POLL: No Unit Workshop in Civ3

[Cyclotron]

Where is this response? Sounds intersting...

And, anyway, to all the people who are for unit workshops and such: Don't get me wrong. Unit workshops are a great idea, I just don't think they would help Civilization. Some of the ideas would be fantastic for some other games, but I think a Civ game is too long term for this and the workshop would become a needless detail.

[Youngsun]

Bye bye "mobilisation idea"!
Bye bye "Arms trade idea"!
Bye bye "better representation of socio-economic impact of war"!

Wait a minute! If there is any way represent stockpiling arms and recuriting combat personnel, unitworkshop may not be a necessity.

I find SMAC unitworkshop quite uninspiring and boring and there were a lot to improve(the potential was limitless)but Firaxis gave verdict not based on their poor perfomance in SMAC and blaming unitworkshop itself as scape goat? come on!

People don't like unitworkshop why? It was Firaxis's poor design, uninspiring graphics and cumbersome interface with so many useless prototype things! not because unitworkshop was fundamentally bad.

There are so many to represent unitworkshop but Firaxis pursue only one choice which is

1.design a unit
2.unit type produced: prototype
3.produce a unit based on prototype
4.make variation of the unit: editing of prototype
5.produce a unit

This way produces problems of frustration from people since we are restricted to produce unit based on prototype and every type should be managed. how inconvenient!

so is there any alternative to that? sure!

1.produce predefined weapons such as rifles
2.stockpile them
3.recruite men
4.make a unit by mixing a weapons and men
5.done!

There are no prototype or type to manage every time and no need to upgrade unit type. Just produce and mix! That's all and every time(likely to be war time)you make a unit for your custom need.

Come and visit my "unitworkshop module list" thread and see what I have done.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 13, 2001).]

[Roman]

People, you cannot expect all your ideas to make it into Civ3. I think cutting this particular one was wise.

[shimmin]

Basically, it seems that Firaxis' decision summarizes more or less like:

1) SMAC's unit workshop may have added a fair degree of tactical depth and variety that was missing in the civs, but graphically, it was pretty uninspiring.

2a) Being the game designs gods we are, there is NO WAY a unit workshop could possibly be done in a more inspiring way than we did it in SMAC.
-OR- (your choice)
2b) Being the game design sluggards we are, there is NO WAY that if we were going to use a unit workshop, we would pass up the opportunity to reuse the code from SMAC.

3) Therefore, we won't have a unit workshop. Besides, as long as the units look really cool, no one will care that there's more or less no way to be innovative with your military tactics. Aren't eye candy and mod packs so much more important than game depth anyway?

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by shimmin on 02-14-2001 07:28 AM3) Therefore, we won't have a unit workshop. Besides, as long as the units look really cool, no one will care that there's more or less no way to be innovative with your military tactics. Aren't eye candy and mod packs so much more important than game depth anyway?

Actually, I think they realized that unit workshops were the real eye candy. I'm glad they diodn't resort to them and stayed with basic units. I am glad they did not sacrafice the very game depth you speak of for frivolous unit templates and the limited and unrealistic scope of unit workshops. And tactics will probably be actually quite innovative, now that we know the AI will actually be able to use the units (I was afraid of the AI ineptitude in SMAC). I think the only people who will be un-innovative are the ones who will not buy Civ3 just because they'd rather mope about unit workshops. Firaxis is not lazy or does it have delusions of grandeur; maybe they just know what they are doing.

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"Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames..."
- Marsil, called the Pretender

[Roman]

Most excellent response, cyclotron 7.

[Krippled]

I liked it in SMAC - I mean how cool was a colony pod attached to a plane chassis? I mean, it rocks for colonising islands, non-attached land and also for hedging your opponents in. Beats the heck out of moving a normal colony pod. I think it will much reduce the fun of getting new tech's. Another thing I liked about it was always the fact that your opponent (and I'm talking network...) never knew quite what they were about to be up against

Having said that I can see why they can't do it in Civ3 with the unit animations. The question is what would I like most? Short term probably the animations, long term unit development.

[Urban Ranger]

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 02-12-2001 03:44 PM Okay, that may be interesting (ooh! My marines have wilderness survival training!) but what use is it? How will all this junk and doctrine and stuff affect the game at all? This sounds like an RPG, not Civ! If it has no use, there is no reason to tack additional meaningless details onto CivIII.

What a well thought out response

All these different trainings and doctrines of course will give units various abilities.

Right now, the Civ model is unrealistic. Think about it, putting a unit in the middle of nowhere, and it is going to suffer various sorts of ill consequences such as loss of morale, combat strength, and so forth. When you put a bunch of men in a jungle and they will suffer. If your unit has Wilderness Survival, though, it will suffer less.

Doctrines are meant to give units special abilties. What would a skirmisher unit do? Perhaps, say, hit-and-run raids instead of all-out combat?

If you just bother to think about this a little bit, the answers should come to you. After all, it is not that hard.

[Urban Ranger]

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 02-14-2001 06:11 PM Actually, I think they realized that unit workshops were the real eye candy. I'm glad they diodn't resort to them and stayed with basic units. I am glad they did not sacrafice the very game depth you speak of for frivolous unit templates and the limited and unrealistic scope of unit workshops

Really?

