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I really wish they'd get rid of workers as units and have improvements directly placed on the map, costing gold.
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Jun 1, 2016 07:17
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Endless legend's factions are, well, wonderful. The tree-loving elves are the industrial guys; the crazed pain wizards are the science dudes; the chivalrous elite knights and the undead soul-eating vampires are the same people; there's a faction that can't declare war and another that can't make peace... perhaps the days of "+1 to gold" as the most daring faction difference are behind us.
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Jun 1, 2016 09:02
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In Civ the "science dudes" would win all the time. I do like it when the UAs are more creative, and introduce new mechanics instead of tweaking numbers on old ones. I think the devs definitely went in that direction with the expansions and DLC (consider Denmark, Venice, Austria). I hope they do more of that in 6, although what we've seen so far (China gets 4 charges per builder instead of 3!) doesn't bode well...
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Jun 1, 2016 09:58
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:You're making statements without establishing causal linkages. In Civ5, workers are unlimited in the number of improvements they can create; in Civ6 they will be limited. Nothing in that says anything about how effectively the AI will use workers. Yes, a Civ5 worker can make infinite improvements over infinite turns. However, you don't have infinite turns. Instead, the AI builds X number of workers, and distributes them out to where it thinks they are required. This means you often have huge stretches of unimproved tiles as its workers are allocated to inappropriate locations, or are killed by the player or by barbs. Civ6, the 3-use instant build improvement will be easier for the AI to manage. It decides a city needs improvements, the nearest cities build a worker, bam bam bam, the tiles are improved. No waiting around, the snowball happens instantly.
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Jun 1, 2016 10:17
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The point being made though is that simply making a resource more scarce does not lead to the computer being able to allocate it more efficiently. Without changing the underlying logic of how improvements are selected and undertaken by the AI - which is completely unrelated to how workers are produced and consumed - all you've done is taken the simple task of redirecting existing or replacing lost workers and complicated it into knowing how many workers it needs now, how many it will need soon, and how many it wants in a long-term plan of what improvements it needs to undertake in a strategic economic vision the computer is already explicitly cheating at in order to appear as if it's capable of making those decisions. The AI ends up with stretches of unimproved tiles because it doesn't know what improvements it needs, and even if it had to build a worker for every single improvement it still wouldn't know what improvements it needs.
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Jun 1, 2016 10:40
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Empire splitting could be done as a combination with vassalization / city flipping: as a civ gradually gets conquered, the cities in that civ become more likely to split off and join the closest neighboring civ for protection. After all, their original nation isn't able to protect them. Sort of a form of war weariness: cities don't like being on the losing side of conflict, so if there's a way to skip out on a war (short of surrendering), they may be inclined to take it. Fighting a war in Civ 4 and having to check every turn to see if they'd Capitulate to me instead of having them do it to a complete rando who I wasn't at war with wasn't fun at all to be honest. It almost made me turn of Vassal States because it's just tedious. Jay Rust posted:I remember Civ III, maybe IV, could have entire cities flip if a neighbouring Civ had stronger culture. But players got a pop-up: "Do you want to lose this city?" Why would a human player ever pick "Sure!"? It was pretty unbalanced! That's the popup just founding a city when you're close to a rival civ, it just goes "Oh they want to join this civ who is closer to them than you are to them", and you can just accept or decline it. In the event of an actual cultural revolt leading to a city flip, you can't do anything about that (besides just stuffing the city full of troops)
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Jun 1, 2016 10:40
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Flopping to a rival instead of you during a war could be an interesting mechanic only if it cost the rival intention to do it. It isn't far fetched for a civ almost dead to flee into the arms of their other buddy who isn't burning their cities down, but it should require some kind of capital of the rival instead of them just being close by or something. Definitely adds another layer of depth with diplomacy.
