About to give it another chance

MidKnight Lament · January 8, 2001, 05:41

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 · January 9, 2001, 11:06

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 · January 9, 2001, 15:25

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

January 9, 2001, 20:19

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 · January 9, 2001, 20:29

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 · January 10, 2001, 00:51

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 · January 10, 2001, 09:10

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 · January 10, 2001, 09:30

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 · January 10, 2001, 09:37

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

MrLeN · January 10, 2001, 09:53

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.

January 10, 2001, 10:13

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 · January 10, 2001, 20:55

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 · January 12, 2001, 23:27

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 · January 13, 2001, 11:16

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 · January 14, 2001, 00:51

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 "

MidKnight Lament · January 14, 2001, 07:19

It just seems really odd to me that there isn't an obvious way to do it. Perhaps they'd argue that they're just giving us more options, but I still haven't found a clear and easy one.

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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.

RayvenWolfe · January 15, 2001, 05:41

Don't worry, MidKnight, that 'o' thing doesn't work all the time for me either. I always check the national manager as soon as I get big enough where a quick flick of my mouse across the screen doesn't reveal all my cities.

MidKnight Lament · January 15, 2001, 08:17

Well, that's a shame. It probably sounds like a trivial thing to most people, but it's severely hampering my enjoyment of the game. I'll bash on I guess, because I want to get my money's worth, but it really isn't ideal.

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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.

Slingshot · January 17, 2001, 23:18

Sorry to hear about your laments, MKL.

I have experienced the same things, and after hours of giving it a good chance I'm leaving CTP2.

It seemed good at first. There's lots of new things that the game offers, but in the end I am finding the interface slow, and at times confusing.

I know that my review was upbeat and positive. Hopefully that didn't mislead you. I'm sure that many civers are enjoying CTP2.

But not me.. not any more. It's too much like every other civ game, and the new bells and whistles don't do anything novel.

By far the best game I played this year was Deus Ex. You should know that I usually don't go for the first person shooters, but something about this one was fun. I think it was a good blend of role-playing (interaction) with immersive atmosphere, soundtrack, and above all, an easy-to-learn interface.

With CTP / CTP2 it's taking too long to forget I'm in front of a computer. Civ II wasn't like that. CaesarIII was another good game with a simple interface.

My copy of CTP2 is going to a consignment store. I don't know what will be the next game I pick up, or when.

January 19, 2001, 11:54

So true Slingshot...I for one am hoping that the upcoming release of CIVIII won't let me down as much as CTP2 has.

MidKnight Lament · January 19, 2001, 20:06

Hey there Slingshot. Good to see you again.

quote:

Originally posted by Slingshot on 01-17-2001 10:18 PM
I know that my review was upbeat and positive. Hopefully that didn't mislead you.

To be honest it probably would have taken quite a few bad reviews pretty early on for me to not have bought it. Truth is, I was keen as mustard for it. (I just had a thought - is that an Aussie phrase? Not sure...) There's a lot of things to like about this game. It's just that there's a few things that really hamper my enjoyment of it. That's a real shame. And I tried to not to over-hype it. I didn't want to be expecting too much from it, because I didn't want to be disappointed. But I am anyway.

I hope enough can be done with the patching to make it enjoyable for me. I don't think simply playing a turn should be this difficult, and I hope it gets simplified somehow. It's not like I'm asking for near-human AI.

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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.

jackazzstudent · January 21, 2001, 15:07

Man!! I thought I was the only one that thought finding a city with an empty build queue was a pain in the ass. I decided not to post for fear of another RTFM post. Besides, on the RTFM thing:

1. The manual sucks
2. If I wanted to read, I'd go to the university library.

Let me know if you find a better way (other than f2).

Adam.

Try Texas heat in august sometime, you'll pray for 99 degrees.

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I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure

MidKnight Lament · January 21, 2001, 19:31

Well, judging by this thread it looks like there isn't. Not one that's worked for me anyway. I can't believe they made it so hard to keep tabs on something so integral to the game. Bad design.

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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.

SixArmedMan · January 21, 2001, 19:44

Maybe with the release of the next patch, little things like this'll be fixed, ya?

jackazzstudent · January 22, 2001, 00:08

quote:

Originally posted by SixArmedMan on 01-21-2001 06:44 PM
Maybe with the release of the next patch, little things like this'll be fixed, ya?

Looks like we cannot look forward to another patch from activision. I bet its very difficult for someone to modify this on their own.

Adam

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I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure