POLL 20: Settlers vs Public Works

[Pedrun]

Settlers have bad gameplay because there will come a time when the civ will have a army of settlers that changes all the terrain and is going to just wait the tecnology to upgrade the tile improvments. living the terrain unbelievely changed. And for manies is boring to leave the settlers waiting or moving them.
Public Workers arent realistic. where does it come from? What is it in real life? the govern is stealing the workers and products from the factories? i dont see that in real life, only in the comunism anyway. Although it has good gameplay

So what how to leave realistic and with good gameplay? I see two options for that.

1- What about instead of public workers, money speaks louder? This way there is not going create a new concept in civilization series. And is tottaly realistic, the civs do spend money to create terrain improvments dont they? and the gameplay is as good as public workers.

2- Lets combo the ideas. The settlers still are the modifiers of the terrain and the creators of the tile improvments. But nothing is free. So to make each modification by the settlers we have to spent money on it, after all there are people that like to move then(like me).This way we limit the "settlers army"(why having all the workers you can get but dont having any money) and becames even more realistic then th first option( now we need money and someone who works). and there is no need for new concepts.

[To_Serve_Man]

I don't think there should be settlers or public works. They should all be semi-automatic.

Heres an idea:

Instead of creating a settler unit, you can place a 'target' where you want people to migrate. Through time and effort, population from cities moves to that area and create their own city. This could be a Colony, with a small population. However, once the colony is a certian size, it can become a city. Once a city, you can re-name it. When its a colony, you can build everything a normal city can but it cost a certian amount more. This is to represent how colonies needed military aid for protection. Your nation can spread several ways. Migration to new areas can be set by a slider bar/numerical value you set. So if you want to expand, raise the migration bar, and target an area were you want to send people. The farther away outside of your nation's border, the long it will take to create a city. So for example, if you target an area right out side your border, it will take 3 turns. Compared to if you set the target across an ocean, it would take 20-25 turns.


About Public Works:
Since Settlers would not be used for new cities, some type of work/serf/business system would be used for terrian improvements.
Irrigation, Mines and any other agriculture improvements should happen automatically by the needs of the citizens in that town.Also, different improvements can be shaped and incuraged by the government type. EX: If your nations govnt is Communist, irrigation is much less common, but all the irrigation you do have brings you some turnly gold. or, EX: As a Theocracy, Irrigation does not accure since the land belongs to all the nobles. However, with a revolution, you can enlighten your nation by bringing it a republic, which makes irrigation come up rapidly through business class emerging. Thus, making a govnt revolution not just a way to get more science or tax money, or more military units.
. For Roads/Rails/Etc, you should lay down a path on the main map. Construction would start next turn and the road/rail/etc would start to take form. The time of completion would be determined by the length and the route it takes (going through hilss/mountians or smamps). It would be like Civ2, but without the settler unit having to move to each new spot.


Just some thoughts of mine.
[This message has been edited by To_Serve_Man (edited May 06, 2001).]

[Grumbold]

I think that moving a limited number of settler/engineer pieces around the board developing the terrain is part of the enjoyment for me. It helps to keep the atmosphere focused about "civilisation" rather than global war. Once you have 40 cities supporting 80 engineers hell bent on turning every swamp into verdant grassland and flattening inconveniently placed mountain ranges the task could become tedious or overwhelming and I begin to appreciate the comments made by MarkG. If you have no personal stake in their activity then it becomes unnecessary micromanagement. However that stage of excessive transformation is normally only available to advanced civs attempting to maximise point scoring in the single player game. It is not a required part of game winning strategy.

An AI model should have a good understanding of what basic improvements are necessary to make a competitive city and what transport links are useful to neighbouring cities. The Civ settlers and the Ctp PW just have different means of delivering the same result. In both cases the quality so far has been poor. For Civ III almost certainly the most important thing we expect is improved AI. If they can deliver it for diplomacy, warfare and city management then terrain improvement should be no exception. If your settlers/PW are being mismanaged in auto mode you can bet the AI opponents are being equally incompetent.

[Seeker]

I am against PW and for settlers. Many people don't seem to realize that if you keep stripping down the Civ idea more and more you are left with a lame wargame.

I WANT a Sim-like experience with all my workers wandering around recieving orders, building mines, roads, bridges, and ports!

[Russian King]

Some ppl say 7 civs aint enough-ok fine. 10will do for me, not much diff...
BUT even if i was like Roman, that would mean nothing to me SINCE:
A MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT At first, i was outvoted that for improving terrain you needed to remove a population from a city(at least they cant settle so i dont have the temptation) now the co. is telling me settlers remove 2 pop!!! THIS IS ABSURD ... if they build cityes with 2 pop-fine if they build cities with improvements-fine but WHY, i repeat: WHY did they do that? to have something to protect doesn't seem like a fair reeason 2me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. dont we have our whole civ already??? so what FIRAXIS are saying:

"Let them take your cities, just leave the settlers alone"

I PROTEST once again! if they fix the nuke and everything else is better than i've seen before, fine they can have my money for the game, otherwise: Dont hope for it!

i will post a new topic on this(so we can start out fresh ) this thing aint over YET!

