Civ should be about nations, not collections of cities

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Using a 'one screen per city' approach will surely tire when you have dozens or scores of cities.

What happens if you amalgamate the information into a list, though? And in that list you allow sorting by pertinent values. You can very quickly see pertinent information and drill down by this method. City management certainly becomes easier when you can see an overview and quickly find what you need to find, and select multiple cities and 'process them' for want of a better word; especially building queues and specialist management if you are thinking in a 'Sid-Civ' kinda way.

That helps a bit but not much. Instead of having 50 cities to deal with each turn, you have maybe 5 or 6 lists. Though I find myself often need to click around the big map to see where the various cities are anyway, so I can remember why I do what I am doing

Originally posted by LDiCesare
In Clash, we don't use cities but provinces, which span several squares. That allows not to micromanage square-wise. City improvements etc. are considered as an abstraction (i.e. no actual buildings). This has the drawback of being a bit too abstract, so we may need to explain the figures as "you have X libraries" if the player requests info.

Region is a good idea, and there was some in-depth discussion about regions and city growth and the whole works in the old Civ 3 Forum. I think the Clash model can be abstracted even further, e.g., put x% of budget into education/knowledge etc.

Originally posted by Big Crunch
Saving build queues and templates, and copying them to other cities is invaluable. Shame Civ3 doesn't have it.

That helps, but your template is not fixed, because build sequence keeps changing due to various factors such as location of the city in question, whether a war is going on, civilisation advancement etc.

That's not the only thing. How about checking each city to shift the work force around, esp. for making entertainers to keep the people happy? That's quite dreary.

Originally posted by ottok
At example:
Do road from South on Cairo to north on Nurmansk?
or make irrigations to nw Some to ne Some

Yes, something like that can be good. Instead of moving little Settlers to do all the stuff, make decisions at a higher level.

Originally posted by DrSpike
To those who don't want to micro at all I suggest you play games from a different genre.

Oh be quiet If you have played Romance of the Three Kingdom, that's a good level of detail without getting too tedious. If not, I highly recommend the first version, should be available for download at the Underdogs.

[Urban Ranger]

Mr. President - Killer Bees? Nice!

[Trifna]

Urban Ranger, you forgot me

All units could be produced on one single panel. Nevermind, a modern production is not "by city" but "by country". Of course, if your territory is separated in 2, you'll have 2 panels.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Region is a good idea, and there was some in-depth discussion about regions and city growth and the whole works in the old Civ 3 Forum. I think the Clash model can be abstracted even further, e.g., put x% of budget into education/knowledge etc.

Hi UR, we're doing this right now with the new econ gui. Its not a complete spec yet, but the vision is to have something like 6-8 high-level categories that you can invest in civ-wide. Then you can drill down in any of several ways (geographically, or in detailed exectution for those orders). I'd like to hear your opinions on how we're doing it if you're interested. The discussion is in the thread Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+. If you don't comment now, don't complain if its not what you want later!

[Cyclotron]

I think the big difference here is that what you guys are proposing is not really Civ. I appreaciate and understand your dislike of micromanagement, but the civ series is based on the control of city production. I know it's annoying when people tell you to play a different game if you don't like this one, but I think in this case it's true; there's only so much you can pull from a civ game before it becomes something that is not civ. Most of the supporters of this de-centralization, from what I am hearing, don't like the civ games because of their city focus. That's perfectly fine, but what you are proposing is a different game, not what "civ should be about."

I wish mark and others well on their alt civ projects... but what is proposed here seems to be a proposal by those who don't like the very basic premises of civ to create a new game, as opposed to an attempt to improve the game as it is.

[Trifna]

cyclotron:
I believe a civ game can have as many details in management and be something else than ONLY city-based. What I proposed is extremely simple... You'd pass from having 4 cities at 10 shields to only one with 40 and you may distribute shields as you wish. Your management isn't less precise... And it's not city-based buildings, it's units who anyway can move with railroad.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Trifna
cyclotron:
I believe a civ game can have as many details in management and be something else than ONLY city-based. What I proposed is extremely simple... You'd pass from having 4 cities at 10 shields to only one with 40 and you may distribute shields as you wish. Your management isn't less precise... And it's not city-based buildings, it's units who anyway can move with railroad.

