Workers? NOOO please!!

SlowThinker · August 12, 2001, 13:16

The segregation of settlers to city founders and workers is a bad decision for the strategic value of the game IMHO.

It shortens the amount of possible ways of development of the game. I think it is a bad new for "chess style players" especially, but not only for them.

Imagine the beginning of a deity game for example. In Civ2 you have two settlers and you have to evaluate the starting position and to find answers to many questions: Shall I build two cities or improve squares with the second settler and keep him as a non-unit? Is it worth to improve a tile in the city radius just before the city will be found?
Of course there are different opinions and interesting debates originates.

In short, you often have to decide between "improve" and "found" when playing Civ2. Civ3 will deprive players of it

connorkimbro · August 12, 2001, 13:20

Quote:

Imagine the beginning of a deity game for example. In Civ2 you have two settlers and you have to evaluate the starting position and to find answers to many questions: Shall I build two cities or improve squares with the second settler and keep him as a non-unit? Is it worth to improve a tile in the city radius just before the city will be found?
Of course there are different opinions and interesting debates originates.

I myself prefer to keep the non-unit.

But i don't at all think that this is limiting strategy. You've still got the same choices, just in different ways. *There are some resources over there. . hmm, should i build another city over there? or should i build a colony instead? can i afford to lose the extra pop point to build a city instead? oh, btw, it really could help if i could get a few extra roads around here instead. . *

The strategic choices are still there, just in different ways.

Inverse Icarus · August 12, 2001, 13:46

i like the seperation.

first off, the obvious anti-sleeze measures, but more importantly, in order for a city to get luxury bounuses, or to obtain strategic resources, you need ROADS connecting your cities.

imagine founding a city and now being able to build your phalanx because there's no road to your city

MarkG · August 12, 2001, 13:51

Quote:

Originally posted by SlowThinker
In short, you often have to decide between "improve" and "found" when playing Civ2. Civ3 will deprive players of it

as connorkimbro said you still have to make the same choice.

in fact, the choice gets harder now, since you have to choose on the level of building units not simply on what the unit will do next. when you decide to build a worker, that unit will only be able to do terraforming.

so, you might be limited in your decisions in the begining, where you get 1 settler and 1 worker, but later the decisions will be more interesting

SerapisIV · August 12, 2001, 15:06

The worker/settler model worked well in SMAC, I don't think anyone every complained about that it should go back to the Civ2 style. However, it remains to be seen the impact of 2-pop settlers and 1-pop workers. It seems to me that Civ3 is gonna have much fewer cities per civs with this combo.

Father Beast · August 12, 2001, 16:30

Oh yeah, but now the decision with 1 settler and 1 worker is if you have the worker improve the land, or join the city for a pop boost, enabling it to put out a settler faster.

I always thought starting with 2 settlers was kind of unfair, anyway...

Inverse Icarus · August 12, 2001, 18:31

on diety all players get 2.

thats all i play.

you panzies

Provost Harrison · August 12, 2001, 19:17

I like the concept and is one that was implemented in SMAC and I find far superior to the 'jack of all trades' settler/engineer. I am pleased that this feature has continued from SMAC...

MarkG · August 12, 2001, 19:39

Quote:

Originally posted by SerapisIV
The worker/settler model worked well in SMAC

only after your post did i realise that this is not something new!

but did terraformers get from your population?

Provost Harrison · August 12, 2001, 19:52

No, formers just behaved like any other military unit, whereas colony pods reduced the population of a base by one when built.

MarkG · August 12, 2001, 20:55

so it's a significant change on the smac model....

Urban Ranger · August 12, 2001, 22:26

I think the change is caused by the workers' ability to construct colonies.

Speaking of which do we know whether the "lost" population will be aborbed into a city when its border expands enough to cover a colony?

tniem · August 13, 2001, 01:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Speaking of which do we know whether the "lost" population will be aborbed into a city when its border expands enough to cover a colony?

The answer from Dan a while back was that the pop is forever lost even if the colony is absorbed by the borders of your civ. The pop point is not given back nor do you get a new worker and that is why choosing where you put colonies is very important.

It adds to the strategy. I am at war with the Romans. If I wait ten turns my borders will include that iron I need to win the war. Or I could use my worker to get it now. But then I lose that pop point forever. Can I wait ten turns? Is that pop point important to me?

It is certainly going to be an interesting dilema and add a whole new twist to the game.

red_jon · August 13, 2001, 04:57

Hmm.

To make things REALLY confusing, Firaxis should make a 'farmer' for building farms and irrigating land, 'miner' for building mines and 'engineer' for building roads! Now you have different units for different terraforming actions, you can spend all your time building terraformer units!

