Shield carry over

[Blackbird_SR-71]

this is a simply suggestion that would probably easy to implent but here goes:

okay i was playing Civ3 today and i wanted to switch production to another thing but i would have to waste lots of shields. and my current project wasn't near done yet. so i was wondering why don't they allow us to carry over the wasted shields to the next project. and if you don't use all the shields on the next project you could carry it on to another project and keep on going until you don't have any extra shields left. it kind of would be like a granary for food. possibly this mechanism would be an improvement.


what do you guys think?

 

[dannergreg]

I love it!

 

[Tom_Bombadil]

yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Hyronymus]

I reckon it works thi was to force you to think twice before build something. But of course there are situations when it would be nice to carry-over the shields. Maybe you need to build a warehouse or guild hall first to allow shields to be carried over. Somewhat similar to the way granaries work.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

ABS

Many times, by myself included. Good idea, even if I say so myself.

 

[Admiral8Q]

Because... If you wanted to convert a partially completed temple into a legion, alot of the work put into the temple so far would be useless to the legion.

 

[searcheagle]

I reckon it works thi was to force you to think twice before build something.

Actually, it forces me to think less. Lets say I have to pick between a Mech Inf (110 Shields) and a Modern Armor (120).

If a city produces 50 shields a turn: The MI and MA would take 3 turns each. Therefore I go with the MA, simply because I am wasting less shields. The MI would waste 40 shields and the MA would waste 30.

If a city produces 55 shilelds a turn: The MI takes 2 turns and the MA would take 3 turns. I will pick the MI because it will be done quicker and will waste less units. The MI will waste 0 shields and the MA will waste 45 shields. Also, coming into play is production speed. Over a period of 10 turns, 5 MIs could be produced and 3 MAs could be produced, in the current system. If the leftover shields were used, 4.58 MAs would be produced.

But of course there are situations when it would be nice to carry-over the shields. Maybe you need to build a warehouse or guild hall first to allow shields to be carried over. Somewhat similar to the way granaries work.

This would be a good or workable solution. I'd just perfer for the carryover to be built in, without any city improvements.

 

[sealman]

Carry over shields in the example search eagle mentions should be implemented. Since your builders would start the next project as soon as the current one is finished instead of waiting until the next "turn"

In regards to switching construction, those wasted shields should be gone - think of it as the expenses associated with retooling and reconfiguring one project into the next.

 

[Aks K]

Good Idea.

I really missed that in civ3. In SMAC you could carry a max of 10 shields to the next production, which I think was nice.
It made it possible continously hurry construction in a city with more than 10 production (some shields wasted, but cheaper to hurry when the first 10 shields is produced) without spending to much money.

Aks K

 

[tracerhaha]

That is a good idea, it gets really annoying when you are a few sheild away from building a wonder and someother civ builds it first. Then the computer forces you to build something that doesn't require that many shields and you lose them.

 

[rhialto]

I think there should be a perfect carry-over of remaining shields, provided you placed the build order in a build queue first. If your workers have no instructions to build something, they do what workers worldwide do without instructions and goof off, essentially wasting the shields.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think that shield carry-over is fine IF, as has been stated, it is switching over to something in the same 'category'. So, land units to land units-YES; sea units to sea units-YES; Improvements to Improvements-YES; Wonders (Great or Small) to Wonders-YES; Units to Great Wonders-NO, NO, NO!!!!
Anyway, thats just my feelings on this matter.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Why not improvements to units, or vice versa?

To me, the wonder thing is the only special case.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Because, you cannot turn a soldier into the rafter of a temple-or vice versa-unless there is something you're not telling us about your building techniques, DH_Epic !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[sir_schwick]

Retooling costs should apply to changing types of projects. It is strategic as well as prevent certain abuses.

I think you should 'partial build' que built into the programming. If you had extra shields after construction would be finished this turn, then your shileds would be silver instead of blue. You could choose any other project(the original project finished in that nebulous between turn cycle) for the new shields. If there are still shields left over, repeat until there are no left-over shields. No storage, but it would be possible for a 400 spt city to produce 4 Infantry a turn, for example. Or A temple, a sewer, and some troops, etc.

 

[Commander Bello]

Carry over or carry forward should be in.

Although it seems to be a valid point that you cannot "convert" a unit to a temple roof, the missing carry over just causes additional micro-management (and by the way, is just another form of 'corruption' through the back door). And come on, have you ever seen a unit being produced? You may produce the equipment, but not the unit itself. So, it is valid to change from unit to improvement to small or great wonder and all the way back.

