Yeah, adding more resources may not be the best solution to the problem. And additional micromanagement may also not be the best thing. However, resource depletion, resource values, and other things mentioned do not all require additional micromanagement. Given, having resource stocks and storing resources would have additional micromanagement, but otherwise, their wouldn't be much micromanagement added, if that's what you're worried about.
Should resources be more valuable?
- Thread starter Onionsoilder
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I believe if resource can generate revenue, then it will be very valuable. You can build special resouce factories to cultivate their potentials.
'Micromanagement', it's like the civ4 gamer's worst nightmare. Why? It adds to the realism and participation of the game, if you didn't wan't to (in Civ3, at least), you could just automate whatever your 'micromanagement' problem was. If some people don't like it, don't get rid of it. Anyway, the whole resource thing that we've been talking about will add a whole new dimension the the game, unless that's not what many of the civ4 players want, who would rather micromanage the other new additions to the game.
Why not just take the idea of Colonization, actual value amount generated per turn. Obviously some tweaking. Then introduce ships and trains to transport it to cities that require it. With that you could even add in the dimension to have units use up resources. Think oil field A brings in 20 barrels of oil per turn and Mech infantry uses 1 barrel of oil per turn taken from the capital's stockpile if it doesn't have one it goes down the list of cities connected to the capital and takes from them.
By Colonization, do you mean the game or the concept? Mechanized units (tanks, and mech infantry) should use more oil if they are in combat, and less if they are fortified. There should be a new building too: The ol refinery, it converts oil to fuel for the mechanized, naval, and air units.
This could all get a bit complicated for the average player. And hence quite boring. It would have to in a format that was, firstly, automated, and secondly, in an easily understood and controllable layout for the player.
TheMeInTeam
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Current automated processes leave much to be desired. Adding complexity before addressing them seems like a recipe for disaster for me.
Get the governor to actually work hammer tiles while building wealth and to choose to build wealth over research on its own in the right circumstances (aka usually), and maybe we'll have an automated process good enough to add resource considerations without additional/excessive human micro.
Hail
Satan's minion
and how do propose the governor will know your strategy? guessing? one of the reasonable solutions i stated in the other automation thread: assign values to everything (food, hammers, gold, science, gp, etc.) and have the governor pick the city "config" where the summary value will be max. however newbies will be lost [forever].
TheMeInTeam
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and how do propose the governor will know your strategy? guessing? one of the reasonable solutions i stated in the other automation thread: assign values to everything (food, hammers, gold, science, gp, etc.) and have the governor pick the city "config" where the summary value will be max. however newbies will be lost [forever].
It doesn't need to know strategy. It needs to do arithmetic. You know...something a computer can do faster than humans.
When you pick wealth, the city converts
into 
. The objective is to increase gold, is it not? All the game would have to do is work the tiles that produce the most gold.In cities constructed to work hammers, or at high sliders, that would be the hammer tiles. Every...single...time.
Speaking of hammers, it does this EVEN IF YOU TELL IT TO EMPHASIZE HAMMERS. There's no way you can pass this off as it "not knowing strategy". My strategy is in my actions of telling it to work hammers. Work them! It is impossible to pass of the current reaction to building wealth/research as anything but faulty coding. It doesn't help us and it sure as @#% doesn't help the AI.
Maybe some people like repeating actions they know about over and over and over again. Maybe it'd be fun to wave a flyswatter for 15 hours straight. For the rest of us, getting the game to take care of the tedium behind the implementation of the the strategy (which is, mind you, still decided by the player) is more fun.
If the actions can be adequately automated, more micromanagement is not inherently better. It is inherently worse. If you really know a repeated action is optimal, forcing the player to do it just wastes time. I don't LIKE wasting time, and I doubt I'm alone.
It's the same thing with waypointed units and airlifts ----> why not, exactly? If you have an airport and a target city, why can't the game handle this? It can. I know it CAN, because i've seen automated corp execs airlift themselves. If you set a waypoint on ANOTHER CONTINENT, your intention should be pretty clear...but no dice. So, anyone who wants to airlift the 5-10 units they produce per turn as to commit to five to ten times the amount of actions (technically more than that by a lot, since the cities aren't exactly on one screen normally). If you're doing that for 50 turns, this can turn into a half hour of your life just pointing and clicking to do something that you know you want to do, the game knows you want to do it, doing it for you if you instructed it wouldn't damage gameplay...
But it still doesn't happen. In many ways, the governor building research and working marginal crap low-yield commerce tiles that will never, ever yield more of what you're emphasizing is just the same. Yes. I can turn the governor on, emphasize hammers, build something, turn the governor off, and then click wealth. I can even do it while selecting multiple cities. That's an extra 10 minutes per game at least though, all over something completely stupid. THE CURRENT WAY IS ALMOST NEVER OPTIMAL. In fact, the current way hurts gameplay, because you KNOW the AI does this crap too, and then they have to give it 23598273059827 bonuses because it doesn't know how to click emphasize hammers, and even if it did the governor doesn't know what that means half the time.
