Nice work Djed djedi! I do all my city planning in Excel, but I've been manually using PasteSpecial|Add to calculate desirabilities. This is much better.

I have seen one minor problem. I'm using the "Pharaoh Cities '97" on Excel 2000/Windows 2000, and whenever I update the city worksheet, I get

Run-time error '438:
Object doesn't support the property or method

Clicking on "Debug", I see that the error is in the IsScratchCity function. I assume CustomProperties is not supported by Excel 2000.

Thanks for sharing your work with us. I'm sure many of us will find it very useful.

[This message has been edited by Nero Would (edited 01-22-2003 @ 10:05 AM).]

Thanks Nero,

I'm pleased to see you've taken a look, since much of the information was gathered from your posts.

I was afraid that something like that would happen. I (currently) only have Excel XP for testing.
Excel has a "Save As Excel '97" option but it obviously was too much to hope that it just worked. I believe I can dig up a copy of '97 and 2000 and do some debugging. I'll post soon.

DJ

I did some testing today with both Excel '97 and Excel 2000. I had to make some minor changes (which btw, happened to make it slightly faster), but it should now work in all 3 versions. Let me know if there are problems.

I am very interested in any usability advice folks may have, as well as bugs. For example, are there more standard "nicknames" for buildings or color schemes that people prefer?

I plan on uploading this sheet to the Heaven download site, when its a bit more tested.

DJ

Very nice compilation of info. However, I'm still getting the same error that Nero mentioned (running Excel 97, Win ME). The error is showing up in both Pharaoh.xls & Pharaoh97.xls

Cush,

Thanks for that information. I was using Windows XP and I wonder if that makes a difference.

I changed how that function works completely and it *should* work. Make sure you are using Version 1.02 of the workbook; the version number is on the "Help" sheet.

If anyone still gets this problem (or a similar macro error) and doesn't mind helping me work it out through email, let me know via email. I'd rather not do this type of work here.

Of course, if there is any debate about actual Pharaoh information (or missing important information), please make a post.

DJ

That fixed it, thanks. Now to play around with it & figure out what I can do with it. (Other than changing colors & font sizes. )

Wow!

An extremely useful set of tools. About the only improvement I would suggest is to include a few more of the production and consumption charts in some of the great forum threads here (with permission, of course).

I also rather admire your double block with the plaza in the middle - it's a good way to fit in the extra libraries and entertainment venues you need for culture without screwing up your housing blocks, and without a culture park in the middle of nowhere.

pagh

Great! I'm glad it works.

To see the usefulness:
Select the "My City" sheet
Do ^R (Control+R)

Make sure to read the "Help" sheet. It can't hurt to read Excels built-in help about "cut and paste" and "Drag and drop" if you aren't familiar with how those features work within Excel. This is the first time I've found a use for Offices "copy clipboard". I can copy a bunch of buildings and they all end up on the clipboard. I then paste from the clipboard (using the dropdown so I can "paste special").

A couple of comments:

First, *none* of the cities in that sheet were designed by me. Every single one of them are cities posted to threads in this forum by other members.

The "My City" sheet is for *you* to use when designing your city blocks. Feel free to clear out that page and start clean.

However, I did want this sheet to initially contain something so you can see how useful the workbook can be. The city block I picked is one designed by VitruviusAIA; you'll see that city also on the sheet with his cities.

But I agree! I picked that block because its just plain cool.

I'll put a note on that page clarifying this point.

DJ

I noticed that you have the forts oversized - you have 4x4 with a 5x5 yard, where they're really 3x3/4x4.

Also, you have the wrong pavilion marked as unable to be made. Hmm, hope the glyphs come out right...

This pavilion can be made - marked as NA. (North is upper left)

And this is the one that can't be made. (North still upper left)

Legend

Hey Cush,

How did I miss the fort size? I even did some checking to make sure the desirability of the fort was correct.

As far as the pavilions, I used Jimhoteps post 10 in this thread:

Puzzling Pavilions

But of course, I would get my left and right confused. "North" is upper-right in his post, not upper-left as I indicated.

I read a lot of posts and didn't find a good consensus about which way North should be.

I'll post an updated version soon.

Any chance you used the worksheet to create the character-input for your glyphs?

No, didn't think about it when I made the glyphs - used the Glyph Generator here on Pharaoh's Heaven. (Also have the offline version in the downloads section.) I noticed the fort sizes when I did some placement tests in game, and the forts weren't fitting as they should have. When I looked closer, I saw that the size was off. If you're going to revise it, you might check your Construction Guilds - when I copied the Bricklayer, Carpenter & Stonemason off the Buildings sheet, they lost their names, simply displaying numbers. Also, it's "Senet House", not "Senate House". And since I can't seem to find it in Excel help.. how do you add/edit the text shown in the merged building cells?

As for the directions... I almost always play in "true north" mode, only switching views to check on details, then going back to north at the top. So when I do draw out maps, I tend to think of north as upper left.

This is kinda fun to play around with, actually. After re-starting Pharaoh after a long time, I've reached Sauty, and used the spreadsheet to map it out. Well, first I tried drawing it out on graph paper, then started looking for mapping tools (PDC kept crashing, don't think it can handle a huge amount of buildings). Since I put the mapped city into the spreadsheet, I made quite a few changes. I spent about 3 days of advance planning; I just started last night with the actual in-game building, and it's going good, so far. Other than the pesky setbacks of forgetting the odd architect or firehouse, that is.

Advance planning is very nice. After only 9 years, Sauty has a population of 5000, a thriving jewelry export, and one of the 3 medium pyramids is 14% finished. I think I'm going to be really tight on workers though, especially as the population ages... hopefully, I'll be able to balance it out, by reducing some less-needed businesses.

