POLL 20: Settlers vs Public Works

[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!

[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!

[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.

[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).]

[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.

[Seeker]

That's a good idea. Already we know in Civ3 it will cost money to support units instead of shields, so why not you have to pay for your settler to build a terrain improvement? maybe 25 gold for a road, 800 gold for a railroaded mine on a gold mountain...

[Grumbold]

If you have an army of workers then you have probably already won the game but are just riding out the endgame to maximise your score. Paying gold to make improvements forming the bulk of the cost rather than the upkeep of the unit itself is a better idea. The worker unit certainly should not need food support now it has been divorced from the settler so some additional cost is required to discourage massive overuse. Few players would create or level mountains if they cost as much as a rushed battleship.

[Cyclotron]

I think that tile impovements should gost money, but still use the settler system. It's just better that way, and it makes sure people don't abuse massed settlers.

------------------
- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Sava]

I'd like to see a public works, but, like the trade in CTP, you would only be able to do as much work as your labor force allows. This is how things get done in real life. I'm strongly against using settlers because settlers know two things about urban planning: jack and sh*t, and jack left town.

Plus it seems to take 10,000 people (a settlers unit) 20 years (the year increment in Civ2 during BC) to build a road over a 100 mile stretch. Even in ancient times, massive stretches of roads were built in a short time. And the Engineers unit made it worse. The Transcontinental Rail system was built in less than five years, yet it takes almost 5 years to build one section of track in Civ2.

I think using a labor force based public works system is the way to go. During depressions and such, the labor force would be greater due to the unemployment.

Farms and irrigation should be created automatically by the computer based on the needs of the people. Roads, mines, rail, etc should be the job of the public works.
[This message has been edited by SoulAssassin (edited May 11, 2001).]

[meriadoc]

I've already said that I prefer a pblic-works based tile improvement system. However, most people seem to prefer a settler based system, and after playing Civ2 again recently, I really don't mind it either. However, I think that for Civ3 I'd prefer not to have to use a unit to upgrade the land. Mostly the only problem that I have with using a unit is that I have to move the thing, and I have problems remembering which of my identical workers are going where. So how about this for an idea:

Like the caravans in CTP, you build a worker unit. This unit then, instead of becoming a real unit, goes into a pool of workers waiting to be used. When I want to upgrade something, I simply decide what tile to upgrade and a worker is temporarily removed from the pool and used to upgrade the tile. This can even be used along with a real worker so that you get the best of both worlds - real units when you want them but less micromanagement when you want that.

------------------
The Electronic Hobbit

[Mister Pleasant]

To all of those who say PW was unrealistic, here's a question:
How realistic is it for 10,000 people to spend 50 years building a road?

Don't have an answer do you? I didn't think so.
PW represents the amount of resourses diverted from the market to build infrastructure. In real life, these represent road crews, linemen, maybe even subsidies and incentives for the private sector to build farms and mines. As for realism, I hate to break it to you, but when ADM wants to build a farm in real life, the US government does not commision a worker unit to build one for them. So don't give me these realism arguments against PW, because worker units are more detached from the world.

As for "feeling like your building an empire", I feel like I'm building an empire either way. Quit being so fussy. And raingoon, I don't think gameplay suffers under PW, its just different. But this is a personal/subjective call. But let me ask you, if PW was a "Sid idea", then would you like it? As for what PW adds, I feel it adds greater control and flexibility over the development of my empire as well as improving management of development. Let me ask you, what does a worker system add?

Actually, outright buying improvements from a menu (ala CTP) with gold is not a bad idea. Sound like the most realistic solution yet. After all, the US government subsidises (i.e. spends gold) individuals and corporations to build farms. Money can be stored up, labor cannot. Maybe for civ4. Or maybe another non-firaxis company will try it in their knockoff.

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Mister Pleasant on 05-13-2001 02:16 PM To all of those who say PW was unrealistic, here's a question: How realistic is it for 10,000 people to spend 50 years building a road?

