Late Game Tedium - Discussion and Solutions

[nato]

This is pretty long but fairly good I hope; it is at least constructive ...

I think there are fun decisions to make in Civ3, and there are boring decisions to make. Fun decisions involve strategic thinking and planning. Boring decisions involve narrow optimization and busy work that many would like to automate.

Civ is a mix of these fun and boring decisions. However the ratio of fun to boring changes as the game goes on. In the early part of the game, you have fewer units and cities. You spend most of your time on exploring, deciding who to attack and ally with, where to expand, whether to pursue war or peaceful growth, and so on.

Later in the game however the number of units and cities grows exponentially. Now you spend most of your time managing, deciding what improvement to have workers make, where to move military units, what to have cities build, and how to quell civil disorder.

This becomes very bad late game. Early game, for every fun decisions to make, where to expand, when to attack, and so on, you only have to move a few units and manage a few cities. Late game, to get to the fun decisions you have to do many many boring things, like move workers #1-150, move artillery piece #1-40, manage 30 good cities, and manage 70 corrupt cities.

To try to fix this, fun decisions should be maximized, and boring decisions should be minimized. This requires first defining what is fun and what is boring (this will vary for people, but I hope some broad agreement is possible - this is my list, please share yours):

Fun

• Where to Expand
• Who to Ally With, Who to Wage War With
• Making Interesting Trade Deals
• Be Aggressive or Peaceful
• Tech Research Path
• What Kind and How Big an Army
• Where, When, and How to Invade

Boring

• What Tile to Put Worker #84 On
• Mining, Irrigating, Clearing EVERY Tile
• Roading and Railing EVERY Tile for Output Bonus
• Cleaning Up Pollution
• Deciding What City #39 Should Build Now
• Getting City #92 Out of Disorder
• Moving Artillery #26
• Moving Tank #15

I don't really see anyway to increase the amount of fun decisions ... I think what needs to happen is simply to decrease the boring decisions so that the fun ones get more time.

So the key is minimization of boring decisions. How to do this?

One thing is perhaps to play smaller maps. Less tiles, less cities, less units, more fun maybe. This isn't much help to ppl like me who prefer big maps for the greater possibilities, but its worth mentioning.

Second is using Shift A to automate your workers. No one, myself included, can stand to do this because of the efficiency loss. However, maybe it is worth it to swallow that loss and get more fun playing time ... just maybe the loss of optimization won't really change the outcome of the game. Life's too short to spend time personally irrigating.

Third is maybe using Governors to handle city management ... I don't know much about this since I was never willing to trust them, but maybe it is worth the inevitable loss of optimality.

Thats all I can think of that players can do as the game is now. What game changes should be made?

First is stack movement of course, so players' lives aren't spent moving every single unit around one by one.

Second is to improve automation routines. Make the automated worker and the city governors do their job better please!! This would allow players to dump the busy work on them without fear of losing too much efficiency. As it is, no one will do this because the efficiency loss is too great. If automated workers and city governors were more competent, say maybe 75% as good as a human, then complaints about end game tedium might disappear.

Third is change pollution. Either fix the worker automation, so that they clean it efficiently like humans, or simply make pollution disappear on its own after 5 turns or so. Pollution is a bigger headache than one might think, because it requires the player to keep workers around even after improvements are finished, and he generally has to activate a stack of them one by one every time pollution appears. It seems a small thing, but it causes a disproportionate amount of tedium.

Fourth is an option to have cities in disorder automatically be "given some entertainment" if that option is available. (The "manage city mood" option might do this already, I am not sure since I never trusted governors).

Fifth make city build queues easier to work with. Allow multiple types of queues for one thing.

Thats all I can think of ... mostly they just deal with improving the worker and governor AI so that busy work can be given to them. Boring decisions cause game tedium ... it just becomes overwhelming late game because the number of them has grown exponentially, cluttering out the fun decisions almost completely.

Boring busywork is best handled by a machine ... if worker and governor AIs were improved, players would be willing to let them do so, and the late game tedium problem might disappear.

Hopefully this just involves improving the existing routines, rather than programming entirely new code, so it might be feasible.

Agreement or disagreement? Any other ideas about why late game tedium occurs and how to fix it?

Thanks for reading, sorry for the length!

[Barnacle Bill]

I think the tedium is a symptom, with two big culprits: pollution & too many units.

