Should Excess shield/food overflow to next production?

Should Excess shields/food overflow to next production/pop?

  • Yes! That will reduce the need for Micromanagement

    Votes: 48 60.0%
  • No! Keep it the way it is.

    Votes: 26 32.5%
  • Something else

    Votes: 6 7.5%

  • Total voters
    80
Last conformist made a very good point too. You can have infinite shields with this. But if only one turn is allowed, there's no point. it's just one turn micro-management becomes two turn micro-management.
 
No. Keep it as it is. I have just started to enjoy MMing. (/joke?)
 
The Last Conformist> This can be easily solved by putting a cap on what can be pass over. A cap of either current shield production level or shield required for current production will do.

Rest> Keep the debate up and the vote coming in! I like to know what everyone thinks.
 
I voted 'no'.

If implemented I would hope it would be an option. That way it could be 'on' during MP games, say (where I agree the MM aspects don't work too well) and left 'off' in SP. Or left to people's choice, too, for that matter.

Coping with the integer mathematics of the production system is one of the skills of the game. Don't dumb it down.

BTW, isn't 6*75=450 and not 3*100??? Not sure I understood that post.
 
"Civ3Ext" not mentionned ? :eek:
but I'm pleased with those results :)

Now, it would be hard for me to play without food/shields/beakers rollover :rolleyes:
 
Can I suggêst an alternative?

I would like to produce more than one item per turn if I have the the shield and the pop to do it. e.g.

- a 20 shield city = 4 warriors

a 30 shield city = 2 spearmen.

Still keeps the MM to keep the anal retentive happy but eliminates the waste that annoys all of us.
 
I think it should carry over if you continue to make the same unit, but you should lose it if you switch. It is logical this way: you are making a division of tanks and have a bunch of extra parts left over. This would help you make another division of tanks, but wouldn't help much if you're trying to Cure Cancer.

This would also solve the infinant shield problem, and still leave some room for micromanaging.
 
Well, I voted yes mainly because of the required (but really boring) micromanaging in the early/mid game. At this stage, I could re-assign citizens to different working tiles pretty much often to optimize shields or food or a very certain mixture of both - and that's just to try to reach these discrete factors (or "production/growth quantums") - eventually turnwise. Mostly it's possible to come at least that close to these discrete quantums that waste is almost zero, there often actually are alternative tiles that could possibly be worked or could be switched/changed due to overlapping for a decent optimization. Maybe I could fill the food storage of a city with 4 fpt for two turns, then reduce to 2 or 3 fpt with a slight (but "quantum"-relevant) spt boost from that mined hill etc.
It does make a difference if your city pumps out 1 warrior/turn (at least sometimes due to short-term shield optimization) or 1warrior/2 turns, or grows in 2 instead of 3 turns in the early game. If you then get "the big picture" (all of your cities), those one turn earlier born citizens might get you that piece of commerce that would be needed to bribe an ally for a MA in time to help to fight your much stronger enemy, for example. Or boost your research rate. Have one extra defender earlier against those nasty barbs in case of shield optimization. Whatever.
So micromanaging does indeed help and I have a very hard time not using it on deity (perhaps I just need exhaustive mm here because I screw up the game elsewhere...).
I could get away on emperor if I just concentrate mm on some selective cities.
Well, I like some "core" mm, but not hard-core mm. So a shield/food cascade might indeed help to reduce mm: food quantum overstep will be stored as bonus towards the next growth process and shield quantum overstep will prompt me for a new production order - so I eventually zoom to the city anyway.
If the result of severe mm was almost no waste, then cascading would just help and doesn't add advantages to a certain civ only. :)

Later in a game, I would't care for mm (i.e. cascading) in the core that much. Once a city has reached 12, alternative working tiles have become rare anyway. I normally don't need to produce settlers/workers often then (pop status doesn't fluctuate), so I just minimize food production/replace some irrigation with a mine .
Then, if 3 tanks arrive in 8 turns or in 9 turns is not the biggest deal IMHO. But surely a cascade system would still help for newly founded/captured cities.

With regards to all discoveries of corruption and waste - note that the corruption formula just calculates the "red" shields - but the *effective* waste may be even higher due to the quantum system. A city with a raw 10spt and 10% waste (at the best mm result possible) gets a "quantum penalty" for a 10-shields worth build, and has effectively the same productivity as a 10spt city w/ 50% ([yeah, that's the ticket: /] a well fitting propaganda example :D).
And that's just shields and not food, the killer resource in the early game.

As for the weaker vs stronger civ: I could imagine that the weaker civ starts in a location that would not feature the desired 5 fpt for a settler factory, but actually has more than 2 fpt. Why should the weaker civ get a quantum penalty on top of not having an ideal food production (while the settler factory city would not benifit from food cascading at the same time)?
Granted, a cascading limit must be implemented. So no 1-turn build-ups accumulate to a wonder over the times.

And for the beakers - theoretically, I could calculate the required number and optimize the science slider (plus scientists). No fun to do that - and I might even re-adjust things due to drop in price. How would anyone like to have more than one scientist (in case of running science at 0%) when they have a big waste potential (i.e. hard to control them), too?

