Irrigation changing to Farmland from Civ2- bring it back!

[Elrohir]

I think varying degrees of farming would be good. Not only would it allow you to build up a respectable population base (On a huge map, where I own 1/4 of the world, I still can't get more than a couple hundred million) that's more realistic than it is now.


Maybe something like in SMAC? Where railroads (Mag tubes) production abilities were cut, but you could construct "soil enrichers" to increase nutrients. (But definently with a differant name)

 

[dh_epic]

I'm for doing away with workers, or at least moving to a pool system with some kind of public works. The most micromanagement you should endure with road-building is the equivelent of MS Paint.

I could live with a few more levels of complexity in the actual tile improvements if they simplified and expedited the way you decide what improvements you want done.

 

[Kobra]

CTP was a very good game because it has many new ideas. But it also was awful because game and saves often crashed , graphics were horrible. But I think many of its ideas should have been kept for Civ III (like unconventionnal units, economic war, public works [but improved], slavers, lots of governments...).

I don't agree with the 'player not worry about it' model. It's a good idea if you don't want to "worry about" growth of your cities, but it should be optional. If you want to quickly improve a small town far from your main city, you need to rule its growth on your own. It should mix the 2 models.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

Yes!!!!! Bringing This Back Is A Must For Civ 4!!!!!!

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

Thats a VERY GOOD point, Rhialto . That said, even in an environment with workers, I think that something like upgrading tile improvements should really be done by a simple push of a couple of buttons. Such as clicking on a single farm, which brings up a pop-up box-saying how much the upgrade costs, per farm, how many farms you currently have and how much money is in your treasury. You then enter, in the box, how many farms you WANT to upgrade that turn. Next turn, whola, its DONE!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

This seems a little to Age of Empires: the Age of Kings, or maybe even Empire Earth.

 

[Dida]

CTP was a very good game because it has many new ideas. But it also was awful because game and saves often crashed , graphics were horrible. But I think many of its ideas should have been kept for Civ III (like unconventionnal units, economic war, public works [but improved], slavers, lots of governments...).

I don't agree with the 'player not worry about it' model. It's a good idea if you don't want to "worry about" growth of your cities, but it should be optional. If you want to quickly improve a small town far from your main city, you need to rule its growth on your own. It should mix the 2 models.

I agree that CTP is a great game with lots of innovating ideas. I was hoping to see more of those ideas in Civ3. But CTP is poorly planned and executed. The AI was worse than civ3's AI (which, being worked on by only 1 man, was bad enough).

Good things in CTP included:
-PW
-no infinite move on any road system
-undersea cities, (space cities sucked)
-nice future tech and units. (but seems to go too far into the future)
-huge graphic inprovement over civ2
-water tile improvement
-upgradable tile improvement
-stack move
-stacked combat
-combined arms
-visible trade route w/o having to manage caravan

 

[Idylwyld]

Is the problem the continuous direction and movement of workers or the need for workers altogether. If it's a problem with the continuous movement then why not make worker units sacrificial. As opposed to creating a permanent worker that can upgrade multiple tiles why not make the worker the improvement? I build a worker, move him to the tile I want to improve, say irrigate, issue an automove command, and when he gets there he is sacrificed to the tile to maintain the irrigation? Every tile improvement or upgrade would cost one worker. Set the unit cost correctly (say 2 shields) and the game balance wouldn't suffer that much. If the thought of building workers is the problem then set a system where right clicking on a tile and selecting the desired improvement and paying a set GP cost to upgrade it. With the thought that there will be more tile improvements available in IV the sacrificial model seems to make sense. It also causes city size to be controllable by moving an urbanite out to the country to do constructive work. Hell, under this scheme your city pop wouldn't work the tiles at all but would be assignable to different industries, manufacturing/service/entertainment/finance/etc... then your workers are out doing the resource exploitation and transportation stuff and your city population is modifying the resources recovered by whatever math you use to determine your final shield/food/GP/science income per city. This way a size 12 metropolis would arise from a total population growth of 40 or more. Even though this is a major divergence from the traditional civ model it seems like an interesting idea.

 

[dh_epic]

It's not the continuous movement, it's movement in the first place.

The solution suggested is to either have built workers represented like a "currency". And more worker results in faster infrastructure building, except that you never have to actually touch a worker yourself.

Or do away with workers altogether.

Sacrificial workers probably adds more pain -- the nuisance that comes from having to waste even a single turn producing a worker every time you need to improve a tile. And you still have to calculate the smartest, safest, most efficient route to the square you want to improve.

 

[SewerStarFish]

I think as long as there are workers there should be a return to the Farm improvement.
It is no more a micromanagement than running around changing Road to Railroad. It gives purpose to workers. Further I don't like the idea of expending the worker, e.g Outpost.

