Anyone other than me hate Civ3 combat?

[Harovan]

Can you place tile improvements in enemy territory with PW? Because you can make it with workers, and it makes perfect sense to build a one-turn fort for an invasion stack with workers shipped with the units.

[bongo]

The upside is combat. During a war you can deny your enemy the use of workers, or force him to give them some serious protection. They become part of the combat even though they are non-combat units.

Ok, it IS boring to move 200 workers around(not that I ever had that many but that's just me) but it is only marginally more interesting to place your tile improvements with the PW system. When I first played CTP I thought 'PublicWorks, what a great idea' but after a while I got tired of. Maybe it was implemented wrong, maybe I am too fond of moving workers around.

[MrBaggins]

Yes, you can build fortresses, outside of your borders, provided you have a unit in the vicinity.

AFWIW, I'm for at least reverting PW construction placement back to CtP1 standards, if not a bit further.

[Harovan]

The worker concept may mean more micromanagement (it surely does!), but it's more flexible. You can put a bigger effort on a single job by adding more force. Do I want the road to be built in 1 instead of 3 turns? If so, I have to send 3 workers, and the road will be there. The aforementioned one-turn fort in enemy territory also fits in this category. It's nice to have the opportunity to put different effort in different jobs, and for realism fans - it is realistic too. Even the fort thing. The people doing this are called military engineers. One more good thing about workers is their different nationality, and the opportunity to add them back in the cities if they're done with their jobs. And grabbing enemy workers is fun. Try to grab enemy PW. You can't even pillage it until it's done.

[MrBaggins]

PW are just as much a part of combat as a worker is in Civ3. You can pillage TI's thus negating those spent PW's, which would have to be reconstructed... but thats not viable if you don't have a military presence in the area (because they'll be pillaged again.)

And if you choose, its simplicity to mod the system to give you extra PW for pillaged improvements.

PW as per CtP is as strategic as Civ3's system, only with less Micromanagement.

And you already have units to move around the map... varied military ones, that interact in a complex manner. I don't see the upside to adding several hundred more...

[MrBaggins]

Oh.. and PW allows for NUMEROUS different tile improvements: different levels even, and switching between, without a cumbersome interface.

[Harovan]

You can't pillage PW in progress.

[MrBaggins]

Easily moddable.

And you could change the system to build quicker improvements- 1 turn forts- by (mod in a text file) making additional more expensive (and theoretically, using different tech requirements,) TI improvements.

And there isn't really any reason why we can't implement stacked PW TI's so that they finish quicker either.

[Harovan]

Of course, the PW concept has not only downsides. An upside is for instance, that you can't exploit the AI by signing a Right of Passage agreement with it and then starve it's thriving cities down by planting forest everywhere.

[Harovan]

Yes, modding is one of CtPs strenghts, especially scripting. Although it has no editor and tinkering with hundreds or even thousands of text file settings isn't exactly an easy thing. It quickly leads to mistakes. Also a downside of the mods is, that they're available only in packets ("take all or nothing"), are mostly resource hogs and work badly with localized versions of the game.

[MrBaggins]

*chuckles* Reading through the thread it sounds like I'm a voice of doom... well... I'm not... I just don't think that including workers was a Good Idea (TM) not because of the functionality... their main problem is additional micromanagement, which really is the scourge of large empire games.

I think if it could be avoided, it should be. I'm not sure that it wasn't more politics that kept PW out of Civ3, than benefit of the worker system...

[Harovan]

Both workers and PW have their up- and downsides. Discussions what is better or worse are pretty pointless.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Yes, modding is one of CtPs strenghts, especially scripting. Although it has no editor and tinkering with hundreds or even thousands of text file settings isn't exactly an easy thing. It quickly leads to mistakes. Also a downside of the mods is, that they're available only in packets ("take all or nothing"), are mostly resource hogs and work badly with localized versions of the game.

While there is some amount of playtesting and troubleshooting of new mods, there haven't been any real problems with mistakes causing problems. You can always fix what is broken, or revert to a different Mod.

The mods that we've been talking about are trivial SLIC or text file mods, easily integratable. like... "Insert the following lines at this point, or at the end of the file". Mods like those are simple to integrate into even existing mods, generally speaking.

Its only when you have two fairly sophisticated mods, which are using the same fuction or modifying the same resource, that there is conflict, and these have been dealt with well by existing mod makers. (for instance Good Mod being integrated into a number of other complex mods)

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Both workers and PW have their up- and downsides. Discussions what is better or worse are pretty pointless.

No discussion on a better system for a future game is pointless...

They are different systems, but they have the same end result.

It just occurs to me that the worker system has an unavoidable downside: micromanagement.

