Auto-Build, Luxury Resources, and Quality of Life

[MagnusIlluminus]

I probably should have posted this a while ago, but I actually like having two, three, or four rows of buildings to choose from. It gives me choices and lets me personalize my cities, if I'm in the mood to do so. I wouldn't be seriously opposed to having perhaps one-tenth of that huge list being converted to immediate auto-build, but any more than that would be hampering my style. On the other hand, upgrade chains and auto-build at Tech could be fine, so long as the Tech is reasonably far (at least one era, preferably two or more) after the building comes into play to give people who want to build it earlier a reasonable chance to do so. Just my two cents.

 

[Thunderbrd]

There's two game values pit against each other in this discussion:
1) Minimization for simplicity and streamlined play.(Macro)
and
2) High detail and variety for deeper and more immersive play. (Micro)

From the beginning of C2C, its definition has always been on course #2. And this is what has attracted every gamer who plays this mod. However, it has been taken to such an extreme that even players who love more Micro and detail are beginning to wonder if its 'too far'. The complete abandonment of Macro approach here is, in my opinion, the most charming element of what C2C IS! But we also don't want players to feel bogged down in overcomplexity either.

Since my return to modding here I've seen the Macro sentiments grow and grow to the point that valued core modders and players have gravitated more over to the renewed AND2 project (which probably would never have come to be if Macro had been more in balance in C2C - instead we'd all be making our progress here!)

So those that have stayed on this far must still have SOME love of Micro.

I know I do. Obviously. This is what inspired me so much to learn to mod in the first place - that C2C was open to more help, had a more is more philosophy, and was so incredibly expansive in its approach.

I LOVE all the many buildings we have. But I also care about the impressions of our players.

Usually, gameoptions can be employed to sort things out to allow for the full ability of players to have things according to their own preferences. And I don't think this is any different.

I'm not really for or against this project myself but given the list of buildings that ls612 would like to render into the autobuild mechanism, I'd far prefer to see it done as an option. Tricky to balance perhaps, yes, but please don't take away from all of us the ability to have all those many buildings to choose from. I'm with Magnus on this... I love having them all there!


If I may, I'd like to make another suggestion on how to go about implementation of a system that leans towards automatic builds and can help to keep the two options in balance with each other:

Private vs Public.


Personally, I had some ideas to work towards this as a goal already.

In short, the concept is, depending on the civics you've chosen, building types, by category, are considered either Private or Public.

If Public, they are built by the decision of the player as they are now. But if Private, and they qualify to be built on their prereqs, they gain a chance to be built each round until they are built. The chances can be modified by a number of factors, not the least of which the overall production value of the city itself. Only one private building would autobuild in any given round but not one would HAVE to be built every round and each would be independently evaluated so we don't get ourselves into the same problems we currently have with the events mechanism.

Usually, civics that make a building category private would cause some loss of production overall to compensate for more privatization taking the efforts of the citizenry further out of the hands of the government.

That's pretty much the basics of the concept in a nutshell. Privatizing categories can relieve the nation of the burden of a) making all choices, b) provide faster development of cities as the building rates in a good balance between private and public would be far superior to entirely one or the other, and c) open up categories of buildings to greater returns from taxation while public buildings would tend to be much higher on maintenance, d) free up the build queue for military while the city continues to self-develop, and e) relieve some of the burden from players who feel we currently have way too much micro in building definitions while allowing those who prefer the micro to play less privatized and thus quite happy to have all those buildings there to select from.

Obviously its a fairly large project but from a programming perspective, rather simple. Categorizing our buildings would be the beginning (we can use specialbuilding tag definitions for that!) and would have a lot more benefits for us than just this project's application.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Thunderbrd

The problem with private vs public is that the player loose control. Under your system say a Tavern or Gambling Hall would be private and as a such would automatically be made. Same goes for an Ironsmith or Bandits Hideout. These buildings some people would not want automatically made.

