Jeffrey Morris: Dan Magaha said to ask you these two questions

[Libertarian]

Dan Magaha said to ask you. Okay, so we're asking.

-----

Presently, there are two issues that hinder — strike that — that cripple gameplay in the modern era. You know, when you're trying to build railroads (required by game design) in your ever expanding empire while waging war over necessary resources that your opponents can't see.

Group Movement

It takes 9 base points — e.g., four industrial workers and one slave, or nine slaves — to build a railroad on a mountain from scratch. It takes 6 to build a railroad on a hill.

It is most efficient to group your workers in brigades such that each brigade — a mountain brigade, a hill and forest brigade, etc. — can maximize their production per turn.

A city radius has 20 tiles (not counting the city tile itself). If 3 tiles are mountains and 4 are hills, then you need 64 worker base points ((3*9)+(4*6)+13)) to railroad the city.

Due to the intrinsic public works design requiring workers, you might typically have hundreds of these critters peppering your map.

They are why a turn can take HOURS. Is this really necessary? Can you not offer us some relief from tedium by allowing us to move an entire brigade from one mountain to another. This is maddening beyond belief. And God help you if the other mountain causes the map to recenter. Arggg! Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... a greater tedium could not have been conceived.

This single oversight has turned Sid's famous "just one more turn" into "oh lord, not another turn".

So, the first question is please, may we have group movement?

(By the way, there have been five —5!— threads on this issue with unanimous — unanimous! — support from the players.)

Sensible Unit Activation Order

The second greatest cause of tedium is that your automatic activation of units does not hold to theaters — i.e., units in close proximity are not activated before irrelevant units far away.

For example, in a particular theater of battle, I might have a stack of four tanks. I right-click and activate them all. I attack with tank number one. Then tank number two. And then — bzzzaaaaaap! — suddenly, I am yanked away to a goofy unit (maybe a transport or something) half-way around the world. Now I must struggle to find my way back to the battle scene to try and activate my third tank. Again. So I attack with him. bzzzaaaaaap Suddenly, I find myself looking at a worker on a polluted hill near my own capital. Once again, I must find my way back to the theater of battle, now having lost my whole train of thought.

Do you consider this to be something that facilitates gameplay? Of course not. Not if you've actually played the game, anyway.

You need to activate all the units in one stack first, and then activate the units in the stack that is next in proximity. Either that, or just don't activate them at all. Let us do it manually. It would be less trouble.

(Yes, I know that you're supposed to be able to right-click and activate a group of units, BUT IT DOESN'T WORK. Mkay? A couple of them might activate as expected, but then it's right back to the random herky-jerky all over the map.)

So, the second question is please, may we have theater unit activation (or manual)? At least as an option?

-----

Thank you for your time.

(edit: corrected arithmetic... I think.)

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

We are aware of these feature requests, and when we have something concrete to say about them, we will.

Jeff

[Libertarian]

Fair enough. I at least appreciate your, um, response.

And in that spirit, I will respond in kind. When I have a concrete recommendation for my friends encouraging them to buy Civ3, I'll make it.

[Jen Dragon]

This about says it for me

Well I have CivIII under the tree for me....Waiting on Christmas.
I can return it unopened for another title until I'm sure. I do know i do not want to move 150 workers per turn, ever. There are a few things about CTP2 that were good ideas. Stacked Movement and Public Works, they must be copyrighted or Sid is to arrogant to admit someone could have an original thought that works. Come to think of it my boss is that way too, so its not to unusual.
But it is supposed to be a game not an exercise in moving units.
If they cant impliment these two functions I know I will never finish a game so I might as well return it for something else, Sorry I was so much looking forward to this game.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Libertarian
Fair enough. I at least appreciate your, um, response.

And in that spirit, I will respond in kind. When I have a concrete recommendation for my friends encouraging them to buy Civ3, I'll make it.

Question:

Were you or are you an only child who is used to getting his/her way all the time? Or are you naturally this self-centered and egotistical?

Do you know the world doesn't revolve around you? You do know that, correct?

Just checking.

[Gunter]

Yep, not also workers,but if you want to succeed in units managment in modern era you have to move till 150 units per turn,with a concentration till 40 units per square,in addition they go to sleep often by themselves (above all fighters on carriers) and the next turn you have to wake up 20 fighters,move 150 tanks,managing cities,obviously Libertarian is a good gamer and he is right asking a quick way to group units/workers before thinking about if it is better to differenciate modern subs attack from older ones.(This appear to be never considered from civ tester)

Cheers

[Ozymandous]

Yep, that says a lot about you.

Originally posted by Jen Dragon
Well I have CivIII under the tree for me....Waiting on Christmas.
I can return it unopened for another title until I'm sure. I do know i do not want to move 150 workers per turn, ever. There are a few things about CTP2 that were good ideas. Stacked Movement and Public Works, they must be copyrighted or Sid is to arrogant to admit someone could have an original thought that works. Come to think of it my boss is that way too, so its not to unusual.
But it is supposed to be a game not an exercise in moving units.
If they cant impliment these two functions I know I will never finish a game so I might as well return it for something else, Sorry I was so much looking forward to this game.

Did Civ2 have stacked movement? Did you ever have a problem moving 20-30+ settlers around trying to terraform anything? No? Did you have the option to automate the settlers in Civ2 so they'd only clear forest or jungle or only build improvements where you didn't specifically put them? How about automatic pollution removal? Was that in Civ2?

If you want to take the game back before you even try it because SOMEONE ELSE had a whine then you didn't really want to play the game anyway. That's what your post says about you.

I'd rather try something and then take it back if I didn't like it (even if I was pretty sure I wouldn't) than to always be a sheep and take something back or not try it because someone else "said so". But that's just me and not just for Civ3.

