Radical Idea to Reduce Tedium ... Might be Possible

[nato]

Earlier I posted a not-too-hard to program way to fix losing armies to defection. I am hoping that this is a possible solution to tedium that again would not be impossible to program.

This is an extreme solution, but please don't reject it without reading the whole thing.

I have a radical idea to try to reduce the tedium ... remove irrigation and mining from the game entirely, and remove the output bonus from roads and rails. Instead replace them with technologies that increase output. For instance, you discover "Crop Rotation" and all your grasslands, plains, and flood plains produce +1 food, or you discover "Strip Mining" and all your hills and mountains produce +1 shield, or "Commerce" gives +1 trade to all non hill and mountains. There could be one food, one shield, and one trade output increasing tech per age.

Furthermore, change pollution. Make pollution reduce the output of the square it appears on, and automatically be cleaned up after perhaps 5 turns. Some technologies like Recycling reduce the number of turns it takes to disappear ... the final tech, perhaps Environmentalism, stops it from appearing altogether.

Now only one improvement is left, which is the movement bonus from roads and rails, and the trade net connection effect they have. Keep these ... one of the fun things in Civ to me is connecting places by roads / rails ... unlike mining every darn square, connecting with roads is fun and not tedious. So I would leave that as is (ideally I would use a Public Works type thing for this, but thats just me).

Therefore the sole remaining purpose of Workers would be the somewhat fun task of connecting places with roads ... lots less tedium!!

On a sidenote, the Industriousness trait would need some sort of new bonus given to it to make up for the lost bonus of double speed workers.

This is just an attempt to automate a tedious no-fun part of the game, like automated Workers. However, a really efficient routine that automates Workers doesn't seem to be doable. Furthermore you still have to build and watch 150+ Workers move around each turn.

I know this is pretty radical, but I think it is a cool idea. Anyone else like it, or does everyone actually enjoy mining / irrigating, roading, and railing every single square in their empire?

If an editor option were put in that allowed technologies to increase land output, then a mod could be created that would do most of what I have described. Massive Worker reduction would be possible, which would be a massive tedium reduction ... imagine playing a game with only 10 - 20 Workers!

Just give the editor an option to allow techs to increase terrain output, and this would be possible! I know thats a big just, but I think it would be fantastic way to reduce the tedium problem ... and there don't seem to be many other solutions out there.

Thanks for reading.

[yin26]

I like it. Also, how about if all tiles count as roads to begin with? If there is no inherent strategy or difficulty in placing roads as they stand, why not make workers totally useless? I know that roads are an important part of the luxury equation, but I'd be willing to let that slide if I *never* had to see another worker again.

Just taking the radical idea to the logical conclusion. BTW, would the AI adjust?

[MrWhereItsAt]

YES! Excellent idea! It does need some serious thought, though. If you had techs that increased food in grass, minerals in Mts etc, then some city sites would be useless for growth or development. But if you brought in techs that increased both minerals and food for the same terrain, perhaps some cities would grow TOO strong.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this idea and hope to God it attracts the attn of some of those genius tinkerers in the Creation or Files fora - perhaps you should put this idea there too.

Keep the roads though, as I think it is too much to try to play the game without restricted access to resources - I gotta be able to cut those damned French off from rubber!

Otherwise I WANT to see this happen.

You have got a revolutionary idea there - something I don't think any Civ clone or successor has dared try!

[MarkG]

i also have that idea of mine.... it's called.... PUBLIC WORKS!!

[MrWhereItsAt]

ARGH! CTP... it's happening again.... NOOOOOO!

Ban the PW!

[nato]

Edit: Responding to Yin here, others came in as I typed ...

Thanks for the response.

I for one enjoy connecting things with roads ... for some reason that seems like part of the fun to me, as opposed to mindlessly irrigating and mining everything. Somehow connecting roads is part of building an empire to me, while improvements are pretty mindless. Maybe it is because roads designate some areas as important to me, places I want to be able to get units to quickly. Therefore they have a little strategy to them, rather than knowing I want EVERY tile mined or irrigated.

I would prefer a PW type thing to take care of roads, and thus totally eliminate Workers.

You might have the better idea though ... that is even more daring than I was thinking. It would have ramifications for defense that you'd have to think about. Good one though!

I think the AI could adjust ... after all it doesn't automate Workers very well to begin with. Just assign a high value to the output increasing techs and it should make things simpler for it I hope.

[Libertarian]

I believe the idea has merit; however, I don't like in general the whole idea that technological advancement comes to anyone and everyone who simply sticks with it long enough.

I would like to see a less linear advancement paradigm in which various appropriate contingencies play key roles. For example, rather than achieving Monotheism simply because you've clicked End Turn a sufficient number of times, I'd like to see a prerequisite of four-fifths of the cities having Temples. Or, rather than getting Monarchy simply because you waited long enough, I'd like to see a requirement that you've demonstrated good governance — perhaps a ten-turn lag or so with no pop rushing. That sort of thing.

