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Info Views & City Planning

AC Feedback and Suggestions
#1

One thing I always find interesting in strategy/simulation games are the different information view/lens overlays available to the player.

I noticed the little eye icon in the bottom right of the HUD in some of the videos, I’m not sure if that’s what it is for. But one feature I think could be useful and fun to play with would be a wireframe-like ‘planning lens’. How many of us get bursts of ideas when playing these games, make all these plans only to forget what you were going to do by the time you’re able to actually build it? …or is it just me :smile:
What does everyone think? Would you use a planning mode like this or do you prefer more organic cities?

This feature would complement the build mode allowing the player to plan beyond their current limitations, without committing any resources.

In addition to that, I always like the standard happiness, health, natural resources, etc. info views. One of my favourite is seeing the foot-traffic and the routes and pathways that are most popular with the civilians.

This might be slightly off topic here, but I would love to see areas of high traffic, actually impact the environment, forging their own visible paths, even if no actual road is build. And doing so, travelling on this desire-path would be slightly faster than un-travelled road, but not a fast as an actual build path.

3 Likes
Roads/paths
#2

Actually the bottom right icons are debug tools :wink:

Left side icons are information layers though, like water areas, slope, height, blocking path… some of them are for debug purposes too. It is still not clear witch ones we will keep on the final version.

One of them let you see all that is planned to build. You can place structures or any kind of area, like farms or paths, and pause its construction. This way you already can plan your entire city before actually build it if you want.

While we want to keep a clean interface there is still information that need to be added to the main HUD :wink:
People already impact the ground they step and with time trails start to appear.

9 Likes
Roads/paths
Roads/paths
#3

Yes but would not it be more fun if this possiblity is linked to the appearance of writting in the game?
(to plan you need to memorise, to memorise you need a big head or to put it down on clay, wood, paper, to put it down you need writting)

AC
The problem with some games is the micromanagement, fun and the start overhelming at the middle /end of the game.
Is part of micromanagement transferable to games’characteres or automatized with or with out games situation (clerqs, school, priest etc…)?

1 Like
#4

This is really cool :slight_smile: I like that a lot, and it doesn’t happen often in games.
In a city/civilization builder I’m strangely happy to see the environment change indireclty; you make key decisions, but the surroundings evolve organically and gradually over time, and I love observing that.

2 Likes
#5

@Marko Agreed.

@UncasualGames Happy to see this incorporated into the game. Such a simple feature, yet so rewarding to see. Loved this in the early days of the Settler series already as well. Characters walking around and paths forming naturally that way. So simple, yet so brilliant. Good to see this is not overlooked here! :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#6

This! I was thinking of Settlers III as well :wink:

#7

Me to :grinning:

#8

While AC is not the ultimate micromanagement game ( people decide what to do, not the player ) technologies will unlock layers of automatism that will keep micromanagement under control where necessary at the same time the gameplay shifts a bit.
That’s the plan.

7 Likes
#9

@UncasualGames Thanks for the reply. Great to hear that’s being implemented. It should be satisfying to see the paths appear and grow over time.

@Amygdala @Marko I’ve never played the Settler series, but I’ve recently been playing Banished and found the path building a bit unnatural. However, that mostly has to do with the game being played on a grid. Love the game though.

1 Like