Terrain Improvement?

[Addled Platypus]

wrylachlan suggested:

b)remove the tile bonuses from roads and RR and change it to a percentage bonus for "connectivity" to nearby cities. Essentially create an incentive to build roads connecting your cities to their neighbors, but a disincentive to build more roads and RR than necessary.


Now I am going to have to think, me likes so far

[Quezacotl06]

I don't think you need more incentive to connect cities. Besides, how are you supposed to make commerce improvements in terrain?

I think the reason they have workers building roads in endless fields is because commerce occures quicker with free flow of goods. And there are people who live in the hinterland (rural areas outside city outskirts), so there is a relative commerce bonus that I think should happen.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by punkbass2000 Workers have an upkeep, just like any other unit you build.

Yes, but if you increase their power incrementally as I'm suggesting. You also need a strong disincentive for the player to build any more workers than absolutely necessary. And at the scale of a modern economy, I don't think the current upkeep is enough of a disincentive. I suggest that a single worker in the modern era work as fast as 8 ancient workers, with a corresponding upkeep of 5x or so.

Originally posted by Quezacotl06
I don't think you need more incentive to connect cities. Besides, how are you supposed to make commerce improvements in terrain?

Thats the essence of my idea. You don't do commerce terrain improvements. You connect cities to get a bonus. Think of it this way:

In the current system-
Lets say city X has a grand total of 40 commerce in its "unupgraded" tiles. Once they are all roaded it gets 80 commerce.

In the basic system I'm suggesting-
City X still gets its 40 commerce from the tiles. But in order to get the 80 it needs to build roads that connect to nearby cities. For example city X is equidistant from A,B,C,D. When it connects to A, it gets a 25% commerce bonus. B=another 25%, C=another 25%, when it has connected to all four it has its 100% increase or 80 commerce.

But... here's the catch. The system outlined above creates an incentive to connect cities. But it doesn't create a disincentive to building roads everywhere else.

So the complete system would work something like this-
City X gets 40 commerce from its tiles. For each nearby city it connects to it gets a decreasing percentage bonus. 1st=50%, 2nd=40%, 3rd=30%, 4th=20% , etc. Also, roads have an upkeep. So if city X connects to A,B,C, and D it gets a total of %140 commerce bonus. But the upkeep is balanced such that the total comes out to roughly 80 commerce. If you were to build a 5th connection, the bonus would only be 10% or so, and the upkeep would outweigh it which would be a disincentive from building more connections than necessary.

***Note - all the numbers are totally made up to illustrate the point. Obviously the numbers would be balanced through playtesting to make it work.

So the end result is
1)Cities get rougly the same amount of commerce benefit from building roads as they did before.
2)It is now only beneficial to build roads that connect cities, not spam the map.
3)If you increase the buildtime of roads accordingly, you can balance it such that the same amount of worker-turns are necessary to achieve the same bonus.
4)To achieve the same commerce results, workers have to move significantly less often
5)Each individual road is much more strategically significant which makes war more fun.
6)Because of the decreasing bonus cities are differentiated by commerce. In cities with high commercein its tiles, it may be cost effective(vs. the upkeep) to build 5 connections, while for a city with low commerce, it may only be cost effective to build 1 or 2 connections.
7)And last, but not least its more visually pleasing.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by wrylachlan


So the complete system would work something like this-
City X gets 40 commerce from its tiles. For each nearby city it connects to it gets a decreasing percentage bonus. 1st=50%, 2nd=40%, 3rd=30%, 4th=20% , etc. Also, roads have an upkeep. So if city X connects to A,B,C, and D it gets a total of %140 commerce bonus. But the upkeep is balanced such that the total comes out to roughly 80 commerce. If you were to build a 5th connection, the bonus would only be 10% or so, and the upkeep would outweigh it which would be a disincentive from building more connections than necessary.

By trying to connect to every city, you are still needing workers.
Dpending how fast you want to get to this bonus, how many more workers would I tempoarly build?.

Dont get me wrong. I am still love the concept, just a wee bit off track.

[star mouse]

I voted Public Works, because it is the nearest to what I would like to see.

I haven't read through all the posts, but here's an outline of the system I would like to see, (and sorry for the long post):

1. Public works are paid for in gold as part of the global budget. (CTP2 paid for it in its equivalent of shields.) It would also be reasonable for some public works project to require strategic resources as well, eg: iron/coal -> railroad.

2. In CTP/CTP2, it was possible for public works to be done automatically by a city in a manner similar to a city governor. While this didn't work very well under the CTP system where working the city tiles was abstracted, it would be a solid feature in CIV4 where only the tiles that are being worked would get public works. This would be because it is obvious which tiles are getting the public works. Therefore, we have a public works manager in each city (like a governor) that develops the worked tiles in the city radius, and that can be enabled or disabled as desired. If the public works manager is disabled for that city, no public works are done automatically in that city.

3. If there is a public works manager in each city, it is likely that a bunch of such managers will deplete the public works budget, leaving none for any necessary micromanaging. Therefore, we should have a slider that we can set to reserve the public works budget for our own use. We can set the slider from 0% (let the city governors have it all) to 100% (I want to micromanage everything). This slider dictates how much of the global budget you want to take each turn. Setting it to 0% won't deplete any reserve you have already built up.

4. You should be able to disallow public works projects in a global screen (for example, don't build any irrigation). You could set it up so that only roads are built automatically, for example, and you micromanage the location of the mines and irrigation. New projects made possible by tech advances are inititally enabled or disabled as controlled by a global game setting.

