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nato
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West Unite
Aug 2001 time: 00:17
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This is pretty long but fairly good I hope; it is at least constructive ...
I think there are fun decisions to make in Civ3, and there are boring decisions to make. Fun decisions involve strategic thinking and planning. Boring decisions involve narrow optimization and busy work that many would like to automate.
Civ is a mix of these fun and boring decisions. However the ratio of fun to boring changes as the game goes on. In the early part of the game, you have fewer units and cities. You spend most of your time on exploring, deciding who to attack and ally with, where to expand, whether to pursue war or peaceful growth, and so on.
Later in the game however the number of units and cities grows exponentially. Now you spend most of your time managing, deciding what improvement to have workers make, where to move military units, what to have cities build, and how to quell civil disorder.
This becomes very bad late game. Early game, for every fun decisions to make, where to expand, when to attack, and so on, you only have to move a few units and manage a few cities. Late game, to get to the fun decisions you have to do many many boring things, like move workers #1-150, move artillery piece #1-40, manage 30 good cities, and manage 70 corrupt cities.
To try to fix this, fun decisions should be maximized, and boring decisions should be minimized. This requires first defining what is fun and what is boring (this will vary for people, but I hope some broad agreement is possible - this is my list, please share yours):
Fun
- Where to Expand
- Who to Ally With, Who to Wage War With
- Making Interesting Trade Deals
- Be Aggressive or Peaceful
- Tech Research Path
- What Kind and How Big an Army
- Where, When, and How to Invade
Boring
- What Tile to Put Worker #84 On
- Mining, Irrigating, Clearing EVERY Tile
- Roading and Railing EVERY Tile for Output Bonus
- Cleaning Up Pollution
- Deciding What City #39 Should Build Now
- Getting City #92 Out of Disorder
- Moving Artillery #26
- Moving Tank #15
I don't really see anyway to increase the amount of fun decisions ... I think what needs to happen is simply to decrease the boring decisions so that the fun ones get more time.
So the key is minimization of boring decisions. How to do this?
One thing is perhaps to play smaller maps. Less tiles, less cities, less units, more fun maybe. This isn't much help to ppl like me who prefer big maps for the greater possibilities, but its worth mentioning.
Second is using Shift A to automate your workers. No one, myself included, can stand to do this because of the efficiency loss. However, maybe it is worth it to swallow that loss and get more fun playing time ... just maybe the loss of optimization won't really change the outcome of the game. Life's too short to spend time personally irrigating.
Third is maybe using Governors to handle city management ... I don't know much about this since I was never willing to trust them, but maybe it is worth the inevitable loss of optimality.
Thats all I can think of that players can do as the game is now. What game changes should be made?
First is stack movement of course, so players' lives aren't spent moving every single unit around one by one.
Second is to improve automation routines. Make the automated worker and the city governors do their job better please!! This would allow players to dump the busy work on them without fear of losing too much efficiency. As it is, no one will do this because the efficiency loss is too great. If automated workers and city governors were more competent, say maybe 75% as good as a human, then complaints about end game tedium might disappear.
Third is change pollution. Either fix the worker automation, so that they clean it efficiently like humans, or simply make pollution disappear on its own after 5 turns or so. Pollution is a bigger headache than one might think, because it requires the player to keep workers around even after improvements are finished, and he generally has to activate a stack of them one by one every time pollution appears. It seems a small thing, but it causes a disproportionate amount of tedium.
Fourth is an option to have cities in disorder automatically be "given some entertainment" if that option is available. (The "manage city mood" option might do this already, I am not sure since I never trusted governors).
Fifth make city build queues easier to work with. Allow multiple types of queues for one thing.
Thats all I can think of ... mostly they just deal with improving the worker and governor AI so that busy work can be given to them. Boring decisions cause game tedium ... it just becomes overwhelming late game because the number of them has grown exponentially, cluttering out the fun decisions almost completely.
Boring busywork is best handled by a machine ... if worker and governor AIs were improved, players would be willing to let them do so, and the late game tedium problem might disappear.
Hopefully this just involves improving the existing routines, rather than programming entirely new code, so it might be feasible.
Agreement or disagreement? Any other ideas about why late game tedium occurs and how to fix it?
Thanks for reading, sorry for the length!
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Barnacle Bill
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Somewhere on the wine dark sea
Oct 2001 time: 00:17
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I think the tedium is a symptom, with two big culprits: pollution & too many units.
