simultaneous build orders!

[The diplomat]

Here is an idea: allow a city to build several items at the same time. This idea has been offered before but I suggest doing it through a single build queue.
Here is how it could work: a city would have a build queue with a certain number of slots just like SMAC has. But instead of building each item one after the other, the items in the build queue would be built simultaneously. A build queue with several slots would allow any combination of items that the player wants: several military units could be built simultaneously or some units and a city improvements, or several improvements and a wonder, etc...
The total amount of "minerals" (or "shields" if we use civ2's terminology) that a city produces would be split equally among each item in the build queue. This would determine how long each item takes to complete.
If there is only one item in the build queue, then all the "minerals" would go to the one item. If there were two items, then 50% of the minerals would go to one, and 50% to the other. etc...
So, if there were several items, each one would take a little longer compared to if it were the only item but several items would be worked on at the same time. To make this idea work, I would suggest increasing a little the amount of minerals a tile produces so that small cities (with low industrial ability) could still take advantage of this feature.

The advantages of this idea are:
-solves the "warrior takes 100 turns" problem. Cities can build things in a more realistic amount of time. Even if a turn is 20 years, since the city can build several things at the same time, at the end of several turns, the city might have 2 warriors and a temple. This would allow more things to happen during the game. It would solve the current situation in civ2, where a player has built up an army only to discover that 40 turns have already gone by.

-it reduces micromanagement. If you think that a city needs a university, a temple and an extra legion. No problem! Just fill the queue with these items and they all will be worked on simultaneously.

I am very excited about this idea. I hope I will get some feedback. Furthermore, it doesn't require too much modification to the civ model so I hope Firaxis will consider it. It would improve the game so much.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Adm.Naismith]

Diplomat, are you kidding?

1) If any item cost same mineral than now, building two at the same time, dividing available mineral by half will be exactly the same, apart you'll wait 200 turns to have 2 warriors.

2) Using a sequential building queue as in SMAC will reduce micromgmt the same anyway.

If you want to change the build model, you must go (e.g) for different queues for different items (units, city buildings, wonders), because they are enough unrelated, or jump to a regional building queue concept, where units and wonders are builded by the regional pool of resources and workers.

BTW, using a queue concept I hope Firaxis will avoid the annoying "currently building item out of queue", because it make uconfortable to switch the current item with the next if you must rearrange quickly your top priority (i.e. a defensive unit if an incoming battle hurry you)

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
[This message has been edited by Adm.Naismith (edited July 06, 2000).]

[The diplomat]

1) You are correct about the math. Should I just hide my head in the sand now?

2)true. But I'd like to find a system that allows multiple build orders simultaneously.
I am thinking of a system where a city would produce a legion in 2 turns and a temple the next turn. The temple takes 3 turns but was started at the same time as the legion so it completed two out of three during the legion construction. Is this possible?

If separate build queues were used for units, city improvements and wonders, there wouls still be a need for sliders (or something) to allocate the amount of shields to each, right? Shields would still be split among the different build orders?

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Adm.Naismith]

Diplomat about your list of action:

1) Please don't do it! Sand in the eyes is not god for your health, nor improve the math too

2) Yes, as you (and others in old posts) suggested, different queues with some slider to allocate resources are a possibility, and I can support this to a point.

But, apart from the feeling of "wave of job done", if Firaxis doesn't change anything about the mix of available resources / needed resources we'll simply end to have some bunch of work done, followed by a long gap of nothing accomplished (when all the queues are at the beginning of a new building order, dividing the available resources).

Will we gain less micromgmt? Not a lot IMHO (three queues to set and mantain instead of one).

Will we gain in strategics/tactics possibility? Not sure is really different for a "builder player". It doesn't change the use or the distribution of resources, so what?

Better we think of a more drastic change of the building model (not a chance that Firaxis will consider it, but who know? ) or simply survive with that we already have in SMAC and put our effort on other weak point.

Or we can simply sit down and wait for the game release, as Firaxis will design it.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Urban Ranger]

Admiral,

As I said somewhere else, you would be correct, that multiple build queues are useless, if there are no rush orders.

Since the cost for rush builds is a sliding scale, i.e., it costs a lot less to rush build an item that you have been building for 2 or 3 turns then right off the back.

Consider building 2 armor units. If you have only a single queue, what you can only do is to put one in the queue, wait a turn, rush that, put another one in the queue on turn 3, wait another turn, then rush that too.

If you have two queues, you can put both in the queue, wait 3 turns, and then rush build both. This is cheaper than doing it with a single queue.