5. Your personal public works budget that you accumulate can be used to fund public works in any manner you see fit.
* Public works outside a city radius
* Give to any single city so that their outstanding projects are completed faster
* Micromanage any city to your heart's content.
* Provide extra funding to all city governors.

6. It follows then that there are two public works pools, (a) one for the city governors to spend, and (b) your personal public works stash. City governors won't build any surplus in their pool unless there are no outstanding city public works projects (no worked tiles in a city without maxed public works). Generally, the city pool will be depleted each turn. The value of needed public works for all cities would be shown with the pools. You should be able to transfer public works funding between these pools as you see fit. This would be managed on your Budget screen using a simple user interface.

7. When micromanaging public works, it is done in the style of CTP2. You place your orders for a tile, it is taken out of your Public Works reserve, and the improvement is done in a few turns. In CTP2, it was not possible to speed-build public works like you can do in CIV3 with workers. We should be able to speed-build public works, but make it cost more. If you want that 4-turn improvement done in 1 turn, make it cost 4 times as much.

8. Cities can make public-works specialists (civil engineers) in the same way they can make entertainers, scientists, tax collectors and the like. These specialists contribute directly to the public-works budget, and also reduce the cost of public works in that city. The cost reduction works by reducing the cost of each project (where a project is one improvement to one tile). Two specialists could reduce the cost of two projects in that city radius per turn, for example. Reseraching a specific tech advance is required before being able to make such specialits.

9. The city governor AI should build public works on all worked tiles, and also connect any of these tiles containing roads to the city itself, so that road networks can form naturally.

10. Some city improvements may require public works funding to build in addition to shields (city walls, aqueduct, anything else that would be a large structure) but not improvements that are simply buildings (courthouse, temple, bank, etc).

11. If you pillage a tile where public works are currently being constructed, the public works stop being constructed in that tile, and you get half of the value of those public works added to your public works pool. This works anywhere (your territory or your enemy's).

[star mouse]

The basic problem with the worker system under CIV3 is that you have to spend a large part of every turn dealing with assigning tasks to an army of workers, or having to put up with automation that is less than satisfactory.

With workers, building terrain improvements is a task that often interferes with the gameplay. I found it rather unsatisfying when I had a stack of tanks at an enemy city, and in the middle of a battle I had some worker slob be the next unit in line waiting for orders. Having to switch tasks like this is quite annoying.

With the public works system, you only deal with public works when you want to, which may be once every few turns. You didn't have to switch tasks from fighting an enemy to micromanaging terrain several times a turn.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex By trying to connect to every city, you are still needing workers.
Dpending how fast you want to get to this bonus, how many more workers would I tempoarly build?.

Dont get me wrong. I am still love the concept, just a wee bit off track.

The problem with workers IMHO isn't just the number of them, but the number of times you have to tell them what to do. By cutting the number of tiles to be roaded/RRed by 75% or so, you're cutting down on the number of commands you have to execute with your workers.

The total number of them problem is addressed by the idea of increasing their productivity (AND UPKEEP) over time.

Another way to discourage overbuilding of workers would be to put a hard or soft cap on the number of workers who can work together in a tile. Or alternatively a minimum number of turns required to build a road/rr.

[Tamerlin]

I know that it must have been already discussed but I am just popping up here to say that I won't consider buying Civ4 if it does not get rid off the old worker system which is, IMO of course, a source of uninteresting micromanagement.

A public work system is, IMO once again, far more interesting. The player should be allowed to build roads outside of his territory though as it would be difficult to connect some of the cities without such an option.

CtP and CtP2 PW systems are fine.

[Straybow]

There are probably equally many who will say the opposite.

I like both the Civ2 work-for-food Settlers and double-rate Engineers. I also like the SMAC Terraformers that can't found cities and don't require food support.

Slave units would be a mix: only half the food support but unable to found cities. Slaves could be captured from enemy tiles, which would diminish the city population. Slaves could be produced (breed/trade) w/o decreasing pop.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
The problem with workers IMHO isn't just the number of them, but the number of times you have to tell them what to do. By cutting the number of tiles to be roaded/RRed by 75% or so, you're cutting down on the number of commands you have to execute with your workers.

Allow a player to create a 'locked' workgang that works as a single unit (example - it may have 4 workers in it) and create a bonus for the use of those workgangs (a 4-unit workgang may lop off an additional turn off of tile improvement construction over the use of 4 single workers that are creating the same type of improvement) and it would be a step in the right direction.

But I still favor a PW-based setup and getting rid of rail sprawl.

[Chuckles]

I liked the CTP system because it was so easy to use and I spent the mid game playing the game instead of playing the workers.

I liked the Civ system because I could overbuild workers early on and be way ahead of other civs in terms of infrastructure and transportation.

So CTP was probably mroe realistic and made the games shorter. Not convinced that it was more fun overall but that sentiment goes for the game overall.

[playshogi]

I like Civ3 style workers in the beginning. But by the Modern Age they become tedious. So, why not Civ3 style workers in the Ancient Age, but starting with Steam Power, the workers must be joined to cities and CtP, public works, is established.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by playshogi
I like Civ3 style workers in the beginning. But by the Modern Age they become tedious. So, why not Civ3 style workers in the Ancient Age, but starting with Steam Power, the workers must be joined to cities and CtP, public works, is established.

Sounds

[Kuciwalker]

It's all moot now.

[Vince278]

True.