Terrain Improvement?

[lajzar]

Workers are sufficiently cheap that giving an extra task will jut result in more workers being built to compensate. Once you have a size 12 city or three, the only opportunity cost for a worker is 1 turn worth of production - the population cost is no longer meaningful at that point.

[Japher]

Workers are sufficiently cheap that giving an extra task will jut result in more workers being built to compensate. Once you have a size 12 city or three, the only opportunity cost for a worker is 1 turn worth of production - the population cost is no longer meaningful at that point.

Good point, but I think you over simplified the magnifying effects as well as the key of "once you have a size 12 city"... Spending time prospecting will take away from time spent improving tiles to increase growth, but might just make you overlook something that could help increase growth or production. Also, if I have 15 units prospecting, that’s still 15 turns of “actual” production time lost compared to someone else who may not use the prospecting option, but just improve with the hope of uncovering a luxury or resource. However, if I do prospect I can better prepare my towns to be more efficient for their location, even if does take 15-45 turns to break even. That 15-45 turns, however, could be enough for my opponent to “blitz build” me.

I think the opportunity costs are there, and are worth it. Building more workers still takes from building something else, using prospect still takes from something else that you may find anyway, prospecting, however, can increase town efficiency in the long run, if used correctly.

[Vince278]

I voted Civ3 style. That is one of the things that makes Civ what it is. I like the CtP style but it wouldn't seem right in a Civ product unless they are planning a combined Civ-CtP game that has the best of both.

[snoopy369]

woot ... the civ3 style crew is pulling ahead ...



Japher, you have some very good points up there. I'm not sure either if the opportunity cost is that great, but it is something. You could at minimum add that worker to another city (who doesn't have a city or two of size 3 or 4 at almost any point in the game, except in a super-grower in the modern era?) and do something productive there ...

[Drachasor]

Here's an idea, you take the CtP model, and use that as the base of the TI system. Such improvements can be made anywhere in your territory.

In addition, you can build workers that will allow you to build outside your territory. When outside, you can build on the square they are occupying. Also, inside your territory you can use a worker (or perhaps more than one) to decrease the build time of the improvement being built. Basically one would have the time, two would third it, three would quarter it, etc. Outside the territory you need an extra worker for the same effect.

Oh, and you capture an extra worker if you move into an enemy's square they are improving (this might require some balancing, and perhaps it wouldn't be necessary).

What do you guys think? Does it make an easy to follow system? Is it at all elegant? I am a bit too tired to be sure of this myself.

Hmm, perhaps workers need an increase in their upkeep cost too (for various reasons).

-Drachasor

[Fosse]

Workers fit pretty squarely into "unfun" for me, for all but the first few dozen turns.

Public works. Call it something else, make it cost something besides shields, so we can all pretend that the idea is a new one. Whatever it takes. Let's just get rid of the workers.

To build outside of your cities' radii you can have a cost increase of X% per Y tiles away from the nearest city.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Fosse
Workers fit pretty squarely into "unfun" for me, for all but the first few dozen turns.

Public works. Call it something else, make it cost something besides shields, so we can all pretend that the idea is a new one. Whatever it takes. Let's just get rid of the workers.

I agree 100%, but there are crazy people--that's what I call them--that are in love with workers, and enjoy nothing more than to move them about the map.

-Drachasor

[Dominae]

I guess the majority is crazy.

Every game has micromanagement. Micro is always better than macro. MOO3 tried and failed to make a game where everything was about macro, but: 1) it was boring, 2) players could still do the micro and perform better. Taking away all the micro from Civ3 will turn it into something 'Civ' is not.

Workers serve a useful purpose: they keep you busy. They give you something to do every turn. Now just because many here have played Civ3 way too much and can order Workers around in their sleep does not mean that moving Workers around is not fun for the casual player. Most casual players only build a few Workers anyway, and set them on auto when terraforming gets too tedious. By then, the Workers have served their purpose as an interesting diversion while the real show (i.e. military and cities) sets up.

[Drachasor]

Actually, the majority (50%) and the plurality (largest like-minded group) are against workers, though it is close. Remember, there is one proposed Worker system in the poll, and that is not getting 50%+ votes.

Another large faction want a public work system. Which is a more functional micromanagement terrain improvement system.

Another group wants something different, or wants something that is wholly automatic. These groups do not want a worker system either though.

So, I can safely say the minority is crazy people. ^^ (This can include the banana-people at your own discretion).

Personally, I prefer a more interesting early game (perhaps interaction with minor civs around you, getting them to join you), as opposed to one with a lot of tedium.

-Drachasor

[Dominae]

My whole point is that this poll is not representative of the majority of Civ players. Casual players either do not find it tedious, or turn on the automate option right away. For people who do not know any better (or do not care), an automated Worker is essentially the same as many of the other options being proposed here.

