Auto-Build, Luxury Resources, and Quality of Life

[Sgtslick]

Well... that's really not how I feel about it. I don't just go to war when I have nothing else to do. I just try to make sure that I have the absolute maximum production and xp output possible before building units. When to go to war is obviously not only driven this way but I would resist going to war if I constantly had more buildings to catch up on! Because to do so means to fall further behind in the race to keep up with the production to tech discovery ratio.

It's more about that. If I can't keep up on buildings, then I feel it's worthless to unlock more.

You realise that isn't really a strategy game. You could essentially program what you wanted to do on turn one and auto-play 10,000 turns.. fun game.

If you don't have to weigh up priorities, make sacrifices, make hard choices between options - then its a one way street that tends to always end in the same way.

Does anyone feel like the building costs and this sort of mentality of 'I need to be able to build it all' or else the game has failed is wrongheaded. Its you who have failed, its you the player.. Even if its not possible - this feeling is a GOOD thing. Not feeling satisfied is a GOOD thing. There is nothing worse than queueing sh1t up and having no-doubt at the end of day you are gonna get it all.. There is nothing 'satisfying' about that.

@Hydro

Remember that we are not against the number of buildings or the amount of content. Its the fact that you can brainlessly build everything. There is no real strategy involved, no real decisions. As ridethespiral said, its idiotic. Keep making buildings, make a million more that sounds great, but if players are able to build 80% of them in 80% of there cities then c2c would be totally ********.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm thinking we may need an 'Expensive Buildings' option that doubles the build costs or more. It's not that I don't see your side on this... I'm just saying I'd find it annoying.

To me, it would mean that 50% of the buildings in the game become immediately functionally non-existant because I'd always prioritorize them out of my build list since I can't get to those. It would not change the hierarchy of importance on the buildings I already personally give to them and just force more of them into the 'ok, I'll gladly ignore THAT building' category. And that's pretty much all it would accomplish. I'm still not going to build anything but production buildings until they are finished, because they make all the rest come faster (and would thus be all the more important in such a scenario) and I'd still not build much of anything outside of food buildings after that. THEN I might start looking at prioritizing according to need and strategy. And I MIGHT be inclined to specialize cities. But I'd certainly consider research to be a lot less important since I'd not want to get too far ahead of myself. And I suppose I'd want to keep track of the buildings that provide resources more and try to build them more sparingly across the empire.

In short, I don't see making buildings more expensive to be a greatly effective means of increasing strategic decision making. Just a way to make more buildings more pointless to be concerned with. But I can see your side too. So I'd just see it as a personal preference point more than anything.

I'd think making GP farming requiring more thought would deepen build strategies FAR more than simply racking up the build costs. And, complicated as it sounds, Koshling's concept sounds very promising in offering more build strategy as well.

 

[Sgtslick]

Just by you thinking about it on the surface like you have you can see how more strategic it is. You have to weigh up the 'current' priorities too, much more than when you can 'build it all'.

You will also find that some of your really good cities - that you concentrate on and perhaps speed build some buildings with caravans, buy buildings with , don't build military stuff out of because it distracts from the 'wholeness' goal - these cities are still doable. At the moment, these 'ultimate' cities are literally nearly every city in your empire. There is no sense of achievement in that, and it requires no real planning/strategy to be able to achieve it.

A lot of buildings will be seen as unattainable for some cities and are therefore pointless to consider. But you will find that some cities which you have actively been concentrating on CAN consider these buildings. Thats where the sense of achievement and the strategy comes into play. How do you get to that point. How can you achieve these 'super cities' which can build it all. Don't just dismiss this as not possible because thats ignorant. Consider all the facets of c2c that you have available. Trade, great farmers, espionage, trade ships, trade caravans, worker micro-management - all needed so you can buy buildings, beef up these couple of super cities with specialists & micromanagement etc. Then and only then can you achieve this 'I GOT IT ALL' feeling! Currently any man and his dog can achieve it simply by shift-click-click-click-click-click-click

*also note 'doubling' the cost is definitely too much. I would suggest 30-40%. Not sure exactly though. I also wouldn't suggest increasing the costs of certain building - especially in prehistoric era.

