Is there a way to purchase partially completed units?

[PieceOfMind]

The obvious reason it was changed was to help the AI accurately determine war score.
In civ4 it didn't really matter if you partially worked on 10 units and then rush-bought them all on one turn because 10 units was 1/10th or 1/20th of your army.

In civ5, instantly rushing just 5 units can double your army and thus your war score, which the AI uses to determine whether it can or can not effectively wage a war against you. If partial rush-buys were possible in civ5, the AI would have to expect this to be the case and double it's forces before considering a war in every case. If that happened the poor joe who didn't exploit a rush-army would be crushed every time (assuming the AI could wage a war...) That creates an extremely narrow style of 'correct' play, which wouldn't be ideal.

The last thing civ5 needs is more ways to game the AI.

Thanks for raising an issue I hadn't considered. I'm sure there are ways to deal with this though without having to rule out partial rush-buys completely.

For example,
a) Hammer decay of units not at the top of the production queue for more than 10 turns. (i.e. civ4's approach). If the decay rate is not enough to deter those trying to abuse the system, make it more severe.
b) Disallow multiple partially completed units in the one production queue. If the user tries to switch away from a unit not yet completed, offer the user to rush-buy the unit or forfeit the hammers invested. Alternatively, allow the user to disband the unit being switched away from, converting the hammers directly to gold in a ratio equal to that used for 'build wealth' (this should probably only be allowed once build wealth is possible, or allow it before build wealth but at a much worse hammer to gold conversion ratio to avoid abuse).
c) Have partially completed units contribute partially or in full to the 'war score'.

 

[magnus333]

Thanks for raising an issue I hadn't considered. I'm sure there are ways to deal with this though without having to rule out partial rush-buys completely.

For example,
a) Hammer decay of units not at the top of the production queue for more than 10 turns. (i.e. civ4's approach). If the decay rate is not enough to deter those trying to abuse the system, make it more severe.
b) Disallow multiple partially completed units in the one production queue. If the user tries to switch away from a unit not yet completed, offer the user to rush-buy the unit or forfeit the hammers invested. Alternatively, allow the user to disband the unit being switched away from, converting the hammers directly to gold in a ratio equal to that used for 'build wealth' (this should probably only be allowed once build wealth is possible, or allow it before build wealth but at a much worse hammer to gold conversion ratio to avoid abuse).
c) Have partially completed units contribute partially or in full to the 'war score'.

All of those solutions involve a lot of developer time (both to implement and balance) and I personally don't see civ5 being better off for it. I certainly think there are dozens, if not hundreds, of better ways to make civ5 more fun. When I look back at my civ4 days I don't think to myself "WOW was that partial rush buy an exhilarating experience!!! I can't wait to do that again!"

On a basic game design level, if you have to come up with a list of confusing penalties to balance a game mechanic, does the mechanic add enough fun to the game to justify it's inclusion in the first place? I'd argue that the only reason to include partial rush buys in civ5 is because civ4 did it (had I not played 4 I would never have noticed or cared that you can't partial rush in civ5), and we all know that doing everything civ4 did wasn't a design goal of 5 .

All that being said, I do like partial rush buys but I don't see that bringing them back would increase my enjoyment of the game.

 

[PieceOfMind]

All of those solutions involve a lot of developer time (both to implement and balance) and I personally don't see civ5 being better off for it. I certainly think there are dozens, if not hundreds, of better ways to make civ5 more fun. When I look back at my civ4 days I don't think to myself "WOW was that partial rush buy an exhilarating experience!!! I can't wait to do that again!"

The discussion includes the possibility of mod creation, not necessarily official patches.

In general yes it's a bit hard to look back at older games, see what they did better and think of them as "wow, what an exhilarating experience". For example, I don't look back at civ4 and say "omg, units actually move to the tiles you click on, this is awesome!"

On a basic game design level, if you have to come up with a list of confusing penalties to balance a game mechanic, does the mechanic add enough fun to the game to justify it's inclusion in the first place?

