Hide Buildings

[DeletedUser]

It would be nice if we could hide buildings (for ourselves) when upgrading streets. That ... or rotate the city.

 

[DeletedUser511]

Yeah when I upgraded I thought that would be nice.

 

[DeletedUser]

Agreed. It's not so bad when you have a small city and no monoliths for buildings, but once you start getting into the higher levels, trying to locate, never mind see, the smaller things like that one street square hidden behind your arena are impossible to locate unless you have a good memory and are willing to 'lift' other buildings to try and see and remember where the items are.

Even just a 'grey out' function that makes the buidlings go transparent so you can see the grid behind them would be a help.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think this game needs a whole set of city building tool to facilitate people designing their cities. For example, it could be a floor plan with grid and people can drag their buildings from the side list onto the plan; once the confirm button is hit, the city instantly changes to the new style without any interruption to the production. I hate to see my city becomes a messy construction site with those big 'not working' signs all over the place.

 

[DeletedUser]

That is an excellent idea nigiri. My city fits the category of the mess you do not want, I am in the process of deleting buildings now just to come up with a different city design. That could be another way for the game designers to also get more use of buying diamonds, which I would do, if that added element was somehow incorporated into game play. Two or three added designs would do wonders for game play. Just another piece that could be placed on the drawing board for future game play.
Then again, I have seen some of the higher level players city designs and they appear to be doing a superb job in their city developments. I was not too fond of art and mechanical drawing in school, both teachers told me to never sign up for their classes again, so here I am with a lack of designing skills. The aspects you have mentioned would help someone with my abilities.

 

[DeletedUser]

That is an excellent idea nigiri. My city fits the category of the mess you do not want, I am in the process of deleting buildings now just to come up with a different city design. That could be another way for the game designers to also get more use of buying diamonds, which I would do, if that added element was somehow incorporated into game play. Two or three added designs would do wonders for game play. Just another piece that could be placed on the drawing board for future game play.
Then again, I have seen some of the higher level players city designs and they appear to be doing a superb job in their city developments. I was not to fond of art and mechanical drawing in school, both teachers told me to never sign up for their classes again, so here I am with a lack of designing skills. The aspects you have mentioned would help someone with my abilities.

No don't make it a premium feature... Elvenar calls itself a fantasy city building game- how could it fit the name without providing the tool to everyone?

Go to beta server and take a look at the top-rank players there, and you'll be amazed. A lot of their cities are very artistic and well designed. I'm no artist so I'll just try to build a city with least roads and make the most out of the space.

 

[DeletedUser]

Got so excited about your idea, lost my mind for a few seconds. Was thinking about getting that, what I thought was the perfectly designed city.

 

[DeletedUser212]

It would also be nice if we could rotate buildings. That would let us utilize the grid better and help to clean up some of "the mess".


Oh you know xaviersxmen, I believe you maybe right well then I guess a "storage barn" were we could place buildings as we move them around.

 

[DeletedUser511]

I think they said it would be to hard to do that.

 

[DeletedUser175]

Good ideas here regarding the buildings. I had played a game before that would allow you to remove a building and save to an inventory, very handy feature.

Rotate buildings great feature city design wise.

 

[DeletedUser507]

The basic problem is viewing behind buildings. I think, but may be wrong, that the most straight forward solution, perhaps not easily programed, is one that allows you to rotate the view either 45 degrees left or right. Essentially that gives you the ability for LOS down any road and down a row of buildings. Something needs to be done in any event. Roads are impossible to see. You just about have to have a large section of grid set aside so you can move buildings, one at time, to look behind them. Right now you can pick the building up but, if you can't put any place but right back where it came from, you end up with worthless knowledge.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think the best solution would be that during build mode obstructing buildings would be temporarily shown as transparent outlines. That way everything would display normally except for what would otherwise block your view.

 

[DeletedUser615]

storage would work, you can store your buildings while you redesign the city. its frustrating for people like me who didn't really start to understand until we were fairly well into the game. my city is a mess, I could make much better use of my space if I could store buildings temporarily.

 

[DeletedUser684]

I think that FoE has a "ghost image" of a building if you try to place something behind it, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time I just pick up the building that's in the way to see if I put the road in the right place, or to see if I "missed a spot."

 

[DeletedUser771]

I prefer the idea of having some type of storage for buildings and other items so you can redesign your city without having to sell things off in order to have room to move things.. it is especially frustrating when you have the space but the items just do not fit properly because they can't be rotated.

 

[DeletedUser684]

storage would work, you can store your buildings while you redesign the city. its frustrating for people like me who didn't really start to understand until we were fairly well into the game. my city is a mess, I could make much better use of my space if I could store buildings temporarily.

I prefer the idea of having some type of storage for buildings and other items so you can redesign your city without having to sell things off in order to have room to move things.. it is especially frustrating when you have the space but the items just do not fit properly because they can't be rotated.

Making the buildings partly transparent when you drag over them is an implementation that most people are familiar with (including the developers). I think that is the best idea.

I understand your frustration. The problem with a "storage area" is that it eliminates one of the few strategy elements of the game. It's kind of like saying Tetris is a great game, but wouldn't it be easier if all the blocks were a 2x2 square? Well, yes, it would be easier, but who would play the game? The point is that while many people want this feature, just as many more feel it would ruin an important element of the game: it takes away the satisfaction and challenge of solving a difficult puzzle. For the same reason, you will never see rotation of buildings, even though it would be artistically nice to see them from different angles.

A 90 degree rotation of the city (not a 360 degree panorama) could be done, but is the bang really worth the buck? That's a huge investment of time, both for the programmers and the artists, and double the data storage for the city display, for what is essentially nothing more than a different visual perspective. Would it be nice? Yes. Is it worth the effort? Meh... you tell me. It also doesn't eliminate the possibility that you still wouldn't be able to see what you want to see from the other perspective, because it's blocked by a different building. A panoramic view would require a different game engine, so that's pretty much out.

Bear in mind, "storage space" is essentially provided every time you place a new land expansion. It is a limited storage space, but it should enable you to relocate everything in your city without having to delete anything (or at least not anything that isn't easily replaceable, like small decorations and road segments). It may help (until a city planner is developed) to use graph paper to place everything before starting to move your buildings around. If you require more space, then try to make major changes when you have a tech expansion and a province expansion close to the same time... that gives you double the work space.

 

[DeletedUser]

What we really need is a straight top-down view for build mode. That's the only way you would actually be able to see that one square of road that's messing up your planning.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think this is an excellent idea. Something needs to be done to help us see behind buildings.

One other option that I didn't see presented here is to keep the current orthographic projection, but reduce each building down to only the X and Y dimensions (where Z would represent the height). In other words, imagine a giant anvil dropping down from the sky and completely flattening your city straight down. This would give us a flat map showing the location of everything. There would be no height to any buildings, so nothing would be obstructed. This mode could be toggled as soon as you click to place a new building, and the usual view would resume as soon as the building is set in place.