Need more control of land auto-acquistion choices

[Roxlimn]

Smokeybear:

No, you could still use gold to buy tiles when it suited you, such as to nab any kind of resource tile you took a fancy to that wouldn't otherwise be available very soon- like that lux out there 3 or 4 tiles away from your city when you need the happiness sooner instead of later, for example. Or to supply your workers with more tiles to improve, if they've caught up with the current ones available and are idling around. Or to grab resources before nearby civs can steal them. Or to block out areas or passes or other bottlenecks so that opposing civs can't get by to infiltrate or steal from you- strategic purposes.

That is what I see as the purpose for spending gold on tiles. But I don't see having to buy most of the production tiles within your own borderlands with your limited gold reserves, as being more complex, or more interesting. Only more annoying, and unnecessary. Gold has a lot of important uses, and wasting it for that shouldn't be one of them, in my personal opinion.

Sounds to me like that's all just personal preference - without any consideration for strategic depth or game design. I mean, why would any lux be 3 tiles away from your city to begin with? If you'd just placed your city with 2 tiles of it, the tile acquisition algorithm will nab it lickety-split. Choosing not to prioritize luxuries is the same as choosing not to prioritize production, as you can see. Purchase far-away lux, or purchase production tiles.

I don't make a habit of purchasing tiles in general, and I get a pretty good production spread just from the default tile acquisition algo. Shrug. You need to account for the algo when placing cities. It just seems to me that you don't and then it annoys you when it doesn't go like you think it should. If the algo were perfect for every reason, then there would be less to consider when placing the city center.

Oh, and there wouldn't be a reason to buy tiles in that case. If your workers are short on tiles to improve, you're gimping the culture. It would be better to just have more culture in that case. Maybe, auto-culture acquisition for everyone? I'm not sure how much simpler you would want the game to be, you see.

 

[Montov]

I think it fine now. Maybe have the governor have an influence on the next tile (prioritize food -> more likely to go for a food-tile, etc.).

 

[Smokeybear]

Smokeybear:



Sounds to me like that's all just personal preference - without any consideration for strategic depth or game design. I mean, why would any lux be 3 tiles away from your city to begin with? If you'd just placed your city with 2 tiles of it, the tile acquisition algorithm will nab it lickety-split. Choosing not to prioritize luxuries is the same as choosing not to prioritize production, as you can see. Purchase far-away lux, or purchase production tiles.

I don't make a habit of purchasing tiles in general, and I get a pretty good production spread just from the default tile acquisition algo. Shrug. You need to account for the algo when placing cities. It just seems to me that you don't and then it annoys you when it doesn't go like you think it should. If the algo were perfect for every reason, then there would be less to consider when placing the city center.

Oh, and there wouldn't be a reason to buy tiles in that case. If your workers are short on tiles to improve, you're gimping the culture. It would be better to just have more culture in that case. Maybe, auto-culture acquisition for everyone? I'm not sure how much simpler you would want the game to be, you see.

All of your arguments assume a perfect placement of everything, all the time, and all resources and luxes being perfectly arranged do drop right into a perfect pattern for you. This rarely if ever happens. You can position your cities as perfectly as possible, and yet there will still often be some stray luxes and key resources just outside of easy reach, that would lend themselves to being acquired through purchasing. Your arguments assume everything you need is placed in a neat little tight circle right where you want them, for you to drop your city right in the middle of. Seriously... NOT. I am quite skilled at intelligent city placement to maximize expansion into resources, but regardless of where or how you do it, you can always count on having a LOT more food tiles than you'll ever need, right away... unless you purposely set up camp in the middle of a wide range of thick hills. And so you're senselessly wasting gold on tiles that should naturally be acquired by your city a lot sooner, if its tile selection code didn't suck.

But we could argue our differing views on this point interminably, I'm sure. Suffice it to say you like it, I don't and I think it needs change and improvement. End.

