How should builders work?

[Arent11]

Ok, I get that if you have builders like in Civ IV you can build inifinitely much stuff & roads everywhere. So, of course, you will do just that. And that might get a chore.

On the other side, having builder "charges" & not being able to build roads or railsroads whatsoever is highly restrictive. If you think about how important railroads were for army movement in later centuries, then you realize you actually sacrifice a huge part of the game.

Now, giving builders charges & allowing road building also doesn't work because placing improvements clearly is much more important than roads. Although you could, maybe, make roads just use up "half" a builder charge or something.

You can, of course, argue that building something requires materials, which are used up at a certain point, aka "builder charges". But wouldn't it be better to have some currency instead of "builder charges"? You could, for example, simply use gold for that. If you want to create a mine, you have to pay your workers money. Same with roads.

Your thoughts?

 

[Leyrann]

I really like the current system, but the rigid production cost system used in Civ VI means Military Engineers (and Armories) are just not worth it, leaving you unable to build additional roads. They just need to let go of the idea of "production costs depend solely on the column in the technology tree and the type of thing you're producing".

Also, another option: Roads don't cost charges, but cost money instead.

 

[XplosiveLun]

I really like the current system. But they need an (official, excluding mods) automation button. Its tedious managing 40+ cities just to build farm clusters.

 

[Leathaface]

I prefer the Civ VI system ATM. It's nice that roads get built by traders, adds some realism to the game. Plus in Civ V it took absolute ages to build a mine on a jungle tile, now it's only 2 turns.

 

[UWHabs]

I've gotten used to the current system, although I would agree that they need improved modern road/railroad building. Builders already rise in cost - it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to simply give them the functionality of military engineers to build roads/forts/etc... when the technology gets unlocked. Although I would potentially consider simply automatically giving builders extra charges instead of forcing that to a policy card. Maybe just dump the builder policy cards entirely, and just give all builders +1 charge at feudalism and +2 charges at civil engineering. So maybe my modern builder can build 7 missile silos - is that a big deal?

And otherwise for roads, maybe those you could simply unlock a special unit somewhere in the tech tree where he essentially gets one charge and builds a road between two cities, so like a one-time-use trader. Military engineers cost too much to build roads, and sometimes the opportunity cost of using one of my trader slots to connect some cities by roads is too annoying to handle. But give me like a one-time-use road builder that will in a few turns plop down a road between my cities that aren't connected? I'd pay something for that.

 

[Aristos]

You forgot one key option in your poll: CTP2's system. No builders, no workers. Only a slider to allocate public work resources from commerce. It worked beautifully. As did some other key innovations in that game (combat was the best in a civ game ever).

I vote for that option.

 

[Forster]

Yeah, I really wish someone would update CTPs and republish it. I loved that game. I still played Civ, but I thought CTP2 had many innovative things.

 

[Zaarin]

While there was something cool (and realistic) about having builders constantly crisscrossing your empire in Civ4/5, from a gameplay perspective I think the way it works now is best.

Maybe just dump the builder policy cards entirely, and just give all builders +1 charge at feudalism and +2 charges at civil engineering.

That would be nice. I used to use the Serfdom policy whenever I needed Builders, but as I've played more I've frequently found it's not worth the investment compared to other policies.

 

[Arent11]

I've gotten used to the current system, although I would agree that they need improved modern road/railroad building. Builders already rise in cost - it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to simply give them the functionality of military engineers to build roads/forts/etc... when the technology gets unlocked. Although I would potentially consider simply automatically giving builders extra charges instead of forcing that to a policy card. Maybe just dump the builder policy cards entirely, and just give all builders +1 charge at feudalism and +2 charges at civil engineering. So maybe my modern builder can build 7 missile silos - is that a big deal?

And otherwise for roads, maybe those you could simply unlock a special unit somewhere in the tech tree where he essentially gets one charge and builds a road between two cities, so like a one-time-use trader. Military engineers cost too much to build roads, and sometimes the opportunity cost of using one of my trader slots to connect some cities by roads is too annoying to handle. But give me like a one-time-use road builder that will in a few turns plop down a road between my cities that aren't connected? I'd pay something for that.

