Worker lost when building Outpost, Radar or Airbase. Should this feature be optional?

Presently units with the Build Outpost, Build Radar and/or Build Airbase worker jobs checked will be lost once they build one of the three tile improvements. Shouldn’t this be optional?

This implies the need for a ‘Unit Lost’ flag in the Worker Jobs screen. If checked, the unit disappears once the improvement is built.

This means that you could toggle the feature off (i.e. Worker is not lost when improvement is built). Likewise, you could also toggle the feature on for other improvements (e.g. Mining costs a Worker).

Just to give you an example: I was thinking of a mod that would divide Worker Jobs into various units (rather than just the one Worker unit) where the units are lost following each job, thus forcing you to rebuild them. For example, an Engineer unit could only build RR and be lost after building but would be very cheap. Each time you build an Engineer, it’s the equivalent of building the rails for the Railroad as well --it also means that the Engineer has to go back to the new target square each time, thus the means of transportation determines how fast the job gets done rather than just the unit’s work rate. Likewise, the shorter the unit’s time in the field, the less you will pay in maintenance. Variations on this would apply to the different worker types (e.g. Farmer, Miner, etc.). It’s just an example mod but it should give you an idea of what I mean.

Seeing as how it’s really just a matter of adding a flag—considering the AI isn’t even designed to take maintenance into account, it seems unlikely that it’s set to distinguish between improvements that cost units and those that don’t—it’s really just a question of whether it’s worth the bother of doing so. That’s why I opened this poll.

There should be someone operating the outpost (or radar or airport). That's why a worker is lost.

These tile improvements would be too good if they didn't consume the Worker.

Originally posted by Ramalhão
There should be someone operating the outpost (or radar or airport). That's why a worker is lost.

Click to expand...

Well, roads need maintenance as well. What about all those slaves that died during the build of the pyramids?

Originally posted by Ramalhão
There should be someone operating the outpost (or radar or airport). That's why a worker is lost.

Click to expand...

Therefore we should also lose the worker when we build a fortification. Who is operating the fortification.

The fort has been in the game from the start - without loss of worker. That is the reason a lot of players do not like losing a worker when building an outpost etc.

The solution, as I see it, is that you do not lose the worker when the improvement is built. But it has no effect until you station a military unit in it. If left unocuppied a rival civ unit destroys it upon entering that tile.

Originally posted by Harrier


Therefore we should also lose the worker when we build a fortification. Who is operating the fortification.

The fort has been in the game from the start - without loss of worker. That is the reason a lot of players do not like losing a worker when building an outpost etc.

The solution, as I see it, is that you do not lose the worker when the improvement is built. But it has no effect until you station a military unit in it. If left unocuppied a rival civ unit destroys it upon entering that tile.

Click to expand...

That makes sense. Of course, for an airport, outpost, or radar tower, a worker should suffice, as it doesn't need to be a combat unit that mans an airport. Yet, this would defeat the point of outpost: it doesn't cost maitnance.

He's not asking for it to be changed in the main game, though.

He's asking for modders to have the option to make certain improvements cost (or not cost) a worker.

He does have a wonderful point that railroad costing one worker per square would help a lot curtail the abuse we've seen there.

Railroads and/or other improvements costing one worker unit per tile is a horrible idea. Instead of having cities producing buildings and military, most of the cities would be doing nothing but producing workers. Since each worker unit costs 1 pop point, most cities would stay small and underdeveloped, certainly until the late game.

Radar Towers, Airports and Aribases are VERY powerful additions to the game. Giving them without using a worker would make them overpowered.

Forget realism, this is Civ after all. I much prefer a game that is better to play than one that is *slightly* more realistic...

Still, the worker shouldn't be lost when building an outpost. Currently, they are useless.

Oda hit the nail on the head: the point of this thread was to find out if you thought it would be worth while to add in a flag that would allow you to to choose which improvements cost a unit and which ones don't. Currently, this feature is hard-coded to the Outpost, Radar and Airbase.

So, let's say you don't like the fact that Outposts cause you to lose the unit building the improvement. Well, you would just load the Editor, select the Worker Jobs screen, select 'Outpost' from the pull-down list and un-check the 'Unit Lost' box. That's all I'm talking about here.

In fact, it's not so much a matter of adding a feature but rather of making an already existing feature editable by players.


