Buildlist spam makes the game less interesting

[Sparth]

Huge building lists solved for me problem with city build pop-ups.

 

[Azurian]

The balance tweaks I just added to SVN should cut down on building spam because the Research Rate is higher than the construction rate, unlocking new buildings is alot slower. You might actually end up running out of buildings to build at your Capitol and very large cities .

 

[Faustmouse]

That is great if you like very long games (which I do) but if you want to reach ie Medival fast you will find longer research rates quite annoying.
What happened to the "free at tech" tag and the "free in new cities" tag? I saw that when I found a new city some buildings are already in.
But free at tech would help newer cities catch up faster. Let's have a look at history:
Cities like New York, Los Angeles, Bosten are comperently young cities. Nevertheless, they are more known, bigger and such then much older cities. This would be very hard to achieve - if not impossible - in civ. And cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and many chinese cities were rather small only 20 years ago. And look at them now!

 

[Yudishtira]

But free at tech would help newer cities catch up faster. Let's have a look at history:
Cities like New York, Los Angeles, Bosten are comperently young cities. Nevertheless, they are more known, bigger and such then much older cities. This would be very hard to achieve - if not impossible - in civ.

But that's because they built Immigrants in - and/or starved and/or demolished all the buildings in - their old cities until there was hardly anyone left...!

You can do that in-game if you really want to...

 

[manivo]

The main issue for me is that there's a lot of fluff and very little essence. It was mentioned that it's no longer a strategy of what to build but rather in what order to build it, where I usually just instinctively queue up production buildings, then food, then other stuff in whatever way strikes my fancy. The problem is added to considering the interface starts lagging badly when it gets bogged down by a ton of buildings, both taking half a second to update when you add something to the queue, and then also scrolling to the start of the category meaning I need to scroll back down to add the next building in line.

The thing is though that I never really consider the buildings unique. I never think to myself "Oh neat, a Deli." but rather "Oh neat, a +1 food building". Many times a new research will open up a slew of buildings which basically all serve the same function, like the sports tech - it adds numerous buildings that each add the same health and happiness bonus. It just seems bloated for the sake of bloat, rather than actual gameplay.

Now for the idea part - many such buildings are not ones a government would normally build itself, but rather free enterprises created by the citizens. A government would build a stadium, but a sporting goods shop would be built by Joe Schmoe.
So, what if an 'Urban Development' type of property was added? Much like current properties it would cause buildings to autobuild as it hits different levels and requirements. Unlike current properties however it could be more directly affected by the player's decisions -
Ideally a fourth bar would be added which would allow players to shift funds from research and culture etc to this urban development, representing the government investing in these free enterprises. Civics would affect this property to great extent, and great merchants / special units could give big boosts to this property (or perhaps to specific sectors, instabuilding certain sets of buildings regardless of the urban development property). All those buildings could then be removed from the player's build queue and instead be replaced by buildings that encourage their appearance. Again, this could be done on a per-sector basis or as a unified property.

Other than clearing up the building queue, this could also add a new mechanic to later games - countries shifting from a government-run economy to a more private-run economy. The buildings built by the citizens would replace the obsolete government-built buildings from earlier eras, trading direct income for other benefits. This would also have the bonus of making money more of an issue in later eras as buildings do not provide direct money anymore. Corporations could then become a much more important player in the game, for the better or for the worse. If the industrial era was about trying to manage rampant pollution, it would slowly shift into the modern era's gameplay of economics.

 

[strategyonly]

I "personally" agree, alot of the OLDER buildings, i believe C2C, does NOT need, sorry Hydro. Like the Wares, Flowers, Nuts, see attached could almost get rid of 90% of these here.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Solution (more or less): do not use the "your city has nothing left in its build queue, pick something to build next" pop-up to select your buildings.

Go into the city screen and queue up multiple buildings at a time. Use the filter buttons to look for buildings of various types. Need more health? Click the health filter button. Many fewer buildings to go through. Want more production in this city? Use the production filter button and queue up half a dozen production buildings from that filtered list. And so on.

You can also create a number of potentially very large build lists using the hammer button in the set of buttons at the upper left of the main screen.

Picking one building every time it finishes the last one is a waste of time. It also makes the "multiple production" game option not do anything, if you are using it. In order to get multiple things produced in one turn you have to have them queued up. If it hits the end of the queue it will have to wait until the next turn even if what you pick could have been built on the same turn as the last thing. Note that multiple production can trim down the size of the available building list quite a bit - if you are building 2 cheapish buildings per turn then you are trimming down the list of buildings twice as fast.

