Pie Chart Game Objective

[Chazar]

The pie charts under Game Objective are nice!

They would be even nicer if they would display the percentage of currently seen enemy, neutral and razed cities, rather than a huge blob of "unknown".

(Actually I am uncertain whether razed cities still factor in those percentages displayed.)

[KGB]

(Actually I am uncertain whether razed cities still factor in those percentages displayed.)

They do not.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

So you think we should have one additional pie-chart? Showing the distribution as far as the player knows it?

[Chazar]

No, not an additional pie chart (but actually yes, see * below)

Currently, I always see a large block called "unknown", despite having vision on enemy cities, which are thus known!

Example:
Assume a map with 20 cities, blue owning 7 (35%), red owning 6 (30%), green owning 4 (20%) and 3 (15%) remaining neutral.

The red player currently has vision on 2 blue cities, obviously all his own cities, all 4 green and 2 neutral cities. Thus 6 cities are hidden through the fog of war.

Currently, the red player is given a pie chart saying 30% and 70% unknown. This is not very helpful, as the red player has much more knowledge.

Instead, the chart should show: blue 10%, red 30%, green 20%, neutral 10% and 30% unknown. This reflects more of the players actual knowledge about the game. Knowledge that a player already has would thus become more easily available.

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The above was my original suggestion, but it might be improved further. I don't think that the suggestion below is difficult to implement either, since essentially one need a single loop over all cities, counting their status.
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*
However, the player does know even more: the map displays cities hidden by the fog of war with the status that was last seen by the player. Therefore an additional pie chart** would be useful, which includes this insecure, but often quite probable information.

Example:
In the above example, 6 cities were hidden from the red player by the fog of war. Red's map shows 3 of these as neutral (they were never scouted by red) and 2 are shown as green (unbeknown to red, these two were lost to blue meanwhile) and 1 city within the fog of war is shown as blue.

So the pie chart that includes unsecure/outdated scouting would show:
blue 15%, red 30%, green 30%, neutral 25%.


Of course, relying on unsecure/outdated scouting information might be misleading, as this example shows; but often enough it is quite reliable. It is of course an essential part of the players task to judge the actual game situation correctly! However, given both a pie chart with the currently scouted situation as well as a pie chart including outdated/insecure information would make this part of a player's task less tedious, since it is quite tedious to count city dots on the minimap!

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**
Of course, one could combine actual and outdated scouting in a single pie chart, e.g. using a bright shading of a player's color for "currently in vision" and a dark shading for "seen, but currently within fog of war and thus unsecure", but I think this might be confusing too some players.

Example:
In the above example, such a combined chart for red would then show 10% bright blue, 5% dark blue, 30% bright red, 20% bright green, 10% dark green, 10% bright grey and 15% dark grey.

I am not sure whether a combined chart is clearer to read. If there is enough space, comparing both charts might be better. I guess this is a personal preference, you could make it a gold member option to choose between combined and separate pie charts?! After all, these improved charts only provide some comfort, but not anything a player could not find out by spending a minute to count city colors on the mini map.


However, I think a much better option would be to always have separate pie charts: free members are shown the chart with current scouting information, and with a 5% chance they also see the pie chart with the insecure/outdated information (and a greyed out are otherwise). 20% for silver members, 100% for gold. So players get a taste of this feature and may close and reopen the game objective dialogue repeatedly in order to see both pie charts at once - or improve their membership level.

[KGB]

Chazar,

In non-ladder games you *always* know the exact city count of all players. There is no need to *guess* how many cities each owns that are in the fog-of-war. So the pie chart in non-ladder games should be 100% accurate.

In ladder games, the pie chart should show only what the player sees (unfogged). This can obviously change during the turn as more is unfogged. What's in the fog should just be in the 'unknown' category.

KGB

[Chazar]

In ladder games, the pie chart should show only what the player sees (unfogged). This can obviously change during the turn as more is unfogged. What's in the fog should just be in the 'unknown' category.

Either you did not understand or read my entire post: the unknown category can be further divided based upon earlier scoutings. Sure, this information is unreliable, therefore the need for a secondary pie chart (or color shadings).

Note that such unreliable information of earlier scoutings is currently displayed on the minimap and map already. All I am asking for is to aggregate this available information into a pie chart - counting things is a typical task for a computer!

[SnotlinG]

This might very well be a good idea. I´ll have alook ont he code shortly and if it isnt too much work I might try to implement something. So lets try to agree on what would be the best solution.
Currently we are displaying 1-2 charts depending on if you play 1v1/FFA or Teamgame.

Im thinking that adding an exact chart for a non-ladder-game should not be so hard. In this case I guess a chart based on FOW-info is quite useless since we have the proper info already.

The tricky thing is at laddergames, we would maybe want to add 2 new charts? One based on exactly what we see, and one based on what we think we know (FOW-info).
Also, do you think this should replace the current charts? I.e. is the teamchart any use?

One solution would be:
non laddergames / non gold member: show charts as of now
laddergames / non gold member: show charts as of now
non laddergames / gold member: show 1 chart with exact info in it (probably scrap the team-chart?)
laddergames / gold member: show 2 charts, 1 based on what we see, and 1 based on what we think we know. And scrap the team chart?

[KGB]

One solution would be:
non laddergames / non gold member: show charts as of now
laddergames / non gold member: show charts as of now
non laddergames / gold member: show 1 chart with exact info in it (probably scrap the team-chart?)
laddergames / gold member: show 2 charts, 1 based on what we see, and 1 based on what we think we know. And scrap the team chart?

That works for me. 2 charts are definitely needed for ladder games. Interestingly, you can infer some things from ladder games that are in the FOW. For example based on winning % you can tell how many cities are non-razed (this tells you if your opponent razed or rebuilt something).

One question though. Why are you going to scrap the team chart? I like seeing the team % when there are multiple teams playing.

KGB

[Chazar]

Yes, I agree that the team chart can be scrapped, provided the ordering of the pie slices is along the teams (i.e. the slices for all players of each team form a consecutive block, so that team slices can easily be seen). That should be fairly easy to achieve as well (I think it currently is ordered that way, at least I have not yet found a counter example: the individual pie chart was always a subdivision of the team chart).

However, it would be desirable to draw a thick border line around the consecutive team block, in order to visualise the team slice. Of course, that might need more work, depending on how you draw these pie charts. If this is too complicated, it would suffice to simply print the team percentages below the charts for now...?!

And yes, no point for a second chart for non-ladder games - I did not think of non-ladder games at all.

[SnotlinG]

It seems I only have space for 2 charts in the game objective window.
Im thinking of trying:
keeping the team-chart + one of these:
for non-ladder games, show the exact chart
for ladder games, show a chart based on FOW-knowledge

What do you think?
I think thats the better solution and should not be so confusing either?