I think that DH's idea of auto-build at techs along with auto-built in new cities and auto-build by starting era are much better solutions. They allow for both the player to experience all the buildings as they appear, but then not have to worry about them later in the game. And example of this would be ...

You discover Agriculture and can now build a Wheat Farm. Yay! that was cool. However later, you are the the medieval and you are tired of building a Wheat Farm in every new city. Having Crop Rotation tech allow for Wheat Farms to be auto-built means you can stop worrying about building them anymore. But you still got to experience building the Wheat Farm for the very first time.

Having them auto-build right off the bat would mean you might not even be aware you built a Wheat Farm. And thus loose the excitement of discovering new buildings.

In addition some buildings might never get an auto-build such as the Bandit's Hideout because its a NIMBY building.

 

[Whisperr]

I WAS frustrated about all the buildings but since the sort buttons have been implemented I don't have a problem with them. I am extremely careful about what buildings I put in each city, and on that list of "suggested" auto-builds list are many buildings that I don't build in every city and wouldn't want them autobuilt. If you want to get rid of repetitive annoyances, do away with workers.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@Thunderbrd

The problem with private vs public is that the player loose control. Under your system say a Tavern or Gambling Hall would be private and as a such would automatically be made. Same goes for an Ironsmith or Bandits Hideout. These buildings some people would not want automatically made.

I think that DH's idea of auto-build at techs along with auto-built in new cities and auto-build by starting era are much better solutions. They allow for both the player to experience all the buildings as they appear, but then not have to worry about them later in the game. And example of this would be ...

You discover Agriculture and can now build a Wheat Farm. Yay! that was cool. However later, you are the the medieval and you are tired of building a Wheat Farm in every new city. Having Crop Rotation tech allow for Wheat Farms to be auto-built means you can stop worrying about building them anymore. But you still got to experience building the Wheat Farm for the very first time.

Having them auto-build right off the bat would mean you might not even be aware you built a Wheat Farm. And thus loose the excitement of discovering new buildings.

In addition some buildings might never get an auto-build such as the Bandit's Hideout because its a NIMBY building.

Well, I see that as part of the charm of the mechanism. Civic choices would define what categories are or are not within private or public domain. And if there are buildings that are in a given category that you simply don't want built then you may not want to privatize in that category.

You wouldn't have automatically private or automatically public definitions on any given buildings, just categories that buildings fall under that you have choice to privatize or not.

Additionally, Whisperr and I were discussing the concept and she suggested that if a private building is about to be built, you the government get a popup to accept or deny the 'construction permit' which could lead to some temporary unhappiness to deny but may be worthwhile in the case of a building you really don't want (but it means the waste of a free build for that round as well so you'd still want to be selective about the categories you allow to be private.)

I simply don't want to see a huge number of buildings reduced to a host of autobuilt buildings because to me it just flat takes away from the experience of having them in the game at all... makes them completely ignorable and takes a lot of control out of the hands of the player without very close monitoring which would be just as (or more) problematic from a monotony standpoint. But we could get creative and try to implement a system that reflects the real world process of governing in a way that Civ has never been capable of delivering!

I completely agree with DH's solutions too, and in particular your comment here

Having them auto-build right off the bat would mean you might not even be aware you built a Wheat Farm. And thus loose the excitement of discovering new buildings.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Additionally, Whisperr and I were discussing the concept and she suggested that if a private building is about to be built, you the government get a popup to accept or deny the 'construction permit' which could lead to some temporary unhappiness to deny but may be worthwhile in the case of a building you really don't want (but it means the waste of a free build for that round as well so you'd still want to be selective about the categories you allow to be private.)

Isn't that making it even more annoying to the player? Its one thing to queue up a bunch of buildings but its another to be pestered by popups. Especially if you had a large empire.

