Economy Tip/Rant: Military / Social wasted allocation handled differently

techn0mage

Join Date 02/2006

Economy Tip/Rant: Military / Social wasted allocation handled differently

Why does it have to be so obscure...? :(

I am really enjoying GC2 and I'm thrilled to see that it is getting the recognition it deserves. My hope is that it will shame some of the larger development/publishing houses into not acting like sleazebags and actually making better games.

Disclaimer aside, my biggest gripe with GC2 is about the economy. For those of you interested in my "book", see post here:
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=346&AID=101763#813913

I'll sum up that rant here though, I'm disappointed at how unnecessarily difficult managing the economy is. The difficulty comes mainly from 2 things:

- Lack of transparency or explanation as to what the economy is doing and how various production values are calculated

- Poor methods of management offered to the player, that is, the way that the player actually controls the economy. Note that this does NOT refer to changing the rules of the game, i.e. setting different research% on every planet, I am talking about how the economy could be better controlled without changing the rules of the game. (i.e., today the player says "I want to use 50% of the total industrial capacity" instead of "I want to spend 300 credits on all industries")

My classic example is that in MOO2 you could click on the number of hammers to see how the computer arrives at that number. In GC2 there is no such luxury and we are forced to try to deconstruct the game in order to figure out what the economy is doing. For example, the 'spending' value on the planet screen appears to equal the production values for all 3 categories, plus the 'maintenance' value for that colony, I just noticed that. But the game never actually comes out and says it in the style of: Mil(100) + Soc(50) + Res(50) + Maint(50) = Spending(250)

I just found an interesting quirk - if your planet has no military project, the military spending value is displayed in parentheses and no money is spent. However, if you have no social project, the money seems to vanish. Whether it gets used for anything, I have no idea. So until anyone discovers where the money goes, beware moving up the social slider to 100%, make sure all your colonies are using the money!

I think the most important thing to realize about the economy is that unlike other games, i.e. Civ4, building factories/labs doesn't get you production or research, what they do is increase your capacity to CONVERT money into production or research. So when you find that precursor mine or artifact and start building/researching to the tune of 400beakers/turn, keep in mind that unlike some 'artifact' bonus in Moo2 which gave your bonus research for free, you are actually paying the same amount of money for each research point, and that precursor mine/artifact just made that one planet ten times more expensive than all the others (assuming you utilized it).

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Now if only the civilization manager colony list allowed you to see which colonies were focusing production, and let you change the focus from that screen. ARGH!

OMG this would be awesome, and should be added to the "EASY TWEAKS to make the game better" suggestions thread.

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Economy has long been my most hated "feature" in the series. I had previously posted many times to get Frogboy to change his system. And guess what? He is stuck on it. Not yielding at all. Biggest problem with the system is that its hard to understand and difficult to work with, and very very easy to exploit like hell, which I do all the time.

This I don't like, I don't like exploiting it, but it has become the only way to play. When on turn 5 my homeworld makes a speed 5 (YES SPEED 5, 3 engines and racial abilty +2) colony ship every 2 turns (YES EVERY OTHER TURN), its something akin to the failure of civ 3 and its settler factories. Or even better getting Planetary invasion on feb 22, 2225 then conquering entire civs with your retarded soldiering tech advantage, no space ships just transports. The failure here is obvious, there is no FUN in any of this. Only thign they can do to fix these two examples is nerf them, which will do nothing to the bottom line beacuse they won't change the system.

Yes the game could have been different if they applied the standard formula (Factory makes production as long as you pay the maintenence or have the ppl to work in it) but it is what it is. And I don't know that the other way wouldn't allow for a lot of exploiting either.

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To some other poster up there, the money comes from taxes meaning people (Also tourism and trade, which can accoutn to as much combined as taxes together), more people = more taxes. So in essence a farm is only used to increase the number of people to pay taxes, but beware of the approval hit from overcrowding. As of now I rarely ever build a farm.

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Social production is indeed "Wasted". This was a game balance decision. The manual is incorrect is all. It would be much harder to manage your economy if the net revenue was changing drastically every time you got a new technology that started upgrading your planetary improvements.

There could be another sollution: 50% of the unused social production get's stored. The moment you start a new social project gets all stored production added to it on the next turn. The amount you can store could be limited and depend maybe on technologies, buildings and moons.

You could epxlain this as the storage of ore and half fabricates.

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Now if only the civilization manager colony list allowed you to see which colonies were focusing production, and let you change the focus from that screen.

