{The List} Terrain and terrain improvements

[Boris Godunov]

I have always thought the worker function was too tedious. Civ always became a chore when your empire was big in the late game, because you were constantly shuffling workers around to clean up pollution, build railroads, etc.

So I think the workers should be limited to few key functions: Building forts, bridges over rivers (maybe), airfields, towers, changing terrain etc. Otherwise, improvements like irrigation, roads, mines, and railroads should be automated, similar to CTP2. I think it makes much more sense to just select two cities for a road to be built between them and have it automated so it happens in a few turns. I'd suggest having an "improvement resource pool" or something which would accumulate over time, and you can spend the points on those improvements. Or perhaps just make them cost money, I dunno.

Regardless, it's definitely time to ditch the current improvement model and end the worker shuffle.

[snoopy369]

Um, actually they did that with civ3, particularly c3c. You can now automate workers to build Trade (road/railroad), clean um Damage, clear Wetlands, and several other simple things. So, you no longer have to shuffle workers around per se.

On the other hand, Boris, I know many civ players who like playing civ *because* of the workers and the degree to which you get to play around with the terrain. I think you're being hasty to say it's definitely time to ditch this model. Allowing you to do it either way -- manually or automated- is quite adequate, and is what is in place now.

And for that matter, I tend to be in one of three kinds of "late" games. Either it doesn't much matter what I do with workers because I'm winning by that much (the scenario you implied above), so I sometimes don't bother improving areas; or I'm being blown out and so there's not much to do BUT improve (makes me feel better that my turn isn't just "Press for end of turn" ; or it's a highly competitive game, where I *want* to take direct, manual control over the workers and ask them to do specific things, to keep me in the game.

[snoopy369]

Heck, upon rereading your argument, you're basically asking for a totally new game.

In that case, go enjoy playing CTP. Civ is *not* the game you just described, could and should never be such. You certainly couldn't have a tile based game like civ just "build roads between cities". You couldn't eliminate irrigation of individual tiles, or mining, or whatnot. That's just not Civ. If they ever made changes remotely like what you're describing, myself and probably thousands (literally) of Civ fans would run screaming away from the game store, without the game, and would never buy another Civ game.

[Boris Godunov]

I think you’re misinterpreting the extent of what I was suggesting. First, I did not say that the player wouldn’t have exact control over each tile and its improvements. On the contrary, the player would select each tile he wanted improved and designate the improvement to be done. Now, he wanted to, he could “automate” it by handing it over to the AI, just as one automates workers. The only real difference is you’re eliminating the tedious shuffling of workers around the map for certain functions—road building, irrigation, mines. Those functions are still precisely controlled (if wanted), just abstracted to ender the actual worker units unnecessary. And you’d still have engineer units to build forts, airfields, towers, and such. You’d still have settler units to found new cities.

I’d also add, as a side note, that the Automate Worker function is not the same, nor is it particularly good. You still have those units wandering around, cluttering the screen and eating up system resources.

The benefit of my proposal for most players is manifold: You reduce system requirements by reducing the number of units in play, you save time for the player by not having to hunt around for available workers and moving them across the map. That’s in addition to the time saver of waiting to build the workers, sending them out to each tile needing to be developed, etc.

Is it different? Yes. But it’s not the fundamental change you declare by any means. The core of Civ isn’t the workers. And I don’t think most Civ players would agree with you that worker shuffling is such a wonderful thing, especially in the late game. Most find it tedious.

[Boris Godunov]

Re: Canals

Might be too powerful. I think it would be good to limit them in length (at max, maybe 3 squares long) and there be no branching options. I think that would be enough to have an impact on the game without being overwhelming. You could link up some interior seas to the ocean, which would be cool.

You could apply the same coding to some rivers, and have some rivers that allow navigation into a land mass. Of course, this would mean rivers must once more be in the tile as opposed to between them.

