Firaxis: BETA Patch Info

[Sparrow3]

I prefer the stack commands Idea suggested by Bamspeedy; instead of the worker gang concept. It would not involve additional art work for one thing. Also, it could be implemented for units like the crusader (I think) that can build fortifications. The Idea of stack bombardment is also a good one. IMHO

Chieftess' post of workers showing their current activity is a great idea too.

QUOTE: by Chieftess __________________________
When right clicking a stack of workers, show what the workers are working on. This would be great for those times you hit "i" once too often, and mean to build a road on a mine instead. Maybe even put the number of turns it will take.

i.e.:

Worker (irragating - 1)
Worker (irragating - 1)
Worker (French) (irragating - 1)
Worker (Zulu) (irragating - 1)
Worker (road - 2 )
Worker (road - 2 )
________________________________________________

 

[Lord_all_Mighty]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy


What about military units? With enough workers, you could build 1 unit/turn, regardless of the shield cost for the unit.

I like the 1 harvest/tile rule. Harvesting multiple times would make this game all about setting up a lumber company (over, and over, and over...). Basically, boring and tedious.

Then what's the point in having forests? By the middle ages most of the time all the forests in core cities have been chopped and they aren't even around in the Industrial ages and beyond. At least let them serve a purpose when the option becomes available to replant them, otherwise nobody will.

BTW on the military unit issue, I see what you're getting at, but which era do you speak of? If it is the Industrial age+ then why is it such a concern? Effective units are beginning to get expensive around the late Middle Ages/ Early Industrial age, right around the time forests have lost their uses, and you will not have such a sizable workforce to exploit what you speak of until Steam Power comes along and by that time you need to focus your attention on RRing your empire (unless you lack coal/iron which your attention should be turned to getting some immediately).

 

[Chieftess]

Actually, I still use forests in the middle ages, especially if the city is surrounded by grassland/plains and is at size 12 with a surplus of +2 food. 2 forests per city.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Then what's the point in having forests?

Defense bonuses, one time shield benefit (70-200 shields/city depending on how dense you build your cities), and as Chieftess pointed out a forest is better than a mined regular grassland (non-railroaded) if you hit a population barrier, and is better than mines on tundra.

BTW on the military unit issue, I see what you're getting at, but which era do you speak of?

Does it matter? Why should I be able to build a 1 MA/turn by harvesting trees (non-stop) when it should take me 2 or 3 turns from working mines?, or if I'm building 1 knight/turn or 1 cavalry/turn.

and you will not have such a sizable workforce to exploit what you speak of until Steam Power comes along and by that time you need to focus your attention on RRing your empire

I think 500 workers before 500 AD is a sizeable workforce, don't you?

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
I think 500 workers before 500 AD is a sizeable workforce, don't you?

500? Are you slowing down Bamspeedy?

 

[MarineCorps]

Originally posted by Hygro
seeing all these incredible things starting getting my hopes up about seeing Helicopters basing on carriers

These changes really are excellent!

Trust me theres nothing I want more then that

 

[Grille]

Infinite forest chop issue: why go south, repectively warp to "ancient" vanilla times (1.07), when you could regrettably use this exploit - downgrade by a patch?

10 shields once per tile and per game is a reasonable solution - and we have this rule actually - even with reduced worker action base time!

Worker-gang issue: agree that you should not 'pay' (build a special 'worker army unit' to load workers in, discover a certain tech or such similar) for getting an interface feature. Well, if there was some extra benefit... but I, too, see a whole lot of potential problems with the concept (deficit spending penalty, capturing, slave worker mix, AI possibly not handling such gang properly if there was an additional benefit on top of being an interface feature etc etc etc).
Then better have a plain & simple worker stack command.

I would appreciate any bombarding-stack command as well. Now that bombardment will reduce garrisoned units' HPs first before destroying any improvement/reducing pop, such command could be assigned to an arty (bomber) stack quite well, I think: e.g. have 15 catapults stacked, choose stack-bombard (alt-b or whatever) -> stack bombs until every defender has just 1hp left (or no units at all in case of lethal bombardment ability); catapults that haven't fired yet, could become active again and may then 'alt-b' for pop reduction/improvement destroying. In any case, that command should somehow distinguish between unit and pop/imp bombardment.



My dream feature for MP: combat replay for hotseat/PBEM.
[Even a really, really, really old turn-based strategy game called 'Empire' with basically a civ-similar combat system had both (!) an intel report (=opponent units that came into your visibility range- even if just temporarily during inter-turn) and a combat report (replay of every battle during inter-turn.]
Or at least a rough combat inter-turn log like there was in SMAC: There was a pop up at turn start like "We have won 4 out of 10 fights". A more detailed description for any unit (resp. base) in question was available in an info box like: "Our scout infantry survived an attack of a mind worm near the base Morgan-Industries".
So if the other various targeted issues are solved in no time and you then really feel bored waiting for the 'late' release date...

 

[Gogf]

I like Chieftess's right click idea as well.

