the scary thought..... City Managment info????

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
These are not bots since bots are self-contained agents. They are... dummies

LOL Define dummies!

[Laszlo]

Selfish Gene at Work

Originally posted by Grim Legacy
Perhaps this is a controversial opinion, but I'd rather *not* have city majors/governors etc.

Grim Legacy, I disagree with your suggestion for several reasons. In this post I'll explain the selfish reason. You can use the governors in Civ2 by not using them!

I'd never let the idiots actually decide what to build, but when I've been working on a wonder for a while and some other Civ beats me to the punch I go to that city and try to change it to another wonder. But I am lazy, and didn't look to see if I had another to switch to after I pressed the Change button. But this time there was no other option but to buy the biggest city improvement and swallow the loss (also, other times the alternative wonder was much smaller). So I panicked. I pressed the Help button, but of course, that was no help, it wouldn't let me out. Then I clicked the Auto button, then Cancel, and...voila! You don't have to make a choice! You can continue "building" the 'stolen' wonder until an alternative is found. I felt very smug.

Some may consider this a cheat, but for me it has been a real cost saver for me during pre-Capitalization times.

[Grim Legacy]

Re: Selfish Gene at Work

Originally posted by Laszlo


Grim Legacy, I disagree with your suggestion for several reasons. In this post I'll explain the selfish reason. You can use the governors in Civ2 by not using them!

Some may consider this a cheat, but for me it has been a real cost saver for me during pre-Capitalization times.

LOL.

Yes it is a cheat and I don't think the designers meant the feature to be used like that. You could also just not click the "change" button, though...and just continue denying the wonder is already built.

Do you have other reasons to include governors?

[MarkG]

btw, having governons/mayors is not a difficult-to-add feature, since you do have the same code in the game for the AI....

so they are probably in....

[Laszlo]

Re: Re: Selfish Gene at Work

Originally posted by Grim Legacy
Do you have other reasons to include governors?

Yes, Grim Legacy, I do. Though some would call them clorified queue lists, if you could make customizable governors, that would be something useful. You would set up your priorities beforehand, and they would follow your instructions technologies permitting.

Though even this would not be perfection. To make it a truly great advance, you should be able to design your governors as little intelligent machines, that respond to events as they happen, and to digest pertinent information from their surroundings. On to the examples!

Once I tried putting on a governor in a Civ2 game, as my empire had grown beyond the bounds of my nearly infinite patience to micro-manage. As soon as I did so I switched it right back. Why?...because the @%*$ing idiot was building SDI defense before the Manhattan Project was even started! They also have this irrational fascination with ports! I think once in my entire Civ-playing existance have I ever felt it practical to build a port facility, and they find grounds to construct one in a city with no ships based on a city-sized lake!

You also would not build harbors or offshore platforms if there were few ocean squares or a supermarket if there were no land tiles because the expense of upkeep would outweigh the benefit. And you would rush-buy a newly founded city's first defensive unit when a barbarian party lands a few spaces away (or maybe sell off it's largest city improvement if they're are too close for hope).

Obviously you have to sort of program the AI into it, or else have it so intelligent that it can teach itself your style through observation. But if you could get it to work, it would be really big. I've never played a MP game of Civilization, but I bet they don't like playing on large maps or going for spaceships. This kind of stuff would speed the multi-player sector up considerably in a way people would be satisfied with.

[Grim Legacy]

Ah, but in the case of glorified build queues, I'm in complete agreement with you.

The way you describe it is just what I would like to see. A pre-cooked list of buildings and perhaps some scripting to make simple decisions about ports etc, like you mentioned.

[Solver]

Those Firaxians are so lazy.

[Laszlo]

heh heh...
Not as lazy as we're gonna be once they put it in there!