How do Sell/demolish improvements?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
There is an even simpler approach, sabre.

Founding and spreading religion, ... are pure beneficial, there is no malus in them.

not exactly true. If you spread the religion to other civs, they can build temples and get other religious bonuses. If you spread a relgion to your own cities that the aI founded, they can view your cities


But I digress


Plant forests should be in there. It would make environmentalism, IMHO by far the most useless civic choice, more entertaining.

[Kataphraktoi]

Originally posted by Dominae


That's the very essence of the strategic decision! Just because it's not obvious does not mean you should always be able to right your "wrongs". The decision to "go green" leads you down a certain path - time and experience will tell whether it was the "right" decision or not.

jumping in here,but what nation in history before the last 100 years has gone either green or used foresight and not mass chopped trees,strip mined,and fished without limit?

[notyoueither]

I don't think there is a need for disbanding buildings to prevent capture (scorched earth). Fight a few wars against advanced AIs, capture a few of their better developed cities, and look at how few buildings you will still have. The destructiveness of war is built into the conquest mechanics.

Another goal of the design was that SP and MP would play as much the same as possible, IIRC. In MP, you are not going to have time to go into your cities and destroy buildings, all at once or one at a time. The conquest mechanics do it for you.

Re the trees, it is part of the philosophy of the design as well that you should have choices to make, and then deal with the consequences. I did not find it hard to adapt to the impact that early chops would have on my late game supercities, but it did take a couple of games to get used to.

And again, you are very unlikely to be finding time to plant trees in MP. And again, the idea is that the baseline game should play as much the same as possible for both MP and SP.

It is understandable that not everyone is going to agree with the ideas behind the base design and the implementation. That is why a very moddable game was also important.

I fully expected that places like Apolyton would quickly gear up for mods aimed at SP and PBEM MP, as people want to put back things they think are missing, and that's fine. However, I suggest people give it a little time, and a few plays before you decide whether something is actually a mistake or not.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Dominae


That's the very essence of the strategic decision! Just because it's not obvious does not mean you should always be able to right your "wrongs". The decision to "go green" leads you down a certain path - time and experience will tell whether it was the "right" decision or not.

The "Chop Forest now or wait for Lumber Mills" tradeoff was explicitly designed into the game. Forget about the thing that's been taken away from you compared to Civ3 and look at what you have now!

Think of Lumber Mills as logging camps where you're planting and replanting, without the micromanagement. Presto! no need for a seperate plant Forest ability.

To replant at a much higher cost is just as viable a strategic decision, and it happens to be the real world one that many nations have taken. You've taken away a strategic choice in order to add one that the automated workers don't understand and cannot manage.

[notyoueither]

The automated workers do need a 'green' option. That is an oversight, IMO.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Jerh9e1k5
By making it impossible to destroy the coal plant you have a strategic decisions on whether or not to build it in the first place. Do you want to build it right away and get the production bonus as quickly as possible, but live with the extra pollution until you get the tech that someone mentioned makes buildings produce no pollution. Or would you like to wait for the clean plants but live with worse production until you get the needed technologies.

This is a strategy decision, I think it is a good one.

It's also a strategic decision if you can destroy the coal plant afterward; just one with lower consequences. Consider: do I build the Coal Plant now, knowing I'm going to have to build another power plant in a few dozen turns, or do I just do without the production until then? The balance is shifted a bit, but it's still an important decision.

Of course, that discussion is moot because apparently the negative effects stop when you build a replacement. That's a good compromise.

Originally posted by Dominae
Why was it lame to sell them when they cost upkeep in Civ3, but it's ok to destroy them when they do not in CIV?

Because you don't get money for destroying them. You gain nothing; you only undo a negative. That was not true in Civ3. In Civ3, you undid a negative, got a chunk of change, and reduced your maintenance cost.

The lameness was also that it felt wrong to "sell" them. To whom are you selling them? If you sell a coal plant, how come you no longer have electricity or pollution? It didn't make sense.

Originally posted by Dominae
I guess because you're free of the "equating things that are not equal" demon?

Be nice.

Originally posted by Dominae
I disagree that "scorched earth" (SE) makes for good gameplay. It allows the defender to just deny the offender his or her prize; defend your holdings tooth and nail, but burn them if you lose. Let me just say that warmongering needs every incentive in CIV...

...

The idea in CIV is that your cities are worth building, worth keeping, and, yes, worth capturing. Moreso than in Civ3 because on average there are fewer cities in CIV. Personally I do not feel SE fits into this scheme.

Hence my other point about how you shoot yourself in the foot, precisely because cities are more valuable. Suppose you have a city that has just enough defenders to barely withstand the upcoming attack. What do you do? Do you destroy a valuable improvement to deny it to your enemy? What if you live? Or do you keep it, gambling that you'll win? Alternately, suppose that you have two cities on a border, one of which has iron. Your enemy moves troops into your land in between them, and you assume he's going after the iron. So you destroy some improvements in that city. Turns out, however, he's going after the other city because he can see oil there that you can't. Or some other scenario.

