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Old January 13, 2000, 22:21   #31
Mark_Everson
 
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How did he do that?!

Markos:

I was about to select "Give me automation options", but that's no good either! You see, even Civ 2 can already claim to have quite a few automation options. The problem is that putting a stalk of broccoli in charge of guiding your Civ does less damage than these existing automation options .

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Old January 14, 2000, 01:23   #32
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how did I do it?? html, what else?

the polls takes for granted that the automation options are decent

perhaps we can have another poll on how good the so far automation possbilities are
 
Old January 14, 2000, 22:23   #33
ember
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I have proposed many regions systems to reduce the amount of build micromanagment. Look for them in the old regions and economics threads in the wish list...

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Old January 15, 2000, 01:12   #34
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Hi, just reading this thread and just wanna post my opinions and ideas.

To me, SMACs Automation and Building Queues have improved a lot from Civ2 and gave me more reliefs.
Usually in SMAC, i just let the darn Governor do what he wants, but able to control him/she with this EXPLORE, RESEARCH, BUILD and CONQUER buttons and the other options for the Governor. I usually just look around in map mode to see what each base is currently building, if that base is building something i don't want right away, i just right click and change production. Also in the right click, i am able to change the Base building preference (EXPLORE, RESEARCH, etc...)
So what iw ould like to see in Civ3 is something like that, but more options for the Governors and more Building preferences and able to customize your own preferences. Also they should Base/City status menu so i can just tell the base what to build from there and also coordinate other bases to give a hand with another base.
When i play, i will only micromanagement in certan crisis like revolts sometimes or being threatening by another faction/civ and the sort or if i want to build a peticuliar SP/Wonder.

I like the other ideas in this thread to like pre-contructed facilities when establishing new cities.
More control in automation and customization of preset building queus and the sort.
Settlers ideas which have been posted
Bases helping each other out, so having supply lines and routes.

Another thing i like in SMAC is the Supply Units you can build.



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Old January 15, 2000, 06:16   #35
Zanzibar
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I like Krenske's idea with the 3 building queues, but I would do it this way:
1. a units queue. The question here is: who controls this queue ? The player (of course, if he wants to), the military advisor or the local governor?
2. a local improvements queue (similar with SMAC)
This 2 queues would be financed from the local shield production.
3. the special projects queue, financed by the central (federal) government. Let's say you have a "development of territories" advisor, and he tells you: "Sire, we must built an Aqueduct in Philadelphia and a Hospital in New Orleans" and you say "OK" and give him 20% from the federal budget. Then he begins to build in Philadelphia and New Orleans, but from a queue which can be controlled only centrally (from the government), so there is only one globalized queue => less micromanagement (or more, if you want to tell him exactly what to build). Maybe the units queue can be do it in the same way, controlled by the military advisor.
By the way, I think the budget concept should be far more elaborated than it was in Civ2. After all, you can control a country very well via the budget. Maybe each ministry should have his own budget, and build what he want with his money.
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Old January 15, 2000, 22:32   #36
vanbeke
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The only issue that I have with the micro management problem is the time it takes late in the game -- it is necessary to set the priorities (and to speed the production along). As it may be necessary to immediately defend the city (depending on the technology: SDI, SAM, City walls, Coastal fortress), or be able to move units in and out (airport or starport), or build a defensive unit, I would not want to leave any of these decisions up to an AI that could not be overridden.

So I see micromanagement as a necessary component of the game
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Old January 16, 2000, 10:02   #37
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just a thought on building up new citys. Perhaps the introduction of a unit to give a city some shields, as the caravan does for wonders?

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Old January 16, 2000, 22:53   #38
jenzler
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I love micromanagment. What troubles me is that I can't move a unit from one city to another an opposite sides of a continent with the move command. Even though their is a rail line the unit decides to take a short cut across a mountain or something. I hope the AI can be improved in this respect. Also there shoul;d be some sort of "note-pad" feature; like 'this unit is available to go fortify a city' or 'this engineer is available for a new task'. By the time I click through all my units and cities (in the late game) I can't remember what needs to be done where. If I could line up some available engineers and then assign them to tasks later (like when I find some pollution) rather than trying to go find an available engineer and then getting distracted.... It is most annoying to forget to fortify a new city and have it overun by barbarians (I admit it, it's happened more than once, what kind of leader am I?) especially in the end game when I have ALL SORTS of units available to fartify with.
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Old January 17, 2000, 01:07   #39
Krenske
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Fish_damage ?????!!!??