Workers have got us through 4 Civ games so far; they're pretty fundamental to the game and, I'm arguing, its success.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Drachasor
Actually, the majority (50%) and the plurality (largest like-minded group) are against workers, though it is close. Remember, there is one proposed Worker system in the poll, and that is not getting 50%+ votes.-Drachasor

Not true. At the time of posting, the breakdown is as follows:

46 - Workers
39 - CtP
6 - Automatic
8 - other
3 - Bananas
--
102 total

I classify "Bananas" as a joke, and thus only 99 total. Then there's "other", which i'll also take out, because it's easily possible for "other" to mean "workers, modified" as "ctp, modified". That means that workers are 46/91, or 51%.



Even if you reject my elimination of "other" as a category, workers still have a plurality of 46/99 or 46% to 39%, an 18% (7/39) lead. "Terrain automatically improves" cannot in any way be compared to either of the groups in any reasonable definition. "Against CTP system" is a larger plurality (52) than "Against workers" (45).

And, as Dom said, I seriously doubt the "casual players" who make up the far majority of civ3 sales but yet are not members of apolyton would vote anything less than 80% for "traditional workers". Certainly if Civ3 had only sold 102 copies we wouldn't be here right now.

In favor of micromanagement: If you're not currently fighting a war, what exactly are you going to do *except* move workers around? Hmm? (Like dom said, again. Sheesh, i'm a parrot.)

I have to take offense to the statement that CTP PW is a "more functional micromanagement system" as well -- it gives you exactly the same options, but without as much flexibility. Having physical units is very handy for quick changes, allows you to develop outside of city or nation radius (how exactly are you going to build a road to conquer your neighbor without a worker?), allows you to *prevent* opponents from building in a more easily seen way (ie, you could say "once foreign occupied, then stop building", but it's harder to see the square that needs stopping without a unit there), and feels more consistent (assuming the rest of the game stays in roughly the same format). You have units to do everything else, why take away the worker unit and replace it with a worker menu (essentially what you're doing)?

And honestly i fail to understand why workers mean micromanagement. In a late civ3 game, say AD 1900 (yes, some of us actually get that far with out winning ), if I take over a continent and want it roaded ASAP, I have two options - CTP and worker. (Understand that i never played ctp, so some assumptions are being made here -- correct please)

option 1: Take 20 workers, press "automate-trade", 3 times if in stacks, otherwise 20 times. Maximum 20 presses (if no stacks), and a whole continent is roaded.

option 2: click on each square, select "build road", wait a few turns, click again, select "build railroad". Total clicks: 2 per square, for a 210 square continent (big enough for 10 full cities exactly), 420 clicks (and selects, or additional keystrokes for "road").

And if I want jungle cleared out? Say a 15 square jungle? Do I want to select "automate - clear jungle" with a few workers, or ctp-style?

Ok, [/rant].

[Fosse]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Having physical units ... allows you to develop outside of city or nation radius (how exactly are you going to build a road to conquer your neighbor without a worker?)

You allow it. That's how.

Can we all move on from this argument? There are many valid arguments that can be backed up with real ideas against getting rid of workers (I favor no workers, myself, but the points remain valid), without having to bring up this non-issue in every post.

The people on the side of workers are not fools. I refuse to believe that you are simply unable to conceive of a non-worker system in which improving tiles beyond your city or national borders is possible.

[/rant]

[snoopy369]

Huh? Allowing you to build a road on someone else's soil without a worker (to indicate the intrusion) would be impractical. Just clicking on a square in your opponent's territory and selecting "road here"? I don't think this would work very well for a couple of reasons, just off the top of my head:
* difficult to identify intrusions onto your own territory
* conflicting build orders on a tile
Both of these *could* be resolved without unit workers, but unit workers make these non-problems, and the resolution (in the first case requiring having a unit-like icon indicating work being done, in the second case either the same or an error beep/message) is either unit-like (and thus why not a unit?) or annoying (don't you hate error messages?).
I certainly could conceive of a system where this is possible -- but not one that's better than unit workers. Why do you think that numerous people posting above have mentioned PTW style *plus* unit workers for outside your territory? (And once you've gotten that far, why stop ... but that's a different argument )

And please do not imply that arguments are not "real" or are "non-issues" just because you don't agree with or understand the reasons behind them. I could make the same statement about this entire discussion, but do not because I respect the intelligence and reasonability of the people on both sides here. If one of 'you' (non-worker-advocates) feels an argument has merit, I'll give you that much, albeit I will tell you exactly why I disagree with its veracity.

[Drachasor]

The tedium of workers is twofold.

1. You have to move them around constantly, and quite a distance is not uncommon. Later on many people spend most of their time fiddling with workers. On more island-like maps, this is especially annoying.

2. You have to spend time producing them, and then deal with getting rid of them when you are done. You have to build a lot of workers in a decently sized empire too.