 

[Thunderbrd]

But that's really not much deeper than it is now is what I'm saying. It's the same way I already go about building priorities. If I can stay on top of the buildings in my core cities as techs unlock them, I can then prioritize tech development more. But if I can't, tech development takes a backseat and I'm quite happy to take advantage of an AI that doesn't have well developed cities even if they are technologically more advanced. They won't have the production levels, the health, the happiness... they won't have the same degree of free promos and extra xp (which usually makes my units, even at a tech stage less than theirs, just as or more powerful.) I already select gold as a priority only when I feel I really need it, and only develop defensive buildings if I fear I'm about to need them.

It's really not different to my current approach if the buildings cost more. Just more frustrating. Even now I find the early music and dance buildings useless since I can never get enough production to get to them. This makes getting the techs that unlock them simply techs that are in the way of what lies beyond. I suppose I'd probably consider the research buildings just as useless if costs were doubled.

I'm an adaptive strategy player. I can work with whatever I'm thrown as best as I can find to do so. But if you make entire building chains useless due to their positioning in priority, what's the point of having them at all?

 

[Sgtslick]

sorry added another paragraph while you were typing that.

A lot of buildings will be seen as unattainable for some cities and are therefore pointless to consider. But you will find that some cities which you have actively been concentrating on CAN consider these buildings. Thats where the sense of achievement and the strategy comes into play. How do you get to that point. How can you achieve these 'super cities' which can build it all. Don't just dismiss this as not possible because thats ignorant. Consider all the facets of c2c that you have available. Trade, great farmers, espionage, trade ships, trade caravans, worker micro-management - all needed so you can buy buildings, beef up these couple of super cities with specialists & micromanagement etc. Then and only then can you achieve this 'I GOT IT ALL' feeling! Currently any man and his dog can achieve it simply by shift-click-click-click-click-click-click

*also note 'doubling' the cost is definitely too much. I would suggest 30-40%. Not sure exactly though. I also wouldn't suggest increasing the costs of certain building - especially in prehistoric era.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well... as I said earlier, most of my impression is currently established in the Prehistoric Era. Perhaps later in the game I'd agree with you completely.

 

[Sgtslick]

Yeah this problem that I keep harping on about it becomes mainly apparent past prehistoric and beyond.

Im also not sure that simply increasing the cost is the answer. All I want is for it to be recognised as a problem, and not simply a play style preference. IMO its a fault in the mod and nothing else.

I also really like Koshling's idea regarding more of the branch style buildings - coupled together with auto-building of more buildings. Then towards the end of all these 'branches' or however you would like to describe it, buildings becomes more expensive and require more 'choice' and strategy.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

After the Classical era I would like an option on the builds that would hide any buildings or units that will go obsolete before this city can build them. I find this to an especial problem with Hydro's Guild buildings.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro

Remember that we are not against the number of buildings or the amount of content. Its the fact that you can brainlessly build everything. There is no real strategy involved, no real decisions. As ridethespiral said, its idiotic. Keep making buildings, make a million more that sounds great, but if players are able to build 80% of them in 80% of there cities then c2c would be totally ********.

If possible I would like some more events tied into specific buildings. Such as quests where you have to build X number of buildings in your empire and then get a set of reward choices.

Likewise I was also thinking of Auto-Build Reward buildings that are made if you have different buildings in your cities. Such as if you build a Hospital, Dentist and Optometrist you might get Doctor related building that boosts your Great Doctor level and reduces disease.

I think such synergy buildings really could make buildings more fun to build. Sort of like how Valley of the Kings is a reward building if you build the Spinx and Pyramids in the same city.

 

[AIAndy]

I'm thinking we may need an 'Expensive Buildings' option that doubles the build costs or more. It's not that I don't see your side on this... I'm just saying I'd find it annoying.

