revisiting GC after some time away...

from Stardock Forums
As a long-time MOO fanatic (the original version), I hold a great appreciation for what SimTex accomplished. Beyond the strength of the gameplay, the real beauty of that game was that the interface was designed to prevent the tedium that plagues the end-game of most 4X games.

MOO1 was getting old, and I finally removed it from my hard drive after playing GalCiv for a few months. That is saying a lot, because I believed up until point that MOO1 was probably the best 4X game ever written.

GalCiv is a great game, and I recently started playing again after a long hiatus. I installed the 1.1 upgrade and the latest patch and have dove back into playing every day. My old, "easy win" strategies no longer work and I've had to lower the difficulty in order to learn new strategies. Bravo to the GalCiv developers!!!

In the interest of constructive criticism, I would like to offer a few suggestions for streamlining the interface a little. I would not presume to suggest gameplay ideas, but I find it hard to believe that no one else is experiencing these minor issues. I love the game, so I hope that these suggestions are taken as ways to make the game better in little ways that are often overlooked.

1. The Economics display - two minor display issues:

A) It would be of GREAT BENEFIT if there was a little display under the Science slider detailing how many months are required until discovery. In the early game, when micro-managing is both fun and vital, I find myself constantly going back & forth to find the correct notch on the science slider for "Completed Next Month".

If adjusting the science slider could give me immediate feedback on the status of the tech research, that would be awesome.

B) In a similar vein, the planet listing does not update immediately when you click a slider up or down. Curiously, it always seems to be two clicks behind. For example, assume your economy produces 100 BC and you need 60 BC to complete some improvement:
If you start at:
Social Rate 10%, Social Amt 10 BC, Completion Time 6 turns.
click Social Pct up one time to, say, 12%:
Social Rate 12%, Social Amt 10 BC, Completion Time 6 turns.
now simply go to Tech screen and come back:
Social Rate 12%, Social Amt 12 BC, Completion Time 6 turns.
go to Tech screen again and come back:
Social Rate 12%, Social Amt 12 BC, Completion Time 5 turns.

That last line is what you would have expected after clicking the slider the first time! This is a real annoyance when trying to optimize build times. I don't know how hard it would be to fix, but it would preserve what little hair I have left! ;)

2. The mini-map in the top right corner when the planet listing is displayed... As you cycle through your ships for each turn, the mini-map does not re-center on the latest ship. This is a real annoyance if you are playing largest maps and have zoomed in on the mini-map. Often, the next ship is outside of the range of the zoomed map, requiring you to zoom 'out' and then zoom back 'in' to re-center the map. It seems like this should happen automatically.

3. The Tech listing defaults to sort by Tech ID, which is kind of weird. 'Cost' or 'Months Left' seems more useful, but this is really a minor deal since it remembers it once you set it.

4. On the trade display, the little dialog that pops up and lets you select the "Amount of BC" and "Number of Months". Right now, the left and right clicks move a certain width across the scroll bar. Having a way to adjust 1 BC at a time would be great. Right now, you have to repetitively make offers until you find the best one. For example, you may know that 43 BC is 'green', but 58 BC is 'yellow'. You then have to play the 'binary search' game to find the best amount:

Type in '50' and hit enter. It's yellow.
Click open the dialog, type in '46' and click enter. It's green.
Click open the dialog, type in '48' and click enter. It's yellow.
Click open the dialog, type in '47' and click enter. It's yellow. Augh, it's 46 and I already had that entered!
Click open the dialog, type in '46' and click enter.

If the existing buttons are analogous to '>', then you could add '' buttons to allow single-BC adjustments. That would allow you to find the optimum amount WITHOUT ever having to take your hand off of the mouse! In reality, it's the constant mouse-to-keyboard-to-mouse movement that makes the current process so tedious.



I know that, in the grand scheme of things, these seem like minor issues compared to adding new races or improving the AI, but I hope that the effort to address them is commeasurately smaller.

In the meantime, I'm getting my butt kicked by the AI! Thanks again to Stardock for a great game... I can't wait for the Altaria Prophecy expansion!
746 views 24 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
u iz all alone veteran thongor, and wiv a name like thongor u az to be an ANZAC

;)
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Sound suggestions.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Good suggestions....i especially agree on 1 and 3.

In regards to the trade display on the diplomacy screen i would be happy if it was just possible to tab back and forth between BC and months.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
In regards to the trade display on the diplomacy screen i would be happy if it was just possible to tab back and forth between BC and months.

