Fine control for sliders

[Mike Parker]

I have just switched to the advanced economy, and one thing I find frustrating is the control of the sliders. Using the mouse I find it exceedinly difficult to control the labour allocations sliders to any but the coarsest degree.

I am wondering if I am missing some way where I can highlight the slider and use the left fight arrow keys or something. I can get to the proper 5% mark and then I am 1% or 2% off and have to move my mouse hand very carefully to get things balanced.. and if I mess up and go too far... I lower another bar even though its locked and now I have TWO bars to fine adjust.

If there is an alternate manner to adjust someone chime in and let me know

If not any chance we could get clicky controls on either end of the bar something like

(-)[OOOOOOOoooooooo](+)

Where I could click INSIDE the bar for course adjustment then use the (-) and (+) to move it in fine adjustment one % point at a time?

[Anthropoid]

It is just kinda twitchy to control in my experience. I use a USB wireless mouse. Admittedly it took me a bit of practice to get good at it but now I do not even notice any difficulty.

[Mike Parker]

Maybe I should consider adjusting my mouse sensetivity then.  It just seems inordinately difficult to get things where I want them, and perhaps I am being a bit to anal about adjusting things to the umpteenth 1%.

[kafka]

I have just switched to the advanced economy, and one thing I find frustrating is the control of the sliders. Using the mouse I find it exceedinly difficult to control the labour allocations sliders to any but the coarsest degree.

I agree, that's exactly the reason why I switched to simple economy though normally I'd micromanage every aspect a game allows to

[Mike Parker]

Well snce I am not alone on this, any chance a future patch could see the additions of a control like I suggested above?  The difficulty being I am sure the creation of graphics for it.

edit: Just as a personal example. Last night I thought about starting a new game as Russia, since playing as Sweden I could not seem to get any textile produced even though I had lots of wool being produced. Anyway I loaded the game then realized how hard it would be to adjust the sliders to the meticulous level I prefer so rather than fight it I just shut the game down and thought I will do it this weekend instead.

I mean I have already purchased the game, and I really like it, but the control issue is rather a bummer. Perhaps I just need to consider that I am worrying too much about getting things exactly done.. but if not I think the addition of fine controls would be nice. One could broadly just click so the sliders are close to where you want them, then just click left and right a few times to dial them in!

[Anthropoid]

I think you definitely want to make very fine adjustments to your economy in Advanced. It could be different rigs suffer from it more than others, and if possible, I agree a different user-interface control would be good for those of you experiencing difficulties.
 

[jhdeerslayer]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

I think you definitely want to make very fine adjustments to your economy in Advanced. It could be different rigs suffer from it more than others, and if possible, I agree a different user-interface control would be good for those of you experiencing difficulties.

COG was the same with the slider headaches if I recall correctly.

[morganbj]

I don't have any problem adjusting the slider by 1%.  I just put the tip of the cursor a little to the left or right and it moves where I want it.
 
But a more important thing to consider is that 1% this way or that really doesn't make much difference.  While it may show an additional item of something, there's no certainty that that one item will actually ever materialize.  I never allocate in amounts in anything less than 25% chunks and can do just fine with the advanced economy.  Of course, I have a good idea what the code is doing and realize that there's enough variablity in what one gets to not be concerned about a sinle percent here and there.
 
But, if you want to do a percent at a time, it can be done.

[jhdeerslayer]

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

I don't have any problem adjusting the slider by 1%.  I just put the tip of the cursor a little to the left or right and it moves where I want it.

But a more important thing to consider is that 1% this way or that really doesn't make much difference.  While it may show an additional item of something, there's no certainty that that one item will actually ever materialize.  I never allocate in amounts in anything less than 25% chunks and can do just fine with the advanced economy.  Of course, I have a good idea what the code is doing and realize that there's enough variablity in what one gets to not be concerned about a sinle percent here and there.

But, if you want to do a percent at a time, it can be done.

I don't overly worry about it but I struggle to get one resource say all the way to 75%. I usually just give up and live with it being 74, 73, etc.. Just odd to me it is so difficult though.

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

To fill in that fiddly bit at the end of the box, put your curse inside the box near the end hold down the left mousebutton and just run it right out the end of the box, that fills the box up fully light green.

