City Governor AI!

[mactbone]

In the video, someone says that the City Governor will "learn" from you. E.G. You stop building warriors and start building temples, the AI takes the cue and starts to build some temples, or starts to suggest buildings that promote culture.

Woohoo, a Governor that takes a hint *nudge* *nudge*

[Sarxis]

Waste of programming as far as I am concerened- I won't use them.

Micromanagement and sleepless nights is the ONLY way to play CIV!

[Robert Plomp]

yeah, I never use governors and simular stuff !
Micromanagement rules !

How can I control my empire if I'm not in control of my own cities ?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Sure I won't use them either, but mnany newbies might... they might even stay with them for a long time if the AI will have relativley good building queues, and city management skill.

[Bleyn]

If the city governers work the way I've heard they will, I probably will use them.

I like the idea of being able to tell the governers Never build this building, and giving them a prefered sequence of building construction.

Why? Its simple. I always hate the amount of micromangement that is required to get a city settled late in the game or one captured from a much less advanced rival up to snuff with the rest of my civ.

Even in games like SMAC and MOO2 where there was a building queue, I found it annoying to have to micromanage those cities, and that the governers just didn't do things the way I wanted them to. With SMAC, I especially disliked the fact that there are buildings I will never use because they do not go with my style of play, yet there is no way to tell the governer not to use them.

[Deathwalker]

Personally I never liked Governors I always found that build the exsact thing I do not want, so the only way i'll use one is if they are as good as they stay otherwise, i'll do it myself as I always did.

[Dida]

I hope the governer AI would be pretty good, cux that will save lots of micromanagement towards the end game.

[HalfLotus]

I think I'll be using the governor. The modern ages get seriously bogged down with moving units and other crap. With the ability to direct your governors on a global or continental basis, they should be helpful.
But probly the first time they build something I dont want I'll , and turn them off for good.

[donarumo]

I think Governers can be valuable and I do not think they are a waste of programming.

Not only do they help new users see what might be built at certain times (i.e. war time, progress time, etc.), they also help when you have a lot of cities and don't want to worry about one for a while. Simply place the governer in charge and focus on more important cities. This is very true late in the game when you have to start a new city and don't want to go through setting up a long line of things to build.

This, of course, is true providing the governers are intelligent and I have confidence in Firaxis that they will be.

[Madine]

You'll be able to tell your governor's not to build certain things, so hopefully that will eliminate that problem.

I only use governor's towards the end of the game because early on I like to pay attention to what my cities are doing.

[Dojan]

I just hope you can use the governors to give collective orders. I find it boring to change the production in all my cities, when I make some strategic research like supermarkets.

But that never stop me from doing it of course.

[Pembleton]

I made the mistake of starting a new thread that was inspired by this topic, but I guess I'll just repeat what I said in that I plan on just loading and saving queues that I've customized for certain types of cities. I don't ever plan on using the governor ever.

[HalfLotus]

Originally posted by Dojan
I just hope you can use the governors to give collective orders. I find it boring to change the production in all my cities, when I make some strategic research like supermarkets.

But that never stop me from doing it of course.

DOJAN, did you read the thread before you posted?

You CAN give such orders to governors.

Pembleton makes a good point, build queue (sp?) saving and loading will be very helpful indeed.

[Donnyb20]

I think governors are going to be an interesting concept in CIV 3. As long as governors can be turned on and off for each city, it could be very useful to players in a couple of different ways.

One thing that I think is very important is to allow player to view each of his/her cities whenever a (city improvement/wonder/special unit) is made in one of your cities, especially when the governor is turned on, this way you can see the next thing that the governor is going to build and hopefully if these AI governors are good, it would be what the player would probably have picked from the list themselves. This will also help prevent building the same city improvement after it's already been completed, and losing half your production if you change to a unit or wonder.

I will definitely have them turned off in the beginning of the game for a while until the game gets to be hard to manage every single city, every single turn, and the possibility of forgetting to switch something over in certain cities is likely. I'm not saying that these AI governors are going to be perfect and always build what the player would build, but if they build improvements/units that are useful to the players the majority of the time, I believe they will be very helpful later on in the game (or whenever you have a lot of cities, like more than 15 or 20 built ). This could prevent players from spending half an hour to an hour on their turns near the end of the game.

