Civ4 - First tings first

[DarkSlayer]

Before we start on the wish list, I think we have to say what is wrong with civ3 so that Firaxis doesn't does the mistake twice.

1.
I hate the waiting in the game. I do want the autosave to be ON, but it uses a humongus long time to do something. If I have 100 workers doing stuff, I hate waiting to see them moving. There is no "Animate everything but workers" button.
The AI part in civ3 is actually fast compare to civ1 & 2. Fix the waiting, things must be fast.
The multiplayer part is also so slow that it is no fun playing.

2.
I hate repetetive tasks. I have 100 workers, and when I can get railroad I want to connect my cities as fast as h***, but when workers are in automode, they don't care.
Also, when I attack... I bring 8 cannons, 2 pikemen, and 10 cavalry in one stack, very powerfull ... but moving 20 units from square 1 to square 2, and keep them in a stack ( for obvious reasons ) is a days work.
Also I have 20 planes, and I want to bomb a city or whatever ...
My point is, repetetive tasks is why I don't play this game this much. It's boring.
Gluing units together, and automate alot of tasks is possible and should be an option IF YOU WANT IT.
If you want to micromangage ... fine ... if you want to automate some tasks ... let me have the option.

3.
Diplomacy needs more options and intelligence in the sence of communication. If the ai walk over my territory, and I have told him to f*** of for the 4 time, does he know why I wage war then? Also, a puny AI should be alot more respectful, rather than walking on my territory and not take a hint.
Also, when I walk on the AI territory, I'll get a message to f*** of, and I have the option to wage war or p*** of. I want the option to say "I don't care", and let the AI determine if he thinks it is wort to wage war.
I want an AI that are able to understand and take more logicaly decision.

4.
hmm... I'll stop for now

I guess that civ 4 will not be different from civ 3, but I hope they create an engine that can run classic civ, without to much new stuff, but also have an engine that makes it possible to create experimental civ. Because alot of suggestions you read about here and there is actually good, and interessting, but it can be awfully costly for firaxis to mess with civ by going experimental in civ4 ...

have an engine civ3 ++ worthy, and make it supermoddable... thats my wish. And having a good engine will let them create a cheap and good civ5

[DarkSlayer]

Hmm ... no replies?

Another thing... Civ4 must be more multitasking friendly, I mean, I should be able to alt+tab and do some MSN/Winamp/mail or whatever easily. Especially if civ4 goes 3D. The game itself takes hours, and be able to do some other small tasks while your playing is wanted. I don't want to wait 5min before civ4 is minimized, and I'm ready to change some music, then 5min before civ is maximized again.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Re: Civ4 - First tings first

Originally posted by DarkSlayer
Also, when I attack... I bring 8 cannons, 2 pikemen, and 10 cavalry in one stack, very powerfull ... but moving 20 units from square 1 to square 2, and keep them in a stack ( for obvious reasons ) is a days work.
Gluing units together, and automate alot of tasks is possible and should be an option IF YOU WANT IT.
If you want to micromangage ... fine ... if you want to automate some tasks ... let me have the option.

Done, this is now part of the game.

They said we will soon have the ability to merge Workers into a Mass Worker Unit soon.

[Rasputin]

you can move units in stacks now, but it still moves one unit at time instead of grpahically mioving as a stack.


also i think you need a new machine if it takes 5 minuters to ALT TAB between applciations...

[Bleyn]

I definitely agree that worker automation needs major improvement. Of course, I've never really been happy with the governers/automation in any 4X TBS game. With the worker automation in Civ3, it never really seemed like it paid that much attention the the priorities that I set. In particular, it always seemed like the automation was completely stuck on optimizing cities for food first and anything else second, even when set otherwise. Which is really annoying if the city in question happens to be surrounded by a lot of grasslands, and what you need is more shields and not more food.

I've always felt that the automation needs the ability to specific exactly what your priorities are in a simple but useful manner. I think part of the problem is that the settings (and I'm guessing the AI) don't acknowledge the difference between optimizing for food to avoid starvation, and optimizing for food to produce growth.

What I'd like to see instead of selecting yes and no on emphasizing the areas is a numbered list format of my priorities. Items that could be on the list for workers might include food for pop. stablity, food for pop. growth, industry, commerce, city interconnectedness, clearing forests, clearing jungles, and pollution cleanup.

Personally, the top of my list would be stability, industry, commerce, growth. For a city all surrounded by grasslands, under Civ3 terrain rules, it would be obvious that I want a majority of the tiles mined, all of them roaded after mining, and maybe a couple with irrigation. Where a city surrounded by plains would get more irrigation under those priorities.

In the same fashion, the city governer could be set with a similar list of priorities for things like pop. stability, pop. growth, industry, commerce, entertainment, and science for controlling which tiles are being worked by the population.