I'm not sure I understand. Decreasing the amount of cities does nothing but limit what I am able to do...

I think that making a city management screen to control all city production queues at once is a good idea, but that's just an interface change. The system, IMO, should not change.

[LDiCesare]

I think the big difference here is that what you guys are proposing is not really Civ. I appreaciate and understand your dislike of micromanagement, but the civ series is based on the control of city production. I know it's annoying when people tell you to play a different game if you don't like this one, but I think in this case it's true; there's only so much you can pull from a civ game before it becomes something that is not civ. Most of the supporters of this de-centralization, from what I am hearing, don't like the civ games because of their city focus. That's perfectly fine, but what you are proposing is a different game, not what "civ should be about."

I beg to disagree.
A non-city solution is about the only one I can envision which allows me to play a civ game that scales well. I love city management when I play OCC for instance, but I can't spend as much time managing my cities if I have ten or twenty of them. The game would last too long for me. I still like the game, and a simple thing like CtP2's build queues makes the game much better at empire management than civ2 although still retaining cities. So for me, civ2 is OK for small empires, CtP2 for bigger ones (although city limits make it not so good at it IMO), but both are civ-like games.
It all depends on how you play the game. If I want one of my cities to be a SSC, I'll micromanage it, and let other cities live their lives because I'd find it tedious to manage all of them. If the game provides me some solution to get these relatively uninteresting areas of my empire mananged all by themselves correctly without my doing anything, then I'd be happy because I could concentrate on SSC and military units for ten or 12 turns, and then come back and check everything. If I can check everything fast, then it is OK to have lots of details in each city. But if I can't group them geographically by giving them abstract orders like "1)be happy 2)build science 3)make sure you don't cost more than what you earn", I have to micromanage. Give me a solution so I can give the above order easily to a collection of cities, while still being able to override those I really want to mess with, and I feel like I control my civ, like I do when I OCC.

[DrSpike]

I'm with Cyclotron........besides if the game as you want it is as intricate as Civ then I don't see how it reduces micro; it just substitutes it.

I am all for ways to reduce micro within the city based model, as I have mentioned before in these threads, but the nation based approach suggested here sounds oversimplified.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

I beg to disagree.
A non-city solution is about the only one I can envision which allows me to play a civ game that scales well. I love city management when I play OCC for instance, but I can't spend as much time managing my cities if I have ten or twenty of them. The game would last too long for me. I still like the game, and a simple thing like CtP2's build queues makes the game much better at empire management than civ2 although still retaining cities. So for me, civ2 is OK for small empires, CtP2 for bigger ones (although city limits make it not so good at it IMO), but both are civ-like games.

But Civ2 is not a small empire game. Saying that you like civ2 because you can tolerate it when playing small empires... that's not liking the game. It's like saying that you don't like building things, but then saying how much you like an RTS game because you can just move units around and not build anything. Liking a single part of the game and hating the rest does not count as actually liking the game.

But if I can't group them geographically by giving them abstract orders like "1)be happy 2)build science 3)make sure you don't cost more than what you earn", I have to micromanage.

Have you played Civ3? I never need to manage citizen moods a la Civ2 with the governor function in Civ3. There's a ton of other stuff you can do with it too.

Besides, I fail to see what your argument has to do with the original proposal of removing the city emphasis from Civ. A game can add abstract orders without changing the nature of the game, or taking the emphasis off cities.

Give me a solution so I can give the above order easily to a collection of cities, while still being able to override those I really want to mess with, and I feel like I control my civ, like I do when I OCC.

Sounds good... but like I said, you don't need to change the city model to do that.