On pollution, I've never really understood the point of it in Civ games. "Oh, you have to have some limit on production". You do, once a city has a manufacturing plant and an offshore platform and has a citizen working every shield-producing tile in its radius, you have reached the limit. If you positively must have polution because you just can't feel green without it, then let's model it more realistically. You don't get random blotches that render huge chuncks of real estate unusable, and climate change due to polution is controversial among scientists no matter what the press might tell you. What is an absolutely undeniable effect of polution is it makes a segment of the population unhappy, and the more of it there is the more that segment grows. So, let's keep the smoke stacks but cause smoke stacks to make people unhappy (yes, I know that they are yellow triangles now but smoke stacks gets the idea across). Let's also give the player something to do about it after all the anti-polution buildings are built and you still have smoke stacks - a setting you can set (maybe you have to build a small wonder called "The EPA" before you can use it) called "Environmental Regulation", which would simply reduce your shield production until the smoke stacks went away (effectively reducing the production bonus from buildings as needed to keep the bad thang away). The setting could either be an "on-off" or a number of smoke stacks to tolerate. Oh, yes, people basically did not care about polution prior to the mid-late 20th century so there should be some tech that turns on "polution makes people unhappy", or maybe it just comes as soon as you enter the modern era. Then, with the above in, remove polutioned tiles from the game and either remove global warming altogether (my vote) or make it a function of the global total of smoke stacks rather than the global total of poluted tiles (a compromise I'd accept). Net result - all you have to do to manage polution is to manage a civ-wide setting akin in principle to your tax rate and build buildings.

On too many units, a couple of easy fixes:

a) too many Workers - in real life, improving the terrain is done mostly by local people. So, let this be performed by the city citizen working the tile instead of producing if it is in the city radius. How long it takes would be a function of tech, but there would still only be one per tile at a time. Since the only reason to improve terrain outside cities is to build roads/railroads (or forts if you use them), the need for Workers should be greatly reduced. It should also be something the governors could be made competent to manage, especially if the player could have setting to tell the governor whether to emphasize food or shield production (probably a sliding scale rather than an bit).

b) too many units in general - this is due to design changes that make it possible to support much larger military establishments than in previous games of the series. The fix is simple (and does not require big coding like "stack movement"). Raise the maintenance cost, and make it a function of the unit build cost not a fixed rate. This is realistic - it costs a lot more to support a 1st World Mech Infantry division than a 3rd World non-mechanized Infantry Division. In real life, it also costs more to own a unit for a year than to build it in the first place. This would cut down on the number of units dramatically.

[The diplomat]

nato: you hit the nail right on the head.

The solution is obvious. Expand the "Fun" decisions and elminate or drastically reduce the "Boring" decisions.

The "Boring" decisions can be easily eliminated.

What Tile to Put Worker #84 On

Mining, Irrigating, Clearing EVERY Tile

Roading and Railing EVERY Tile for Output Bonus

Cleaning Up Pollution

this can be solved with a PW system.

Deciding What City #39 Should Build Now

Getting City #92 Out of Disorder

This can be done through intelligent AI governors assisted by the players direction.

Moving Artillery #26

Moving Tank #15

One word: stacked units.

If you stack units then you can move the equivalent of maybe 3 or 4 units instead of 40!

It would add a sense of strategic planning to warfare. Imagine deciding to move Stack#1 and #2 to attack from the North while sending Stack #3 as a diversion from the South. The enemy stacks would meet and engage in battle. The outcome might be something like: Stack #1 manages to push back the enemy Stack 2 tiles but Stack #2 was forced to retreat, Stack #3 never encountered any enemy forces. Ok, now what do I do? This would be so much more interesting than moving every single unit and having each unit engage in a 2 sec fight to the death.

[Autolicus]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of tedious activities in the game. Most of them have been repeatedly pointed out, and some have offered what appear to be workable solutions -- e.g., stack movement; elimination of pollution or else make the effects more abstract.

Aside from these, one of my most disfavored aspects of the game is revolts. I'm not talking about a city or two -- those are fine. I'm talkling about a situation where war weariness sets in, or you lose one or two luxury agreements in a single turn, and suddenly all of your cities revolt. You then spend the next five minutes allocating entertainers; then you renegotiate the luxury agreements, make peace; increase luxury expenditure, etc.; then on the next turn you have to wait while you receive messages from each city that order has been restored; then you have to go into each city and reallocate the entertainers. Sigh.

