Terrain Improvement?

[Skanky Burns]

How would you like the terrain around cities to be improved?

Civ3 style - Workers working the land. Physical units:
You build workers, send them out to a tile near (or far) from your city and then order them to build improvements. Micromanagement hell towards the end-game.

CtP-style Public Works:
Could someone who has played CtP give a description of how this works? Thanks.

Terrain automatically improved over time:
The terrain around your cities improves automatically over time. Roads are built between cities that trade together (including towards foreign cities you trade with). You, of course, have no control over what gets built where or when, apart from perhaps setting "policy".

[Fosse]

I voted Public Works. Perhaps if the "Over Time" approach were more fleshed out I would have gone that way. But The micromanagement disaster that is the Worker system has simply got to go. The AI can't handle it, and the humans shouldn't have to.

[wrylachlan]

I voted other because a though the worker system is a pain, public works takes away the possibility of capturing workers, which I like. What I'd like to see, and I've said this before, is workers like in Civ3 with a Public Works Manager on top of that system. So you could control workers individually, or, if they don't have anything to do, they would automatically "check-in" with the Public Works Manager to see if there's anything that needs to get done.

As a side note, a number of different variations on workers vs. public works were put forward in various other threads. I'd like to see a poll that lists all of the different options people have come up with. I have a feeling that this poll will skew towards Public Works, even though a lot of people who vote for it might vote for a different hybrid system given the choice.

[Skanky Burns]

If you could post some links to the other improvement systems or at least descriptions of them, we can restart this poll with a much better range of poll options.

I will be the first to admit I don't know much about improvement systems other than workers, but this is an issue that does need to be discussed.

[Ozymandous]

Public Works

It's been a few years since I have played CtP, but here's what I remember about "public works."

A Civ has to dedicate a percentage of it's income per turn to building a "fund" for Public works. Improving each tile costs X amount. Let's say you want to put a "level 1" fam over grassland. It costs 5 public works for the one tile. When you have accumulated 5 or more "credits" into the public works fund you then select to upgrade that tile and it's done the beginning of the next turn.

Each improvement, from roads, to irrigation to mines to nets (for fishing) costs some amount of public works "credit". Some improvements can't be placed over certain terrain types. There are/were three different levels of public works, and each improvement above level 1 comes when certain technologies are developed.

The best thing about this system was that the more you allocated to the public works fund, or the more your economy did with a lower percentage going into the fund, the more you could upgrade each turn. Initially you might upgrade a tile every few turns, but after awhile you could upgrade a lot of tiles at once. Plunk down a new city and build the roads to it and upgrade a few tiles in that first turn. No having to coordinate workers, no having to "plan ahead" as much as in Civ3 now. The AI seemed to use this system much, MUCH better than now.

I hope something like this is done in Civ4, since it take the "worker hell" micromanagement in mid-late games nonexistant.

I hope this helped explain the system for those who have never seen it.

[Kuciwalker]

I want the things to be represented by a unit at some level.

[asleepathewheel]

civ isn't civ without individual worker type units

[Ecthy]

I like the Master of Magic approach

[Fosse]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
civ isn't civ without individual worker type units

Or really dumb AI moves. Let's face it, every Civ game ever has had really dumb AI moves in it. Thus, not having them would be Not Civ.




If this is the case, then I move that Firaxis make NotCiv 4, a game that removes dumb AI moves and also individual worker units.

[hexagonian]

...Some kind of hybrid system, as pointed out by wrylachlan - it would require an overhaul of the existing economic system that may have to multiply normal shield output of a tile by (2x), or some multiplier to be determined by the developers...

You have a national and/or a local city pool of shields that can be used for your improvements. Workers are not required if you want to build within a city radius either.

So if you want to build a new mine in a city, you will require 8 shields to do so. The construction of the mine without an assigned worker will take 8 turns to construct.

A worker can be created to reduce construction time by a turn for each worker - not by 1/2 time as it is currently in civ3. If you want to build outside the radius, at least one worker is required to do so. You also make workers expensive.

The end result is that workers are needed, and are valuable in the early game, especially in roading to a trade good and pre-establishing a site to be settled - but their increased cost, their reduced effectiveness, and the aspect that you will still be able to build tile improvements without them, will actually reduce the number of workers in the game.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by hexagonian
...Some kind of hybrid system, as pointed out by wrylachlan - it would require an overhaul of the existing economic system that may have to multiply normal shield output of a tile by (2x), or some multiplier to be determined by the developers...

You have a national and/or a local city pool of shields that can be used for your improvements. Workers are not required if you want to build within a city radius either.

So if you want to build a new mine in a city, you will require 8 shields to do so. The construction of the mine without an assigned worker will take 8 turns to construct.

A worker can be created to reduce construction time by a turn for each worker - not by 1/2 time as it is currently in civ3. If you want to build outside the radius, at least one worker is required to do so. You also make workers expensive.