[Harovan]

I don't think the missing destroy building option is an issue anymore. It was based on a mistake, the health malus does not remain when the old plant is replaced. I could care less about old buildings in my cities, as long as they don't generate a malus or cost upkeep.

But bring back forest planting! Screw them lumbermills.

And who the heck had the glorious idea of a pigtailed Catherine?

[Tventano]

After inventing Ecology you can build a Recyclong Center. That seems the only way to get rid of that sick faces.

[Venger]

Alot of good posts in this thread. I like some of the ideas - especially the time to grow forest vs. workpiling, that is utterly perfectly stated. You can't grow forest back faster by having more people planting the trees... a forest option should require X number of turns, perhaps 10. Good thinking!

Civ has almost always been praised for it's options - the appeal of the game is all of the things you can do. Who would argue that restricting options, especially ones that are clearly valid real-world, are better? I bet this change makes the first patch...

The key is - doing it in the most elegant way possible. So far, giving workers the ability to plant forest at a certain tech, and that forest taking X long to grow, seems not only the best logically, but also prevents lumberjacking.

Anyone have a more elegant solution?

Venger

[Hurin]

I don't think that anyone has the patience to read this whole thread. But, suffice it to say:

Yes, the ill-effects of a coal plant are superceded by a cleaner alternative as soon as they are built. Someone tried a nuclear plant above and saw the "green sickies" disappear. I tried a hydro plant and saw the same effect. So, what's the big deal?

If you're still bent out of shape because you "accidentally" built a coal plant in the city and now you want to get rid of it because everyone's getting sick. . . well, how likely do you think it is that a government would give electricity to a region, and then completely take it away?

As for them "taking away" functionality. . . that's only if you look at this game as a patch to Civ3. Civ4 is a new game, with a different philosophy to its design. They clearly wanted to make cities less disposable and the design seems to discourage scorched-earth tactics. Just because you don't like a design decision doesn't make it a bad design decision. You might as well get mad at the rules of Tennis because it won't let you touch the net.

H

[Venger]

Great, I posted in the wrong bloody thread - ignore my ranting above...

Venger
P.S. Not being able to demolish a building still blows...

[DeepO]

Foresting: I did it all the time in Civ3, and frankly, I'm glad it's gone.

SR, remember the dotted map of already forested tiles I created in GS just to get the bonus from each tile exactly once? That is not a hoop someone should need to jump through to get maximum efficiency. And if it is in, there is no other option than to use it.

Make a forest consume a worker, thus costing more than you can gain? Sadly, that is not entirely true. There will always be cases where this is exploitable. You basically have the option to invest a lot more in rushes than normal. This investment can come at a time where you need it (e.g. for rushing the Internet or Space elevator: just make sure you've got plenty of workers beforehand, and forest and deforest a complete city in one or two turns... voila, instant Internet).

Also, and this might be one of the biggest problems: it basically is a trade between different 'investments'. Workers are partly built using food, which transform into hammers (and given bonusses you might receive a lot of hammers too, in the right circumstances a forest can give you the equivalent of 100+ hpt). That in itself is not really a problem, only the AI will never be able to do it.

And don't tell me this kind of MMing is fun, and yes, it is MMing. You need to do a lot of different actions, planned out over years, to get an efficient result.

What does the current system give? A more equal bunch of tactics available for players and AIs alike. A hugely increased strategical decision, where saving forests for health and lumbermills is truely a cost to your early game. No difference between MP and SP. No problems with e.g. players building forest-highways in their empires for Woodsman II defenders, something the AI can't deal with. Less workers to run around with, so a faster gameplay. Etc...

So was it possible to include the foresting? Sure. And there are arguments in favour of it. I think the right choice was made, though.

DeepO

[Mace]

IMO, planting forest should not be in there.

However, NATURAL re-growth, which may be in there (can't tell yet...I swear i saw it happen though) to an unimproved tile might be neat.

Destroying buildings? Hmm probably should be in there, but it should actually cost the player money to do so...
and only allow 1 bldg destroyed/per turn.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Mace
However, NATURAL re-growth, which may be in there (can't tell yet...I swear i saw it happen though) to an unimproved tile might be neat.

That's certainly in, and it keeps on happening until late in the game if you don't improve a tile. Not sure on how it works exactly, though, and I would welcome e.g. lumber mills increasing the chance of natural regrowth.

DeepO

[seebs]

I would rather have the option of planting forests, although I can see the tradeoff with micromanagement.

I do think workers need much more control for their "automated" improvements. I played most of a game with automated workers, and they were awful. They would starve cities building cottages on everything, and leave a hill unmined for hundreds of turns while running around doing unrelated things.

On the general question of demolishing improvements... I'd like to see at least a way to deal with obsoleted improvements (say, a coal plant when you have hydro). I was going to do more with this, but for reasons I can't explain, my Three Gorges Dam had no effect at all.