Depending on how intelligent the AI is on determining your play style and what type of units and improvements were made in the game previously; it could adapt to that and stick with the same type of concept building. If throughout the game you have stuck with a certain pattern on building city improvements in your cities from when they were founded, then if you decided to build another city (or if you captured a city), the AI governor could build city improvements using the concept of your building method with your other cities. For example, if you have built financial improvement first throughout the game, then religious improvements, then etc.... The governors would stick to that same principle of building a market place first, then temples, then etc....

[Skeeve]

Question on this Governor thing:

Let's suppose it's late in the game and you've just created a new city.
Now you immediately abandon it to the whims of it's governor.

Do you think the Governor feature will still allow you to specify a "template" strategy?
For example suppose that:

• You want 3 military units (1 offensive, 2 defensive), but they have to be the most modern ones.
• You want the first 2 units built right away, but the 3rd can come later.
• Finally, you prefer city improvements that lead to growth, but eventually you want everything.

Do you think that the feature will allow this level of customization?

It sounds like it will, but my problem is that I don't have a "cookie cutter" strategy that I use for all cities. It depends greatly on their location, proximity to the strongest enemy, the surrounding tiles, and my current gut-feeling about my strategy.

[dennis580]

Another reason somebody might use AI governors is to make the game more challenging as it will handicap you from fully implementing your strategies.

[Patriqvium]

If this means saying goodbye to those brainless SMAC governors who built another transport after another, I'll be happy

[Inverse Icarus]

Build queues for provinces is the only way to go.

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by UberKruX
Build queues for provinces is the only way to go.

What provinces will those be?

I'm finding this thread intriguingly interesting.

I recently got in "hot water" over at the MoO3 site for suggesting that micromanagement was--for many of us TBS gamers--not only necessary, but fun. I was just about boo'ed out of the forum! (Over there you will find staunch advocates of this new IFP--Imperial Focus Points--system that imposes a very close limit on how much micromanagement you can exert. The advocates argue that this will speed up each turn, improving gameplay and increasing the suspension of disbelief. I suspect that it will be a tremendous success or a tremendous failure, with very little 'in-between ground.')

But what I'm hearing here is very much along the lines of what I--and it sounds like many of you--enjoy most about this genre: much of the joy of the game is the personal involvement in the details of the Civ! And I believe that the "just one more turn" addiction that has become synonymous with Sid's games is inextricably linked to that detailed involvement.

For myself, I'm anxious to see how good a job any of the 'automated' options will be in Civ3. Will I be able to trust a unit to find the best way from its current location to a select destination? Will a worker make the best use of time and resources with little or no supervision? Or, if given supervision, will that same worker carry it out with a high degree of efficiency? Will local governors properly compensate for the "age" of a city (its 'maturity', if you will)? Taking into account my current diplomatic state (stable peace, wary peace, preparing for war, war away from home, war at home)? Taking into account my current economic state (loads of cash reserves, running on a shoestring budget)? Taking into account my current priorities (research/happiness/production, or whatever)? Taking into account my current technological sophistication? And so on, and so forth...

I can hardly wait!

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Sabre2th


What provinces will those be?

there was a province thread, whereas you could create groups of cities and give them special build queues or universal commands.

example, make a set of "Production Cities" that build factories etc, and "Science Cities" that build libraries etc.

[Ozymandous]

Just felt I had to comment on this idea...

Originally posted by DATarbell
I'm finding this thread intriguingly interesting.

I recently got in "hot water" over at the MoO3 site for suggesting that micromanagement was--for many of us TBS gamers--not only necessary, but fun. I was just about boo'ed out of the forum! (Over there you will find staunch advocates of this new IFP--Imperial Focus Points--system that imposes a very close limit on how much micromanagement you can exert. The advocates argue that this will speed up each turn, improving gameplay and increasing the suspension of disbelief. I suspect that it will be a tremendous success or a tremendous failure, with very little 'in-between ground.')

Having been over at MOO3.com myself I can tell you why you were "chased away". In Civ3 at most you may have 200 cities to rule and manage (maybe less than this, is there a limit on cities?), but in MOO3 you may have 2,000 colonies to manage. See the difference?

Micromanaging 200 is tough but micromanaging 2,000 would be beyond most gamers, much less the 20,000 or so you *could* end up ruling. Civ3 is small enough (in comparison) to do everything yourself, MOO3 will not be that small.

See the difference? I hope so, tis' a very simple concept.