That's because of the mouse-to-keyboard-to-mouse problem. If you could use the mouse to make single-BC adjustments, it would be much cleaner.

Adjusting the amounts with the mouse automatically trigger the green/yellow checking. Right now, typing in amounts from the keyboard do not. Unless they figured out how to do that (reevaluating the trade after every keystroke), you'd still have to 'enter' the trade to see if it was acceptable. And that still has the mouse-to-keyboard problem.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Welcome back, from one Mooer to another. :D I came late to the GalCiv party so we haven't met yet, but I love the way you think. I've had all the same interface issues and just never put them to paper. Let me second the suggestions now.

And let me add one more:

* Minimap scrolling! On gigantic maps, clicking on the edge of the minimap only moved the map one sector over. That's hugely annoying, since you have to be zoomed in to make out any of the details. The minimap zoomed in is enormously informative, but for somebody like me, who often sends ships on long "goto" missions across the map (especially constructors and freighters), to have to click-click-click-click to scroll the minimap to the destination, or else to have to zoom out where I can't see anything (on gigantic), and then try to find where I wanted to go, often buried behind huge population circles in the late game, which make it impossible to see anything... either way it's bloody tedious. :( Any improvement in this department would be appreciated. :) GalCiv is remarkable in how FEW of these kinds of click-fest bits of tedium it has, but that also makes the few it does have stand out like sore thumbs. Thongor covered four of the biggest, but this one also deserves notice.


- Sirian
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
hmmm. I was trying to quote the previous post and it didn't come out that way. I wasn't talking to myself, really! LOL
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh One More Thing (TM):

Thongor: spare yourself the tedium on trade deals. Don't pinch too many pennies. I make a lot of deals for 1111 Influence points, or 3333, or for 77 gold, or 88. Half the labor gets you 90% value, the other half gets you the rest. You won't be able to sell techs to the majors on Maso anyway, and single influence points aren't worth your time to haggle over.

In real life, haggling is tedious. Haggling for pennies will get you a bum reputation. Maybe Stardock feels that if you want to haggle that much, you should have to go through some tedium to get there. Otherwise, why allow you to make offers? Why not just click a button and have the game offer YOU the best available price? It already knows what that is. In my view, we're lucky there's a clear cut yellow/green mechanism to take out the guesswork. :)

Do I still haggle? Sure. Especially on any deal for 99 turns for a trade good or bribe-to-war deal. But I am doing it less on smaller trades with each game. Only worth it early, when a few pennies acutally could make some difference.


- Sirian
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
"GalCiv is remarkable in how FEW of these kinds of click-fest bits of tedium it has, but that also makes the few it does have stand out like sore thumbs. "

I agree completely and I was really concerned about my post coming across as a complaint. I think GC is an awesome game and the Stardock crew will get my money as long as they continue updating it.

Of the items I listed, I think #3 is not really a problem because it is just a one-time adjustment. It is the others that result in constant clicking throughout the game.

One big reason that MOO1 is a timeless classic is because of the 'elegance' of its interface, for lack of a better word. In comparison, look at how MOO3 completely bombed because of its convoluted interface. Most 4X games have the same roots and the same problems with late-game tedium. I should know, because I've played a ton of them. MOO1 stood out from the others because it was different in this regard.

GC is about the same as MOO1 in late-game tedium -- just a couple of minor issues and not much else. Like you said, they stand out specifically because they are so few.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
"In real life, haggling is tedious. Haggling for pennies will get you a bum reputation. Maybe Stardock feels that if you want to haggle that much, you should have to go through some tedium to get there. "

That seems possible, but I remember the discussion on this forum when they added the little scroll bars in an early patch. Before, we didn't even have those! :sniff!:

My only objection to your position is that it could be used to justify any form of tedium in any game. If they didn't want us to do something, it would be much easier to disable it.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

We're certainly not trying to make things tedious! :) All of the scrollbars are a bit wonky that way.  It is on my list of stuff that needs to be fixed.

Sirian: do you use the tactical map at all? I think that the hot key is F9.  I find it to be much more useful, especially with the ship list up, when moving lots of ships on a gigantic galaxy.  I will add your request for improved minimap scrolling, though.

 

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
All of the scrollbars are a bit wonky that way
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CariElf,

Just to make sure it gets on your scroll bar list... One of the scroll bars that is annoying is the load ship scroll bar. Specifically mid/late in the game when I want to create a new colony on a PQ 14. Using the 'scroll' often leaves me with billions of people to load, when I really only want 200M. I then have to single click the > until I get 200. My finger gets tired. :)

Thanks.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
I wholeheartedly agree with damoose! Please let us type in a number on loading colony ships!! :)
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
"We're certainly not trying to make things tedious!"