Now, a CtP system avoids both of these problems. First you no longer have to deal with the hordes of workers late-game. This saves you a ton of time and tedium, that no one likes. Casual gamers certainly hate this. Cities grow faster, and in general things go smoother.

Casual gamers, I must say, would probably prefer a non-worker system. The mild interest of ordering workers about early game is outweighed by the massive time investment on them late-game. Without workers, the early game passes much faster, and so does the late game. This means a shorter game, which the casual player would likely prefer. Additionally, you spend more time working on more interesting things, like culture, war, etc.

Anyhow, it is extremely unfair to pretend that there are no ways to adapt a PW system to Civ. You want to build in someone else's territory? It could let you build under your own units in that case. You want to build outside your territory? Well, the same as before, and perhaps you can do it without the unit at increased cost. It is very, very easy to adapt the system. You want to build faster? Have an increased cost, just like rushing a building.

Casual gamers would prefer it, as the main lobby for the old system are die-hard Civ I/II/III fans that don't want to see a change. Even so, a substantial group of people do not like the current system, and want it change. Any adjustments would undoubtably be to reduce the annoying micro and time investment. As such even the "other" undoubtably dont like the micro of the worker system.

-Drachasor

[Max Sinister]

I'll try to consider both sides:
The fans of the "traditional" system are the majority, but the CTP system still has many fans too. If you consider that many people prefer the traditional system only because, well, it's tradition or because they don't know CTP and can't imagine how it works / whether they'd like it.

I personally would prefer a public works system since it would save a lot of time, though I have to admit that Civ3 has an advantage against CTP because of its "anthill feeling": Lots of little people busily running around. CTP lacks this a bit.

[snoopy369]

Drachsor:
- In a late game, moving workers around is not tedious - if you have a lot of workers, you *inevitably* have railroads everywhere. If you have dozens of workers and no railroads, you're either really weird or a very poor player. With railroads, all you have to do is use goto.
- Workers are so easy to automate especially in C3C, as I explained above, that it is literally easier to automate them to do a massive task than it would be to do the same task with PW. If you don't like manipulating them, you just put a half dozen on "auto-clear pollution", put a few in non-developped areas on "auto-trade", etc. And if you do like manipulating them ... cool.
- Time spent producing them and getting rid of them? Heck, that's a good argument for having workers. The way you get rid of them, to be precise. The ability to switch population from one city to another is one of the many useful tasks a worker accomplishes. (Yes, you could have a "population" unit, but again, why not have a worker in that case?) Any good civ player (well, most if not all commonly accepted civ strategies) will add many workers to new cities from larger older cities -- and why not give this unit more abilities than just adding population?
- For that matter, in a unit based game, why are you complaining about time spent making units? Even if I make 40 workers in my game -- probably the upper limit of what i'll make that aren't specifically intended to be added to a city -- that's a drop in the bucket compared to how many military units i'll generally make. The time it takes to make 40 persistent workers versus hundreds of soon to die knights, horsemen, and cavalry is not significant, and you'd have to counterbalance that with time spent managing your PW budget anyhow.

- If you're going to tell me casual players don't like tedium, i have two words for you : The Sims.
- I disagree that removing workers would significantly shorten the game. Mostly what it would do is require you to hit "Enter" for end of turn a lot more rather than actually *do* anything on your early turns, which is boring. Towards the end, your workers (if you prefer faster) will just be automated anyways, and you can tell the game to not show you automated moves. Admit it - you watch their moves because you are at heart a micromanager.
- More interesting things like culture, war, etc. ? Culture I would love to find more than a few people that like *that* system (civ3 style anyways). It's just not well enough developped to be that fun by itself right now (instead of being a strategic option in a larger game). War? Hmm, try Rise of Nations if you prefer the military side of things without the worker action, or a RTS, or any of a number of military games out there. For that matter, Civ3 has a whole range of scenarios that involve military action and little to no worker manipulation. I don't think casual players buy Civ for the war, or the culture. They buy it because it is a chance to ... build a civilization. That pretty much screams "micromanagers" (or "control freaks" as I like to call us ) to me. Just because you may not enjoy micromanaging, please do not assume that there aren't a whole host of people out there that do. (And yes, I do know quite a few 'casual civ players', and they're all control freaks.)
- I don't assume PW system couldn't be adapted to civ. I argue that it would be *poorly* adapted without adopting unit-like systems, and that if you're going to adopt unit-like systems then why not just have the units.
- The "main lobby" is people who like workers. Calling us reactionaries is just an insult. At least give us the credit for having reasons for believing what we do. I don't doubt that you like a PW system for very good reasons to yourself, and would enjoy a PW system in civ4 more than a worker system -- I just argue that for the game as a whole (and not just you) it would not be better that way.
- And besides, the reactionary argument is not a bad one -- civ4 sales would be hurt if it were too different from the mainline civ experience. People come to a game expecting certain things given their past experiences with the name "civ". A different game with civlike qualities but very different gameplay should just be called something else (like, say CTP ) and marketed as such -- quite possibly a fantastic game in and of itself. But, changing civ4 too much will alienate many casual fans who will not understand why it's so different, and just want to play something that feels like civ.
- to reduce the micro/time investment? Don't assume you know what even your fellow PW compatriots are thinking. More than one of them has argued in favor of PW being more micromanaging than workers (which I disagree with, but what the hey). Less micromanaging means also less *control*, anyways, which is not a good thing in a game like this that is all about the level of control you have. (You can't have it both ways -- arguing PW system is less micromanaging, you can't argue that you could control the same amount; that would entail micromanagement again.)
- And certainly don't tell me you know what the "others" are arguing for. Unless you can find me eight posts claiming to have voted for others, you don't. I could easily suggest that "others" are people who have good ideas for how to change workers in positive ways (more automation, more moves, more options in the later game with different types of workers). In fact there's at least a couple of posts above about the last one there - involving prospecting, those posts - several of those people could have voted "other", and still believed in workers. I personally feel many of the "others" want some sort of combo (PW plus workers), which means they're not really on either side, but I don't know.
- And besides, as of when is this "workers versus not workers"? If you can't support PW on its own versus workers, then perhaps it's not an adequate system. Any time you have many options here, one option alone will often not win out a full majority, yet will win against any one of the other options in a one-on-one.

