One more time: multiple production in one city

A few time ago, the question came up why not to divide the production into units, wonder, etc. Cities with high production could produce units fast and wonders simultaneously.

Now I just want to:

1. Re-ask this question. Why not divide it?

2. Make an upgrade: Why ot let the player decide how many "Production Windows" or sth. like this are to be opened in one city?
So, a city with a production of maybe 30 could then produce 3 units of a type with a cost of 10 in one turn or 1 unit with a cost of 20 and 1 with cost of 10.
So you could be aböle to decide how many units are produced simultaneously, see?

Well, the numbers could be different then, esp. when there's a kind of "x10" system in civ3......

[agent4043]

I love the idea. I tend to be domestic and as a result, don't take the time to build up larger armies. Multitasking cities are the way to go.

I like the idea too, but I have to play devil's advocate for a bit. How would you setup the queue for autobuilding stuff? As the city finished building an item, it would pull the next item off the queue and start building it with whatever percentage of city resources it was using to build the item it just finished? (I hope that isn't confusing) You would really have to keep on top of things with a system like that or you could end up building three or more expensive city improvements at the same time and no units. I suppose you could have each build sub-window thingy have it's own queue, but that would stack ( Sorry, I couldn't resist) up pretty fast and consume a lot of resources.

[Napoleon I]

I would agree completely with the idea, but I just want to warn that such a system, if implemented could provide for a whole lot of extra overhead for both the players and the AI designs.

I would however like to propose one change in the proposal. Let us assume that the city’s production does not occur in the city in general but rather in specific production centers. Now any given city can have more than one production center. One of them could be the initial city itself, while others would be added buildings such as factories, manufacturing centers and the such. Under such system I would propose that for the sake of simplicity all of the cities production centers receive an equal share of the resources and can produce one unit. Each production center would have its own production queue and the player or the automation mechanism would set the objectives in each of the queues separately. If one of the queues is idle then, its share of resources will be redirected to the other production centers.

[Jon Miller]

I think the problem before is that it would not make since to do so even if you could

in order to ofset the problem and to make a realistic bonus for communist ans other command economy we could make it so that the greater part of your cities production that gets used on one thing the less effecient it is, but that the command economy does not have as big a hit on its effeciency

also we could make it so that command economies don't pay as much upkeep per troop (do they have multi thousand dollar hammers(

some ideas

Jon Miller
(look at previos discussions of this for old problem withs it )

[UltraSonix]

I haven't seen the previous threads ont this but I thought this idea would be good 'cause then different governments could designed to have different building slots. Maybe depotism can only build 1, and democracy 4 units or something.

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

Tying it into gov't type seems like a good idea. It eliminates the infinite number of queues required for large cities, yet adds a certain needed degree of realism.

yes, the idea with the government forms is good.

[Par4]

Tie it into market type, free market makes most all the way down to gov control market(socialism or commieism or despotism) makes the least number of stuff but at the fastest rate.



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HappyLand

I would somehow tie that to Corruption as well.

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~~~I am who I am, who I am - but who am I?~~~
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[UltraSonix]

Nah, I reckon that linking amount of production directly with government is probably the simplest and most effect method.

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

[MidKnight Lament]

As long as both the build queues are using the same resource (as units, improvements and wonders all currently do) it would not be to anyone's advantage to use more than one build queue.

Say a unit requires 50 resources, an improvement also requires 50. Let's also say that you produce 10 resources a turn. If you put the unit and the improvement in two build queues, they would both be finished after 10 turns. (5 resources towards each queue per turn * 10 turns = 50 resources.)

If you only had one queue, you'd start building one of them first (let's say the unit), and it would be finished in 5 turns (as it would receive the full 10 resources a turn). You'd then start building the improvement and finish it after another 5 turns. So, that's the unit finished at 5 turns, and the improvement at a total of 10 turns.

So why wouldn't you want the 5 turns benefit of the unit (in this case) or improvement?

Like I said, this holds true while both queues are using the same resource. If you had to train population to make units, and use the traditional resources to build improvements or wonders, then things would be different. But even then, you (and the AI) have to handle two queues, and it's probably just asking for confusion.

