Civ6 Blog Post - Automation

[rastak]

New players never saw worker automation, they are ok. For old players Builders differ enough from workers so this also look new. You could see the replies in this thread for general feeling of old players.

Consider this potential automation as new feature nobody expect. In this case having it implemented badly would be worse than not implementing at all.

And, surely it's quite easy to mod in for those who can't live without it.

I completely agree with your take. Builders are not completely the same as workers. The game changed, workers were removed as was worker automation. I am surprised anyone is concerned.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The problem is that you aren't able to put an interesting decision into motion when you make it.

Say I have a new city, i know I want farms on certain tiles and districts on others... But I need some way of putting that into motion.

(Or I may know I want barracks/stable in a certain city before those are available....i need some way to put that in motion)

 

[MkLh]

Builders are in some sense closer to settlers than former workers as districts are more like small cities than just terrain improvements. Therefore it makes sense they can't be automated. You can't automate city founding either.

 

[AriochIV]

The problem is that you aren't able to put an interesting decision into motion when you make it.

Say I have a new city, i know I want farms on certain tiles and districts on others... But I need some way of putting that into motion.

(Or I may know I want barracks/stable in a certain city before those are available....i need some way to put that in motion)

I'm not sure what you mean by "put into motion." If you mean you would like to be able to plan and queue all Builder and city production actions on Turn 1 and then just hit End Turn several hundred times, I don't think that would be necessary or even desirable.

Ideally these choices should change based on how the game develops.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'm not sure what you mean by "put into motion." If you mean you would like to be able to plan and queue all Builder and city production actions on Turn 1 and then just hit End Turn several hundred times, I don't think that would be necessary or even desirable.

Ideally these choices should change based on how the game develops.

Some will change, but some won't.

You should be able to do something like that. In 5 you could do it by automating workers, having puppet cities.

And having those far off areas of your empire undeveloped, or not remembering the district puzzle setup you wanted for the 20th city in your empire.

This can be helped by checking systems (lenses where you see unimproved tiles, reminders when you can build a new district in a city, etc.)

And then automation needs to be an option for non interesting decisions. (If I have the campus, I want to build the Library...not really an interesting decision.

 

[m15a]

I think having more queuing options would help a lot with that. Maybe you won't be able to queue up improving farms before you build the builder, but you could queue up districts and buildings in your build queue, so you'll remember what you meant to do. Even better if you can queue a district and pre-assign the placement (and change it later if you change your mind before it reaches the top of the queue). Then, add a builder to the queue when you need it and have the builder improve tiles you didn't assign to districts in your build queue.

Barring all that, I hope it's easy to put clear markers on the map. Drawing with a mouse is hard, but it'd be cool if you could drop some icons (or even colored dots) on the map that you can see when one of the lenses is on.

 

[chaosprophet]

Barring all that, I hope it's easy to put clear markers on the map. Drawing with a mouse is hard, but it'd be cool if you could drop some icons (or even colored dots) on the map that you can see when one of the lenses is on.

Didn't quill18 said you can put markers on the map? Which can be used for those planning ahead to remember where they want to put what.

 

[m15a]

Didn't quill18 said you can put markers on the map? Which can be used for those planning ahead to remember where they want to put what.

Yes. I just hope there a few distinct marker icons you can put down. As opposed to 1 marker and/or whatever you can draw with your mouse.

Edit: typing is fine, too. I just want icons because it'd be faster.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I also pray to god for labels.

 

[ClavisRa]

Builders are in some sense closer to settlers than former workers as districts are more like small cities than just terrain improvements. Therefore it makes sense they can't be automated. You can't automate city founding either.

Exactly. You may as well automate the production-queue while you're at it, too. Build decisions are impactful, involve multiple factors, have long range implications, and are key decisions in the development of a city. With the way cities have been unpacked in Civ VI, builders aren't just making an endless series of improvements as before.

 

[AriochIV]

You should be able to do something like that. In 5 you could do it by automating workers, having puppet cities.

Automating workers in Civ V was never putting your plan into action. It was asking the AI to play for you.

I have never understood the enthusiasm for a game that plays itself.

 

[Ryika]

Well, you don't have to understand it. All you have to understand is that there's people who would want features like that and that the game isn't designed for you personally. Hell, I think a mod that allows you to puppet your own cities for some %-Modifiers would actually be quite a cool idea. Being able to have super-wide empires without having to queue seven-hundred-thirty-five buildings every turn sounds like it could be a cool experience to breeze through every now and then.

Again, where are the arguments against it? "I don't understand it.", "I wouldn't want to use it.", "I don't think it would be interesting." just aren't "arguments" against people telling you that they and others would enjoy playing that way.

The only real arguments I see are "New Players would try to use it and be disappointed!" - which can easily be countered by a disclaimer - and the time it takes to implement those - which really shouldn't be that high. Everything else is just elitism.

 

[chaosprophet]

The argument is what the devs presented: they see the need for automation a weakness / reflection of a boring system that should be avoided when possible. They believe the changes made to CIV 6 regarding space and how builders works makes deciding when to make one and what to do with it more interesting and meaningful to the point where automation is unneeded. Whether they are right or not, we will only know when we get the chance to play the game.

They could still give the option to automate it anyway, but then as other have said they could also do that with any other system in the game, but they don't for most of them. For Civ6, builders are included in the not possible to automate camp.

 

[Ryika]

Whether they are right or not, we will only know when we get the chance to play the game.

