Citizen status for buildings

[Lewin]

I can imagine occasionally using it to check when my recruits in towers will go to eat, but that's about it. But my strategy does not depend on having an empty inn for most of the game so starving bakers/metallurgists is never really something I worry about (I realise to be a really strong player you need to run your food production right on the edge of running out, but I'm not at that level). Having watched some replays posted here I can imagine that knowing when your recruits will go to eat would be somewhat useful in certain situations, although I doubt it would be used regularly in every game, and I doubt less experienced players would ever use it.

I'm still undecided, I see both sides of the argument. It would be a feature used by a small number of players in a smallish number of situations (if anybody else here thinks they'd use it please write about it). At the same time it's not much UI clutter and it's pretty obvious in my mockup what it means, it wouldn't be a confusing feature IMO, just extra information most people don't care about most of the time. Although the condition bar on citizens is information most people don't care about anyway, I can't remember the last time I checked the condition bar of some citizen (not troop) in a multiplayer game so the same argument could be used there, except that UI is already empty so it can't be called clutter.

[dicsoupcan]

well it would be nice to know when citizens go to eat for the same reasons as bo stated, especially the watchtowers since i mostly recruit them at the same time so they all eat at the same time. but i do understand If this was to be implemented it would have a low priority.

[Private.NL]

I can imagine occasionally using it to check when my recruits in towers will go to eat, but that's about it.

Speaking of which (recruits is it I am referring to), how do you do that with the recruits in the barracks?

[Bo_]

Well I know it's not the most usefull feature but it may prevent quite some rages like 'Oh no, he sneaked into my base, now I lost my baracks and there was realy nothing I could do about it.' I'm thinking again of the time that To almost lost his baracks because his recruit got hungry.
Anyway the only 2 arguments I can see against this feauture is the cpu it takes, (I higly doubt it would change even a single fps)
and the time it takes to implent, I agree that there are more important things to do.
I don't see any other reason why this would be bad, Ben what do you mean with this being confusing? I realy don't get it.
But if people find a reason why this is a bad idea then I'll aprove on that.

[The Dark Lord]

@TDL: You contradict yourself "So if you see one of them is about to get hungry and you won't be able to feed him, you can already train a new one in the school. This means you can focus on battle so you don't have to check every building every minute". To see if any of your citizens is hungry you need to scan half of your town

That's true but it's not what I meant. Yes, you have to scan half of your town, but then you have a good impression when citizens will be hungry and if you act accordingly you won't have to look again for a long time.

@Ben that's indeed something to consider.

[Krom]

@MrBo: The main argument against this feature is that it clutters UI for no good reason. The main argument to add this - is micro-management of Towers, which is not that much of a need.

You still need to watch your defences and relying on "now I see my recruit wont go away, I can sleep safe" is not gonna work at all - some of 5 militias can sneak a single tower with 100% chance.

@TDL: There's a simple equation - units get hungry linearly over time. Take a look at game results charts, citizen count graphs - they grow at a steady pace. What does that means? It means that starting from 30min there will be a steady growing count of hungry citizens - you dont need condition bars to predict that

[Bo_]

Why trying to convince me that I don't need it if I had already plenty of situations where I could realy have used it?
Depending on how late your gold is knowing the status gives you and exacter idea about what time exactly.
It's actualy the fun part of kam, every game in kam is different so you don't have exact times.
It also makes sense since you can see the status of serfs all the time, why not other citizens?
I also didn't say 1 single tower, but I always leave some space between my towers, I don't like to towerspam you see.
If the tower on the very right gets empty you can easily sneak in that way,
with sneaking I was also more thinking of scouts, knights, since militia are pretty worthless for that.
(Except if you realy overwelm, but then it's no sneak anymore.)
A player won't send 8 scouts when he knows that he will lose 4 of them just by passing towers.

[FeyBart]

Why trying to convince me that I don't need it if I had already plenty of situations where I could realy have used it?
Depending on how late your gold is knowing the status gives you and exacter idea about what time exactly.
It's actualy the fun part of kam, every game in kam is different so you don't have exact times.
It also makes sense since you can see the status of serfs all the time, why not other citizens?
I also didn't say 1 single tower, but I always leave some space between my towers, I don't like to towerspam you see.
If the tower on the very right gets empty you can easily sneak in that way,
with sneaking I was also more thinking of scouts, knights, since militia are pretty worthless for that.
(Except if you realy overwelm, but then it's no sneak anymore.)
A player won't send 8 scouts when he knows that he will lose 4 of them just by passing towers.

On one hand, I understand you don't feel like arguing. But on the other hand, somewhere it kinda feels like you're walking away, if you understand what I mean. Plus, you keep saying you don't want to argue, but you still try to convince him of why you'd like to see it.

[Krom]

So far I did not saw strong arguments in favor of that feature. What I try to say, is that KaM should not accept any feature suggestion without analyzing how it will affect the game. If we would accept every minor features, the game would be a dump of all sorts of craziness. We need to maintain a balance between usefulness and pithiness. In this situation my analysis is that the feature is really minor and is outweighed by negative effect of cluttering the UI.

P.S. I would send 8 scouts and loose 4 of them knowing that I can wreck havoc in your town with remaining 4 ones

[Bo_]

I want to argue but not on the fact that I won't use it, there's nothing to argue about.
Anyway you're right I keep arguing on it.
I just don't want something not to be done for a reason that's unvaluable,
if it won't be implented I'm ok with it but then give any other valuable reason. (not enough arguments is good enough for me)

[Bo_]

That's ok for me, realy no problem.
About the scouts, depending against who you're playing playing it would be a good/bad thing to send them.
If the player is terrible in micro then it's obvious to send them.

[Krom]

My argument can be expressed in these two pics:

Lots of features, cluttered UI:
http://www.orchestrainafield.com/wp-con ... Kirton.jpg

Features thought through - lean UI:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_J9bnnRgW4f8/S ... 400/b2.jpg

[Da Revolution]

Krom I love the first bus

Anyway I don't think this option is really needed. You can always set a timer if you really want to know when they got hungry. And like Krom stated with his pictures you can also have too many options.

[Encaitar]

My argument can be expressed in these two pics:

Lots of features, cluttered UI:
http://www.orchestrainafield.com/wp-con ... Kirton.jpg

Features thought through - lean UI:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_J9bnnRgW4f8/S ... 400/b2.jpg

Awesome example Krom!

[The Dark Lord]

@TDL: There's a simple equation - units get hungry linearly over time. Take a look at game results charts, citizen count graphs - they grow at a steady pace. What does that means? It means that starting from 30min there will be a steady growing count of hungry citizens - you dont need condition bars to predict that

Hah - if you can predict precisely when a random farmer/animal breeder/baker/butcher will get hungry, you are the king of KaM.

But I agree with your main point, we could come up with a lot more of such functions. And although they might be useful sometimes, you won't need them often and they will just make the menu a mess. Good example with the busses.