Well, finally, if the poll results in a draw (or at least isn't highly biassed towards either option), a check box at game start ("like culturally linked..." and stuff) could really come handy. Guess what? It should be automatically checked if using default rules... :D
 
Originally posted by lz14
Last conformist made a very good point too. You can have infinite shields with this. But if only one turn is allowed, there's no point. it's just one turn micro-management becomes two turn micro-management.

The cap I suggested would only go into effect when the number of shields carrying over exceeds the cost of the next project. That's not a situation which is terribly common.
 
Voted yes for a very simple reason.

The AI does NOT micro-manage. The human does. Therefore micro-management is yet another tool that boosts the human player and screws the AI.

If the shields carry over then it's the AI who gains. The human player actually _loses_ because his micro-management won't be any help any more.

Whatever makes the AI better is good, so this really ought to be implemented.
 
Originally posted by Darkness
No, keep it...

MM is part of the fun of the game, isn't it? ;)
Yes, and no. MM is part of the fun if the MM in question has any interesting choises. An examples of such interesting MM is worker management (what square to fix first, do you prioritize production (mining) or growth (irrigation)).

Examples of boring MM (IMHO) are such as those discussed here, along with the science beakers as well. Another aspect is that it doesn't make any sense either. It would be as if a factory would only start new production on january 1st. If something needed 13 months, tthus finishing in february, they would be idle for the rest of the year.

So let it overflow, but never with more than its current production - so if a 50-shield city produces spearmen (20 shields), the following will happen:
turn1: One spearman produced, 30 shields remaining
turn2: One spearman produced, 50 (not 60) shields remaining
turn3: One spearman produced, 50 (not 90) shields remaining
etc.
 
Originally posted by TheNiceOne

Yes, and no. MM is part of the fun if the MM in question has any interesting choises. An examples of such interesting MM is worker management (what square to fix first, do you prioritize production (mining) or growth (irrigation)).

Examples of boring MM (IMHO) are such as those discussed here, along with the science beakers as well. Another aspect is that it doesn't make any sense either. It would be as if a factory would only start new production on january 1st. If something needed 13 months, tthus finishing in february, they would be idle for the rest of the year.

Well said - I agree.

It also seems reasonable (to me) to be making decisions about your country's priorities by choosing between growth and production (for both workers and citizens) and about the general emphasis of your miliatry (infantry or artillery). I really don't like it when I'm forced to select between such options on the basis of how the game mechanics are intruding into the game (e.g. there is no point in working the forest this turn as we'll build our spearman anyway - you might as go and work the floods plain).

I realise I'm not forced to do this micro-management, but if I don't, I feel as if I'm just wasting resources and being deliberately stupid. There's also, at times, a bit of a culture within parts of CfC which imply that the aim of any true CfC member should be to perform this sort of micromanagement in order to excel at the higher difficulty levels of the game. (Hmm, maybe that last observation is a bit off topic...)
 
carrying on shields has no downsde.
oh no, ill be pumpign out those cavalry at a slightly faster rate. this is terrible! :lol:
so as logn as the AI does exactly the same as you, why not have it. if you can switch production half way throuh so you basically start with say 20 shields done already from a old production, then what is wrong with beign able to do it if you got spare when its finished???
 
I voted Yes.

The type of micromanagent required to take advantage of the current system is tedious and it distracts from more interesting big-picture strategic decisions.

The current system is one of the main reasons why I do not play any multiplayer except PBEM. The length of the turns are simply too short for me to manage my empire like I do in single player, and I don't like to play in a suboptimal way.

As mentioned already, a nice side-effect of this change would be a more efficient AI.
 
In the early part of the game, this would really annoy me. As i've said before, I play the game based on knowing how long it takes to complete things in certain times. This would completely disorientate me. Like Madscot said, It would have to be an option, cause there are too many people that don't like it.
I like Micromanagement anyways :)
 
I vote yes with provisions that the carryover not be excessive. The Last Conformists suggestion is a reasonable one. The carryover of excess production of food and shields is far more "realistic" than the current scheme. Making it an option would make both sides happy. Another option could be for the wasted shields to be converted to gold (a la wealth) rather than applying towards the next production.
 
I voted no. I love new games because of all the city and worker micromangement. Beakers I would like to see carry over, however, since you can't control it nearly as well you can control cities. I certainly understand why MP people want everything to carry over though.

Someone mentoined how the AI does not micromanage. It would be very easy to program a basic micromanagement routine for the AI, and with a little more trouble it could easily surpass a human's capability using only mere microseconds of computing time. The computer doesn't get bored doing a task over and over again whereas the human will quickly give up on micromanaging every city once it takes over 15 minutes a turn.

In order for the game to be fun, the AI has to be hard to beat in some way. For me, beating an AI that was smart and managed its cities like a mofo would be a million times more rewarding to beat than an AI that was stupid but got a +60% shield, food and beaker bonus. Obviously +60% shields unmanaged still beats +0% shields managed perfectly, but you get the general idea of what I'm talking about.
 
I think food should be stored, but not shields. In real life, food can be stored, but manpower can't be bottled up to be used later. So, something else.
 
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