 

[Fanny Brice]

The Worker Gang concept should not be tied to a tech. Unless you are adding an enhanced ability, this is really just a player convenience and should be available from the beginning.

And please don't add an enhanced ability.

 

[Gogf]

But don't make it cost shields.

 

[Jurimax]

1) Worker gangs:
Great idea:
- slave workers can finally be converted into a 'chain gang'
- the phase in the game with lots of workers becomes less tedious
- on the implementation issues:
2 worker gang: Engineering
3 worker gang: Physics
4 worker gang: Steam Power
5 worker gang: Radio
Also make sure that the AI knows kow to handle with it
- It could be like an army unit (for workers only) with an extra movement point that has no capabilities of its own, but once loaded with workers it has the worker abilities.

2) On the forest issue:
Why not allow the raplantation to also allow the ten shields? It happens in the real world, but to counter exploits increase the time to clear forests and maximize the number of workers so that it effectively takes at least 2 turns to clear.

Greetz Jurimax

 

[Nihilist]

My only hope is that they change the interface so it doesn't take me 20 minutes a turn micromanaging my workers. If the worker gangs were just an interface improvement (stack commands), there would be no need to worry about AI implementation. So PLEASE keep any enhanced worker gang concept (requiring techs and shields and potentially buggy AI) separate from improvement in user-interface (stack commands).

 

[TedJackson]

As a player I would welcome some improvements/additions to the stack commands as proposed by several posters in this thread but would be wary of such improvements/additions unless they were countered by changes to the AI programming to provide similar behaviour.


Ted

 

[ranger999]

Exactly. A UI enhancement is good. Actual "worker gang" units would lead to some additional complications.

We don't need new features that the AI fails to utilize or exploit. I still have not seen evidence that the AI can use specialists like engineers and policemen for its cities (at least not in the governor code, which I assume is how the AI controls its cities). Obviously not enough time for that in this patch, but it would be nice to have it in a future patch.

Please do not make this game like Master of Magic--much beloved as it was, it was chockful of features the AI couldn't use optimally (or it couldn't master the degenerate combos humans used). As I mentioned in another thread, Civ 2 couldn't even use carriers correctly. As Civ gets enhanced, I don't think anyone wants to feel that the AI is using a shrinking subset of allowed units and actions, while human players get more and more "extra" features and units.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by Jurimax
1) Worker gangs:
Great idea:
- slave workers can finally be converted into a 'chain gang'
- the phase in the game with lots of workers becomes less tedious
- on the implementation issues:
2 worker gang: Engineering
3 worker gang: Physics
4 worker gang: Steam Power
5 worker gang: Radio
Also make sure that the AI knows kow to handle with it
- It could be like an army unit (for workers only) with an extra movement
point that has no capabilities of its own, but once loaded with workers it has the worker abilities.

I don't know if the benefit of extra movement is worth it. As it is now, in most cases in my games, workers reach their next 'construction target tile' within one turn anyways. So they don't really need extra movement. Furthermore, worker gangs would be needed to complete time-intensive jobs in the first place, e.g. clearing wetlands, building roads/rr/mines on mountains etc; but extra movement is pretty much useless then (eaten up to get access to such a tile anyways).
Apart from the movement benefit (which is not the biggest deal compared to having a better interface tool available right from game start w/o any tech pre-requisites or so), why should the AI ever use it? My comp doesn't press keys on the AI's turn - I am the one who's fed up with moving around hordes of workers...

2) On the forest issue:
Why not allow the raplantation to also allow the ten shields? It happens in the real world, but to counter exploits increase the time to clear forests and maximize the number of workers so that it effectively takes at least 2 turns to clear.

At some not so late point in the game, dependent on city spacing style, that's probably 30-100 uncorrupted shields per turn (!) production capacity for a normally crappy city... (see Bamspeedy's earlier posts #45 an #64)

 

[Mallek]

Hello everyone i have dowloaded this patch but i still have a problem with the arial view that is that there isnt one when im playing mods but there is in the normal game (is this a bug?)

 

[The Last Conformist]

It's 'feature'. They removed the city view from all modded games, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me.

 

[Longasc]

I like the worker gangbang... äh worker gang idea, too.

But... first fix corruption, and fix it now!

Right from the beginning and over PTW now into C3C, corruption has been a real nuisance and was always bugged or broken.

Now that is really bad!

I think the idea of having more corruption in far away cities is great, but the code is sooo terribly broken now, I often hardly can tell if building a police station or court house actually changes more than 1 shield of corruption.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
It's 'feature'. They removed the city view from all modded games, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me.

Because modders would get their own bug reports because when somebody builds some new wonder like the Effiel Tower, the UN or Great Wall would show up in the aerial view.

Anyways, I think they should just have had an option in the editor whether or not to disable the aerial view, so that mods that don't change the wonders,improvements etc. (only doing minimal rule changes for example) would still get to use it.

 

[Al Lowe]

Is it just me, or did some of the buttons disappear? I seem to be missing the auto-bombard and many of the auto buttons for workers have also flown the coop. As well, the Sentry until Enemy unit is near button is gone.

Anyone have any ideas???