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Jun 1, 2016 13:20
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Ghostlight posted:The point being made though is that simply making a resource more scarce does not lead to the computer being able to allocate it more efficiently. i think maybe the argument would be that it should be easier to teach the ai that? since making improvements is now instant, an ai can just focus on what unimproved tiles are currently being worked or about to be worked instead of having to create like six workers ahead of time and plan dozens of turns in advance not that we have any indication that'll happen
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Jun 1, 2016 14:27
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I'm not really sure how they could have hosed the worker AI up so bad in Civ 5, given how simplistic tile needs are. I mean this hierarchy is a simplification but not much of one: 1. Unimproved resource tiles? Improve them. 2. Build farms on every tile that can take a farm. Grassland tiles get priority, then river tiles get priority. Chop down forests on grassland or plains tiles, unless you're early game Boudicca. 3. Jungle tiles? Trading post. 4. Swamp tiles? Clear 'em, then build a farm. 5. Mines on unrivered hill tiles (or lumber mill if they're hill + forest). (X. When new cities are built devote a worker to building a connecting road.) I mean there are some edge cases and exceptions but that's pretty much it, and I can't imagine it's that hard to program the AI to go through that decision tree. It appears the Civ 5 AI has some misguided idea of keeping a city's tile yields balanced in some way, but the results are almost random. It's almost like the devs never realized that the way they designed the game, food is everything, and so didn't program the AI to prioritize food over almost everything else, as human players do.
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Jun 1, 2016 15:09
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My guess is that improvements are constantly delayed by workers being reassigned, or spooked by barbarians. So poo poo gets left unimproved for ages. I've seen screenshots of late-game AI capitals surrounded by unimproved tiles. There's no excuse for it though, I'm sure some simple rules could avoid it.
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Jun 1, 2016 16:12
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I believe AI workers constantly change tiles back and forth between farms and trading posts, or something along those lines. They change their priorities dynamically based on what the nearby city is currently set to prioritize, which is especially obvious since puppeted cities are always set to maximize gold. I would assume AI civs change those settings a lot more than players would, since they have to rely on them instead of manual population assignment. So, left unchanged, that would just mean that if an AI was given a CIv 6 builder instead, they would just use up all of its charges on the same tile.
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Jun 1, 2016 16:33
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Yeah, workers getting spooked by barbarians can't be the explanation when the AI's capital in the middle of its territory in the 1900s is still working unimproved tiles. As far as I can tell, these are the only possible explanations: * The AI keeps disbanding and rebuilding workers before they can do anything * The AI keeps interrupting workers before they can finish building improvements (suspect: eventually the workers ought to finish anyway since partial progress is remembered by the game) * The AI keeps having their workers bulldoze existing improvements to replace them by different ones (most likely explanation IMO) * The AI keeps telling their workers to stand idle or move from place to place rather than work on improvements I say the third is the most likely because I can easily see an AI "hole" that would allow for it: the worker finishes building an improvement, and they need to decide what to build next. Well, the city needs gold, right? And here they are on a spot that doesn't have a trading post! So let's build a trading post right here, since that's more efficient than moving to an open tile first. Never mind that it destroys the improvement they just finished building. And once they finish the trading post, whoops, the city needs food! So time to bulldoze the trading post and put a farm in. Etc. etc. etc. Mind, this would be pretty easy to fix -- just tell the AI to never replace tile improvements. Sure that means that the improvements you build in 3000 BC are never going to be replaced by potentially better ones, but realistically most players never replace tile improvements either, so that's not a big loss. Certainly better than working unimproved tiles in the endgame.
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Jun 1, 2016 16:47
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Tile switching and then non-completion in Civ5 would result in loads of half-built improvements everywhere. Instead, what I think is happening is that a tile improvement order gets queued on an individual worker, but then a new order slots itself ahead of that empty tile, and that empty tile is simply getting lost in the queue. The limited charges/worker may be a concession to the realities of 1-unit per tile. Civ4 lets you stack workers: a mid game AI empire can happily sack 2-3-4 workers on a tile, and 1-2 turn out an improvement. A Civ5 worker slowly improves a tile over 5-7 turns, and you can't accelerate it by contributing more man-hours, and then it might get called out to do another job, so it never starts the original order. On demand workers means the AI no longer needs to plan as far ahead, and you can do things like refresh the queues every 20 turns or so. As for not simply paying out gold or hammers from a city? That's fine, you can do tricks like feed a new city improved tiles using workers produced in an established city. I'm not going to bootstrap a new city off its own production, I'm going to subsidise it with production from my core while it's still growing.