On pollution, I've never really understood the point of it in Civ games. "Oh, you have to have some limit on production". You do, once a city has a manufacturing plant and an offshore platform and has a citizen working every shield-producing tile in its radius, you have reached the limit. If you positively must have polution because you just can't feel green without it, then let's model it more realistically. You don't get random blotches that render huge chuncks of real estate unusable, and climate change due to polution is controversial among scientists no matter what the press might tell you. What is an absolutely undeniable effect of polution is it makes a segment of the population unhappy, and the more of it there is the more that segment grows. So, let's keep the smoke stacks but cause smoke stacks to make people unhappy (yes, I know that they are yellow triangles now but smoke stacks gets the idea across). Let's also give the player something to do about it after all the anti-polution buildings are built and you still have smoke stacks - a setting you can set (maybe you have to build a small wonder called "The EPA" before you can use it) called "Environmental Regulation", which would simply reduce your shield production until the smoke stacks went away (effectively reducing the production bonus from buildings as needed to keep the bad thang away). The setting could either be an "on-off" or a number of smoke stacks to tolerate. Oh, yes, people basically did not care about polution prior to the mid-late 20th century so there should be some tech that turns on "polution makes people unhappy", or maybe it just comes as soon as you enter the modern era. Then, with the above in, remove polutioned tiles from the game and either remove global warming altogether (my vote) or make it a function of the global total of smoke stacks rather than the global total of poluted tiles (a compromise I'd accept). Net result - all you have to do to manage polution is to manage a civ-wide setting akin in principle to your tax rate and build buildings.
On too many units, a couple of easy fixes:
a) too many Workers - in real life, improving the terrain is done mostly by local people. So, let this be performed by the city citizen working the tile instead of producing if it is in the city radius. How long it takes would be a function of tech, but there would still only be one per tile at a time. Since the only reason to improve terrain outside cities is to build roads/railroads (or forts if you use them), the need for Workers should be greatly reduced. It should also be something the governors could be made competent to manage, especially if the player could have setting to tell the governor whether to emphasize food or shield production (probably a sliding scale rather than an bit).
b) too many units in general - this is due to design changes that make it possible to support much larger military establishments than in previous games of the series. The fix is simple (and does not require big coding like "stack movement"). Raise the maintenance cost, and make it a function of the unit build cost not a fixed rate. This is realistic - it costs a lot more to support a 1st World Mech Infantry division than a 3rd World non-mechanized Infantry Division. In real life, it also costs more to own a unit for a year than to build it in the first place. This would cut down on the number of units dramatically.
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Autolicus
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Los Angeles
Nov 2001 time: 05:17
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Unfortunately, there are a lot of tedious activities in the game. Most of them have been repeatedly pointed out, and some have offered what appear to be workable solutions -- e.g., stack movement; elimination of pollution or else make the effects more abstract.
Aside from these, one of my most disfavored aspects of the game is revolts. I'm not talking about a city or two -- those are fine. I'm talkling about a situation where war weariness sets in, or you lose one or two luxury agreements in a single turn, and suddenly all of your cities revolt. You then spend the next five minutes allocating entertainers; then you renegotiate the luxury agreements, make peace; increase luxury expenditure, etc.; then on the next turn you have to wait while you receive messages from each city that order has been restored; then you have to go into each city and reallocate the entertainers. Sigh.
I would like to see a feature that deals with a situation when more than a certain number of cities revolt in a single turn. In those situations, you should be given a pop-up screen at the beginning of the turn, indicating that X cites are about to revolt. Possible options could include: a) increasing the amount of entertainment in the budget windor; b) allowing the computer to automatically appoint entertainers in each of the trouble cities; c) simply ignoring all revolting cities -- (perhaps you plan on renegotiating the luxury agreements, or negotiating peace on the next turn, which will obviate the need for you having to deal with the situation).
Well, anyways, that's my two cents worth.
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nato
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West Unite
Aug 2001 time: 00:17
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Barnacle Bill - Thats a very good idea for pollution. That does treat pollution more like it is in real life I think. Either it is untreated and makes people unhappy, or it has to be cleaned which essentially costs production.
I really do think pollution causes more tedium than it would seem.
Having the city population build improvements is a cool idea, and would be nice. Given my last attempt at "fixing" terrain improvements though, I'm not sure how well people would receive such a big change, and it would take a lot of new programming. Its a cool idea, I'm just not sure how feasible it would be.
The high cost maintanence idea is interesting ... it would lead to players being able to build miliatary units, but not wanting to because of gold cost. The limiter to your armies would change from shield production to gold income.
With tech trading, its easy to have a huge gold income, so the upkeep cost would have to be pretty steep to stop me from making troops. However it might lead to a cool situation of running a deficit during a war, then having to disband units afterwards instead of keeping them forever. That would be pretty realistic.
