Please do espionage better than BtS

[Lord Yanaek]

Anywho, governors suck, they have always sucked, and they will always suck. If you want your cities to Not Suck(TM), you have to micromanage.

perhaps you're right, perhaps the programmers suck beyond the ability to ever implement governors correctly, but knowing that, they should design appropriately.

Please, try to be careful with quote tags, this post was NOT mine, neither was the next about MOO3, only the first quote was really a post i made. It's not that bad here, but if you wrongly quote someone for an offending post, it can be really bad

OK, i think we pretty much all agree spying is not the n°1 priority, but it will probably be added to shadow. So better give our points of view before then complain after isn't it?

As for the govs assigning specialists when the city should grow : sometimes prioritizing food will work, but not in all cases. The AI seems to put too much value to Great People Points, and it does not seem to understand that growing first is better in the long term. Sometimes it will just put a specialist no matter what you prioritize, and you must turn the gov off. I don't recall it doing this prior to BTS (never bought warlords as FFH was not ported to it so i don't know how it worked with the first expansion). Mhh, in fact the AI used to grow the city even if it would grow drones (uh, sorry, old Alpha Centaury term, i mean unhappy citizen), now, it can stop city growth and change workers assignment to produce more if the city would grow drones, but the drawback seems to be sometimes (not always, but it happened to one city in all my three BTS games) the AI will stop city growth while the city still have happy faces available. Not sure whether it's a small bug, or something is over-weighted by the govs, maybe GPPs.

@Onedreamer : it CAN cripple a city if it stops it from growing, or if the growth is reduced to a crawl. I would rather have my city grow in 5 turns then start using specialists with a better overall production, then gain 5 turns of specialists but have my city grow in 25 turns to be able to exploit this on-copper mine.

 

[onedreamer]

your problem is that you use the governor in the wrong way, NOT that it doesn't work. You have 2 options
1) don't use governos (best one)
2) use it at your own risk, especially if you don't know how to do it properly. Clearly, if you want your cities to grow, then you have to set the governor on growth. The espionage system is completely unresponsible for the use of specialists by the governor. In fact, if he wasn't using specialists for espionage, he would be using them for something else.

Let me also add that some sort of espionage system was present in Vanilla and Warlord Civ4 too, and *that* one really sucked. BtS has brought huge improvements to that, so labeling the system now as "crappy" is really illogical.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

BTW, the governor was changed dramatically for BTS. It is supposed to be more long-term orientated, but it is possible something was lost in the transition to FfH, and also that it over values spies over other specialists.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

your problem is that you use the governor in the wrong way, NOT that it doesn't work.

Not sure who you are answering to. In case it's me then ...

You have 2 options
1) don't use governos (best one)
2) use it at your own risk,

Well, i don't use them when i want my city to grow Something bothers me thought, you told the problem is govs are used the wrong way, and then you tell the good way of using them is to turn them off. Sure they won't do anything stupid when turned off . OK joke apart i think they have been improved but sometimes (not always), they just don't work right. Sometimes prioritizing something won't change the workers assignment. I had this happen when i wanted my city to grow, as i said, but also when i wanted it NOT to grow (the next citizen would be a drone, and even if i click on prioritize hammers workers will stay on those 5 flood plains to give me 25 food and no hammers). There is something that just doesn't work the way it should.

Let me also add that some sort of espionage system was present in Vanilla and Warlord Civ4 too, and *that* one really sucked. BtS has brought huge improvements to that, so labeling the system now as "crappy" is really illogical.

I didn't call anything crappy. I just said BtS espionage, even if it's more interesting than vanilla espionage, added a lot of micromanagement (ai rebuilding every mine, pasture, forge ... the AI keeps destroying) and FFH already added some (fires, terraforming ...) so just puting the BTS espionage system in FFH might add to much micromanagement. The main complain i have is you just don't seem to be able to protect yourself from enemy agents. I always keep a spy in all my cities, produce a good amount of spy points (more then the AI) and keep being hit by it's agents. In my last game, on later turns i had something to rebuild every other turn. Reminded me of pollution cleaning . So, while i don't call it "crappy", i think the BTS espionage system perfectible, and i just hope the FFH team will give us something better then the original game, like they did for everything apart from AI so far (and just to make sure i'm not misunderstood : i'm neither flaming anyone, nor complaining, i can understand it's WAY harder to teach the AI to use spells then design those spells)

 

[xienwolf]

I personally think that spies just need a larger Area of Control function on them, it is probably set at the squares immediately around them, but needs to be improved to at LEAST the "fat Cross" area of a town they are nestled down in. Then you have a chance to detect any spy which can affect your resources, so long as a city can work them (and you can always park extra spies on vital resources for security).

But it would be really nice if spy movement was only 1 point so that a spy cannot move in and do sabotage before your counter intelligence even has the opportunity to detect them. Or if there was a unit / improvement you could park at the borders which a spy CANNOT enter the tile of. Then someone who REALLY detests spies can line their border to effectively lock everyone out.

