Workers? NOOO please!!

[SlowThinker]

The segregation of settlers to city founders and workers is a bad decision for the strategic value of the game IMHO.

It shortens the amount of possible ways of development of the game. I think it is a bad new for "chess style players" especially, but not only for them.

Imagine the beginning of a deity game for example. In Civ2 you have two settlers and you have to evaluate the starting position and to find answers to many questions: Shall I build two cities or improve squares with the second settler and keep him as a non-unit? Is it worth to improve a tile in the city radius just before the city will be found?
Of course there are different opinions and interesting debates originates.

In short, you often have to decide between "improve" and "found" when playing Civ2. Civ3 will deprive players of it

[connorkimbro]

Imagine the beginning of a deity game for example. In Civ2 you have two settlers and you have to evaluate the starting position and to find answers to many questions: Shall I build two cities or improve squares with the second settler and keep him as a non-unit? Is it worth to improve a tile in the city radius just before the city will be found?
Of course there are different opinions and interesting debates originates.

I myself prefer to keep the non-unit.

But i don't at all think that this is limiting strategy. You've still got the same choices, just in different ways. *There are some resources over there. . hmm, should i build another city over there? or should i build a colony instead? can i afford to lose the extra pop point to build a city instead? oh, btw, it really could help if i could get a few extra roads around here instead. . *

The strategic choices are still there, just in different ways.

[Inverse Icarus]

i like the seperation.

first off, the obvious anti-sleeze measures, but more importantly, in order for a city to get luxury bounuses, or to obtain strategic resources, you need ROADS connecting your cities.

imagine founding a city and now being able to build your phalanx because there's no road to your city

[MarkG]

Re: Workers? NOOO please!!

Originally posted by SlowThinker
In short, you often have to decide between "improve" and "found" when playing Civ2. Civ3 will deprive players of it

as connorkimbro said you still have to make the same choice.

in fact, the choice gets harder now, since you have to choose on the level of building units not simply on what the unit will do next. when you decide to build a worker, that unit will only be able to do terraforming.

so, you might be limited in your decisions in the begining, where you get 1 settler and 1 worker, but later the decisions will be more interesting

[SerapisIV]

The worker/settler model worked well in SMAC, I don't think anyone every complained about that it should go back to the Civ2 style. However, it remains to be seen the impact of 2-pop settlers and 1-pop workers. It seems to me that Civ3 is gonna have much fewer cities per civs with this combo.

[Father Beast]

Oh yeah, but now the decision with 1 settler and 1 worker is if you have the worker improve the land, or join the city for a pop boost, enabling it to put out a settler faster.

I always thought starting with 2 settlers was kind of unfair, anyway...

[Inverse Icarus]

on diety all players get 2.

thats all i play.

you panzies

[Provost Harrison]

I like the concept and is one that was implemented in SMAC and I find far superior to the 'jack of all trades' settler/engineer. I am pleased that this feature has continued from SMAC...

[MarkG]

Originally posted by SerapisIV
The worker/settler model worked well in SMAC

only after your post did i realise that this is not something new!

but did terraformers get from your population?

[Provost Harrison]

No, formers just behaved like any other military unit, whereas colony pods reduced the population of a base by one when built.

[MarkG]

so it's a significant change on the smac model....

[Urban Ranger]

I think the change is caused by the workers' ability to construct colonies.

Speaking of which do we know whether the "lost" population will be aborbed into a city when its border expands enough to cover a colony?

[tniem]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Speaking of which do we know whether the "lost" population will be aborbed into a city when its border expands enough to cover a colony?

The answer from Dan a while back was that the pop is forever lost even if the colony is absorbed by the borders of your civ. The pop point is not given back nor do you get a new worker and that is why choosing where you put colonies is very important.

It adds to the strategy. I am at war with the Romans. If I wait ten turns my borders will include that iron I need to win the war. Or I could use my worker to get it now. But then I lose that pop point forever. Can I wait ten turns? Is that pop point important to me?

It is certainly going to be an interesting dilema and add a whole new twist to the game.

[red_jon]

Hmm.

To make things REALLY confusing, Firaxis should make a 'farmer' for building farms and irrigating land, 'miner' for building mines and 'engineer' for building roads! Now you have different units for different terraforming actions, you can spend all your time building terraformer units!

[Provost Harrison]

Actually red_jon, your sarcasm aside, I have found the separated worker/settler model to be vastly superior. It was used in SMAC to great effect and now the system of one, all round settler/engineer seems ridiculous to me now. They wouldn't have kept the principle if it wasn't a good one now. Remember, SMAC has been played to death by a lot of people and thus lessons have been learned from accumulated experience. Those who have not played this game has missed out on a lot, gameplay wise and greater knowledge of the TBS genre and what works and doesn't IMO...