City Manager Bug????

[Firebird]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Who says they had a reason?

Thats right. It could just be one of those things that happen.

But if it is linked with some gamemechanics (like the AI-citygovernor) it might be difficult to remove without tweaking some piece of code, which could lead to an unwanted change in the AI, which again could demand more tweaking etc. Things could be so complicated, that they choose not to do the change because of lack of time.

Now, my life are not any bit worse if they don't change this, but as I am not into micromanagement, it would be nice to be able to stop that worker-building habbit.

Therefore I hope they can and will change this in a patch, so lets hope there are no reason.

[vmxa1]

That would be good. I do not have that issue as I do not let the gov do anything.

[Alex]

I never let the gov do anything too. I do my own production choices, depending on the circumstances and the overall situation. It pays off in the long run, because I can maximise my production on a city-per-city basis.

And yes, cracker's way of explaining what he thinks should be done is too severe and sometimes even arrogant, but that is what has to be expected from anyone who becomes a master of all the subtle aspects of strategy. Intelligence and modesty are rare to be found walking side by side (hiya, Vel!!).

[planetfall]

How to always generate wealth

Back to the original question. The problem is relying too much on city governor. The method to get wealth every time and not anything else, is to go to preferences and select build last unit {or whatever the exact name is}. Then set city governor to have NO control over this city.

BTW the only reason I can imagine to build wealth is when 1) military is much larger than any other civ, 2) no city improvements are useful. For me this is after about 1990 when only a few AI cities are left and only playing simcity style and trying to up score before quit game.

300 workers
Why so many after RR'ed? The only reason I can think of is poor decisions were made about build options and building too many high polluting improvements. If a ton of these workers are foreigners, you should have 0 native workers to maximize power in game. I would have to review sav's to see what is going on, but guess it is a case of too many polluters. I used to have too many workers at the end of the game, i.e., about 30. Now it is always under 10 with holding over 95% of land mass and have no problems cleaning pollution each turn. Just don't leave those workers in a city. Put them in a stack outside the city and freeze them so you can find the worker stack on each continent as you need it.

Cracker -- How about a bit of leaway?

It is common for new posters who first come into contact with Cracker to be PO'ed at his approach. Get over it and give him a break. The real problem is new posters don't know who they are talking to and whom is giving them advice. They incorrectly assume they are talking to a player at their level.

Pick your cracker analogy:
A- CHESS
Cracker plays AND teaches at the Grand Master level. Grand Masters are by definition frustrated with ineffective play styles and often come down hard on play styles that are known not to stand the test of time. Bobby Fischer was an exception. Most Grand Masters, such as Fine, etc, talk down to lower level players. Cracker fits this mode.

B- FOOTBALL
Cracker is like John Madden. He is a coach trying to encourage/frustrate/madden you so you play better and better each month. To this end he posts play plans and game tutorials on civfanatics web site. I don't know of any football player who does not get mad at his coach frequently, but they put up with the coach because of the value they add in improving game play.

If you write off Cracker and treat him as a "crackpot" and not as a "code cracker", you do so at your own risk. Others will slowly and reluctantly learn from him and you will not have any chance vs a cracker educated player in any PTW group game. If you only play single player and allow yourself to build a mental brick wall vs Cracker's ideas you will discover more frustrations than people who try to understand what he is talking about.

Bottom line:
A-- if get PO'ed at Cracker, use PO enegry to "prove him wrong" and see if you can discover any play strategy/tactics which will out play the master, and/or
B-- think of him as your old loving father/grandfather who doesn't understand the softer feel good kind of language but really wants you to learn how to play the game better. Get past the language and focus on the play ideas, concepts, and tactics.

What do you have to lose? a little pride and arrogance.

What do you have to gain? an consistently easier win.

Enough said?

-- PF

[Redstar]

K..since my reponse timed out and i have to start it again.. here is the short version.

LOL the apologists are really reaching.

Assumption 1.. A person must be a newbie if they dare take offense to someone's rudeness and high handed manner.

ya, that's it.


The original question was ...was the city govenor bugged?

Taking aside and filtering out the extraneous comments, the question was finally answered ..thanks to people like firebird.

From the thread, the consensus is that the govenor was not bugged but rather that firaxis made some design choices.

Now if you want to talk about whether or not the city govenor should be used (or relied upon) or whether a person is justified for keeping around 300 workers (btw: the statistic on worker count seems flawed as it kept telling me i have only 75) then i would suggest another thread is needed.

[planetfall]

Originally posted by Redstar

Now if you want to talk about whether a person is justified for keeping around 300 workers (btw: the statistic on worker count seems flawed as it kept telling me i have only 75) then i would suggest another thread is needed.