 

[BeefontheBone]

Not sure who you are answering to. In case it's me then ...

Well, i don't use them when i want my city to grow Something bothers me thought, you told the problem is govs are used the wrong way, and then you tell the good way of using them is to turn them off. Sure they won't do anything stupid when turned off . OK joke apart i think they have been improved but sometimes (not always), they just don't work right. Sometimes prioritizing something won't change the workers assignment. I had this happen when i wanted my city to grow, as i said, but also when i wanted it NOT to grow (the next citizen would be a drone, and even if i click on prioritize hammers workers will stay on those 5 flood plains to give me 25 food and no hammers). There is something that just doesn't work the way it should.

The Avoid Growth button does precisely what it should, with the added bonus over microing them that it actually prevents growth (somehow) even if you still have a surplus. It's great, so long as you keep on top of when you gain happiness bonuses (easy enough when the city builds something, trickier if you change civics, trade or gain resources (especially with automated workers) or adjust sliders. The last is even more of an issue in FfH thanks to gambling houses )

 

[Lord Yanaek]

But it would be really nice if spy movement was only 1 point so that a spy cannot move in and do sabotage before your counter intelligence even has the opportunity to detect them. Or if there was a unit / improvement you could park at the borders which a spy CANNOT enter the tile of. Then someone who REALLY detests spies can line their border to effectively lock everyone out.

Mhh, you know spies can't execute missions if they moved in the same turn don't you??

Well, i'm pretty sure the spying system in FFH will be quite different from the normal BTS system, so we'll see what they come too. I bet spying will have a lesser impact, except when Svartalfar will be in the game. They will surely have some special mechanism for covert operations. If not, why were they delayed until "shadow".

 

[xienwolf]

Hrm, haven't played with active espionage, just assumed that was how the computer was able to make attacks without your city parked spies catching them. Must meant that there is only a percent chance to catch a rival spy per turn and you need to park 2 or 3 spies per town in order to be completely safe? If so, that is quite annoying. Should be a guarantee that a spy will catch another spy. Not "realistic" but far more game appropriate.

 

[Inkling]

Please, try to be careful with quote tags, this post was NOT mine, neither was the next about MOO3, only the first quote was really a post i made. It's not that bad here, but if you wrongly quote someone for an offending post, it can be really bad

My sincerist apologize on that. i thought i was being very careful, and obviously I screwed up quite badly. I am very sorry to have misquoted you, and am happy to see you are forgiving. I will try to be more careful in the future.

Again, very sorry.

 

[Inkling]

your problem is that you use the governor in the wrong way, NOT that it doesn't work. You have 2 options
1) don't use governos (best one)
2) use it at your own risk, especially if you don't know how to do it properly. Clearly, if you want your cities to grow, then you have to set the governor on growth. The espionage system is completely unresponsible for the use of specialists by the governor. In fact, if he wasn't using specialists for espionage, he would be using them for something else.

Let me also add that some sort of espionage system was present in Vanilla and Warlord Civ4 too, and *that* one really sucked. BtS has brought huge improvements to that, so labeling the system now as "crappy" is really illogical.

try as i might, i'm too petty not to respond to this. Its a character flaw.

i won't address the first part, as i already have in the begining of this thread, and Bob Morane just did again.

as to the second part, how is it illogical? it really doesn't matter how bad the system was if it is STILL bad. And in my oppinion, it is, horribly so. slightly better crap, can still be crap. 1000 degrees celscius might be a lot cooler than 2000 degrees, but i think i'm gonna call em both hot.

adding Gimmicy silly features to a game when the core components don't work correctly, espescially when those new additions further foul up the core components is, well, illogical. Which is exactly what they did with BtS as far as i'm concerned.
And if the best option is to not use the governor or "use it at your own risk", then i can't possibly imagine how you can say it works.

Last but not least, as Bob Morane pretty much already said, the ultimate point here is: i'm sure, whether you like the BtS system or not, if they so desired, the FFH team could do it better.

 

[xanaqui42]

I've noticed that the governor logic in BtS is even worse (at least in some ways) than it was in Vanilla. Fortunately, the Governor logic is a relatively small piece of code (or at least is was in Vanilla - I haven't really looked at the BtS version yet), so it probably can be fixed in the space of a few weeks' work.

 

[Inkling]

I've noticed that the governor logic in BtS is even worse (at least in some ways) than it was in Vanilla. Fortunately, the Governor logic is a relatively small piece of code (or at least is was in Vanilla - I haven't really looked at the BtS version yet), so it probably can be fixed in the space of a few weeks' work.

I haven't looked at the code for the governor, i did look at the code for the barbarians AI(trying to figure out why they seem to form a "congo line" ,as someone once put it, to me, the player, leaving others in relative peace).

I must say, i have a new found respect for what kael and company have done. Given what they have to work with, what they've accomplished is quite astounding. I was impressed before, now i'm quite amazed.

Anyone willing to tackle that has far more pateince and tenacity than i do.