My preference would be to change the way AI looked at units in determining a civ's power. And for the record, my option (c) above would not make it any more or less confusing to the player - it's only in the AI's routines that the change would be made.

I'd argue that the only reason to include partial rush buys in civ5 is because civ4 did it (had I not played 4 I would never have noticed or cared that you can't partial rush in civ5), and we all know that doing everything civ4 did wasn't a design goal of 5 .

I disagree with this. I think in basic gameplay design it is unintuitive to have a rush-buy rule where if an item is close to completion, completing it buy rush-buying costs just as much as buying it from scratch.

We may have cared less about it, because we hadn't seen how intuitive it is to have partial rush-buys if civ1-4 had not done it, but in that case it would be a common suggestion for civ6 or for a civ5 mod to allow partial rush buys.

All that being said, I do like partial rush buys but I don't see that bringing them back would increase my enjoyment of the game.

The main thing limiting my enjoyment of the game is how slow everything is. I'm not talking about turn-times (the AI turns). They are bearable and unavoidable. However the time it takes to scroll the map, zoom in/out, waiting for movement indicators etc. all adds up to the point I'm getting too little gameplay in too much time. The gameplay may be perfectly exciting and the decisions required be challenging, but if the engine is sloppy enough it alone forces the game to be boring.

Partial rush buys will not change this, but it is a rule change I would advocate, particularly for a mod. I will maybe mod it myself once the c++ sdk is out.

 

[eris]

Making rules different for the heck of it doesn't appeal to me. This is exactly why I ask in my post if anyone is aware of a design reason for the change.

You're getting worryingly close to telling me I want civ4. I can assure you that's not the case. I'm more than happy to embrace change, but changes that make the game less intuitive or more 'gamey' for no good design reason I will sometimes question.

I don't have this obsession with hating everything in the name of 'streamlining', as it seems a lot of people on this forum do. In fact I'd argue that one of civ5's biggest improvements over civ4 is its attempts to streamline the game further (many of those attempts being successful, some of those attempts neither here nor there).

The most streamlined game in this instance is the one where when your city is asking for a new build order, you build what you want now or want as soon as possible. Building what you want next and buying in a few more turns what you want now adds more calculations to the process and more requirements on the player to remember to buy the thing in 10 turns time.

It's entirely possible to have a game mechanic in this case where the penalty for rushing a building or unit early (perhaps each of the two could be treated a bit differently) has a penalty that depends on how early it is. Remember that in civ4 if you rushed something on the first turn of putting hammers towards it you paid an extra penalty (50% or so extra IIRC). After the first turn, there was no longer much incentive to delay the rushing (other than situational ones), so it was still fairly gamey in civ4 and could have been done better.

One could make the cost of rush-buying a unit or building be based on a gold-to-hammer conversion 3:1 (or whatever the rough ratio is in game at the moment) with a penalty that decreases either linearly or exponentially (or any other suggestions for how rapid to decrease it) with how many hammers have been invested. This way you would pay a premium for rushing something, but not be penalised (any more than the inherent inefficiency of the base gold-to-hammer conversion) very much at all if you've already gone some way to completing it.

So getting back to what you said, yes I'm more than happy to make suggestions on how to modify the game. So far I have not seen any good reason for the way this feature has been implemented in civ5 other than it being a 'different set of rules'.

Just like I strongly advocated the re-introduction of the beaker overflow mechanic after it was bizarrely left absent in civ5, I do a similar thing here.

I am not trying to say you want Civ 4 back. I am not trying to criticize. I am trying to say that you and I have different opinions on this. I like it this way and it works for me, or more precisely, I am learning to like it this way as something different. You prefer the other way and are willing to mod the rules accordingly. To my understanding, there is room for both approaches in the Civ universe.

I do agree with the point about beaker overflow, for instance.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well Units I can see not allowing.

