"Smart" Empire Management

[DarkCloud]

Perhaps we could have 3 options:

War Management- the computer manages all of the units or you can automate certain units if you wish to focus on city management. The computer would prompt you if you wanted to start a war with someone, etc.

City Management- the computer manages production, basing the priorites on the following factors: Your relations with other civs: Your attitude: Your reputation: The number of units on the borders of your civ: etc.

You can specify whether you want to A. Conquer, B. Develop, C. Explore, D. Build, etc. (a la Alpha Centauri)

Empire Management- This sets the other half of the city development by reallocating citizens to
A. Maximize Happiness
B. Maximize Food Production
C. Maximize Taxes
D. Maximize Science

With the above you can set, on a slider bar, how much you are willing to starve the people.
IE. if you maximize taxes will they tax the people if 50 bushels are in the granary and you lose 3 bushels a turn.
If they do that, then they will have a minimum # of bushels to restrict taxing to. Thus, if you only have 5 bushels left, they make food until you have 25 bushels left.

-
The above allow you to create a 'smart' empire and not be overwhelmed in the later game.

[Vlad Antlerkov]

Good ideas, but Build and Develop are basically the same thing... Shouldn't it be Discover instead?

[Wiglaf]

War Management- the computer manages all of the units or you can automate certain units if you wish to focus on city management. The computer would prompt you if you wanted to start a war with someone, etc.

That's a bit too much, isn't it? I mean, civ is very much a unit based game - to give all of that to the AI would make you too much of a spectator, and it would also make wins less skill based.

City Management- the computer manages production, basing the priorites on the following factors: Your relations with other civs: Your attitude: Your reputation: The number of units on the borders of your civ: etc.

You can specify whether you want to A. Conquer, B. Develop, C. Explore, D. Build, etc. (a la Alpha Centauri)

I like that idea, but it might overwhelm the computer with too many variables. Again, victories should be based less on your governors and more on you.

Something like this was proposed for Starcraft: total control to the AI, and you make the big decisions. It was tossed around until dropped because it would remove so much from the game. The TBS genre takes less of a hit on the matter, but still a substantial one.

Good in theory, but it would probably take too much time to get the above to work - and once you do that, it could backfire.

[korn469]

War Management- the computer manages all of the units or you can automate certain units if you wish to focus on city management. The computer would prompt you if you wanted to start a war with someone, etc.

City Management- the computer manages production, basing the priorites on the following factors: Your relations with other civs: Your attitude: Your reputation: The number of units on the borders of your civ: etc.

you could already do this in SMAC...it wasn't quite as advanced as what darkcloud proposed, but you could let the AI completely manage all of your units and cities...the only thing is, the AI was so bad, that after a short amount you'd at least assume personal control of your units...your AI commanders were even worse than the enemy AI

if the AI could be better then this could be a really good option...also they need to add in interface options, so you could instruct your generals to attack a certain city if you were in a war for example

[Urban Ranger]

What's the fun in that?

[Kc7mxo]

Uh. Darkcloud, are you sure that you are interested in playing games? Sounds to me like you just like watching them. :-)


Wasn't there a discussion back a while ago about an option to allow the computer players to play just against eachother while the human simply watches the action?

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
What's the fun in that?

Roger that!

[Gramphos]

I would never use it as I don't trust anyone but me to run my civs

But there is nothing wrong with the idea, can maybe make it into Civ IV. The game is almost finished, and I don't think they have time to add this. Anyway, it is a small thing to do, but they have a release date to hold.

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Uh. Darkcloud, are you sure that you are interested in playing games? Sounds to me like you just like watching them. :-)


Wasn't there a discussion back a while ago about an option to allow the computer players to play just against eachother while the human simply watches the action?

Okay, KC7MXO HAM RADIO OPERATOR: ERIC O. GRENSEMAN, kc7mxo@aol.com (I know where you live... I know your zipcode as well )

Okay, now, this is merely to reduce micromanagement and perhaps make the game move faster.

Actually Korn, I am counting on the AI for Civ III to at least be good enough to beat someone with an IQ of 100... hopefully it will be better

Actually, you could have the difficulty level set the IQ of the AI. If you are on a low level your AI could operate at 1-100% of efficiency, whereas the enemy on a low level operates at 20% efficiency, etc.

[Pythagoras]

Re: "Smart" Empire Management

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Perhaps we could have 3 options:

War Management- the computer manages all of the units or you can automate certain units if you wish to focus on city management. The computer would prompt you if you wanted to start a war with someone, etc.

City Management- the computer manages production, basing the priorites on the following factors: Your relations with other civs: Your attitude: Your reputation: The number of units on the borders of your civ: etc.

You can specify whether you want to A. Conquer, B. Develop, C. Explore, D. Build, etc. (a la Alpha Centauri)

Empire Management- This sets the other half of the city development by reallocating citizens to
A. Maximize Happiness
B. Maximize Food Production
C. Maximize Taxes
D. Maximize Science

With the above you can set, on a slider bar, how much you are willing to starve the people.
IE. if you maximize taxes will they tax the people if 50 bushels are in the granary and you lose 3 bushels a turn.
If they do that, then they will have a minimum # of bushels to restrict taxing to. Thus, if you only have 5 bushels left, they make food until you have 25 bushels left.

-
The above allow you to create a 'smart' empire and not be overwhelmed in the later game.

Sounds like SMAC, and I think similar things might be included in Civ3, hopefully smarter. I used Governors (City managers) and Auto-Formers occasionally, but often had to keep an eye on them, but there were lots of settings so that you could tell governors "never build xxxx" or formers "you can build XXXX but not XXXX." It was pretty good for a first time try, but like most things the AI was the crutch.

[Laszlo]

Okay, now, this is merely to reduce micromanagement and perhaps make the game move faster.

I too would like some sort of intelligent artificial intelligence that could help micro-manage my cities. Especially when you have a sprawling empire where it could take ten minutes to manually run through your turn.

If you could set the AI governor or, say, your Trade Advisor to a task, they would handle the details, while freeing you to oversee the bigger picture. And it would make the games go by faster. Especially appealing during MP games...

[Eagle one]

City governors like in CTP II

I hate it in Civ I+II to check every city and decide what to build. This took especially in the end game much time. I liked the function of governor in CTP II. You could choice a governor with different priorities (happiness, production, defense, offensive,...). The governor really did a good work. You just could let the city on its own and concentrate on other issues.

I hope such a governor will be in Civ III. Because he could help you a lot. And if you don't like him, just turn him off!

[Christantine The Great]

Um, you could do that in CivII, too. Instead of a governor you would chose what advisor (like there's a difference) would control your production. Military or Economic I think. Of course the economic would just build caravans after the buildings would run out and the military would build those dumb alpine troops!

I think, in TBS, you have plenty of time to make decisions during your turn. And if you don't want to constantly be rushing back to your cities then put them on Capitalization.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Christantine The Great
Um, you could do that in CivII, too. Instead of a governor you would chose what advisor (like there's a difference) would control your production. Military or Economic I think. Of course the economic would just build caravans after the buildings would run out and the military would build those dumb alpine troops!

That incompetent Auto function, it (almost) never did things right, I hope they don't make anything like this unless it works or you can customize what it should rank as important.