This is exactly how I feel about this subject. You said it brotha'!

The main issue for me is that there's a lot of fluff and very little essence. It was mentioned that it's no longer a strategy of what to build but rather in what order to build it, where I usually just instinctively queue up production buildings, then food, then other stuff in whatever way strikes my fancy. The problem is added to considering the interface starts lagging badly when it gets bogged down by a ton of buildings, both taking half a second to update when you add something to the queue, and then also scrolling to the start of the category meaning I need to scroll back down to add the next building in line.

The thing is though that I never really consider the buildings unique. I never think to myself "Oh neat, a Deli." but rather "Oh neat, a +1 food building". Many times a new research will open up a slew of buildings which basically all serve the same function, like the sports tech - it adds numerous buildings that each add the same health and happiness bonus. It just seems bloated for the sake of bloat, rather than actual gameplay.

Now for the idea part - many such buildings are not ones a government would normally build itself, but rather free enterprises created by the citizens. A government would build a stadium, but a sporting goods shop would be built by Joe Schmoe.
So, what if an 'Urban Development' type of property was added? Much like current properties it would cause buildings to autobuild as it hits different levels and requirements. Unlike current properties however it could be more directly affected by the player's decisions -
Ideally a fourth bar would be added which would allow players to shift funds from research and culture etc to this urban development, representing the government investing in these free enterprises. Civics would affect this property to great extent, and great merchants / special units could give big boosts to this property (or perhaps to specific sectors, instabuilding certain sets of buildings regardless of the urban development property). All those buildings could then be removed from the player's build queue and instead be replaced by buildings that encourage their appearance. Again, this could be done on a per-sector basis or as a unified property.

Other than clearing up the building queue, this could also add a new mechanic to later games - countries shifting from a government-run economy to a more private-run economy. The buildings built by the citizens would replace the obsolete government-built buildings from earlier eras, trading direct income for other benefits. This would also have the bonus of making money more of an issue in later eras as buildings do not provide direct money anymore. Corporations could then become a much more important player in the game, for the better or for the worse. If the industrial era was about trying to manage rampant pollution, it would slowly shift into the modern era's gameplay of economics.

We've discussed something like this before... just a matter of priorities as to what we're developing I'm afraid. I'd like to see something along those lines someday - at least as an option.


Keep in mind guys... some building lists may be 'lacking unique substance' as has been pointed out. BUT... that doesn't mean they always will. Sometimes it just takes having the established building category infrastructures in place in the mod and then we begin to see other things we can do to make those buildings all the more unique. Take for example the military training centers and what we're looking to do with Ongoing Training. Or Equipment (big one here!) which can really benefit from a bit more 'micro-definitions' of building types to work with when developing what equipments are sourced from what buildings.

My point is... I don't think it's time yet to start shaving down. However, as usual, the complaints are largely derived from people who aren't yet comfortable or familiar with the queuing mechanism. I rarely ever get a city popping up saying 'what do you want to build next?' because I've plotted those decisions out many rounds in advance. And when something comes up almost all cities would want, shift select on the city bar allows you to manipulate all build queues at once and Ctrl-select on the city bar allows you to manipulate all the build queues on all cities on the same continent at once. Easy once you're used to using it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I had a nasty thought on how we could make c2C insanely complex - introduce Platyping's "quantity goods" but not just for the military normal buildings use and convert them, sink buildings like palaces use them and if you don't have enough...riots

Bot something I would even consider working on mind you.

 

[manivo]

shift select on the city bar allows you to manipulate all build queues at once and Ctrl-select on the city bar allows you to manipulate all the build queues on all cities on the same continent at once. Easy once you're used to using it.

Been using ctrl-select since ever for that purpose exactly. Somehow missed the shift-select one. On the topic - is there a way to display all of the available buildings in all of the cities when multiple-selecting? It seems to be determined by my capital right now, meaning I either have to postpone building something until every city has built its pre-requirements, or manually go through every city later on.

 

[Azurian]

I love the amount of sheer awesome content in C2C, but the biggest problem with it I have is that after the classical era arrives you have so many options that you're prompted to build at the start of each turn that it starts to get monotonous trying to pick the best option out of a list of 40+ things to do with your city. Is there any way we could solve this? Earlier obsolescence maybe? I think there needs to be some option or way to trim down the list.

