Firaxis wants to remove "unfun"? Eliminate WORKERS!

[sir_schwick]

This same method could be used to improve worker automation. The user could just specify what he wants done all at once and then workers would obtain their orders from the pool of tasks needed to be accomplished. Sort of a "set it and forget it!" Ron Popeil method.

Although that would not be my first choice, this is the most compatible option for a variety of players. It also prevents anybody from gaining an advantage, since AI and human workers would move the same way. How does reducing micromanagement make Civ a "memorize the moves" game? You still have to have good improvement strategy, now you just odn't handle the nuance of managing movement.

 

[Mistfit]

Player A is willing to expend the energy and effort Micromanaging his empire and player B is lazy and does not want to do so. By taking out player A's advantage you have successfully "dumbed down" the game. The way it stands right now you can automate the workers if you do not want to "mess" with worker movement.

 

[sir_schwick]

Player A is willing to expend the energy and effort Micromanaging his empire and player B is lazy and does not want to do so. By taking out player A's advantage you have successfully "dumbed down" the game. The way it stands right now you can automate the workers if you do not want to "mess" with worker movement.

Have you ever used the automate feature? It is not pure crap, but it is no where near as good as a human player can do.

So you are saying that Micromanagement is considered a skill you should need to master a game about Macro-management? Mabye if you are playing Starcraft or Rise of Nations(even though taht is desinged to reduce micromanagement and reward strategy). Player B is saying that you should win a game because you had the better strategy and tactics, not because you can add worker moves in your head.

 

[Mistfit]

I just don't want the game to become only about military movements and strategy. Yes that should be a big part of the game but IMO it should not be the only part of the game. If you take out the workers the warriors are all we have left. The game becomes a battle game only. I personally use my workers for my military strategy. Have you ever tried using a worker as bait to trash the rep of an opponent, or decided to leave a jungle tile to hinder the movement of an opponent?

I may be considered a heritic but I personally think that the automate worker function should be left off the game. If you are to lazy to play with the workers play somthing else.

OTOH if this were a thread about making the AI smarter in their worker moves I would be all for it, but it is not. Firaxis wants to remove "unfun"? Eliminate WORKERS! is what this thread is called and I wanted to voice my opposition incase someone from firaxis was snooping around and getting the idea that everyone hated the worker.

 

[EddyG17]

A good strategist thinks alot and knows how to best use what he has, mp.
Workers are an essencial part of the game, if you don't want to worry about workers, then automate them, butIi suppose that you know that the computer is not very good with workers, So I ask the people at Atari to "teach" the computer how to handle workers properly.

 

[Vizurok]

DH EPIC: I love this idea!!!
Removing workers is a very brave decision, but also a very good decision! Worker management is unrealistic, bothering, and boring in CIV3, but this idea really makes sense, and makes the game more realisitc, handable and PLAYABLE!

Player A is willing to expend the energy and effort Micromanaging his empire and player B is lazy and does not want to do so. By taking out player A's advantage you have successfully "dumbed down" the game. The way it stands right now you can automate the workers if you do not want to "mess" with worker movement.

No, no, no. Players arent lazy, they just want to win with armies, diplomacy and economy, NOT with workers! That's why many potential player dislikes the game (corruptino and flipping helps, too ). I think CIV4 should be more popural, because CIV3 is a hardcore strategy, and only hardcore players (e. g. ME! ) play with the game.

This feature should be included in the new game, as well as other new gameplay features, making the game uniqiue and playable for way more people. Why? Because CIV3 is only a modern CIV1, and CIV 4 shouldn't get this destiny. Im not saying that I want to make a RTS from CIV, it should be only more dinamical and playable (this is a very important thing, imho).

Look at RoN. I know it's a different style, but the example lays in front of us. They have stealed lots of things from CIV and lots of things from other games, BUT the game is great. We shouldn't have to steal anything, we have our own reforming ideas from CIV history, from real history and from the players!!!

Does anyone from Firaxis read this ideas? I dont know. But they should! And I am praying for reading and using ideas from CFC in the game.

DH_EPIC, Why dont you make a poll? Everybody would vote, cause its a REAL question & idea...

Sorry for being too philosophic and long.

 

[dh_epic]

I'm glad there's some good discussion going on here. In particular comparing workers to civ specialists now.

First off, I spend hours of my working day presenting how to economize on clicks and decisions in User Interfaces. I'd like to think I know a little thing about micromanagement and how to cut it out. I do think I proved you save on clicks AND decisions. And if you don't believe me, I don't think you read that tedious piece of prose I put together.