OK then, how about this one:
How realistic is it that 10,000 people can grow to 10 miljon within a couple of game-play hours?

Well, the answer my friend, is that it is all about abstract & symbolic thinking. A computer-game is after all only a computer-game, and real-life is real-life. Theres a difference.

I have read somewhere that those who analyzes humor, is those who dont have any. Maybe one likewise shouldnt analyze the realism in strategy-games too much either. Perhaps one tend to forget having fun if one do that too much.

[The Rusty Gamer]

This Settlers vs Public Works thing, could perhaps be settled by allowing both? Perhaps whether you use settlers or public works or some combination thereof could simply depend on one or more of the following:
1. Which civilization you are playing. Different civilizations can think in completely different ways and have different approaches to doing things.
2. Your current government type
3. Which technological age you are in

[Cyclotron]

quote: As for "feeling like your building an empire", I feel like I'm building an empire either way. Quit being so fussy. And raingoon, I don't think gameplay suffers under PW, its just different. But this is a personal/subjective call. But let me ask you, if PW was a "Sid idea", then would you like it?

No, I wouldn't. A "sid idea" is the same as a regular idea: when it sucks, it sucks, and that's all there is to it. Sid is intelligent, and very good at what he does, but he is quite human and he is not my god.

quote: As for what PW adds, I feel it adds greater control and flexibility over the development of my empire as well as improving management of development. Let me ask you, what does a worker system add?

Well, let's see.

First, let's go over what you said PW adds.

"PW adds greater control." More than the settler system? I don't think so. If anything, the settler system allows you more control because you can build stuff anywhere without a long line of roads.

"PW adds flexibility." That doesn't make any sense. PW is a system of pointing to a tile and placing the improvement. The settler system accomplishes the same thing... production creates tile improvemnts. How could either one be more flexible?

"What does a worker system add?" A worker system creates more strategic choices. For instance, you can stop the construction of a fortress by preventing settlers from getting there with military units. With PW, there is no way to actually prevent a person from starting construction. A settler system also adds more choices. If you need to quickly build a fortress to help your retreating forces make a stand, do you run the settlers through the well-traveled plains (a quicker route, but more dangerous enemy patrols that could waylay your workers) or hike through the nearby mountain chain (takes longer, but better defense from enemy units and less enemy patrols)? In a sentence, settlers add more strategic depth.

Satisfied?

------------------
- Cyclotron7, "The Rajah of Resources"

[Mister Pleasant]

In response to cyclotron:

Control and flexibility: I have a small army of engineers improving the Northeastern Seaboard. But growth in New York and Boston has stalled out until I build a sewer system. But Los Angeles and San Francisco on the west coast will boom with only a little irigation and a few roads (a mine or two wouldn't hurt either). SO . . .

In civ2 I've got to move my entire heard of emgineers over to the west cost - and if I don't have railroads or roads out there yet - this just isn't happening. Control - under PW, I build what I want when I want it as long as I have the funding. Flexibility - if I deside that the east coast is up to snuff while the west coast needs to be improved, I do this instantly without 80 years of redeployment. Under the settler system, I feel hemmed in by the limitation of moving units around. Under PW, like in real life, I fund/subsidize Union Pacific, AT&T, or ADM to build a transcontinental railroad, telephone system, or farm. I can do what I want, I can switch strategies quickly - control and flexibility. And PW is not "stuff falling from the sky", it is merely one possible way of modeling the world.

As to building a road outside your territory, when is the last time you saw a Mexican road crew building highways in Texas, or an American road crew building an interstate in British Colombia? But if you allow civs to trade PW in negotiations, you can simulate a Marshall Plan where allies provide funds and resources to rebuild infrastructure, or foriegn aid in general.

Frankly though, I've been convinced that buying tile improvements with gold is the way to go now. Maybe I'll write my own game. (and maybe Manson will get parole)
[This message has been edited by Mister Pleasant (edited May 14, 2001).]