[nato]

MrWhereItsAt - Thanks for the nice words! That is a real good point, some city sites would be impossible now ... good observation.

I don't have a great answer to that, but I think maybe one could be figured out with time ... of course my dream solution would be to allow cities to send excess food and shields to each other, like real life nations, not individual city states.

MarkG - Actually this isn't PW really ... playing CTP I eventually felt PW was tedious too, though not as bad as Workers. This is an attempt to do away with tedius per tile improvements altogether, to let you spend more time on fun strategy stuff.

The problem with PW is that, like Workers, it requires time spent on each little tile, one at a time. My way is different.

I do think that PW is better than Workers, but only marginally. I think my idea solves the problem much differently from either, and with a lot less busy work and boring decisions.

There is just no way that improving each little tile one at a time is very much strategy ... I'd rather automate it and spend time deciding who to attack, who to ally, what to build, where to expand, and so on.

Thanks for reading and respoding!

[Skanky Burns]

Actually, i enjoy being able to build roads AND improvements in the tiles. The only time i get annoyed with my workers is when i have nothing to improve, but have to keep them around to clean up pollution.
Pre-patch I could either:
1) Keep about 8 awake each turn, if no pollution arrived, space-bar them, or
2) Put all my workers to sleep on a mountain, wake them up when pollution arrives and then Shift-P them to clean the pollution. The next turn put them back to sleep on the mountain (one by one).

Post-patch, i still have 2 options:
1) Shift-A all my workers, let them clean pollution 2 workers per tile (taking up to 8 turns, even though i know putting more workers on could clean the pollution this turn, or
2) Put all my workers to sleep on a mountain, wake them up when pollution arrives and then Shift-P them to clean the pollution. The next turn put them back to sleep on the mountain (one by one).

If Firaxis got rid of the stupid 2-autoworker limitation for cleaning pollution, i would have ABSOLUTELY NO worker-related tedium throughout the entire game. (well, perhaps the turn i set them all to auto, but thats only once per game, i can live with that).

[notyoueither]

This is cool.

I agree with you about keeping roads.

Go a bit further. The terrain graphics could change with the improved tech. Green expanses give way to little homesteads give way to barbed wire and cattle ranches.

Unfortunately, I think this goes a long way beyond what patches will do. civ4?

Salve

[nato]

Libertarian - Thats a super cool idea for tech advancement; it would make a good thread of its own. I think it would be fun to play, and it is an original way to do tech advancement. I wish game companies were more willing to try new ideas like yours instead of following the original too closely.

Skanky Burns - Well I guess you avoid the whole tedium thing by automating everyone. That is the best solution available now, even with the less than optimal routine.

However, turns still go slower because of all the extra units, and I really can't stand the way continents look once they have been railed to death. I still don't understand why they would want to ruin all that time and effort they spent on terrain graphics just to cover them over with such a hideous look.

Still you have a good point; I just was under the impression that not many people automated all Workers because of the imperfect routine. If MP ever actually happens I doubt many people would automate.

notyoueither - Thats a cool idea about changing graphics. Sadly you're right about probably being beyond a patch ... however if an editor option were put in that allowed techs to increase output, a mod could easily be made to do just this.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I just was under the impression that not many people automated all Workers because of the imperfect routine

Not just imperfect, downright inefficient. It seems to me that every advantage you have against the AI, especially at the higher levels - is needed, if the strats of the Deities amongst us are anything to go by. Thus you need to control your workers to improve the right squares early so as to receive max benefits over time. Same goes for MP.

Surely there's a mod somewhere in history that replaces RR with something less ugly? If so this would be a nice complement to all of this. Maybe Sn00py would be interested...

[Grumbold]

I love the idea. It was brilliant when it was first used in Master of Orion and deserves to be resurrected and adapted with all speed. Of particular interest (to me) was the pollution control mechanism. By default, every planet (city) would spend enough of its own generated production to clean up the waste it produced as it went. The player (and the stronger AI levels) could override this to accept significant pollution of the environment if they temporarily needed to devote the production to something more important. Most of the time it was not necessary and you could have a tedium-free empire that ran itself efficiently without a single worker in sight.

[HugoHillbilly]

Although this idea sounds great, how would you account for pillaging? A great strategy in war is to pillage alot of your enemies mines and irrigation and starve them of resources. How would you account for this if technology gave the resource bonus?

[DaveV]

Originally posted by nato
I think the AI could adjust ... after all it doesn't automate Workers very well to begin with. Just assign a high value to the output increasing techs and it should make things simpler for it I hope.

The problem is that the AI is programmed to produce a lot of workers, enough to do all that mining and irrigating. If all the AIs have a horde of workers standing around leaning on their shovels but the human is smart enough to build just a few workers, that represents a huge lost investment for the AI, and a big edge to the human.