However I still think that civics should have more of a role in buildings. Not in what you can or cannot build but how they effect buildings. Especially in the case of maintenance cost. Somoene should go over the buildings and civics and see if there should be more interaction between the 2. They are highly overlooked. Mainly because you have to edit them in the CIV4CivicInfos.xml and not the CIV4BuildingInfos.xml

 

[Thunderbrd]

Isn't that making it even more annoying to the player? Its one thing to queue up a bunch of buildings but its another to be pestered by popups. Especially if you had a large empire.

True... and Whisperr said much the same. Could be better to just send a notification of the build. Once we have a button on the city screen for selling off a building it wouldn't be all that bad to run it that way. At least that way too you get some benefit (the gold) from the building having been built. And since message logs allow you to double click on the message and takes you right to the spot where it took place, its not that different from watching for other messages of a critical nature like where new resources emerged and where key battles took place.

 

[Sgtslick]

You probably know by now (i've been saying this since I first started playing this mod) - all these cheap buildings bog down the game play so much. Choosing what to build in cities becomes this shift-click fest, there is no strategy involved really. Players are not confronted with the problem of what to build but rather what not to build (which I feel is backward). Its not that I generally dislike hydro's buildings, its more that they detract far too much from other areas of the game.

I have also said that I personally would like to see buildings become generally more expensive - again forcing more of a choice and hence > more strategy. The same goes with units, they seem too cheap to me. If players can just build 'it all' - where is the fun in that? It sucks out some of the feeling of achievement and feeling of automony. Players can too easily feel as though they are going through the motions. It probably adds to some of the lack of difficulty of the mod too, if every players generally builds everything - there isn't much to differentiate a good player from a mediocre player.

Again let me reiterate that i'm not against the range of choice available - I think its great. The problem is - its not really a 'choice' is it? They are just pesky buildings that you queue up in a huge shift-click fest without any thought whatsoever really (apart from maybe the order in which you build them). Players need to see time & hammers as a limited resource which needs to be allocated wisely and strategically. The decisions relating to what to build are fundamental to what makes civ great. Having to specialize your cities and give each of your cities its own flavour or uniqueness is a good thing. Caveman2Cosmos needs to move away from allowing players to be able to build 80% of all buildings in 80% of your cities kinda thing. I think it should be more like 20% of buildings in 80% of cities and then each city being different in terms of whats been built - based on what it needs. If a city lacks production, it has a higher level of related infrastructure present, or if it has little food locally - it can focus on having bakeries and fishmongers etc.

There's two game values pit against each other in this discussion:
1) Minimization for simplicity and streamlined play.(Macro)
and
2) High detail and variety for deeper and more immersive play. (Micro)

Generally I think the idea that less = simplification, is naive. Also what i'm suggesting specifically is not about removing detail. By simplifying you actually give the detail back in the hands of the player (at the moment players don't even need to read what buildings can do really - all they need to do is know how to shift-click). Also by allowing players to build virtually every building they could possibly want (easily) it ruins the immersion. There is no choice, no strategy, its ubiquitous and therefore conversely - not immersive. I realise what your saying more directly relates to is612's solution & not mine specifically, but you see my point

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

... Choosing what to build in cities becomes this shift-click fest, there is no strategy involved really. Players are not confronted with the problem of what to build but rather what not to build (which I feel is backward). ... There is no choice, no strategy, its ubiquitous and therefore conversely - not immersive.

I can understand this perspective, and will readily admit that this does happen often. Personally, I don't feel that it ruins the immersion for me, but that could be just me. Frankly, whether the player has to choose what to build or just have a "click-fest" depends heavily on the state of their empire and the state of that city. If the city is currently unhealthy, unhappy, etc, then those needs must be met first. If the empire is having problems (War, events, whatever), those must be dealt with. If everything is peachy, then the player is free to do what they want.

Increasing the costs of the buildings could help, but could be a daunting project depending on how they are defined. It might be easier/quicker to just increase the multipliers based on map size and game speed.