I must admit that I was concerned my comments would be taken as an overall criticism of the game. I LOVE GalCiv. I think it is an awesome game.

But I have played enough 4X's to know that the interface is an extremely important issue for long-term loyalty to a game (and the subsequent sales of GC2 it would create!). I know that I am not the only guy who has found a way to keep the ORIGINAL Master of Orion on his hard drive for over TEN YEARS.

I honestly think that GC is close to perfection in actualizing what was the original intent of the developers. I can't give any higher praise than that!
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Welcome back Thongor!
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, one of the things on my list is to give all sliders with a value an entry field to type an actuall number in.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
"Yeah, one of the things on my list is to give all sliders with a value an entry field to type an actuall number in."

Actually, for the science slider, the key thing would be knowing how it affects the "months left to research" without having to constantly go back to the research screen.

It would be nice to see on the economics screen a little field under the science slider that said "1 month remaining" and then, click click click, it shows "next month".

The advantage is that you can have the planet listing displayed at the same time. This allows you to directly see the complete impact of your slider changes all in one spot.

Adding that, tuning the trade negotiation dialog, and fixing the "two-click" lag on the planet listing would make a huge reduction in what tedium remains in the game.

I'm a software developer and I've done a lot of work with UI development, so I have a good idea of the kind of effort you go through. The interface is one of the big plusses of GC. If anyone doesn't think it's important to a game, just look at MOO3.
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
"Welcome back Thongor! "

Thanks! I'm still reeling from the Trade Goods balance changes that destroyed my previous winning strategies!

Curse you, Stardock, CURSE YOU! LOL
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, for the science slider, the key thing would be knowing how it affects the "months left to research" without having to constantly go back to the research screen.It would be nice to see on the economics screen a little field under the science slider that said "1 month remaining" and then, click click click, it shows "next month".
End of quote


That's probably my #1 interface issue. Perhaps even put a small tech progress bar (months-to-go would be better) on the frame of the main window. No big deal to hit F6 or click, but it's nice to have the info in view (like the voting power and pop in the lower left). Maybe expand that box with research turns to go and current morale.

Another diplo slider item: the increments should be the same going up as coming down. So if 56bc is a green offer, and one click takes me to 78bc and yellow, one click down should take me back to 56bc, not all the way down to zero (or some other value).
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian: do you use the tactical map at all?
End of quote


Not for moving ships.

My monitor is quite a bit darker than average. Or rather, less glaring in contrast. That's by design. I'm a writer, and I need low glare. My eyes suffer enough as it is, as many hours as I put in at my PC. I should probably switch to LCD, but my trusty Viewsonic has seen me through a lot of years now, and I need those LCD prices to drop a bit more first.

The minimalist color shades showing sector ownership are totally useless to me on the minimap. I even have trouble seeing the difference between blue, red and purple on the tactical map. Most games comes with a gamma slider to let me increase brightness or contrast as needed, but even if GalCiv had that, the rest of the game is appropriately shaded. I wish there was an option for brighter shading on sector ownership, so I could see it.

I rely on the minimap because I need the main visual. I may bust fog along the way to an early game destination, and I may want to know types of rival ships I'm moving around. Most of all, I rely on the visual of my own ships... the type of ship, the surroundings... to identify it.

F9 may sound like a quick hotkey, but my right hand is on the mouse, and my left is parked near the shift and control keys. Thus, to reach F9, I would have to move my left hand a whole foot of space, or my right even farther. That's more work than even six or eight clicks, where I don't have to move. Economy of motion is as much a factor as number of keystrokes. Why swap the entire screen to a tactical map when the minimap is right there and performs the same functions?

Then there's pure habit. When I am moving warships in tactical combat, I would have to have visual. And since that is how I operate for one situation, there's economy of habit to operate all ship movements the same way. I move them one keystroke at a time with my right hand on the number pad, when at war. I also manage my planets from the visual. I will click on the minimap to locate a planet of interest, then click on the visual display to zoom the planet. Not only is this my galciv habit, but it is also years of habit from other 4X games. Clicking on the minimap is THE navigational method of choice in Civ3. The GC minimap has several visual filters to aid my maphunting. I'm a visuals kind of guy. :) I do use the planet list, but for information only. My planet list usually sits on social turns left, occasionally shifting to military turns left or morale. Social Production is the fourth item I use, when checking for secondary wonder building sites, besides my manufacturing megacenter. I don't use the ship list except to track down missing freighters or ships that I have lost track of their location on the visual, or to verify how many I currently have. The ship list seems especially useless because the visual does not zoom to ships when I click on them. At least the planet list goes to the planet when I click there.