Had this exact same idea the other day - this would be INCREDIBLY helpful, given the necessity the social production issue causes that planets be tweaked for focus constantly in order to maximize appopriate production/research.

I think our friendly neighborhood stardock poster was trying to point out that if social 'waste' was returned to the treasury, then ANY tile upgrade would trigger an IMMEDIATE loss in the budget by whatever capacity the social slider was set to.

What is interesting about Stardock's comment here is that this EXACT problem occurs with military spending if you go from a relatively peaceful period were many/most of your starports are idle to ramping up military production in prep for a war, or in defense of a war that just started. I have not found this a problem to manage, and actually thought this made perfect sense. My factories (starports) are sprining into action - my costs just went up as a result. Perfectly logical. Not sure why this isn't the same for social, but I guess we can be glad that the same issue doesn't effect military.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

I won't generally participate in threads that essentially boil down to saying "If you don't agree with me, there's something wrong with you."

So I will only say this:

In GalCiv I, both military and social production were "Wasted".

In GalCiv II, only social production gets wasted. At one time, social product was put back in the treasury if there were no buildings and it was a micromanagement nightmare.

Why? Because on a large galaxy where you have 30 colonies, you would go from being $3000 in the black to suddenly $-$3000 in deficit spending because you researched some tech that upgraded your factories or research labs or whatever. And then the balance would shift, all by itself, as planets started finishing these.

It's not an issue on ships because ships keep building forever until you manually turn them off. So in that case, the economy stays reasonably straight forward.

I have yet to see a good alternative other than "put social spending back in the treasury" which I already know won't work.

Perhaps in GalCiv III we'll simply eliminate the dual-military/social thing and have it like Civ IV since so many people find this system too confusing.

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Uh-oh, now you've all gone and done it - you've gone and got Peace Phoenix into formula breakdown and explanation mode.

Anyone without an honours degree in applied mathematics would be well advised to leave this thread and never return, because PP is likely to explain the game mechanics with formulae of Einsteinian proportions.

Don't argue with him though - he'll be right! Besides, he's probably the most helpful person I've ever met on a gaming forum so keep up the good work PP, and I'm only joking with you.

For what it's worth, I like the centralised economy management just the way it is as it takes away hours of potential micro-management.

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Now if only the civilization manager colony list allowed you to see which colonies were focusing production, and let you change the focus from that screen.

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Perhaps in GalCiv III we'll simply eliminate the dual-military/social thing and have it like Civ IV since so many people find this system too confusing.

That is precisely the reason to do it. No matter what your justifications are for the system, if 90% of your players (my guess is this number is actually even higher - I would be surprised if any non-developer actually understands the system 100%) can't understand the system, it may be time for a new one.

Ultimately I feel that the system itself is less of a problem than SD's frustrating refusal to provide a resource explaining unambiguously how it actually works, including all aspects, modifiers, and penalties, along with gameplay examples that show how the average player can use the system as intended.

Instead you get hundreds of posts on this or that, with SD responding to a small fraction of them with incomplete or uninformative answers. Why put everybody through this?

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OK Frogboy your post makes sense but I will hit you with a sucker punch over here.

In my current on large galaxy with 2 players I expended at first forsaking even research,e very new planet would get a factory and starport put into its queue and here and there I would buy a factory and a starport outright and have those planets make more colony ships.

Around 50 or so colonies I turned up my social to 20% military 50 and research 30.. My spending bar would fluctuate when I had to save money but it would never be 0. Where is my problem you ask? MOST OF MY LITTLE COLONIES DIDNT HAVE ENOUGH CASH FOR 1 PRODUCTION! NOT ONE POINT! at 20% social all the money was being sucked by the bigger planets which were mostly already full and producing a big fat NOTHING!

So tell me how does your formula work here where a tiny colony with 0 buildings doesnt get 1 frikin credit but a huge colony buildign no social projects is wasting all the money it gets?

NOW FIX IT!

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This sounds more like a documentation problem than a bug. It may be that colonizing 50 colonies was strategically a bad idea. One of the reasons for the poor/inaccurate documentation, though, is the implementation itself keeps changing. Kinda hard to document something that's changing, because now you have to sync up the documentation AND the software. All-in-all, that's not the kind of problem I expect to see in a released product.

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Problem I have is that the money isn't assigned on per need bases. I would still pay the same amount of BC if all the needy planets got all the money as opposed to the big ones.

Who knows how it is assigned, I assume there is a rounding down. If a planet has a max production of 100, then 20% would be 20 BC [per turn. My little planets may be only max production 5, so they would get 1 BC, but because my spending bar is at 30%, they may fall below 1BC. Really stupid actually.

