Removed Wasted Food/Shield on growth/Production Feature

[Qitai]

One of the features which I find makes it "necessary" for me to micromanage the city production is that if I want to build a knight and my city produce 34 shield, then I need to always either (1) hurry with cash to 40 shield after one turn or (2) adjust my lands so that I can get 35 shield but maybe with negative food in order not to waste 32 shield if I leave things alone. The wasted shield is significant enough for me to want to do micromanagement to get almost the exact number. All these should not be necessary. The game should be about strategy, not who can micro manage things better.

Similarly, food production are wasted on growth. This should be change as well.

The better approach should be to cascade the excess shields/food to the next production/food. This will make micromanagement of cities unnecessary so that players can concentrate on strategy issues. So, in the above case, I should have
turn 1 - 34 shield
turn 2 - 68 shield
turn 3 - 32 shield with cavalry produced. (Instead of zero shield)

 

[TedJackson]

I'd like to see this too. Maybe as a option so the die-hards can still get their MM kicks


Ted

 

[Gengis Khan]

I disagree. It's unrealistic, your overproduction on a battleship wouldn't help out to build a nuke. Maybe production wouldn't be wasted if you built the same thing, the extra sheilds would carry over but if you switched the extra is lost.

While I'll be the first to admit it's a pain in the ... sometimes & I'm a complete rookie at micromanagement, its definatly what seperates the pawns from the kings.

 

[TedJackson]

@Gengis Khan
Just think what a boost it would give to the AI.

AFAIK the AI doesn't have the ability to MM so suffers from lost production and food far worse than any competent human player.


Ted

 

[Roland Johansen]

I like this idea. You should think of it this way: after half a turn (or 29/37 a turn ) the unit/buiding is finished and the production of a new unit/builing is started. Each city should just remember the overproduction in a project and put it in the next project. In Master of Orion II, it worked this way.
I agree that the AI would benefit from it much more than an experiened human player. That's another reason (except the excessive micromanagement), why I would like it. I play at Deity level, so I would suffer a lot, but I like it anyhow.
I don't think they'll change this in Civilisation 3 however. It's too radical. But I'm hoping for Civilisation 4.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Also prebuilding would be pointless, and the computer could prebuild without even meaning to.

ex. Say in your capitol your producing 55 sheilds a turn, you build a warrior for 10 sheilds netting you 45 "extra" sheilds a turn & a unit. You could either upgrade the unit for money or disband it for more surplus shields. After a few turns you could build ANYTHING in 1 turn.

Way too powerful!

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
Also prebuilding would be pointless, and the computer could prebuild without even meaning to.

ex. Say in your capitol your producing 55 sheilds a turn, you build a warrior for 10 sheilds netting you 45 "extra" sheilds a turn & a unit. You could either upgrade the unit for money or disband it for more surplus shields. After a few turns you could build ANYTHING in 1 turn.

Way too powerful!

This abuse can (and should) of course be avoided. It is very easy to avoid. Put a maximum of 300 on shields you can have in "holding". Then it would be equal or weaker than a prebuild.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Having all shields in every city roll over to the next item would make it too easy for the player. However, it might be interesting to have a small wonder, that once built, accumulates up to 50 overproduction shields, with the option to use them every 10 turns or so. There's already a Recycling Center, so it would have to be named something else (Spare Parts Facility? Salvage Yard?). I'd like something similar for food storage too - a Grain Elevator Complex, maybe, especially if you can fish on sea tiles and send that food to a city (then its grain production can be stored). There should be a stick side to this as well as a carrot - cities should riot if they starve, for several turns - that way the player has to be more careful in preventing population loss. The way it is now is somewhat ridiculous - a conversation between two citizens of a starving city might go something like this: "Hi, Bob!" "Oh, hi, Jim! Say didya hear that they ran out of food over in Queens last week? Everybody died, and no one is working that tile anymore! It's really dropped our city production down!" "Gee, that's too bad. Well, I've got to get these banners over to Manhattan - we're celebrating WLTK day next week!"

 

[Greebley]

1) I would limit the rollover to only apply to the next turns build. So if you have 55 production and you are making a warrior, you get the warrior built and 10 shields in the box. The rest is lost. This way there is "saving up" that is exploitive.

2) I would also keep the current policy that if you have 300 shields saved up and you switch to a warrior, then you lose 290 shields.

Note that the first rule actually follows from applying the second rule at the beginning of your turn.
---------------------
In other words, if you are building something that is more shields than the city's production per turn, you use all your shields, but if you build something that is costs less shields than you make in a turn, you still lose the shields.

This would remove the need to MM without being exploitive. Unless someone can find a flaw in my idea?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by Ivan the Kulak
Having all shields in every city roll over to the next item would make it too easy for the player.

