Production

[jfby]

I am a long time fan of Civ and have played/owned every version including the original. There are things that aren't exactly accurate but I am OK with because it would be hard to include certain things without destroying game play; for example it doesn't take 5 years to send an aircraft carrier around the world and bomb a city.\

One thing I think could be made vastly better is the production system. It is my understanding that the shields represent the productivity of the city (money, capital resources, labor, etc.) and as such determine how quickly a city can produce a particular item. My preference would be to go to a system where you could have more than one project running at a time and split the resourcs of the city as you see fit, at least between 2 different options. It is absolutely un-realistic to have a 5 million person city only producing one item at a time. Except for periods of total war/mobilization, cities have always done more than one task and I think this could add a huge bonus to Civilization and give the player more options for their strategy to victory. Just my $0.02, let me know what you think.

 

[PeterWimsey]

I think that there are two problems with your suggestion.

The first is that it adds more complication for (AFAICT) no real benefit. I.e., if you could produce one swordsman (10 turns), one settler (10 turns),and one worker (10 turns), after 30 turns you have all three, regardless of whether you produce them serially or consecutively.

The more serious problem is that even if you had the option of splitting your production between units, it would never be a good idea.

As an example, let's say you are devoting 1/3 of a production point to a swordsman, worker, and settler, and that you will have one of each in 30 turns.

If another civilization produces units one after the other, after 10 turns he will have a settler, who can found another city and let it grow for 20 turns while your units are still being produced. Ten turns later, he can produce a worker, who will have 10 turns to make improvements while you are still waiting for your units to be produced. And after 10 more turns, you have your three units, and I've produced my swordsman - but I'm much farther ahead in game turns.

Of course it's unrealistic for a city to only produce one product at a time. But the reason it's unrealistic is because the concept of a city having fungible "production units" is unrealistic. Even if it wanted to, an actual city couldn't focus all of its production on one item - there wouldn't be room in the factories if the entire population wanted to go down to a factory and spend a year only producing tanks anyway. For that reason, modern cities can produce tanks and aircraft and libraries and granaries at the same time - not because they are dividing up the city's production, but because in reality a city has dozens of different types of non-overlapping production.

But I think that would be way too complicated.

 

[ggganz]

Maybe a city's inability to focus all of its production on one item should be factored into the game. Having 1000 people building a library won't make it go much faster than using only 100 people, and using 100 people won't get it done in half the time it would take 50 people. So, if Civ simulated this accurately, you would actually want to set your cities to build multiple things at once.

 

[Robo-Star]

I'm more a fan of hammers ("minerals" in Alpha Centauri") being raw-materials, which can be used for construction or generating wealth (consumer products), and most buildings/units only taking a single turn to construct but also having a maintenance cost in hammers...maybe have multiple constructions in one turn possible but require engineers being assigned (which would give no other benefits apart from the extra construction ability).