Question on a strange game mechanic?

from GalCiv3 Forums

I wonder what the mechanic on shifting focus on planetary scope on the management screen really does for an otherwise pretty solid game. This mechanic is purely a micromanagement tool and completely unrealistic to boot. It forces you to focus each world on ONE single aspect of that focus at all times and make world building much more tedious and not  as fun as it could be... now it just becomes math since you allays want to focus in that ONE field as much as possible... all the time.

So... basically ALL colonies will now be about 60-80% either research or market places or a pure industry world for ship production purposes. It all just feel like a rock/ paper/scissor mechanic... more or less.

 

If this focus feature was removed planets would need more long term planning and MUCH less micromanagement from the player to be efficient. I know not everyone are going to bother but ut is a HUGE advantage for a player against the AI. It would also make planet building allot more diverse and fun.

 

I figured out the optimal strategy how to outproduce and brake the AI in just my first game. Each planet are basically designated as either Industry, Research or Market planet with some other buildings sprinkled in here and there. Other buildings are not affected by the focus mechanic so they can be planned more long term (which is more fun and less tedious).

Noe... in order to be efficient you need to constantly shift planets from more or less 100% focus from one are to the other very frequently in order to be efficient. ever leaving it at anything else is a waste of resources which of the most important one is time. It is no problem for me to completely outproduce the AI within a few dozen turns and it all just escalate from there... it simply does not matter which race I play.

 

So... my conclusion is that the game becomes more to a math problem with tedious micromanagement than a strategy game. Once you are miles ahead of the AI strategy is irrelevant. If the focus mechanic was removed you would level the playing-filed more between player and AI and remove allot of the tedois fiddling with it all the time.

 

16,052 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The sliders can be adjusted for each planet. When you are in the planet management screen look on the lower left and you will see the management button. Click this and the sliders for the planet will pop up.

If you don't want to manage the economy set it in the middle on the main screen and go ahead on. However, you should know that the AI does play with theirs (economy sliders that is)

As you get more familiar with the game all this stuff will start to seem simple and not tedious. Managing constructors and star bases can get a little tedious later in the game but managing the economy does not, once you fully understand it.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Was I asking for advice?!?   ;)

 

I am fully aware how it works... I'm complaining it is an unnecessary and very gamey mechanic that just increase micromanagement and that make long term strategy less important than min/max the slider all the time.

 

That is if you want to play the game efficiently... ;)

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I mostly think the focus slider mechanics is at odds with the way planetary infrastructure building works. To begin with, there are very few reasons not to set your slider all the way to 100% and super-specialize your planet. You basically decide if it's a production planet, a research planet or a money planet and then build everything towards that goal, because if you don't it'll be wasted.

For instance, if you build factories everywhere on a planet, then you have to put the slider all the way to "production", or you'll just be wasting your planet's potential since money/research won't be producing anything. But if you build, say, 50% factories and 50% labs, and then set the slider halfway... each will be producing 25% of what specializing in only one area would have given you (50% from the slider * 50% of the tiles...)

 

That said, it's fine to encourage specialization, but planetary building management then becomes unnessarily complicated. If you give us tools to make ad-hoc, complex tile-by-tile choices, then these choices need to matter, or we're just wasting our time.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Exactly...

 

I would prefer the tile placement of buildings and remove the focusing tool altogether, it would be much less micromanagement changing the slider from 100% production to either 100% money or science all the time.

It would also make planets more interesting to develop in general since specialization is not that necessary in the same way anymore. It is more up to bonuses ad the layout of the planet that decide what you want to build.

 

It is also a bit tedious that over production (or even research) are not carried over to the next item. It become a choir to manage planets so they don't over produce too much at times.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting JorgenCAB, reply 2

Was I asking for advice?!?   ;)

 

I am fully aware how it works... I'm complaining it is an unnecessary and very gamey mechanic that just increase micromanagement and that make long term strategy less important than min/max the slider all the time.

 

That is if you want to play the game efficiently... ;)

End of JorgenCAB's quote

 

No you were not. I misunderstood your post and thought you were a new player that didn't understand the mechanics. I figured out I had misunderstood you a few seconds after I replied and if we had a delete button, I would have trashed the reply.

Incidentally, I don't agree with you and if you poll a thousand players I doubt there would be more than a few who feel compelled to adjust the sliders so "efficiently" as you feel the need to do.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ok... you may choose to play inefficient because you can't find the strength to go through the tedium of doing it... that is your choice. This is my exact gripe with this mechanic to begin with.

 

That and the fact that it reduces the strategical choices of how to develop your planets.

 

I'm well aware that most players will not fiddle with the sliders too often but the result is that they handicap themselves for no god reason other than it is to tedious to do otherwise.

 

I really think that planet development would be way more fun and balanced overall without the ability to focus in the areas of Money, Production and Science since you can already do that with the different buildings you build on the planets.

 

A good question is... when do you ever NOT want to have the slider at 100% in any one category (mathematically speaking)?