TheMeInTeam
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Nobody's asking to automate EVERYTHING. Some of us are asking that tedious, repeated activity be automated. The latter really shouldn't be all that hard.
Building wealth and research used to actually go through the commerce multipliers at one point in vanilla, or so I'm told (I didn't get the game yet by then). Back then, having the tiles auto-shift to commerce would make sense, assuming the multipliers would justify it.
At some point before I started playing, this was changed. I didn't understand the reason back when I read it, but I do now because I've gotten a lot better. Having wealth or research going through cities like that could allow someone to bypass the global slider (while still using commerce!)...an element fireaxis probably didn't want in the game. So, they switched it over to hammers.
The governors, for some completely unknown reason, have yet to be adjusted accordingly so many patches and probably expansions later. They still act as if it's commerce that's applied. This automation used to work, was broken, and never fixed.
I know they can do it, because it works based on old mechanics.
This isn't about the AI playing for us, as you like to imply. It doesn't remove human decision making. It removes the number of raw inputs necessary to get the game to do what we want. In the case of the governor, it's completely indisputable - it can and should be done. Should HAVE been done, long over a year ago. It's a patch-introduced bug that's either gone un-noticed or un-corrected. I don't know how many other high level players have suffered it, or even low level players unknowingly. Probably anyone who's ever built wealth...so a lot.
Same thing with airlifts. Come on dude, this has nothing to do with the "AI playing the game for us". You still have to tell the computer to do it. It just saves you from having to click several hundred extra times.
These aren't the only issues, but they really stand out to me lately because we've seen active proof out of the current game that it could handle them better. If automated units already self-airlift and the governor used to work better, why are they broken now, and how did these things bypass 3.19?
TheMeInTeam
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Ah I gotcha. I agree with that. I just wish the automation wasn't so obviously bugged after a ton of patches + some expansions to the game is all
.When you pick wealth, the city converts
In cities constructed to work hammers, or at high sliders, that would be the hammer tiles. Every...single...time.
And if you want to pick which tiles you work based on any more complicated additional factor
- such ass another civ building a city close enough that some squares might be contested so you want to pick them first - do you trust the automation to do that ?
Yes, because even if that's waht you want the thing to do 98% of the time, there's always that odd 2% where some other consideration also matters.
If selecting every square for every city to work is a strategic decision, then it's kind of inherently not tedious.
Well, I want to scrap airporta and airlifts and make air transport into physical units that carry other units, so in that model all you need is air units with a workable "go to" command. Which as of Civ 3 is a solved problem.
TheMeInTeam
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Trust the automation to do something that isn't relevant to civ IV? Sure.
In other words...what contested tiles? Either your culture wins and you can work your bfc or it doesn't. What tile improvement you work has nothing to do with that, other than your ability to get something built in the city. But that's what emphasizing hammers is for.
Still, this isn't earlier civ games, so if you're going to counter an argument, at least use something that is actually POSSIBLE
.Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any "forced automation" camp. I want it to be an option, and if it is going to be an option, it should work. Current build wealth tile choice selection is utter garbage, and they need only borrow the algorithm for other unit builds to correct it.
If something IS to be automated by player's choice, it makes sense to get it to do the most common action (aka the thing that's best 98%) of the time, and the player can adjust it in special circumstances as needed. Currently, the governor is 98% right when building units/buildings (if the emphasis buttons are ticked correctly), and 98% or more wrong when building wealth.
It's not a hard fix. It would go a long way. Too bad the better AI forum has people that think working a 2F 0h tile under slavery is better for production than a grassland hill mine.
If pie tastes good, then gravity kind of inherently exists. Can we use sensible arguments now?
Just because something is strategically important doesn't mean it isn't tedious. Imagine a role-playing game where you had to fight 2000 battles just to gain one level. Certainly, fighting those battles is an important part of the game. You need to do it to win.
By the way, you only need to select "magic" ---> drain in all 2000 of those battles. You know this. But you can't automate it. That's also inherently not tedious, by your usage.
If a city is emphasizing hammers, the player made a strategic decision to work hammer tiles. The governor should pick the hammer tiles, considering this isn't a hard thing to implement. Or maybe you DON'T find 15 hour flyswatter bouts and clicking 100's or 1000's of times to accomplish something that could be done in 2-4 clicks with the same knowledge/strategy tedious. I find it doubtful you're in the majority.
I generally just use transport waves (thanks to the waypoint system in civ IV, it ironically takes less micro to ship units in boats than to airlift. A lot less.). Automated air transport units would be fine by me too. That said, we're not discussion III here per se', and certainly it's not a good assumption to say that something that worked in civ III would translate well.
