AU Mod: woker jobs

[alexman]

Right, you need one but you lose him. Some players don't want to make that sacrifice.

Outposts do have more visibility on high elevation, IIRC.

[pvzh]

Don't they see more, when put on Hills, or Mountains?

AFAIK, No, that was main fuss about them, but I did not test it personaly.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by alexman
Right, you need one but you lose him. Some players don't want to make that sacrifice.

In the late Industrial Age (or, more often, early Modern Age), when Airports come by, most players will have that one spare Worker to get the Airfield on the receiving side of the invasion. So making the cost high instead, seems better to me.

If you are concerned about Airfields at home, then make the cost very high. This will not solve the problem entirely, but will make it less exploitative.

Originally posted by alexman
Outposts do have more visibility on high elevation, IIRC.

I just checked - they do. See attached pic. One is on a hill, the better one on a Mountain. Both provide increased visibility.

[Cryptor]

I say just get rid of airfields entirely. Worker built airfields are too much cheaper than city built airports and are not used by the AI.

I've modded games to play without airfields and railroads, and it works fine. You actually have to think about defence in the modern age when there isn't unlimited movement, and the discovery of steam power doesn't give a huge exaguated production bonus.

[nbarclay]

Am I remembering correctly that outposts block amphibious landings by units without amphibious assault capability on tiles that contain them? If so, making it possible to build outposts without consuming the workers would open up a serious exploit. Even if players don't deliberately abuse the exploit, the sort of "high ground" tiles that are the most interesting places to build outposts (because you can see farther from higher ground) are also the places where enemy landings are hardest to counterattack.

On the other hand, the ability to build outposts without consuming a worker would cause me to start using a feature I currently never use. That would be a significant advantage. And even if I'm right about the potential exploit, players could avoid most of the consequences of the exploit by refraining from going overboard in their use of outposts.

I definitely do not like the idea of changing the mechanism for airfields. I don't think the current model keeps the option of building them from being interesting, nor do I remember anyone explaining a basis on which a change could be expected to help AIs be more competitive.

Regarding radar towers, as I said before, I would want to see the results of play-testing before I would support the proposed change. In the absence of play-testing results, I will vote against that part of the proposal because I don't like the idea of making everyone who uses the AU Mod a guinea pig.

[alexman]

Outposts do indeed prevent non-amphibious landings.

Time to vote:

1. Yes/No: increase base turns required to create an outpost to 6 (the same as a mine). The action does not consume a worker.
2. Yes/No: increase base turns required to create an airfield to 6. The action does not consume a worker.
3. Yes/No: increase base turns required to create a radar tower to 6. The action does not consume a worker.

My votes:
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes

[lockstep]

1: YES
2: YES
3: YES

Even if the AI builds only a few outposts on hills and mountains, this should make mid-game intercontinental invasions much more interesting.

[Cryptor]

Looking at the current votes, airfields, an overpowered cheap airport for humans, are not even going to consume a population point now. If anything they should consume 5 workers if it was possible, not none. I'm against these changes, if anything airfields should be taken out of the game. They reduce strategic depth, because its a no brainer to build lots of airfields and no city based airports.

[Theseus]

Yes
No
No

I think we can come up with something better for airfields, and that the AI does just fine with radar towers.

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Am I remembering correctly that outposts block amphibious landings by units without amphibious assault capability on tiles that contain them?

Until this is confirmed, I'm all for the proposals for outposts and radar towers. I can barely remember ever using them myself and I'm sure I've never seen the AI build them. Even if the AI doesn't build these, it adds some depth to human strategy.

As Theseus said, something better can be thought up for airfields.

