"Builders" as the new Workers... now with charges.

[Thormodr]

Perhaps with the ancient roads they will ease the movement penalty somewhat but still won't be as good as normal roads. By this I mean, suppose an ancient road (built by a trader) goes through a hill. Normally a unit with 1 movement point couldn't enter the hill tile but with the ancient road there, they would be able to enter it and stop there.

 

[Biologist]

Worker management has always been one of my least favorite aspects of Civ. You build, buy, or steal a helpless unit that you then have to babysit for the entire game. Building anything with them tends to take forever, barbarians and/or enemy units are constantly disrupting their operations, and eventually you reach a point where you no longer have meaningful tasks for them. Even then, you don't dare disband them, because you might need them to clean up fallout or repair bombed-out tiles, or convert roads to railroads, etc. And ideally you don't automate them, but then you're stuck either cycling through a bunch of units and pressing "Skip Turn" every turn, or mothballing them with a Sleep order and then forgetting about them. Meanwhile they're eating through gpt that could be more efficiently used to fund military units or city improvements.

I'd say an expendable unit that can be produced as needed is a big improvement, provided they can be made quickly and cheaply enough that they aren't a major disruption to your empire's building queue. For that matter, it'd be nice if units and buildings could be constructed simultaneously. It's 2016, please stop pretending that a nation couldn't manage to both train a cadre of warriors and build a shrine at the same time.

 

[Thormodr]

Worker management has always been one of my least favorite aspects of Civ. You build, buy, or steal a helpless unit that you then have to babysit for the entire game. Building anything with them tends to take forever, barbarians and/or enemy units are constantly disrupting their operations, and eventually you reach a point where you no longer have meaningful tasks for them. Even then, you don't dare disband them, because you might need them to clean up fallout or repair bombed-out tiles, or convert roads to railroads, etc. And ideally you don't automate them, but then you're stuck either cycling through a bunch of units and pressing "Skip Turn" every turn, or mothballing them with a Sleep order and then forgetting about them. Meanwhile they're eating through gpt that could be more efficiently used to fund military units or city improvements.n

I'd say an expendable unit that can be produced as needed is a big improvement, provided they can be made quickly and cheaply enough that they aren't a major disruption to your empire's building queue. For that matter, it'd be nice if units and buildings could be constructed simultaneously. It's 2016, please stop pretending that a nation couldn't manage to both train a cadre of warriors and build a shrine at the same time.

You have to remember with 1UPT, they don't want you cranking out units lest you get the dreaded carpet of doom. So, you'll get slower production times and lower tile yields to counteract that.

Perhaps having builders instead of workers will lessen their number on the map somewhat as well as combining units and some unit classes moved to support.

So, I wouldn't hold my breath in regards to building units and buildings at the same time. At least with 1UPT around.

 

[ZTZaorish]

A great engineer is just one guy, and I'm willing to accept those missionaries had to be disbanded for the purposes of gameplay balance, but I'm not quite getting why this had to be the case with builders.

As I said, even from a gameplay perspective some of these mechanics just seem kind of wonky. Builders don't even build roads, those will be the responsibility of traders.

So what if I need a road going somewhere close to a battle line to move troops faster?

I don't agree with your first post. (not the one I am quoting)
I think this is a step forward. Why? Well, having workers only have 3/4 charges forces you to make a meaningful decision. This decision in Civ V was only, do I build 1 tile and get -1 gold(or whatever the upkeep is), or do I wait. That isn't very meaningful. Having 3/4 charges, that definitely is.

Edit -> I also think you are forgetting the benefits. Shorter turn times, which translates into games moving faster, which means you can complete more Civ games. I honestly can't tell you how many unfinished games of Civ V i have vs games I haven't finished. Many of these changes are towards this goal, and they aren't changes that dumb down the game either in my opinion.

As for the roads, think of it as a limitation of what a country could realistically do. Building massive roads to go attack somebody just wasn't done in the past. The only notable example I have is in WW2 when Hitler built the autoban to do that. Perhaps they could implement Modern roads later so you can build your own army highways later. ( I could be completely wrong about when in history a or b happened, but my point still stands, I don't think nations built roads in that ancient era across thousands of miles just to attack, and I believe they are trying to abstract that.)