[snoopy369]

Re: workers

Thing is, I see that as a totally different game. That's closer to SimCity or some such. Civ quite simply is a unit based game. I'm quite serious when I say that a lot of people enjoy what you call the 'worker shuffle', and it's where at least a good portion of the fan base comes from -- the "growers".

Automating workers, while not identical to what you say, accomplishes quite enough. It does not use up a significant amount of resources on a modern system (and civ4 certainly won't be running on P2-266 machines i suspect), I've had hundreds of workers moving about with no problems. And, as I said earlier, units is what civ is about. And in terms of avoiding 'tedium', it actually reduces that -- you can tell your workers to do things automatically to the extent that fifty or a hundred turns later they're still doing whatever you asked -- clearing a massive jungle, cleaning up pollution, or building roads, with just *one* simple command.

As for 'hunting for workers' and 'building workers' and whatnot, that's a great part of the strategy in civ, particularly the building aspect of it. You'd essentially eliminate the possibility of playing as a growth game (where you primarily try to build a successful civilization through building up your cities and gaining territory through peaceful means), where worker production and manipulation is the whole point. And when playing a normal game (or even a military game), balancing the production of workers with the production of military units and the growing of city population is also a large part of the strategy. Read some of the strategy guides -- all of them talk heavily about early game worker production being *key* to later success. Taking that away makes the game a lot less fun.

Perhaps many civ players -- i'd guess less than half, but i certainly don't know that large a percentage -- don't like the worker shuffle, but I doubt many object given worker automation advances that have occured in the recent games, particularly C3C. You barely have to touch a worker in the late game -- shift-D for a few dozen, shift-T for most of the rest, and in some areas shift-W to clear jungle or whatever. Otherwise shift-I or A depending on your preferred version, and they go around making irrigation and whatnot automatically. You can turn off the animations of automatic moves, if I recall correctly, and it doesn't take very long, even with dozens or a hundred workers.

Just my opinion ...

[K.J.H.]

Originally posted by Kucinich
It's annoying during the Industrial Era to be able to do essentially nothing about pollution.

Just build less factories and power plants ....

[grap1705]

I'm surprised to see that there are still some uncoinditional supporters of the magical railway... Are they the same who argue in other threads that this or that feature doesn't look real? I hope not.

STOP THIS RAILWAY MADNESS!
Come on. You have all your troops stacked on one border, are attacked on another and can move them all at once to face the opponent attacking by surprise? What's left for strategy? No need to be prepared, the magical rail will save you anyway!
Even if you give a one turn penalty for using the rail, your units are still there at once to defend a menaced city. Not realistic at all.
The CTP2 way of 1/5 movement point for rail, which is just a little better than road is much better and realistic. Going for the easy unrealistic solution is just not worthy of a strategy game of Civilization calibre!

Just like I don't like the planes moving to the other side of the world in one turn whatever the distance... But back to rail.

The rail bonus for squares is such that you end up having an ugly map with rail everywhere. Berk! I admit the fantasy curves of the rail make it less bad looking than in Civ2, but still...
So that there would be need to review what bonus is brought to a square (or hexe) if it has a road or if it has a railroad.
Road => +1 food +1 shield +1gold, the three together being logical, instead of just the additional gold of Civ3.
Rail => +1 food is unlogical for trains don't help at all farming. But +1 shield because it helps industry, and +1 gold because more travellers and goods transportation, would be logical. But given that this still leads to a map full of ugly railroads, I support the no extra food, shield or gold solution. Railway is then only for faster transportation. Only roads bring bonus to the squares.

And may be a magnetic train of CTP2 style with a 1/10 movement rate to speed things up in future times?


A new terrain improvement proposal is the power plant. But that links to the whole energy concept, so I think it's better that you go see the thread on this (energy: a strategic national issue).


Sea squares definitely are neglected in Civ3. CTP2 had fishing nets or farms, etc. There should be something like that for the sea.

And it also had the sonar to enable you to guard your maritime frontiers.