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HT...256.html?24#24

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 02-14-2001 10:46 PM What a well thought out response

Why, thank you. Roman liked my last response, too.

quote: Right now, the Civ model is unrealistic. Think about it, putting a unit in the middle of nowhere, and it is going to suffer various sorts of ill consequences such as loss of morale, combat strength, and so forth. When you put a bunch of men in a jungle and they will suffer.

And, if you put a bunch of gamers in a room with a game that bogs itself down in "realistic" nuances like loss of morale because they are further from cities, etc., you can bet they will suffer.

quote: Doctrines are meant to give units special abilties. What would a skirmisher unit do? Perhaps, say, hit-and-run raids instead of all-out combat?

Okay, but you still haven't told me what this means in game terms. When last I checked, all Civ combat was all-out.

quote: If you just bother to think about this a little bit, the answers should come to you. After all, it is not that hard.

Actually, I have bothered to think about it for some time, and I have decided that my opinion is that all this super-realism that makes Civ "unrealistic" to you makes it a good game in my eyes. This is a game, not a documentary. Your suggestions would both not work and would be mind-bogglingly dull to anybody playing it. What we need is better gameplay, not painstaking "realism." I still don't understand (Is this what I am supposed to think about?) how any of the details you have mentioned above could possibly benefit anyone playing the game in any way or improve anyone's gaming experience, besides possibly getting good excercise at honing their math skills. With a game like you describe, maybe I could do my homework while I play it!

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"Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames..."
- Marsil, called the Pretender

[Chaos Warrior]

I am surprised that I was able to vote 5 times in that poll so far!!
[This message has been edited by Chaos Warrior (edited February 15, 2001).]

[shimmin]

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 02-14-2001 06:11 PM Actually, I think they realized that unit workshops were the real eye candy. I'm glad they diodn't resort to them and stayed with basic units. I am glad they did not sacrafice the very game depth you speak of for frivolous unit templates and the limited and unrealistic scope of unit workshops.

I don't understand a word here? How is a workshop more limited than fixed units in any way besides visually? Name one thing that can be done with fixed units that cannot also be done with user-designable one.

By "innovation" and "tactical depth" I referred to there being multiple viable strategies at a given tech level in the game. When I played Civ II, and I was playing a competent opponent, if I knew what techs my opponent had, I could pretty well predict what force would come knocking at my door if we fell into war, and conversely what his city defenses would look like.

[raingoon]

For several reasons SMAC's Unit Workshop is just not as strong a system for a strategy game... You may be able to "think differently" about designing units, but that's not the same as creative problem solving. You're not thinking nearly as creatively as you would be forced to think were you limited by the static nature of your units.

One is fooled into thinking "less restriction" from a unit-design standpoint means less restriction from a unit-strategy standpoint. It does not. Ironically, the one thing that fixed units engender which user-designable units do not is the very problem-solving creativity that makes a Civ game fun.

It's a paradox that restriction engenders creativity, but it's true. And universal. You may feel you are highly creative inside your unit design workshop, but you're not. You're just "thinking differently," and that to a limited degree. Problem solving in a design workshop is non-existent. In effect, you've simply just built a mod-builder into the game. You lack a real problem set and instead you convince yourself you're solving problems you really don't have ("should it be a bow or a lance?") -- there are no opponent forces acting against you in this arena. Whereas the current system restricts your ability to make those kind of horizontal decisions and forces you to make use of the sticks and stones you've been given to create solutions in the arena where opponents really are acting against you.

But wait -- your opponent would have a workshop, too, and his moves would be infinitely harder to predict, correct? Oddly, not. At best it works out the same as were his units fixed to begin with. But usually on the strategic level the result is in fact that his moves have on average become easier to predict. For one simple reason...

Creativity is a problem solving skill. He's attempted to think creatively within his design workshop, but by definition no problem really exists there, therefore he's only thought "differently" about units that don't change without his input. Be that as it may, now let's say he has his finished designing his units and he's placed them on the board. Aren't we back to Civ 2 anyway at this point? Not really. Because he has, to a limited degree, added a factor of unpredictability in the makeup of his troops, he now lacks a need to be as unpredicatble in his attack. And "need" is the operative word, here, because certainly he may choose to be as unpredictable in his attack, but by definition, to a certain factor that did not exist before, he no longer needs to be. And in a nuanced game like Civ, that "certain factor" can change everything. Therefore, what fixed units allow that "user designed" units do not is the real need to be more creative. The less you can change the nature of your units, the more creative you need to be in using them.

All this to say, one may still appreciate the greater flexibility of the design workshop, but if you want Civ 3 to require greater flexibility in strategic thinking, Firaxis was right to cut it.

[Cyclotron]

Raingoon... I wholeheartedly agree with your point. I don't know if anyone could have put it better.

[Roman]

Raingoon, good job. This is one of the most thoughtful posts I have ever seen on these forums. You are precisely on the spot by saying that limitations engender creativity.

Units should come with their specific advantages and limitations. If you are allowed to remove all limitations from your hypothetical unit type and give them all the advantages, there would then be no point in building the other units (exept for perhaps price). The game would then degenerate into one unit type game with little real strategy.