Why additional micro-management? Just because you have to constantly adjust your cities not to waste to many shields. When playing on the higher difficulty levels and having some wars going on, you really cannot risk those precious shields to be drowned somewhere in the in-between-turn.
Let's assume, you are playing emperor or above. You just have lost one of your luxuries, and now you are circling through your cities to fight unhappiness. Here and there a pop will become a clown. Unfortunately, as the production modifiers all work by multiples, as soon as you loose just one shield of basic production it may result in 3 or more shields lost in total (per turn). And I am speaking of net shields, not gross. Out of a sudden, your <whatever> will no longer be finished in 4 turns, but in 5.
As a balance for the longer production time, in most cases you would spend more shields as well
So you have to do some basic math in each city, keep in mind what you have planned to produce in the next turns overall, and then you are adjusting not only this one city, but some others as well, since the change in this city will cascade changes in the other cities as well.
And then your turn didn't last 3 minutes, but 15. Great idea!

 

[dh_epic]

Isn't the way they used to do it -- you lose half the shields no matter what you switch? Listen, I'm all for realism, but to me, I'm not that picky about that sort of thing. I think reality is a great way to inspire a feature, but it doesn't need to be followed to the letter.

I always saw switching production as a retroactive decision like -- "oh I was building a library all along". Not like I care but if people really care, that's fine too.

 

[rysingsun]

i think bello explains my grievances very well. the lack of shield carry-over encourages a great deal of micromanagement that we really wouldnt miss too much if it were gone. to be fair if shields were carried through to the next production it would significantly increase overall production rate especially late in the game. how often do i produce 80-shield artillery with a city producing 55 shields? all too often. giving free carry-over would significantly increase my artillery production rate and we have an aweful lot of units running around the board as it is. a compromise would be to modestly increase production costs, perhaps by 10 shields for later game items and 2-5 shields for earlier game units and improvements.

let me add one more grievance to the list bello gave us. in the late game my corruption goes up each turn as i conquer or settle new cities. so every few turns i lose a shield on my core cities until i break down and build a corruption reducing improvement. it goes up again only to slowly trickle down as the turns continue to progress. this means that every couple turns i have to go through all my cities again to see if that tank build should be changed to an artillery build or if an artillery build can without cost be changed back to a tank build. what a pain. carry-over would indeed eliminate this problem.

/tangent ... if you ever play hotseat games and have never tried using a chessclock to regulate turn length it may be worth a try. it solves the entire micromanagement problem quite nicely

 

[mhIdA]

Why not a system with multiple unis/imp/rovements/wonders at same time instead one after other.
The example of MI wich costs 110 shields and MA wich costs 120 shields:

1 Unit/Improv at a time:
City Produces 1 shield per turn, so MI take 3 turns with waste of 40 shields and MA take 3 turns with waste of 30 shields. In total it take 6 turns with waste of 70 shields.

Several Units/Improv at a time:
The limit should be 3 units/improvements at once with the combinations are 1 units/improv or 2 units/improv or 3 units/improv or 2 units and 1 improv or 1 unit and 2 improv. The several combinations showed is given by optimal choice wich waste = 0. With the same shields and turns to city production, MI and MA.
It works by a slider to allocate shields of a city:
Since we have some free shields a slider of city production will appear automatically to allocate it. In there allocate 3/5 shields per turn to produce 1 MI and 2/5 shields per turn to produce 1 MA. With that MA take 4 turns and MI 5. So in 5th turn the slider reapper again to allocate the 20 shields now free change to allocate.

With this this system there are no waste and we take 5 turns to build a MI and MA instead of 6 turns. A system like that would be more eficiently, since there are no waste.

 

[Commander Bello]

@mhIdA:
Nevertheless, your model would require us to hop to our cities every 5 or 6 turns. Definetely an improve over hopping each turn, but not the final solution. This hopping - as far as I see it - only can be avoided in case of the carry forward. Or with a completely new concept of production, but this new concept seems not to be around.
So, under the assumption that production principles will stay as they currently are, I absolutely vote for the carry forward.

Another idea might be, that the "lost" shields are pooled somewhere on the nation level and might be manually distributed to any production which currently has allocated more than 50% of it's cost. There could be a certain disagio for this to simulate the corruption processes appearing in real life. And there could be a per-turn loss of those shields (just as an example: 10%) gathered on nation level.
I admit, that even this model would require micro-management, but with the benefit of "simulating" shield distribution between cities.

Any thoughts?