Provost Harrison · August 13, 2001, 06:41

Actually red_jon, your sarcasm aside, I have found the separated worker/settler model to be vastly superior. It was used in SMAC to great effect and now the system of one, all round settler/engineer seems ridiculous to me now. They wouldn't have kept the principle if it wasn't a good one now. Remember, SMAC has been played to death by a lot of people and thus lessons have been learned from accumulated experience. Those who have not played this game has missed out on a lot, gameplay wise and greater knowledge of the TBS genre and what works and doesn't IMO...

red_jon · August 13, 2001, 07:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Actually red_jon, your sarcasm aside, I have found the separated worker/settler model to be vastly superior. It was used in SMAC to great effect and now the system of one, all round settler/engineer seems ridiculous to me now. They wouldn't have kept the principle if it wasn't a good one now. Remember, SMAC has been played to death by a lot of people and thus lessons have been learned from accumulated experience. Those who have not played this game has missed out on a lot, gameplay wise and greater knowledge of the TBS genre and what works and doesn't IMO...

I actually prefer the AC system, I just thought it would be funny to have different terraformers for different actions.

Ecthy · August 13, 2001, 07:56

I like the separation, it was fine in SMAC and so will it bein CIV3. End of the story.

Solver · August 13, 2001, 07:58

I hated Settler terraforming, and always used the instant terraform cheat because of it. I like Workers. I want Settlers only to found citites, and nothing else.
Go workers !

.

Ecthy · August 13, 2001, 08:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Solver
I hated Settler terraforming, and always used the instant terraform cheat because of it.Go workers !

.

what? how does this cheat work?

SerapisIV · August 13, 2001, 09:04

I think it was the Civ1 bug, where after you make an order, you could click on the settler and reorder the same command, as many times as you wanted until the job was done. A settler could build mountain railroads in 1 turn this way.

Ecthy · August 13, 2001, 09:05

yeah, I remember that, I thought he would be on about CIV2

Father Beast · August 13, 2001, 09:33

Yes, the AC formers...

I liked these guys because I didn't have to agonize about using valuable potential cities to terraform. the only problem was what to do when they got done with everything they were supposed to do.

with the workers, I can have them join a city if I don't have anything else for them to do.

There isn't a size limit on workers joining cities anymore, is there? has anyone confirmed this?

Ecthy · August 13, 2001, 09:38

well, I didn't like the size 10 limit in CIV and the size 8 limit in CIV2, so I'd like to know about that as well...

Provost Harrison · August 13, 2001, 11:08

Well yeah, I remember that cheat very well in Civ1. And in civ1 you only needed an aqueduct to grow beyond 10. In Civ2 you needed an aqueduct at 8 and a sewer system at 12 (SMAC, Hab Complex at 7 and Habitation Dome at 14, faction profile or Ascetic virtues dependant).

But yeah, definitely a separate unit for workers. And what is the news on an engineer/super former equivalent in the later ages?

SerapisIV · August 13, 2001, 11:36

I didn't mind the pop restrictions. Though they do stop growth, they are semi-realistic if you consider the funny-math used by Firaxis to translate pop number (1-7, etc) with their actual populations (860,000 etc.), but that's a whole different problem. Besides, at least in my games the pop restrictions allowed me to pause and build some cathedrals and stuff to prevent riots before the next pop growth.

Father Beast · August 13, 2001, 20:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Father Beast

There isn't a size limit on workers joining cities anymore, is there? has anyone confirmed this?

What I meant was, in civ2, you couldn't have a settler join a city and add its pop point to the city unless it was size 5 or less. if these workers are going to be serious movable pop points, that restriction has to be lifted. preferably entirely.

you would need a certain rules disallowing joining of pop if that would bring the cities above the size restricted by aqueduct or sewer system... but otherwise, give us free reign.

if the city will starve, let us make them starve (give a warning - "are you sure?"), but give us free reign

Inverse Icarus · August 13, 2001, 21:30

for some reason i never caught on to SMAC... i just never did for some reason.

i used blind research and had my terraformers auto work, and my covenors and build or discover.

then i built some planet busters and some X planes.

never got in touch with early war. the unit factory got annoying real quick.

Urban Ranger · August 13, 2001, 23:10

The only way to play SMAC is blind research

Also I like the Unit Workshop a lot. There were some discussions on it earlier, with Youngsun and I formulated what would be a good one for Civ 3. Even though it didn't make it into Civ 3 happily both Freeciv and Manifest Destiny might use our work.

One minor question: do worker units eat food?