Yes, I am of course still arguing from the position that there may be problems in the late game. If they have solutions for these that we don't know about yet, then that's perfectly fine with me.

 

[Haggbart]

Well, you don't have to understand it. All you have to understand is that there's people who would want features like that and that the game isn't designed for you personally. Hell, I think a mod that allows you to puppet your own cities for some %-Modifiers would actually be quite a cool idea. Being able to have super-wide empires without having to queue seven-hundred-thirty-five buildings every turn sounds like it could be a cool experience to breeze through every now and then.

Again, where are the arguments against it? "I don't understand it.", "I wouldn't want to use it.", "I don't think it would be interesting." just aren't "arguments" against people telling you that they and others would enjoy playing that way.

The only real arguments I see are "New Players would try to use it and be disappointed!" - which can easily be countered by a disclaimer - and the time it takes to implement those - which really shouldn't be that high. Everything else is just elitism.

But new players aren't the ones complaining now. Those complaining now are old Civ-players that miss a feature they yet don't know if they will miss because this is a new game with new game mechanics they have not tried.

If the designers want the players to experience builders and not automate from habit, there might be a good reason for that. You might call it speculation, but not as much speculation as proclaiming now that automation SHOULD be there regardless of new game mechanics.

From the IGN preview:
"What’s more, Firaxis has eliminated the ability to automate Builders’ behavior – and Beach has some strong words about that feature. “To some extent, automation is a sign that your game design is weak,” he says. “Hitting the automate button and then not looking at that unit, there are no interesting decisions at all there.” Firaxis’ guiding principle, as laid down by founder Sid Meier himself, is that games are a series of interesting decisions – so that makes a lot of sense. And as someone who at first leaned too heavily on that crutch in Civ 5, I’m glad to see that automation scaled back so that I’m forced to make those decisions instead of putting city development on autopilot."

 

[King Jason]

If the designers want the players to experience builders and not automate from habit, there might be a good reason for that.

The quote you just posted literally pointed out that the reason there is no worker automation is because Ed doesn't like it.

Which is fine, because it's his game. Also note, elsewhere he even said they had a version of the game where Exploring wasn't automated either - because he wanted to remove automation due to his design philosophy (Automation = weak game). The Feedback on it was strong and they decided to keep Automated explorers in.

The designers aren't always "right". They are never "wrong" either. They make the game they want to make and people either like their choices or they don't. Ryika wants automation. His reasons don't matter, the pros and cons don't matter. He wants the option. Further; it's programming - there is virtually no reason they can't have automated Builders other than they simply didn't want to put it in the game. Period. Which is also fine.

So to end, I'd say the same thing to the people who seem to want Builder automation that I've said to the people who think the graphics are awful - That's the game's design... deal with.

 

[ftl]

Presumably, to remove the automation, they also removed the reasons WHY workers were such an automatable thing in the past. I think those reasons were:

1) Lots of things for workers to do - every single tile in the radius of the cities (if the cities were tall)
2) After the first few things (luxuries, resources) the order only matters a bit.
3) There's no tradeoff to improving tiles - the workers are there, they might as well do something useful, there's rarely a reason to hold off.
4) Workers work slowly, so by the time one of them finishes an improvement you've probably forgotten what else you want it to do, you have to re-assess and think about something that isn't important anyway.

Combined, all those things together made worker management boring - lots of things to do, but very few of the decisions particularly interesting or impactful, if your workers just stay busy doing whatever for the whole game your cities just get better.

In Civ 6, they've tried to address these in a few ways.

Since districts and wonders are now built on the map, there's no longer a point to improving every single tile around. In fact, with adjacency bonuses, removing or changing terrain may be counterproductive, and perhaps there's no point in improving a tile you're going to place a district on later. In addition, improvements are no longer free, since builders have limited charges and need to be rebuilt. You won't have a swarm of builders around and be forced to decide what to do with them just because they're there. Since building improvements is instantaneous, you won't be in a situation where a builder becomes active and you have to re-think "man, what is useful for this guy to do around here? What's going on?" because a builder is only going to be around for a few turns total.

The designers believe that those changes are enough to make decisions of what to do with your builders interesting and meaningful, rather than a chore. You'll only build a builder when you have something in mind for it to do, it will only be there for a few turns so you won't have to keep figuring out over and over what you want from it, and the choices of where to improve are more interesting then before, due to the interactions with districts and the limited charges.

We'll see how well it works when it comes out, obviously. But I can certainly see the idea.

 

[rastak]

I agree with your well reasoned post ftl.

 

[Mustakrakish]

While I don't see how having automation as an option is a bad thing even if not used, I also don't see why would you care so much that it's not there?

I mean a builder needs to be built. It has limited charges. I don't see how "3 farms in places I don't need them / want districts later" scenario could occur? You just used up time (that could be used building more important stuff) building a builder that you don't need? To automate it so it builds something you have no need for? Why? It's not a worker from before that would just stick around that you need to make busy with something or delete. I just don't see a scenario where I'd bother building a builder if I don't really need it? I mean maybe some can and so I don't see why this option couldn't be there, but I can't and in the end I don't care either way

Well that was a useful post...

 

[Socrates99]

I'm not sure I could fathom why anyone would want to build a limited charge builder and automate it. Who knows what the AI would do with it. You wouldn't want it planting districts or ruining adjacency bonuses.

At any rate, roads are basically automated so that knocks out a good portion of old worker work.