The end result is that workers are needed, and are valuable in the early game, especially in roading to a trade good and pre-establishing a site to be settled - but their increased cost, their reduced effectiveness, and the aspect that you will still be able to build tile improvements without them, will actually reduce the number of workers in the game.

Just out of curiousity, what is the advantage of using two different systems vs 1? I don't envision a Public Works director as being seperate from the workers, but rather an overlay on top of the worker system. All workers do all the work just like in Civ3. The difference is in the way you give workers orders. Right now you have to give them individual orders. Instead I'm suggesting that the worker units could get their orders en masse from a public works director. Thus you could EITHER order a worker to mine a certain tile, OR you could tell the Public Works Manager that you want a certain tile mined, and the Public Works Manager would do the tedious work of finding which worker is closest and assigning him to the task.

The Public Works Manager could also give you some high level feedback in terms of "The Public Works you have requested will take a total of 29 turns to complete with the current work force. If you want to decrease that time, please build more workers."

[Fosse]

I like the idea of the Public Works Manager wrylachlan is putting forward as a reasonable compromise between two systems. It will allow the ultra micromanagement nuts to hand move every single worker to their little hearts' (whose beats' control has no doubt been ceded by their unconscious to their conscious brain) content, while allowing those of us who find this tedious to simple give orders.

I would rather push it one step further into the strictly Public Works systems, where you fund public works from your economy and simply issue orders, no workers involved. But this is a happy compromise that I would be glad to have.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Just out of curiousity, what is the advantage of using two different systems vs 1? I don't envision a Public Works director as being seperate from the workers, but rather an overlay on top of the worker system. All workers do all the work just like in Civ3. The difference is in the way you give workers orders. Right now you have to give them individual orders. Instead I'm suggesting that the worker units could get their orders en masse from a public works director. Thus you could EITHER order a worker to mine a certain tile, OR you could tell the Public Works Manager that you want a certain tile mined, and the Public Works Manager would do the tedious work of finding which worker is closest and assigning him to the task.

The merging of the two different systems would require the use of shields (a cost factor over and above the initial cost of a worker, so you will have to plan this cost out), and it would allow for the capture of workers because they are an actual unit. Best of all, it would allow for the construction of most types of Tile improvements without the tedious efffort of issuing orders to an army of Workers, because they become less important. You still have them but they augment your efforts rather than forcing a player to solely depend on their efforts to get the job done. So you get the best of both worlds.

The way I see it, you proposal is not much different than the automation command feature currently in place - a feature that some players still complain about because it ends up sending units willy-nilly around your empire. You may order a unit via the Director to build a tile improvement and it may take that unit 4 turns to get there to start it - meanwhile another worker is finishing up another improvement and will be closer than the first worker to that tile on the next turn - and so you will need to issue orders to that unit on the following turn. You then run into the problem of having to reissue an order based on efficiency.

[Fosse]

wrylachlan's proposal is quite a bit different than the current automation implementation, I think.

Instead of saying to the workers, "Do as you will! Have fun!" or giving them only the vaguest commands, "Don't mine my farms, but otherwise go hogwild!" wrylachlan is saying that precise orders are given and carried out.

So if I decide I want to build a farm next to London, I just right-click on that tile, and select "Order Farm." My job is done. Now the Public Works manager will find the nearest worker who is not busy and order him to move to that tile and build that farm.

The AI for the Manager would need to be done well enough to let the Manager calculate whether it is more efficient to bring an idle worker from the other side of the empire, or simply wait for a nearby one to finish his next task. The Manager would do all of the ganging, and figure out the annoying details for us.

If we wish, we can manually move the workers around and do things as we currently do, always having the option to turn them over the the PWM.


This is MUCH different, and better, than the current automation.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Fosse
wrylachlan's proposal is quite a bit different than the current automation implementation, I think.
{snip}
The AI for the Manager would need to be done well enough to let the Manager calculate whether it is more efficient to bring an idle worker from the other side of the empire, or simply wait for a nearby one to finish his next task. The Manager would do all of the ganging, and figure out the annoying details for us.

If we wish, we can manually move the workers around and do things as we currently do, always having the option to turn them over the the PWM.

This is MUCH different, and better, than the current automation.

Thanks, you beat me to it. To build on that in order to answer Hex, the AI really is the sticking point. The problems you point out about workers crossing the continent, vs. the closer worker finishing his job, etc. etc. is a problem not of the basic idea, but a possible problem of the implementation of the AI.

On a side note, if you are attached to the idea of improvements costing shields, one possibility is to simply assign a shield upkeep cost for every turn that a worker is working a tile. The upkeep is drawn from the nearest city. I'm personally not sure whether this is really necessary, but it is a possibility that is not anathema to the suggestion I've already put on the table.