Truth is I have always wished that was an improved Civ II. Most of the eliminated things from Civ II were returned in except for Refrigeration and Farming. I had hoped for improvements and more. I hope Civ IV is a real improvement.

 

[dh_epic]

I feel the exact opposite. The more you simplify workers, the more you can add to their functions.

• Let T = Time Spent Per Function
• Let N = Number of Functions
• Let C = Amount of Time Spent Micromanaging Workers in Civ 3

If Soren, the lead designer of Civilization 4, is living by his quote of "if you put something in, take something out" then we can say the relationship between N T and C should be: N x T < C

To me, if you're going to increase N (the number of functions), you should reduce T (the time required to micromanage said worker on the way to that function). You can reduce T drastically if you abstract-out worker movement. Then you can increase the number of functions workers can do, or add to the game in some other department completely!

 

[Sirian]

You can reduce T drastically if you abstract-out worker movement. Then you can increase the number of functions workers can do, or add to the game in some other department completely!

Civ has always been focused on units, though. It has always been a board game, and in classic board game fashion, represents everything with markers on the board. Just that, being a modern-era PC game, it can handle (and automate, to some extent) the "little stuff" like tile output and city improvements much better than an actual board game.

The best thing Civ has always had going for it is the randomly generated maps. Player's interaction with the map -- exploration, dotmapping, the land grab, military clashes shaped by the map and the placement of opponents -- is what keeps the game interesting and what sets it apart from classic board games, which must by definition operate with static game boards.

I've always enjoyed handling workers in the early game. It's only the late game, where worker actions are repetitive and mindless -- and way too numerous -- that the fun devolves into a nightmare.

If Civ4 could maintain or even enhance the early worker fun yet find a way to allieviate or eliminate the late-game worker tedium, that would be ideal. It's a tall order, of course, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. But I can and -do- hope that it will be better in Civ4 than previous Civ games.


- Sirian

 

[dh_epic]

While it's important to know where you came from to know where you're going, I don't think we should be limited by the past. Especially board games.

All the same, I don't think you need to absolutely abolish worker units. For those who really love seeing them on the map, they could still appear there. Except they 'teleport' around the map, doing whatever the most recently queued action is. The key is you don't ever need to touch the movement keys or goto function. You point and click.

You've knocked the bottom-most level of micromanagement off. All your decisions revolve now about what to build -- and you've cut out the tedium of how do I get there. And you'd still get fine control over what to build in the early game. Whether you irrigate first, connect your cities second, or the other way around.

The only argument against this is mere sentiment. "But I'll miss doing it the Civ 3 way". Kind of the same way people argue that the Civ 2 way was better too.

 

[Idylwyld]

I don't see what the problem with late game worker control is though. The automation controls, available in Conquests at least, can take care of most problems. Especially after your rails are set you can turn your workers loose on automated tasks, like pollution cleanup, and only have to redirect a couple of them a turn. Further, by the time you reach the mid to late modern era most of the tile improvement work to be done should be complete except maybe rail expansion and regular pollution call outs and you can fold most of them back in to the cities. That's not micromangement on a level that causes a lot of pain.

 

[dh_epic]

It's still time and processing power (human and computer) that could be better spent on dozens of other features.

Multiparty diplomatic agreements. New economic or trade concepts. More military concepts, like logistics or intransative unit relationships. Minor Civs. More variety in government, or in the tech tree. A more powerful cultural model. Civics, health, religion.

Would you really pass those up for the fun and strategy of "redirect a couple workers a turn"?

 

[Sirian]

I don't think we should be limited by the past. Especially board games.

Board games offer something substantial with which to play. You get a game board, you get units or icons to place on the board, and you interact with the units and icons of rival players. The simple, physical nature of it makes it more inviting to new players. The more abstract the game becomes, the less welcoming it is to new players. That's a big deal for a game like Civ.

The -only- difference between classic Civ workers and an abstracted worker is picking the unit up off the board: changing the unit from a substantive thing into a concept. If the function of the worker is otherwise still the same -- to make improvements to tiles, and to take time to do it, and to be limited in how much can be done by the number of available workers -- then where is the gain?

I submit to you that the loss of substance in abstracting the worker exceeds the gain (if it even is a gain) of not moving the workers.

I submit to you that choosing which tiles to work (with no movement consideration) is no different than moving workers around via infinite rails. (I thought you were one of those who are against infinite movement? It's good for workers but not for military? How do you figure that?)

To me, the point at which workers can be moved around infinitely is usually the point at which messing with the workers becomes boring in Civ3. I have to wonder if infinite movement on workers would make them too powerful. They stop being a tactical exercise. Should the whole concept of workers then be abstracted? Why even bother with them at all?

If there aren't meaningful limits on which tiles to work, wouldn't that, in the end, actually WORSEN the micromanagement load? Instead of managing your workers including their movement, you'd simply have on-demand tile upgrades available with no effort, and you'd constantly be tuning in to the most boring details of your cities looking for the next most urgent need. I'm not convinced that would be an improvement.

