Ideology too Cheap??? :S

from GalCiv3 Forums

In my personally opinion I think ideology is far too cheap, and they dont stack very well. e.g. if you are going for a benevolent race it should also make all other ideologies harder to get, this way it should discourage you from trying to get all 3 ideologies. 

 

In my current game, an immense map turn 266, I have now maximised Benevolent and Malevolent and half way to maxing pragmatic. This to me seems like ideology is far far too cheap and can easily be maxed pretty damn fast, especially for colonizing spammers - like myself.

 

Maybe there should be a rethink on the cost of ideology stacking? Or maybe a rethink on cost per ideology depending on map size?

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Somebody on Steam was saying that ideology is too expensive on smaller maps.  There does need to be some kind of scaling, as it's currently balanced for medium-ish maps and on anything else it doesn't quite work right.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

i would also put in that i think the planetary bonus's are too weak on larger maps. and would suggest reducing the frequency of ideology bonus's to 1 in 20 planets but buff them up quite a bit something like 500-1500% bonus rather than 5-15

i mean the 5-15% is nice and then i go well that's only equal to a single +3 adjacency and which is really not all that much.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I would agree that there needs to be some sort of scaling between ideologies... your main ideology is at a cost of 1 how far you deviate from your main the ideology scale increases.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think there are two main issues here: one is that ideology needs to scale with map size, and the other is that we need more non-colonizing sources of ideology. The notion that ideology is too cheap is laughable on anything below huge map, which seems to me to be the sweet spot currently. With colonizing being the main driving force behind ideology, it is impossible to explore the system on the smaller maps. The idea of invasion events has been talked about, but that would mean that you would have to choose a military strategy to advance any ideology tree. There are some ideology events, but these are too few and far between to make much of an impact and you can't count on them.

I think there should be triggered ideology events that happen with certain milestones; the ones that give cinematics would be a good start. So first new planet, first starbase, first anomaly, first  capital ship would be good times to get an ideological choice. In addition, certain techs could give you a choice and maybe even at certain turns or population levels, some anomalies could give you ideology choices. Mutually exclusive 1/civ and/or 1/planet buildings that are granted through tech rather than the ideology tree itself would also be welcome. It's probably a little too much for the base game, but I'd love to see some quests put in to gain ideology as well. I think this would allow for advancement in ideology on smaller maps, while a scaling cost would prevent you from maxing out all the ideologies in the larger ones.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

As I said in the other thread about ideology, I'm a little wary about saying that ideology can't be constrained on larger maps.  With the right number of opponents. an Immense map can play just like a Large map.  Right now, there are six factions with no minors. So there is a LOT of open space.  How ideology will play with more factions and minors (especially ones that might grab a planet or three) taking planets is yet to be seen.

That being said, I'm all for allowing players to set ideology upgrade cost like they can for tech speed.  If it feels iike it is too easy to max out ideology, by all means let people set it so it is more expensive.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

A follow up.  

For people complaining that ideology is too easy to get on larger maps, just set your planets to Rare.  8C

Started up a new game and decided to give the Yor a whirl.  Somehow I set everything to random and... well... I'm on turn 101 and I'm about to colonize my ninth and tenth planets.  On an Immense map.  It's a scattered galaxy, but shouldn't matter that much when it comes to the total number of stars.

It's not like I'm shirking things, as I am #1 in UP votes and am close to the top in # of planets held.  Near as I can tell, the Terrans have the most planets in the game.

They have 10.  Again, on an Immense Map. 8C

And it's not like I haven't explored.  So far I've found around 120 to 140 star systems (it's a bit of a PITA to accurately count without sector lines).  And in those 120 to 140 star systems, there's been 14 total planets that are colonizable, including extremes.

 

...

Gonna need the ideology buildings in this game I think!  ;P

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ok yes ideology is based solely on how many planets you can colonize and size of map. So maybe a rejig of how many points it takes to upgrade the idoelogy per upgrade? Like Civ V - Hate this game - culture?

 

But I did find u can pretty much max out one of the trees after about 10 planets

 

 

O but thank you to everyone that has had some feedback. And I see that not everyone has the same opinion as me. Which is understandable, I did have like 200 planets or summit and maxed out all ideology so yeah :P.

 

I just found that it was too easy as well to flip ideology, which should not happen IMO

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I decided to try an immense map for the first time without thinking about changing my usual settings for small maps, and now I find myself at turn 178 with 58 planets, the entire Malevolent Ideology tree, and a third of the way through Pragmatic, and I haven't even met any of the AI civilizations (all of them are out there somewhere).  So I agree, Ideology needs to be scaled somehow.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well it eould be reasonable to take 500 turns to get through ideaologies. Another thing that don't make sense is go through multiple idealogies at the same time. Maybe instead all the points are added together. Then they are added by seperate idealogies. Whichever idealogy has the most points is the one picked for each picked by the total number of points.