Finally: the anthill feeling. Max, I like this statement, because it summarizes nicely (in a much shorter post ) why I like workers. Having a system where you just click on squares and say what you want to happen to them just doesn't feel right. That feels ... like a computer game, I guess. Workers (and military units, and everything else) feel like a more total immersion into the world -- admittedly it's not Morrowind , but it's something that I can ... feel. Having to move my worker stack out of the way so they're not captured by the roving barbarian hordes; for that matter capturing enemy workers and making them build me a road to their capital (teamed up with a warrior settler, of course ); building a road, one square at a time, with a lone settler, across a giant desert, to a compatriot's capital, to allow trade. These all just feel right to me - and are what I enjoy about civ. Just clicking on squares ... doesn't feel like fun to me.

[snoopy369]

A good example by the way of a game being changed drastically is EA Sports' MVP Baseball. In 2002 they realized that "Triple Play Baseball" had a lot of problems that weren't going to be easily fixed, and fixing them would require a game with a totally different feel.

This led them to abandon one of the most valuable names in sports gaming ("Triple Play Baseball") and totally change the name (to "MVP Baseball"), indicating to the fans that big changes occured between the two, and not to expect a similar game (which it wasn't).

I totally agree that a PW system civ-like game could be very interesting, and would certainly have plenty of fans. I'd just argue that you should call it something else, and keep civ4 in the same style as before. Workers are the heart and soul of the previous 3 civ games, and taking them out just makes it a different game entirely.

[Drachasor]

[SIZE=1]I totally agree that a PW system civ-like game could be very interesting, and would certainly have plenty of fans. I'd just argue that you should call it something else, and keep civ4 in the same style as before. Workers are the heart and soul of the previous 3 civ games, and taking them out just makes it a different game entirely.

If a wholly micromanagement "feature" of the game that only improves terrain tiles makes you think it is the "heart and soul" of the game then something has gone dreadfully wrong.

Me, I think the heart and sole of the game is growing a civilization from 4000BC to 2000 (or so) AD. Complete with building cities, making war, making peace, etc. Another important aspect is the rough government system, and another is the tile-based resource collection. Ordering little minions about to improve the tiles is simply a system the 3 previous games used, much like corruption or waste. They are drastically changing--or even getting rid of--the last two, and workers are in the same boat.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Drachsor:
- In a late game, moving workers around is not tedious - if you have a lot of workers, you *inevitably* have railroads everywhere. If you have dozens of workers and no railroads, you're either really weird or a very poor player. With railroads, all you have to do is use goto.

It is a lot more tedius than Public Works, and that is pretty tedius. It is the fact you have to give the workers orders, move them around by hand, etc, etc which takes time. True, the two system use the same amount of time with actually issuing the improvement orders, but the time to tell the unit where to go, and figure out which worker you want where...that adds on a lot of time.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - Workers are so easy to automate especially in C3C, as I explained above, that it is literally easier to automate them to do a massive task than it would be to do the same task with PW.

The automation AI has always been really lacking in my experience (but I'll test out the C3C version to see if it has changed). Automation isn't a good option if it is a choice between doing that and losing good tile improvement placement, or not doing that and spending a lot of time on workers.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - Time spent producing them and getting rid of them? Heck, that's a good argument for having workers. The way you get rid of them, to be precise. The ability to switch population from one city to another is one of the many useful tasks a worker accomplishes.