I hope that clears things up. I think I'm right on this one.

- MKL
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited June 12, 2000).]

[Spekter]

D'oh! You're right. It only seems like you're accomplishing something by building two things at the same time. Queues as they are should be fine. Yet, it seemed like such a good idea.

[Urban Ranger]

Easy, because of rush builds.

You get heftily penalized if you rush build from scratch, but a lot less of you have already several turns (i.e. a number of shields) in the current production item.

Having multiple queues allows you to build several items for a few turns and rush build them all at the same time.

There are a few other problems with single queues. Switching production causes penalty. If you have multiple queues you don't need to switch, you just changes resource allocation to different queues. You also don't waste any resouces.

Also, if production is switched from a city-centric system to a civ-centric system, there is no other way around multiple queues since building city improvement would be by cities but building Wonders and units would be by the civ.

[UltraSonix]

Hadn't thought of MKL's problem - but maybe it can be solved by having a multiple-producing city being able to utilise resources better of one of the two units. So if they both usually would take 50shield then one could build with only 40shield maybe.

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

[Par4]

I would be content with a unit construction queue and a improvement construction queue. Maybe a misc if we need it for wonders or soemthing.

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I use this email
(stupid cant use hotmail)
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Don't ask for golf tips
Your game will get worse
HappyLand

[UltraSonix]

You're right - MKL's point was just too valid. Oh well, there goes this idea...

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

[MidKnight Lament]

Sorry. It's one of those things that sounds great at first, but doesn't really work. Someone explained it to me once, and chances are someone else will ask the same question a month or two from now... and you'll be able to tell them. We'll just keep passing the baton.

- MKL

MKL: I just say

1. Rush-building

2. You have a wonder of the world going on AND need more units! What do you do? Cancel the wonder? Really?

All in all building productions shouldn't be "deleted" when they are cancelled. If they were just stopped and you could later repeat building them, we wouldn't need that multiple production except for rush-building!

Another idea:
city with 100 production should be able to at least create 2 units with prod cost of 50 per turn! Has that been mentioned before? what do you think? We also wouldn't have to use this multiple thingy...

[Jon Miller]

my idea would solve mlk's problem because in democracy or more free market economies there would be an hefty effeincy lost, so it would be more worthwhile to do multiple (in mose cases)

in communism there would not be the effeincy lost so oyu would want to do one at a time

Jon Miller

[Stuff2]

I think production anywhere in civ should be much more realistically handled. Every thing that is possible to build cost money and resources and work. This means that u need money (from taxes), resources (from the production in the region) and workers (people who do the job). When u build something u simply get a dialogue box that tells u how much money and resources it will cost and how much time it will take. If nothing has to be built you simply don't waste your time on it.

Whenever nothing is built resources is stockpiled.

[Urban Ranger]

Any comments on my post?

[UltraSonix]

How about this idea then:
While building a wonder you have the option to rush-build a unit at anytime. The turn that you rush-build the unit would not have any shields go to the wonder, but at least you didn't have to sacrifice the wonder! Of course, rush-building the unit would cost the same amount as rushing a unit normally with no shields (ie it cost twice as much or something).

Take that, MKL!

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

[Grier]

One thing that no-one has mentioned is trade offs. For example, can you risk building that factory before I start building the wonder. If you can build everything at the same time then there is no trade off, though as MKL said mutiple queues are pointless unless you get a bonus for doing so.

A related idea that I had was that of batch building. Foe example, one unit takes 10 turns, but building a batch of 10 units might only take 90 turns, but you wouldnt get any units until the 90 turns are up. It might also be possible to build different types of constucts in the same batch.

[Stuff2]

I hate building units. Before 1950 it's just a waste of time and after you have already won.

Units should not be built with shields at all. Wonders should be built with resources from the whole civ and the rest improvements should be built with cash from whoever can afford it. There are several possible buyers:
- U as the civ leader
- The governors you have selected
- The people that want it (corporations, and companies)