2 missing visual cues

[Pocus]

I think the interface can benefit from these:

- when only sneaky units are in a province, there is no visual cue on the map (the sole flag is the flag of the owner). Something like a smaller flag of your nation would be cool. I sometime forget about some scouts (yes nation overview can help me track them, but still)

- put level 4 search in all magic fields of the Capital, thats would be handy in the nation overview. Also many new players ask if they have to search their capital (two birds with one stone).

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Pocus:
I think the interface can benefit from these:

- when only sneaky units are in a province, there is no visual cue on the map (the sole flag is the flag of the owner). Something like a smaller flag of your nation would be cool. I sometime forget about some scouts (yes nation overview can help me track them, but still)

- put level 4 search in all magic fields of the Capital, thats would be handy in the nation overview. Also many new players ask if they have to search their capital (two birds with one stone).

Might as well make it 9 (like Acashic Record).

That is, assuming that it's still impossible to find magic sites other than the starting ones in capitols. I haven't found any yet, but I'm not taking it for granted that it's impossible - I've only searched 3 or 4 capitols so far.

BTW, you can often find those hidden scouts using the 'n' key. It cycles through all commanders with defend, siege or hide orders.

This won't help you find hidden preachers, spies inciting unrest or something like that though.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Pocus:
- put level 4 search in all magic fields of the Capital, thats would be handy in the nation overview. Also many new players ask if they have to search their capital (two birds with one stone).

In theory you can add #feature scripted items to capitals - ie, additional sites which have to be found.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
That is, assuming that it's still impossible to find magic sites other than the starting ones in capitols. I haven't found any yet, but I'm not taking it for granted that it's impossible

#features 100

Adding this line in a map file will give you 4 sites in every province, when playing a game created from this map file. Except capitals never get extra sites.

Another way to demonstrate it without Acashic relies on the fact that, at game creation, random sites are placed before #feature'd (ie, specific) ones. So if you try something like:

#features 100 // full sites in non-capital provinces

#setland 1 // a non-capital province
#knownfeature "Throne of the World" // won't work, since the province already has 4 random sites

you'll notice you never get a "Throne of the World" in province #1. Now try the same in a capital. It works. QED.

[licker]

You can find your 'hidden' units on the F1 screen can you not? Though a visual cue on the strat map would be nice

There sort of is a cue though, you can see the armies in provinces that you normally cannot, if your sneaker is deep enough...

[Taqwus]

Regarding magical site searches, the interface could in theory help out even more. For instance, since searching is deterministic and there's a hard cap on the number of sites in a province, there are times when a given commander's search or a particular divination spell -- Auspex, Haruspex, Augury et al -- cannot produce any positive results.
If a commander has no searching ability that's superior to that already used in the province, perhaps the 'search' option should be greyed out.
A similar filter (greying out provinces) would be nice for the divination spells, but that would probably be harder. I would suspect that all the remote-targeted spells use a common path through the code for selecting provinces, and that it may not have the support for filters, e.g. accepting a set of trinary flags (must have this, must not have this, don't care) or perhaps a function pointer for a more general filter that could perform the appropriate tests given pointers to appropriate data structures. It would be nice, 'tho.

[Psitticine]

Originally, all searches were marked as complete at level 9 in the home province. This was dropped during beta-testing. When I asked why, Johan or Kristoffer said it was because there is now a chance for new/hidden sites in the home province, so they have the same thing in mind there.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
Originally, all searches were marked as complete at level 9 in the home province. This was dropped during beta-testing. When I asked why, Johan or Kristoffer said it was because there is now a chance for new/hidden sites in the home province, so they have the same thing in mind there.

Good to know. And probably another of those things that they are waiting for us to discover.

I was going to mention that I have used .map files to make EXTENSIVE and interesting changes to the home sites. Adding to them, removing the ones you normaly start with, giving you someone elses starting sites.

However I would very much like to see something added where IF there is no need to bother searching the home province, the game might say so to help newbies.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Regarding magical site searches, the interface could in theory help out even more. For instance, since searching is deterministic and there's a hard cap on the number of sites in a province, there are times when a given commander's search or a particular divination spell -- Auspex, Haruspex, Augury et al -- cannot produce any positive results.
If a commander has no searching ability that's superior to that already used in the province, perhaps the 'search' option should be greyed out.
A similar filter (greying out provinces) would be nice for the divination spells, but that would probably be harder. I would suspect that all the remote-targeted spells use a common path through the code for selecting provinces, and that it may not have the support for filters, e.g. accepting a set of trinary flags (must have this, must not have this, don't care) or perhaps a function pointer for a more general filter that could perform the appropriate tests given pointers to appropriate data structures. It would be nice, 'tho.

I'd at least like to see a "This mage is not skilled enough to find any new magic sites in this province" message (similar to the message you get when preaching won't be effective). The locator spells would be trickier to do though.

Are you sure there's still a hard cap on the number of sites in a province, though? If so, full provinces (where the maximum possible number of sites are already known) should automatically be marked with 9 in everything (to reduce redundant searching).

Interesting info about the capitols though. Is that only for sites added through #feature, or can the normal random site generation add them too?

[Taqwus]

The limit of four sites might be gone. I haven't seen any provinces with more than that, but there's nothing to prove that it's still there.