Re: Civ game

[Jim Kingdon <kingdon at panix dot com>]

> I was reading about Xconq and it seemed to resolve many of those
> issues with a very nice interface. It even includes a CivII game.

The civ2.g game isn't as well-developed as, say, advances.g or the
standard game.  Not that I've tried civ2.g in a while, but trying a
few of the xconq games might get a better idea of what is there and
what isn't.

> Unfortunately when selecting various plans I just get "no such
> command", so I guess that feature isn't supported for that game?

Sad to say, it isn't really supported for most games.  It used to work
a little bit, but I'm told that the implementation was kind of iffy
and it would require more work to really work reliably.  Personally, I
stopped using it because I didn't so much like the results.  (For
example, I would put a particular unit on the "Defensive" plan and it
was almost what I wanted, but it wouldn't do quite enough to patrol
the area and find incoming enemies).

> Even "AI Control" doesn't seem to do anything. Am I missing
> something?

AI Control toggles the "NoAI" bit which is shown in the middle of the
screen.  I think that only has an effect if you picked an AI from the
Side/AI menu.

> It would also be good if there was a manual explaining what the
> various units actually do in the context of Xconq. F.ex. we all know
> what to expect from the various wonder-units, caravans etc. but how
> they actually affect the game in Xconq is a bit unclear.

Best place to start is the online help (hit the "?" key).  That and/or
read the .g file directly (the online help and the .g file have pretty
much the same info, just formatted a bit differently).

> Especially the plans and AI Control stuff. If there was a Civ-style
> game with good ways to avoid micro-management I'd be very willing to
> play more of it.

Xconq might be what you want, but I suspect it would be more of a
platform on which to improve the macro-management features.
Contributions are welcome....