I don't know if this is possible, but I just had a thought. Perhaps we should reward people for having more specialized cities. For instance, the Forge could produce an extra 2% if the buildings in the city are producing more than twice as many as either or . This would work best, IMHO, if the amount of things produced just by buildings could be isolated and compared so that the city would actually have to have the right buildings and not just tweak the numbers using specialists or plots worked.

 

[AIAndy]

I consider the idea of having auto-built private buildings vs. manually built state buildings quite interesting.
To have some control over what is built I would suggest having several properties that represent how much capability to contruct buildings in different categories the private people have at the moment. That might be because of supporting laws, administration buildings or investment help. The chance that something in the category is autobuilt increases with the property (while the autodeconstructing chance decreases) and if something is built the property decreases by an amount that depends on the building being constructed (so they are a kind of hammer pool for private construction).

Every building in the city is marked as either state owned or private and you can't easily destroy or sell private buildings.

Depending on civics the pool of buildings that is private or public or can be either changes (techs might alter this also). When you change civics, some buildings might be privatized or disowned causing appropriate reactions.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I can understand this perspective, and will readily admit that this does happen often. Personally, I don't feel that it ruins the immersion for me, but that could be just me. Frankly, whether the player has to choose what to build or just have a "click-fest" depends heavily on the state of their empire and the state of that city. If the city is currently unhealthy, unhappy, etc, then those needs must be met first. If the empire is having problems (War, events, whatever), those must be dealt with. If everything is peachy, then the player is free to do what they want.

Increasing the costs of the buildings could help, but could be a daunting project depending on how they are defined. It might be easier/quicker to just increase the multipliers based on map size and game speed.

I don't know if this is possible, but I just had a thought. Perhaps we should reward people for having more specialized cities. For instance, the Forge could produce an extra 2% if the buildings in the city are producing more than twice as many as either or . This would work best, IMHO, if the amount of things produced just by buildings could be isolated and compared so that the city would actually have to have the right buildings and not just tweak the numbers using specialists or plots worked.

What if you don't want Specialized cities? Are you going to cut off this type of gameplay? Would you force How the mod is played to be more narrow focused? We've had these discussion of course before.

JosEPh

 

[SilentConfusion]

What if you don't want Specialized cities? Are you going to cut off this type of gameplay? Would you force How the mod is played to be more narrow focused? We've had these discussion of course before.

JosEPh

I don't see that this would force a certain play style. It would just add additional strategic options. It would be an advantage to specialize. There are already plenty of advantages to doing everything in a city.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@SgtSlick:
I can appreciate the sentiment but to be honest, C2C is already set up this way to just about the right degree at this time.

What it means if you take it much further is that many buildings simply go unbuilt ever, you never get the feeling of completion, you never feel like its time to start working at building for war, production is by far the ultimate yield, and you end up feeling like half the buildings in the game don't have any purpose to be there because they simply won't get built.

It becomes as much choosing what not to build as it does choosing what to build. And if it were to become much more like this then war would never be an option because you'd always be stretching to get your cities into a satisfied state.

However, this whole scenario is also to some extent a positive thing because it means you've got some challenges in how you arrange your build strategies so to some extent its one of those things where you make it harder and its more fun until you suddenly hit a point where its no longer enjoyable and while it gradually got fun as you made it harder, it drops off drastically when you take it that last inch too far.

IMO, from what little experience I have in playing with current settings, in the prehistoric age at least, it currently strikes the perfect balance.

I suppose the captives mod changes probably make a very big impact there that I haven't experienced enough of to see. I suspect that costs should probably now be modified up exponentially around the time they start becoming a real game factor.

@MagnusIlluminus: The concept of establishing some positive feedback on the specialized yields and commerces of cities that have ended up being highly specialized is not a bad one. More positive feedback in general is the only concern that shows there. So if it were a subtle effect, as you suggest, then its probably a good idea. I also have some concepts for GP pts that will be inspiring to specializing cities.