Limited Worker Movement causes players to manage workers one unit at a time in real time, where instead of having to consider YOUR ENTIRE CIV with each worker, you can only focus on a few local options, one worker at a time. Would it really be better to remove the limits that keep workers a local activity with a local focus, whose choices can be worked out on the fly? Would it really be better to make workers a national resource that players can manhandle? If there are gains to be made from planning your infinite movement work force to the Nth degree, won't players feel COMPELLED to do so, even if it feels like operating a spreadsheet?


It's one thing to notice a problem. It's something else to find a good solution.


- Sirian

 

[dh_epic]

On the Civ "game board", only movement is being abstracted. So you still get little workers getting plopped around as improvements are completed. But you cut out the movement decisions and the movement process.

There's still a bottleneck and that's your number of workers. So that's what keeps your number of decisions manageable. You might have 30 workers running around, but some improvements take more turns. And you could still make higher level decisions like "road to" or "auto-irrigate".

At the end of the day, it's "decide where to go and how to get there" or "decide where to go".

The reason people micromanage workers instead of automating them (besides obsessive control) is because automation loses them a lot of strategic benefit.

One of these IS how to get there: an automated worker might end their turn right near where a potential enemy may lurk, while a micromanaged worker will end their turn where a unit sits. An automated worker may cross several squares to get to some special square, while a micromanaged worker might save a turn or two of movement by doing an improvement along the way.

The other strategic benefit over automated workers is "where to go". The player just might have a better sense of priorities when they can tie their decisions into the whole -- knowing that they'd produce legionaires if not for the lack of iron in a city, and thus need a road between cities. Knowing that they're going to wait before cutting down that forest because they need that extra little boost for a great wonder.

My point is that "how to get there" is NEVER a strategy that's fun, and lasts way too long, until rails. Ditch it.

And "where to go" -- the part of workers that I intend to keep -- is very important in the early game, but becomes totally automatable by the time all your cities and resources are connected. The early middle ages for me, if not a few techs later. And you WOULD automate them if automation didn't make so many dumb decisions.

I just can't see how "where to go and how to get there" somehow takes up less of the player's time than "where to go" by itself. In practice, the player would have no reason to double their micromanagement. And you'd have removed a concept that players had to micromanage around.

(And on infinite RR's... Military units have a completely different function from workers. Military units are actually your main mode of interaction with other players. Workers are mainly internal, save the occasional worker-capturing -- which, I might add, can still be done with abstract movement, and they can still be protected if you're good about border protection. That's why I can argue for simplifying workers, but leaving military alone, or even making military more complex.)

 

[Sirian]

I just can't see how "where to go and how to get there" somehow takes up less of the player's time than "where to go" by itself.

When "how to get there" is a factor, there are a limited number of viable options. Most options are too far away, unless there really is an emergency need that overrides the usual concern for efficiency. When each worker comes up in the queue, in most cases a player will only need to examine a few tiles around the worker and pick something that needs doing. The player can make faster choices based on less information.

It's a matter of how much thinking is required for each decision. Giving players manyfold more options for each worker on each turn increases the complexity of the decision-making process. It would change the player's focus from "out of the dozen or so options available to this worker, what should he do next" to "out of all the thousands of options available and the dozens of competing needs what most needs doing".

The gameplay would shift from several different tactical situations, which vary by terrain type and completed progress, to one single global question asked over and over again. I don't see how that could be good.


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

Let me put it another way. When it comes to thought, appearances can be deceiving.

Which is easier to read?

* u r gr8 gi hoo luvs 2c nuz 4 civ

* You are a great guy who loves to read news about Civ.

The first line is shorter. Why isn't it better? Why is it harder to read? You have to stop and put more thought into each step. Instead of operating smoothly and simply, there are complications. Even though physically it is more compact, mentally it is much more lengthy and time consuming.


Imagine trying to read the previous paragraph if I had left out the capital letters and the punctuation. Worse, what if I also left out the spaces between the words and jammed them all together?

The traditional worker system has flaws, but it also has strengths. The rhythm of handling workers one worker at a time acts as punctuation. Instead of abstractly dealing with "all workers" over and over again, and having to examine reams and reams of data to make wise choices for each worker, you end up dealing with This Worker in his own space and time, then That Worker in a different locality, a different situation. You can take the time to look at the big picture if you want, but the game presents you an easy way to only have to look at the small picture most of the time -- and to me, that's better than trying to juggle too much information inside my head.


- Sirian

 

[Darwin420]

The traditional worker system has flaws, but it also has strengths. The rhythm of handling workers one worker at a time acts as punctuation.

Hear! Hear! Well said, old chap!!

 

[Philips beard]

Yeah, Sirian is a wise old lad! Agree with his pints!
One more thing, how should slavery be done without real traditional workers?