I also posted my opinion on the way terrain improvement should be conducted in the thread dedicated on the workers vs public work. So I won't develop again here why I favor a mixture of all three systems: workers with public work budget for some improvements and over time improvement for others.

[snoopy369]

Actually trains help a *LOT* with food. The quality of food, and thus the ultimate usefulness of it, transported across distance, is determined by how long it takes to go across that distance. Rails rather than roads help decrease the time it takes to bring food from farm to market, which decreases the spoilage and/or decreases cost (by allowing less refrigeration). They help food probably more than they help shields ... who cares how fast you transport your fabrics or whatever across country, but your fresh fish, that matters.

[okblacke]

Originally posted by grap1705
I'm surprised to see that there are still some uncoinditional supporters of the magical railway... Are they the same who argue in other threads that this or that feature doesn't look real? I hope not.

I'm pro-"magic train" and anti-reality.

I'll remain pro-infinite-rail-movement until I'm confident the late game will not be bogged down by micromanagement. I use IRM to organize my troops, not so much to rush from one side of the map to another.

[Tripledoc]

Maybe this has been mentioned, but why not have civilisation specific tile improvements?

I have been able to think of the following:

Dutch: tulipfields +2 trade
Ottoman, Arab: caravanserai +1 trade/+25%defense
Zulu: kraal +25% defense/slows down enemy movement
Romans: imperial road +1 movement/ignore river
French: Vauban fortress +50% defense/intrinsic bombard
English: steampowered mine +2 shields
Scandinavians: sawmill +1 trade/+1shield
Chinese: fishpond +1 food
Persians: quanat +1 food
Greeks: olive grove +1 trade/immune to pillage
Inca: trail +1 movement/ignore river
Aztec: chinampas +1 food
Hittites: iron foundry +2 shield
Russians: gas pipeline +1 shield
Koreans: supercomputer access +2 trade
Americans: GPS decoder +1 food
Germans: Autobahn: +1 trade/immune to bombard

More can be added.

These become available when certain techs are discovered. The advantage is commensurate with the time it takes to build them, so that some effort will be put into building them.

Also certain improvements can only be built on certain terrain. For instance sawmill can only be built on forrest tiles next to rivers. Likewise certain improvements can only be built if there is acces to certain resources, fo instance Hittite iron foundry.

Maybe to make it interesting captured or bought workers can build the improvements of the original civ, so that for instance the Persians capture some Greek workers and can make them build olive groves.

The advantages to this scheme would be multifold. 1) it would further differentiate between the different civs, making the game more enjoyable. 2)it would ensure a map that is more varied and thus easier on the eye.

Edit: more civ improvements added.

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Actually trains help a *LOT* with food. The quality of food, and thus the ultimate usefulness of it, transported across distance, is determined by how long it takes to go across that distance. Rails rather than roads help decrease the time it takes to bring food from farm to market, which decreases the spoilage and/or decreases cost (by allowing less refrigeration). They help food probably more than they help shields ... who cares how fast you transport your fabrics or whatever across country, but your fresh fish, that matters.

Actually a lot of industry cares tremendously about how quickly products can be shipped. Especially these days, the faster product can be shipped to market, the sooner it will be sold. The longer it takes to get product from point A to point B, the more product is just sitting on someone's books as inventory. And the more inventory on the books, the less the beancounters are happy. And unhappy beancounters is not a good thing in industry.

Another way rails help cut costs is on shipping bulk materials long distance. If you have one truckload worth of bulk raw materials to ship half-way across the country, paying someone to drive a truck with that material makes sense. If you have a hundred truckloads worth of that same item to ship, rails become very attractive. At that point it will cost less, and probably get there faster, up to a certain point you can be absolutely sure that it will all get there together.

