Some (hopefully) simple interface suggestions

[ErikM]

I dunno if this is a right forum to post this, but...

Here is a short list of things I find somewhat poorly implemented in Civ III interface which are (hopefully) should not require more than three lines of code to fix.

1. Domestic advisor/tile improvements. It is very common to replace some mines with irrigation after getting out of Despotism and I often assign more than one worker to do to the job faster. Each time I get a Domestic Advisor's "Are you sure" pop-up. This gets incredibly annoying once you get 30+ workers. Could the game only ask it once (ie no pop-up if there is at at least one worker ordered to change the current tile improvement). It works this way in SMAC, btw.

2. F1 screen. Could it show in red (or pink or whatever) cities that are about to go into civil disorder (as opposed to cities which are in disorder).

3. F1 screen. Could it add a line showing shields required/accumulated. Ie, Athens, Settler (2 turns, 22/30) instead of just 2 turns.

4. Maybe it is to much to ask but it would be nice to have the same info for techs in the civ status window. Ie, Pottery (4 turns, 48/60) instead of Pottery (4 turns).

5. End of the Golden Age - this is probably a bug rather than a feature - first turn after Golden Age ends shields/arrows are counted as if you are still in the Golden Age which messes up production orders a bit.

6. Foreign advisor blurbs when I call up someone on the Diplomacy screen. Most of them are redundant and could be safely scrapped. They go like...

- Xerxes is furious with us (redundant since it shows in the diplomacy window) ==> scrap
- Persians are unimpressed with our culture/Our people are impressed with Persian culture. This is the same thing - leave one of the two
- Persians say that we are backwards/Our people say that Persians are technologically advanced - again, scrap one of the two
- Persian army fears our warrior - yeah, whatever , is this info useful in any way? ==> scrap

This would leave only three blurbs which are actually informative (relative culture status, technology status, and the army comparison) and will reduce clicking on the "more..." button.

Actually, if we also scrap the technology comparison (which is fairly obvious from the trading screen) than probably other pieces of information would fit on one window and there would be no need to scroll through foreign advisor blurbs at all.

[7] - this is more drastic, but given the importance of corruption management it would be nice if F1 screen had an extra column showing the distance of a given city from the capitol.

These are all (relatively) small things but imho they would go a long way towards streamlining the gameplay and reducing micromanagement.

[vmxa1]

Probably could be in the bug thread. I have been asking for the firstone since the game came out. I am guessing it must be more complex that one would think or the have some reason to leave it as it is.

The bigger issue if the lack of a dip screen thqt cna handle all of the civs in the game.

[Wittlich]

Good points Erik.

[bvoncranium]

...and it would be a nice option to have your Military Advisor pop-up to give you the odds of winning a particular fight (this is common in other games).

-bvc

[MrWhereItsAt]

The first one does sound easy, as it could just be in the preferences screen as a warning to be potentially turned on/off, like tutorial messages or announce city going into/out of disorder.

The others sound like the sort of thing that might befuddle newer players a little. I get the feeling that Civ3 compared to SMAC was designed for the gamer who cared not so much about the micromanagement and formula that some of us on these forums do. Either that or Firaxis did not want to set out to make determining the exact formulae for such things as tech costs to be easy to find.

However much I would like them, you must see that a game with all this info can be a bit daunting. Having it presented as optional would have been nice however, if the time was there to design screens to present this information in.

[The Mad Monk]

SMAC itself has options for making meus more and less complicated, and warning more and less intrusive. there is no reason Civ3 couldn't do the same.

Even better, SMAC lets you do it "on the fly", without having to leave the game to access certain options.

[vmxa1]

I have got to figure that it must be a lot tricky than we image to change the constant warning about destroying the improvement.
I would think it was mentioned in beta test more than 2 years ago
and I know I have posted it here.
So either not that many complained or they find it hard to fix or see it has causing more problems.

I know with a stack of slow working slaves trying to irrigate a mined tile, it is a real pain.

[steven8r]

From the Department of Unnecessary Redundancy Department:

I agree, it can be annoying when you're trying to Irrigate a Mine (or vice-versa), "Are you sure?", "Yes", "Are you still sure?", "still Yes", "Are you completely, absolutely, sincerely, positively sure?"......

W/ the Foreign Advisor just rephrasing the same info, I rarely even look at it. Most of the time I know our comparitive status from looking at the Victory Conditions / Power Graph screens.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to tell the number of Beakers that you've devoted to Research. It would be nice to see that level of detail rather than just the number of turns.

The distance indicator might also be nice.

Good points Erik.

Steven

[Fatwreck]

Originally posted by ErikM

1. Domestic advisor/tile improvements. It is very common to replace some mines with irrigation after getting out of Despotism and I often assign more than one worker to do to the job faster. Each time I get a Domestic Advisor's "Are you sure" pop-up. This gets incredibly annoying once you get 30+ workers. Could the game only ask it once (ie no pop-up if there is at at least one worker ordered to change the current tile improvement). It works this way in SMAC, btw.

4. Maybe it is to much to ask but it would be nice to have the same info for techs in the civ status window. Ie, Pottery (4 turns, 48/60) instead of Pottery (4 turns).

these two I really like

let´s hope firaxis implements this, it shouldn´t be so hard