How should builders work?

[Aristos]

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.

The thing is that they went halfway to a better solution (which, sometimes, seems to be their sport). You can "feel" the CTP spirit in the builder system, but as anything half cooked, it remains wanting... the builder system is just a production --> infrastructure system, exactly as it was, although much more elegant and efficient (and straight to the point), in the CTP series. The problem is that in using a "builder" unit to convey that conversion, they added: a) some useless micro, and b) constant production costs for everything. The latter, in particular, is bad and a wasted opportunity. I much prefer the CTP system where every infrastructure has its cost in hammers, different and evolving with the ages, and you pay for them from real, pooled, accumulated hammers that you had to divert from other tasks (via slider, oh the horror).

But hey, let's not apply good lessons from the "enemy", right?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The current system in Civ VI has several problems.
First, the ONLY way to effectively get roads is to 'use up' a Trader for 30 turns (on Standard Speed) to build a Road. Therefore, if you have a Sea Trade Route, you get no road and there is no real extra benefit to sea-bourne Trade to compensate - so the Builder/Road system also downgrades the most important source of Commercial/Trade Wealth historically.
Second, they left out Railroads which had enormous effect on transportation, but also affected culture (mass tourism really was a product of the railroad as much as anything else) industry, and military movement as well. The Industrial Revolution without Railroads just isn't very revolutionary...
Third, using the Builder Charges speeds up the building of Improvements, but the building of everything else is now glacially slow by comparison. Why should it take me 5 - 8 turns in the Ancient Era, or 100 - 200 years, to get a unit of slingers or a Monument? Are the little Civ people gnawing the monument out of a block of stone with their teeth? And, of course, since building Districts still requires the old application of Production by the individual City, the actual total time required to build most Buildings has increased since they can't even be started until you build the District, so the imbalance of build time between Improvements and Buildings is even worse

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

That statement says less about the roads than it does about Really Bad Game Design.

- And I agree with all the previous Posts that CTP had a host of really interesting ideas in it. That makes it very similar to Civ VI in two ways: they both have a lot of interesting ideas in them, and they both implemented those good ideas so poorly that both games are Massively Frustrating.

 

[The googles do nothing]

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.

Oh yeah, in other version of civ roads/railroads were important, or at least felt important. The were fun too. Getting to the point where I could railroad units long distance made me keep playing to get to that point.

I just remember that a road on a tile used too increase it's gold yield. Another way roads are less useful. Maybe traders could establish a path between two cities which would then be upgraded by builder to a road or railroad which would increase the yield of a tile.

 

[Duuk]

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.

This. A million times this. This was my all time best system.

 

[Aristos]

- And I agree with all the previous Posts that CTP had a host of really interesting ideas in it. That makes it very similar to Civ VI in two ways: they both have a lot of interesting ideas in them, and they both implemented those good ideas so poorly that both games are Massively Frustrating.

Well, the two best examples I usually use from CTP were actually very well implemented: the Public Works system for building on-map infrastructure, and the Combat System. Both should have been in the Civ franchise since Civ 4, yet they are not. Pride?

 

[acluewithout]

There’s been a lot of discussion already about the problem of Traders and Builders building roads. I think the more interesting question here is whether the current Builder / Improvements systems “works” or “could be better”.

I like the Builder system. My take on it, is that Builders are another way CivVI lets you consolidate production into one or a small number of core cities. Basically, you can have a core city producing districts or whatever else is needed, and then smaller “satellite” cities can produce builders that can then travel to your core city to improve and boost its territory. You can also use gold produced across multiple cities to buy a Builder in your core City to further boost its value / cosolidate production.

Of course, you can also do that the other way around, and use big cities to build Builders to boost smaller cities.

Overall, pretty solid system although it suffers a bit from too much micro.

Where I think Builders and Improvements maybe miss a trick is that there isn’t any “thing” which sort of bridges the gap between improvements and districts / wonders. Well, there are a few very specific "things": building mines can boost industrial zone adjacency, and some unique improvements gain bonuses from being next to certain districts or wonders although they don't themselves boost any districts (eg spain’s missions, nubia’s pointy rocks, egypt’s sphinx, and mines / farms and Koreas seowans). In each case, these improvements kind of sit in a middle ground between being an “improvement” and “being part of a district / wonder” which is kind of neat.

I’d suggested elsewhere having a “village” improvement that could maybe give +0.5 housing and +0.5 adjacency. But I’m sure there are other possibilities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The thing is that they went halfway to a better solution (which, sometimes, seems to be their sport). You can "feel" the CTP spirit in the builder system, but as anything half cooked, it remains wanting... the builder system is just a production --> infrastructure system, exactly as it was, although much more elegant and efficient (and straight to the point), in the CTP series. The problem is that in using a "builder" unit to convey that conversion, they added: a) some useless micro, and b) constant production costs for everything. The latter, in particular, is bad and a wasted opportunity. I much prefer the CTP system where every infrastructure has its cost in hammers, different and evolving with the ages, and you pay for them from real, pooled, accumulated hammers that you had to divert from other tasks (via slider, oh the horror).

But hey, let's not apply good lessons from the "enemy", right?

It's not *really* constant production costs though. Builders cost more as you make more, but you can also double their charges pretty reliably not too far into the game. Their man advantage over a straight production --> improvement design is that they're transferrable between cities and can frontload improvements in said new city.

