While they're just twiddling their thumbs

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by senowen


Yes, automated patrols is something I've wished was available for years. I understand line of sight to be reflective of patrolling, but when the shortest period of time for a turn is one year I think troops could patrol much further than one or two squares. Besides its boring having to send my planes on recon missions every turn I not at war. If there is such a turn in late game. Being able to set a plot for a unit to patrol, even over several turns does not seem like something that would be hard to program into the game. The mechanics are basically already set up.

Anyway, I don't think it will happen.

never start thinking about how mcuh a unit should be able to accomplish in a game turn. It's just an aspect of civ games that can't be made to make even a tiny bit of sense.

[rah]

Since the AI seems to do it, I refuse to believe the logic isn't already in the game somewhere. (or some form of it) Especially since there is a recon option on planes. I don't see anything different about changing a one time thing to a repeating option.

[lange17]

Originally posted by Geronimo
never start thinking about how mcuh a unit should be able to accomplish in a game turn. It's just an aspect of civ games that can't be made to make even a tiny bit of sense.

I've actually rationalized it to myself some. I think of the game as having two time scales- the obvious "X years per turn" scale where most game functions occur (research, economy, growth, production) and then a much faster tactical scale on which units move. The latter is mapped onto the former for the purposes of having a playable game. Obviously there are some discontinuities where the two timescales interact that don't make much sense, but they each make sense within their own context. Instead of 490 years of peace followed by a ten year war, you just map a tactical ten year war onto 500 years of gametime.

A more obvious example of the same thing is in the Railroad Tycoon games. Your express passenger train might make it from Chicago to Milwaukee and back five or six times in a two-year fiscal period, which wouldn't be satisfactory for long-haul freight in Siberia much less important Midwestern bigwigs with places to go and people to see. However, if you think of it as trains running on a two-day tactical timescale mapped onto a two-year construction/financial timescale, it works out fine. Actually come to think of it, they may have actually written that into the game explicitly. I sort of remember a clock time that turned toward midnight as the two-year fiscal period wound down. Anyway...

[senowen]

Originally posted by Geronimo


never start thinking about how mcuh a unit should be able to accomplish in a game turn. It's just an aspect of civ games that can't be made to make even a tiny bit of sense.

I'm not that concerned about attempting to rationalize the movement potential of units in relation to the amount of "time" each turn takes. The restricted movement of units is a necessary mechanic in a turn-based game. I'm not only resigned to the situation, but I'm happy about the restriction.

What I am worried about is micromanagement of rather boring parts of the game. Having to manually move my units around only for doing recon is boring. If I have a horse archer that I want to patrol between two fixed points on the map until it is attacked, sees and enemy unit, or I tell it to stop, why can't I do that. The game already has a movement plotter, i.e. I can move a unit from the location it is at (point x) to another location I tell it to go to (point y) and the unit will travel to that location without any more intervention on my part. Why can't I just tell the unit to go back to point y after it reaches point x and then return back to y indefinately. I can't image it takes much code. I acknowledge that I can certainly make this happen manually, but I don't want to, its boring. It can't take much additional code to make this happen.
Enough. I think such a function has been requested for years. I think someone put this in the CivIII wishlist, but I can't remember now.

[Jaybe]

You can do effective patrols in Rise of Nations, but that's an RTS, and in most ways Civ is a much superior game.

[Kuciwalker]

I spam forts

[senowen]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I spam forts

Been there. I'll put forts around resources that are outside any of my cities fat crosses even though it isn't necessary. Just got to make sure that your enemy can't use the forts to their advantage.

[zeace]

Originally posted by senowen


Just got to make sure that your enemy can't use the forts to their advantage.

Sometimes you can control how/where an enemy will attack by building nice forts for him to take when he attacks. I had two border cities near each other, and every war I would get a stack marching towards the weaker city (Less culture, on flat land). I built a fort near the stronger city because my worker was bored and I thought I might start a war that direction. Turns out a war was started against me, but this time the large stack decided it was easier to attack the second city because they could hide in the fort on their way there.

Of course the second city was on a hill across a river so I was delighted. I've found a few times since where it's nice to influence how the AI will go about attacking you.

I usually have a slightly underpowered army but some spare cash and lots of production ability. So when I get attacked I almost never have a large counter-attack force ready. The AI doesn't need to hide in the bushes at this point because I have nothing to attack with. By directing him through a fort, over a hill, through a forest, sometimes you can slow him down, and that extra turn or two can help mobilize defenses.

[senowen]

Originally posted by zeace

The AI doesn't need to hide in the bushes at this point because I have nothing to attack with. By directing him through a fort, over a hill, through a forest, sometimes you can slow him down, and that extra turn or two can help mobilize defenses.

Nice exploit, I've never tried it but I'll be sure to do so now. I usually have something to counter, but it would be nice to direct the enemy to the right (i.e. wrong) city to attack.

[rah]

Just build improvement outside your fat cross if they have nothing better to do. The AI attackers will pause to pillage. It can sometimes buy you a turn or two, which can sometimes make the difference.

I may try that fort idea though.