Little things like this could go a long way in making Civ better.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Rasputin
you can move units in stacks now, but it still moves one unit at time instead of grpahically mioving as a stack.


also i think you need a new machine if it takes 5 minuters to ALT TAB between applciations...

Not if you hold SHIFT (at least, not always).

[DarkSlayer]

The moving units in a stack today is prone to bugs, and doesn't really work. I select a stack of units and ask them to move as a stack to place B, then it only moves some of them, so in stack of 10 - 15 units, you'll have to repeat the task 2 - 3 times.

What would be smart is an interface where you select a number of units and glue them togheter, or un-glue them.

The worker stuff... I have an idea of an worker-action window, where you get a map of your area. Then you could ask the system to suggest "what should be done", irrigate here, road there etc. Then you could say, mine here, road there .. and your suggestions takes presedence over the default worker plan. In this way you could keep areas forrested, where needed etc. But you should also "create projects", where you say ... road from here - to there ... and put a priority on it. Then the project would get a percentage of workers to start working on it.

Well - 5 min af ALT Tab is an exaggeration, but it feels like 5min, and just to put things right, my comp is far better than the majority of computers out there.
My point is: Civ is a game that takes forever to finish, but doesn't need 100% attention, beeing able to respond to MSN, change music in Winamp etc ... should be like snapping a finger. Alt-Tab in a game like Medal of Honour, CS, or whatever, doesn't really give that much sense, since the game demands 100% of your attention.

By finding out what was good, and what was bad in Civ3, you'll get a better platform to develop Civ4.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by DarkSlayer
The moving units in a stack today is prone to bugs, and doesn't really work. I select a stack of units and ask them to move as a stack to place B, then it only moves some of them, so in stack of 10 - 15 units, you'll have to repeat the task 2 - 3 times.

I have never witnessed this. I can't tell it never happens, but I can sure tell you that if you experience this often, you are doing something wrong.

And I agree with Rasputin: if it takes you 5 minutes to alt+tab, you should consider changing your machine.

As for the 100+ workers: if you have so many workers, you're probably playing on a huge map or bigger. Civ3 was designed for "standard" maps with 8 Civs. Bigger maps have been included only because Firaxis wanted to please the fanbase. However, the pay for big maps is that you have to wait for a long time. An exponentially long time: the bigger the map, the increasingly slower the game gets.

[Kuciwalker]

Stacked movement really isn't the sort of thing that's the focus of this forum - it isn't a gameplay change. It is simply a tool to reduce MM without changing the game mechanics.

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by skywalker
Stacked movement really isn't the sort of thing that's the focus of this forum - it isn't a gameplay change. It is simply a tool to reduce MM without changing the game mechanics.

I disagree. If we don't talk about the tools we want to see in Civ4 as much as the mechanics that we want to use those tools on, we could very well have a repeat of the stack movement tool in Civ3.

The reason stack movement sucks right now is specifically because it was an add on, an afterthought. Firaxis didn't think it was important enough to plan into the code way ahead of time, and had to kludge it in in a patch when they realized their mistake.

If we make it clear that we want tools to simplify stack movement, governers that are worth trusting, good ways of telling workers where to terraform, and other micromanagement reducers, they stand a chance of getting in. But if we completely ignore them, who knows what we'll see.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar


It's happend with me on an on-and-off occasion

I thought you didn't have C3...

[DarkSlayer]

Whether Civ3 was designed for std. maps or not, is not interesting at all, because the design of the game shows huge flaws in how the game works. Yes I play Huge w lots of AI.

But even playing multi- w/3 ppl takes a insane long time, because the design of the gameengine is the worse ever. Bad netcode, tools for automating tasks is either missing or have flaws, bad graphic code etc etc. By programming the game differently, much of these "problems" would be gone. We wouldn't have to wait and do repetetive tasks - even on a huge map w/40 AI - 4000 workers moving around.

Stacked movement is something I always have wanted, since moving troops around is the #1 time consumer. The #2 is administrating alot of cities.

By pointing out these "Problems" + "Time consuming, boring, repetetive tasks", then the game designers can implement them early. I cannot see why ppl won't agree on these "problems", because they doesn't alter anything of the existing or possibilities for future gameplay features. I say they will make Civ a better game.

...and again... alt+Tab feels like 5min, it doesn't take 5 min. But my point is clear. If Atari wants a better computer than Pentium 2 w/Geforce 2 MX for Civ4, then they should fire every developer on the projects. Even if Civ is going 3D, they would be nuts if Civ4 becomes heavy. The only thing that can be heavy is the AI, and YOU should decide how much time you will give the AI.

[Grumbold]

I'd start by asking for a really serious scenario editor to be integrated into the game from the ground up. Something that can create really in depth scenarios including scripting and the ability to radically tune options like cultural assimilation. Civ 2 and CtP1/2 are still far more flexible and long lasting than Civ 3 imho because of their modability.