 

[Duuk]

In later era maybe roads should just slowly appear linking ALL cities across ALL tiles? After all, by the modern era, highway infrastructure dominates the planet.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

In later era maybe roads should just slowly appear linking ALL cities across ALL tiles? After all, by the modern era, highway infrastructure dominates the planet.

I find that's what happens now. Between my trade routes, Traders from other civs, and the automatic roads connecting all districts, by mid game all my cities are connected to each other. The only time I tend to need to think about it is in the early game, when I like to send my first couple of trade routes from one end of my empire to another civ on the opposite border, and after founding a new city, when I need to send one Trader there to connect it to the rest of the network.

 

[Duuk]

The cities, yes. But it would be nice if the tiles all became interlinked. Right now only "routes" become linked when in reality the districts should also be linked because the districts (and especially "neighboorhoods!") represent suburbs.

 

[Aristos]

It's not *really* constant production costs though. Builders cost more as you make more, but you can also double their charges pretty reliably not too far into the game. Their man advantage over a straight production --> improvement design is that they're transferrable between cities and can frontload improvements in said new city.

That "advantage" is void vis a vis the CTP system, as the latter feeds from a national pool of accumulated production hammers filled in by the setting of a slider, thus making the resource available regardless of city locations... and yes, I should have called the builder transfer system "pseudo-constant", but still inferior to the highly dynamic and flexible CTP system.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

That "advantage" is void vis a vis the CTP system, as the latter feeds from a national pool of accumulated production hammers filled in by the setting of a slider, thus making the resource available regardless of city locations... and yes, I should have called the builder transfer system "pseudo-constant", but still inferior to the highly dynamic and flexible CTP system.

I didn't play CTP . . . but ugh, sliders?

 

[Duuk]

I didn't play CTP . . . but ugh, sliders?

It actually worked amazingly well. Like the Science/Culture/Espionage sliders in Civ4.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

See, I thought that removing the sliders in Civ 5 was among the best design decisions they made.

 

[Aristos]

See, I thought that removing the sliders in Civ 5 was among the best design decisions they made.

And I thought the opposite. It's a matter of opinions, sure, but there are heavy opinions around here that say the removal of sliders alone accounts for a big portion of the loss of strategic depth. In any case, the slider we are talking about here made all the sense in the world, as it allowed you to dynamically dedicate a portion of your overall production from cities to a national pool of hammers to be used to build roads, tile improvements, anything on the map. Simple, deep, powerful, no micro.

 

[Duuk]

Armies and public works were amazing. Also, CTP2 was the first Civ-game to have actual borders on the map. I also miss the way they treated slavery. And Civs, actually (but I guarantee I'm in the ultra-minority on that one)

 

[SammyKhalifa]

And I thought the opposite. It's a matter of opinions, sure, but there are heavy opinions around here that say the removal of sliders alone accounts for a big portion of the loss of strategic depth. In any case, the slider we are talking about here made all the sense in the world, as it allowed you to dynamically dedicate a portion of your overall production from cities to a national pool of hammers to be used to build roads, tile improvements, anything on the map. Simple, deep, powerful, no micro.

Like you said, it's all opinion and all good; but for me thinking back at the all of the the resources in one pool controllable by sliders (which I didn't have a problem with at the time) made too many decisions too "undo-able" and fluid. For me at least the change made me think more about what I really want/need knowing there isn't a magic slider to take me out of debt/have better research. In my mind people can question 1UPT (and do they ever) and some of the other decisions, but this one (along with no tech trading) were home runs.

Now how that relates to tile improvements, as I said I can't say. There is something to be said with moving units around to do things though (as long as it doesn't get too tedious).

 

[legalizefreedom]

I prefer workers as they are in V and BE.

In VI, you can found a city, roll up with 2 builders and trick it out in a few turns. No sense of progression or accomplishment.

 

[mitsho]

You don‘t actually need the slider for CTPs system, you could just use the nationally pooled resource we have already. If „buying infrastructure“ with gold seems to unrestricted, cap the actions possible per turn or make the construction take several turns. I don‘t think that is necessary though.

But I‘m all for doing away with all the tedious micromanagement that some players (especially in this forum) so like and take advantage of by optimizing the building times of the builders, their routes and the government cards to maximize return. I respect that, but personally, I‘d rather have less nitty-gritty decisions and more empire-wide ones.

 

[UWHabs]

You don‘t actually need the slider for CTPs system, you could just use the nationally pooled resource we have already. If „buying infrastructure“ with gold seems to unrestricted, cap the actions possible per turn or make the construction take several turns. I don‘t think that is necessary though.

But I‘m all for doing away with all the tedious micromanagement that some players (especially in this forum) so like and take advantage of by optimizing the building times of the builders, their routes and the government cards to maximize return. I respect that, but personally, I‘d rather have less nitty-gritty decisions and more empire-wide ones.

Yeah, if they came out with a system that did away with builders, and you simply bought the improvement with gold (or production?) it would be fine. But I do think it's useful to have some sort of unit on the map to do things, as something else that you need to protect from AI/barbs. And while the current system occasionally has issues, I don't find the micro needed to be all that challenging, as opposed to previous games where I would be sure to have my stack of 8 workers or whatever it was that had to run around and clean up pollution tiles.