How about making different stuff use up different amounts of builder charges? For example mines/farms need 3 builder charges, while roads need 1?

You forgot one key option in your poll: CTP2's system. No builders, no workers. Only a slider to allocate public work resources from commerce. It worked beautifully. As did some other key innovations in that game (combat was the best in a civ game ever).

I would need more background information for that. So, you have "public work ressources"? And you build the improvements from the city screen or somewhere else?

 

[Icicle]

CTP's system was actually pretty cool. There were a lot of fun ideas crammed into a terrible game in that franchise. Basically infrastructure/public works was a resource like gold/culture/science, you built up points and then spent it to make things like roads, farms, etc. I didn't think you had to make workers but I don't really remember that well. I do recall wishing that civ had picked up on that system.

And you built them from the main interface, basically you had the hand of god dropping roads and mines and such spending your points whenever/however you felt like.

 

[Xur]

You build districts in the city build menu; why not build a farm in the menu?

Honestly I dont care, but I miss roadbuilding. And I particular miss railroads. It’s all too “same’y” at the moment. Boring no-brainer. I’d rather have no trade routes actually - at least not in their current form.

 

[Aristos]

CTP's system was actually pretty cool. There were a lot of fun ideas crammed into a terrible game in that franchise. Basically infrastructure/public works was a resource like gold/culture/science, you built up points and then spent it to make things like roads, farms, etc. I didn't think you had to make workers but I don't really remember that well. I do recall wishing that civ had picked up on that system.

And you built them from the main interface, basically you had the hand of god dropping roads and mines and such spending your points whenever/however you felt like.

I would need more background information for that. So, you have "public work ressources"? And you build the improvements from the city screen or somewhere else?

You had to divert production (hammers) to a "Public Works" pool, using a slider (oh, the horror ), from which you paid the hammers for infrastructure in any given tile. Simple, fun, powerful. That's why FXS didn't adopt it, probably.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I don't miss road building in the slightest. I personally like the approach to builders in Civ 6

 

[The googles do nothing]

I can't remember a time where a road made a difference in the game other then the annoyance.

 

[acluewithout]

I've been playing Civ Rev 2. That does roads well. You just spend gold from the city menu then pick a destination. Bang: road between the two cities appears.

That, plus traders still building roads, would be plenty for me.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I wasn't sure about the "new" civ 6 system at first, but now that I've used it I like it better.

It would be nice for them to make Military Engineers not suck, though.

 

[Chefofrats]

I really miss the option to actively build roads - especially as the success of some empires relied on non-trade-oriented road-building: Rome and Inca come to mind. I would like builders to be able to build roads. Military engineers come too late and are ridiculously expensive - or at least have too few charges for their cost.

Roads should also provide more of a benefit (which is not a theme in this thread so I will not elaborate).

 

[Arent11]

I can't remember a time where a road made a difference in the game other then the annoyance.

Huh? Railroads were extremely important to defend against landing operations of the AI or enemy players. It was absolutely critical to invent and build them to move armies quickly.

Now, it takes ages to move your army from one side of your civ to the other.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Worker micro was a huge skill variance source in Civ 4. For Civ 6 this is also true because of how your charge count is variable.

The requirement to repeatedly make more with no queue/broken city UI is a chore, but this is not a fault of the builders, just the broken UI. I wouldn't mind seeing this be integrated into city management, but it would be a pretty heavy rework to accomplish about the same decision making. My vote would be to save that for Civ 7 and just make the UI in Civ 6 work first. The builder design aspect is pretty good.

Though the tradeoff between harvest and make/leave improvements is still borked and I'd like to see roads matter more sooner.

 

[acluewithout]

I’m okay with not having a production queue, but it would be helpful if you could auto projects and building builders. That way I could set a city to churn out projects or builders and forget about it. I think that would indirectly make builders better too, because you could get a good builder production line going.

I really wish you could just pay gold to get a road (or railway) between to cities. Maybe that would be limited to the industrial era onwards or whatever. I like roads via trade routes but it’s a pain not having another way to build roads given Military Engineers aren’t a real option.