You have a point here on getting rid of them (though this could be accomplished, perhaps, with a "migrate population" build order in a PW system. On the other hand, you didn't go over how the building of new workers is annoying.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - For that matter, in a unit based game, why are you complaining about time spent making units?

Time spent making non-military, non-settler, non-transport, non-exploration units. They did get rid of a lot of units in CivIII, if you didn't notice; Caravans, diplomates, etc. I am just proposing changing one more annoying system. Though, I suppose it might not be that big of a deal, compared to the other issues. I'll just drop it and we'll say this is a relatively non-issue.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - If you're going to tell me casual players don't like tedium, i have two words for you : The Sims.

I don't think the Sims is designed for casual players, whereas cIV is going to be. Shorter games and other changes are in the works (though I do hope long games will still be possible).

Originally posted by snoopy369 - I disagree that removing workers would significantly shorten the game.

Much quicker earlier game, no more moving around workers all the time and deciding where you want them in the late-game. That cuts out a lot of time.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - More interesting things like culture, war, etc. ? Culture I would love to find more than a few people that like *that* system (civ3 style anyways).

All in all, I find culture to be a dramatic improvement from anything cIIv had. Much better than no system at all. I haven't met anyone that thinks otherwise.

Originally posted by snoopy369 It's just not well enough developped to be that fun by itself right now (instead of being a strategic option in a larger game). War?...

War is a big part of why people like Civ games, and you are kidding yourself if you think they come back to mess with workers. As for other strategic issues, well, they could certainly work on improving them come cIV...which is the idea of a new version. People buy Civ for the chance to build a world-dominating civilization, and that includes war and other global interactions. They don't buy it to be leaders of little farming/mining/etc nations. The game is basically a power trip of world domination...the appeal isn't the micro management.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - I don't assume PW system couldn't be adapted to civ. I argue that it would be *poorly* adapted without adopting unit-like systems, and that if you're going to adopt unit-like systems then why not just have the units.

Well, I have a number of ideas that would fit in PW quite easily into a cohesive concept. It wouldn't be hard at all.

Originally posted by snoopy369 - The "main lobby" is people who like workers. Calling us reactionaries is just an insult.

Alright, but I think a substantial portion are reactionaries, though not everyone. There are probably people worried it will take away control or some such thing from them. I merely meant to say that the "reactionary" element inflated the worker-side of the pole with people that didn't know/think through the alternatives, though I admit it doesn't make up the totality of that side.

Originally posted by snoopy369 Finally: the anthill feeling. Max, I like this statement, because it summarizes nicely (in a much shorter post ) why I like workers. Having a system where you just click on squares and say what you want to happen to them just doesn't feel right. That feels ... like a computer game, I guess. Workers (and military units, and everything else) feel like a more total immersion into the world -- admittedly it's not Morrowind , but it's something that I can ... feel. Having to move my worker stack out of the way so they're not captured by the roving barbarian hordes; for that matter capturing enemy workers and making them build me a road to their capital (teamed up with a warrior settler, of course ); building a road, one square at a time, with a lone settler, across a giant desert, to a compatriot's capital, to allow trade. These all just feel right to me - and are what I enjoy about civ. Just clicking on squares ... doesn't feel like fun to me.

Well, this is probably the most powerful arguement in favor of workers, imho. However, you can still have the captured worker effect, by giving PW resources to you when you move into a square being worked on. There are also some ideas that could keep a unit-like concept, but have a PW interface (such as having a worker pool, and you point in click on tiles to work on up to your worker limit). I'd be fine with a system like that, so long as the movement issue is removed.

-Drachasor

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Drachasor
I don't think the Sims is designed for casual players, whereas cIV is going to be.

But the Sims are the best-selling game ever... (sorry, I prefer Civ myself (what else ;-)))

[Fosse]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Huh? Allowing you to build a road on someone else's soil without a worker (to indicate the intrusion) would be impractical.

To be fair, people are mentioning building outside of their own territory or city radius, not in somebody else's.

This is certainly a different point. I frankly don't see it as a horrible loss if we cannot build in another player's territory. I will, however, propose that an easy solution for a Public Works system that allows building in another's territory:

If you have military control of a tile in somebody else's land (ie, a unit in it) then you can build on it (at increased cost depending on how far from your land it is). If the unit on the tile is killed before the job is done, then the job is incomplete and all progress is lost.

I certainly could conceive of a system where this is possible -- but not one that's better than unit workers.

Perhaps workers are a better way to build in someone else's land. But I want a better solution to land improvment on the whole. Nearly every single tile that most players ever improve is within workable distance of one of their cities. The system in Civ IV should be the best one for those tiles.

The late game tedium is an issue for most of us (even for many rabid worker supporters). No workers is a help to the AI, because now all it has to decide is what to build in a tile, not how many workers to move, from where, and in what order. If you don't think that the AI would benefit from doing away with workers, then automate yours for a few dozen turns and watch. While they make decent decisions of what to do (not that there are lots of possiblities in Civ 3, but still), how they do it is atrocious.