I proposed the pooled production to allow smaller/starting cities to build their initial improvements quickly using national based production. Adding new units would be bad I tmink. I refer you to my above point on grouping several settlers together at the start of a new city to jump start it considerably. From the middle of the game on you should have no problem getting 5-6 settlers together to rapidly found a new city.
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Old January 17, 2000, 09:52   #40
fish_damage
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Krenske:
As to the username, it's a long story. Including a latex plaice.

I like your ideas, but if the developers choose to stick to the old civI/II system, I thought they could include a caravan like unit to allow you to develop cities faster.
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Old January 17, 2000, 10:52   #41
Matthevv
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Just to add my two pennyworth -

Personally, I quite like a bit of micromanagement. Not too much though, because it becomes dull then. I can think of a few possible approaches to keep the micromanagement in the game, but limit it to avoid it becoming a chore.

1. The player has a fixed number of micromanagement actions per turn. Anything not given a specific instruction manages itself. This sort of reflects the decreasing possibility for direct control as your empire gets bigger.

2. Cities can be grouped into regions and managed as a group. Regions could get bigger as the communications between cities get better. Perhaps travelling time could be a criterion for deciding which cities could be in the same region.

3. You have AI advisors that you give a budget and let them get on with managing an aspect of your Civ. This is a logical extension of the advisors in Civ2. So, you could give your military advisor a budget of say 100 gold per turn that they would be able to spend on building troops and city walls etc. They could also decide where to put the troops and so on. This idea has many possibilities, but could easily be spoiled by naff AI programming. Selectable and editable AI scripts would be a good idea, so that you could choose from different personalities, and even customise them, and exchange them with your friends.

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Old January 17, 2000, 20:06   #42
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Mathevv,

Your option 2 is a fairly obvious solution. At a certain stage of advancement regional governments come into being which allow for the amalgamation of cities. This reduces the micrmanagement at the time it starts to really grow. This could happen again later and allow super regions or nation level management.

Note:- this is well covered in the regional and economic models threads in the lists group.
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Old January 19, 2000, 14:03   #43
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Why not have the best of both worlds. Just make the game so that civs are only 15 or so cities. This way you will be able to mico-manage and it wont be over barring. Plus it would get rid of the ICS. Just make cities over 15 HIGHly incress the chance that your civ will split into 2 if there is any unhappiness.

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Old January 21, 2000, 19:49   #44
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I liked MOO II's governors, who came with some advantages (like increased food production %s etc.) Of course they had their costs as well, but it was interesting to allocate your governors depending on their abilities. Perhaps cities which are a certain distance from your capital, or overseas require a viceroy, who might increase the chance of a revolt or civil war. Perhaps Governors would have ratings in the following areas:

Defence: % increase for combat units in the city radius.

Loyalty: % chance of the city breaking away from the empire.

Food/Shield/Arrow ratings would increase (or decrease) those areas of production by a certain percentage.

Justice: Reduces (or increases) the number of drones/unhappy folks.

Perhaps require each city to have a Governor, and as your Civ grows larger, the quality of the Governors gets worse.

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Old April 21, 2000, 18:49   #45
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three months later, the final results

Micromanagment or Not?

Yes! 786 / 33%
I can live with it 221 / 9%
No! 91 / 3%
Give me automation options 1058 / 45%
Microwhat? 166 / 7%


2322 total votes



 
Old April 21, 2000, 21:22   #46
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It is surprising to see how few Apolytoners chose the 'No!' option.

The poll results make me think that people want CivIII to be more an extension of CivII than a radical new generation of the Civ tradition.
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Old April 21, 2000, 21:26   #47
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On a (slightly) different topic... Poor DanQ/MarkG!

It would be great if some Firaxian threw them a CivIII bone from time to time. It's been such a slow news month, I'm worried about seeing something like:

April 22 - This just in! Sid Meier scratches his arse. Read all about this most recent development in the CivIII section. Post your comments here...
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Old April 22, 2000, 05:05   #48
Gord McLeod
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quote:

Originally posted by Slingshot on 04-21-2000 09:22 PM
It is surprising to see how few Apolytoners chose the 'No!' option.

The poll results make me think that people want CivIII to be more an extension of CivII than a radical new generation of the Civ tradition.


