Police = useless?

[Harovan]

Policemen come in a time, when you'll be building mostly units anyway. Civil Engineers don't do squat under these circimstances. Policemen can help you to turn that 48 or 49 shield city into an efficient tank producer.

[joncnunn]

Alexman is right, this is before all city improvements like Factorys, Libaries, etc.

While Civ Eng / Taxmen / Scientists are after corruption, they are also after city improveemnts.

In normal pratice, they are worth 1 shield initally until you have a Factory, then either 1 or 2 depending upon rounding issues with a Factory, and then 2 shields when Hoover Dam is built. The 3 is from occansionly rounding with Nuclear Power Plant.

The occansinal effective 3 extra commerce is from rounding with all three of either science improvements or all three income improvements depending upon where you are on the silder and it's rounding issues.

Originally posted by alexman
Why are people so hard on Policemen?

If you have the right city improvements, Policemen can give you up to 3 extra shields and 3 extra commerce, even more if Newton and/or Copernicus are present. This is more than any other specialist can provide.

[alexman]

Originally posted by joncnunn
The 3 is from occansionly rounding with Nuclear Power Plant.

Or always, with Nuclear Power plus Manufacturing plant.

[Xorbon]

Originally posted by alexman
Why are people so hard on Policemen?

It's been that way since the Rodney King video...

[Willem]

Originally posted by Tall Stranger
WHY? What on earth is wrong with telling someone how to adjust the game to their liking??? Lots of people mod the game: that's WHY they have an editor. Unfortunately, many people don't realize how much you can actually change in the game.

Just because you expect Firaxis to develop the game to correspond to YOUR idea of exactly how the game should play (and b**ch when they don't) doesn't mean EVERYONE has a similar view. Willem was simply trying to be helpful. I guess that's a foreign concept to you.

Way to go team!

IMO, it's much more productive to change the game the way you'd like it to be played than to whine and moan about the deficiencies. But then I guess some people get a kick out of ranting for no logical reason.

Or maybe they just think that Firaxis is God, and that they know better than everyone else what works best for all players, with any deviation from their vision being tantamount to heresy.

[Capt Dizle]

The topic of this thread dealt with the use of policemen in the game. This could have resulted in an intelligent and useful discussion of the various specialists and their potential best uses in the game PER THE FIRAXIS DEFAULT SETTINGS.

To break in to the discussion with a comment about changing the DEFAULT SETTINGS via the editor is essentially a threadjack. It is not helpful nor is it welcome IMO.

I would suggest that posters who are gut busting determined to beat folks over the head with the editor option make use of the private messaging system.

[Harovan]

jimmytrick has a point. The game should be balanced and work well with the default setting. To shout at everyone "If you don't like it, change it in the editor" doesn't solve any problem. It creates misunderstandings. Look, I took over the whole map yesterday with one warrior. (It was a 100.100.10 &Uumlr-Warrior. I changed it in the editor, because $"@*%&§ Firaxis made the original Warrior too weak ) See what I mean? Same goes for corruption and waste, and for every other setting in the game. To change things in the editor just to appease own likes or dislikes is the death to every sane game discussion in a forum.

[DrSpike]

Hehe I followed the debate with a few chuckles. Personally I only use the editor to see how the game works, not for editing. I want my experiences to be comparable with the game others are playing. Plus, I bought the game so I wouldn't have to write it.

You probably could let people get away with offering a little useful info to those who might not know it JT, but now that you can edit everything up to the colour of Caesar's pants it could get hard to bite your tongue.

[Tall Stranger]

Sir Ralph,

I have to respectfully disagree with you on how this conversation went.

It started with justjake essentially asking, "Why use Policemen when you can get greater benefit from taxmen?"

Within a few minutes, MattPilot helpfully pointed out that justjake was mistaken in believing that the gold produced by a taxman is affected by city improvements and gave a partial answer as to why Policemen MAY be useful.