But Buildings.... perhaps instead any hammers invested into a building that can has already been built in the city are dealt with the same way excess Wonder hammers are. (better than "Wealth" but worse than Rush Buy.. even with Big Ben)

So there is some planning ahead needed for optimum, but not much.


The easiest would be to make Rush cost = Remaining Hammers * 4 + X

X is fixed amount of Gold possibly different for units. (and would model their current system with 0.7 exponents well (cheaper things more than expensive things)

 

[Revoran]

Also a Great Engineer can hurry production on buildings, not sure about units.

 

[nuschler22]

The legitimacy of rushing makes sense for both buildings and units. For less units we are not so much creating people as equipping and training. With extra money you can train quicker better and provide more equipment whether it be by making it or purchasing it. So in the real world you can if you have the money churn out units quicker.

The same is true of buildings. With more money you can purchase more supplies manpower to have them work longer etc.

And whether it be a unit or a building its not ready automatically. It's not until the following turn that you can use it which time wise makes sense.

 

[SpearMan153]

its quite possible that there was no design decision involved in how the rush buy works

as a veteran software developer I've come to the conclusion that alot of these features/lack of features (software in general not civ specifically) is all down to what the individual developer thought/or didn't remember to think was a good idea on the day

 

[Firvulag]

For units, you just add a new one to the queue and rush it then straight back to the one you were building. Not much of an issue given you changed your mind on when you wanted it.

As for Buildings, the entire game is really about planning what you want when, so if I see that it'll take 20 turns for me to get a granary, but I think I'll want it in under 15, I check my Gold to see if I'll be able to afford to buy it. If I can't afford it, I build anyway and hope that growth makes it quicker, or focus production and hope for growth as well.

I rarely used the partial-build in Civ IV, and haven't missed it in Civ V though, so I guess that I just play it very differently to the OP

 

[Firvulag]

its quite possible that there was no design decision involved in how the rush buy works

as a veteran software developer I've come to the conclusion that alot of these features/lack of features (software in general not civ specifically) is all down to what the individual developer thought/or didn't remember to think was a good idea on the day

Or what they'd managed to get through testing successfully...

 

[timtofly]

If cutting down a forest would work as a rush build option, would it be hard to implement a planting a forest tile improvement.

 

[sharkles]

I actually prefer CiV's way of doing it. It makes more sense, because if your people are constructing a library and then you tell them to start recruiting a unit, they can't just turn the library into a warrior.
Maybe if they added in Alchemy as a Medieval tech it could grant that ability.

 

[nuschler22]

I actually prefer CiV's way of doing it. It makes more sense, because if your people are constructing a library and then you tell them to start recruiting a unit, they can't just turn the library into a warrior.
Maybe if they added in Alchemy as a Medieval tech it could grant that ability.

It's no different doing that than straight up buying the unit.

Although, there should be a partially left building, where you can continue where you left off.

Remember that there is a time period that goes along with these turns. Ten years for much of the game, one year in others...

So it's not "instantly created" nor is it ready instantly. It's ready at the beginning of the next turn which is either ten years or one year later.

 

[Camikaze]

If cutting down a forest would work as a rush build option, would it be hard to implement a planting a forest tile improvement.

Probably not hard, but maybe a little unbalanced and illogical. Really it would only make realistic sense later in the game, by which time the gains would be far more minimal. If it were made available earlier in the game, then it would probably be fairly overpowered. Build forest, chop forest, build forest, chop forest, etc.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

I would prefer the following things to be changed with rush buy.

1: make rushbuy cost flat 4 gold per hammer so that early buildings are not more costly per hammer then late buildings/units. Also change upgrades to flat 4 gold per hammer . make upgrades cost the same ratio so your entire army does not become upgraded the second you get the new tech.
2: no rush buying of atomic bombs/icms/GDRs, not only is it cheap with Big ben/commerce combo but it breaks game balance by allowing a really fast atomic rain killing units on the front line every turn. atomic bombs is a game changer like none other.

forest planting on grassland/plaines with or without hills should be allowed. they should just make newly created forests not add free hammers.