[Gunter]

Yep, not also workers,but if you want to succeed in units managment in modern era you have to move till 250 units per turn,with a concentration till 40 units per square,in addition they go to sleep often by themselves (above all fighters on carriers) and the next turn you have to wake up 20 fighters,move 150 tanks,managing cities,obviously Libertarian is a good gamer and he is right asking a quick way to group units/workers before thinking about if it is better to differenciate modern subs attack from older ones.(This appear to be never considered from civ tester)

Cheers

[Steve Clark]

Lib, I am curious, what answer would have been ideal for you? Would you prefered Jeff to say that the problem has been fixed in the code and it will be released in a minor patch on Friday? How do you know it could be this simple?

I have programmed indexing "units" on a grid and it is difficult. When the "unit" is created, it is assigned an ID pointer. Part of the information about that unit is it coordinate location, which obviously changes when it is in a different tile...but the ID may not have changed. One can have it constantly update the ID so that all units in the same coordinate would be sequential...but the cost would significant increase loop cycles each time a unit moves (by you, by the AI, by retreating or other movements). Instead of attacking quickly most of the time with one unit and then the next, you would conceptually have a noticeable pause between each and every action. Would you prefer that instead?

The above was based on real programming experience but I am not making any assumptions as to the what is going on in the Civ3 code. My point is that perhaps the fix for your problem would cause a new (and potentially, worse) problem. That happens all of the time in programming. So what I hear Jeff saying is that, "right now, there is not a simple solution for your problem and it is not known if it can solved that wouldn't cause new problems. Until we determine what the best solution is, I won't promise anything." That is what he said (reading between the lines) but you don't want to hear programming reality (or should you, imo), you just want speculative promises.

[Alex]

Yes, these are important things that could improve gameplay a lot... Especially number one, I hate to move tons of workers one by one... Sure, many people would say: automate them! But we all know what automation does... at least for me it is not an option (except in rare and unimportant situations).

What puzzles me is Firaxis' criptic answers... "Yeah, we know about that... We'll talk to you later... Somewhere... Sometime...". But I guess that they cannot say something like "these things will be in our Civ3 Gold Multiplayer Add-on SuperPack, due in May 2002!", can they?

On a lighter tone...

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... a greater tedium could not have been conceived.

I wouldn't call this tedious... if you know what I mean...

[ACooper]

Lib,

You've got your answer. Will you quit crying now. Go do something else. Take a walk, watch TV, find a girlfriend, anything!
Please stop taking up space on the same issue


Thanks

[Alex]

Did Civ2 have stacked movement? Did you ever have a problem moving 20-30+ settlers around trying to terraform anything? No? Did you have the option to automate the settlers in Civ2 so they'd only clear forest or jungle or only build improvements where you didn't specifically put them? How about automatic pollution removal? Was that in Civ2?

But Civ3 is not supposed to be Civ2, right? After five years and other approaches to this same problem (CTP?), one could think that we would see some improvement on worker movement. I expected to see it. Does that make me egotistical, too?

So what I hear Jeff saying is that, "right now, there is not a simple solution for your problem and it is not known if it can solved that wouldn't cause new problems. Until we determine what the best solution is, I won't promise anything." That is what he said (reading between the lines) but you don't want to hear programming reality (or should you, imo), you just want speculative promises.

Sorry, but if that is what Jeff said, why did he not write it? If I want to say "this", and not "that", I will write "this", and not "that".

But I agree with you that we cannot know what happens inside Civ3 code. Maybe to implement the unit activation system as suggested by Libertarian would be possible but would also bring new problems. Anyway, since Jeff did not say anything about it, we are left with speculations...

[Alex]

Oh, and before someone point me as a whiner, I'd like to say that I like Civ3. I like it very much. I'm having a lot of fun with this game. I think it has interesting concepts, addictive gameplay and great atmosphere.

I'm just trying to support some specific requests... features that would improve even more our fun, IMHO.

But I cannot agree with those who say: "hey, this was in Civ2; Civ2 is perfect; therefore, this is perfect". Flawed logic, if you ask me.

And I cannot agree with those who say: "this game sucks because I don't like it!". Another example of bad logic.

Now, where is the exit?

[Libertarian]

Ozymandous (sic):

You're making the baby Shelley cry.

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Lib, I am curious, what answer would have been ideal for you? Would you prefered Jeff to say that the problem has been fixed in the code and it will be released in a minor patch on Friday?

The ideal answer would have acknowledged the intelligence, humanity, and integrity of those who posed the question. Something like this:

I just want to say on behalf of Firaxis that we greatly appreciate these kinds of suggestions for improving gameplay. We can't think of everything, and so we depend on good people, like the ones in this community, to help us with great ideas like this one. I wish I could give you a definitive answer, but at this point, we're currently reviewing exactly the issue you raise. We agree that it would contribute greatly to gameplay, and if we can find a way to implement it, we'll let you know. Thanks, Lib.

How do you know it could be this simple?

As a programmer with twenty years of commercial experience, I understand completely that few projects are very simple. But difficult doesn't matter. These guys aren't hobbyists. They're professionals. If they can't code this, then they need to go program databases or something.

(edited for spelling)

[Steve Clark]

Alex, because saying something like that in a public forum would invite even more criticisms and perhaps ridicule. It is far better to say as little as possible as to nature of the code and just work out the solutions as best as you can. With code as complex as Civ3, I am surprised that even most things work as well as they do.

I recall a software product I developed that had two serious bugs (one was a memory leak) that I could not fix adequately (it uses a 3rd-party product that even their developers had less clue about it than I did). To this day, they never were fixed but my customers did not know that because I built in a workaround that slightly reduced functionality but at least it didn't cause a fatal error. That's the reality.