Since I know you're all still playing Civ IV, here's a production UI tip

| Wednesday, June 5, 2013
The other day I discovered something by accident that changed everything.  Well, changed something.  It made things slightly more convenient.

If you alt-click on a unit to produce, the city will keep making it indefinitely.  This is upgraded and maintained when more advanced units are available.  Until I discovered this I'd been spamming shift-click when I wanted a lot of a unit.

Even better, if you shift-click and add something after it, once the current unit is done it will build the next item in the queue, and then go back to the infinite unit.  For example, if you wanted to finish the spearman that is almost done and have the city build walls before starting on the next one, this can do that.

Even more better, if you shift-alt-click you can have two units being built in an alternating pattern.  Or add more to change the ratio.  This makes it easier to keep a good mix of spears and axes.

Civ IV has a great production management system.  It's strange that Civ V completely lost this, with a much clunkier queue system.  About the only thing it made better was allowing you to pick city production anytime before the end of the turn rather than forcing a decision at the start.

I don't like having a production UI pop up constantly.  I like being able to make a plan, push it into the city, and focus on something else.  It reduces distraction.  In Civ IV this is as simple as shift-clicking as you go through the build order.  My only annoyance when dealing with pre-req buildings, such as needing libraries to build universities; even if you have the library queued before it, you cannot add a university to the queue until it is done.

[edit] Something else that isn't quite related, but here goes: if you can get to a city screen you can also get to the diplomacy screen.  For example, let's say a window popped up informing you that a fire burned down your forge and offers these options: ignore it (forge destroyed and unhappiness), investigate (forge destroyed and costs 10g), rebuild it (forge saved and costs 50g), and of course examine city, but you only have 40g.  I'd say it's worth much more than 40g to keep a forge working.  If you pick examine city, then hit F4 you'll get to the diplomacy screen.  You can now trade with other civilizations, possibly getting the gold you need.  In a similar scenario, if you get a free tech you can use the option to view the tech tree, then go to the diplomacy screen and trade for something, allowing you to leapfrog further ahead.  Wouldn't you rather have free astronomy than free optics?

3 comments:

Electrolux said...

Totally am still playing Civ IV. I can't do the infinite queue thing. It would be 1987 and I'd suddenly notice I have 287 Axemen in Atzcapotzalco.

I only found out you can rename military units last month. Civ IV is my favourite RPG now.

Klepsacovic said...

The units are "awake" when built, so you'd see that an axeman was built. Besides, you'd end up with 100 axemen, 50 macemen, 25 riflemen, 25 infantry, and 87 mechanized infantry.

Electrolux said...

Ah thanks. My dismissive attitude to Alt-queuing was totally misguided :)

Post a Comment

Comments in posts older than 21 days will be moderated to prevent spam. Comments in posts younger than 21 days will be checked for ID.

Powered by Blogger.