One thing, if you had all improvements built in a city, and couldn't afford more units, you'd have cities with nothing to do ... lots of Wealth.
I like having modern units cost more than ancient ones. That would have to be scaled with empire growth right.
Cool ideas!
The diplomat - Thanks thats one of the most positive replies I've ever gotten.
I prefer PW, but I don't think it will ever happen in Civ3. Actually though, if the AI of the automated worker was near optimal, it would be even better than PW. PW still takes some management, while good automated workers run themselves.
I think better governors, ones you could rely on, might be an overlooked improvement that would really reduce the tedium a lot.
As for stacks, we can only hope...
Thanks for the replies ... I think by sharing ideas, people can come up with ideas they could not alone.
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C Chulainn
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Leeds,WestYorks,UK
Jan 1970 time: 05:17
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It isn't true that people didn't care about pollution until the mid-20th century; when the river Thames got so polluted that sittings of parliament had to be abandoned because of the stench, the British government in the mid 19th century began to notice pollution - it's not some hippy thing.
That said, it isn't modelled realistically in Civ - in real life you don't get great big clumps of yecch that ruin hundredsof square km of land. It would be better to have pollution work like corruption, as the horrible environment harms crops, makes workers miserable or ill, etc. It could affect happiness, food or commerce rather than production. A toxic cloud disaster could kill citizens. The maddest part is that, rather than getting a nuclear winter, dropping the bomb contributes to global warming! Huh?!
Regarding workers, I liked CtP's model of giving public work points to create improvements rather than sending little men all over the place, which can get tedious.
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Kevin Ar18
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How about pop-ups?
You can read about it in more detail here:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...&threadid=39549
Basically the idea is to compress the many pop-ups into 2 or 3 pop-ups at the end of the AI's turn.
Also an option to save any other pop-ups like diplomacy till the end of the AI's turn so you can leave the computer if the turn takes a long time.
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Kevin Ar18
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quote: Originally posted by C Chulainn
It isn't true that people didn't care about pollution until the mid-20th century; when the river Thames got so polluted that sittings of parliament had to be abandoned because of the stench, the British government in the mid 19th century began to notice pollution - it's not some hippy thing.
That said, it isn't modelled realistically in Civ - in real life you don't get great big clumps of yecch that ruin hundredsof square km of land. It would be better to have pollution work like corruption, as the horrible environment harms crops, makes workers miserable or ill, etc. It could affect happiness, food or commerce rather than production. A toxic cloud disaster could kill citizens. |
I like that idea. Would be a little more realistic to have pollution on the level of how the disease model works in CivIII in that it affects the city but does not change the terrain.
Then again, I do think nuclear missiles should affect the terrain. (They should kill all the units and buildings too, but that's another story )
quote: Originally posted by C Chulainn
The maddest part is that, rather than getting a nuclear winter, dropping the bomb contributes to global warming! Huh?!
Regarding workers, I liked CtP's model of giving public work points to create improvements rather than sending little men all over the place, which can get tedious. |
Yeah, a nuclear winter would be more realistic.
You know it's never been proven that pollution is causing global warming? In fact mars is undergoing global warming now as well. Supposedly the sun is going through a hotter/warming cycle right now (and no I don't mean it's becomming a gas giant )
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DilithiumDad
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Automating workers to clean pollution works well when you have pollution present every turn --they keep on going.
Once you have hospitals, all but a few workers should join your bases, if you Industrious/Democracy and have Replacement Parts tech (=400% speed, clearing jungle in 4 turns with a single worker not 16).
Build fewer cities. Give away those 70 corrupt cities unless you are going for domination or conquest.
Don't wage war. Surround your empire with forts and garrison fortified defenders in them. Fortified units do not need management!
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Libertarian
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quote: Build fewer cities. Give away those 70 corrupt cities unless you are going for domination or conquest. |
[...knocking on poster's head...]
Hello? Anybody in there?
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Libertarian
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And what happens to your worker when an enemy soldier happens by, or when your rival civ's border expands, or when your coal has disappeared and you can longer build railroads, etc.?
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nato
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West Unite
Aug 2001 time: 00:17
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Grumbold - I agree PW is not a perfect solution to terrain improvement tedium. You are totally right.
Currently I think the best solution would be to improve the worker automation routines. They don't have to be perfect, just good enough that you don't lose too much optimality using them. Good automated workers would be superior to PW.
Using city improvements to represent terrain improvements might be a good idea. However it also might just shift the managment tedium from workers to cities.
