City Governor AI!

[mactbone]

In the video, someone says that the City Governor will "learn" from you. E.G. You stop building warriors and start building temples, the AI takes the cue and starts to build some temples, or starts to suggest buildings that promote culture.

Woohoo, a Governor that takes a hint *nudge* *nudge*

[Sarxis]

Waste of programming as far as I am concerened- I won't use them.

Micromanagement and sleepless nights is the ONLY way to play CIV!

[Robert]

yeah, I never use governors and simular stuff !
Micromanagement rules !

How can I control my empire if I'm not in control of my own cities ?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Sure I won't use them either, but mnany newbies might... they might even stay with them for a long time if the AI will have relativley good building queues, and city management skill.

[Bleyn]

If the city governers work the way I've heard they will, I probably will use them.

I like the idea of being able to tell the governers Never build this building, and giving them a prefered sequence of building construction.

Why? Its simple. I always hate the amount of micromangement that is required to get a city settled late in the game or one captured from a much less advanced rival up to snuff with the rest of my civ.

Even in games like SMAC and MOO2 where there was a building queue, I found it annoying to have to micromanage those cities, and that the governers just didn't do things the way I wanted them to. With SMAC, I especially disliked the fact that there are buildings I will never use because they do not go with my style of play, yet there is no way to tell the governer not to use them.

[Deathwalker]

Personally I never liked Governors I always found that build the exsact thing I do not want, so the only way i'll use one is if they are as good as they stay otherwise, i'll do it myself as I always did.

[Dida]

I hope the governer AI would be pretty good, cux that will save lots of micromanagement towards the end game.

[HalfLotus]

I think I'll be using the governor. The modern ages get seriously bogged down with moving units and other crap. With the ability to direct your governors on a global or continental basis, they should be helpful.
But probly the first time they build something I dont want I'll , and turn them off for good.

[donarumo]

I think Governers can be valuable and I do not think they are a waste of programming.

Not only do they help new users see what might be built at certain times (i.e. war time, progress time, etc.), they also help when you have a lot of cities and don't want to worry about one for a while. Simply place the governer in charge and focus on more important cities. This is very true late in the game when you have to start a new city and don't want to go through setting up a long line of things to build.

This, of course, is true providing the governers are intelligent and I have confidence in Firaxis that they will be.

[Madine]

You'll be able to tell your governor's not to build certain things, so hopefully that will eliminate that problem.

I only use governor's towards the end of the game because early on I like to pay attention to what my cities are doing.

[Dojan]

I just hope you can use the governors to give collective orders. I find it boring to change the production in all my cities, when I make some strategic research like supermarkets.

But that never stop me from doing it of course.

[Pembleton]

I made the mistake of starting a new thread that was inspired by this topic, but I guess I'll just repeat what I said in that I plan on just loading and saving queues that I've customized for certain types of cities. I don't ever plan on using the governor ever.

[HalfLotus]

Originally posted by Dojan
I just hope you can use the governors to give collective orders. I find it boring to change the production in all my cities, when I make some strategic research like supermarkets.

But that never stop me from doing it of course.

DOJAN, did you read the thread before you posted?

You CAN give such orders to governors.

Pembleton makes a good point, build queue (sp?) saving and loading will be very helpful indeed.

[Donnyb20]

I think governors are going to be an interesting concept in CIV 3. As long as governors can be turned on and off for each city, it could be very useful to players in a couple of different ways.

One thing that I think is very important is to allow player to view each of his/her cities whenever a (city improvement/wonder/special unit) is made in one of your cities, especially when the governor is turned on, this way you can see the next thing that the governor is going to build and hopefully if these AI governors are good, it would be what the player would probably have picked from the list themselves. This will also help prevent building the same city improvement after it's already been completed, and losing half your production if you change to a unit or wonder.

I will definitely have them turned off in the beginning of the game for a while until the game gets to be hard to manage every single city, every single turn, and the possibility of forgetting to switch something over in certain cities is likely. I'm not saying that these AI governors are going to be perfect and always build what the player would build, but if they build improvements/units that are useful to the players the majority of the time, I believe they will be very helpful later on in the game (or whenever you have a lot of cities, like more than 15 or 20 built ). This could prevent players from spending half an hour to an hour on their turns near the end of the game.

Depending on how intelligent the AI is on determining your play style and what type of units and improvements were made in the game previously; it could adapt to that and stick with the same type of concept building. If throughout the game you have stuck with a certain pattern on building city improvements in your cities from when they were founded, then if you decided to build another city (or if you captured a city), the AI governor could build city improvements using the concept of your building method with your other cities. For example, if you have built financial improvement first throughout the game, then religious improvements, then etc.... The governors would stick to that same principle of building a market place first, then temples, then etc....

[Skeeve]

Question on the Governor feature...

Question on this Governor thing:

Let's suppose it's late in the game and you've just created a new city.
Now you immediately abandon it to the whims of it's governor.

Do you think the Governor feature will still allow you to specify a "template" strategy?
For example suppose that:

• You want 3 military units (1 offensive, 2 defensive), but they have to be the most modern ones.
• You want the first 2 units built right away, but the 3rd can come later.
• Finally, you prefer city improvements that lead to growth, but eventually you want everything.

Do you think that the feature will allow this level of customization?

It sounds like it will, but my problem is that I don't have a "cookie cutter" strategy that I use for all cities. It depends greatly on their location, proximity to the strongest enemy, the surrounding tiles, and my current gut-feeling about my strategy.