[Russian King]

Some ppl say 7 civs aint enough-ok fine. 10will do for me, not much diff...
BUT even if i was like Roman, that would mean nothing to me SINCE:
A MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT At first, i was outvoted that for improving terrain you needed to remove a population from a city(at least they cant settle so i dont have the temptation) now the co. is telling me settlers remove 2 pop!!! THIS IS ABSURD ... if they build cityes with 2 pop-fine if they build cities with improvements-fine but WHY, i repeat: WHY did they do that? to have something to protect doesn't seem like a fair reeason 2me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. dont we have our whole civ already??? so what FIRAXIS are saying:

"Let them take your cities, just leave the settlers alone"

I PROTEST once again! if they fix the nuke and everything else is better than i've seen before, fine they can have my money for the game, otherwise: Dont hope for it!

i will make a new topic room on this

[Cyclotron]

Actually, the Harbor was the improvement that boosted food by one, and the offshore platform boosted shields by one. No improvement boosted trade on the water, apart from governments/wonders that boost trade on both land and sea like Democracy and the Colossus.

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Brad]

quote: Originally posted by MrFun on 04-26-2001 12:46 AM Was there also another city improvement that increased food by 1 in all sea tiles in Civilization II?

No but I think the offshore platform increased shields by one in each ocean square

[MrFun]

Actually, in Civilization II, you could improve sea tiles indirectly by building a city improvement called Harbor (if I remember correctly). By building Harbors, you increased trade by 1 in each sea tile.

Was there also another city improvement that increased food by 1 in all sea tiles in Civilization II?

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"I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, making exceptions to it -- where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why does not another say it does not mean some other man?"
-- Abraham Lincoln's quote, and his anti-racist ideals

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by Al'Kimiya on 04-25-2001 03:56 PM With PW you could make improvements in lake/ocean areas, allowing more food income (and trade?). Has anyone considered this for settlers/workers?

With settlers, you could just take a settler out to the ocean square in question with a ship and park it there while the settler works. That is, assuming Civ3 has sea improvements...

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Al'Kimiya]

With PW you could make improvements in lake/ocean areas, allowing more food income (and trade?). Has anyone considered this for settlers/workers?

Ralf, you don't want to drag a map around to place improvement with a PW system, but you are willing to herd settlers/terraformers/engineers around a map, perhaps 20 a turn, look around the map for tiles that should be improved, spend several turns getting 20+ settlers to their proper spots and then spending 7+ turns to add roads/railroads/irrigation/farms or road/railroads/mines to a single square? I'm just not convinced. I guess I'd rather hunt around on the map for things I'd like to improve, place as many improvements ans I would both like and afford simulataneuosly and wait sveral turns as people (who are not in unit form) build it. I guess I'm just more interesting in building the empire I would like as opposed to moving blinking units around a screen. Silly me.

[Fredric Drum]

noitazilivic: Are you talking about engineer troops? Not a bad idea...


Fred

[noitazilivic]

How about PW like in CTp, but to please those of you who use settlers/workers strategically (forts or others like sensors) you could have special units for these. I am not talking millitary settlers, but perhaps a type of infantry could have the ability to build a semi-permament for (entrench etc) or a millitary unit that can also set up listening posts?

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 04-20-2001 06:24 PM Selling CTP as the updated Civ-3 was the very reason that people got lured into buying the game in the first place. That was Activisions only chance of getting significantly above ordinary salefigures - and they knew it all too well. Why else, was it so important for them to have the catchword "CIVILIZATION" (with capital letters), directly above "Call to Power" on the package?

i'm not sure if you agree or disagree with me...

activision failed cause they had to stop the series in the way that they did and because they probably lost money(again, in the entire series). and they failed cause instead of presenting ctp1/2 as what they were(different civ-like tbs games), they presented them as "civ3". if ctp1 didnt have "civilization" in it's title we would probably be making "ctp3" suggestions now...

quote: The low sales of CTP-2 was a consequence of people now knew for sure that activisions CTP-games had nothing to do with those old civ-classics.

ctp2 was doomed for the bigest part of ctp1 buyers due to the bad memories of ctp1

quote: Then the bad/lukewarm game-magazine reviews came.

actually, ctp2 got much much better reviews than ctp1(cgo 4/5)

quote: These angry AI-post where infact so many that you guys felt compelled to create a special CTP-2 AI-section to house them all.

actually, if you had visited the specific forum you would see that the purpose of the forum is to discuss how the ai can be modified, since, well, it can be modified...