Automation is NOT sufficient to eliminate the micromanagement of workers. Like I said, as long as the option is available, doing it manually will always be superior to the AI. In other words, using automation alone is a surefire way to lose an advantage to other AI civs.

But if you take the pathfinding stuff out of it, it's one less advantage you have to worry about maintaining. The user can still select which tile-improvements to build with ease, if not easier, but without playing the movement points game. And automation would be less hazardous, unlike the current version where you can lose entire turns of work if you let the AI manage your workers.

Some would say that the movement points game is really important to the strategy. I say it's boring and tedious and a reason the game hasn't caught on in a huge way. Movement point strategy is something ANYONE can learn (self proclaimed geniuses AND chimpanzees) but most people choose not to learn.

Why?

Because "figure out the most economic way to move your workers around!!!" isn't an exciting selling point on the back of the box. ("Build roads and traderoutes", however, IS a selling point.)

 

[EddyG17]

Figuring out the most economic way to move your workers around IS part of what makes CIV a stragety game. As it is corruption and cultural flips.

BTW I don't see how your idea would reduce "micromagement"( I call ordering my workers just managment) you still have to sit and decide what to do.

 

[crimson238]

Workers are too important of a strategic investment to be removed from the game. The ability to slave them, the ability to hold your population in them, and their ability to work outside your borders, and the ability to sell them in cases of financial need, are very integral parts of the game.
There is nothing that makes me happier, generally, than seeing a whole stack of enemy workers get caputred.
That being said, I can see how many people get annoyed with the constantly having to move workers around. Unfortunitly, there is no single answer to this problem, at least no perfect one.
The queing of worker moves is a good diea i've seen here, as it woudl still permit workers to be captured and is much a kin to the fire and forget method most modern militaries are going for now a days anyway.
another way to cut down on the "clutter" on the board in the late game, would be to creat worker "armies." It wouldn't be an army in the sense of the military armies, it would however, be a way of linking multiple worker units into one.
This would eleminate most of the clutter on the board, allow you to have to order less pieces (but not less true units) to do work as well as have many other perks.
Imagine you have 50 workers. You link them into 5 sets of 10, 5 "armies." now you've just reduced the amount of orders you have to give by 50%, also they'd be easier to awaken if you (like i do when my workers aren't working) have them sitting in a fortress in the middle of nowhere.
Sorry if this is incohierant, and the spelling is probably horrible, this is just an idea that came to me as i was trying to think of something more to say than "please keep workers."
I cna see botrh sides of this coin, although i am partial to keeping them, i can see them as a hinderance. however, i firmly belive that keeping them as a unit allows for much more strategy than without them.

Also another possibility would be to just revert back to the all around unit of the settler from civ 2. That way, when there's nothing more to be done, you just head out and biuld on some island someplace. but, that may be a step backwards.

 

[EddyG17]

the only way to make the people who want to eliminate workers happy is to ask the programers at Atari to "teach" the AI how to handle workers properly.

 

[Bibor]

IMHO the worker discussion is similar in many ways to diplomacy. If I remember correctly, you had spies/diplomats as units in previous CIVs. By removing diplomat units from game, they did not stop diplomacy. Maybe some of the possibilities were removed this way, but other diplomacy options were added.

If we look at workers, they do have a very important function. Workers and settlers are the only link between the City-based operations and board-based operations (two different aspects of the game).

CIV4 population management will largerly influence the existence or non-existence of workers/settlers (terraforming specialist citizens that can move on board).

The first question is: "Do we want to reduce the number of board pieces in general or not?". If the answer is yes, workers as we know them now will cease to exist, and military units will also be reduced in number (in some way).

Also, micromanagement skills have nothing to do with number or existence of units/workers. This is a misunderstanding. After removing workers, Firaxis can "throw in" a dozen more features that require micromanagement. Just for the fun of it.

Think of it this way. Every citizen in CIV4 will probably have far more "tags" attached to it. Will you really want to mess around with a
Greek, Protestant, Democratic, Educated (Scientist), <enter more tags here> Captured Worker

The second question is: "Do we want workers to be shown as units, or do we want workers to be an integral part of the city screen?"

If Firaxis chooses the latter, they can always add ways for workers to be caputed, moved etc. (by pillaging an improvement and creating "temporary citizen units" that must be returned to city, for example).

Third question: "Will CIV4 return to the Colonization idea of units?" Maybe in CIV4 military units will be made of regular citizens like in Colonization. Maybe we will have many types of specialised citizens, of which only some will be Terraformers (pioneers) and Army units.