Factor in that rail was used for shipping material across the US at least 40 to 50 years before trucks even started getting used to haul materials halfway across the city. And even then it wasn't really until the late 50's or early 60's when the modern semi-truck and trailer was developed to meet the demands of shipping in the Western US, that trucks worth trying to use to haul goods and materials over long distances. Thats a period of as much as 100 years or more during which the rail was the undisputed king of industrial land transportation.

And while rail does not seem important to us today, I would be willing to bet that if the US DOT unilaterally declared all rail services to be shut down tomorrow, there would be a lynch mob of industrialists (and farmers) on their doorstep before you could blink.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Re: workers

Thing is, I see that as a totally different game. That's closer to SimCity or some such. Civ quite simply is a unit based game. I'm quite serious when I say that a lot of people enjoy what you call the 'worker shuffle', and it's where at least a good portion of the fan base comes from -- the "growers".

It's not a "totally different game." I agree Civ is unit-based, but we're not talking about eliminating any units. We're talking simply abstracting the most tedious aspect of the workers - manually building irrigation and roads - into a system that eliminates a lot of wasted time. I've never heard anyone say they enjoy moving workers around as a core aspect for their civ games. Now, a lot of people don't mind it, but you're absolutely the only one I've ever seen see these worker functions as so essential to the game.

Automating workers, while not identical to what you say, accomplishes quite enough.

And I disagree, because what I propose would give the player the exact, precise control over the tile improvements that automating the workers lacks. Automating them leaves it to the AI to determine the tile improvements, and this (often) is at odds with what I want. So my system would allow me to have precise control sans worker shuffling. That's a huge difference.

As for 'hunting for workers' and 'building workers' and whatnot, that's a great part of the strategy in civ, particularly the building aspect of it. You'd essentially eliminate the possibility of playing as a growth game (where you primarily try to build a successful civilization through building up your cities and gaining territory through peaceful means), where worker production and manipulation is the whole point.

I don't deny it would change the strategy of the game a bit, but not to the "sky is falling" extent you maintain. The above is simply not true based on what I proposed--I think you're misunderstanding or ignoring what I wrote. Civ building would still very much be a part of the game. The means of civ building would be different. And only slightly so--you'd still be strategizing over what to build in which tile. And since your resources for tile improvements wouldn't be infinite, you would have to allocate tile improvements with care to avoid wasting time and resources on improvements that aren't vital to the growth of your empire.

And when playing a normal game (or even a military game), balancing the production of workers with the production of military units and the growing of city population is also a large part of the strategy. Read some of the strategy guides -- all of them talk heavily about early game worker production being *key* to later success. Taking that away makes the game a lot less fun.

I don't care if it changes the strategy some--THAT HAPPENS BETWEEN ALL CIV GAMES. Considering the worker model in Civ3 is different--very different--than in the previous Civs, I can't take complaints that it's changing the game too seriously--that's the entire POINT. To change the strategy of the game!

So to summarize, what I proposed:

1) Doesn't eliminate units, merely removes some functions from units and turns them into civ-wide management aspects
2) Isn't the same as autoworkers, since the player would still precisely control the improvements of each tile
3) Wouldn't eliminate the empire building model at all--on the contrary, this is designed to make that model less tedious
4) Wouldn't fundamentally alter the strategy of the game any more so than other changes from Civ game to Civ game have made.

[Fosse]

Boris. I think that most Civ players would greatly enjoy the type of system you're talking about.

I still would love to see a full-blown public works system... but I'll concede that your method certainly seems more likely to be in Civ 4.

[Tripledoc]

Boris Godunov:

How can the player capture workers of other civilizations with your method? Also how does one build airfields, fortresses and most importantly roads outside the city radius? Sometimes it is also neccesary to build irrigation outside the radius to bring water to a city.

I agree that managing to many workers can be tedious, especially when it comes to pollution. One method to alleviate that would perhaps be the ability build superworkers, or engineers later in the game. They cost more to support and more shields to build but can improve tiles much faster.

Another solution would be to make the workers more 'intelligent' when automated.