[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#5777) Stuck building coinage in worklist

["John Wheeler" <jdwheeler42@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa
<vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, John Wheeler wrote:
> 
> >
> > [vasc - Thu Sep  4 19:54:00 2003]:
> >
> > > On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Please refrain from automating things too much
> people. We want
> > > an interface which does not bother a user with
> micromanagement,
> > > but we also do not want to make something like
> Master of Orion 3,
> > > where the only thing you do is click turn done.
> >
> > Um, who is "we"?  I'll agree that I definitely
> wouldn't want to play a
> 
> "We" is the maintainers.

Fair enough.  After all, if I really feel strongly
enough about it, I can always go fork myself a new
version of the code. ;-)

> I am not certain CMA was exactly a good idea (in the
> way it was made
> anyway). The UI is overly complex.

I would agree completely, *IF* you couldn't save
preset CMAs.  Most of the time all I do in the CMA
screen is click on different presets.  BUT, I would
hate to be stuck with just a few predefined presets,
because there are those occasions where I need to
tweak a number or two to allow the CMA to control the
city.

> I like more the way SMAC or Master of Orion did
> things. In SMAC you have
> just three settings for the "city governor":
> command, conquer or explore.
> In Master of Orion you had IIRC three sliders to
> attribute value to these
> personalities. These control the whole city or
> planet's resources and queue.

To reiterate, I would hate to have to being twiddling
sliders all the time, especially ones that affect the
whole nation.  Except, I'm already doing that in
Freeciv with the Tax Rates dialog.  Usually I just
want to do stuff like "Maximize science, with no
cities in disorder, and a minimal but positive cash
flow" or "Make as many cities as possible have a
WLTPD, then maximize the amount of science and don't
worry about the cash flow until reserves get low".

> Believe me you have no idea about what is a game
> with heavy
> micromanagement. Millenium 2.2, *that* had heavy
> micromanagement. After 45
> minutes I started wanting to bang my head against
> the wall. :-(

I've had games in Civ 2 where one turn took over an
hour.  And in empire I would frequently use up all my
BTUs just moving stuff around.
 
> You must strike a balance between micromanagement
> and doing nothing at
> all. If you completely automate the city, you will
> end up with a strategic
> combat game. If on top you completely automate the
> units, what the hell is
> left for you to do? Change governments? Choose the
> tech? Boring.

I definitely agree that there needs to be a balance
between micromanagement and automation.  From a
maintainer's point of view, I can even see reasons for
sticking to the center.  However, in case you haven't
noticed my other posts, as a player I'm in favor of
maintaining the balance by expanding in both
directions: more automation, but more details (such as
resources) to be managed.

There still is plenty of opportunity for tweaking
things, making sure the managers are doing what you
want them to, deciding which managers to use, etc. 
After all, leaders of civilizations always have had to
rely on others to help run their nations.  That's the
experience I'm looking for in a game.

> Spending time sterilizing the game instead of
> improving the graphics or
> gameplay does not strike me as very productive.

Heh, improving graphics does not strike me as very
productive, and I consider increasing both complexity
and automation to be improving gameplay.  /A Chaque
Son Gout/.

Man, has this discussion gotten away from a simple
little annoyance in the worklists.  Oh well.

++JohnWheeler

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com