 

[ZTZaorish]

I don't like how tiles are instantly upgraded. I also don't really like how builders have charges.

I see what you are saying, it is somewhat strange, a build time would be nice to add a bit of realism, even if it is only a turn or two.

*EDIT* What I mean is that, the builder expends a charge, can move away the next turn, but the building doesn't come up right away. 1 or 2 turns later the building finishes building itself. This would feel a lot more natural than instant buildings.

 

[Redaxe]

workers with charges does seem a little 'gamey' but then so does having a worker unit stick around for thousands of years. In reality an empires labor force has always fluctuated according to its needs and its economic health.

 

[Haig]

Now pillaging and bomber runs become more important - you need to spend your builder points and recruit new ones just to repair all the ravaged improvements and districts.

I think that's very very cool.

 

[historix69]

To reduce further builder/worker micromanagement :

If the tile where an improvement is to be built is in range of a city, they could just let the city build the improvement via production screen. (Similar to public works in the Call to Powers series.)

In that case you would need builder/worker units only for tasks outside the city range (or when transfering production from one city to a wonder project.)

 

[Westwall]

workers with charges does seem a little 'gamey' but then so does having a worker unit stick around for thousands of years. In reality an empires labor force has always fluctuated according to its needs and its economic health.

So has an empire's military. Maybe military units should also be on charges.

 

[Felis Renidens]

military units are on charges. It's called HP. Try attacking too many times without resting and see what happens. Maybe there should have been a way of giving builders 'refills' in city like explorers in BE (although I guess there should be gold cost for it so that people won't overuse it).

 

[HisDivineShadow]

I guess that the builders represent construction resources that you have to firstly acquire, then move into position before finally exploiting. So it's more like a combination of logistics and resources - seems like a reasonable game mechanic to me.

 

[Gali]

One minor impact of the worker to builder change. barbs and ai pillaging your tiles will now be much more costly. Instead of each pillaging 2 worker turns it will cost 1/3 of a builder.

 

[Cerilis]

One minor impact of the worker to builder change. barbs and ai pillaging your tiles will now be much more costly. Instead of each pillaging 2 worker turns it will cost 1/3 of a builder.

Well we dont know how pillaging works yet. Maybe it is dealed with another way.

 

[Gali]

Production times have been quite reasonable in Civ 5 since Ed beach took over. i doubt they will be extended since military units stack immediately and can fit up to 4 on one tile. Resources do not have the exaggerated impact of Civ 4 but cities are meant to sprawl more. Resources still matter in Civ 5.

For pillaging we'll have to see but they have made doing economic damage to a defender who fails to defend all his lands a point of emphasis multiple times.

 

[ftl]

I like this change, I think. It's going to eliminate the phenomenon where I get workers early, and then they just do busywork for the whole game.

Usually the first few things a worker improves are ones that I care about, like unique luxes , but after that I've noticed that I just have workers do whatever is around. It's definitely important, I get a lot of value out of having tiles improved, but I stop caring about the order and just improve everything, figuring that eventually my cities will use those tiles. There's rarely a reason to reevaluate whether I have a real need for those improvements, workers just keep working until they've finished basically everything. And it works ok, though I'm sure I could optimize a little more.

This mechanic is going to make me much more deliberate with builder uses. I bet it will work out like this. I'll have a specific reason to want a builder - probably to get a unique lux or resource. But then the guy will have two charges left, and I'll have to plan and figure out how best too use them. Or, I'll realize my city really needs better tiles and it's worth building a builder just to get farms, but it will be a tradeoff against other things the city could be doing. Either way, there won't be a unit to order around unless I have made a conscious decision that I need one.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Eh... I'm not really sure how I feel about this.

Part of making my empire feel alive and thriving was seeing all those workers running around making improvements and reshaping the landscape.

Now they're on 4 charges each and get auto-deleted after they're spent.

This seems like a step backwards for me. I mean where exactly did they go? Did they die from being overworked? Am I literally working these people to death?

