Terrain Improvement?

[Addled Platypus]

tiles should lose one shield as to cover the work thats done there


I like the way you think panag


what else is locked up inside


Ideas like that smack of thought

[GePap]

I laid out my proposals eslewhere.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

i dont know if this would work, but have a city improvment called Mines, Roads, Irrigation that cost a certain number of shields. everytime it gets completed, it irrigates/builds mines/ etc on the square that you click on in the city view.

[Addled Platypus]

How many here have the 1.22 patch for conquests?

There is an improvement made to workers actions

can auto build roads/rails- click the button/click destination
sit back and watch the progress (and does a good job of it too!)
It does take the best way to get there.

several other auto buttons for the worker


Now to waste several more hours experiment with the other buttons!

[Jonny]

I really like wrylachlan's Public Works Manager proposal from earlier in this thread. It still allows the player to control how each individual tile is improved, but without the hassle of moving every single worker around.

[Tassadar500]

It looks like people are pretty split between Civ III terrain improvement and CTP terrain improvement. I think, though, that Civ IV will stick to the normal Civ series style of improvement.

[peteruk223]

I voted CtP becuase it was much better to use and easyer. It also saved time aswell well thats what I tought.

[Drachasor]

Well, I have a few ideas.

1. A CtP public work system is used, but you can still build worker units. Workers can decrease the time it takes an improvement to appear. They also allow you to build outside your territory (not at increased speed though). This latter effect only works on the square the worker is standing on.

2. Here's more hybrid system. Workers are used to build forts, airbases, and other tile improvements that don't give resources bonuses. A public works system is used for tile improvements, like farms and mines, that give a resource bonus. Workers can still decrease the time it takes for the latter to appear.

Both systems dramatically reduce the number of workers you need, but allow you to use them if you like to micromanage.

Now, I can see a lot of objections to the second idea, as it seems overly cumbersome. However, if currently proposed ideas are used to decrease road/rail sprawl (give no resource bonus, cities gain trade bonuses by being connected to the road network, etc), then the number of workers will also be very small, but of significant use (road building, fort building, etc). Also, if my idea about letting cities give and take shields to/from a national store is implemented, then excess shields in this store can be used to build improvements.

Anyhow, I think it is high time Civ moved away from the extremely cumbersome and time consuming pure worker-model.

-Drachasor

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Drachosar,

Your idea is VERY similar to what I've been suggesting.
My idea is that a worker is attached to the city which builds it-though it can be 'vectored' to another city via a central 'pool' in the Capital. These workers determine how quickly a specific terrain improvement/terraforming job is done-wheras your PW budget effects how many jobs you can have going at any one time.
For instance, lets say that you want to build mines, and mines cost 200 points each, and require 8 turns to build. If you have 600 points, then you can undertake the building of three mines before you run out of 'money', and they will be complete in 8 turns. If you have 3 workers in your worker pool, then you can assign them to each of your 3 mine building jobs-thus maybe reducing the time taken to 6 turns each. The downside of workers is that they require money and food to 'survive'-the amount being dictated by your wages and rations settings (as per CtP). Slaves, OTOH, require money and half as much food, though if you have slaves and you set your rations too low, then you run the risk of a slave revolt. If you emancipate your slaves at any point, then they will join your normal worker pool. Oh and, BTW, in my system slaves (and workers for that matter) can be 'sacrificed' to generate shields towards whatever project you're doing. Also, certain improvements (like labour farms, slave markets etc) can generate additional food, income and shields for the city-dependant on how many slaves the city has.
The number of workers assigned to a terrain improvement job determines the chance of your workers being 'captured' if that square has been overrun by an enemy unit. Even ig you haven't assigned any UNITS to that job, an enemy unit has a VERY small chance of generating a 'slave unit' if it overruns the square. In this instance, you will probably lose a small proportion of your population in the process.
One last thing is that, in order to do jobs outside of a city radius, you require your national Public Works budget, and you can assign any workers (or slaves) currently in your 'central pool' to shorten the length of a job.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Addled Platypus]

Well said "The_Aussie_Lurker"


To furhter clarify

Depending on the amount of workers and depending on the amount of "jobs"

This could be like the trade screen, were I could select by job a different amount for each.
EXAMPLE
Total workers 10
Mine 3
Irragate 2
Clear forrest 5

Then you could select what city should get mined first?
and or pollution/forrest cleared

I would like to see a quick and easy interface

[Urban Ranger]

No Workers - the only advantage of them is getting killed by enemy combat units.

I suggest a combination system. A civilization can order certain tile to be worked on, and specify how many population points are to be used. Then the city (or cities) closest to that tile loses that many population points when work is in progress. Of course, the people would need food and payment.

A tile will also be improved overtime depending on how often it is worked, but it seems this is a bit limited. IOW it is very unlikely for any terrain conversion to occur. However roads, irrigation, etc. will be built.

[Kuciwalker]

I like the system proposed in a previous thread, where you create an improvement similarly to the way you do in CtP(2), and some of your workers automatically are set to goto the tile and do the improvement.

[dannubis]

and something related
the citizens working your tiles should become more productive once you reach a certain technological level.

i mean: a single farmer nowadays can produce a lot more food than lets say 100 years ago ... the same goes for a miner ...

[patcon]

The PW manager that some people claim reduces micromanagement doesn't seem to do that to me. You have assign output to a PW fund, then click on a tile to create the improvement there? How is that different than building a worker, sending him to a tile, and giving him a task?

When I need to do a lot of improvements, I create SoW's (Stacks of Workers) and move them in groups. The real drag is having to click "clean pollution" 8 times or more. If there could be a "stack task" analog to the "move stack" feature that would help a lot.

The "Guild Hall" idea got me to thinking, superworker specialized units. Once a civ acquires a requisite tech (different techs for different actions) a city with a Guild Hall and build superworkers skilled in one particular action (farmers, miners, road crews, lumberjacks, swamp rats, EPA workers, etc.). These would cost as much as 2 normal workers (shields and pop). The superworker would work at his specialized action with the speed of 3 normal workers (a gain of 50%), but at the speed of 1 normal worker on other actions (a loss of 50%, the price of specialization). Maybe allow workers to join into superworker specialized units; 2 workers can travel to a city with a Guild Hall and be upgraded into a superworker in a manner similar to military upgrades. (If the idea of combining 2 units into 1 is too hard, just make them more expensive in shields an 1 in pop.)

[Kuciwalker]

When I need to do a lot of improvements, I create SoW's (Stacks of Workers) and move them in groups. The real drag is having to click "clean pollution" 8 times or more. If there could be a "stack task" analog to the "move stack" feature that would help a lot.

I'm pretty sure they're even planning to have that in C3C in another patch, so it'll definately be in cIV.