Colonization style workers

[danwhit]

I would like to see civ 4 have citizens act more like colonization. The land is a factor in productivity, but so is the specialization of workers. I would like to see different types of citizens such as factory worker, farmer, fisherman, politician, priest, etc. as well as unspecialized general citizen. There are plenty of different types of citizens that could be designed with each type giving different bonuses to production, commerce, culture, whatever. There could be different careers and levels of specialization which could be unlocked by civ advances. Maybe even lesser GLs of different carreer types for greater bonuses which would be placed in a city as a citizen(Omar the Tentmaker who gives production bonus when building expansion buildings, a master shipwright who gives increased production when building naval units, a military genius who increases production of military units, millions of other possibilities).

Specialization of citizens could take micromanagement to an all-time high. or depending on how you feel about MM.

 

[Spatula]

That's the thing though - if you don't like micromanaging, then you're screwed, because with specializing citizens you're going to have to. I like the idea in principle, but I'd like to see an idea on how to bridge the gap between us non-MM and those who take the time and effort to MM.

 

[kingpenguin]

I agree in part with Spatula, since Civ 3 is strategic, not tactical, it tends not to specialize. I would say that perhaps you could research specialized workers, sort of like the specialists in this current game, that could improve on things but common labor workers are always available.

 

[danwhit]

I think that if citizens(not workers) could be specialized it would increase MM some but then again the governor could take care of it in the same way that civ3 does. If you have a specialized citizen in your city it would attempt to use it in the most effective manner. It isn't really that much different than civ3. You already have citizens with nationalities, now the citizen could have specialization or have no specializtion. I agree that in massive empires you wouldn't want to worry about individual citizens doing there jobs effectively. It would also help the people who want the game to move a little more away from warmongering(not me).

 

[Albow]

I must say NOOOOO to this idea, can you imagine the head ache? please, no more micromanagement for the heck of it

if anything, have a trait system for a CITY.

like, say, one city gets really good at making swords (like Toledo in spain), then units who require Iron in that city get +1 to attack.
or have a bunch of woodcutters in a city make it famous, so that certain buildings are made faster.

or perhaps a city is militaristic, so barracks are cheaper (Sparta anyone?)

So instead of going all the way down to pop level, just stay at city level ... this could make owning some cities extra strategic perhaps?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Here is a thought or two for specialisation:

1) First up, we need far more improvements and wonders of each 'category' per age. So, for instance, we might have around 5 production improvements per age, 5 commercial improvements per age etc. Also, we need the ability to 'improve' terrain improvements in the same way as we currently improve roads to rail-but with, perhaps, finer gradation. So, for instance you can make improvements to your roads over time, before finally upgrading to rail-which can in turn be improved. Same with mines, farms, forts and outposts.

2) (1) is important to me as it will lead to situations where the player will HAVE to decide what he/she wants the city to specialise in-which will lead to each city having a different character. So you will have 'industrial heartlands', 'cultural/religious centres', 'breadbaskets', 'commercial hubs' etc.

3) In addition to this specialisation, it should be possible to 'overspecialise' your population. This COULD be handed over to the city's governer, who will use the current character of a city as a guide to both future improvement building AND overspecialisation.

4) I think that a highly specialised city COULD develop an appropriate trait which, in turn, could make improvements/wonders with the same trait easier to build. By the same token, if you have enough cities of a specific trait, it might be possible for your CIVS traits to change accordingly!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[danwhit]

The citizen specialization idea is not really meant to affect civ traits or give cities a set trait. I mainly intended it as a way to give cities more personality and customization earlier on in the game. I would like to see breadbaskets, commerce, research and industrial type cities forming in late ancient age through middle medieval age. Cities in civ 3 seem a little bit to cookie cutter for my liking. I also think that it would make it interesting to not have to build every improvement in every city. A very productive university in a city would make up for 2 other cities not having one. Seems realistic. Also, research/industrial centers could be supported by breadbaskets and not have to worry about losing out on not having a university in the breadbasket cities until modern age.

I think the reason the idea sounds great to me is that I am not interested in Civ 4 being a bigger, extended civ3. I want some gameplay changes(like the change between 2 and 3) and not just new civs, improvements, advances and wonders. I also don't really like the huge empire style of play. I think the designers tried to steer the game away from the player having a huge empire going into the end of every game. I would rather have medium to large(not huge) civ with more personality, instead of just expand, GL farm, destroy all civs. I think each game would be more personalized and memorable.

 

[Philips beard]

I really love this idea, if they (atari) can make it work! I don't trust them after Axis and Allies RTS, what a great disapointment that was! Atari, Don't ruin CIV as well!

 

[K.F. Huszár]

I agree with dawnhit.
Otherwise, the micromanagment is no problem in the early and in the mid-games. but in the late games, micromanagement is awful. I hate switching cityproduction all the time the same way for twenty or more cities. You should be able to design governor types much easier and place them in cities also much easier.
Also, generals are needed. I hate ordering a dozen tanks attacking one by one.
If this problem is solved, specialized citizen won't mean no problem, rather a very intersting part of the game. It would not be need to have as much specialized citizens as in the Colonization, but some would be enough.

 

[dh_epic]

I'd give up individual workers units for a system of specialized population heads, easily.

Much more strategy and variety in determining how to focus your population than trying to move your worker from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. Pathfinding is a bore.

