City Production Divided up on more than one task

[Smackdown]

This very possibly could have been suggested by now, I haven't seen it yet hovering around the message boards for a while (I don't post much) so just in case this hasn't been suggested here goes:

Personally I'd like to see city production divided up on more than one task at a time, you'd be directing a percentage of your city production to various tasks every turn (building workers, attack units and constructing a building, etc). This is pretty straight forward and has probably been suggested, I came up with this however thinking about something that may not have been. Simply put, large ships should never be built exclusively in one city. You'd have the guns of your battleship for instance being built in Rome for example while you'd have the Naval quarters built in Neapolis, and the hull in Veii, etc. This to mimick specialization of building parts, maybe as cities build many units of one type they begin to be specialists in steel work for example so one city's Hull would be stronger than the hull built in a city that was not a specialist in steel work. Tanks and smaller units of course would be produced in one city, soldiers would be trained in one city although perhaps you could train a standard soldier in specialized methods only by sending them to cities that specialized in that type of fighting (in the earlier ages anyway, modern cities should have all types of combat training expertise).

Basically my suggestion is to treat large sea vessels more like the Space Ship of CIV2 and 3. Most importantly however, is the breaking up of production on more than one task!

One last suggestion, ships should take up more than 1 square where your attack could be directed at the rear portion or front portion of any ship with different defense statistics depending on where you attack the enemy ship.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Dreadnought]

In order to have your idea to build ships in multiply cities would have way too much micromanaging. In order to keep track of where your building the ships parts would draw your attention away from what your going to do with the ship to how are you going to make it

One last suggestion, ships should take up more than 1 square where your attack could be directed at the rear portion or front portion of any ship with different defense statistics depending on where you attack the enemy ship.

Again too complicated. The game (Civ4) will be based not on military (not completely, at least). Military is just a small part of the game. Some of my games don't involve a large military (UN victory, for example).

Sorry, but I don't really like this idea.

 

[Fromage10x]

Agreed. Plus, a battleship I built in five cities better be flippin' AMAZING.

 

[Dreadnought]

hehehehehe

 

[Smackdown]

Agreed. Plus, a battleship I built in five cities better be flippin' AMAZING.

Of course it would be, the stats used by Firaxis are way off in Civ 3. Not the stats I use in my mods.

Catapult Bombard = 4

Battleship Bombard = 8 A battle ship with twice the firepower of a catapult... now that's realistic...

My Catapult = 4

My Battleship= 150

In response to the first post: Just because something seems as if it is too complex to do doesn't make it a bad idea! I'm sure there could be compromise, from a programming standpoint it would be a lot harder to do than what is done in civ3 production. From a gamers perspective it would be no more difficult to play, perhaps in multiplayer it would be trickier. But nothing much more difficult than in anyof the real time strategy games like empire earth, starcraft, etc.
There are games currently out that are running way more complex programs than Civ3. I don't think dividing up production is that complex when you look at all the games out for PC, PS2, XBOX, etc.

If it would be too much for gamers to enjoy during multiplayer perhaps production division could be limited to any combination of 2 projects at a time (worker and library for example or marine and modern warship, etc) or for multiplayer games it could be an option to allow divided production!

 

[Helmling]

MOO1 did have divided production, but I think the level of abstraction afforded by the city producing one thing at a time is more appropriate to Civ. Though I've often thought that most things--units especially--should cost less production and time to make but should cost more to support.

Oh, and I think that the proposal about the ships would bog down the game in the miniutia of naval warfare.

And Smackdown, my favorite illustration of what you're talking about is the fact that the Korean UU does more damage than a Stealth Bomber!

 

[Dreadnought]

Your right helmling...that is kinda wierd!

 

[Smackdown]

MOO1 did have divided production, but I think the level of abstraction afforded by the city producing one thing at a time is more appropriate to Civ. Though I've often thought that most things--units especially--should cost less production and time to make but should cost more to support.

Oh, and I think that the proposal about the ships would bog down the game in the miniutia of naval warfare.

And Smackdown, my favorite illustration of what you're talking about is the fact that the Korean UU does more damage than a Stealth Bomber!

heh, yeah or the fact that a fighter plane bombing and a trebuchet do the same!

It will be interesting to see what Civ4 will look like. I wonder if they will use any of the suggestions in these forums or will they 'know it all' and be "authoritarian" about it, because honestly some of the units and scenarios I have seen on here are better than what Firaxis put out in civ3.
I hope they use some of the suggestions on here, I also hope the game isn't as simplistic looking anymore either. The graphics in Civ 3 were nice but they can definitely be improved, more city management and government management with less of a focus on the war aspect would also be nice (and realistic). The single player game should try to be as complex as possible to emulate history and real society, multiplayer of course be faster paced military style game play.

It will be interesting to see what it turns out like, does anyone know what stages the game is in or where to find news releases on it?

S

 

[Helmling]

I think the big fear is that any more complexity would alienate more casual players. What I hope we see is a layer of subtlety that those casual gamers don't need to access to enjoy the game, but which is there somewhere for us fanatics to utilize. I'd like to see that be the key to higher difficulties. Playing on Monarch and above shouldn't be about overcoming the AI's obscene resource advantages, but about controlling the simulation in much more precise and devious ways.

But we can only hope...

 

[warpstorm]

I hope for that also, Helmling.