@Joseph: Anytime you take a more specialized city style approach you're also going to be compelled to take sacrifices in other areas to do so in those cities (not building things you'd normally have standard everywhere else) so the idea would be to enable both strategies to be equally effective. I don't think anyone is looking at eliminating strategies and their value in suggestions like these, rather I believe its more that the game would benefit if we can find ways to introduce new value into new strategies, enabling more diverse playstyles to emerge. This is my goal when modding anyhow

@AIAndy: Well... cool! You get it and have pushed the concept forward a bit! I like We can certainly keep things somewhat simple by keeping the buildings private or public definition rounded into building categories, but each building could interact with the property you're discussing differently.

Any given Publicly built buildings would also be more or less likely to be built over other options based on an equation of demand from the citizens (they would want to build what they feel is most needed for them) and that equation could be rather complex.

I also like the idea of destruction of privatized buildings in a privatized manner too - businesses do go under all the time!

 

[Sgtslick]

I don't see that this would force a certain play style. It would just add additional strategic options. It would be an advantage to specialize. There are already plenty of advantages to doing everything in a city.

exactly


@TB
I don't think the balance is anywhere near perfect. I've played a bunch of c2c games now (30+) and this is its biggest weakness by far imo. Its about striking a balance and currently buildings/units are too cheap and its so bloody easy to build everything everywhere.

Im not looking at you specifically but I really dislike the idea that the player needs to be able to build all the buildings or else they would be a waste.. Its just plain wrong. They serve a very obvious purpose - they provide the player with a choice! You as the player can choose route A, B, C, or D. At the moment unless you want to just build research/wealth/espionage or build units until they're coming out your ears - you are going to go down c2c's one way street toward 'building complete' mayhem and hypnotic shift-clicking and 'enter' pressing monotony

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't see that this would force a certain play style. It would just add additional strategic options. It would be an advantage to specialize. There are already plenty of advantages to doing everything in a city.

Yes it does. Every time you give special circumstances to a given way of play you prioritize/ make that the dominate way to play. Soon if this continues (and it will continue once adpoted) it becomes the only way to play as it Has been optimized above all other ways. Then the only reason to not use this dominate means of play is too handicap yourself. It's not about strategies at all because you eliminate some of the strategies by adding in and employing these type restrictions.

JosEPh

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

That's exactly why I kept the suggested bonus small, so as to not significantly penalize cities that are not specialized. Of course, the exact amount of such bonus could be discussed. I do like having 'general purpose' cities as well. Most likely only a few buildings should have the specialization bonuses anyway, probably just the ones that work with % already.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@ Slick:
I don't blame you for that opinion and can see your point but it just drives me up a wall to not be on top of my cities and have all the buildings complete. Never being able to reach that point is more exhausting to me than the queuing of buildings by far. I'm then able to keep the new things unlocked built quickly and easily by ctrl or shift selecting all cities and adding to the front of the queue for all of them.

This basic disagreement in play preferences is interesting... I wonder if there'd be a way to give the option there to the player somehow...

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

Yes it does. Every time you give special circumstances to a given way of play you prioritize/ make that the dominate way to play. Soon if this continues (and it will continue once adpoted) it becomes the only way to play as it Has been optimized above all other ways. Then the only reason to not use this dominate means of play is too handicap yourself. It's not about strategies at all because you eliminate some of the strategies by adding in and employing these type restrictions.

JosEPh

Hmm, you do have a point there. Personally, I don't think it would be as much of a necessity as you seem to think it would, but you've been at this longer, so you could be right.

Well, we could also add in an invisible building (or something) that would add to the city's happiness (or whatever) if all , , , and production are within (just as a random number) 10% of each other. This would reinforce the option for just having generalized cities, but would also make you have to put a little effort into keeping everything somewhat equalized to keep having the bonus. (Thus people would have to actually think about what to build next and not just have a 'click-fest'.) The number could be higher than 10%, but probably shouldn't be higher than about 25% or so, otherwise the city isn't 'balanced' enough.