F3 ## of workers is number of native workers only. This number is used for support costs. Foreign workers are not counted. To speak more precisely, when I talked about less than 10 workers, I really meant less than 10 native workers. I may have 20-30 non native workers cleaning up pollution, hanging out smoking some weed or whatever. Not a cost factor in the game so I don't pay attention to it. After RR the only value of native workers is to more quickly repair war zone dis-improvements.

If you are going to submit an RFE to firaxis to count all workers, ask them to also make it much easier to locate a particular unit from the F3 screen.

I don't run into your original question as I either use city build queues of the next 10 builds, or decide on turn by turn basis, or have on wealth. Once on wealth I am never prompted for a build decision again on that city.


-- PF

[Redstar]

well if ya do actually mean my original question..

it was basically why are workers produced when i have the auto gov set to (sometimes) wealth and never build a worker.

As firebird explained, this is because a setting of wealth does include the occassional worker.

And yes, i know that foreign workers are not included in that tab. But i also know that i counted more original workers than listed...and then projected the final total.

But, since i have only attempted this one time, i know well that my observation may indeed be untrue.

I am playing a few more games to see.

I do micromanage my cities until it simply becomes too much like work (ie too many cities) )
--same with workers

[planetfall]

I have never been able to get city governor to work correctly, i.e., to produce what I expect. If I am in a static era of building and no warfare, I use build queue of 5-10 next improvements. It takes about 3 turns to set up the queue on all cities, but once that is done the turns really fly by. Unfortunately as you advance in levels you have to also advance in military action to stay alive, which makes build queue very difficult. Since I can't predict what the governor will create and when I have more than a hundred cities I can't remember what is most important to build next, I always was stopped on confirming governor's build choice anyway. No time savings. There is time savings when I automatic city production.

The only times I automatic city production now are:

1. queue production in Middle Age peacetime
2. happiness only in newly conquered cities
3. important new tech, i.e. nuclear power, manu. plants, RR.
For example, nuclear power-- cycle thru all cities, to see which are eligible for nuclear power. Depending on shields in production and closeness to AI will either change to nuclear power plant or add nuclear power to next build after current build is finished. If I don't use the build queue, I forget to power some cities.

Now when most cities are on manual production, I just select the scroll list to see if producting correct improvement. It only takes a second and average play time for a turn is about 7 minutes during peace. When I turn on the city governor I only save 1-2 minutes, so I don't find it useful.

HOWEVER, if you discover a method to determine a better way of using the governor I would be interested in knowing.

Ideally, I wish we could set up 3 default settings. Something like this:

A- culture build: lib, temple, cathedral, university, {research lab}, colesseum,
B- military build: top defensive unit of era, top offensive unit of era, top def, top off, bombardment unit, def, off, air unit, ..etc
C- local build queue:

Then have city label show one of "A|B|C" so the player would know if city governor is using his default build order A, or B, or a local order, C.

-- PF

[lorddread]

arrogance vs righteous arrogance

I do not mind arrogance. It shows self confidence. It definitely has its place. I do however agree, that just because someone posts a question, does not mean they are newbies. I have played this game since it came out and have a different playing style. To use the chess analogy, Kasparof plays differently than Fisher. Same here.

I do not usually build a big military until the mid 1600's. Until then I concentrate on building my tech. In the current game (playing this style) I am 8 techs ahead of everyone else (when the game isn't cheating by trading techs during my turn).

Does this make my playing style childish or amatuerish?

Play on!

PS: How do real players rate PTW? Is it buggy like Civ 3 was?

[Theseus]

In SP, very slightly buggy, but overall great.

[vmxa1]

I thought they got rid of tech trading during your turn? Styles are personal and completely up to the inidivual.

[Firebird]

I seldom play a game where I aim to get the most of everything. I will rather play on regent than on deity, because on deity I must micromanage much more to win (or even survive ). And often I don't have time to micromanage everything if I want to be able to finish my game in a resonable time. Call me lazy, but thats the way I enjoy this game.

This is, of course, where I bump into the beloved () citygovernor and his habbit of growing workers. I have no doubt that I would do better if I didn't use automation at all, but it still saves me playingtime.

Besides: It seems to me that most people tries to use the governor and then gives up on him. That must be irritating (and a motivation for change!) for Firaxis, because IIRC the citygovernor was one of those things, which fans missed in civ-like games before and which was shown to us as one of the important new features in civ3.

Once more: I hope that Firaxis frees the citygovernor of his bad habbits just as they have done well (MHO) when fixing, changing and adding so many other things in civ3.