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Jun 1, 2016 16:49
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I have no clue why the worker thing sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't (Because it isn't universal, which in a way is weirder) but I can't help but feel that making workers simpler would help find and fix the problem.
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Jun 1, 2016 16:56
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:I have no clue why the worker thing sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't (Because it isn't universal, which in a way is weirder) but I can't help but feel that making workers simpler would help find and fix the problem. And you don't get simpler than removing them entirely.
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Jun 1, 2016 18:15
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bring pack the public works system, both in the game and irl
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Jun 1, 2016 18:21
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Gort posted:And you don't get simpler than removing them entirely. I'm not certain how balancing using city production to build improvements in its claimed area when measured against city production for buildings would work. As it is, Workers are investments that can be used away from the city of their construction, and work in parallel to the city itself with regards to improvements.
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Jun 1, 2016 18:23
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berryjon posted:I'm not certain how balancing using city production to build improvements in its claimed area when measured against city production for buildings would work. As it is, Workers are investments that can be used away from the city of their construction, and work in parallel to the city itself with regards to improvements. You use gold to buy improvements directly
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Jun 1, 2016 18:30
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berryjon posted:I'm not certain how balancing using city production to build improvements in its claimed area when measured against city production for buildings would work. As it is, Workers are investments that can be used away from the city of their construction, and work in parallel to the city itself with regards to improvements. In EL you build improvements just like normal in-city buildings. It as the disadvantage of not being possible to build parallel to other buildings, but at the other hand you dont waste turns building a unit for it. Maybe a system where you allocate pop to build the improvement, this way it can build parallel to buildings, it wont require worker units and still it involves management (since the pop you allocated to building is 1 pop less you got for food, production and etc). Makes more sense too IMHO
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Jun 1, 2016 18:31
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Elias_Maluco posted:Maybe a system where you allocate pop to build the improvement, this way it can build parallel to buildings, it wont require worker units and still it involves management (since the pop you allocated to building is 1 pop less you got for food, production and etc). Makes more sense too IMHO I like that! Then the pop will start working the improved tile immediately after it's finished, which is one less point of management as you'll improve tiles with spare pops as needed, then leave them there.
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Jun 1, 2016 18:37
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Elias_Maluco posted:Maybe a system where you allocate pop to build the improvement, this way it can build parallel to buildings, it wont require worker units and still it involves management (since the pop you allocated to building is 1 pop less you got for food, production and etc). Makes more sense too IMHO Yeah this seems like the ideal system to me. (so long as a slaving mechanic came in to maker up for the lack of worker-nabbing  )
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Jun 1, 2016 18:38
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I like Call to Power's public works system: "public works" is a thing you can set cities to build, feeding a global pool of public works as a resource. Every tile improvement can be planted directly from the main screen for the cost of X amount of public works.
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Jun 1, 2016 19:00
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Cythereal posted:I like Call to Power's public works system: "public works" is a thing you can set cities to build, feeding a global pool of public works as a resource. Every tile improvement can be planted directly from the main screen for the cost of X amount of public works. Hm, that's even better, since it allows bigger, more developed cities to improve tiles in new ones. EDIT: maybe than a system where you allocate pop to "public works" (instead of building it) and these pops become available to improve tiles in any city Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jun 1, 2016 |
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Jun 1, 2016 19:02
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Cool ideas. I do like the idea of roads being naturally occurring though after a certain tech or turns has passed. I'd say maybe the super high end roads like monorails or railroads could be manually, but city connections and quicker paths between cities being natural makes the most sense to me. I like the idea of the city allocating citizens to it. Similar to Endless LEgend, except instead of allocating them to gold or science, they can be allocated to a project and you get no resources from them until they are done with their project. GET FIRAXIS ON THIS GUYS.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:02
