quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 04-20-2001 06:24 PM Selling CTP as the updated Civ-3 was the very reason that people got lured into buying the game in the first place. That was Activisions only chance of getting significantly above ordinary salefigures - and they knew it all too well. Why else, was it so important for them to have the catchword "CIVILIZATION" (with capital letters), directly above "Call to Power" on the package?

activision failed cause they had to stop the series in the way that they did and because they probably lost money(again, in the entire series). and they failed cause instead of presenting ctp1/2 as what they were(different civ-like tbs games), they presented them as "civ3". if ctp1 didnt have "civilization" in it's title we would probably be making "ctp3" suggestions now...

quote: The low sales of CTP-2 was a consequence of people now knew for sure that activisions CTP-games had nothing to do with those old civ-classics.

quote: Then the bad/lukewarm game-magazine reviews came.

quote: These angry AI-post where infact so many that you guys felt compelled to create a special CTP-2 AI-section to house them all.

quote: Originally posted by Al'Kimiya on 04-25-2001 03:56 PM With PW you could make improvements in lake/ocean areas, allowing more food income (and trade?). Has anyone considered this for settlers/workers?

With settlers, you could just take a settler out to the ocean square in question with a ship and park it there while the settler works. That is, assuming Civ3 has sea improvements...

Was there also another city improvement that increased food by 1 in all sea tiles in Civilization II?

"Let them take your cities, just leave the settlers alone"

I PROTEST once again! if they fix the nuke and everything else is better than i've seen before, fine they can have my money for the game, otherwise: Dont hope for it!

"Let them take your cities, just leave the settlers alone"

I PROTEST once again! if they fix the nuke and everything else is better than i've seen before, fine they can have my money for the game, otherwise: Dont hope for it!

Heres an idea:

Instead of creating a settler unit, you can place a 'target' where you want people to migrate. Through time and effort, population from cities moves to that area and create their own city. This could be a Colony, with a small population. However, once the colony is a certian size, it can become a city. Once a city, you can re-name it. When its a colony, you can build everything a normal city can but it cost a certian amount more. This is to represent how colonies needed military aid for protection. Your nation can spread several ways. Migration to new areas can be set by a slider bar/numerical value you set. So if you want to expand, raise the migration bar, and target an area were you want to send people. The farther away outside of your nation's border, the long it will take to create a city. So for example, if you target an area right out side your border, it will take 3 turns. Compared to if you set the target across an ocean, it would take 20-25 turns.

About Public Works:
Since Settlers would not be used for new cities, some type of work/serf/business system would be used for terrian improvements.
Irrigation, Mines and any other agriculture improvements should happen automatically by the needs of the citizens in that town.Also, different improvements can be shaped and incuraged by the government type. EX: If your nations govnt is Communist, irrigation is much less common, but all the irrigation you do have brings you some turnly gold. or, EX: As a Theocracy, Irrigation does not accure since the land belongs to all the nobles. However, with a revolution, you can enlighten your nation by bringing it a republic, which makes irrigation come up rapidly through business class emerging. Thus, making a govnt revolution not just a way to get more science or tax money, or more military units.
. For Roads/Rails/Etc, you should lay down a path on the main map. Construction would start next turn and the road/rail/etc would start to take form. The time of completion would be determined by the length and the route it takes (going through hilss/mountians or smamps). It would be like Civ2, but without the settler unit having to move to each new spot.

Plus it seems to take 10,000 people (a settlers unit) 20 years (the year increment in Civ2 during BC) to build a road over a 100 mile stretch. Even in ancient times, massive stretches of roads were built in a short time. And the Engineers unit made it worse. The Transcontinental Rail system was built in less than five years, yet it takes almost 5 years to build one section of track in Civ2.

I think using a labor force based public works system is the way to go. During depressions and such, the labor force would be greater due to the unemployment.

Like the caravans in CTP, you build a worker unit. This unit then, instead of becoming a real unit, goes into a pool of workers waiting to be used. When I want to upgrade something, I simply decide what tile to upgrade and a worker is temporarily removed from the pool and used to upgrade the tile. This can even be used along with a real worker so that you get the best of both worlds - real units when you want them but less micromanagement when you want that.