That's funny... the results make perfect sense to me. I'm betting the vast number of 'Give me automation options!' voters represent both the 'Yes' and the 'No' camp. I myself voted that way because I love micromanagement, but there are times I don't want to be bothered with it and don't want to be prevented from being able to do it. Automation *options* give you the best of both worlds.
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Old April 22, 2000, 05:08   #49
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quote:

Originally posted by Slingshot on 04-21-2000 09:26 PM
On a (slightly) different topic... Poor DanQ/MarkG!

hehe, we(Dan and I) should probably not complain. We had a great period before, geting huge news and mostly posting about them or having them exclusive, starting from the ctp2 announcement, to brian reynolds and later bhg, and then to sid's message. Not to mention the 4 interviews we posted during March(Tim Train, Phil Sulak and Brad Oliver, and Steve Mariotti)
 
Old April 22, 2000, 10:36   #50
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I'm not surprised at the poll results. In fact, I think it acurately shows what gamers want--the ability to change every little detail when they want, but if they choose not to change it, they do not have to.

SMAC did that with the workshop idea, where you could modify your units if you wanted to, but if you didn't, the game did it for you.

If Civ III could have the option to micromanage, but smart non-microcomanagement (this includes smarter automation for units), the best of both worlds could be achieved.
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Old April 22, 2000, 16:59   #51
Diodorus Sicilus
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"One man's Micromanagement is precisely what the next guy most enjoys doing in the game."

I posted something similar to that saying months ago in the "Suggestions to Firaxis" threads, and nothing has changed since - in fact, the current thread reinforces it.
As long as Civ is a competition game, either between people or between a person and the computer, and as long a person can do a better job of decision-making and planning than a computer/AI can, people will micromanage in the game. Period.
As for making an AI that can "micro" manage as well as a person in Civ, note that Chess has only two sides, 64 tiles of only two types, 16 units on a side of 6 different types, and it took how long and how much $$$ to develop Big Blue? Multiply Chess's complexity by about 8 orders of magnitude (terrain types, number of tiles, number of units, types of units, diplomacy, development, research, etc, etc) and then try to develop a competitive AI - but don't expect to play it on this or the next generation of home computers!
So, we are reduced to "automating" the micromanagement. This, from all the discussion so far, comes down to managing the individual cities in your Civ - civ-wide research and taxaton aren't a problem since they are Civ-wide.
The problem with grouping cities into Regions is that there weren't no such thing until mass rapid transportation was available - either a group of cities had to be connected by river-canal-sea or by railroads. No road traffic could carry bulk goods any distance with animal motive power, so Regions before the railroad will be mostly riverine or coastal - and damn hard to define except in terms of trade routes established.
Automating individual city builds, and especially starting queues, runs into the problem that individual city start-ups vary with the requirements of the citizens: a city in the desert needs water systems first, in hostile territory they need defenses, over the ocean needs a port first, etc. For an extreme example, the Romano-German city of Aquieas Mattiacus (modern Wiesbaden on the Rhine) started with a set of hot bath spas, to entice Romans and their money and goods across the river! How to you automate that kind of thing?

Programmable Defaults are another thing, and should be added to any game...
Multiple Build Queues is long overdue, but why tie it to a specific number? The bigger the city, and the more facilities for production it has, the more "simultaneous Builds" it should get. At the same time, by building only one thing (Priority?) it should be able to concentrate resources for a "Rush Job" - within reason.
I'd have the number of possible simultaneous builds be dependant on the size of the city (assuming lots of little workshops or industries as a % of the population), certain special Improvements (Shipyards, Barracks, Factories, etc), and possibly on the Social-Political organization of the civ. The last is based on the premise that a Militaristic society will produce more military units than a democratic-peaceful capitalistic one, which would, however, produce more wealth and happiness producing Improvements faster.
Which brings up "automatic" infrastructure for a city. I think this should be based squarely on the Social-Political structure and the requirements of terrain and surroundings. Thus, a city across the ocean from the Capital will start with a Stockade/City Wall and a Port. A city of a capitalist-Democratic civ will build a Market first, while a Theocracy will build a Temple first, etc. For player interaction, you can change the auto-builds, but building anything else first would cost more: the automatic-socially-generated builds would be very cheap for that particular civ.
Finally, why should only the resources of a single city be used to build a Civ-wide Wonder? I know right now in CivII I can use Caravans to add resources to a Wonder build, but such a project should automatically receive resources from other cities in the civ. The amount should vary depending on transportation technology and location (can it be shipped in by sea, river, or canal) and by the requirements of the civ-society: an economic Wonder would attract extra resources in a capitalist civ, a religious Wonder in a Theocracy, a military Wonder in a civ which is militaristic, or is getting butt-whipped in a war...

Anyway, there are my semi-random additions to micromanagement - you'll never get it out of a game, because most of us Want To Win, but the Option to avoid as much of it as you want should be added to Civ.
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