Possible Major Approval bug

Approval bug

from GalCiv3 Forums

Playing latest opt-in game 6.1 patch.

 

I have noticed, that when you have a big empire and when you start to war with someone you get a SEVERE penalty. This has happened in every Beta so far.

 

In this particular game I have half map(excessive) won by influential means. The last Drengin planet wont flip for some reason- they do not have immune ideology unlocked, my influence is way over 22x on their planet, but it wont flip. So i build some ships and transports and take it out. Job done.

 

BUT then something happens- I get a severe hit on approval across board. Before that all green through the roof. One turn approval drops to 50, then 30, 20, 14.... All planets red, everything stops- the current tech even froze- it said 999 turns to finish research- and it cycled down to 0 turns remaining. I could research all other techs but i couldn't finish this one, it just froze there.

 

Also I noticed even if i did have 500% on approval relics, Had them 6, ideology traits- I even built approval temples(+9)(+4)etc, its like the digit for approval disappeared. On tool-tips and on planets it says the digit is there but in reality its gone. No matter what you do, you cant get your approval back. Also it never tells you anywhere what is so BIG that is hitting on your approval- no information anywhere.

 

So letting you know there is such a problem. It could be some hidden penalty without a coma, because after one planet takeover(I didn't made peace with Drengin afterwards and on next turn pop-up told they are destroyed), would had hoped no enemy- no problem- nada.

 

10,708 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Large Empire Penalty -210% that is what its telling me there. 

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nope not that. Flat line i was countering it by a very large margin via relics/ ideology traits/ research tech/ planet strategic resources etc, even starbases had +3 approval built on them. Only After i took the last unflipable Drengin homeworld by force, then all approval just poof- gone. Thereafter In 2/3 turns my empire just came to a halt. :\

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Did the last planet happen to be the furthest away?  Because I'm thinking when you took it it made your empire go to REALLY far / big.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

actually the problem is that large empire bonus and im not sure why you havent encountered this before

 

total percentage stats
+40% bonus
-220% malus

totals 

-180%

so no matter how many flat bonus's you have you reduce that by 180% 

lets say you have + 2000 harmony crystals now because of your -180% malus you reduce that by 3600 so you have a value that is less then 0 

 

and thats why the large empire penalty is broken

 

 

edit ok you say you have bonus % from other sources but they arent shown on the image do you have a screenshot showing them?

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Sadly no. The pc I played on is in a different place from where I am currently :)

 

I did send a ticket to support with save game, so if else, they should know what really happened here.

From my memory:

 

Actually the large empire penalty kicks in from start, when you start to go over lets say 15 bases(don't know the actual number) your approval goes down if you dont do something about that. So early on i started to fish out approval relics, they do help big time. Later on you can counter that penalty vs techs, ideologies, starbases , events etc.

 

Come to think of it, once i got Intimidation center from benevolent tree, it gives 50% approval per planet. Built them on all planets. Though when culture flip started those flipped planets initially all were unhappy(0 approval), once the center was built- 100% approval with all bonuses applied instantly. Even got the UP 50% approval bonus so i could really push it.

 

As you see in 1st post where it shows 0/5.3, once intimidation center was on, everything worked before Drengin war most planets showed something like 20/5 22/8 so on(raw approval/population count). That was true with all 200+ planets. Reaching critical influence mass on average started to get 3 planets each turn.

 

What Im trying to say here- you get these flat bonuses +1, +4 etc and then there are these % penalties- same thing with research (ascension crystal gives you +1 to research, alterian tech) so with 18 crystals, with 1 lab it summed up to roughly 3500 something per planet. Same goes for food, factories etc. These +1 are very OP and on excessive map you have time and room to get and exploit them.

 

After  Drengi planet was invaded these flat bonues were gone- I had only penalties left. 

Why did it happen? What caused it to happen?

And how really approval works? I remember in Gal civ 2 using the same tactic as here, i didnt go bankrupt. 

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It doesn't sound like the large empire bug because it was one more planet. A small drop in approval maybe, but the op reported a massive drop after taking 1 planet, which doesn't sound like the large empire penalty

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Got back to my pc, These are some photos I took, keep in mind every turn the number goes down to 0, I did have aprox 10 planets with 100% but the number is going down. Before everything all planets were 100%. As you see something is eating down the approval numbers.

 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

there does seem to be a problem based on those screenshots. Doing some very quick math the approVal numbers in the second and third screenshots are lower than the tooltip math would indicate 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

And some of the modifiers have vanished for no apparent reason. Its very likely a large empire bug, you captured one planet but then everything collapsed. So its quite possible that there is something wrong with the expansion calculation and its disrupting all the other bonuses you have. 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I only skimmed through all the posts as its late, but in the last twitch stream Paul did say he would be looking into the large empire approval problem people are getting. Apparently its a small additive value that doesn't have a hard cap on it. As he never tested it with tones of planets he didn't know there was an issue. He is now looking into adding a hard cap or something similar now.

 



I have noticed, that when you have a big empire and when you start to war with someone you get a SEVERE penalty. This has happened in every Beta so far.


End of quote

Side note, might be unrelated, but from your first line of your post the first thing that came to mind was the Pragmatic Favored trait "anyone at war with us receive a %25 penalty to approval". maybe they had that and it caused a problem?

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks for reporting.