Don't have an answer do you? I didn't think so.
PW represents the amount of resourses diverted from the market to build infrastructure. In real life, these represent road crews, linemen, maybe even subsidies and incentives for the private sector to build farms and mines. As for realism, I hate to break it to you, but when ADM wants to build a farm in real life, the US government does not commision a worker unit to build one for them. So don't give me these realism arguments against PW, because worker units are more detached from the world.

As for "feeling like your building an empire", I feel like I'm building an empire either way. Quit being so fussy. And raingoon, I don't think gameplay suffers under PW, its just different. But this is a personal/subjective call. But let me ask you, if PW was a "Sid idea", then would you like it? As for what PW adds, I feel it adds greater control and flexibility over the development of my empire as well as improving management of development. Let me ask you, what does a worker system add?

quote: Originally posted by Mister Pleasant on 05-13-2001 02:16 PM To all of those who say PW was unrealistic, here's a question: How realistic is it for 10,000 people to spend 50 years building a road?

OK then, how about this one:
How realistic is it that 10,000 people can grow to 10 miljon within a couple of game-play hours?

Well, the answer my friend, is that it is all about abstract & symbolic thinking. A computer-game is after all only a computer-game, and real-life is real-life. Theres a difference.

quote: As for "feeling like your building an empire", I feel like I'm building an empire either way. Quit being so fussy. And raingoon, I don't think gameplay suffers under PW, its just different. But this is a personal/subjective call. But let me ask you, if PW was a "Sid idea", then would you like it?

No, I wouldn't. A "sid idea" is the same as a regular idea: when it sucks, it sucks, and that's all there is to it. Sid is intelligent, and very good at what he does, but he is quite human and he is not my god.

quote: As for what PW adds, I feel it adds greater control and flexibility over the development of my empire as well as improving management of development. Let me ask you, what does a worker system add?

Well, let's see.

First, let's go over what you said PW adds.

"PW adds greater control." More than the settler system? I don't think so. If anything, the settler system allows you more control because you can build stuff anywhere without a long line of roads.

"PW adds flexibility." That doesn't make any sense. PW is a system of pointing to a tile and placing the improvement. The settler system accomplishes the same thing... production creates tile improvemnts. How could either one be more flexible?

"What does a worker system add?" A worker system creates more strategic choices. For instance, you can stop the construction of a fortress by preventing settlers from getting there with military units. With PW, there is no way to actually prevent a person from starting construction. A settler system also adds more choices. If you need to quickly build a fortress to help your retreating forces make a stand, do you run the settlers through the well-traveled plains (a quicker route, but more dangerous enemy patrols that could waylay your workers) or hike through the nearby mountain chain (takes longer, but better defense from enemy units and less enemy patrols)? In a sentence, settlers add more strategic depth.

Satisfied?

Control and flexibility: I have a small army of engineers improving the Northeastern Seaboard. But growth in New York and Boston has stalled out until I build a sewer system. But Los Angeles and San Francisco on the west coast will boom with only a little irigation and a few roads (a mine or two wouldn't hurt either). SO . . .

In civ2 I've got to move my entire heard of emgineers over to the west cost - and if I don't have railroads or roads out there yet - this just isn't happening. Control - under PW, I build what I want when I want it as long as I have the funding. Flexibility - if I deside that the east coast is up to snuff while the west coast needs to be improved, I do this instantly without 80 years of redeployment. Under the settler system, I feel hemmed in by the limitation of moving units around. Under PW, like in real life, I fund/subsidize Union Pacific, AT&T, or ADM to build a transcontinental railroad, telephone system, or farm. I can do what I want, I can switch strategies quickly - control and flexibility. And PW is not "stuff falling from the sky", it is merely one possible way of modeling the world.

