Improvement vs Production

[Emelio Lizardo]

The decision to have distinct production and improvement regimes I think is not a good one.

There should only be one mans of building everything and that should be the improvement point system.

None of te "production" buildings like factories or schools should occupy a full hex. this is simply ridiculous and apes the poor design choice of CIV.

Ideally a hex should contain multiple possible resources and have multiple exploitative facilities. This could be represented visually so that we would have a more visually complex map.

[Dissenswurst]

What exactly do you mean by the term 'production'? For me, production is the production points you can get from the terrain, from foresters, mines etc. and derived goods like iron logs, bars, tools etc. as well as from certain buildings you can build within the capital cities. This production is solely used by the capital city to build buildings, to form units, and to convert the production to different entities like knowledge, culture, improvement points etc.

The improvement points are there to improve the terrain. Whereas you need workers in Civilization to improve the terrain, you have improvement points in Millenia.

What's wrong with that?

And I don't have any problem with one improvement per tile, whatever this improvement is.

But that may be so since I'm not so interested in a perfect simulation. I have no problems in having both buildings within capital cities and improvements (even building-like improvements) on terrain tiles as long as the resulting game is interesting.

[chaney]

Hmm, "should" ... but why?

Splitting the currencies into hammers for Buildings in the same Region that take no land space, and shovels for Improvements that do take space and can be shared with all Regions has a game function. These type of games always have a problem with break-away leaders and combining everything would make that problem worse.

These games need high levels of abstraction, don't think of "a house" as a single house but a degree of housing resource, and so on for other tile improvements.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Originally posted by Dissenswurst:

What exactly do you mean by the term 'production'? For me, production is the production points you can get from the terrain, ....

I'm saying that the distinction between "improvements" and "production" are silly.

Workers create the "improvement points" and they should be applied to ALL construction whether in the terrain or the capitol. You should simply click on what you want built and be done with it.

If it is desirable "improvement" points could be regional.

Things like factories, schools, etc should never take up an entire hex. And they should be scalable. These aren't things that take up lots of space.

[chaney]

Tiles are heavy abstractions, not literal. Improvements and buildings represent not single literal examples of things but significant investment in the concepts and infrastructure they represent. The function of every improvement and building is scaled for game play purposes (not always perfectly) so allowing the player to jam several Improvements into a single tile would require making each of those Improvements less effective. That part would be fine but would multiply the management job for the player. Not saying what is perfect/best/should be, just pointing out some consequences while discussing what a better system might do.

[mk11]

What is the problem with the current system as a game? How does it make the game worse?

[Dissenswurst]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

I'm saying that the distinction between "improvements" and "production" are silly.

Workers create the "improvement points" and they should be applied to ALL construction whether in the terrain or the capitol. You should simply click on what you want built and be done with it.

If it is desirable "improvement" points could be regional.

Things like factories, schools, etc should never take up an entire hex. And they should be scalable. These aren't things that take up lots of space.

I don't find this distinction silly. Your proposal would just lead to a different game - whether that would feel better to me than the current Millennia is at least questionable (though possible).

What exactly is silly about it? Does this break your immersion? Should there be only one entity that allows you to produce physical things? In reality, different things need different production methods, and units are produced in a completely different way (birth, education, training), so one entity for production is a super high abstraction. I don't care whether there are two or even more methods in a game. It is artificial anyway.

Something I would find interesting would be if some 4X game would have fundamentally different ways of producing physical non-living objects and producing units. Nevertheless, the absence of this distinction doesn't really bother me - I wouldn't go so far as to say that the absence of this distinction is silly.

To work out your opinion more consequentially: Would you also say that there should be no domain and culture forces that produce something? That you shouldn't be able to buy military units with warfare XP and exploration XP, no pioneers with engineering XP, no envoys and merchants with diplomacy XP, no armies with a culture force, no population with arts XP? And that unlocking techs shouldn't give you free units? I mean, isn't all that also silly from your point of yiew?

[Emelio Lizardo]

It's silly because there should only be one means of producing objects.

You are right, units should be produced entirely differently than objects. And they should require assigning population to those units.

Constructing units should consume some of what are now called improvement points, assign population, and consume appropriate mil/gov/etc points, and cash. Units should also consume appropriate points for maintenance beyond cash.

When a unit dies the appropriate population should also be deducted.

[Dissenswurst]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

It's silly because there should only be one means of producing objects.

This isn't an argument that does explain to me WHY you find it silly. It just reproduces what you already said. As I said I don't find it silly, and the reason for that is that even for non-living objects the methods to produce them are extremely different in reality. But even without this argument I wouldn't care much about this since these games are never perfect simulations anyway, so abstraction is a necessary part of these games, and as long the resulting game is strategically and tactically interesting I do not complain. I just don't need immersion stemming from good simulation for this type of game (which is different for me when I play RPGs, especially ego-perspective open world RPGs, though even there abstraction is unavoidable).

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

You are right, units should be produced entirely differently than objects. And they should require assigning population to those units.

Constructing units should consume some of what are now called improvement points, assign population, and consume appropriate mil/gov/etc points, and cash. Units should also consume appropriate points for maintenance beyond cash.

When a unit dies the appropriate population should also be deducted.

I didn't say that units SHOULD be produced entirely different, I said that I would like it if some game would do this. In the meanwhile I have learned that Humankind deducts population to build units (permanently), so at least it goes somewhat in the direction you want (but not entirely).

I find your suggestions interesting. Would be nice if there would be some game following them. From your suggestions I deduce that you want a better simulation that does less abstraction.

[Emelio Lizardo]

They seemed to have borrowed some aspects of CIV:CTP in the game design.

I came to despise "Humankind" as it treated race/culture as a optional changeable skin suit.

Buildings, whether in the hex or the capitol should use the build points generated by the region/nation. capitol buildings should use the same process as hex buildings as it is less annoying than the present process. And the process should be consistent across all material builds. Like the IC in HoI before they screwed it up in HoI3-4. i don't know how to explain the why in a better way.

They kept to the CIV population model of 1-2 digit population when they should use at least a three and preferably four digit population. This would allow for a better distribution of population and more interesting variations in population.

[mk11]

I think the separation was an excellent design choice.

It allows to have National Spirits that vary the rate you gain land, use the land, and grow population without significant change in the way they build buildings or recruit units. If anything, would be nice to have gone the way of Old World and had separate resources for buildings and units.

[Emelio Lizardo]

I agree that a different way to build units is preferable.

But building buildings and resources needs to be consistent. And again only exploiting resources should be in the non city hexes. This won't affect the spirits.

CIV:CTP did it right.