[MrBaggins]

The "make sure you don't cost more than what you earn" is defeating part of the purpose of the game:

Games are fun because they include interesting alternatives, that make a difference.

ROI is an interesting aspect to choices within 'civ'.

Removing it because you don't want to think about it does not make a better game.

It makes a more simplistic game. Removing game complexity is attacking the wrong component issue.

Micromanagement is a function of complexity of change * number of components. To solve it, you can either reduce the number of components or make the interface to change them better.

If managing cities involves less effort than the gratification you get out of it... the problem that you suggest is solved.

How do you achieve this?

You give the player only so many organizational entities as they want to have, and balance them appropriately so that the "ICS" player has as much "power" as the "OCC" player. You assist the management of multiple cities through a sortable list. You don't need multiple lists... just one with several columns where each can be ranked, and action can be taken 'by group'.

MrBaggins

[LDiCesare]

The "make sure you don't cost more than what you earn" is defeating part of the purpose of the game:

You don't understand what I mean. That "make sure" thing is exactly a "don't bother with..." the same way the governors are. If you say this defeats the purpose of the game, then governors do too, and do it worse. What I said was I wanted to be able to specify a set of priorities. Here, I chose an example where I didn't want to run a deficit in a given city, but I want to be able to change that by switching a policy in one place. If I want a lot of my cities to change orders, I don't want to run them individually if I can give the orders at the empire level.

What I said is typically the ability to specify a RoI at empire level instead of setting the same figure in every city. Then, if I want to override that in a given city, I sure want to be able to.

Adding abstract orders changes the feeling of the game. When instead of managing cities you change orders at empire level (like CtP2 sliders vs. Civ2 controls which are not as fine), you feel you own an empire rather than a collection of cities. At least I do.

But Civ2 is not a small empire game. Saying that you like civ2 because you can tolerate it when playing small empires... that's not liking the game.

That is not what I said. Your definition of what liking should be is a bit strange to me by the way. Do you love everything in civ2 including every cheat? If not you don't like the game?
I say that civ2 is harder to play than CtP2 when your empire gets big because for example when you go in revolution, then you have to check each and every city to make sure it doesn't revolt. In CtP2, you don't have that problem, thus CtP2 "scales" better, and thus I prefer CtP2 over Civ2 (except for the ai) because I can manage a bigger empire with less tedium. So the sentence was intended as a comparison of the games, not as a judgment of whether I like them or not. Plus I challenge anyone to manage an ICS empire the way they manage a 10-city or 30-city empire.

[MrBaggins]

Having *just* ROI based city governing to solve micromanagement is like having an autopilot in a flight sim, but with shoddy instrumentation and no time compression.

Governers as a whole *are* too. They are a fix (or actually a crutch) for a problem that should be fixed another way.

City management that takes time and energy, for little reward is tedious and ultimately pointless.

The problem isn't that cities need to be managed, but the methods of managing them is bad.

A really nice queue designer and portfolio manager... would go a long way... to solving the root problem... without taking the piloting out of the game.

You make your choices, ROI included... if you make bad choices... they hurt... you learn... you adapt... you improve. Later, you can still tweak; if those tweaks matter.

Its an additive solution, instead of a subtractive one.

Subtractive solutions are the kind found in Civ3... and their effect is negative to the game experience.

---

People can cope with about 7 simultaneous components in a scenario, before their attention degrades. We 'cope' by limiting our field of view to an appropriate number of components. If we can't... the decision making is hurt in the process.

Ctp2's system was not taken far enough. With filtering and the possibility to control groups beyond 'mass build queue management' (like specialist management), then we'd have something close to a perfect nation manager, given the controls we are changing.

MrBaggins

[Trifna]

Ok... I would like someone to comment this idea:
Instead of a city-by-city unit production management, it would be managed in one window from the moment you get more modern, this since anyway units can be produced in many places at the time normally. Less micro, not losing control on anything, almost just INTERFACE.

Comments pleaaaaaase...

[Trifna]

[sry, it posted twice]