About the example mod where units are lost per improvement: the Engineer unit would cost shields but not population. The idea is not to make it count against the civ's population but rather to represent materials and their transfer, thus less industrialized civs with big populations will need more than just the infrastructure (Factories) with which to build the Engineer each time and the appropriate Road connections with which to send each new Engineer unit to the target square within a shorter period of time. Either way, you still pay for the unit's maintenance.

I'm not sure about Workers (just build Roads). Do roads cost a unit or not. It kind of depends on the era. If its medieval then the workers just move dirt around and don't have to really move to many materials about (i.e. like stone or concrete). Whereas modern highways require even more work than RRs do.

YNCS mentioned the problem of having to continuously build Workers in order to build a improvements. It's not a problem with Railroads because you only NEED to build a direct line between cities, whereas Roads are build on possibly every city square. Again, it would depend on economics: if you're economically proficient, you can probably build workers in a short enough time span that it won't interfere with your other production.

Here's what I had in mind:

Unit(Pop. Cost) (Improvement)

Worker(0) (*Road, Clear Damage)
Farmer(1) (*Irrigation, Clear Forest, Clear Wetlands)
Miner(1) (*Mine)
Engineer(0) (*Railroad)
Army Engineer(1) (*Radar Tower, *Airbase)
Naturalist?(0) (*Plant Forest)
Infantry(1?) (Outpost, *Fortress, Barricade?)

* Unit Lost

(The reason why the Farmer and Miner units cost population AND are lost when building Irrigation and Mine is because I wanted to simulate the effect of having the unit 'working' there once the improvement is built rather then just continue building on another square).


While I'm on the subject, I'd also like to see Colony (which is also hard-coded to cost a unit) added to the pull-down list in the Worker Jobs screen so you could chose whether or not the unit is lost when building a Colony.


BTW, I'm quite surprised that so many people voted against this. I'm assuming that some may have misunderstood and thought I was talking about changing the default settings. As I've said above, this is not the case.

What about Outposts?

players start to MASS nproduce putposts everywhere, like in entire fields of em..that is not the way it should be..

also, what impact could this not loss of worker have on AI, maybe they mass build them on all empty tiles outside empire or sumthing...

so either lose the worker, or make it take 10 turns or sumthing

Originally posted by yoshi
BTW, I'm quite surprised that so many people voted against this. I'm assuming that some may have misunderstood and thought I was talking about changing the default settings. As I've said above, this is not the case.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think having that flag available in the editor is a great idea, but even more, I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want more options in the editor.

All of these posts in this thread are really arguments about whether to have the flag checked or not for certain jobs - having the flag exist in the first place seems like a no-brainer. Once it exists, then we can have another poll about whether certain jobs should use up the worker or not. Until the "Unit Lost" flag exists, any arguments about which jobs should use up a worker are beside the point. I agree with most of the posts that say the rules shoudn't be changed, but yoshi's idea for making the editor better and giving modders more options is brilliant, and it doesn't seem like it would be hard to add it in a patch.

1) If you didn't lose any worker, you should put a radar tower everywhere in map. Not so bad when you have Replaceable Parts with faster workers.

2) You REALLY use workers in those mines and irrigations. Look at city screen and you will see some squares being worked. It's people in the city working on that tiles.

3) There's better things that should be in editor that I consider more importants than this one. It should be good to make new worker actions, for example. It should be really good if editor add entries in civilopedia.txt and pediaicons.txt when we create a new unit or building. It also would be good if we could decide how many tiles units walk per turn in railroads.

NOTICE TO ALL: this poll is to see if you want/wouldn't mind the option or you prefer to leave this feature hard-coded into the above listed improvements. That's it.
My idea for the mod was only meant as an example of the added flexibility it would give players (i.e. if you don't like the way something plays, you can change it --it has nothing to do with changing the default settings of the game).

With that in mind, vote whether you want the added option or not. (Even if you yourself have no particular interest in modding.) Thanks.


On topic: the reason why I can picture this feature getting into the game is that it is apparently only a matter of 'de-hardcoding' this aspect of the 'Worker Jobs' settings. I doesn't seem likely that the AI would be affected by changes to the settings either. Thing is, I'm not absolutely sure about that because I don't know if the AI takes Worker loss into account when building improvements --seems more likely that it just tries to maintain the # of Workers necessary to perform the required AI jobs (i.e. it will just build another worker if the requirement is there).

Determining whether or not, and is so how the AI would be affected by this is really what IMO would determine the feasability of adding the feature. Anybody want to clarify this?


P.S. If you want to comment on changes to the default settings go ahead, but your vote should NOT be based on that. (It distorts the vote thus making the poll useless.)