall correct, neither Civ2, with an empty build order. They always build something, and be it wealth. Empty build orders are a design flaw of CTP games exclusively.

So how does it work in Civ3? In Civ2 it works like this: The computer checks all your cities, if there is an item is complete you get a popup message about it, if you haven't disabled it. It asks whether you want to continue or you want to open the city window. If you open the city window you see that there is no build order, so you have to give it. Of course you can also use the advisors, but for some reason they never build what they are supposed to build.

So in Civ2 the city doesn't build anything when an item is complete. In CTP1/2 the city builds nothing when the last item on the build queue has been built. That's an all items vs. some items issure. And I see cities without built orders is coomon to Civ1/2 and CTP1/2, and I wouldn't be suprised if it is common as well for Civ3 and Civ4, as this event must occur if you have to manage the build orders manually, because the advisors have no idea of what you want.

-Martin