speeding up the game

[nap2]

I had a couple questions on speeding up this game:

1. Is it possible to queue your workers so that they build a few things without me having to control them for building 4 roads in a row or something.

2. Can you change any setting so that the cities don't ask you what to build next? Especially if I set the queue for 10 riflemen or something. I just want them built, not have to confirm it 9 times ya know.

3. Same with buildings. If I select temple, lib, aqua, market, and uni, I just want them built, don't want to confirm.

If anybody could please answer these questions, I'd really appreciate it. At this stage, my turns take about 15 minutes each sometimes....very annoying.....I don't even feel like playing after a half hour or so.

Thanks

[Willem]

Re: speeding up the game

Originally posted by nap2
I had a couple questions on speeding up this game:

1. Is it possible to queue your workers so that they build a few things without me having to control them for building 4 roads in a row or something.

2. Can you change any setting so that the cities don't ask you what to build next? Especially if I set the queue for 10 riflemen or something. I just want them built, not have to confirm it 9 times ya know.

3. Same with buildings. If I select temple, lib, aqua, market, and uni, I just want them built, don't want to confirm.

If anybody could please answer these questions, I'd really appreciate it. At this stage, my turns take about 15 minutes each sometimes....very annoying.....I don't even feel like playing after a half hour or so.

Thanks

There's a check box in the preferences that allows you to turn off the confirmation of building orders after something has been built. Nothing will pop up until you've finished building a city improvement or you reach the end of your queue. It only affects units by the looks of it though, they still ask after improvements.

As for Workers, look in your Civilopedia under Game Concepts/Hotkeys. There's a listing of the automated commands there. They're rather limited though, IMO. The only ones I use are CTRL-n (build trade roads) and Shift-j (Clear Jungle only). Everything else, I find it better to control manually. But that's my preference.

[barefootbadass]

What really annoys me is when the governors of the cities don't do what I tell them to do. I usually default my cities to wealth every turn(by setting everything else to 'never') and manual decide what to build and queue up. But the governers seem to decide to switch to workers sometimes anyway(that's all they switch to) and then I have to change them back to wealth or something else. It doesn't take long to change production orders, but it does get old sometimes.

[Willem]

Originally posted by barefootbadass
What really annoys me is when the governors of the cities don't do what I tell them to do. I usually default my cities to wealth every turn(by setting everything else to 'never') and manual decide what to build and queue up. But the governers seem to decide to switch to workers sometimes anyway(that's all they switch to) and then I have to change them back to wealth or something else. It doesn't take long to change production orders, but it does get old sometimes.

From what I can see, if the queue is finished, it will start producing the last unit completed in any city. I agree it's annoying, I keep trying to make it produce Wealth as well. I wish there were a command that says "Always" instead of just "Often". Also I'd like to see something that allowed me to just keep making the same thing over and over again, like a production loop. If I have a town with Barracks for instance, it would be nice if I could tell it to build Horsemen until the end of time, and only Horsemen. That way I wouldn't have to keep going back to it to tell the Governor what to do.

[nap2]

those would be nice features I agree. I would probably want tomake modern tanks till the end of the game.

One question though, about "Wealth". Does it only work for one turn (which is good) I wouldn't mind using it if you just rebuild it every turn; espeically if there are no units that I need to build. Example, if I have all the troops I need and 10 cities have EVERYTHING, can you jsut make "wealth" every turn and crank extra gold???

This would be great.......

[Willem]

Originally posted by nap2
those would be nice features I agree. I would probably want tomake modern tanks till the end of the game.

One question though, about "Wealth". Does it only work for one turn (which is good) I wouldn't mind using it if you just rebuild it every turn; espeically if there are no units that I need to build. Example, if I have all the troops I need and 10 cities have EVERYTHING, can you jsut make "wealth" every turn and crank extra gold???

This would be great.......

Yes, that's how it works. If you just leave it on Wealth it will keep producing gold every turn, until you change it. That's why I try to get the governor to produce it often, at least I can't go wrong if the queue ends when I'm not looking.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by nap2
One question though, about "Wealth". Does it only work for one turn (which is good) I wouldn't mind using it if you just rebuild it every turn; espeically if there are no units that I need to build. Example, if I have all the troops I need and 10 cities have EVERYTHING, can you jsut make "wealth" every turn and crank extra gold???

