Adjust the dropdown list values for 1000+ troops

by **Fuchsia tude** on Mon Jul 24, 2017 2:05 am

Concise description:

Change the way dropdown lists of 1000+ troops are populated in Advance, Reinforce, and Deploy phases so there are less values bunched up at the high and low end and more values in the middle.

Specifics/Details:

Right now, the Advance/Reinforce/Deploy dropdown list contains 1 item for every troop you are deploying, advancing with, or reinforcing with. However, that is only true of values up to 1000.
When troop numbers exceed 1000 (only likely in long Escalating games, or rich maps like City Mogul) this scheme changes. Instead, you get a linear increase (of at least 10 items) until the value hits a power of ten, then the increment is multiplied by ten.
This isn't too bad when the first digit is "1" or "2", but it breaks down at higher numbers. For example, with 3338 troops:

Code: Select all: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 2000 2100 2200 2300 2400 2500 2600 2700 2800 2900 3000 3100 3200 3210 3220 3230 3240 3250 3260 3270 3280 3290 3300 3310 3320 3321 3322 3323 3324 3325 3326 3327 3328 3329 3330 3331 3332 3333 3334 3335 3336 3337 3338

This is a hideous drop in specificity: the number of list items drops a full order of magnitude when you increase from 999 to 1001 troops!
Worse, most of these values are bunched up at the top and the bottom. When there are thousands, tens of thousands, or more troops being tossed around, does the difference between 3334 and 3324 really matter?
Note the giant gap between 1000 and 2000. I can't even pick a value in the middle; I have to go with roughly 1/3 or 2/3!
This is inconvenient in Deploy phase, but you can deploy in the same spot multiple times to precisely calibrate your values. But it's devastating in Advance and Reinforce: there, you only have one chance to get it right.

Thus, I propose:

Whenever the troops being deployed/moved number 1000+:
The first and last 10 items will count up from 1 to 10 and down from (# troops) to (# troops - 10).
List items 11 through 990 will be filled in with values between 10 and (# troops - 10), either a simple linear interpolation or (ideally) an S-curve.
Bezier curve: , where the first two points are fixed, and the top two move up or down so that y[3] = (# troops).

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

Much greater specificity in advancing and reinforcing -- vital in long escalating or otherwise high-troop games
Guarantees list length will not exceed 1000
No specificity drop from 999 to 1001 troops

by **Thorthoth** on Mon Jul 24, 2017 10:56 am

At the very least, could we flip the list so that 0 is at the bottom. I'm sure the two most common options are 'advance all' and 'advance none' so having to scroll up for 0 is a major waste of time.

And please don't reply just to tell me to do some weird 'right-click' instead. That doesn't even work well on all set-ups or systems.