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Elias_Maluco posted:Hm, that's even better, since it allows bigger, more developed cities to improve tiles in new ones. And indeed in Call to Power you kind of had to due to sea and space cities becoming things later in the game. Space cities in particular could be enormously productive, but only once you got the necessary tile improvements - they were expensive, but sky farms and orbital factories were the most potent tile improvements in the game.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:07
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Cythereal posted:And indeed in Call to Power you kind of had to due to sea and space cities becoming things later in the game. Space cities in particular could be enormously productive, but only once you got the necessary tile improvements - they were expensive, but sky farms and orbital factories were the most potent tile improvements in the game. Thats another thing I was going to mention, they need to not be afraid of letting you get powerful. This is something Beyond Earth did right, I think. Even in our current time of 2016, a few acres of Iowa farmland can potentially produce enough food to feed a town for quite a long time. Even 50 years ago it would have taken far more land to do that. Why not let us do that in Civ? Sure a farm in 900 AD can produce 1 food, but by 1950 it should be producing like 6 food, not just 2 or 3 as it is now. Its like they didn't want players getting too much yield or too much damage from their tiles and units whereas Civ BE let you do that and it was awesome. You're in the modern age, stuff moves faster, there is no reason it should take as long in 2010 to build a road as it does in 1800, nor should it take as long to move the same tiles. I think it opens up a lot of different strategies when you increase yields, units, and even tiles.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:17
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Jastiger posted:Thats another thing I was going to mention, they need to not be afraid of letting you get powerful. This is something Beyond Earth did right, I think. Even in our current time of 2016, a few acres of Iowa farmland can potentially produce enough food to feed a town for quite a long time. Even 50 years ago it would have taken far more land to do that. Why not let us do that in Civ? Sure a farm in 900 AD can produce 1 food, but by 1950 it should be producing like 6 food, not just 2 or 3 as it is now. Its like they didn't want players getting too much yield or too much damage from their tiles and units whereas Civ BE let you do that and it was awesome. You're in the modern age, stuff moves faster, there is no reason it should take as long in 2010 to build a road as it does in 1800, nor should it take as long to move the same tiles. I think it opens up a lot of different strategies when you increase yields, units, and even tiles. The other nice thing about large tile yields is that it potentially lets you have a larger number of specialists which is both appropriate for giving a feeling of a more modern city and also gives you new city managenent choices in the late game that are as interesting and relevant as the choice of tiles early game. Of course, you'd have to have tech and buildings ramp up specialist production at a similar rate as tile production, but that seems fairly reasonable.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:31
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blackmongoose posted:The other nice thing about large tile yields is that it potentially lets you have a larger number of specialists which is both appropriate for giving a feeling of a more modern city and also gives you new city managenent choices in the late game that are as interesting and relevant as the choice of tiles early game. Of course, you'd have to have tech and buildings ramp up specialist production at a similar rate as tile production, but that seems fairly reasonable. You would also need to have a lot more late game technologies, since you would be producing tech like crazy; Which is also pretty historical
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Jun 1, 2016 21:44
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Yeah the game should get MORE complex as time goes on, not less.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:46
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Personally, a much more complicated late game would make me lose interest pretty fast. Like, having six different kinds of battleships, each with different specializations, isn't super compelling to me. I watch a lot of strategy games on YouTube, and it always seems to me that the first few hours of a particular playthrough are far more interesting than the remainder, because by then it's just a matter of going through the motions. And I don't know how Civ 6 could prevent that, honestly But I may be in a minority. I probably am
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Jun 1, 2016 21:58
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Jay Rust posted:Personally, a much more complicated late game would make me lose interest pretty fast. Like, having six different kinds of battleships, each with different specializations, isn't super compelling to me. No, you're not. The Something Awful Games Forum selects members mostly from way out on the far  side of the scale, ultra-complexity is what most of us want but most of us are like in the top 10 or 15 percent of Civ fans in that regard (and let's not even talk about the most avid Civfanatics posters).I'm pretty sure my own ~Civilization Opinions~ are considered filthy casual by goon standards but complicated by general Civ buyer standards.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:04
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Well that sounds pretty pedantic to have 6 different battleships. I think the right focus is on diplomacy. As the game gets further on and everyone is more powerful in the ways I described, diplomacy and tactics become more important than just pushing the tech tree. I think that should be reflected in more powerful rivals, more politicking, and more specialization in cities. Create more end game wonders and techs and more unique improvements. Give multipliers to tourism, religion, and other stuff and expand espionage and diplomacy. THAT sounds like a lot more engaging than just cranking out new unit types. Civ 3 I think went over board, but it WAS cool to send a lawyer to an enemy civ and gently caress up their economy and it forced big behemoths to actually strategize instead of running out the clock.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:22
