did anyone ever want this?

[MRT144]

ability to build multiple units or facilities at the same time and allocate where the building materials went instead of being forced to choose one thing and stick with it or lose points for change.

example, building a wonder and a phalanx at the same time, and divide the cost or allocate the cost to each one accordign to your priority.

[TitanTim]

I've always wanted this. It makes more sense and allows for new options like "city workforce" which is dictated by city size, labour pool, and unrest/morale factors. Also, based on resources you may not be able to build anything or it could take a while to build. In addition, tech can give bonuses when building certain things including the ability to add more build queues (limited in the early game to more in the later game).

[Proteus_MST]

You have a similar thing in MOO3.

Here you have two different building queues, one for military units/spaceships and one for planetary buildings,
allowing you to build a building/planetary enhancement and a spaceship at the same time.
You also have sliders allowing you to control how much of the tax money goes into the military production and how much into the production of planetary buildings.

A similar system with 2 Buildings queues, one for units and one for city improvements and a single slider which determines how many percent of the city production go into military production and how much into the production of buildinge/wonders would be great, allowing us to produce 2 things at the same time and on the other hand also being easy enough that even a Civ-beginner could understand the concept.

[Aramis]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
A similar system with 2 Buildings queues, one for units and one for city improvements and a single slider which determines how many percent of the city production go into military production and how much into the production of buildinge/wonders would be great, allowing us to produce 2 things at the same time and on the other hand also being easy enough that even a Civ-beginner could understand the concept.

Best idea for Civ seen in a long time.

[MRT144]

based on government there could be bonuses or penalties for each que...

[Nikolai]

It's an idea I've supported for a while. Hopefully it'll be included in a way or another. OTOH, not all good ideas can be implemented and at the same time keep the game good, so I'll survive without it if I have to.

[lajzar]

Nice idea, but it completely destroys the concept of opportunity cost decision making.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by lajzar
Nice idea, but it completely destroys the concept of opportunity cost decision making.

++ Count me firmly against this idea for the reason stated above.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by lajzar
Nice idea, but it completely destroys the concept of opportunity cost decision making.

You still have to make decisions.
Dio I build the granary first or better the pyramids?
Do I built a settler or rather a phalanx to defend the city?

And the Computer-Opponent has to make the same decisions, which means that, if you might be able to build a large army because of the separate unit-build-queue, he is able to do it as well (at least if the AI is programmed intelligent enough ) and that, if you might be able to build a wonder earlier because of the separate Improvements-build-queue, the computer-opponent might as well be able to race to wonders.

So 2 separate queues very probably won´t make your job easier

[Elda king]

Very good! But I don't understand why only 2 queues, the number of queues that you should have should be based on your government (2 on despotism, 3 on republic, 1 on communism, etc.), or the city size (towns with 2 queues, cities with 3 queues and metropolis with 4 queues).

[TechWins]

Re: did anyone ever want this?

Originally posted by MRT144
ability to build multiple units or facilities at the same time and allocate where the building materials went instead of being forced to choose one thing and stick with it or lose points for change.

example, building a wonder and a phalanx at the same time, and divide the cost or allocate the cost to each one accordign to your priority.

No, I don't like the idea. It takes away from some of the strategy of building a wonder for X amount of turns, usually quite a while, and not having producing anything else out of that city in the meantime.

I hate to sound conservative, but I do not want to see changes made to the Civ series that are not a core part of the Civ feel. Most notably the game being turned based and one production item at a time fits that mold.


Regarding queues, I wish there was a way to set up a queue so that each time a new city is built it takes upon the "new city" build order queue. It would be nice if there were more flexiblity with the queues in general.

[Switch]

It's an interesting idea, and I can also see a way to make the war-time mobilization more useful too. For example, with a normal mobilization and a non-specifically war-based government (i.e., not Commy, Despot, or Fascism), you have a maximum unit production allocation of, say, 50%, except for primarily defence-based units, though only if the MP limit hasn't been reached for the city. Go into war-time mobilization, and you now have the option of going beyond that limit, to 100%, and now perhaps a lower limit of 50%, so you must allocate more than 50% to military units. War-time governments would have a similar limit, but would be better to have these limits higher than 50%, but with a correspondingly higher low-limit in war-time mobilization. Perhaps this might allow Fascism to actually be useful, with the highest military unit production rate allowable under normal mobilization...

Just a thought.

[Falconne]

Originally posted by lajzar
Nice idea, but it completely destroys the concept of opportunity cost decision making.

Not quite - you still only have limited resources and you have to decide how to allocate them.

It's a feature I always wished the game had, but the issue I see is that the abstractions used by Civ make it not so appealing:

You can't get any benefit from a partially constructed building or unit. Therefore, instead of constructing two buildings at the same time and having them both build slowly, it is probably better to build one quickly using all available resources and reap it's benefits while building the other.

Same is true of units. If the game was more granular, you would be able to start using buildings and units after a certain minimum level. You could continue construction on it further later on, if you wanted to improve the efficiency and quality of the building/unit (upgrade in other words), but that's not the Civ way.

Another issue is all resources being abstracted by "Shields". If towns had a "workforce" based on population and each building had a limit on the maximum number of workers who can work on it at one time, then the simultaneous building could work.

Unless some fundamental changes are made in the game, after a certain period of time, it wouldn't matter whether you built one thing at a time or many, because you would have achieved the same end result. It would make occasional short term difference, for e.g. at the start of a war, but that's about it.

[TechWins]

Originally posted by Falconne


Not quite - you still only have limited resources and you have to decide how to allocate them.

It's a feature I always wished the game had, but the issue I see is that the abstractions used by Civ make it not so appealing:

You can't get any benefit from a partially constructed building or unit. Therefore, instead of constructing two buildings at the same time and having them both build slowly, it is probably better to build one quickly using all available resources and reap it's benefits while building the other.

That's not necessarily true. If you enter war and in a high production city you've been working on a high production cost building it would be nice to be able to continue working on that building while trying to pop out a few cheap(er) units in the meantime. As lajzar said it takes away from the oppurtunity cost making decisions. Choosing to build that high cost building when you may enter war soon is apart of the risky decisions you sometimes have to make; granted some are more "risky" than others.

[Falconne]

Originally posted by TechWins


That's not necessarily true. If you enter war and in a high production city you've been working on a high production cost building it would be nice to be able to continue working on that building while trying to pop out a few cheap(er) units in the meantime. As lajzar said it takes away from the oppurtunity cost making decisions. Choosing to build that high cost building when you may enter war soon is apart of the risky decisions you sometimes have to make; granted some are more "risky" than others.

Yes, but you would be dividing your available resources between multiple projects, so the opportunity cost is still there. It is still a decision you have to make as to how to allocate resources between that expensive building and making units. A realistic decision at that.

I just think that the abstractions the game has would prevent this kind of feature from showing it's full potential.

I don't think it would cause micromanagement issues either. This could be implemented at a high level, like sliders to determine at the civ level how you want to allocate resources. It could be very high level (between civilian,military) or more detailed (civic, military, scientific, commerce, manufacturing, cultural, etc). Basically like the Galactic Civilizations model.