[feature request] Last view of a province info

[msew]

The game should keep track of of the Last time I have viewed a province and keep that infomation available to me.


example:

I send my scout scampering across the Enemy territory gathering intel of supply support and all of the other data a province has.

I get high enough domain to see more detailed info on a province near me.

I actually take over a province and then end up losing the province to either indeps or to another nation.



In all of those cases I am given set of data about a province.


Now when I leave the province, lose dominion, have it taken over I lose ALL of that info that just a moment ago I had.


What should happen is that the info on the "province intel" should stay the same as the LAST time it was refreshed based on the various types of views.


e.g.

I goto province foo.

foo has:

supplies: 100
income: 30
population: 6000
resources: 10
unrest: 5
which magical paths have been searched for

-magical sites that are there
-structures that are there

etc etc


so if I were to stay there I would get updated reports of the province each turn.

if I "lose sight" of the province then I should have the info that I Last saw there in a nice greyed out text signifying that this data is outdated and was the data I Last saw regarding this province.


This stops the really really really tedious task of keeping track of every single province in the game and data about that province on a piece of paper.


I have seen the province's data. The game should mark this and reduce tedium :-)



~msew

[The_Tauren13]

ah, the old 'fog of war' ploy
a reasonable request; most games do differentiate between what has not yet been explored and what was explored but can no longer be seen

[Gandalf Parker]

That is a good suggestion. And of course that is possible but it would be crossing over the "recommended good practices for a PbEM game" line. There are many things we all request, and could be added, but the game is designed to be:

A) long download of the game (graphics, sounds, hi-res backgrounds)
B) short upload/download of turn files. Easily attached to emails even with size limits and slow connections to the net
C) anyone can host a game

Within that framework it is really hard for the game to keep track of things from turn to turn. That causes a problem with smart computer opponents, battle replays, history of Messages, scoreboard, cheat checking, and fog on maps just to name a few things. Keeping track of all of the province info, and who saw it (my report is different than your report on the same province), and when they saw it, would amount to alot of info. Keeping it at the host, or in each players turn files, or both would be kindof involved. Not impossible. If Johan K likes the idea and gets a brainstorm on how it can be done without being huge then it might get done.

[guybrush threepwood]

That is a good suggestion. And of course that is possible but it would be crossing over the "recommended good practices for a PbEM game" line. There are many things we all request, and could be added, but the game is designed to be:

A) long download of the game (graphics, sounds, hi-res backgrounds)
B) short upload/download of turn files. Easily attached to emails even with size limits and slow connections to the net
C) anyone can host a game

Within that framework it is really hard for the game to keep track of things from turn to turn. That causes a problem with smart computer opponents, battle replays, history of Messages, scoreboard, cheat checking, and fog on maps just to name a few things. Keeping track of all of the province info, and who saw it (my report is different than your report on the same province), and when they saw it, would amount to alot of info. Keeping it at the host, or in each players turn files, or both would be kindof involved. Not impossible. If Johan K likes the idea and gets a brainstorm on how it can be done without being huge then it might get done.

Lets see... Say 200 provinces each occupying 10 extra integers. Whats that a couple of KB extra... Looking at some .trn files from a mp game around turn 50 i see size ranging from 130-170KB. Thus we are only talking about a couple of percents of file size increase.

That shouldn't really be an issue IMHO.

Cheers,
Thomas

[Ironhawk]

It actually doesnt even have to be a matter of file transfer bandwidth. This information that msew is proposing to store is all specific to your nation.. So why not just store it on the client side? Add a directory under the game directory like Intel or something. And just store everything you know about each province in there. Load it up and apply that to the GUI when you load your turn.

This would of course require the devs to write functionality to save and load this kind of information. And a flag which indicates whether a given piece of intel is new or old. Not trivial, but without knowing the codebase it seems like it could be reasonable to request this.

[Gandalf Parker]

It actually doesnt even have to be a matter of file transfer bandwidth. This information that msew is proposing to store is all specific to your nation.. So why not just store it on the client side? Add a directory under the game directory like Intel or something. And just store everything you know about each province in there. Load it up and apply that to the GUI when you load your turn.

This would of course require the devs to write functionality to save and load this kind of information. And a flag which indicates whether a given piece of intel is new or old. Not trivial, but without knowing the codebase it seems like it could be reasonable to request this.

Excellent points. The read/write has to be ironed out for Windows, linux, solaris, and mac. But on the other hand thats already done with the turn files.

I wonder how much space it would take. Of course there are ways to do it more efficiently than text. But 17 nations on a 500 province map might affect the hosts ability to run multiple games.