These, and others on the board, are all sound reasons for switching. I do not recall having seen a counter argument to the AI aid of PW, and the tedium seems to rest solely in the matter of opinion.

Why do you think that numerous people posting above have mentioned PTW style *plus* unit workers for outside your territory?

Well... I attribute that to the somewhat absurd degree to which people on this board suggest "compromises" about irreconcilable differences!

SCENARIO:

Elizabeth: I think that there should be a fully deformable, spherical, 3D map to real scale!
Bismark: I think that we should stick to the old, flat, immutable cylinder!
Elizabeth: Let's make it an option at game start!

Realistically, a system of PW and workers is worse than either of the other options.

(I realize that many people have suggested a worker system in which the player can either control them directly, or place orders on tiles and the CPU will move the workers and perform the requests. This isn't so much a compromise, as a worker system with a new way to automate. It's a really good idea.)

And please do not imply that arguments are not "real" or are "non-issues" just because you don't agree with or understand the reasons behind them.

Well, I didn't.... I directly stated that building in another's territory is a non-issue to the tile improvment systems we are arguing for because every single one of us can come up with solutions to that "problem." We can certainly discuss the merits of those solutions (as you did in the post I am responding to), but dismissing a huge design decision (in the admittingly non-consequential in terms of final game design realm of this thread) for such a small hang-up is silly.

It would be as though somebody asked for the ability to play out every single battle in the game in a first person shooter style, with the ability to take control of any single troop on the field, and then I argued against that idea because many of the keyboard commands in Civ IV that are typically used in FPS games are probably already going to be mapped to something.

I should argue against it, instead, because it is a terrible idea. Anybody though can imagine solutions to the "keyboard mapping" non-issue that I instead presented.

I could make the same statement about this entire discussion, but do not because I respect the intelligence and reasonability of the people on both sides here. If one of 'you' (non-worker-advocates) feels an argument has merit, I'll give you that much, albeit I will tell you exactly why I disagree with its veracity.

I know. And I honestly don't know why I've chosen this tiny thing to get hung up on. I like discussing the pros and cons of workers and public works, and 99% of your - and most peoples- posts on either side are dealing with legitimate concerns. I just chose that one little line to launch a ten page exchange between us.

Shame on me.

[Fosse]

Workers and Public Works are our two major theories of a good way to improve the land that our cities work. Improving the land also grants us (as of Civ III) access to trade with other nations and to resources and luxuries. But for the rest of this post I am going to assume that the primary reason we are discussing this issue is to determine the best way to improve the worked tiles. I will also assume that Civ IV will be exactly like Civ III except for the changes I explicitly state, and the opportunities for futher change at the end. (so I'm not thinking of stacks, or spherical maps, or civil wars, etc)

I'll start with a question that seems obvious: Why do we need to improve the tiles? Certainly 4x games have been made, and successfuly, without single tile improvments. Improved tiles represent the people that live in the cities bettering themselves. Cultivating land, creating industry. It's an integral part of history.

But is there no other way to represent it? What if instead we built traditional city improvments? Building "Farms" in the build queue would increase food output for all grasslands and plaines tiles, for example. The map would update with farm graphics for those tiles in the city that are being worked by the people (adding a small benefit of being able to see which tiles are being worked without entering the city view!).

That works for farms and mines. Maybe even quite well.

What else to workers do? Roads, forts, lookouts, airbases.

Roads: Maybe a Trade Advisor screen in which you select cities you want linked to other cities and other countries. The advisor asks if you want the shortest road, the cheapest (least build time) road, and provides a suggestion which you can modify. You select which tiles the road passes through, and issue the orders. You then watch the road built over several turns from tile A to tile B. No workers or PW needed. You pay for the labor through the advisor screen.

Forts, lookouts, and airbases could be handled similarly in the military advisor screen. Or certain units could be equiped to set up those things on the map.



This would put the player into a much more administrative role. This has a possible positive of being more accurate historically (The Ceasars didn't hand built all of those Roman roads), and a possible negative of removing the player from that aspect of the game (they probably didn't have a super fun time telling other people to, either).

But making tile improvment a more broadly focused area might have some other impacts, too:

Taking out that huge chunk of the game opens up a lot of room for other features and areas (Soren's design presentation says it: for every 1 thing added, take 1 out. 1/3 new, 1/3 improved, 1/3 old). More robust politics, a more involved combat sytstem, more detailed city managment, the religion and civics mentioned in the design powerpoint. Maybe some of those things which wouldn't otherwise have room in the game would be better than old fashioned worker or PW tile improvment.