Yeah, you make gold for one turn, a fraction of the shields you make. in the early game I do it to 'mark time' when it won't make any difference when the next unit I make comes, like when my city grows in 5 turns and it will take 4 turns to build that worker or something. I also find it to be a great setting for useless one shield cities(you get 100% on gold/shields for that) after I've rushed whatever I want to rush.

It really would be nice if there were an 'always' thing in the governor, so that you wouldn't have to set everything else to 'never'. Grrrr. That's one of things that I couldn't have thought of 'not doing' if I had been developing the game.

[Ironikinit]

In my last game I ended up automating all my workers with Shift A. Worked fine, even though they still take too long to all move, there's like 50 of them. I had a little under 30 cities.

The shortcut to build a road to someplace is cntrl shift r. or that could be rail, check the manual it has a lot of keys.

I don't know how to access the governor that y'all are talking about. Sounds like a hassle.

You can set it so that cities will always produce the same unit but the DA still pops up.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
In my last game I ended up automating all my workers with Shift A. Worked fine, even though they still take too long to all move, there's like 50 of them. I had a little under 30 cities.

The shortcut to build a road to someplace is cntrl shift r. or that could be rail, check the manual it has a lot of keys.

I don't know how to access the governor that y'all are talking about. Sounds like a hassle.

You can set it so that cities will always produce the same unit but the DA still pops up.

To access the city governor, just hit the "G" key when you're in the city screen. It's rather useless early in the game, but I can see it would have a use later on. At least it has a few options for setting priorities, but you really have to keep your eye on it. Every so often it will start building something stupid.

[Dimension]

The simple solution to avoiding ridiculous amounts of tedium is DON'T PLAY ON HUGE MAPS!!!

If you're going to use a huge map, you have to expect a slow game. If you want the game to go faster, you make your empire smaller. I love micromanaging everything, but I don't like a single game taking several days, which is why I just play standard maps.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Dimension
The simple solution to avoiding ridiculous amounts of tedium is DON'T PLAY ON HUGE MAPS!!!

If you're going to use a huge map, you have to expect a slow game. If you want the game to go faster, you make your empire smaller. I love micromanaging everything, but I don't like a single game taking several days, which is why I just play standard maps.

But huge maps are part of the fun! Myself I like to play on a 256 x 256 map. Sure there's lots more micromanagement, but I've come accept that. I'd have no problem at all spending a "month" playing a single game personally, provided I have more to build than just military units and Wealth. I want to build a civilization, not just go around kicking other civ's butts all the time.

[Dimension]

Well, I have to admit that huge maps actually have potential to be fun in Civ3 now that you can have 16 civs... I suppose if I ever feel like spending a week on the same game I'll give it a try.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Dimension
Well, I have to admit that huge maps actually have potential to be fun in Civ3 now that you can have 16 civs... I suppose if I ever feel like spending a week on the same game I'll give it a try.

16 civs takes WAY to long on my lowly 400mhz Celeron. By the endgame, I can see a turn lasting an hour or two.

[nap2]

My turns last at least 30 minutes, especially since I have about 100 workers to control.

I have a cool suggestion however, and if theres a way to send feedback to firaxis, we should send this. One annoying thing is cleaning up all the pollution. Well, maybe in the next patch, they could make something like you designate 2,3,4...workers, per city, to clean pollution ONLY. So they just sit in the city, and when that city generates a pollution square, they automatically go out to clean it. Otherwise, they just skip their turn. That way, you take out a significant chunk of annoying micromanaging.

This may waste workers, but its only until you get to ecology, which is sooo far from sanitation (quite annoying) Once you get your mass transits and recycs everywhere, you can keep only one back or something. I think this feature would be really nice, what do you think??

If someone knows how to pass this along.....be my guest.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Willem


To access the city governor, just hit the "G" key when you're in the city screen. It's rather useless early in the game, but I can see it would have a use later on. At least it has a few options for setting priorities, but you really have to keep your eye on it. Every so often it will start building something stupid.

In the late game I default all my cities to military units(usually 2 of defensive, artillery, and offensive) and my coastal cities all produce naval units by default(another thing I don't understand is why they didn't allow for some distinction between transport naval units and other naval units, grrr). I always like to choose when buildings or wonders are started, gotta wonder about the IQ's of those governors that start a 600 shield wonder in 1 shield cities.