Make it so the neediest planets get the frikin money first, I may be at 20% on slider but why not even let the neediest planets function at 100%(with the slider at 20%) if there is enough waste on the big planets to accomodate it? There would be no change in the amount of money the player pay per turn! Only benefit would be I could actually build stuff on planets with no infrastructure.

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In GalCiv II, only social production gets wasted. At one time, social product was put back in the treasury if there were no buildings and it was a micromanagement nightmare.

With all due respect, I feel that the way things are currently is more of a nightmare since you constantly have to micromanage your social production and focus in order to try to limit waste.

I have yet to see a good alternative other than "put social spending back in the treasury" which I already know won't work..

It would work if the game simply provided a little more information. What about the suggestion that you see not just the current surplus/deficit but the 'worst case' number as well (what it would be if all your planets' factories were in full production). Then people would know what to expect when they research a new technology which would cause a mass upgrade.

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Brad, what we're really asking for is the ability to micromanage. Let us be bean counters, and specify exactly where every BC goes.

Why do we want this? Because we want to optimize our game and WIN. Is it a shock that players want to optimize? Is it a shock that prior to Civ IV, players would fiddle with the technology slider EVERY TURN so no commerce would be wasted on beakers that disappear? Of course not! We want to win, and we want every penny accounted for.

Of course, it's tedious to micromanage like that, and it bogs down the game, especially at the end. There are two possible solutions. Take away the ability to micromanage (which GalCiv II has done) or eliminate the need to micromanage (which Civ IV has done). I understand the reasons behind your design decision. But I hate it. And most other players hate it too. We want the Civ IV way.

This doesn't mean that we should implement a hammer system. I like the cash economy; it makes a lot more sense than Civ IV. The capacity/funding system just needs to be better explained. I agree that it's really not that complicated. We just want control. We don't want credits wasted. We want overflow accounted for.

The surplus/deficit pendulum is something that strategy gamers have learned to expect. We're OK with it. In the real world, is it a surprise when a technological advancement prompts massive infrastructure upgrades, that a society would have to pause, look inward, and commit funds to digest the changes? Of course not!

IMHO, social spending -> approval is a TERRIBLE idea. Rather than making spending yo-yo, you're going to make taxes and population yo-yo? That's far more destructive!

The challenge for you is to come up with a UI that allows us easily micromanage at a macro level. Give us the control, and give us the tools to effectively exercise that control. In the current system, players feel screwed.

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I disagree, I do NOT want to micromanage, and I don't want the AI to be able to micromanage either. It might be a win/win, because there's probably no way the developer wants to code that AI, either. I have a big issue with Civ4 because it's just so slooooow. You have to micromanage to play your best game. I don't want to play another 2 hours just to see if my strategy is going to work. In a turn-based game, if I can micromanage, I will. I don't want to be able to. If the AI can't, either, that's fair enough.

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I would argue you guys are generalizing when you say the majority of players are unhappy with the current system. There are some vocal folks that have some good points, but I don't have a problem with the way it works now, and I suspect many others don't either.

I don't want to be an economist, I just want to conquer the galaxy. I write off lost production to economic inefficiencies, company profit or whatever. I think the ability to emphasize military, research or social is all we need.

The system has been play tested to work as it is. The AI has been optimized to work as it is. Sure, there are exploits like some of you pointed out, but just because it can be done does not mean it has to be.

They could go to a system like Civ, but then pretty soon you have Civ. I definelty don't want to make the system more complicated than it is. I personally don't want to have to fine tune every planet.

I'm not saying your guys' wishes aren't valid, but I do want to point out some of us don't want to see it go the direction some of you are asking for.

Tony

That's my two cents.

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Citizen amaevis :

In beta we all made our voices heard "MINIMIZE MICROMANAGEMENT"

The idea was that you shouldn't be forced to micro to win. And yes this social waste is kidna liek it, so you dotn have to manually turn up social everyime you get a tech to upgrade buildings. And it won't cost you extra money.

But I would liek the AI to reasign the waste to mor eneedy planets instead of lettign it waste at planets with nothing in social queue. This can be done and shoudl be done. And if you research a tech that suddelny queues up every planet you own, the money goes back to even across the board.

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I don't think people are asking for more micromanagement, they're asking for more control. They want to be able to make interesting decisions and not be limited by some arbitrary game mechanism which, quite frankly, feels more like a puzzle then a strategic option, and forces unnatural and not particularly fun types of play (like trying to time it so that all your planets build social improvements at the same time).

