Interface

gameman · April 6, 1999, 18:36

I think it is crazy that everyone is complaining about the interface. The Civilization series has been known to be complex games. If you want a game that takes two seconds to learn and gives you four seconds of fun (in my opinion you may love them and I respect that) go buy a cheap first person shooter.

TheClockKing · April 7, 1999, 13:14

Complex means that the game has depth and lots of options, it does not mean the controls are very difficult to use. Moving troops in CTP is very difficult as is getting city info. and a host of other things, these make the game less fun to play, tedious, and boring not complex.

Pique · April 7, 1999, 14:12

Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion, and mine is that the CTP interface is just not well thought out.

Why should I have to access several screens, for example, to get relevant info on a single game concept/advance/city/etc, or make sure I have fresh bateries in my TI-85 so I can accurately figure out if my population is going to starve?

The interface is made to seem even worse by oversights like action taking place behind tech choice screen, little pop-up msg.s that don't go away when you look at them, got-to path lines that follow my mouse around the world, because the game automatically selected a unit when my turn started and then jumped up an info screen, etc.

You can't interface at ALL with stuff you can't see (fog of war, bizzare algorithm for determining whether or not a foreign unit is visible, etc.).

In the end, and IMHO, the interface is bad because it is not intuitive. I don't care that I can _eventually_ figure it all out by printing out hot key lists or whatever, it would be better if it was more fluent, with relevent info displayed in one screen for easy veiwing and cross-referencing.

Pique

sherwin · April 7, 1999, 16:00

am i playing a different game?? the interface (IMHO) is excellent once (like any game) you get used to it. using hot keys and mouse i can go just about anywhere, any menu i need to within one click or one key......i can - honest......
learn your hot keys!!!!! check out the cities menu - its all there - even down to clicking on the stat icons which reorders the list of cities blah blah blah
even so, after saying all this, there are still some fundamental flaws which do need to be sorted out by activsion - anybody know the latest?????

Chuckles · April 7, 1999, 18:09

I've only played the tutorial and the first 1000 years of a game and I haven't read the manual yet, but I know I can address the one point about units being automatically selected at the begining of your turn. This annoyed me as units with leftover move commands from last turn would move while message windows were coming up which is just stupid. But if you hit ESC and go to game options and game play I think it is, there is an autocycle units choice and another units choice that I can't remember the name of. I turned that second one off and then the units wait until I click on the green guy button. Works a lot better.

Tolls · April 8, 1999, 07:06

Yeah...I have the same set up, Chuckles.
I use the little green bloke button rather than letting it automatically move on.

Delbaeth · April 9, 1999, 15:22

ALso turn on the right click interface option. This way you plot your movement with the right mouse button. Everything else with the left button. Also there is a screen tab on the right, it gives you large summary information on everything except public works. As far as wonders and tech's go, right click on them for a quick info.