 

[ls612]

I did not expect for this idea to be so polarizing, but now that I think about it it seems like I've touched a sensitive area in terms of design styles and where we want the mod to go.

I have said this before, but as I've developed as a modder and a coder here I have found my design preferences shifting more and more towards simplicity. That does not mean that I want to eliminate content. I like C2C because it has a lot of content. But I do want to make things easier to use and not so intimidating for new players. I also want the mod to be polished and balanced, as a good first impression makes many more people willing to play longer. I know this is unpopular perhaps, but I do think based on what I remember of the AND days and what you've told me that I would agree with Afforess on many things.

Since my return to modding here I've seen the Macro sentiments grow and grow to the point that valued core modders and players have gravitated more over to the renewed AND2 project (which probably would never have come to be if Macro had been more in balance in C2C - instead we'd all be making our progress here!)

So those that have stayed on this far must still have SOME love of Micro.

I know I do. Obviously. This is what inspired me so much to learn to mod in the first place - that C2C was open to more help, had a more is more philosophy, and was so incredibly expansive in its approach.

I LOVE all the many buildings we have. But I also care about the impressions of our players.

This would be to me a sign that we've gone too far in the micro direction and that we need to move back some towards more simplicity. When many people who have been around since the start are leaving for AND2 that tells me that we are doing something wrong. That was one of the things I wanted to change when I was considering forking C2C, but I haven't done that because I think that C2C can be moved in the direction of more macro.

The problem with private vs public is that the player loose control. Under your system say a Tavern or Gambling Hall would be private and as a such would automatically be made. Same goes for an Ironsmith or Bandits Hideout. These buildings some people would not want automatically made.

I think that DH's idea of auto-build at techs along with auto-built in new cities and auto-build by starting era are much better solutions. They allow for both the player to experience all the buildings as they appear, but then not have to worry about them later in the game. And example of this would be ...

You discover Agriculture and can now build a Wheat Farm. Yay! that was cool. However later, you are the the medieval and you are tired of building a Wheat Farm in every new city. Having Crop Rotation tech allow for Wheat Farms to be auto-built means you can stop worrying about building them anymore. But you still got to experience building the Wheat Farm for the very first time.

Having them auto-build right off the bat would mean you might not even be aware you built a Wheat Farm. And thus loose the excitement of discovering new buildings.

I actually like AIAndy's idea of Public vs Private stuff to a certain degree. In my mind that is what Auto-Build is right now, the idea that some buildings are not built by your decree but built instead by the people of their own accord.

Auto-building many farms and shops would allow the player to focus on stuff that matters more and progress faster in the game, which is always good. If they want to slow down and experience more stuff they can move to a slower gamespeed. But I think that as Thunderbrd said Micro has pushed many people to AND2, and I don't see that as at all good.

I agree with you though that negative buildings for the most part should not be auto-built.

I can understand why you are against this, as it is mostly your stuff that would be autobuilt and removed from the public eye. I believe that this is a needed change to the mod in order to maintain our widespread popularity and make C2C an even better mod.

What if you don't want Specialized cities? Are you going to cut off this type of gameplay? Would you force How the mod is played to be more narrow focused? We've had these discussion of course before.

JosEPh

I am by no means in favor of forcing specialized cities. But if there are small benefits to using them it would make things more interesting for those who choose to go that route without forcing that path of development. I am with you and tend to build everything I can afford in my cities.

 

[Sgtslick]

Hmm, you do have a point there. Personally, I don't think it would be as much of a necessity as you seem to think it would, but you've been at this longer, so you could be right.

He couldn't be more wrong tbh, there IS no strategy involved in shift-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click. More anything? More EVERYTHING!!