mortgage
That could be an interesting concept. Care to elaborate?
mortgage
great idea!how about to build improvements from city screen:
Spoiler :
However, (1) there's no decision for the player between improving tile yield and spending production on other things, (2) there's no way of customizing tile yield for different cities, and (3) no way of focusing on increasing tile yield for some cities before others.
Changing the system so that improvements that provide access to strategic and happiness resources need to be constructed as buildings would perhaps insert a strategic decision. But it might be a non-decision in that there's always one choice that is clearly better.
Another option would be to add a building that needs to be constructed before tile improvements start building. More than likely another non-decision.
First off - thanks to all for the feed back, all! I'm pleasantly surprised to see this thread is still alive. Unfortunately, I don't have time to respond to all the comments, so I'll just pick it up where it left off.
I was thinking along similar lines. A player can decide to build an improvement (or preform another "worker action") on a tile, by clicking on a tile an selecting the improvement. (Right click context menu seems most natural way to do this, but the selection buttons could sit elsewhere on the interface.)great idea!
that's exactly the solution i had in mind:
key points:
- improving tiles must have a trade off (choices! civ should all be about choices!)
- therefore either a citizen is working an unimproved tile or improving the said tile(the city receives no tile yield from the tile in question)
I'm note sure that it needs to be that complicated. Simply letting have improvements have fixed build time (maybe modified by terrain, techs, wonders and policies) would already work well.
- furthermore let's suppose that every tile improvement has a base cost
- "base cost" may be modified by tile terrain difficulty(e.g. it is more difficult to construct something in the mountains, then on grassland)
- "rate of tile improvement" linearly depends on city's production
- therefore turns_to_complete = (base_cost * modifiers) / rate_of_improvement
That would be a wholly different discussion with its own pros and cons.
- maybe allow cities to transfer production to each other (and quadruple wonders' costs and effects to make them more epic )?
While the improvement is being constructed the tile has a zero yield (or maybe simply a reduced yield). This is the trade-off, and force the player to think about when to build the improvement.
It's most likely been brought back from the dead because it was featured for discussion in the latest episode of Polycast (you can find it in the 'News Updates' section).
If it were a completely empty choice (one that always has the same best answer) then I would concur. But I don't that it necessarily is. If a tile being improved does not have a yield, this means that for most new cities this turns into a choice between improving the first tile or growing the city. Both choices improve the total yield of the city. Depending on the balancing of city growth speed, yields, and improvement rate this can be highly situational of the cities surroundings. Other considerations like: improving will make resources available earlier, but while growing the city produces more hammers and/or gold, and also increases science output.I'm a bit quizzical about why some many commentators are so instant on this point. First off, I don't view it as a major issue. This could be a better way to implement the idea, although I doubt it for the following reasons:
First off, there is a fine line between creating a "trade off" and punishing the player for an action that is in his interest to do anyway. It seems that, in the vast majority of circumstances, earlier improvement is always better, because it maximizes tile yields over time. I understand that if a player is playing a tiny map with a lot of other civs and attempting a warrior rush, then this choice could be interesting. Otherwise, it seems to be a trade off that is quickly "solved"; but you just slow down production/growth - which is more of a punishment for playing the game correctly.
1) This is actually not that hard to get a good heuristic for.Secondly - to the extent that the decisions DO matter - it creates another opportunity for the AI to screw up. As players - we have to accept that the AI is limited, and I can just imagine a tirade of posts complaining that the AI (for both competing civs and governor-controlled player civs) isn't improving tiles fast enough, etc. Maybe it's something that can be implemented with a good algorithm - I don't know. But even that solution could extend turn times . . .
If a tile being improved does not have a yield, this means that for most new cities this turns into a choice between improving the first tile or growing the city. Both choices improve the total yield of the city. Depending on the balancing of city growth speed, yields, and improvement rate this can be highly situational of the cities surroundings.
1) This is actually not that hard to get a good heuristic for.
2) Moreover since these decisions are most relevant in the early game, your can actually have early game specific AI routines which are more expensive CPU wise, because the AI is not doing much else yet. (This is one of the things what (I think) was done in the Better AI mod for BtS to improve early game decision making (like when to prioritize workers, which is a similar dilemma.)
3) At worst better decision making by the player is going the give an early game advantage to the player, which is easily offset by giving the AI something extra at the start of the game.
That approximately translates to grow to size 3 and then improve, which was I intuitively guessed. After that improve after each growth seems quite near to optimal.[...]
With those conditions, it makes sense to improve the grassland if you are 12 or greater turns away from the next population point.
The big difference is the cost of not microing optimally. De cost of not microing techoverflow tends to become bigger as the game progresses. Here the cost of doing it quick and dirty and just slapping down improvements as you build the city and letting the governor improve as the city grows, (which is not quite optimal) is not that big.My feeling is that it falls under (b). Two out of the three cases it's mostly better to improve right away. And the third case has this strange pattern to it that requires a bit of brainless micro once you realize how it works.
Note that:Another consideration to throw into the mix is how developed do you want the early game to be? I generally believe that the early game already has build times which are too slow and would like more to do. Do you want to slow it down even more? (I realize this could be tweaked by other methods not discussed here - but why force the issue?)
It should not be too hard to find a relatively decent one. If you put in some thought you can probably get the AI to do better than 90% of the human players.So:
- (1) given the complications above, is there really a good heuristic?
Later in the game the cost of not doing it optimally is not that big, and the AI can do a fairly decent job with a cheaper heuristic algoritme.- (2) how would you handle AI improvements of cities built or acquired during the later part of the game? That does happen fairly often, especially on larger maps.
Well, it is better than removing decisions from the game, because those give the player to do better than the AI. If you think about it, that is actually the reason to choices in the first place.- (3) AI is dumb so give it more bonuses? I view this as a necessary evil best avoided, where it can be.
That approximately translates to grow to size 3 and then improve, which was I intuitively guessed. After that improve after each growth seems quite near to optimal.
Note that:
1) This doesn't slow down development more than building workers does.
2) Having to think about this in the early game, actually gives you something extra to do in the early game.