All the Best
Peter

[Mike Parker]

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

I don't have any problem adjusting the slider by 1%.  I just put the tip of the cursor a little to the left or right and it moves where I want it.

But a more important thing to consider is that 1% this way or that really doesn't make much difference.  While it may show an additional item of something, there's no certainty that that one item will actually ever materialize.  I never allocate in amounts in anything less than 25% chunks and can do just fine with the advanced economy.  Of course, I have a good idea what the code is doing and realize that there's enough variablity in what one gets to not be concerned about a sinle percent here and there.

But, if you want to do a percent at a time, it can be done.

bjmorgan,

The reason I brought this up isn't that its just a little hard for me to control its VERY difficult. I don't have issue with mouse sensitivity in other applications I use I will however try and up it some and see if that will help.

Literally to adjust a percent I have to try and click close to the % marker I want, usually I am off 1 or 2 maybe as much as 3. I then have to very carefully slide my mouse and click again which adjusts 1 or 2 (or sometimes 0). Repeat until I am where I want to be. Its not terrible really except suppose I want 55% and 45% on two sliders. I get the 45% dialed in then go for the 55%. I get to 54% move over then BAM I am at 56%.. and now the 45% is at 44%.. so now I have to go to it and hope I can get it to 45% and this can go on awhile.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so anal with the sliders and I will try to run a game where I am happy to be within the proper 5% bracket and see how things go.

I feel this is an issue with the game code itself and my particular computer, be it software, firmware, or hardware. And to justify my feelings a bit, I am currently the Director of IT for a Govt. Office and the 10 years previous to that I worked as a test Engineer for HP(and Compaq before the merger) so I have dealt with such things more times than I care to remember.

I do not blame the coders for it, I am sure its a problem that is idosyncratic to me and a small number of users. I might could fix it with a newer version of my chipset driver (to update my ICH) or a new mouse itself. But if its easy to do adding fine tune controls would be a more pervasive solution in that it would fix to a degree any and all idiosyncratic mouse problems.

I am kinda hoping that the economy works out with just 'close enough' management of sliders.. that would pretty much solve it as I said I can easily get to within 0-2% of where I want to be.

[Mike Parker]

ORIGINAL: Kingmaker

HiHi

To fill in that fiddly bit at the end of the box, put your curse inside the box near the end hold down the left mousebutton and just run it right out the end of the box, that fills the box up fully light green.

All the Best
Peter

I concur with this. It works for me.. I was sitting getting so anxious then I figured this out and it made things so much easier!

[morganbj]

ORIGINAL: Deerslayer

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

I don't have any problem adjusting the slider by 1%.  I just put the tip of the cursor a little to the left or right and it moves where I want it.

But a more important thing to consider is that 1% this way or that really doesn't make much difference.  While it may show an additional item of something, there's no certainty that that one item will actually ever materialize.  I never allocate in amounts in anything less than 25% chunks and can do just fine with the advanced economy.  Of course, I have a good idea what the code is doing and realize that there's enough variablity in what one gets to not be concerned about a sinle percent here and there.

But, if you want to do a percent at a time, it can be done.

I don't overly worry about it but I struggle to get one resource say all the way to 75%. I usually just give up and live with it being 74, 73, etc.. Just odd to me it is so difficult though.

You can click in the middle of the bar and, holding the mouse button down, drag the mouse all the way past the end. The highlighted bar will magically go all the way to the end you wanted. Are you doing something else?

[Anthropoid]

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

I don't have any problem adjusting the slider by 1%.  I just put the tip of the cursor a little to the left or right and it moves where I want it.

But a more important thing to consider is that 1% this way or that really doesn't make much difference.  While it may show an additional item of something, there's no certainty that that one item will actually ever materialize.  I never allocate in amounts in anything less than 25% chunks and can do just fine with the advanced economy.  Of course, I have a good idea what the code is doing and realize that there's enough variablity in what one gets to not be concerned about a sinle percent here and there.