I would like to see a feature that deals with a situation when more than a certain number of cities revolt in a single turn. In those situations, you should be given a pop-up screen at the beginning of the turn, indicating that X cites are about to revolt. Possible options could include: a) increasing the amount of entertainment in the budget windor; b) allowing the computer to automatically appoint entertainers in each of the trouble cities; c) simply ignoring all revolting cities -- (perhaps you plan on renegotiating the luxury agreements, or negotiating peace on the next turn, which will obviate the need for you having to deal with the situation).

Well, anyways, that's my two cents worth.

[nato]

Barnacle Bill - Thats a very good idea for pollution. That does treat pollution more like it is in real life I think. Either it is untreated and makes people unhappy, or it has to be cleaned which essentially costs production.

I really do think pollution causes more tedium than it would seem.

Having the city population build improvements is a cool idea, and would be nice. Given my last attempt at "fixing" terrain improvements though, I'm not sure how well people would receive such a big change, and it would take a lot of new programming. Its a cool idea, I'm just not sure how feasible it would be.

The high cost maintanence idea is interesting ... it would lead to players being able to build miliatary units, but not wanting to because of gold cost. The limiter to your armies would change from shield production to gold income.

With tech trading, its easy to have a huge gold income, so the upkeep cost would have to be pretty steep to stop me from making troops. However it might lead to a cool situation of running a deficit during a war, then having to disband units afterwards instead of keeping them forever. That would be pretty realistic.

One thing, if you had all improvements built in a city, and couldn't afford more units, you'd have cities with nothing to do ... lots of Wealth.

I like having modern units cost more than ancient ones. That would have to be scaled with empire growth right.

Cool ideas!

The diplomat - Thanks thats one of the most positive replies I've ever gotten.

I prefer PW, but I don't think it will ever happen in Civ3. Actually though, if the AI of the automated worker was near optimal, it would be even better than PW. PW still takes some management, while good automated workers run themselves.

I think better governors, ones you could rely on, might be an overlooked improvement that would really reduce the tedium a lot.

As for stacks, we can only hope...

Thanks for the replies ... I think by sharing ideas, people can come up with ideas they could not alone.

[Green Giant]

Finally a constructive "complain" thread. I was getting sick of all those #### threads. Nothing gets accomplished by it.

[C Chulainn]

It isn't true that people didn't care about pollution until the mid-20th century; when the river Thames got so polluted that sittings of parliament had to be abandoned because of the stench, the British government in the mid 19th century began to notice pollution - it's not some hippy thing.
That said, it isn't modelled realistically in Civ - in real life you don't get great big clumps of yecch that ruin hundredsof square km of land. It would be better to have pollution work like corruption, as the horrible environment harms crops, makes workers miserable or ill, etc. It could affect happiness, food or commerce rather than production. A toxic cloud disaster could kill citizens. The maddest part is that, rather than getting a nuclear winter, dropping the bomb contributes to global warming! Huh?!
Regarding workers, I liked CtP's model of giving public work points to create improvements rather than sending little men all over the place, which can get tedious.

[Kevin Ar18]

How about pop-ups?
You can read about it in more detail here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39549

Basically the idea is to compress the many pop-ups into 2 or 3 pop-ups at the end of the AI's turn.

Also an option to save any other pop-ups like diplomacy till the end of the AI's turn so you can leave the computer if the turn takes a long time.

[Kevin Ar18]

Originally posted by C Chulainn
It isn't true that people didn't care about pollution until the mid-20th century; when the river Thames got so polluted that sittings of parliament had to be abandoned because of the stench, the British government in the mid 19th century began to notice pollution - it's not some hippy thing.
That said, it isn't modelled realistically in Civ - in real life you don't get great big clumps of yecch that ruin hundredsof square km of land. It would be better to have pollution work like corruption, as the horrible environment harms crops, makes workers miserable or ill, etc. It could affect happiness, food or commerce rather than production. A toxic cloud disaster could kill citizens.

I like that idea. Would be a little more realistic to have pollution on the level of how the disease model works in CivIII in that it affects the city but does not change the terrain.
Then again, I do think nuclear missiles should affect the terrain. (They should kill all the units and buildings too, but that's another story )

Originally posted by C Chulainn
The maddest part is that, rather than getting a nuclear winter, dropping the bomb contributes to global warming! Huh?!
Regarding workers, I liked CtP's model of giving public work points to create improvements rather than sending little men all over the place, which can get tedious.

Yeah, a nuclear winter would be more realistic.
You know it's never been proven that pollution is causing global warming? In fact mars is undergoing global warming now as well. Supposedly the sun is going through a hotter/warming cycle right now (and no I don't mean it's becomming a gas giant )

[DilithiumDad]

Automating workers to clean pollution works well when you have pollution present every turn --they keep on going.