As to building a road outside your territory, when is the last time you saw a Mexican road crew building highways in Texas, or an American road crew building an interstate in British Colombia? But if you allow civs to trade PW in negotiations, you can simulate a Marshall Plan where allies provide funds and resources to rebuild infrastructure, or foriegn aid in general.

quote: In civ2 I've got to move my entire heard of emgineers over to the west cost - and if I don't have railroads or roads out there yet - this just isn't happening. Control - under PW, I build what I want when I want it as long as I have the funding. Flexibility - if I deside that the east coast is up to snuff while the west coast needs to be improved, I do this instantly without 80 years of redeployment.

If I was in this situation, I would either rush buy engineers on the west coast. If I establish a tiny city on a foreign coast with PW, they won't have skilled engineers, miners, railroad directors, and all the other skilled tradespeople it takes to build infastructure. I need to send skilled work crews over to develop this new territory. Theoretically, under your defenition of control, you would have even more control if improvements are free. So why not do that if you want control? What exactly do you define as control and flexibility?

Hmmmm. The problem I have with this is that it nibbles away at the idea of logistics. With settlers, you have to deal a bit more with logistics which I find more realistic and enjoyable. If you make a mistake with your settler, you pay for it. I don't want my civ (or the others) to have some quick, easy-fix way of undoing their mistakes.

"In civ2 I've got to move my entire heard of emgineers over to the west cost"

The ENTIRE herd? When we had a bunch of fires out here in the west, we wouldn't consider sending our ENTIRE fire fighting force to assist the other states. I usually keep my settlers near their home cities and send them far away only for crucial situations (and even then, it's still not my entire settler force).

"and if I don't have railroads or roads out there yet - this just isn't happening."

You now have engineers and your cities are STILL not connected by at least a road? Now who's fault is that? I see this as more proof about the concept of logistics. PW allows you to quickly fix years of poor planning - unrealistic, unstrategic, unfun (to me, anyway).

"Under PW, like in real life, I fund/subsidize Union Pacific, AT&T, or ADM to build a transcontinental railroad, telephone system, or farm. I can do what I want, I can switch strategies quickly - control and flexibility"

WOW! New Orleans must really have its act together! ;-)

All kidding aside, large scale construction takes much time and planning. Switching strategies can be done, but doing so mid-stream is COSTLY and time consuming. Settlers reflect this better than PW.

"I do this instantly without 80 years of redeployment"

I agree with many people's argument about the time scale. However, if you are going to grumble about how long it takes to move the setter to its destination, etc. then your complaint is with the movement of any units, not to mention their construction, or the construction of city improvements.

1st off we need to be able to customize the priorities of the worker, preferably in-game, for each tile and each tile improvement. FE, on a plains square the priority might be: 1-irrigate, 2-road, 3- RRoad, 4-farm, while a grassland square would have 1-road, 2-irrigate, etc. Modifiers would be necessary for the various govt types or SE factors, depending on which is used. FE, in the example above, irrigation would be flagged off in despotism.

There would also need to be one for the AI. This one should NOT be in-game, but only in a .txt file.

Then the player should be able to drag a box, or select specific squares, for the worker to auto-improve. Perhaps even assigning which tiles to work 1st, 2nd, etc.

And the player should be able to assign (a) specific tile improvement(s) to be done over an area or a given path. This would be mainly necessary for road & RRoad construction.

quote: Originally posted by Mister Pleasant on 05-13-2001 02:16 PM To all of those who say PW was unrealistic, here's a question: How realistic is it for 10,000 people to spend 50 years building a road?

And how realistic is it to spend 50 years moving one or two tiles? That arguement should be used for more turns only. Also we could use the same arguement for PW. How realistic is it to take 50 years to build one tile of road?

There is a way of using both settlers and PW in the same game.

Like usual your cities collect trade arrows for taxes and so. Why not add a new bar in the Tax-rating screen for collecting Public Works. This concept will stand for maintenance for the impr. your settlers build. If your wont collect PW your tile impr. will vanish and you have to build them again with your settlers.

This probably works best if you raise every bar 5% a turn instead of 10%.

Think about this!!!