To me, it would mean that 50% of the buildings in the game become immediately functionally non-existant because I'd always prioritorize them out of my build list since I can't get to those. It would not change the hierarchy of importance on the buildings I already personally give to them and just force more of them into the 'ok, I'll gladly ignore THAT building' category. And that's pretty much all it would accomplish. I'm still not going to build anything but production buildings until they are finished, because they make all the rest come faster (and would thus be all the more important in such a scenario) and I'd still not build much of anything outside of food buildings after that. THEN I might start looking at prioritizing according to need and strategy. And I MIGHT be inclined to specialize cities. But I'd certainly consider research to be a lot less important since I'd not want to get too far ahead of myself. And I suppose I'd want to keep track of the buildings that provide resources more and try to build them more sparingly across the empire.

In short, I don't see making buildings more expensive to be a greatly effective means of increasing strategic decision making. Just a way to make more buildings more pointless to be concerned with. But I can see your side too. So I'd just see it as a personal preference point more than anything.

I'd think making GP farming requiring more thought would deepen build strategies FAR more than simply racking up the build costs. And, complicated as it sounds, Koshling's concept sounds very promising in offering more build strategy as well.

If you would not even consider 50% of the buildings regardless of the state of your cities, then it may be that they are simply not balanced. Maybe the production buildings are too cheap with too much gain to make some other buildings viable.

Ideally you would have a choice and "build production buildings only and then everything else" is just one viable way among many. Some other buildings you might ignore if you go that way but not ignore if you go another way.
Like if someone focuses on military buildings then he should be able to crush you if you focused completely on constructing civilian buildings. Or at least he should be able to drive you to the defensive and control your expansion to other areas.
If someone focuses on research he should get a headstart in the wonder race and his fewer but more advanced units would equal your more but weaker ones.

Gateway buildings (that are expensive or weaken other buildings but give access to powerful buildings for their cost) or the reward buildings Hydro mentions could make focus in other areas viable.

Maybe we should split up military training capability and building construction capability more.

 

[Sgtslick]

If possible I would like some more events tied into specific buildings. Such as quests where you have to build X number of buildings in your empire and then get a set of reward choices.

Likewise I was also thinking of Auto-Build Reward buildings that are made if you have different buildings in your cities. Such as if you build a Hospital, Dentist and Optometrist you might get Doctor related building that boosts your Great Doctor level and reduces disease.

I think such synergy buildings really could make buildings more fun to build. Sort of like how Valley of the Kings is a reward building if you build the Spinx and Pyramids in the same city.

Yes I like this idea. Remember though that as it is currently every player will get pretty much every reward your describing. That is what is inherently wrong. This is a good idea to make buildings generally more interesting but the problem still lies in the fact that players are buildings nearly every building in nearly every city. Why? Because they can.

 

[Yudishtira]

I think it may be helpful to summarize this thread at this point. Threads - especially ones that fire the imagination/passions like this one has - tend to be very stream-of-consciousness, and the risk is that great ideas will get lost in the 'rush'.

These are the topics in this thread so far:

Auto-builds - for convenience
"Quality of Life" - proposed new 'property'

I should probably note that these are the actual topic of this thread as implied by the thread heading...

Auto-builds - by the 'private citizenry' - not what the OP intended, but still technically on-topic.

Invisible Properties
The consensus was that they are a bad idea, but if there are any dissenting opinions, that might need another thread to be thrashed out further.

Bonus Perks For Negative Crime and Pollution

Tribes/Settlers Reduce City Size

Lack of Strategy Required in Building Priority

Building Requirement Tiers/Chains/'Bushes'

I suggest that those last four need their own threads. It would probably be best if "Private vs. Public" had its own thread too. I encourage and recommend those who had passionate ideas on those issues to start threads for them. Btw, they're all good ideas imho too.

 

[ls612]

You realise that isn't really a strategy game. You could essentially program what you wanted to do on turn one and auto-play 10,000 turns.. fun game.

If you don't have to weigh up priorities, make sacrifices, make hard choices between options - then its a one way street that tends to always end in the same way.

Does anyone feel like the building costs and this sort of mentality of 'I need to be able to build it all' or else the game has failed is wrongheaded. Its you who have failed, its you the player.. Even if its not possible - this feeling is a GOOD thing. Not feeling satisfied is a GOOD thing. There is nothing worse than queueing sh1t up and having no-doubt at the end of day you are gonna get it all.. There is nothing 'satisfying' about that.

