Could you please add the ability...

[Belanos]

to auto build selected units in a city? It's such a pain building military units one at time, then having to go back into the city screen every time in order to select another one. It would be so much more convenient if I could just tell a city to keep building that particular unit until I tell it to stop, and only have to deal with giving it orders when completed.

I'd also like to be able to save a queue order for buildings so I could just press a key and have it loaded up. I find myself spamming new colonies after the aliens have done their thing and they typically all end up creating the same buildings when they're first founded. Having to click them from the list each time leads to a lot of micro-management. Civ 4 has that ability and it comes in really handy.

And Formers really, really need a "Build Road To" command. Since the auto Formers don't build roads, I have to do all of them manually. And it's a real hassle having to do it one tile at a time.

[ranaraza]

to auto build selected units in a city? It's such a pain building military units one at time, then having to go back into the city screen every time in order to select another one. It would be so much more convenient if I could just tell a city to keep building that particular unit until I tell it to stop, and only have to deal with giving it orders when completed.

[Xilmi]

Why not just queue like 10 of the same units? It's not that much different from automatically building the last unit.

[PvtHudson]

Hi Xilmi, thank you for the great job done on AI! You make the already good game so much better!
Are you limiting yourself to AI modification? If not, I humbly propose several assorted improvements.
1. An option to control techcosts separately from buildcosts would be welcomed. Like the Tech stagnation in the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It should suit players that prefer low- or high-tech action. This can be a line in config file, without UI representation.
2. Talking of the UI, can we get rid of those pesky popups that show just in time to obscure the critical attack by Lady Lilith on your capital? Let them be regular post-enemy-turn messages on the right of the screen, open diplomatic, research, or event dialog when clicked. Viewport should center on my unit whenever it gets attacked. Ideally, switchable option to view combat odds when you are being attacked just like when you are attacking would be helpful.
3. Limit refit to the same hull. E.g. you can refit your Avenger Tank with new gun or armor, but not to Demolisher Tank. This in theory should promote troops diversity and limit the almighty rank advantage.
4. And the last whim: some sort of naming scheme for AI designs. E.g., designs capable of bombardment have Artillery in their name.
Hope at least some of those suggestions are not excessively hard to implement, and thank you again for your work on Pandora.
Edit: corrected spelling of Xilmi.

[Xilmi]

Hello and thank you for your praise. I accept it.

While my focus clearly was on the AI, there have been a few things not AI related that I have done so far:

Representation of yields on the population to allow for easier micromanagement.
Display of "negative pollution" for easier micromanagement.
Change of how trade works: Make it scale with your population relative to the total population of the planet so overall trade yield is about the same regardless if you play with only 2 or with 20 opponents.
Fix of non-working Ambassador-faction-trait and then nerfing it due to it being way too strong once it actually worked. ^^
A few minor bug-fixes regarding pop-growth, razing-cities and diplomacy-messages.

1. Tech-cost has been brought up a lot. That's what I'm currently playing around it. I didn't actually intend to make it an option though. I wanted one that feels right for most of the players. But I might consider some sort of option for it.
Currently I'm testing with this formula:
16 * (1.75 - tier/52)^tier

Code: Select all

Tier:   New:   Original:
0   16   16
1   28   24
2   47   46
3   78   82
4   125   132
5   198   196
6   305   274
7   459   366
8   674   472
9   965   592
10   1346   726
11   1828   874
12   2419   1036
13   3114   1212
14   3899   1402
15   4745   1606
16   5611   1824
17   6442   2056


My aim was the first era to feel about the same as it is now. But increase the costs of techs in era 2 and 3 in a way that prevents a playstyle where you can skip most of the blue techs and immediately go for the gold ones and then still have the problem that they all can be obtained in 1 or 2 turns.
I've tested this in 2 AI-only-games and now test it in a normal game. It feels much better. The decision-making regarding tech-choices in the later eras now feels similar to the first one, which was what I intended. This also gives the players more time to develop their cities and build some military.
Before you blazed through the tech tree so fast that you had so many buildings to build that you had almost no time for units. You also have more time to prevent a tech-race-victory and it is harder to do one yourself without getting a decent military to defend yourself.
You can download and help testing this from here: http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?9 ... ost6759295

2. This might be complicated. The game is split in 2 Parts: Pandora.exe and PandoraServer.exe. The Server is what does all the calculations and sends data to the Client, that then shows messages. I have done very little to the client so far and don't really know much about it's structure. The requested change clearly is a client-change.
However, I do see that and why this is an issue and I agree that this would probably be better. However, that would mean a lot of relatively boring work for relatively little benefit. So while it is a good idea, I might not come back to it anytime soon. My next big plan after the science-change is to create faction-specific behaviour to make the game more interesting. You can read about my intentions on this in the later parts of this thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/287580/di ... 466049063/

3. No, I think way too many players are used to how it works now and even I am not sure that kind of change would be good. It would also nerf the Togra-University and the usefulness of Credits alltogether. Upgrading units all the way from the start to the end has been part of the game for too long to simply remove it.

4. Doing it for one language after agreeing to names would probably be quite easy, but with stuff like that you have to be careful as it would affect all languages. I'm more of an optical person and ignore the units names completely. It's the icons that tell me what an unit is and how to use it.

However, I don't want to discourage you from giving further input. As I said 2 and 4 are not bad ideas by any means, it's just that my internal "required time vs. benefit"-evaluation-method disagrees. ^^;

[PvtHudson]

"... it's just that my internal "required time vs. benefit"-evaluation-method disagrees." - just as I was afraid.
1. While exponential growth of techcost is important (good example is Endless Space, that keeps you on your toes all the way up to tech victory if you wish to maintain reasonable advancement rate), I was speaking about another thing. Different players have different opinions on how much effort they have to do to obtain new techs. Some prefer prolonged low-tech wars, entering Transcendent era when they are already at the jugular of the last foe, thus making "the last stand" impression. Some wish to have techtree half researched at the break of their first war. It's the matter of preference, so I had voted to make it an option, a multiplier parallel to your latest changes, not replacing them. Or multiplier to one of the coefficients in your formula.
3. But why not make it an option, a line in config file, off by default to ensure behavior people are accustomed to? It seems not too difficult to implement, just one small check in the Refit dialog. Of course, it changes the balance, but that is on the risk of those who switch it on. You do not have to test the game with non-default value.
Thanks.

[PvtHudson]

3. At a second glance the task looks not so easy, as it has to mess with AI too. So let's forget about it.
5. Your notched people icons are a blast for micromanagement! Thank you for this UI improvement. If only we can see total garrison MP of each city directly in the city list (F3)...

[Xilmi]

3. At a second glance the task looks not so easy, as it has to mess with AI too. So let's forget about it.
5. Your notched people icons are a blast for micromanagement! Thank you for this UI improvement. If only we can see total garrison MP of each city directly in the city list (F3)...

3. AI would not have a big problem with that. It only considers upgrade-options that are allowed. If it's not allowed, it doesn't consider it. Less upgrades available means more Credits to spend on buyout. The problem is that I would need to create access-methods to the contents of the config-file. Right now I only have that for UI-stuff. Everything else you can configure goes into the savegame but I'm not allowed to alter these.

5. That sounds doable. The easiest would be to put it right behind the cities name in the same field, so I don't have to alter the UI. And as I said, I'd also like to make population icons for the unused tiles showing just the amount of resources that you could gather there but no people. But that's quite a bunch of work both for programming and Icon-creating. But I really want to have it to further easen the Micromanagement.