Yeah... That's a serious problem if you ask me. The amount of buildings is getting out of hand.

I personally don't mind having tons of buildings to build, however, in this case i have to agree, BUT, not because there are too many buildings i can choose from (i happen to be a ''the more the merier'' type of person when it comes to mods/games) but because there are too many useless/pointless buildings that i could do without.

I think that this issue should be looked into ... more and more buildings are being added every version and i feel that a lot of them could be merged with other buildings or just simply removed from the mod since they are pointless ...

That's just my 2 cents on this matter.

EDIT: before anyone wonders, i play on snail speed or lower, I've never, ever, played on anything higher than snail.

+1 for that.

Agreed!
To much is too much. Maybe it is possible to add a GameOption to play with less Buildings and mabe also Techs, Units...
Also i think that this Mod needs a freeze (there nothing new will be added) to work on the balance and errors.

I'll volunteer myself to a Freeze for a week or three, and focus on building balance.

 

[Pepo]

i think that the problem is that there are too many cheap and repetitive bonus buildings (the one gold buildings for example) and only a few that requiere some kind of decision (money/crime buildings, science buildings) and even then is not a problem because is easy to counter those problems.i would really like less buildings but more decissions

 

[Sgtslick]

My point is... I don't think it's time yet to start shaving down. However, as usual, the complaints are largely derived from people who aren't yet comfortable or familiar with the queuing mechanism. I rarely ever get a city popping up saying 'what do you want to build next?' because I've plotted those decisions out many rounds in advance. And when something comes up almost all cities would want, shift select on the city bar allows you to manipulate all build queues at once and Ctrl-select on the city bar allows you to manipulate all the build queues on all cities on the same continent at once. Easy once you're used to using it.

I don't really see queuing and shift clicking huge build lists as a solution personally. It makes the game monotonous and removes some of the strategy. When every city builds a lot of the same buildings (most of them), sometimes you just wish you could fast forward the game till when some of these build queues are finished.

I think having options is great, and choosing between these options is what makes it 'strategy'. When all you have to do is shift click through them all, its dumb.

 

[Maxima7]

You don't necessarily have to get rid of all of them. You could make them auto-build after meeting certain criteria.

 

[RidetheSpiral23]

I don't really see queuing and shift clicking huge build lists as a solution personally. It makes the game monotonous and removes some of the strategy. When every city builds a lot of the same buildings (most of them), sometimes you just wish you could fast forward the game till when some of these build queues are finished.

I think having options is great, and choosing between these options is what makes it 'strategy'. When all you have to do is shift click through them all, its dumb.

Totally agree. It reduces civ strategy to queue buildings...wonder...one or two military units...queue buildings...

That's not even an exaggeration. This many building completely reduces the overall strategy of the game. It needs to be changed.

 

[Sgtslick]

The main issue for me is that there's a lot of fluff and very little essence. It was mentioned that it's no longer a strategy of what to build but rather in what order to build it, where I usually just instinctively queue up production buildings, then food, then other stuff in whatever way strikes my fancy. The problem is added to considering the interface starts lagging badly when it gets bogged down by a ton of buildings, both taking half a second to update when you add something to the queue, and then also scrolling to the start of the category meaning I need to scroll back down to add the next building in line.

The thing is though that I never really consider the buildings unique. I never think to myself "Oh neat, a Deli." but rather "Oh neat, a +1 food building". Many times a new research will open up a slew of buildings which basically all serve the same function, like the sports tech - it adds numerous buildings that each add the same health and happiness bonus. It just seems bloated for the sake of bloat, rather than actual gameplay.

Now for the idea part - many such buildings are not ones a government would normally build itself, but rather free enterprises created by the citizens. A government would build a stadium, but a sporting goods shop would be built by Joe Schmoe.
So, what if an 'Urban Development' type of property was added? Much like current properties it would cause buildings to autobuild as it hits different levels and requirements. Unlike current properties however it could be more directly affected by the player's decisions -
Ideally a fourth bar would be added which would allow players to shift funds from research and culture etc to this urban development, representing the government investing in these free enterprises. Civics would affect this property to great extent, and great merchants / special units could give big boosts to this property (or perhaps to specific sectors, instabuilding certain sets of buildings regardless of the urban development property). All those buildings could then be removed from the player's build queue and instead be replaced by buildings that encourage their appearance. Again, this could be done on a per-sector basis or as a unified property.

