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Maps

The main playing window of the common interface is called the map window (or just map for short). At present you can have only one map window, but this will change.

Map Panes

Each map window consists of a number of panes, whose size you may adjust by dragging the small square grips that may be seen on the the pane boundaries.

----------------------------------------------------------
|                                     |    turn/date     |
|         notices/commands            |------------------|
|                                     |                  |
|                                     |      sides       |
|                                     |                  |
|-------------------------------------|                  |
|       |      mouseover text         |------------------|
|       |-----------------------------|                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |        unit info            |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |-----------------------------|                  |
|       |                             |    unit types    |
|       |                             |                  |
| ctrl  |                             |                  |
| panel |                             |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |         map view            |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |------------------|
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |    world map     |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
----------------------------------------------------------

The map view is a detailed display of part of the world. You can view it at different magnifications, and can enable or disable the display of various kinds of data, such as country borders or wind direction.

Each map window has one current unit (aka selected unit). Both the map view and the world map highlight it specially, and the unit info pane (see below) describes it in detail. The current unit is the one to which your commands apply; it will always be a unit that you control.

The unit info pane has the general form

<picture><unit owner/type/name>  <hp> <acp>|<cp> <cxp>
<location>                       <other units here>
<occupants>                      <supply>
<plan>                           <more supply>
<tasks>                          <even more supply>

Items like <hp> and acp have the form current/max, so that you can get an idea of how the value compares to what it could be.

The mouseover pane is a brief description of what the mouse is over, and updates continuously as you roll the mouse around, both inside the map view and outside. Use it to get info about cells, enemy units, and buttons.

The notices pane is a scrolling list of textual notices about what is happening, and what has already happened in the game. Combat and construction reports come out here, as well as copies of warnings and feedback from commands.

The bottom line of the notices pane also serves as an input field for commands that need textual input. When this happens, you will see a prompt here, and anything you type in response will be echoed here also. Prefix arguments to keyboard commands also appear on this line.

The control panel along the side of the map is just a collection of buttons for the most common commands.

The turn/date pane shows the current turn. In many games, the turn is displayed as a date, so you may see it in that form.

The side list pane lists all of the sides in the game, including emblem, name, and player. Most importantly, it displays each side's progress in moving units for the current turn. The black part of the progress bar indicates the total number of acp left for units to move with, while gray indicates units that could move, but that are asleep or in reserve. The turn is over for a side when the black part is gone. Note that a sleeping unit may wake up, in which case the gray part will shrink and the black part will expand.

The side list also displays the current value for each scorekeeper for each side.

The unit type list displays all available unit types in a scrolling list. Units that your side can never own in this game (for whatever reason) will not appear. Each unit type appears along with its name and a count of how many completed units of that type you own. If you have incomplete units, their numbers appear in parentheses following.

The world map pane is similar to the map view, but magnified so that you can see the whole world. It also includes a outline showing the locations that are displayed in the map view.

Note that for some very large areas, the world map's pane may not be large enough to display it all, even at the lowest magnification. You can drag the sizing grip to increase the area given to the world map.

Scrolling Maps

It will nearly always be the case that the world is too large to be seen all at once. You can scroll around in several ways.

If you position the cursor close to the edge of the map view, it will begin to scroll.

If you want to go directly to a particular part of the world, use the world map in the bottom right corner of the map window. Just click anywhere within the world map, and Xconq will center the main map on that point.


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