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Keep in mind that increasing yields will lead to vastly more devastating snowball effects. If you get 10 extra turns' worth of the triple-yield farms over your neighbor, then you'll have a substantial lead in food production in absolute terms. That's almost certainly why they don't let you get hugely powerful in the late game: because the game needs to not be a blowout as soon as one civ is half an era ahead of everyone else.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:34
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Keep in mind that increasing yields will lead to vastly more devastating snowball effects. If you get 10 extra turns' worth of the triple-yield farms over your neighbor, then you'll have a substantial lead in food production in absolute terms. That's almost certainly why they don't let you get hugely powerful in the late game: because the game needs to not be a blowout as soon as one civ is half an era ahead of everyone else. Then force the specialization. If you want to get OP in one area, you're going to suffer in another. Maybe adjacency bonuses or diminishing returns. And rememeber in a perfect world, the AI can do this too. The Great Lands of TooMuchAbstraction is unparalleled in food production with their multi tier farms, extremely complex infrastructure, and generous social policies. But his country runs a deficit and he can't field an effective fighting force and maintain the rest.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:42
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The trouble with putting all the complexity at the end of the game is that you're ALREADY incentivized to end the game as early as possible, so you're putting all of your design effort into the part of the game that gets the least play.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:49
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Tendales posted:The trouble with putting all the complexity at the end of the game is that you're ALREADY incentivized to end the game as early as possible, so you're putting all of your design effort into the part of the game that gets the least play. Maybe it gets the least play because its cruise control after year 1900 for most people. If we changed that, it may change that habit.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:56
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Jastiger posted:Then force the specialization. If you want to get OP in one area, you're going to suffer in another. Maybe adjacency bonuses or diminishing returns. And rememeber in a perfect world, the AI can do this too. The Great Lands of TooMuchAbstraction is unparalleled in food production with their multi tier farms, extremely complex infrastructure, and generous social policies. But his country runs a deficit and he can't field an effective fighting force and maintain the rest. Are you suggesting that as eras advance I should actively decline in areas I'm not specializing in? Because if you aren't, then that means that you're still getting monotonically better in every area as time passes (that is, you either stay at the same level or advance to higher levels), which means that the first player to achieve huge power in some domain still gets a massive advantage in that domain over all other players.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:57
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Are you suggesting that as eras advance I should actively decline in areas I'm not specializing in? Because if you aren't, then that means that you're still getting monotonically better in every area as time passes (that is, you either stay at the same level or advance to higher levels), which means that the first player to achieve huge power in some domain still gets a massive advantage in that domain over all other players. Right, thats right. I think that would lead to more exciting and interesting gameplay.
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Jun 1, 2016 23:02
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Jastiger posted:Right, thats right. I think that would lead to more exciting and interesting gameplay. Like I said, first player to get the massively improved yields will be able to parlay them into a significant advantage over their rivals, exacerbating the snowball effects that already exist. I think your counterargument is something like "if you focus on food then you won't be focusing on military/gold/science/culture", but in practice all of the different domains are to some extent fungible: if you have lots of food, then you have more population = productive capacity = ability to make other things. If you have lots of gold, then you can just outright buy other things. If you have lots of science, then you can get other things more efficiently. If you have lots of military, then you can just take the other things you need. In all cases, having an advantage in one domain means having an advantage in all domains -- your civ is just plain "better" than the other civs. I mean hell, if you look at Civ4/5, there's a reason people beeline the techs that unlock better food tile improvements and more science buildings. Those techs only give relatively minor boosts and they're still very highly prioritized. And you're suggesting making them even stronger?
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Jun 1, 2016 23:17
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If I may insert a controversial opinion, the snowball effect isn't THAT huge a problem, it can be a good thing for the endgame being mostly the player enjoying the fruits of having played the early/midgame well, and you definitely want to avoid going too far the other way with rubber band mechanics and turning Civ into Mario Kart where the first two-thirds of the game is irrelevant.
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Jun 1, 2016 23:21
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