More realistic landscape. No more spaghetti roads and rails. Only used tiles are covered in farms. Maybe "filler" art could show up on tiles that aren't being worked - homes and such. Since they won't be obstructing information the player needs to know (does he need to improve that tiles) this might be a possibility. Hinterland will be realistically represented.

More Improvment options. Refarming (double irrigating) every single tile sure was tedious... but building that improvment in a city that has the same effect wouldn't be. This might open up the game to many more levels of tile improvments, instead of just the basic binary (improved or not) version we have today.

More city improvment decisions and strategy. Every single "tile improvment" build in the city means not buiding a City Improvment as quickly, and vice versa. This will usually be a decision based on opportunity, but it's just the kind of decision that the Civ IV Apolyton strategy forum will have a blast debating for ages and figuring out the math down to signle turns, and that won't be too overwhelming to the rest of us ("Do I want farms or a bank?")

The AI can handle it. At least as well as it can handle building markets and harbors.


REASONS AGAINST THIS PROPOSAL:

It's a big change. A radical one. Bigger than adding strategic resources was, bigger than switching to public works would be.

Players would be detached. Maybe we really do play for hours at a time because of those workers. This might remove a level of immersion.

Too easy. No more strategy in where to build farms vs. mines, or in figuring out the best order to build them in or which workers should start when. Now it's all in the city queue and a few advisor screens.



What do you think? Do we really want to shuffle workers or allocate production, or are we primarily concerened with improving the land? Is this a viable way to improve the land (if that's our real concern)? How would it change the game as a whole? Would it be incompatible with any other ideas or any current Civ features?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Drachasor
Casual gamers, I must say, would probably prefer a non-worker system.

You're arguing for what casual gamers prefer based on what you prefer.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Fosse
REASONS AGAINST THIS PROPOSAL:

No sense of continuity/progress; you spend resources on PW, forget about them and build up a bunch, then road your entire empire in the blink of an eye. Imagine if you could accumulate Shields for production items in the same way...instant Wonder!

[snoopy369]

Fosse: short answer to your (very good) post is, this is an excellent description of a different game. I'd gladly play this game -- but if Civ4 is that game, it will fail, because the casual gamers (as well as the veterans) will have their expectations dashed by the vast difference between that game and Civ4.

Dominae: Exactly.

Max Sinister: Again, exactly. The Sims has sold countless millions of copies, and I think nobody believes there are countless millions of hardcore sims players. There are a few thousand - maybe even a hundred thousand- hardcore or mediumcore players, and countless millions of casual gamers, who enjoy the ability to micromanage a person's life. (Personally, it's too much micromanagement to me, but who knows.)

Drachasor:
1. Moving workers takes no time, and deciding which one to use is a meaningless decision, since there is no 'veteran' worker. Again, in the late game, it's just point & click to move them somewhere (on RR), heck ctrl-R and click if there's not one. Certainly, play with C3C automation if you haven't -- it's VERY good, much better than anything previous. You're going to have to give an order under either system, and under PW you're going to have to give 'orders' to each square.
2. "Reactionaries" may or may not be the majority of the votes, but who cares? Who cares why who votes for what? Assume we have valid reasons for voting how we do, and don't try to invalidate some of the votes on the opposite side of your own. Unless you can prove some of us voted twice anyways.
3. If you have many ideas for how to do something, put them forward. We can't discuss your ideas without telling them to us. Fosse makes some suggestions, which I think are good (although not changing my mind). It certainly makes it easier to discuss.
4. Short games (and workerless games) have always been possible in civ. Try a scenario. WWII scenario for example; or the Napoleon scenario. Both very short, neither requires much investment in workers.
5. (To your first post) Workers are the heart and soul of Civ, because what differentiates Civ from RoN and similar games is the persistence of improvements to the terrain, the ability to play a game without ever fighting a single battle if you so choose, and the ability to massively develop your world in whatever way you see fit (assuming you don't get beat by the AI ). Micromanagement is an essential part of civ, whether you like it or not (and you don't have to). It's why most people (try 80% or more) play the game, and not RoN or Warcraft or whatnot.

Just think of the "valid strategies" out there for winning at civ. Some of them involve building wonders; some of them don't. Some of them involve military action; some of them don't. Some of them involve building all of the buildings available (well, most of them anyhow); some of them don't. But all of them -- all -- suggest building workers as soon as you can afford to (although disagreeing when this is, but still) and developping the land you live on. This tells me that land development -- which means workers, at least for now, and will always mean micromanagement no matter how you do it -- is the heart and soul of Civ.

[snoopy369]

More on Fosse's proposal:
I think it's an excellent idea, again for a different game. I think elements of it could be incorporated into Civ -- for example, the Refrigeration element in Civ2 -- easily and usefully.