The way I would see this working there would be two strategy elements involved in city building and management.

1. Where you place your city would become far more important. If you have good stuff in the vicinity you could get special buildings auto-build which give unique benefits. This could even be integrated with the Expression System to allow for delayed effect auto-build. So for instance you could have a Bamboo Farm auto-build if there are more than 3 Bamboo features in the City Vicinity, or mines lose their and be auto-built after a certain tech (but be manually built before then). This leverages our wealth of current assets to make strategy more interesting without adding more micro or making it a clickfest.

One thing that would benefit this is a list in the hover for a settler of what things would be auto-built if you settled at the tile your cursor is over.

2. Since simpler buildings would be managed by Auto-building more advanced buildings would have tradeoffs which mean that you have to be careful what you build. For instance, you can build a Barracks manually and that is good for some places, but if you build it everywhere the and crime will cause problems. And so forth.

I don't see how Hydro could be against this, as it makes his stuff much more interesting and less bland.

 

[ls612]

I apologize for overlooking one major factor in what I was trying to say there. And that is this:

Any company knows that you cannot make everyone happy with whatever product they present. Civ in and of itself doesn't appeal to all gamers. What you MUST do if you have a hope of success at all is to identify your target market and what it is they thrive on and DO THAT! Don't just do that, but do it to an extreme more than anyone has ever done before.

I fully agree that this is the very success of C2C! And although I got to wandering a bit in making that point and got somewhat off track, that's really what it was I was trying to say. We can also enable options to help bring further 'target markets' into the mod's fold however. And this point I think I made a bit too strongly. But that's what options are about, widening the appeal. If ls612 believes all this is necessary, than I urge strongly that it be a game option rather than the core norm, which already greatly appeals to those of us who love all this great diversity!

I can understand those on the Macro side of the fence and I think we can offer them something that appeals. But let's not ever forget that all this great detail is exactly what has thrust C2C into the forefront of all CivIV mods on this site!

I, for one, pray to God you don't give up and that you carry on and keep giving us more of the great stuff you've given us so far!

I am not against micro per se. But too much of it will turn people off from C2C. I've watched this to a lesser or greater extent for the past six months, and it seems that we have about 5000 normal players downloading every version release and 500 SVN users. This is held steady for a while now, and I think the reason is that C2C is too complex and non-user friendly. I want to make it simpler while maintaining the amount of depth we have in C2C, whereas I think sometimes you and Hydro go for complexity for complexity's sake, which I don't like.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I can respect that view, but would still think that any mod effort that is fairly dramatic, whether to achieve a far greater complexity OR a vast simplification, should probably be designed as an option. Options can widen the appeal without eliminating appeal that exists.


On another note: something you said in the previous post, ls, sparked a concept. What if most of our buildings that are based on vicinity plot elements didn't actually give straight benefit to the city so much as enhanced those sorts of plot that exist in the city? For example: a Bamboo Farm increases the food from bamboo features within the city radius?

Then take it another step: Give multiple possible enhancement buildings for those plots and force us to pick one and only one of them. Thus, You'd have a Bamboo Cutter: Adds +1:Hammers: to Bamboo features in the city radius and a Bamboo Farm: Adds +1:Food: to Bamboo features in the city radius. But if you build one, you can't build the other (and they'd both be made available at the same time with the same conditions.)

I BELIEVE all this can already be done with the tags we have can't it? (Perhaps the +Yield to particular features in the city radius would need to be developed... but the ability for buildings to keep other buildings from being built sure exists.)

I suppose this is kinda along the lines of what Koshling's Bushy idea would present and could be a concept woven into that project. I have a feeling this idea itself is the tip of an iceberg towards a really cool solution all in all.

 

[ls612]

I can respect that view, but would still think that any mod effort that is fairly dramatic, whether to achieve a far greater complexity OR a vast simplification, should probably be designed as an option. Options can widen the appeal without eliminating appeal that exists.


On another note: something you said in the previous post, ls, sparked a concept. What if most of our buildings that are based on vicinity plot elements didn't actually give straight benefit to the city so much as enhanced those sorts of plot that exist in the city? For example: a Bamboo Farm increases the food from bamboo features within the city radius?