All the functionality I could want from the tactical map, I get from the minimap when zoomed, without losing access to the visual map -- EXCEPT for sector ownership, which accounts for 95% of my tactical map access, checking sector ownership and influence of particular sectors.

I tend to have my ships dormant unless they are exploring, warring, or traveling. Unless at war, I allow the normal cycle-through each turn to determine the order in which I assign new commands. The minimap scrolling one sector at a time is good enough on large maps and smaller. Those don't need to be zoomed much anyway. And that's yet one more reason I learned to depend on the minimap. I mostly play large and medium maps, and the minimap at those settings shows all the details I need either normally or with one zoom.

Put another way, with minimap scrolling completely broken in patch 1.12, I cannot stand to play a gigantic map at all. What a nightmare of zooming in and out to recenter the map on different ships and locations. :( Recentering the minimap on the current ship during the cycle-through would help.

I'll be glad when I get the update. I may play two or three gigantics in a row, because I'm past due for them at this point. :D And with me entering a new 30 day cycle, my Metaverse score could shoot up a hundred k in short order, if I do play a bunch of gigantics. LOL


- Sirian
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
Just as further reference, in Diablo II, I have all my hotkeys reassigned to the lower left part of the keyboard. A, Z and spacebar the main keys. S, D, X, Q secondary, W, E, C tertiary, and anything else, I have to move my wrist. Not having to move my wrist allows much faster, more economic response. And even that isn't where I formed my hotkey habits.

I started playing Descent multiplayer on the net with Kali at the start of 1996, before even Warcraft II was being played on the net. Formed leagues, played on ladders, traveled across state lines to attend LANs. FPS players know the power of the hotkey, and of customized controls. With one hand on joystick or mouse, everything keyboard must be done with the other hand. Reaching with the wrist is problematic. Not having to do so is ALWAYS preferable. I can reach, mind you. Descent 1 forced a reach to the number keys to change weapons, and a portion of the community couldn't hack that, sticking with Descent 2 because they could re-assign weapon swap to other keys, or even cycle through with joystick buttons. I CAN do a reach, but not having to is much better. And if the mouse-hand can achieve something without wrist movement that the keyboard hand would have to reach across the keyboard to achieve, well... you get the idea. :)

These are little touches, though. For real time games, interface issues matter more. They affect gameplay. For GalCiv, they affect only the removal of distractions / annoyances / inefficiencies.


- Sirian
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
Stardock has done a very good job at improving the aliens, it definately has kept the game fresh for me the last 6 months. I agree with you about jumping back and forth to deal with the research slider and months remaining

The following is an unsolicited recruitment pitch:

Ever feel like the last kid picked? Looking for a home in the Metaverse? Consider joining the Republic of Aldar.

Here is the link to the Republic of Aldar:
http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=151

Follow this link to read about us in the Metaverse Review:
http://metaversereview.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=220

Learn about our history in the Republic of Aldar Thread:
http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=100518

And finally, here is the link to our web site (very much under construction):
http://aldar.galciv.org

We now return this thread to its regularly scheduled topic.

[Message Edited]
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Sirian,
The ship list will zoom to the ship if you click on the little icon on the left end of the entry. I use it all the time for chcking out new starbases I buy from the aliens.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
If we're talking about interface issues, I would LOVE for there to be a way to talk to the next alien from the diplo screen with the current alien. Instead of having to click exit then click on the next alien. :) Not a huge deal, but I do alot of 'round robin' tech trading, and it would make things so much easier.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
CariElf,

Just to make sure it gets on your scroll bar list... One of the scroll bars that is annoying is the load ship scroll bar. Specifically mid/late in the game when I want to create a new colony on a PQ 14. Using the 'scroll' often leaves me with billions of people to load, when I really only want 200M. I then have to single click the > until I get 200. My finger gets tired.
End of quote


One item I noticed (after countless single clicks... :) ) is that the mouse scroll wheel loaded the ships much better. When you are trying to load colony ships a little later in the game the mouse wheel "scrolls" much quicker than trying single clicks. Maybe this has been mentioned but if not hope it helps you out, Damoose.

Muskies
[Message Edited]