Primarily, though, my objections to it have to stem from the fact that you'd no longer be playing a tile/unit based game. You'd be playing a game a lot like one I played a while back, don't remember its name, about medieval Venice, where you traded from city to city and built up money, and tried to assassinate your opponents and gather votes for (leader of venice - i forget the name, also i think the name of the game). You'd be basically playing a city-to-city game. This would probably work better in RoN style than Civ -- play the game city-to-city, and then have combat be cut-aways where you say "I want to attack city X of civ Y" and you and them go to a RTS game (or just a battle without the resource aspect, depending on the design) that takes place somewhere within the area between cities, with other cities nearby on either side supplying reinforcements. A fun game? Yes. Something I want to see in Civ? Nope.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Dominae


No sense of continuity/progress; you spend resources on PW, forget about them and build up a bunch, then road your entire empire in the blink of an eye. Imagine if you could accumulate Shields for production items in the same way...instant Wonder!

That's an apt description of what happened a lot with PW, but it is not applicable to the proposal I made a few posts up. That one said nothing about stockpiling shields or even gold, it just talked about paying as you go.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Fosse: short answer to your (very good) post is, this is an excellent description of a different game.

Fair enough, but I'll state right now that I'm never one to accept that as a good enough reason to ditch, keep, or change anything in the game. I think based on Soren's Powerpoint that we can expect a "different game." He talks of doing away with, or at least signifigantly changing, corruption, maintence upkeep, and a handful of other traditional elements.

Primarily, though, my objections to it have to stem from the fact that you'd no longer be playing a tile/unit based game.

The proposal I just wrote up (on a lark, really) wouldn't make Civ a non-unit based game. Think of those workerless scenarios you keep bringing up. Military (and potentially other) units would still be all over the place.

As for the tile based part... You and I see that differently. To me Civ has always been a city based game (though I always wish it were a country based one, but hey). Never has it been a tile based game. I remember lots of cities I've played vividly... but no one tile really sticks out in my memory!


I have never thought of workers as the "heart and soul" of Civ. To me, that is an over-emphasis on a tool. Like saying that a hand saw is the heart and soul of a woodshop. It's a great tool, sure, but its work might be done by others, and the important part of the shop is certainly not the hand saw!


Anyhow... i was just trying to propose a third way, apart from workers and PW. Thanks for the input, I'll continue to mull it over.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Fosse


That's an apt description of what happened a lot with PW, but it is not applicable to the proposal I made a few posts up. That one said nothing about stockpiling shields or even gold, it just talked about paying as you go.

Paying as you go with what, though? It would have to be either a stockpile of gold, or a gold-equivalent. I suppose you could have a "roads-per-turn" option, ie "you may complete 100 man-hours of work this turn" (perhaps 10 hours per citizen, or something) and then make a road take 20 hours to complete, a forest take 60 hours to chop down, etc. But I suspect a lot of people would have meant gold or gold-equivalents in this sort of example... I'd probably prefer the "man-hours per turn" option ... but that's basically workers, again, which is probably why I prefer it.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Fosse


Fair enough, but I'll state right now that I'm never one to accept that as a good enough reason to ditch, keep, or change anything in the game. I think based on Soren's Powerpoint that we can expect a "different game." He talks of doing away with, or at least signifigantly changing, corruption, maintence upkeep, and a handful of other traditional elements.

I suppose I see only a very few things as so central to civ that they couldn't be changed without being a new game. Those things are:
* Tile basis of the game (ie moving units on tiles, not city-to-city)
* Unit basis of the game, and a "company" basis of these units - ie, military being strategic and not very tactical.
* Non RealTime -- ie, turn-by-turn, or risk-like at the extreme (simultaneous turn risk). This is pretty important, that Civ is *not* an RTS, but a turn-based strategy game.
* Builder/Fighter/Diplomat triad of ways of playing - all important, all have to be there to be Civ

That's about it. I basically mean "big picture" details. PW for example is not that totally different that it would HAVE to be a different game, so long as the rest of the game remained unit-based; not all PW systems explained here seemed to be as such. (However, I still maintain that a PW system would dissapoint a lot of people.)
Your suggestion was good, like I said, but definitely takes away the "tile" basis of the game (by Tile i mean "moving units on discrete sectors of a map"), or would at least work better with a city-to-city game.

The proposal I just wrote up (on a lark, really) wouldn't make Civ a non-unit based game. Think of those workerless scenarios you keep bringing up. Military (and potentially other) units would still be all over the place.

I suppose, although you could certainly see it becoming a non-unit game (as I gave an example of in earlier post)...

As for the tile based part... You and I see that differently. To me Civ has always been a city based game (though I always wish it were a country based one, but hey). Never has it been a tile based game. I remember lots of cities I've played vividly... but no one tile really sticks out in my memory!

Well ... I don't think I would consider it Civ without discrete tiles. Just my feeling... not exactly sure I can explain why I feel that way right now, just that it's what the game is (not RTS with indescrete tiles, and not a city-to-city game with no space between them)...