Then take it another step: Give multiple possible enhancement buildings for those plots and force us to pick one and only one of them. Thus, You'd have a Bamboo Cutter: Adds +1:Hammers: to Bamboo features in the city radius and a Bamboo Farm: Adds +1:Food: to Bamboo features in the city radius. But if you build one, you can't build the other (and they'd both be made available at the same time with the same conditions.)

I BELIEVE all this can already be done with the tags we have can't it? (Perhaps the +Yield to particular features in the city radius would need to be developed... but the ability for buildings to keep other buildings from being built sure exists.)

I suppose this is kinda along the lines of what Koshling's Bushy idea would present and could be a concept woven into that project. I have a feeling this idea itself is the tip of an iceberg towards a really cool solution all in all.

I'm happy to add different and conditional benefits to buildings along with this. But the realm of buildable buildings really does for a variety of reasons need to be reduced and made to have trade-offs somehow.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

I can respect that view, but would still think that any mod effort that is fairly dramatic, whether to achieve a far greater complexity OR a vast simplification, should probably be designed as an option. Options can widen the appeal without eliminating appeal that exists.


On another note: something you said in the previous post, ls, sparked a concept. What if most of our buildings that are based on vicinity plot elements didn't actually give straight benefit to the city so much as enhanced those sorts of plot that exist in the city? For example: a Bamboo Farm increases the food from bamboo features within the city radius?

Then take it another step: Give multiple possible enhancement buildings for those plots and force us to pick one and only one of them. Thus, You'd have a Bamboo Cutter: Adds +1:Hammers: to Bamboo features in the city radius and a Bamboo Farm: Adds +1:Food: to Bamboo features in the city radius. But if you build one, you can't build the other (and they'd both be made available at the same time with the same conditions.)

I BELIEVE all this can already be done with the tags we have can't it? (Perhaps the +Yield to particular features in the city radius would need to be developed... but the ability for buildings to keep other buildings from being built sure exists.)

I suppose this is kinda along the lines of what Koshling's Bushy idea would present and could be a concept woven into that project. I have a feeling this idea itself is the tip of an iceberg towards a really cool solution all in all.

Please do this. The number of buildings that add random values to overall yield production arbitrarily is ruining the strategy of working tiles. Bamboo farm should increase food on bamboo tiles only. Lumber camp should increase production if working a forest tile only. Why do wheat farms, barley farms etc exist? Isn't that already taken care of by improvements. I'm not against adding buildings exactly but I don't want ones that ruin normal mechanics, unbalance the game or be redundant.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Yes I like this idea. Remember though that as it is currently every player will get pretty much every reward your describing. That is what is inherently wrong. This is a good idea to make buildings generally more interesting but the problem still lies in the fact that players are buildings nearly every building in nearly every city. Why? Because they can.

There are a lot of rare buildings that are based on city vicinity too.

Why do wheat farms, barley farms etc exist?

Because the rare buildings exist. If you can build a Carrot Farm but not a Potato Farm buildings just because Potatoes are a map resource and Carrots are not makes people mad. Also it denys them the Vegetable resource the building makes.

If I had my way all map resources would be "terrain features" and not "resources". Resources would all be building made.

 

[ls612]

Please do this. The number of buildings that add random values to overall yield production arbitrarily is ruining the strategy of working tiles. Bamboo farm should increase food on bamboo tiles only. Lumber camp should increase production if working a forest tile only. Why do wheat farms, barley farms etc exist? Isn't that already taken care of by improvements. I'm not against adding buildings exactly but I don't want ones that ruin normal mechanics, unbalance the game or be redundant.

I agree with this, the redundancy of having the farm improvement and the farm building is just another way to make more stuff for your civ. I'd suggest that the Farms add +3 to tiles with their corresponding resource, and the Mines +3 to their resource. If there isn't a map resource it should give a flat +1, but all should be auto-built.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Is it even possible for a building to boost yields on plots? What happens when the plots are in the vicinity of two or three cities - do they get the boost from every city?