An hour and 20 minutes later, Jaybe further pointed out that, used properly, Policemen could be helpful it turning a 3-turn tank producer into a 2-turn tank producer. Again, very helpful response.

Then, OVER AN HOUR AFTER Jaybe's post, Willem pointed out that the effect of Policemen could be changed in the editor. Since this was clearly NOT a cross-post, and since Willem MUST have read MattPilot and Jaybe's posts, the only reasonable interpretation was that he was essentially saying, "If the above descriptions of how Police may be useful to you still don't satisfy you, you can change it in the editor."

Thus, the response to the original question can be summarized as: 1) your understanding of how taxmen work is flawed; 2) there are certain cases when Policemen make sense; 3) Policemen are more powerful than you realize and 4) If you're still not happy with how they work, you can change it with the editor. That, in my view, amounts to a pretty respectable and thorough answer. (The only thing that is missing is a statement pointing out that, when you're in a government that can't cash rush, gold is relatively less important, but being able to increase production by one or two shields may be VERY important.)

Only after all this was said did jimmytrick go off on his petty little tirade. And I'll remind you that, at the time of his first post, he did not (as he now claims) say this was somehow a threadjack. He instead categorically attacked "anyone" who suggested using the editor to fix "something" in the editor. That, in my view, is out of line, but all too common a response from the luminary who created such brilliant threads as "Firaxis deserves a big fat punch in the nose" and drafted such feeble put-downs as "You must be from West Virginia."

Just to clarify, I myself rarely bother to use the editor. I've played around with it a bit to improve my understanding of the game, but I usually play with stock rules. The only mod I've ever consistently played is the AU mod. I agree that that should NOT be the first choice for addressing a problem. In most cases, I think the game IS very well balanced, and don't generally advocate doing it. But it was, in my view, a valid (partial)response to the question.

And jimmytrick, I would suggest that posters who are gut busting determined to beat folks over the head with their semi-coherent rants fuming about how terrible Firaxis is and demanding that Firaxis immediately incorporate every change they deem necessary make use of their own personal email system.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Well said Tall Stranger, and JT Im from Stoke on Trent.

[Shogun Gunner]

If I read anymore of this, I might report this to a policeman!

There's never a cop around when you need one...no problem, I simply open up Real Life Editor 1.0 and add a few more policeman to my county. Done.

Now I'm moving to West Virginia.

[Grond]

I'm not a regular here and I certainly don't have the expertise or experience of most of you, but I do still have my Civilization floppies so I feel that gives me the right to say the game should be reasonably playable without having to use the editor to make your own personal mod. While JT may be a bit over the top from my own personal experience and from what I've read it does seem not enough testing was put into the current corruption model. While its true that by using specialists you can get pretty good production out of any city no matter how corrupt it is, I am not a fan of 500 hour games where I spend 400 hous adjusting specialists. This makes all but the smallest of maps unplayable. I would like to see an option in the preferences for a simplified corruption model or a greatly enhanced governor that could handle specialists for you.

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
If I read anymore of this, I might report this to a policeman!

There's never a cop around when you need one...no problem, I simply open up Real Life Editor 1.0 and add a few more policeman to my county. Done.

Now I'm moving to West Virginia.

Sad part is, I've been to West Virginia all of about 3 times in my life, in each case to go skiing. (Disappointing: too many people, too few trails, too little natural snow!!)

[joncnunn]

I've never built a nuclear power plant or manufacturing plant in Civ III.

Originally posted by alexman

Or always, with Nuclear Power plus Manufacturing plant.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Grond
... from what I've read it does seem not enough testing was put into the current corruption model.

All the more reason to bring up the point about changes in the editor. The game has been out now for what, two years now? And Firaxis is still tinkering with the corruption model. If we has the "playtesters" come up with our own settings that seems to work better for us, that provides Firaxis with a reference point in order to adjust the settings of the default game. They did after all change the strengths of both the Taxman and the Scientist in Conquests, and I strongly suspect that it had something to do with players fooling around with the editor on their own, and coming up with a better arrangement. Not just whining about how deficient they were.