[This message has been edited by Cush (edited 01-26-2003 @ 04:25 PM).]

I'm glad you're catching these. I'll fix these in version 1.03 (soon).

For now, you can "fix" the Guilds yourself by making their formulas *absolute* rather than relative. The bricklayer should be: "=Data!$A$10" instead of "=Data!A10". Note the addition of the dollar signs ($). I did this to all the other buildings, but missed those three.

I have this note at the bottom of the Bld[] sheet:

If you want to change the *text* for a building, you need to unhide the "Data" worksheet and edit the nickname for that building.

Let me know if this is descriptive enough. Maybe it should be easier to change building text?

I think I'll add a parallel set of pavilions where north is upper left. There doesn't seem to be a lot of concensus about orientation (North = upper left vs North = upper right), so both really are needed.

Pagh, you mention that I should add more production/consumption charts. Any specific suggestions?

DJ

Hey Folks,

I just uploaded version 1.03 to my server. I've fixed a variety of minor bugs (mostly in the data), cleaned up the helps, added the new Cleo buildings (all 4) and significantly improved the glyphing.

The worksheet can now do its own stand-alone glyphing; you don't need to use the PharoahGlyph web site unless you want to. In fact, it enables a few more glyphs than the web site does.

Anyway, I think this is pretty much finished unless someone finds more bugs, has a compelling new feature I should add or suggestions for changes to the colors or text of specific buildings. Please post if you have any thoughts along these lines.

http://www.winisp.net/tempdj/Pharaoh City Desire Calc.zip

DJ

PS: Anyone have a good name for this thing?

Well, after taking a break from playing, I came back to the forum and found this topic. I was interested so I downloaded the excel files and played around with them. I am running Win2k and Excel 2000. I downloaded Version 1.03 and I still get the same error everyone got with the version. Object can't support this property or method. Now it could be that I don't have something installed into Excel that you do. I'll run through the setup and install everything and see how it works.
Aside from that, I really like it. You did some great work.

As for a name, I have no clue. Except for citybuilder but I don't think that would go right.

--Zamirathe

Zamirathe, after playing with the sheet for a little while, I figured this one out, as I was getting the same errors. There is a hidden worksheet called "scratch" that I believe is used as tempoarary workspace to calculate desirability. In cell A1 there is a comment with the name of another sheet in the book. If whatever is in that comment cell matches the sheet you are working on, you won't get the error. There are 2 solutions. 1 is to just always use the "My City" tab when you are editing cities, and rename it when you are done. The 2nd is to unhide the scratch tab and change the comment to the name of the sheet you currently want to edit.

Hey Folks,

Sorry for leaving you without a reply for a week. I've been working on a version of this for Emperor.

Rather than working through code bugs here in the forum, please send me email and I'll work with you directly. I obviously don't have many OS/Excel version combinations available to me and I'd appeciate your help in tracking this down. Don't worry; you won't need to know anything about Excel macros.

Note that I'd rather have discussions not directly related to the code here in this forum. I'm a pretty good programmer (usually ), but there are others that know Pharaoh much better than I.

DJ
djed_djedi@hotmail.com

Here is one idea for a name

"PATTERN Maker"
(P)haraoh (A)rchitectural (T)ool (T)o (E)nhance (R)esults (N)icely

I've been away from the game for a looong time, but recently started up again. I can't believe how much I have forgotten! Spending a lot of time right now on the beginners' questions sticky. Which is kind of funny, since a number of the articles there are ones I wrote myself.

This excel work-book is absolutely gorgeous. A fantastic compilation of information. Thanks!

Djed djedi, very very impressive! I've been away and am now trying to catch up on the forums. I'm glad I haven't overlooked your spreadsheet.

I have one minor problem. I am using Excel XP and I notice that I cannot use the office clipboard to copy buildings. I must be losing the conditional formatting or something? When I use the office clipboard to copy a house I get a house with h not with a desirability number. The house stays as h even when recalculated. Is there any option I can set to fix this?

Anyway, I think it is stunning. I especially like having all the favourite housing blocks for reference!

Hey Kach,

I have found exactly the same problem and couldn't figure out a way around it. You're absolutely correct that a lot of hidden formating gets lost.

What I do is
"Window" | "New Window"
followed by
"Window" | "Arrange" | "Vertical"

This gives me a 2nd window of the same spreedsheet and lets me view my city sheet *and* the building sheet at the same time, side by side. Of course, I rearrange the window sizes. I don't mind scrolling through the building sheet, but don't like scrolling through the city I'm planning.

I'd like to be able to view 2 worksheets in 2 completely different windows so I can put them on two different monitors (my desktop is a dual monitor system), but I haven't figured that one out yet either.

I can write code to make Excel do backflips, but I can't do simple side by side windows. Thats how it works sometimes.

Thank to Nero Would, we now have Excel maps of all of the Pharaoh and Cleopatra campaign missions. They can be found in Pharaoh Heavens Miscellaneous Downloads.

These maps are compatible, and can be copied into, Djed djedi’s spreadsheet.

I used to have this tool but lost it when my computer crashed, I tried the dowload link but its not working for me. I would be really grateful if someone could email it to me, or upload it to the download centre

[This message has been edited by ebony_aurora (edited 04-11-2007 @ 11:34 AM).]

Welcome to our forums ebony_aurora.

I’m at work right now, but I will send you the file (to the email address in your profile) when I get home this evening.

Thanks Vaia, got the file this morning. You're an angel.

[This message has been edited by ebony_aurora (edited 04-13-2007 @ 06:19 AM).]