[sabrewolf]

speaking of worker jobs. i dislike the extremely cheap forest chop in comparison to the roading. in civ3 and ptw it took 10 turns to chop and 6 to build a road. now it's only 4 for the chop and still 6 for roading.

i would like to initiate a discussion about whether to make this job more expensive. my opinion would be to go back to the PTW settings, but anything inbetween would be better too


some reasons in favour of the change:
- it makes it worth building a road first and then bring in other workers to chop it down (like currently still with jungles)
- making a road requires the removal of a small part of the trees. clearing the tile requires ALL to be chopped --> real-life reason.
- 10 shields can be a lot in the early game and also in corrupt cities further out. they should not be gifted with simple 4 worker turns.

[nbarclay]

My votes (with apologies for not noticing the vote sooner):

1) Yes
2) No
3) No

I would be willing to change my vote on (3) if someone provides experimental evidence that the AI builds a reasonable but not excessive number of radar towers with the change. But the AI does a good job with radar towers under the stock rules, building a reasonable but not excessive number of them, and I don't want to take the chance that a change would result either in AIs not building enough towers or in their building an absurd number of them.

[nbarclay]

I think the cost of chopping forests in C3C is balanced very nicely. Under the old rules, until a civ had some spare workers available, chopping forests was rarely worth the delay in everything else the workers needed to do. Under the new rules, chopping forests is almost always an option worth considering, but about the only time it's ever a no-brainer for me is when I really need the underlying grassland or plains tile or when a resource is involved.

Regarding Saberwolf's first and third reasons (the two that are in terms of gameplay):

- it makes it worth building a road first and then bring in other workers to chop it down (like currently still with jungles)

My own view has always been that unless I'm in a big hurry to build a road for strategic reasons, I'd rather chop or clear first in order to take advantage of the lower road-building cost after the tile is chopped or cleared. For me, increasing the cost of chopping would almost never cause me to build roads through unchopped forest, just as I almost never build roads through uncleared jungle or marsh and just as I almost never built roads through unchopped forests prior to C3C.

10 shields can be a lot in the early game and also in corrupt cities further out. they should not be gifted with simple 4 worker turns.

In my view, the only time four worker turns are anything resembling "simple" is when a civ is clearly ahead in its worker jobs. What you get for those four worker turns is ten shields, but the same ten shilds would be available for later use if you didn't go ahead and chop to get them. So the question is, is it worth delaying everything else workers need to do in order to get those ten shields sooner rather than later, or would it be better to have the workers concentrate on other things for the time being and leave the ten shields from the forest until later? For me, tha lower cost of chopping in C3C makes that question more interesting than it was in previous versions where the cost of chopping was higher and chopping was interesting less often.

The one aspect of Saberwolf's post where I strongly sympathize is in regard to how high the cost of building roads through forests is, although my reasons differ somewhat from his. In my view, the real problem is that building roads through forests is too expensive, not that chopping is too cheap.

I have an idea that might be worth considering if it would work, but I'm not sure whether it would work or not. If I understand things correctly, the time it takes workers to do things on different types of terrain is tied to movement cost. That suggests the possibility that having workers ignore the movement cost for forest might bring the cost to road forests down to that of roading flatlands. But would that be a worthwhile thing to do if it would work? And could it be done without nasty side effects?

[joncnunn]

I think the current # turns to chop forest is fine.

Myself, I consider choping a forest in the capital for an ultra-early granery a no-brainer.

Otherwise, I tend to work them into expensive builds along with the rest of terriagn, generally prefering to mine grassland with shield to choping forest, but prefering to chop forest [on grassland] to improving a non-shield grassland.

In the case of plains, I generally make irrigating the existing plains up to amount it can currently be worked a higher priority than making more plains via chops. And so I'm getting 10 shields this way that I simply wouldn't get getting otherwise.

[Pfeffersack]

Bad news...unless I have oversight something in my setting (has anyone tested this, too?), the entire thing does not work.RT, Airfields and Outpost seem to comsume workers regardless of the assigned number of worker turns.It isn't possible the other way round, too - mines, irrigations etc. don't start to consume workers when you decrease w.t. to 1. Seems to be completly hardcoded.

The questions of AI behaviour seems pointless with this new information; however, I don't think it would change their behaviour (haven't test it though).