You could say it didn't make much sense for them to carry on living through the ages, but I just assumed that they, like military units, were representative of entire groups whose members gradually got replaced over the years.

Now what happens to them? Do they just lose their jobs and melt back into the population? Obviously not since I don't think a city's population will receive a boost as a result of them disbanding.

The only logical answer then is that they just die off and new ones have to be trained from scratch. Even from a pure gameplay standpoint, this just seems unnecessarily tedious. It was fine for things like missionaries and great people because they drew from other resources unrelated to buildings and military units, and either way they weren't really that necessary. More like bonus units.

Do I seriously need to hold off now on whatever else I was planning every few turns just to churn out more builders?

"Building" the builders gave them a certain amount of materials, and they used up those materials, and then went home.

As for the feel, a few thoughts
1-you don't need to build roads (roads are now free)

2-they get 4 charges and use them instantly... which means you only need to make ~1 Builder per 4 population

3-since builders act similar to workboats, perhaps they will take a page from BE and eliminate work boats... instead your Builders will embark to develop the seas... making it Much easier if the same unit can improve everything you need.

4-Districts (and wonders now) are essentially tile improvements built in the city...Builders mean all the other tile improvements are built in the city as well...each tile improvement has a cost in terms of hammers (basically 1/4 Builder cost for normal improvements)

5-because of districts less population will be working "normal tiles" so that's less often



As for pillaging... I could see a few was to deal with it
1-Builders use a charge to repair
2-Builders repair it for free
3-Pay gold to repair
4-Work the tile for X turns to repair (like cottages)
5-city has a "repair pillaged tiles" project

Given that Districts take up tiles and can be pillaged, I'd probably go with gold... its the most flexible and the least micromanagement (restrictions: must be in your terrain, no enemy units within 2 tiles... improvements out of your terrain get improved/repaired with military engineers)

 

[Acken]

I like it.

With the removal of roads it may make the worker AI a lot easier to program (also due to instant build) and it should stop the AI's worker armies running around in the late game. It will shift the whole mess that is to teach the AI how to organize its workers to a more build order approach. And this is simply way easier to do than to deal with 1UPT civilian traffic and build times.
Also it wil encourage you to make them at the right time instead of having to rush them early and then forget about it. Now they will constantly be in the build order and you will have to carefully pick when to build a new one depending on your growth speed and opportunity cost.

 

[Thormodr]

I like it.

With the removal of roads it may make the worker AI a lot easier to program (also due to instant build) and it should stop the AI's worker armies running around in the late game. It will shift the whole mess that is to teach the AI how to organize its workers to a more build order approach. And this is simply way easier to do than to deal with 1UPT civilian traffic and build times.
Also it wil encourage you to make them at the right time instead of having to rush them early and then forget about it. Now they will constantly be in the build order and you will have to carefully pick when to build a new one depending on your growth speed and opportunity cost.

Definitely should help the AI. Perhaps with builders the AI will do a much more competent job.

 

[Aldor]

I like it.

With the removal of roads it may make the worker AI a lot easier to program (also due to instant build) and it should stop the AI's worker armies running around in the late game. It will shift the whole mess that is to teach the AI how to organize its workers to a more build order approach. And this is simply way easier to do than to deal with 1UPT civilian traffic and build times.
Also it wil encourage you to make them at the right time instead of having to rush them early and then forget about it. Now they will constantly be in the build order and you will have to carefully pick when to build a new one depending on your growth speed and opportunity cost.

This is a good point. I seem to remember that a player examined the turn durations in Civ5 and found that a big part of it was for worker AI. So if the builders' instant improvements help speed up turn times, then I'm all for it!

 

[Staal]

It might be easier to program the AI to only build a Builder when it has a tile to improve and when it doesn't it won't. Others have already mentioned the turn time in later eras might get a significant boost because of it.

Mostly I am impressed with this change because it fixes a problem I didn't even know I had. After the first two eras worker management wasn't fun, you always had excess workers that were idle. It wasn't designed well. Well done Ed Beach for fixing something that no one in the community even realized could be improved on.

I think Civ 6 will be great thanks to him.