***

We can only guess the answers to these questions, but I believe that CIV4 will be strongly multiplayer (internet) oriented. And that means:
- less units
- many automation-friendly options
- completely removing game features that the AI can't work well with (including shipping units, armies, artillery, city defence, worker actions) etc.
- reduced possiblity of crippling the enemy by a single blow (reduced city importance, greater tile importance


-kirby

 

[dh_epic]

Workers are too important of a strategic investment to be removed from the game. The ability to slave them, the ability to hold your population in them, and their ability to work outside your borders, and the ability to sell them in cases of financial need, are very integral parts of the game.

You can still enslave workers. Workers would appear on the map as they improved tiles, even though you can't move them yourself. If you have a dozen workers and managed to finish off three tiles of work in a turn, you'd have (more or less) 4 workers on three tilles. If an enemy steps onto this tile, they could capture some workers.

And population points. No reason that drafting citizens into the worker pool can't still "hold" population, reducing unhappy citizens, allowing one more unit to be churned out without building an aqueduct. With this, selling workers would be possible too.

Figuring out the most economic way to move your workers around IS part of what makes CIV a stragety game. As it is corruption and cultural flips.

BTW I don't see how your idea would reduce "micromagement"( I call ordering my workers just managment) you still have to sit and decide what to do.

You can't complain that cutting out worker movement takes away from strategy without taking away from micromanagement. In an earlier post, I showed that it requires fewer decisions AND fewer clicks/keypresses.

There's a difference between figuring out how to economize your worker movements, and trying to initiate a culture flip and dealing with corruption. The prior deals with micromanagement. The latter deal with macromanagement -- huge overwhelming decisions like "I'll try to generate more culture on this border", or "i need to hold out and create my forbidden palace *here*". If you look at my response to Crimson238, you'll see that the more interesting strategies of workers can be preserved without movement points.

And thanks to Bibor, who explained that cutting out diplomats didn't get rid of diplomacy... you can maintain the good strategy without the bad.

A thought, I think I've been misleading in "eliminating workers". What I'm asking for is a lot more like giving them infinite movement points -- although not exactly. (You couldn't have a worker explore the entire world or something. Infinite points within borders, maybe. Or infinite points along tiles that are already improved.)

 

[Diogenes183]

If you ditched workers you would not have to click and set each square individually. You would paint the squares you want irrigated one color, the ones you wanted roaded another, if both, then it would look striped. You could even paint priority flags.

This same method could be used to improve worker automation. The user could just specify what he wants done all at once and then workers would obtain their orders from the pool of tasks needed to be accomplished. Sort of a "set it and forget it!" Ron Popeil method.

I think this idea has huge merit, whether workers are kept or not. There are many possiblities that could benefit from this: workers as units, workers as specialists, CTP method, etc. We all agree that infracture should take a certain amount of time and a certain amount of effort (public works, unit that you produce, specialist who could be doing something else).

In any case, I definitely think there should be a screen (Infrastructure Advisor) which basically is just a map of the world which shows current and planned infrastructure (irrigation, roads, mines, forts, forests to be planted or cut down, etc.). This advisor would be a sort of master plan where you can be specify everything you want in terms of infrastructure, both within and outside of your borders. The AI would use this master plan to distribute orders to whatever is tasked with building the infrastructure (workers, specialists, etc). The master plan could of course be updated as needed and user could also take direct control if need be.

This Infrastructure Advisor would allow for the best of both worlds - users would still have the same level of control as they do now but without the tedium. A good civ player would have better infrastructure than a beginner.

Added bonus - I think it would make the programmers lives easier as well (when compared to coming up with a better automation algorithm).

 

[Arathorn]

Some reasons why I think the proposed method will increase MM and tedium, not decrease it.

Worker finishes job. Old method -- he appears in my standard queue and I know what to do with him. New method -- I have an extra point in my worker pool -- do I assign him to work within a city? Or on another job? I will want to check every single city to see if it can benefit from one extra citizen working a square before determining what to do with that position.

Best play under the old method -- debateable but generally involved using workers intelligently and having "enough" of them. Best play under the proposed model -- check every city every turn and vary the worker pool every turn to finish some jobs this turn and not even work on others. Use people from different cities for every job every turn, because that will be the most efficient use, to encourage each city to grow/produce most rapidly. Large brushes will be much more inefficient, so every job will need to assigned every turn, with precisely the proper number of workers. UGH! Plus you need to see the workers from the city menu and change the worker pool from the main menu. That alone would be reason enough for me to not buy the game, honestly. When the user interface fights good play, a game is in bad shape.