Pretty much any downside that the PW system has can be "solved" with minor implementation changes.

[Harovan]

As far as I can see, we are discussing present games and not future ones, for which we have by the way a special forum and no need to spam the others.

Micromanagement could be reduced by the interface and smart gameplay, like using workers in stacks fit for a particular work. We have stacked movement since vanilla Civ3 v1.17, the only thing we lack is stacked tile improvement commands. If we had them, a stacked "goto" and a stacked "build mine" wouldn't mean more hassle than to click on the "mine" interface and after this the tile.

I love workers and wish them preserved. You can go with your PW where the sun doesn't shine. I trashed CtP2, because I am not fond of futuristic stuff like fusion tanks and space bombers (or how the heck they are called), because I plain hate hidden units like spies and lawyers (not because I fear them, but because it's a micromanaging hell to expel the same spy coming out of the same city during hundreds of years every ****ing turn) and because I don't like PW. So there. Your mileage may vary.

What I would like added to Civ3 is advanced farms and advanced mines and the infinite RR movement cut down. That would be one of the few CtP things I'd like to see implemented.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
It just occurs to me that the worker system has an unavoidable downside: micromanagement.

You can't say that you don't micromanage your PW; maybe not investing the same energy in it; but then, some of us like to micromanage things (and we love the option to automate when micromanaging becomes tedious). Micromanagement is not the biggest evil in a civ game.

You don't have to micromanage your cities, if you don't want to; enable the governors and there you go: less micromanagement. Yet most of us micromanage our cities, sometimes even in the modern era, because there are things we like to micromanage (like combat, right?, but also cities, and some of us workers)

Finally, I don't find PW any more fun than workers, and fun is the primary reason I play civ.

[CybellesReverie]

Easy solution: play Kohan. Problem solved.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Can you place tile improvements in enemy territory with PW? Because you can make it with workers, and it makes perfect sense to build a one-turn fort for an invasion stack with workers shipped with the units.

I just couldn't resist to check in on this issue...
Yes you can - use a settler to build a temporary city within enemy territory, drop a fort and disband that city the same turn. You retain your settler to move on to other tiles - and the beauty of it is that you can simulate your beloved worker system.

Both combat systems have their plues and minuses.

The civ3 model is more simplistic (since having no limit on the number of units on a tile makes it easier for the AI to mount large-scale invasions). Couple this with infinite RR movement and a weakened ZOC rule, and military tactics in the Industrial Age and beyond are no more than a matter of maintaining one or several huge stacks within your borders that can react on the fly to any threat. There is little thought involved because troop positioning is a non-factor - all you need to do is pump out units - take cities - and beeline reinforcements into conquered cities on you newly captured rail system - that is if you even decide to bother to keep the city.

My main gripe is that civ3 bogs down in tedium at that point - and the tedium is the main reason why I do not care for the game.

There isn't an efficient way to move these forces to multiple fronts. You have the ability to group/move like units, but it is a major chore to subdivide those stacks. And yes, a player could just keep his forces subdivided, but this doesn't reduce the tedium by much.

And the battles are tedious when you have to resolve 50-60 combats a turn in simplistic one-on-one mini-battles.

CTP2 has a more streamlined approach, but not without its flaws. The AI has several problems to overcome - it needs to create a good balance of ranged/frontline/flankers in an army while it also has a limit of the number of units. It does a pretty good job of it, but it can screw up too (but what game is perfect all the time???). And the pathing can sometimes create movement logjams - although it does not cripple the AI, or freeze the game, it seems it could be better.

I'm not going to get into a huge debate concerning the tank-vs-spearman issue. Suffice to say that it occurs with much greater frequency in civ3 - deny it as much as you want as an urban legend, but there are enough reports to give it some validity. Again, the argument for this was to add a more random combat factor into the game.

Personally, its not a big issue for me in civ3 - I can live with it. I do feel that the programmers at CTP2 were smart enough to do away with this issue that was also a major problem in CTP1.

I do have other issues which I will not touch here, but the tedium (civ3 workers, as well as civ3 combat) is the backbreaker... (and despite my criticism, there is a lot to like about civ3 - it does do some things well.) But given the choice between the two, I would rather play (Modded) CTP2.

Actually I'd make this suggestion - play EU2! Neither civ3 or CTP2 is in it's league.

[vmxa1]

Eu2 is it not an RTS? If it is then CivIII or CTP2 are not even it its genre.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Eu2 is it not an RTS? If it is then CivIII or CTP2 are not even it its genre.

It's an RTS that feels more like a TBS game than a RTS.

...and its still superior, in terms of gameplay depth