But what I'm hearing here is very much along the lines of what I--and it sounds like many of you--enjoy most about this genre: much of the joy of the game is the personal involvement in the details of the Civ! And I believe that the "just one more turn" addiction that has become synonymous with Sid's games is inextricably linked to that detailed involvement.

For myself, I'm anxious to see how good a job any of the 'automated' options will be in Civ3. Will I be able to trust a unit to find the best way from its current location to a select destination? Will a worker make the best use of time and resources with little or no supervision? Or, if given supervision, will that same worker carry it out with a high degree of efficiency? Will local governors properly compensate for the "age" of a city (its 'maturity', if you will)? Taking into account my current diplomatic state (stable peace, wary peace, preparing for war, war away from home, war at home)? Taking into account my current economic state (loads of cash reserves, running on a shoestring budget)? Taking into account my current priorities (research/happiness/production, or whatever)? Taking into account my current technological sophistication? And so on, and so forth...

I can hardly wait!

I am anxious on what the automated "helpers" can and cannot do myself, but I doubt Civ3 will be as dependant on these as MOO3, but then again this is why Quicksilver has had someone working on the game AI for over a year, long bewfore anything else in the game was started.

I think that Firaxis will improve these items but to what degree only they know (we'll have to wait a month ), but I do know that the last of what you described probably is beyond what will be in this game. Heh, I know real people who'd have trouble micromanaging to that degree.

I guess we'll see in a few weeks how good or bad they are.

[Rasbelin]

Originally posted by Anunikoba
Micromanagement and sleepless nights is the ONLY way to play CIV!

But what do you think about this?

In an interview (should be soon available on Ape) Sid
told that he didn't want to have micromanaging in Civ I.

Sid doesn't like micromanaging?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Bleyn
Why? Its simple. I always hate the amount of micromangement that is required to get a city settled late in the game or one captured from a much less advanced rival up to snuff with the rest of my civ.

Eons ago I have suggested the use of a "master build queue" to solve this problem. It would have been quite easy to implement.

[Sarxis]

Originally posted by Rasbelin


But what do you think about this?

In an interview (should be soon available on Ape) Sid
told that he didn't want to have micromanaging in Civ I.

Sid doesn't like micromanaging?

It would be amazing to have city governors that actually work. I know that some people do use them in SMAX, but a lot of the best players won't touch them becuase of the lack of skill of the AI.

It will be interesting to see just what the CGs have to offer though.

[Skanky Burns]

Im not too keen on the governors idea - even if they do a good job. Initially, ill build everything by hand just to familiarise myself with different buildings (probably just the first game, there shouldnt be too many surprises). Then ill use build queue templates, so for a new city, just load up the 'new city queue', after that lot is done, load the next build queue, until the newer cities are on par with my core cities. Just like in SMAC.

[Blake]

Personally I would prefer the CTP2 national manager, this was one thing in CTP2 which was actually done right, made empire-wide building a cinch (It was powerfull enough that I could, for example, insert a factory into the build queue of every city producing more than 100 production, this required only a couple more mouse clicks than inserting a factory into one cities queue).

A national manager gives the player just as much control as micromanaging every city, without the micromanagment . It's like the veterans version of govoners (which are so newbie ).

If Civ3 has a sufficentely powerfull National manager / queue manager then I wont touch govoners.
If they decide to deprive me of a national manager then I guess I'll reluctantly let govoners take control of my cities.

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

There are a variety of options for customizing governors. Not only can you set preferences for which types of units and improvements you want to build but you can also have the governor control basic city functions such as managing your citizens. In addition, you can have different settings for each city you control and each city can be configured individually to use the governor or not, as you desire. When not using the automated governor, the AI learns from the units and improvements you select for production and suggests similar items to build. You can also save a set of "default" settings for the governor that it will use for each new city you build. Alternately, you can have each new city governor mimic the settings of your capital city.

I use the governors extensively when I play and I think they do a great job. I rarely change what they are producing unless I have a sudden, unexpected war or something (I probably shouldn't be demanding tribute from powerful AI players.... ).

[The diplomat]

Sounds excellent!

The more I hear about the game, the more I want to play it.

[mactbone]

News Item!!!! News Item!!!! Wow, lots of stuff being told today

OK, so this means we have, what, 4 or 5 different ways to use the City Governor? Plus the old fashioned way? Dzang! Got Options? This is gonna be soooo cooool!!!