Current method for workers essentially never requires me to use my mouse. I *hate* using my mouse -- it's so inefficient. Proposed method -- requires hundreds of clicks, at least. Multiple for every square, plus into every city for worker pool EVERY turn, plus a whole lot more if/when I want to go back and change things. UI nightmare with no keyboard shortcuts immediately obvious.

Add in the DECREASE in strategy by not requiring workers to actually be bound by laws of physics and motion, nor by shields, and you can start to see why I still really don't like this plan. Arguing that many fewer decisions have to be made is NOT a way to sell something to me. It makes the game cheaper, not richer.

The "sample" clicks in http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2014663&postcount=69 ignore a number of issues. I almost never click on the map to activate a worker or to re-center when doing worker actions. Two buttons counted but honestly never really pressed. Suddenly, the new method adds clicks, without even getting to my examples above.

Arathorn

 

[sir_schwick]

Arathorn, no disrespect, but you adding things we did not put in the MP free model. The worker pool is either built like in days of old(Civ3), or automatically created based on the factors I have listed before. Even in the non-Civ3 model, workers would still be constratined somewhat by existting infrastructure related to movment. You are in the minority if you don't like the mouse. The allocation of workers is automatic sense you either build them or they exist. Movement is handled by the computer so a player can't use it as another advantage. We propose to eliminate a tedious skill that has nothing to do with Macro strategy.

My question is this: Is your arguement that movement point strategy is a legitimate strategy and skill that a player should be rewarded for? I say that players should be rewarded for their improvement planning, not execution. Civ should theorhetically be a game of planning.

 

[Mistfit]

And somehow planning military movements ranks higher on your list of worthwhile endevors than planning worker moves?

 

[Arathorn]

Arathorn, no disrespect, but you adding things we did not put in the MP free model.

What did I add? I tried hard to base all my complaints on things I've read in this thread.

There's been a lot of talk of adding and subtracting from the worker pool, using buttons outside the city screen to change the worker count/city or of making them equivalent to specialists. Those are all trade-offs vs. working squares in the city, which is a major concern.

Maybe I need to read it again. Or can somebody explain to me exactly how many worker points are in the worker pool and how those are assigned? And/or how the worker points are divided up among different tasks?

Arathorn

 

[Suki]

the question I still have is why we differentiate at all between workers and those farmer types in the cities.

I think if you just got rid of the concept of city radius, and had efficency drop off exponentially with *movement points away from nearest city* you'd only need one concept for the two of them.

the efficincy concept makes a lot more sense than culture radius, this way a tile belongs to whoever can access it most easily making road networks very important
I really don't see the difference between a farmer and a worker building irrigation in that same square.

specialists would stay at the city center, and anyone there could be captured with the city but you could also capture workers out in the field. this could lead to mass migrations when city centers are captured and workers start flowing to nearby cities.

you wouldn't even need a setteler unit anymore, just have the town center as an improvement that takes at least two workers to build

a huge change but worth it.

the only good copies are the ones that show up the absurdaties of bad orrigionals - la Rochefoucauld

of course that doesn't change the micromanagement problem..
who was it that said on here a while ago that micromanagement isn't an AI but an interface problem. I think that's what's missing here.

either system would benifit from a better interface.
for example: public works/civil engineering plans: a little tab on the side that would when clicked show the overlay of all planned terrain improvements that you have ordered, which you paintd onto the overlay. you could divide in into several layers, either based on inportance, location or different groups of workers. automated workers would try to get the most (turns or work)*(priority of that work) done as possible. I think you could work that out with a modified pathfinding algorythm.

this way workers aren't doing whatever the AI programmer thought best but whatever you think is best given the current situation.

and the reason I don't think players should be rewarded for spending hours making the same decisions over and over is that the better player isn't the one who is patient(stubborn) enough to carry out the plan but the one who actually thought it up. If they'd let us mod the AI that point would soon become plainly obvious.

 

[t3h_m013]

You are in the minority if you don't like the mouse.

mice are a complete waste of time and movement... long live hotkeys

 

[Bibor]

In perfect conditions, yes. I agree.
However, I started to respect the mouse when I was in hospital, barely able to move at all, and I had a Notebook (no numeric keyboard).
I played only CIV3 because it doesn't require keyboard at all (move with clik-and-hold etc.)

-kirby