 

[guest273]

Hi there everyone!

Sorry for necroing this ancient post. I was googling something else a while ago and this discussion popped up in my search. I though that it was quite an interesting read.

I've played Civ3 & Civ 5 a lot, so I'm familiar with both of the systems. Using gold to hurry production VS using gold to instantly produce (purchase) a new unit / building.

To me this feels like a deliberate decision choice made by the developers and a good one at that. There is a recent interview with the head of Mohawk games (The guy who designed Civ4 & Co-designed Civ 3) about his new game "Old World" where he stated that while working on Civs 3 & 4 he realized that players have the tendency to over-optimize the fun out of the games. I feel like Civ 5's developers had the same idea when designing the game this way. To combat spending both production and gold on the same building / unit. Now thinking about it, it does seem gamey and would add complexity to basically EVERY turn. Since if you can scam some gold from the AI at a given turn, you can then use it to hurry a building, which gives you either more gold / science / production etc. etc. You know how players are - give them a finger, they'll take the entire hand. This design choice to only let you full-buy things makes it so, if you put a building such as the marketplace or the colosseum to build for let's say 6 turns, you can not think about that city for those 6 turns (if it also doesn't grow during that time OR you get declared war on and need to switch to unit production).

I do miss the so called Wonder Cascade, but let's be honest, if there's 5 wonders to be built and you really want 2, 2 other ones are okayish plans B & 1 is trash then building only 1-2 wonders & the AI getting one of them still meant that you can instantly switch into either another good option or the Palace to keep your production banked up. Heck you could even pre-build wonders in this way. Building Wonders was pretty low risk in Civ 3 if you had access to more than one at a given time.

In Civ 5 wonders are way more frequent and you really have to commit to a handful of good ones like Hanging Gardens / Petra / Oracle / Colossus etc. etc. And if you don't get the you get compensated with gold.

One of the best things the Civ 5 developers did for the series IMO was giving players more and better ways to spend gold, thus making it more relevant. Gold can be translated into any other resource.
Gold -> Production / Food via city building purchasing,
Gold -> Culture / Faith via City State purchasing,
Gold -> Science via Science agreements,
Gold -> Diplomacy via buying UN votes either from Civs or by allying City States with gold,
Gold -> Units either by directly purchasing them in cities or by buying City State allies once again,
Gold -> Happiness by buying luxuries form City States or Civilizations,
Gold -> Allies, you ask one neighbor to declare war on another and pay him gold.

Having Gold in Civ 5 just feels impactful because it's such a damn versatile resource.

Those are just my 2 cents on this 10+ year old topic though!

 

[Diktaattori]

No. You will purchase a new unit, and the unit in production will continue to be produced. If you change production, you'll have lost the hammers you put into it.

Hammers are not lost. They remain when you switch production back to that unit

 

[reddishrecue]

The hammers do remain however there are some that do get lost if you neglect building whatever it is you had after a long time.

 

[guest273]

The hammers do remain however there are some that do get lost if you neglect building whatever it is you had after a long time.

I wonder if someone also knows the exact number of turns it takes for the invested production to start to decline?
And also if it's different for each of the game speeds.
And also also if putting a single turn of production once again stops the decline of production for the thing you're building for the same X amount of turns or not.

 

[vadalaz]

I know that production decay starts in 50 turns for buildings and 10 turns for units. It's in GlobalDefines XML:

Spoiler :

<Row Name="BUILDING_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME">
   <Value>50</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="BUILDING_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT">
   <Value>99</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="UNIT_PRODUCTION_DECAY_TIME">
   <Value>10</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="UNIT_PRODUCTION_DECAY_PERCENT">
   <Value>98</Value>
</Row>

I believe it's not affected by game speed. If you resume production the decay stops, but this doesn't reset the counter, so if you switch production again, hammers will continue to decay. I'm less certain of this than the decay times though.