 

[Jon Shafer]

I really love this idea, if they (atari) can make it work! I don't trust them after Axis and Allies RTS, what a great disapointment that was! Atari, Don't ruin CIV as well!

Man, what is your obsession with Atari.

Like I said in the other thread, they're a publisher, they don't even make any part of the games.

 

[Albow]

Is there a thread for the idea of having city traits? The more I think about this individualisation of cities, the more I like it!

Wouldn't it be cool if your university can become so good it turns into MIT or something (kind of like leaders, but for institutions) ... this could happen for all types of buildings, which would make them almost minor wonders ... then cities would be known as centres of learning, or great commercial centres etc ...

cool.

and I totally agree with you Mr Lurker - we need more improvements for mining and roading etc between road and rail (also, wouldn't it be cool if the UU for Rome was also a better road? like they actually had? and Incas could build roads faster in mountains or something ...)

 

[danwhit]

Albow-you got some good ideas there; a non-unit UU that is a cool concept, I love it. Also, an improvement improvement; a specialized university, barracks or whatever that could come about by some means.

I like city traits, but not predetermined by the game. Maybe just a more specific governor to help decrease micromanagement with specialized citizens.

I would like to see the ability to move citizens from city to city without having to build a worker and move it across the map to the city. I am thinking along the lines of MOO population transportation or HOMM4. You would just pick a citizen to move on the F1 screen and then where to move it too. The citizen would be in transit for a number of turns determined by the distance and the type of transportation that has been discovered, so time between cities would decrease as the eras go by. This would easy enable the movement between cities of specialized citizens.

 

[Francophile]

Some people may not like all the specific aspects of these workers, especially newbies.

 

[frekk]

I'm not against having a greater variety of specialist citizens with more options behind (like, say, expert swordsmiths associated with producing elite units of certain types or something), but I draw the line at totally doing away with workers. First off, I've been playing the game in its various incarnations since its inception, and while I'm not against a few radical changes, there are certain fundamentals I cannot tolerate being altered. One of them is the ability to modify the main map using nonmilitary units. That rules out doing away with workers, not to mention certain additions I liked that came with civ3, like slaves. Take away workers and imho, it is not Civilization any more, and as such, I would cease my decade-old support for the franchise and refuse to purchase Civ4. If you want to reduce the micromanagement I suggest altering worker jobs so that fewer improvements need to be built. You could have farmland occur organically with city growth, or at the acquisition of a certain tech. You could do away with the trade bonus for roads and restrict their function to movement, and use mines only for resource extraction and not production bonus. But to totally do away with workers and abstract it from within the city screen, no.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Given that workers didn't even APPEAR until civ3, it can hardly be said that removing them would be 'unciv-like' (a specific line of argument which has always bothered me anyway!) The point is that it is possible to have 'workers' without the MM asocciated with them. Just have public works to determine how many infrastructure projects you can do each turn, and allocate static 'worker units' to these projects to determine the SPEED at which these jobs are done!
Lastly, static worker units can ONLY be 'vectored' from one city to another, via your trade-screen.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[rhialto]

...and as such, I would cease my decade-old support for the franchise and refuse to purchase Civ4...

Please don't! Without your financial support, the entire civ series is doomed to collapse into obscurity!

More realistically, neither of us is so important to the franchise that we can make such bombastic statements seriously.

 

[frekk]

Given that workers didn't even APPEAR until civ3

Well ... that isn't entirely true. Settlers were workers before civ3, building roads and so on. So there was a worker role, even if it was assumed by settlers.

As far as vectoring workers via a screen other than the main map, MANY problems.

What happens when a job is finished? Does it alert you, or do you have to go around looking inside every one of your cities for idle static workers? If it alerts you - how many popups are we talking about here? How do you tell, on the main map, what jobs are being done? Do you also have to go into the City Screen to do a job? The micromanagement is truly far more staggering, once one gets into the gameplay realities of such a system.

There's another thread where we've talked about this and the only real way to implement it is to get rid of even "static workers" and simply have a single national labour pool: anything else, such as static workers sitting in cities, is too much micromanagement, worse even than the present system.

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, there's no real need to have workers be linked to cities. Civ 3 simplified unit upkeep by eliminating the "home city" feature -- which has some benefits, don't get me wrong, but there are even more benefits to eliminating it. Hence, workers can be a collectivized national pool.

The square being worked on contains multiple worker units and thus the unit-graphic of a worker. If a worker uses up its turn, it stays on that square until the next turn, while the remainder of workers move onto the next queued job. This continues until there are either no more queued jobs, or no more rested workers that turn.

Workers are still produced by cities, but are collectivized. As for adding population points back into cities, some of you may be surprised to know that this is a HUGE exploitation problem in Civ 3 and needs to be reworked anyway. Putting workers back into a city's population needs to be rethought.

 

[Licentia]

That's the thing though - if you don't like micromanaging, then you're screwed, because with specializing citizens you're going to have to. I like the idea in principle, but I'd like to see an idea on how to bridge the gap between us non-MM and those who take the time and effort to MM.

Civ 3 is nice, because it's the first game where you can really let the computer take over control of the city functions. In Civ1 I have to make sure that the workers go on the square I want, etc. In Civ3 I don't touch those commands, which enables me to build more cities, etc.