 

[Smackdown]

I think the big fear is that any more complexity would alienate more casual players. What I hope we see is a layer of subtlety that those casual gamers don't need to access to enjoy the game, but which is there somewhere for us fanatics to utilize. I'd like to see that be the key to higher difficulties. Playing on Monarch and above shouldn't be about overcoming the AI's obscene resource advantages, but about controlling the simulation in much more precise and devious ways.

But we can only hope...

To hell with the casuals!! j/k

I agree with you though on the difficulty level complaint completely. I play on Monarch and I notice no different strategy in the AI than in the 3 easier levels, i just know that there are building speed advantages and unit vs unit combat bonuses which annoy the hell out of me. Just because I play on a higher difficulty than I used to doesn't mean my tanks should lose to riflemen and infantry or that my attacking knight loses more than 50% of the time to a defending knight on regular terrain. It just annoys me when I know the combat is working how it is supposed to (4/3 knight should win a round of combat 4/7 times while the defending knight should have 3/7 chance to win the round.) If you reload without preserving random seed you can see that it is not 60/40 in your favour but more 60/40 in the AI favour with those very same statistics! I hope they find better ways to adjust AI this time around.

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

Interesting mix of ideas. Parallel build streams in a city (and parallel research streams, for that matter) are wholly consistent with the underlying nature of the game. Whether they should be introduced depends entirely on issues of complexity (how many inter-related kinds of things are going on), game balance (do they make it too difficult to perform the design tests that eliminate rogue trends) and playability (do they, in practice, offer more work than "fun" - is there so much to do in the game that the player ends up ignoring whole areas and thus loses comprehension?)

Ideas like building units in parts over several cities and having units occupying more than one unit of space are of a completely different nature. They are simply nothing to do with the game. In game terms, units are representations of technology combinations and they pop up in play, largely to test which technologies are more effective. Of course the test is more complex than that becuase there are also the vital elements of resource management (leading to larger numbers of units) and strategy (how best to deploy units). So added detail as to the characteristics of units detracts from the primary thrust of the game, which is concerned with the developments of technology and human organization and their application in a world of increasinglycontested resources of materials and space (more oversimplification, but it is Sunday morning).

The more abstract the units the better served is the game.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Off the face of it, building different stuff in the same city simultaneously is a disadvantage.

Say, you're building a 100 shield improvement and a 100 shield unit in a city with a production of 10 spt.

If you build them sequentially, you get one after ten turns, and the other after a further ten turns. If the shields are split equally, you get both after twenty turns; clearly a worse deal in most circumstances. To make parallel builds worthwhile, it would probably need some sort of bonus, which doesn't make much immediate sense, and leaves a worrying possibility for horrid exploits.

Building single units in multiple cities would be just too much MM.

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

(you following me about Mr. non-conformist?)

Absolutely true. This is one of the ways it adds complexity - more decisions to work out. It's hard sometimes deciding whether to get a factory, say, built as early as possible so hat all future builds are quicker, or to chase after that "vital" wonder in case it gets done without you. So this could be one step too far. Still it is definitely worht considering even if to reject it.

Algae

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'd like to point out that I'm a different poster from nonconformist. And no, I'm not stalking you - I don't know why you should think that.

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

Sorry Last ....,

just joking because your posts followed mine on two threads this morning (three now and this one twice!). I forgot there was a poster called non-conformist. I just took the words from your sig. Still I don't think he uses a hyphen

The correct short-form for my name is Algae; do you have a preffered short-form from "The Last Conformist"?

Cheers

Algie

 

[AKtionFich]

and was near to open one.
I tiy to express what i think shell change in the production system, maybe its what u meant maybe not.
production shell becoming more comlpex with new techs.
at the begining there shell be produktion like it is now.

- x shields for used square´s, which are used to build anything.

then the spearman appears, so u need a smith in a city to build it.
it could be handled that u need a resoure for it, so only few cities can build it, or caravans could provide it, then the productivity of the smith isn´t set by terrain its set by used citizens and avaibilty of resources. so u can set the smith to produces spearmen while the city itself is working on a temple, resources like workpower are split.

so u need special production facilitys for diffrent units.
for tanks u need a havymachineryfacility for ships an shipyyard and so on.
the producivity is set by used workforces and avaible resources and maybe avaible preproducts as steal, machineparts instead of shields form city terrain.city terrain,


the system gets more complex doesnt mean its more difficult.
u can handle the productionfacility as own cities, based in a city
for example:
with the development of commuter services or cars u can use workforce from near cities so can set a citizen to commuter status. now u manage the production of a stealmile, there u see which commuters are avaible and chose them to work in the stealmile, then u need iron and coal u chose wich mines shell deliver it and tahn u see how productiv the stealmile is...

so a player can decide if he creates huge industrial facilitys or just uses serval small ones.
and back to the idea of splitting ship building,
u set a shipyard to produces a battleship (maybe there are diffrent siezes of shipyards so u need a huge one)
u click the ship yard and see how long it takes, the turns u need depending on how quick u can provide the needed resources (preproduced parts)
so if u have a a lot of resources workforce and parts u get maybe 2 ships a turn or ur workers have to wait for the guns and it takes longer.

i would like to see such a system at civ4 it isnt micromanagment to set up a industrial brunch, micromangement is like checking each city each turn.

the time u need to manage it doesnt take u longer than managing ur units now. if the military gots more options like division and armys, armadas and airarmadas , tasks...
u would have more time for real ur civilisation

 

[The Last Conformist]

The correct short-form for my name is Algae; do you have a preffered short-form from "The Last Conformist"?

"TLC"