settlers and workers

[jerkwaterbox]

::bang::

[Skanky Burns]

I must confess to never playing CTP, so tell me. How did the "public works" work??

[aaglo]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith

....New York as "City of God"?

The God here propably means money, it is The God for many people...

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
I must confess to never playing CTP, so tell me. How did the "public works" work??

A certain percentage of your Shield production was set aside in a Public Works pool. When you wanted to build something like a road or a farm, you placed these "tile improvements" and their cost was deducted from your accumulated PW pool.

[MidKnight Lament]

I'm going to abstain on this poll on the grounds that I haven't tried out the new system yet. It seems a bit unfair for me to vote either way until I've tried it out.

[fluffy]

try playing SMAC - the 'new' system has already been tried and tested for 3 years...

[Adagio]

Originally posted by UberKruX
In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb" , "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning" - Nostradamus 1654

freaky eh?

Since I haven't studied what different people have said from time to time I can't be sure if this is true that this person said that, but I wouldn't be suprised if this is true or will become true these days...But let's see what happenes the next couple of months

[Colonel Kraken]

I have never understood why so many people think it is so wonderful to micromanage a bunch of settler/worker units all over the map to make roads and other such improvements. I hated that in CivII. Furthermore, removing a population from the city to accomplish this seems extreme to me.

CtPs public works system wasn't perfect but it gave a sense of government projects being completed with public funds and hired hands. And, if you saved up enough, you could build many things at once. This was appropriate simply because every turn spanned 5, 10, 20, or even 50 years.

Although, I must admit, I never have understood why the player (and thus the government of the civ) should be allowed to build things like farms, mines, marketplaces, etc. These are things that would be built privately by entrepreneurial individuals.

Oh well.

[DATarbell]

Colonel Kraken, it has been my experience that the micromanagement was more necessary than desired. For example, in SMAC you could set your former units on 'autopilot'--but they made STUPID decisions and wasted movement turns. Micromanagement became necessary in order to direct them in such a way that you could get the most benefit from them at any given time.

If it was possible to 'guide' them with an overall schema (e.g., 'maximize food resources, production resources, luxury resources, in that order') and if they faithfully worked to those priorities, then micromanagment would--at least for me--become unnecessary.

The SMAC former unit was pretty faithful in its 'build a road from here to there' instructions, but not much else. And it didn't seem to take into account any change in resource values that had been changed in the default settings for any particular game (e.g., forests produce one additional production shield over the default setting).

I look forward to seeing how Civ3 a) enables us to not micromanage, and b) still provides the ability to micromanage when desirable and/or necessary.

Note: I got in trouble the other day over at the MoO3 forums for suggesting that the IFP concept (Imperial Focus Points) as a required part of that game, would limit the options of the player and therefore be a negative in that implementation. After all: sometimes I feel like a nut (want to micromanage), and sometimes I don't (don't want to)!

[Colonel Kraken]

I understand, Tarbell, when you have actual units that are used for tile improvements, you need to micromanage. That's my point entirely. With a public works system, there are no units, and thus no micromanaging. How does this limit your options? I don't see how. You can place those public works right where you want them. No need to take several turns to move that worker unit to the spot you need it because you produced it in a city that could afford to lose the population point but was far away from "the action."

To me, having a system that costs resources (money and other) of the government to construct roads and such seems much more realistic and appropriate. You could actually take this one step further and have certain projects cost more or less depending on how quickly you want it completed. In CtP, you did not get the tile improvement immediately. It typically took 3 or more turns to complete. You could actually incorporate public works into the economic model of your civ. Current unemployment is 15%? No problem. Hire them to build roads. There is all kinds of interesting things you can do with a public works system.

I just think there are too many hard core CivII fans who can't possibly allow any competing idea to find its way into CivIII.

You know, in the end I don't really care. I just like public works idea much more. That was one of the main things in CtP that jumped out at my wife and me as being totally improved. Thank God! No more 30+ stupid settlers all over my civ to build roads!

I just think some should be a little more open minded.

[DATarbell]

Colonel, I was unfamiliar with the 'public works' concept, so I appreciate your explanation. I avoided CTP and CTP2 because of widespread criticisms of both of those games. In doing so I obviously missed some improvements, as well.

It will be interesting to see if Civ3 is able, as you suggest they should to do more than just provide an 'upgrade' to Civ2--but really make a leap in concepts. And if they do, will they be able to bring all of us (speaking for myself) "old dog" Civ2 players along?

Referring again to MoO3: they appear to be taking such a dramatic departure from MoO and MoO2 that there appear to be only two possible outcomes--dramatic failure or dramatic success. And the odds when doing a sequel are almost always in the corner of dramatic failure! It seems that everyone has a different expectation of where things should go, how fast, and so forth.

I'm sure that this has been given a lot of thought over at Firaxis. I hope they really 'push the envelope'--giving us a dramatically new experience from Civ2 and SMAC! We'll see.

[Colonel Kraken]

Thanks for the comments, Tarbell!

I'm glad this exchange of ideas was a pleasant one.

I agree with what you said in your last post. That is the eternal argument on Apolyton. How much change should there be in CivIII?

[Adagio]

Originally posted by DATarbell
In doing so I obviously missed some improvements, as well.

Well, in my point of view the only improvement you missed was the future part, the PW part was an annoyment not an improvement.

Don't take this as I'm a total hardcore CivII fan, I really like chances, but only chances which makes the game more funny and the PW system is actually that annoying that I get pissed whenever I have to build some terrainimprovements.

One of the main reasons why I really hated the PW system is because of those to damn prices, it's not that the prices where too high, but it's the prices don't give much of an improvement (the price doubles for each level of improvement, while the extras is not even 50% more), and the worst of it is when upgrading it costs the same as completely new build, this is realistic yes, but because of those prices it can't payout to build those lev1's because Lev2 is fast reached, and when having Lev2 it doesn't take that long to get to Lev3. This means the best way to suvive (when you love science) is NOT to build roads, only have the number of roads to minimum.

[lockstep]

On the one hand, I like the idea of being able to capture enemy workers which retain their national identity. I also like to face the danger of my workers (or even a settler?) being captured by other civs.

On the other hand, being forced to keep track of dozens of workers in the late game doesn´t really add to the civ experience, although it may become less annoying with 'improvement queues' for workers. Sometimes, when my civ has already researched railroad and is at war with another civ on the same continent, building a supply railroad is fun, but I´d like to have a 'public works' system a la CtP, too.

My suggestion for a civ3 expansion pack: Keep the 'worker' unit, but add a 'public works' system that can be applied only within yor civ´s cultural borders.

[PGM]

I like the new system. It requires very interesting decisions:
when to invest and expand, when to invest and improve. Specially when these units have different inherent costs (Pop points). Also, this may be a serious blow on ICS.