Another situation arises when you need to build a unit and a wonder or a city improvement at the same time. Suppose a city building a wonder is being attacked. Now you could either choose to switch to produce military units and taking a massive hit in shield loss, or gamble that the enemy can't break your defense. There's no such problem when you have two queues. One queue can be used to build the wonder and another one churns out units.
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited July 07, 2000).]

[Adm.Naismith]

Urban Ranger, good points.

On the other hand I don't love too much the concept of "rush building"; I mean, I use it and found it useful, still it taste to me a bit unrealistic (if really overstretched to gain many building turns).
I'll really like if it will be toned down to only achieve some percentage of turn gained, may be randomly choiced in a range.

I agree that switching production from a Wonder to a unit is a bit ridiculous as is: you lose a lot of work already done or switch too much resources to the new job (can you really dismantle the Cure for Cancer laboratories to build a Wing of fighters in a turn? ).

Ok, so you have found reason to divide the queues. On this approach we can also let the queue be only one, but with three "under construction" slot: units, wonders, city advances. You assign with a slider how many resources are dedicated to every production.

Then we have two different models:

1) Every time a slot is vacant from previus production, it simply look down the queue for the first appropriate item requested. If none is available it ask for new order or redistribute resources to other lines of production.

2) The system strictly respect the build order of the queue: if you have a sequence as "unit, wonder, city adv., unit, unit, unit, city adv." when it finished the city advance and find that the next is not the first waiting on queue, it straight shift its resources to the more required (i.e. unit) line of production, till another slot end its job.

Former model is simpler, the latter try to balance better taking priority into account.

Of course we can have a model with two/three queues that can build every item, but I don't like it, because it miss the concept of specialized "production lines".

Let's see your opinion!

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[The diplomat]

How about making military units a lot cheaper to produce so that a city with good shield production could still produce a legion in 1 turn, even if only a third of the shields are allocated to military units (the other 2/3 shields would be to city improvements). This would allow a large city to devote most of its shields to city improvements and still produce units fast enough to protect itself.
Furthermore, if the city devoted all its ressources to military units, then it should be able to produce several units in 1 turn!
For example, if a city produces 20 shields and a legion cost 10 shields. Then you could put 2 legions in the build queue and the city would produce 2 legions in 1 turn.

Would this work? Is it a good idea?




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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[MidKnight Lament]

Ahh, multiple build queue idea... we meet again.

Urban Ranger is correct in pointing out a couple of situations where multiple build queues would be useful, but on the whole I think it's actually adding more micromanagement and much more complexity for the AI (when unnecassary complexity is the last thing it needs) for relatively little gain.

- MKL

[Az]

quote: Originally posted by The diplomat on 07-07-2000 10:57 AM How about making military units a lot cheaper to produce so that a city with good shield production could still produce a legion in 1 turn, even if only a third of the shields are allocated to military units (the other 2/3 shields would be to city improvements). This would allow a large city to devote most of its shields to city improvements and still produce units fast enough to protect itself. Furthermore, if the city devoted all its ressources to military units, then it should be able to produce several units in 1 turn! For example, if a city produces 20 shields and a legion cost 10 shields. Then you could put 2 legions in the build queue and the city would produce 2 legions in 1 turn. Would this work? Is it a good idea?

Diplomat : as I started reading the posts in this thread I thought about the same Idea. but then I thought really deeply I guess it also needs a major change in the whole military system , a change which will , to my opinion , improve the game dramatically .

the only problem is that FiraXis wont do it. this change is lowering the home city population any time you build a unit in order to enlarge reality and prevent unit flood .... ( imagine yourself . 2 legions in a turn for a city . it's too much even for the OCC start! ).

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Prepare to Land !

[UltraSonix]

MKL's right:

quote: Urban Ranger is correct in pointing out a couple of situations where multiple build queues would be useful, but on the whole I think it's actually adding more micromanagement and much more complexity for the AI (when unnecassary complexity is the last thing it needs) for relatively little gain.

BUT, I think there should be one exception. In the case described above, where you have to abandon a wonder to build a defensive unit. There should be an option to temporarily stop the building of anything (wonder, improvement, or even another unit), so that another unit can be built. So this isn't quite multiple queues or whatever, because only one thing's getting built at a time.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[MidKnight Lament]

It's certainly an undesirable effect of having only one build queue. No disagreement there. I don't think the designers were deliberately trying to put this in our way whilst creating the game, but it does significantly impact the way you play.

- MKL
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited July 10, 2000).]

[meriadoc]

That's a neat idea - putting the production of a wonder/improvement/unit on pause while you construct another unit or improvement. I can see this as being especially useful when I'm ten turns away from building a wonder and all of a sudden find myself in need of a new defensive unit. I'm all for this option.

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The Electronic Hobbit