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I have yet to see a good alternative other than "put social spending back in the treasury" which I already know won't work.

OK, first I'm still playing around in the campaign mode but so far, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game... as for this, relatively, minor issue I have an idea....

For those planets without current social production, how about splitting their social allocation between research and military until a new social project begins? That way, nothing is wasted and as far as the overal economy goes, it doesn't look any different.

Just a thought.

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But doesn't this system force you to micromanage if you don't want to waste money?

Set Social to 0% and leave it there the entire game. Then, on a colony by colony basis, turn Social to 100% (or whatever you like) when you are actually building a colony project, then turn Social to 0% when the colony is finished with the project.

I think I read, though, that there might be a penalty to have this type of focused colony production. It's not clear to me. So, maybe there is no way to win and avoid the waste.

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For those planets without current social production, how about splitting their social allocation between research and military until a new social project begins? That way, nothing is wasted and as far as the overal economy goes, it doesn't look any different.

That's a great idea!

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I personally don't have any problem with the zig-zagging treasury when you research an upgrade, IF you put social (and military) spending back into the treasury when it isn't building anything (no matter what the reason). You can always X out the upgrades if you don't want them.

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@ above, it does appear possible if the production potential is there. But you will end up with annoyences no the less.

Uponr esearchign new tech that upgrades your factories lets say,y ou uber 20 factory planet that had nothign queued socially now has a queue of 20 items. Same for every other uber planet out there. Out of nowhere you find it that the ships which you designed specifically to be built within 5 turns on all those planets now take 10 turns to complete! Add to it the fact that now your research took a hit too becasue you got used to the fat juicy extra tech you were getting from the planet... altough that may not be so servere since you had so many factories :/ But I'm sure there would be tech planets out there so it owuld still hurt.

Hold idea behidn the concept is not to penalize a player for discovering new upgrades and such. If you knew your ships would now take 10 turns to complete, you might have held off for 5 turns researching the tech ect. Still lot of micro management involved in this setup.

My idea was to convert it to population growth bonus a-la housing of moo2. But that doesnt work as most high end planets are at max pop anyway. Only would be helpfull in event of war to keep you supplied with troops.

Sorry a quick thought, why not convert the waste money into influence? That is a win/win. Of course it wouldn't be a lot of influence, but you can always use more influence. You can ratify it by saying that the people use social funds to fund carnivals and parades and the Arts. increaing their influence

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I don't see what's the big deal with all that stuff being auto-queued when all you have to do is X them out of the queue. As for diverting social production to research, though, I'm already kind of exploiting "Focus research" now, by taking my uber-manufacturing planet and focusing on research. I can get more research out of it that way than if I just did 100% research spending. That's given me an early tech lead more than once.

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tie social spending into a base moral ... ie: 25% social minimum or you take a moral hit. But if you use governors that automatically produce upgrades then you could expect swings in your economy and have to go turn them all off or use just selected projects...When you go to each planet and have them build starships you expect a swing so you should expect a swing when you research a project that would produce plantary upgrades.. I like not having to go manage all the upgrades...

I like the basics of the system I just need to understand it a bit better... I dont even know how to focus a planets production yet ... I know read the manual.

So If 1 planet out of 10 capable of building ships is the only one building ships does 100% of military spending go to that planet to the limit of its production capability?

if so the same should work for social.

If you put social to 0% at this moment in code does it effect moral at all?

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Sorry guys, I was not trying to turn this into an idea-fest of how it should work, or into a forum for bashing SD. Going back to my first post, I was saying, in a roundabout way, "Argh the economy is killing me! Here is a tip that I just learned! How are you dealing with the economy?"

What I was trying to do was ask the question "How are you, as players, dealing with the rules of the game in order to play the best game that you can?" If the answer comes back as "Planetary invasion exploit" or "Uber Colony Ship Spam" or "Micro every planet on every turn" then I think the truth will speak for itself.

SD makes the game they want to make, they do not have to cave into pressure from a vocal minority on the forums. However, they may be interested in what happens to the fun factor as you try and become a better player. That's what we're here to learn, how to play within the existing rules in order to play a better game, while hopefully keeping it fun.

I'm sure there are at least a few people in SD who actually like this game and play it themselves

If SD believes the game could be improved, they may do something about it if they decide to make a GC3. But flaming SD is the surest way to make them NEVER read through this thread, plus we will lose out on any game tips that they toss in our direction.

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