My dream solution is still what I posted under "Radical Idea to Reduce Tedium", using techs to increase terrain output. Zero tedium! But thats not likely to happen.
Oh yeah, I would LOVE to have stacked combat rather than just stack movement ... sigh if only ... but I think we will be lucky if we just get movement.
Atahualpa - Wow a brush, like laying walls in Age of Kings (sorry for the RTS mention RTS haters). Clever! I'd have never thought of that.
I could see it as being more possible if individual workers were selected and you could use the brush to give him orders. I really like that idea.
The "continental pool", with workers not appearing on the map, would be pretty identicle to PW I think. PW with a brush tool would be a big improvement over the original PW idea though.
The bombardment idea would make it like you had a unit occupying the tile bombarded. Maybe, I'm not so sure ... I don't know if a unit's barrage of shells is really large enough to prevent all work on a tile sized area.
That brush idea really might be onto something, I think... Grumbold has a great point that lots of clicking = tedium, and the brush would save clicking ...
Libertarian - I think using Atahualpa's brush idea would be like giving the Worker an order queue ... the brush idea just lets the player give the Worker the queue in a quick way, without having to click every tile. If one of those events occured, interupting the Worker's order queue, how about the queue is just canceled, and the Worker enters the activation queue? Just like sometimes units on a Go To command do when they come across an enemy.
Now I have to take a break from saying "queue" so much ...
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Skanky Burns
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Skanky Bastard Quartermaster
Aug 2001 time: 14:17
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Sorry, i fail to see how 'mass improvement designing' with brushes would improve automated worker efficiency. Or how it differs to standard automating workers in any useful way.
As automated workers stand now, they make improvements based on how useful they see each improvement would be. Road connections to and around cities, mines and irrigation around cities only, then roads/rails in squares inside your cultural border, but not in any city radius. I dont know exactly how the automated workers decide what should be done and where as i control all my workers, but i know from the AI's workers that the algorythm is more advanced than "build roads everywhere in this 4x4 box".
Obviously the alogythm for the automated workers is not as efficient as it could be, and a good player will be able to optimise their workers much better than the AI, but there are also much worse ways of automating the workers.
I dont see PW being any better than this system either, as you still have to go to each city and place stuff down. For me it would be even worse, as without a worker telling me i had some 'improvement points' to use i would forget about improving for a couple of turns, and once i remembered place heaps of improvements down. This would result in a less efficient empire than automating my workers ever could.
btw: You can already automate workers to just build railroads (for example), or to build a railroad between cities or such. Automating several would probably mean that they stack to help each other. 
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nato
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West Unite
Aug 2001 time: 00:17
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Skanky Burns - I agree that for Civ3 automated workers is probably the most realistic solution.
I am willing to accept the loss of efficiency from using them ... but I don't think many players are, as is. There must be some room for improvement ... if the routine was somehow improved, more ppl might be willing to use them, solving lots of tedium.
Same goes for governors.
Once again, I agree PW is still too annoying, because it requires tile by tile work, one at a time.
Grumbold - I think if you could click and drag an area, it would save on clicking pretty well ... I agree, more radical solutions would reduce tedium more, but the brush idea might be doable with workers.
MoO 1 sure seems to have gotten a lot right! I do remember being really disappointed when MoO 2 switched to a boring conventional just-like-everyone-else city improvement style.
I really believe sometimes ppl just imitate the past too much, and don't think out of the box enough.
As for my tech advancement idea, it would lead to a sudden sharp increase in production. It would be powerful, but as long as everyone could research the tech, everyone would have the same benefit. I think it would work fantastic, but others disagree. It would be zero tedium!
Your city improvement idea has a lot of merit, and is certainly better than the current model. Its just that managing cities is one of the main tedium items, so I think it might just be shifting things around, unless governors or build queues were much improved.
However your improvement idea, and my tech idea, are probably both too radical to really hope for. Right now I think an improved worker AI is the most realistic hope.
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dadacp
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D-55129 Mainz, Germany
Apr 2001 time: 05:17
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One possibility would be to punish players for too much micromanagement, or reward them for automation. It's perfectly natural that city governors or worker battalion leaders would resent being told every last action that they should take, and that they should know better than a far-away nation leader how to accomplish their task. Let automated workers work faster than non-automated, and micromanaged cities have more corruption or unhappiness. Then players would only micromanage when neccessary.
Right now, governors and automated workers are less competent than the player. So perfectionists will try micromanage everything, and the game slows down. If the governors and automated workers are made more competent, and the player is given a bonus for trusting them, the game would play much faster.
Letting extra food production carry over to the next population level and and extra shield production carry over to the next item in the queue would also help a lot.
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