 

[dexters]

The tile acquisition algorithm is fine. As noted, you need a little bit of efficiency to add value to the choice of spending cash to buy tiles right now and to maintain the value of the UA Manifest Destiny.

 

[qemist]

Strategist83:

If the tile acquisition algorithm always went for the tiles that were optimal, then there wouldn't be much of a point to purchasing tiles manually, now, would there?

No doubt that is why the auto-search is so poor too: if it worked well what would be the point of manually controlling your explorers? IOW your reasoning is just a weak excuse for the developers.

 

[dexters]

Pretty sure it's not hard to have the cultural borders beeline for the choicest tiles, and sometimes they do (it will pick a resource tile 3 tiles away from the city to grab it for your empire) but the point made about 'organic' growth of borders and the fact there is a tile purchase feature is a pretty strong argument against spending precious resources working on this.

 

[Roxlimn]

All of your arguments assume a perfect placement of everything, all the time, and all resources and luxes being perfectly arranged do drop right into a perfect pattern for you. This rarely if ever happens. You can position your cities as perfectly as possible, and yet there will still often be some stray luxes and key resources just outside of easy reach, that would lend themselves to being acquired through purchasing. Your arguments assume everything you need is placed in a neat little tight circle right where you want them, for you to drop your city right in the middle of. Seriously... NOT. I am quite skilled at intelligent city placement to maximize expansion into resources, but regardless of where or how you do it, you can always count on having a LOT more food tiles than you'll ever need, right away... unless you purposely set up camp in the middle of a wide range of thick hills. And so you're senselessly wasting gold on tiles that should naturally be acquired by your city a lot sooner, if its tile selection code didn't suck.

But we could argue our differing views on this point interminably, I'm sure. Suffice it to say you like it, I don't and I think it needs change and improvement. End.

Sorry, but I won't let it go at that. Despite your self-proclaimed skill at city placement YOU have a problem with your tile acquisition not getting you enough hammers to get by. I do not. That rather speaks for my ability to account for the tile acquisition algorithm better than you can.

You do not have to set up camp in a wide range of thick hills at all; clearly you are unfamiliar with how to work the tile algo. Generally, the acquisition will heavily favor resources, so much so that there really is no reason to purchase a resource tile 3 tiles away. The algo will frequently snake for it anyway, especially if it's on flatland.

The placement is rarely perfect - that is why there are trade-offs to various positions. It's not enough to count the possible hammers within the 3-tile limit. You have to account for the algo as well. Netting a bunch of plain resourceless hills in the first ring is frequently desirable for this reason - putting resources on the second ring is acceptable, as the algo will reach for them preferentially anyway. In fact, I've run into the problem of actually having to buy food tiles, because I erred too much the other way and it was taking too long for the algo to reach for the food tiles!

 

[Roxlimn]

No doubt that is why the auto-search is so poor too: if it worked well what would be the point of manually controlling your explorers? IOW your reasoning is just a weak excuse for the developers.

That's totally bogus. It's possible to USE the algo to your advantage with a little city placement consideration. There's a game in there. There is no game to be had in the bad search pathing.

 

[Becomedeath]

I would have presumed that it's decision making was left to a priority order that it would follow even if it meant having to build a connecting tile to achieve it.

Something like:

1. Strategic Resources
2. Luxury Resources
3. Food Tiles
4. Production Tiles
5. Mulling about thinking of chocolate
6. Deciding that chocolate isn't for computers anyway
7. Questioning why chocolate isn't for computers
8. Sea Tiles

However, that priority should change if your automated citizen management is set to growth, production etc.


That said, however it's choosing it, if you consider a tile to be of greater value than the one the system has decided to go for, surely that's the purpose of purchasing tiles?

That's the trade off. Either let the computer do it for you, or spend some gold on what you want.

I really don't see how that's broken, surely that's exactly as intended? If you don't like the computers choice, you have your own. Hence there are buildings/wonders/policies that amend that cost.

Or am I missing the "but I want to eat the cake as well" part of this?