I would say that physical installations, such as fortresses, listening posts and airbases should be built by units - and I'd be fine with certain military units being able to do that, such as infantry (phalanxes, legions, pikemen, marines, etc). Engineers would be able to build twice as fast though.

Strict tile improvements such as fields/irrigation, mining and fisheries are well implemented with the PW system - and it does make a bit more sense than setting settlers out to do that I feel. Setting up new colonies on distant islands and having to send two settlers always annoyed me as the second settler could be turned into a new city instead. PW makes more sense as it is more like taxing your citizens and then paying them to go out and improve the land. I'd do away with the CtP notion of having to spend the entire amount to build an advanced farm when there's already a field there though - the cost of the field should be subtracted from the cost of the advanced farm if one is already there (or a field could be made a prereq as in Civ2, but I personally prefer the CtP implementation of being able to skip right over that).

However roads and rails present a bit of a problem as we know very well that roads were built by the Roman legions yet they're not strictly an installation either. One could argue that it comes down to whether or not the city derives any benefit from road construction - in Civ2 they clearly do (trade arrows) but in CtP it was set up so that there was no trade benefit from roads, which kind of galled me when I found out that all my roads weren't producing any cash benefits (though that can be "fixed" in the game files). On the other hand the military clearly benefits from a road infrastructure for reasons we're all familiar with. So perhaps it should be made possible to build roads and rails (and tunnels/monorails) either way, which is not a bad compromise and is in keeping with historical precedent as well - the military were not the only ones to build roads, but they sure were the only ones to build fortresses, etc. whilst they never built farms (at least not while on active duty).

Oh, and I would like to see a new type of installation - a seaport or harbour or drydock of some sort that could be build along a coast for ships to take refuge in to recover from battle and made available in the age of sail sometime (a la Gibraltar etc). It could be combined with a fort and later an airbase, and it couldn't be built beside another port so as to prevent it from becoming an excessively quick and easy method of canal building across continents - a movement rate halting like an airbase might help to quell that sort of nonsense as well. But I don't expect this idea to become reality...
(come to think of it - not allowing airbases to be built directly beside each other would prevent human players from building airbase walls as a cheap shield against nukes and air attacks as well)

Of course installations could be built anywhere in the world (as in Civ2) and not just on the end of a road as in CtP (or so it seems so far - I just got the game a few weeks ago for dirt cheap).

Ok, I think that's about all I have to say for the moment on the subject.

quote: Originally posted by wittlich on 02-15-2001 01:33 PM Darkcloud, you're probably right that Activision has "public works" copywrited...

Good! I never thought of that.
Let Activision keep their bad-selling non-awarded CTP-games for themselves, including the design-solutions as well.

quote: However, the principle of public works could still be used - just call it by a different name, like "city services" and if Frixis combines both the public works concept with the settler work concept, the end result would be different from CTP's basic public works concept so there shouldn't be any copywrite infringement.

Well, lets hope not.
I dont want to loose that ingenious clickable city-area view we had in Civ-2/SMAC. Improve it - yes, but DONT replace it.

quote: Originally posted by Chuckles on 02-17-2001 06:22 PM I'm pretty happy with the public works model in CTP. Except that I also hate that you don't get any credit when upgrading existing terrain improvements. That's just dumb.

This is exactly what I hate with Public Works system! That ingenious clickable city-area view is carelessly scrapped under the pre-text of "streamlining the interface" by meddlesome CTP game-designers.
The result? You upgrade a city-area terrain-tile, but you dont have the foggiest how that upgrade actually adds to the overall city-output. That vital and important (but often underestimated) game-mechanical chain between user-inputs and game-outputs gets lost in the process.

quote: Originally posted by Sabre2th on 02-17-2001 09:51 PM Personally, I liked the PW system better, but I'll buy it and love it either way.

I probably shouldn't say this, just in case it turns out to be like ctp.

PW represents the funds, material, etc. while the units represent the actual people doing the work.

Ralf,

quote: Originally posted by monolith94 on 02-15-2001 05:22 PM Nah - settlers kick the public works system's butt!

I agree.
I like settlers/engineers much more than PW.

I understand that some people don't want to bother themselves with settlers, caravans, spies, etc, but I don't want Civ3 to become a wargame, with only military units.

quote: Originally posted by Mister Pleasant on 02-21-2001 03:04 AM I hate managing herds of units across mountains and plains.

But you don't hate managing herds of military units, right? Well, Civ is not a wargame, and I pray to Firaxis to keep the civilian units, too.

quote: I should not have to waste food and loose population to build a road (really, does a chain gang or work crew require 10000 people to build a road).

Defend my empire by raw numbers screen, not by units, is not funny. Chess too has units! (Without ranking, supply line...)

Having to use an engineer to build a road where I want one is good for me. Having to move workers on square (and check them every other turn) to better use available (inside city radius) resources, well, is not the most funny part of CIV IMHO.

We need a unit to simulate workers exploiting resources outside city radius: SMAC Supply units must be changed a bit (see other thread about satellite cities ) to reproduce villages (I mean rural population for farms, miners and so on), but are a good starting point.

A mix of these PW & Special units can be balanced, not too much micromgmt and a lot of funny. Firaxis team must earn its money here.

1) At the start of the game, you want settlers because you want more units to play with, and not that much is going on, plus micromanagement doesn't really bother you that much at this phase.

2) LATER in the game, you can make Public Works an upgrade or City Improvement, and then won't have to use the settlers anymore. By this time, you're tired of moving all those damn guys around, so anything to reduce micromanagement is a good thing!

The best of both worlds.

1) At the start of the game, you want settlers because you want more units to play with, and not that much is going on, plus micromanagement doesn't really bother you that much at this phase.

2) LATER in the game, you can make Public Works an upgrade or City Improvement, and then won't have to use the settlers anymore. By this time, you're tired of moving all those damn guys around, so anything to reduce micromanagement is a good thing!

A nice compromise, Derek, but it's not real consistent, imo. Also, it kind of makes it more confusing, especially for a novice player to say that at the beginning of the game, you need to build a unit to improve the terrain, but later on, you have to use public works.

My suggestion (which is worth exactly what you've paid for it :-) ) is this:

Auto improvement. In the city screen, you can decide how you want to improve the terrain surrounding your city (you want all squares totally irrigated with roads in each square-for squares where irrigating (sp?) is not allowed, mine it.) Then, during the game, the computer automatically improves it.

For building roads/railroads between cities, use an engineer unit (that doesn't require food, just production like any other unit). For founding new cities, use a settler (that does require food-and the population drop).

This eliminates the micromanagement of units (especially annoying in the later stages of the game), while eliminating the food cost/population drop just to build a mine.

Marc

That's why I find Derek's idea pretty good. I'm not sure that this is the perfect sollution:

quote: - settlers founding cities, require food, loss pop - engineers improving TIs , require shield (production) - later in the game, after a certain discovery, make it possible to use PW (and/or automated PW), but only if you want to

We have both engineers and PW.
Mostly they don't overlap, but both can build roads.

PW can only build roads in City radius (preferrably growing radius *hint*).

After invention of some cool tech that has something to do with transport, it can build dem roads in all of your country area (the terrain that is yours but isn't city terrain).

Engineer can build road anywhere, so it is used in ancient times to connect distant cities, and in newer times to connect very distant cities or maybe build roads on the war front.