Do you use City Managers?

[Obviak]

I've just started my first CTP2 game and I am not sure to trust the city manager's to manage my building queue. I am on old Civ, Civ2 & AC fan.
I am always trying to get the best from my builds considering in what stage of the game I am in. What do you guys think about these guys that control what gets built in your cities?

[Purple]

Most players think they are unreliable.

I'd rather do the micromanaging myself, but I do use them selectively in the latter stages of the game, when I have too many cities and don't want to be bothered so much.

[Dale]

I use saved build queues for certain points in the game. At the start I micromanage myself (how hard is it to look after 10 cities?) but once I get agri revolution I just load up my saved queue, then put my cities on the managers. Because the build queue has stuff in it, the manager doesn't do anything except terrain improvs. I find this helps.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[TacticalGrace]

The city managers would be okay if the games wasn't broken - they build things which would be useful if the game was put together correctly. But it isn't so they don't. can't make it any clearer than that


example.
all the build managers (growth, production, whatever) know that to be minimally defended in CTP2 a city needs not only a defensive unit but a bombarding unit. And quite right too. So it always tries to build an artillery unit or whatever when it can. BUT what you the player knows is that there isn't a snowflakes chance in hell of the AI opponents actually attacking any cities which aren't right on it's doorstep so an obvious saving is not to bother with all those artillery units.

another example.
no city is complete without its own oil refinery. Yup, production is good. At least it should be. But CTP2 is totally unbalanced when it comes to pollution. You can have a city with no refinery, no factory and no mill and still have pollution coming out of your ears (now there's a graphic image). So I'd rather not have yet more production. The enemy isn't those Russian cavalry, or even those German tanks. No in CTP2 it's pollution. How tedious.

[Darkknight]

Yes always.Not so much for the build queus but for the tile improvements they build.Usually most of my cities still have a build queue from the last time i appended a load os stuff onto them , either that or they're building wonders.

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" mind over body "

[Gwap]

No, never use them. Have tried them, and yes, they do build tile improvements, but I constantly find I'm running out of PW because the eejit Mayors have used them up building megamines.

I prefer to make my own mistakes

Also, I don't much care for happy pop until I get a good lead. Around 73/74 is fine by me. And when it starts to become too crucial, yeah, by all means by that expensive basilica (esp. in maintenance cost). Best to use the money for useful stuff such as bombers, tanks and cruise missiles, loads and loads of cruise missiles... And then to think I spent a whole day marching against those things

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Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

[Swissy]

I find the mayors are great for mp games. In CTP1, playing with turn time limits, I would have times where I was busy with an attack build-up or exploration and neglect using my PW or forget to reset a build queue after a city improvement was built. That never happens in CTP2. The farms and mines pop-up automaticly. I just wish it wouldn't build so may roads. Something is always placed on the build queue so the production is never lost, remember you can always switch it if you don't like what the mayor is building.

Also you should take time to look at what each mayor builds and does. I had a game where I set a city to Gold mayor, who promptly set-up profitable incoming trade with the AI civs in the game. Setting a bunch of cities to gold mayor usually insures I have enough gold to rush build city improvements as the tech is discovered. this is crucial in a MP game.

Now in a single player game I rely on them less because of the PW uses. But them the single player game is played at my pace.
[This message has been edited by Swissy (edited January 30, 2001).]

[Dale]

One thing I do to ensure that I've always got PW with the mayors on, is to use Ogre's PW mayor mod. But I changed it so it's minimum is 1000. I always have 1000 PW to use now. That's usually enough to get a road from one city to the next one.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[OmniGod]

Short and sweet... NOPE. I want control, I am a power monger and I don't want to give anything back to the computer. They'll try to cheat somehow and screw me over... if I'm the leader then I don't need any little underlings who do what they think is right. You do what I say, or else I starve your little city back to the stoneage. BTW I did let a city have a mayor once, the guy/gal screwed me so I ignored the city for years and then gave it to the Mongols. That taught the little SOB.

Rich - the vengeful ruler

[Dale]

Rich, sounds like Theocracy/Fascism/Technocracy is your line of governments

Dale - Fascist is great for stomping

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Solver]

Actually, Mayors aren't that bad, and if a particular city isn't too important late in the game, I'd set there a Mayor to gold or science and slowly reap the benfits. Early in the game, I never use these, as it's easy to micromamange thos 10-15 cities I have, but when I have about 50, of course, it's getting annoying to micromanage those.
In SMAC, I think, one can rely on Governors in the early game, too. But this feautures here is yet a nice additiob, sometimes being useful.

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Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com

[Collie]

I find Mayors can be useful but often stupid, or they have their priorities messed up. I was conquering cities and needed to build up some defences and units and decided to let the mayors look after some of the cities on the borders with defence or offense being the type of mayor. So did they try building tanks or walls - nope - buses. Yes, public transport is often the way wars are won, not. Wasn't even like there was much pollution in the cities anyway.

[OmniGod]

Hey those buses can cause so real havoc.. clog up your city and then they can't attack... if only that were true... take control and give the city away and then bombard it... back into the stone age... dumb mayors deserve to die I love being the evil ruler. I guess this is another thing that Activision really never put too much thought into when they developed it. It may work sometimes but I agree that buses should never be built if you want offense or defense... a complete game my a$$.
[This message has been edited by OmniGod (edited January 31, 2001).]

[Dale]

Omni:
My usual line of governs is monarchy (do a little early stomping on my first neighbor), republic (speeds up research and commerce a heap), fascism (a bit more stomping of civs not necessarily close), corp repub (you just can't have enough gold for science), then lastly technocracy (end game stomping).

Collie:
My general rule - NEVER NEVER NEVER use mayors in border cities (unless you keep the build queues full). Only really really really safe cities in the heartland. And then only science or wonders.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Alpha Wolf]

i look at how poorly the AI cities use PW and dont trust they same logic to waste mine. Maybe its beneficial and I just dont see it but why do outer rings get improvents when inner ones dont? As I understood the production model, the inner ring is making the most use out of the resources. Personally I build up one city at a time.

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History is written by the victor.