Once you have hospitals, all but a few workers should join your bases, if you Industrious/Democracy and have Replacement Parts tech (=400% speed, clearing jungle in 4 turns with a single worker not 16).

Build fewer cities. Give away those 70 corrupt cities unless you are going for domination or conquest.

Don't wage war. Surround your empire with forts and garrison fortified defenders in them. Fortified units do not need management!

[Barnacle Bill]

Actually, nulcear winter has been pretty thoroughly discredited sciencewise. It turns out to have been one of those garbage-in/garbage-out computer model things. That's why you don't hear much about it anymore.

Scientific studies and articles are starting to appear challenging the "polution causes global warming" theory as well.

The specific incident mentioned (blech in the Thames) may have upset people, but turn of the century (c. 1900 that is) pop art indicates that smoke stacks belching black into the air was a symbol of progress and prosperity to the culture at large. The big picture was that air quality in industrialized cities of that era was a lot worse than today but people just didn't care.

[nato]

DilithiumDad - You have good points. However your solutions require you to not do well.

Pollution automation works as long as you always have pollution ... isn't that kind of self defeating? I just want an automation that works well all the time, basically activating workers when pollution reappears. Global warming hits too fast in this game to keep pollution around.

Build fewer cities ... well I guess that gets to a real heart of the matter. Part of "winning" a 4x game is having lots of cities. I guess that is not the Civ3 way ... but I think enough people want to play that way that it should at least be considered to make it less tedious.

Note I am NOT asking for reduced corruption or stuff like that! Just better automated workers and governors.

Your line "Don't wage war" ... similar to having lots of cities. The reason a lot of players play 4x is to wage war!! In a game with fewer city improvements to build, this is even more true.

I guess I could play with fewer cities and no wars ... but then you start wondering what the point of playing is? To get 30 cities all building Wealth?

[Libertarian]

Build fewer cities. Give away those 70 corrupt cities unless you are going for domination or conquest.

[...knocking on poster's head...]

Hello? Anybody in there?

[Grumbold]

Pollution affecting city production/wealth/happiness/growth rather than being a tile based event is a great idea. It worked in MoO and would not be difficult to make work in Civ. My biggest dislike in Civ 3 is that pollution stops the square being worked so when your automatic pollution cleaners have finished you have to give the square back to the right city. Otherwise you find one city is now expanding and another shrinking because the starving city didn't grab it back as soon as it was available again.

What Tile to Put Worker #84 On

Mining, Irrigating, Clearing EVERY Tile

Roading and Railing EVERY Tile for Output Bonus

Cleaning Up Pollution

I disagree that PW is a solution to these. You have to decide what tile to PW, still mine, irrigate and clear everything, still need those road/rails unless the bonus system changes and have to PW to clean up pollution. If 30 workers is a good number for your current empire size then 30 workers worth of PW is required to produce the same effect, and to be efficient you stillhave to scroll round your whole empire every turn looking to the best tiles to pick. If we were to move away from this idea then the system must change so only important city-city trade connections need be represented and the development of the land be more focussed on buildings built in the towns that represent increased agricultural, mineral or industrial output from the surrounding area.

Stacked movement? Proper armies !! Why move them together if they then queue up one by one to fight the enemy with no attempt to use combined arms or the advantage of numbers? One idea that Activision got 95% right and Firaxis almost totally failed to incorporate.

[Atahualpa]

Solution would be that for example you can build railroads the following:

From a list of tasks you select: Building Railroads
Then you hit with your mouse all that tiles that should be railroaded (maybe with a 1x1, 2x2 and 4x4 brush)
Then you assign a number of workers to that task and tada it is done!!

I think this should be the way everything should be done with workers.
When you build workers, they should not appear on map but enter in a "continental fund of workers" where all workers of one continent are in (of one nation of course).

And from this fund then you do all of your tasks (irrigation, mining, clearing jungle,...)

Of course you also have the option to make one worker appear on the map in a special city. So that you can transport him to another continent. And then add him there to the fund. Or of course you could use the worker just the way you were used to use workers. By disabling this continental fund every worker remains its functionality.


Oh and yes I think tiles that were bombarded by another nation should not be worked on again.
So that you can suppress working on tiles by bombarding every turn. This is much more realistic I think.


I think this change would be more of a add-on to the existing code than a rewrite. And for that reason I think it is doable.


Again, I need to say this is a great thread! I would like to see more of em.
the bashing and flaming threads should die out!

ata