Would make what too easy?
The human player is much better at micromanagement than the AI, so it would make the game harder for the human player.
If a city produces 39 shields and produces a cavalry (80 shields) than the (smart) human player will increase the production of such a city to 40. Or a player might, after 1 turn of producing a cavalry, switch the production to a 50 shield item, rush it, and switch it back to cavalry (this to produce the cavalry in 2 turns).
The AI won't do these things.
So the game will get harder when the human doesn't have that micromanagement advantage anymore.

Also this waste of shields is very strange. In the case mentioned above the cavalry should be build in just a little more than 2 turns (actually 2 2/39 turn) and than the production should switch to the next item in the queue which would get 37 production in the third turn. It's strange to lose that production.

Also this per turn production doesn't add something to the game. Just some more micromanagement, but no real strategy. The more time you spend in a turn to manage this micromanagement, the better you play. It doesn't require real intelligence, just persistence.

 

[EddyG17]

This Idea is good if you want to build lots of wonders of the world!

 

[Qitai]

I have thought about the cascading problem as well. As others have bought up, you just need a cap to it and it will not cuase any problem. My ideal solution would be to cap it to what you are currently building. With that in place, you can implement this safely without creating a lop hole.

Gengis Khan> I understand you have not done too much micromanagement. If you have, you would appreciate this a lot! Micro-management of cities is very powerful with the current design. But the neccesity to do it to play well simply makes no sense. I see the need to MM workers where I am actually making decisions. But for cities, it is a no-brainer for me and I had to spend massive playing time on this just because it is so powerful.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Roland - such a wonder as I proposed would become available later in the game, after cities were already working every tile, so switching production tiles around would not make that much difference. You're right about the rush buy trick, although I regard this as something of an exploit myself. Of course if you're in a government that uses forced labor to rush, it's really not worth the cost to rush units this way on a regular basis. If the AI built this wonder it would have the same advantages as the human player anyway - I would think that it would actually make more efficient use of this than the human player who doesn't extensively micromanage. You could let the AI store more shields than the human to give it a bigger advantage as well. I wish the AI could allocate its shields the way it did in civ2.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Ivan - I don't use the rush buy trick either, but I try to get production levels in cities that are more "effective". For instance, a production level of 40 would be much more useful if you're building cavalry than a production level of 39. And a production level of 43 wouldn't add anything. The AI doesn't think about these things and therefore plays far less optimal than the human player. ( I achieve the more optimal levels of improvement by changing minse to irrigation or the other way around)

I think of the turn based system as a system where you look at a continuous system at fixed points in time. At these fxed points in time (the turns), you can make decisions. But if you look at it like this, then it is very strange that a city can't start on the next project between turns. Especially if this next project is already in the queue. The decision is already made and the city doesn't have to wait until the next turn to start on the next project. It can use it shields that weren't used for the previous project on the next project.

Why should such a natural thing need a smal wonder?

If cities don't lose the overproduction in a turn, then production micromanagement won't be needed. A city that produces 39 for tree turns on a cavalry will use the overproduction of 37 (3*39 -80) on the next building project and will switch inbetween the turns to this project. Effectively this means that in the turnbased system the 37 unused shields will be stored for the next project. This storing would have a limit of 300 (or another number) to avoid misuse for building wonders (more than with prebuilding).

I wouldn't mind if a city that produced 50 shields could build a worker (10) and a cannon (40) in one turn. As long as they are in the queue.

Excessive saving of production (you could do this until 300 shields) is a stupid strategy. You should use it to build things. For wonders it's just another way to prebuild. But you could better use an expensive palace or expensive small wonder to prebuild for a wonder, because they cost more than 300.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I just think that Qitai's idea is great.

 

[Galcador]

I'd just like to add my vote to this change. Less tedium for the player and more effective AI civs = a better game.

But, I can't see it happening. It's been this way since Civ 1.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

I don't think they'll change it either - the point to having it this way is to reward those who DO get into the nuances of the game, and micromanage, which is not a bad thing. The wonder I suggested would appeal to those who don't micromanage, though. The Grain Elevator would be useful to everyone, however - many times I've wanted to get a newer city growing through increased food supply, and I don't want to waste time building workers and sending them over - if I have a coastal city that's useless for production (low shields, high corruption), why not send its extra food to a more useful city?

 

[Muchembled]

200 % behind this

Waiting for Firaxis to make this an option, there is my utility. Topic : Civ3Ext

 

[PurplePacifier]

I like the idea of rolling over shields. After all, shields represent raw materials found or produced. If there are extra materials, countries definitely use them for other projects. This rollover idea stems from efficiency in production that many countries excersize.

 

[Bane Star]

What about wonders... I was under the impression you could only 'start' wonders if your current build had NO shields in it...

 

[Qitai]

Muchembled> Cool. I may give it a try one of these days. But as it is, I wouldn't want to be playing a mod which no one elses plays. Anyway, did anyone look at the AI and how they perform? Does it shows any significant improvement? Or did the mod affects the human only?