But, if you want to do a percent at a time, it can be done.

bj, my understanding from the other thread was that you adjust your sliders the same way I do. Namely, you always try to get each slider and just the right spot so that a tiny increment smaller and you lose a +1 increment in a resource produced over in the right hand. So for example if you are going to get +2 timber from having your slider at the 20% mark, but +1 timer at the 19 mark all the way down to 10% marks, and 0 from 10% down to 0%, you will ideally put it right at 20%, not 19% and not 21%. Unless of course you want to have that 10% allocation for some other resource, and only want to have +1 wood from the province in which case you'd want to put it at right at 10% and not a 9% (which would give you +0 wood output) nor at 11, 12, 13 or any other % up to 19 which would be wasted allocation.

Was I wrong on that?

[morganbj]

Yes.  I generally just put the sliders at 25, 50, or 75.  That's it.
 
I tried the other way, moving one up and down a point or two, trying to squeeze out ONE more thing.  But I was always frustrated because what I thought I was getting I seldom ever really got.  So, why spend hours every turn squeezing something out that won't happen?
 
So, I adopted my "1/3, 2/3, all-the-way" strategy and it works just fine.  Sure, I propbably could maximize things a little more, but COGEE is not an economic simulator, it's a strategic game.  I want to fight battles, not do detailed analysis for an hour or more a turn.
 
There's a lot of variablility in the system (intentionally), which should discourage those who sit there with a laptop by their side looking and dozens of spreadsheets that calculate the finest detail.  I developed a disdain for that playing style back in my boardgame days, when some idiot I was playing would spend hours and hours trying to confgure his stacks and attacks to squeeze one more 3 to 1 odds attack out of the turn.  I try to remember that the purpose of the game is to fight wars and battles and engage in rudimentary diplomacy, not move sliders back and forth endlessly for little or no gain.
 
But, for those who want to do the 1% move thing, I say go for it.  If that's what you want, it's fine by me.  But, don't then complain that the game is not producing that ONE more unit of Iron you spent five hours figuring out how to get.

[Mike Parker]

I played about a year and a half as Russia last night as a friend's wife had a sudden birthday (grins I am glad he remembered at the last minute) and our bible study got canceled.  It seemed to work fine by just coarsly adjusting the sliders.  I suppose I might have made an extra wood here an extra food there.. but in the main it worked fine.
 
Also I know why Sweden wasn't making textiles for me.  When playing Sweden when no textiles were produced I kept reloading the save and fiddling with the economy again to see where I messed up.  Playing as Russia I was mostly trying to get the clicky things done, so I went several turns and realized "Oh I have read that.. textiles are produced based upon the Wool/Cotton you made/aquired LAST turn" so I was never giving Sweden a chance to show me the production!
 

[morganbj]

Yeah, that pesky textile production.  Never have completely figured out all the nuances.  But, as long as I get enough (no pun intended), who cares?

[Anthropoid]

The thing about textiles I find annoying is: people keep 'consuming' them! It seems impossible to build up enough to build a Diplomat! I have YET to build freekin' diplomat! [:@][:D] For months and months, I've been producing about 14 textiles per turn, and my stockpile of wool and cotton fluctuates up and down close to zero (i.e., I'm making about 55 to 58 raw textiles per turn). Meanwhile, my textile stockpile will build up to about ~110 or ~118, getting CLOSE to the 129 value I need for a diplomat, but then when I get to 120 or so my dang citizens 'eat' the excess and knock me down to about 100 again!! ARGH! [:@]
 
Guess the idea of those evil game devs was that I gotta build up my raw goods production AND my textiles production so that I produce enough in one turn to allow for the consumption rate of my citizens AND to bump me over, which I'm guessing must be about 40 textiles in one turn (= 160 raw goods!?!).
 
Was it intended to work that way?? I can definitely see how it WOULD be intended to work that way, but just wanted to make sure.

[morganbj]

The last time I played Britain, I built up to the maximum of 7.  I typically end up with well over 120 textiles each month (net) after a few years.  But, if I don't buy right away, it drops down to below 100.  In that game I mentioned, I had 159 textiles at one point, I think it was.  So, it can be done.
 
When I play some basket case economy (Russia, Turkey), I never get to buy a diplomat.  All my available resources go to building the economy (and courts to reduce waste).