New national wonder idea - unit upgrader

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
You will recall that in Civ2, units upgraded via Leo's lost veteran status... that isn't really desirable in Civ4...

This already happens. In Civ4, the (default) settings make it so that the maximum amount of EXP an upgraded unit can keep is 10.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The keeper
Or the new strategy would be to build a bunch of warriors - Then disband them all while constructing a wonder to speed the production along.

Nothing wrong with that. A standard tactic in Alpha Centauri is to make supply crawlers and disband them in bases that are building wonders.

This way there may be a good reason to build a whole bunch of solid cities, as opposite to a few fantastic ones and a whole lot of so-so ones.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Willem
The reason the Caravan was dropped after Civ2 was that it was an exploit that the AI didn't know how to use.

I would't call that an exploit.

At any rate just because the AI in Civ 2 doesn't know how to use it doesn't mean the AI in Civ 4 doesn't know how to use it. Com'on, it's at least 10 years. Furthermore, this game can be patched far more easily than previous ones and the SDK is supposedly will be available.

So saying something the AI can't use is an exploit has ceased to be a reason IMO.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I would't call that an exploit.

It is if the human can milk it at the AIs expense.

At any rate just because the AI in Civ 2 doesn't know how to use it doesn't mean the AI in Civ 4 doesn't know how to use it. Com'on, it's at least 10 years. Furthermore, this game can be patched far more easily than previous ones and the SDK is supposedly will be available.

We don't need them anyway, we have Engineers now. And the AI does know how to use those. How many advantages do people want in a game?

[Nikolai]

More than you obviously.

[samspock]

Not that this is on the original topic at all but:

How about changing the Engineer specialist (or maybe just super specialist) to allow you to direct their hammers to another city? If you don't then they all go locally. Perhaps add to it a distance penalty where if you are x distance away you can't do it at all and reduced ammount for closer in. The city right next door sould get all of them.

Since Engineers are one of the hardest specialists to get then it would be quite hard to over use them.

[Willem]

Originally posted by samspock
Not that this is on the original topic at all but:

How about changing the Engineer specialist (or maybe just super specialist) to allow you to direct their hammers to another city? If you don't then they all go locally. Perhaps add to it a distance penalty where if you are x distance away you can't do it at all and reduced ammount for closer in. The city right next door sould get all of them.

Since Engineers are one of the hardest specialists to get then it would be quite hard to over use them.

Why not just create an Engineer in the city where you want the Hammers?

[Ijuin]

Maybe because the city would have to have the food and population available to support an Engineer?

That said, I would like to have a "warehouse" box to store hammers and food the way that gold is stored in the nation's treasury. You could instruct a city to devote its hammers (or its surplus food) to the warehouse at a 50% penalty, the same as how you can build Research, Capitalization, or Culture. The hammers or food from the warehouse could then be donated to the city of your choice, with the restriction that the city could not receive a larger amount than it is already producing--e.g. the city produces ten hammers per turn locally, so you could only add ten hammers per turn to it.

[amicus curiae]

I like the way it is. Retrofitting and upgrading via wonder would be too much micormanagement.