Other than clearing up the building queue, this could also add a new mechanic to later games - countries shifting from a government-run economy to a more private-run economy. The buildings built by the citizens would replace the obsolete government-built buildings from earlier eras, trading direct income for other benefits. This would also have the bonus of making money more of an issue in later eras as buildings do not provide direct money anymore. Corporations could then become a much more important player in the game, for the better or for the worse. If the industrial era was about trying to manage rampant pollution, it would slowly shift into the modern era's gameplay of economics.

Yes this would be ideal, take all of the +1 (something) buildings and make them like the realistic corporations function. Somewhat random but mainly dependant on your government choices, war, resources, happiness, city size, culture etc.

Then with all the left over buildings you can boost the cost of them right up and it will feel like civ again, players will be forced to choose definitive paths towards there goals. Such as- I will build this city up to get stables and riding school and some production stuff and build horse troops out of here. As opposed to, ill queue up 100+ buildings and then be ready to use this city..

 

[Hydromancerx]

My point is... I don't think it's time yet to start shaving down.

As long as I am around there will be no "shaving down" of buildings. From the beginning of modding I wanted to get to this level of buildings. It took many months and some help but overall I am extremely happy with the variety of buildings we have. As you said we finally have a base line for some interesting stuff. And for people use to vanilla civ4 or even civ5 I can see where they get overwhelmed. However C2C is WAY beyond those types of games. You got to ave the mindset of say Sim City where there are a lot of buildings, and of those many similar ones. Also we have many dependency buildings similar to the Anno series.

I also think that people think that there are more building than there really is. At any given point in the game there are many factors that unlock a building. Tech, resources, culture, city size, religion, etc. And not all buildings last forever either. And buildings can unlock other buildings too so a city may have a more limited amount of buildings than you would think.

i also think that many people who complain about too many buildings are not using the building filters or are playing on a speed that is much too fast. Heck even having unlimited wonders can skew your view since you would have so many wonders listed to build since there is no limit to remove them from the list of building to build when you reach the max amount.

Note I do have a few ideas on how to make thing run smoother for buildings, but I not sure which I should use yet.

 

[teakbois]

How about this for a possible way to reduce the building spam

Two new types of buildings: Supply buildings and export buildings

Supply buildings: There are tons of buildings that give resources. For example, paper maker. Supplies paper. you end up with one in every city, and you end up with 30 copies of paper.

Why not just have one paper maker for the entire civilization? Jack up the hammer cost and if it makes sense give each city a bonus. For instance, a winery might provide a culture boost to all cities. So instead of building something in each city, you just build it once at a far greater cost but every city benefits.

Export buildings can also be built once per civilization. These can grant a commerce or gold boost to that particular city. Or perhaps add trade routes. So if you had two grapes, you could make a winery ofr your civilization, and a winery export. they wouldnt give the resource to other civs, you would still be able to trade raw materials. You wouldnt be able to trade this finished good (wine), but if you had multiples you could trade the resource (grapes) so that civ could build a winery.

 

[Hydromancerx]

The things is the Paper Maker also is providing you with and sometime producting buildings also have a down side the more you make. Not to mention there has been talks for ages about having resources have a quantity for things. So I would like to keep that window open the the possibility of a supply line type of system.

At any rate I have some other ideas I am trying to work out that you guy might like. So stay tuned.

 

[strategyonly]

At any rate I have some other ideas I am trying to work out that you guy might like. So stay tuned.

See i like this, talking things out, then having more ideas how to do things, this is what i am talking about !!

 

[JosEPh_II]

@Hydro,

are playing on a speed that is much too fast.

Gamespeed isn't that much of a problem. I play Normal and Epic and don't have the problems that this thread's OP and others are complaining about.

It's play style and adjusting that play style that these poster having problems need to reconsider.

Even sgtslick needs to too.

Such as- I will build this city up to get stables and riding school and some production stuff and build horse troops out of here. As opposed to, ill queue up 100+ buildings and then be ready to use this city..

You would never que up this exaggerated number (100). Again here is an example of a short sighted playstyle of "I have to have cities that have a Defined role". This one only builds military, and this one is only research, etc.. Your cities need to be fluid to adapt to the constantly changing environment. The stated playstyle is fine for vanilla BtS but not for C2C. Adapt your playstyle, it might hurt for awhile but you'll be a better player for it.

JosEPh