Oh, let's just drop the 'it'll reduce mico' rubbish, because it won't. You can bet that if we're stuck with just the global wheel, we'll be microing it every turn to make sure we're not wasting any more production on econ or research than is absolutely needed, rather than just setting worlds to 100% whatever-they-do and leaving them alone. Every time I build a new ship or building, I'll need to adjust GLOBAL outputs to cover the maintenance increase; as population grows, I'll need to adjust it downward to avoid surplus cash. This does not strike me as less micro-intensive than setting a planet's wheel to 90% econ and then forgetting it exists.

And we can ditch the 'it's against the spirit of the game' crap, too; if we're using a pop=prod model then the ability to direct population is a fundamental part of that model. It wasn't in previous GC games because the pop=prod model wasn't, and so it wouldn't have made a blind bit of sense to include it. It WAS in more or less every 4X that uses a population = production model tho = in Civ, you can position your citizens, in MOO, you assigned them by blocks etc. And the funny thing is, it worked just fine in those games. There's no reason for it not to work in GC3. If anything is 'the spirit' of Gal Civ, it's a razor-sharp AIs that actually play the game. Gal Civ isn't the most innovative 4X; it's not the most relatable, it's not got the biggest budget or the most features or the best balance. But it has always had excellent AI. Removing the wheel to avoid an AI improvement is precisely the opposite of that spirit.

This really boils down to three things:

1. The AI can't specialize.

2. Because the AI can't specialize, everything has to be cheap and bonuses have to be high.

3. Because bonuses have to be high, those who DO specialize can get game-breakingly good scores.

Removing the wheel is entirely down to dealing with this. Nothing to do with micro (since that could easily be reduced using any of the 150 different suggested ways to trim micro that players have contributed to this very forum), nothing to do with some mysterious 'spirit of the game'.

So let's analyze this further:

Part 1: The AI can't specialize.

The strategic AI is, let's all be honest now, really bad at this game. This isn't a dis to SD. It's an objective statement of fact. The reason that the bigger maps are boring is because you aren't competing against the AI to win. You're basically just waiting for the AI to fall apart. It's entirely possible to play on maps where, by the time you meet another empire, you're already in mopping up mode because they've already fallen so far behind you. This should not happen. We've excused it with 'well, don't play on those settings', or with 'it's getting better!', but ultimately, the AI cannot play the game effectively beyond a few dozen turns.

This is entirely down to the inability to specialize. It produces slowly, it researches slowly, and it barely makes money. When it tries to research, rather than putting 100% of it's research planet populations into research, it puts 50% of it's industrial populations into research, where they are useless. It builds shipyards orbiting worlds covered in market places, and then spends 50 turns building a frigate. 

The AI will continue to do this regardless of if they get rid of the planetary wheel or not. Only now, you, the player, get to send 50% of your industrial world's population over to do research at miserable returns too, if you want your actual research-dedicated planets to make even half-effective use of their infrastructure. If you are think this idea will be a net improvement to the game, then you are, quite simply, wrong.

Part 2: Everything has to be cheap

So, because of 1, everything in the game has to be cheap and everything which gives bonuses has to give really, really high ones. The AI is going to be building that frigate on that econ-dedicated planet with only 50% of it's production going into un-boosted manufacturing; it might have a manu output of just 10 or 20. Even on manu-dedicated worlds, it's 20-30 population will only be dedicating 50% to manu, so even with lots of end-level factories it's unlikely to break 100 final output. That means that everything is ludicrously cheap - for example, money is nearly worthless because the AI never really makes any use of it's econ worlds; it might put 30% of total production cash, and be dedicating the rest to stats that are outright worthless for those planets.

The AI's inability to specialize is therefore dictating the economic balance of the game. EVERYTHING is balanced around trying to make the AI's crappy planets actually produce things despite being used incompetently. This is one of the main reasons I've been banging on about the AI needing to specialize so much. The reason we have all there unbalanced mega-bonuses from adjacency and basic buildings is because otherwise, the pathetic output that the AI is presently achieving would be even lower, and the game would be even less of a challenge; fixing the broken economy will actually murder the AI in it's present state. Removing the wheel does not fix this as such - instead, it makes the player reliant on the ridiculous bonuses too. If anything, these insane increases will actually need to be increased still further to compensate for the incredible slowdown that non-specializing will introduce.

Part 3: Specializing gives game-breakingly good scores

Because the bonuses have to be so high, actual specializing gives enormous output scores. Attempting to increase outputs so that the AI is less dire automatically increases the player's output even more, because he'll make use of 100% of those new bonuses while the AI might get 50% out of them. As they balance everything around trying to make the AI actually productive at horrible global settings, this leads to insane bonuses for the player. For a level 3 factory to give a noticeable improvement to the AI's outputs, it needs to give 10% extra per factory - say maybe +100% planet-wide. The player will gain manufacturing equal to his raw production from the upgrade. The AI will get, at best, half it's raw production value extra out of it, due to it's population being spread out doing dumb stuff.

Hence why, by T3, you are producing more or less anything in 1-2 turns, yet the AI is producing stuff in 20+. When you have 500% bonuses, the player will put out 600% of raw production. The AI will, at best, put out 300% of raw production into manu, and then 1/4 of raw production each in econ and research. Thus, the difference between specialized and non-specialized gets bigger throughout the game, and efforts to make unspecialized competitive by boosting outputs causes the specialized worlds to become relatively more powerful rather than less. 

Now, I'd say that leaving the wheel alone and teaching the AI to use it is a much better solution than taking it out. And fixing point 1 allows you to fix point 2, and that fixes point 3. It would allow you to nerf the oversized outputs, as the AI wouldn't need them to prop it up anymore. This, in turn, would substantially reduce the difference between specialized and non-specialized planets, so that previously insanely-high cumulative bonuses would be brought down into merely very good planets. If we shouldn't be making huge hulls in 1 turn, then make huge hulls expensive and reduce top-possible-bonuses to be less than they cost. 

I doubt we'll be seeing a switch to a factories-are-production economy, since that'd be a ground-up reworking. Which means that pop=prod is almost certainly staying. If pop-prod is staying, then we need to be able to direct the population. ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE PLANETARY WHEEL IS A WEAKER METHOD OF DELIVERING THAT. The only alternatives which do not result in a loss of control  (like, say, per-planet 'focus' buttons that set 100%) are ones which do nothing to resolve either the problems above, or the micromanagement issue, and so are meaningless changes. If you're celebrating the removal of the wheel, just watch how well the AI is doing in your next play-through - because in 1.4, that's you. That's how well your empire will be doing by turn 300. Does that look like fun? 20+ turns to build a destroyer? Research that's trapped in <T3 because without specialized research worlds you cannot keep up with the exponential increase in tech costs? Fighting against a bureaucratic limit set on your ability to exercise control over your people? If so, go play MOO3 - you'll love it. 

This is a stark choice between improving the AI and simply removing stuff it can't use from the game. The former everyone wants anyway. The latter sets a dangerous precedent. What will they remove next in favour of teaching the AI to make use of it? It presently doesn't use the ship designer - it just builds from scripts. So we can nerf the hell out of that. Just limit the player to purely cosmetic changes. That makes combat much easier to balance, and doesn't wreck the 3D printing. The AI was bad at picking good hulls - and we've already seen that the solution to that was making the unlock techs insanely expensive so the player wouldn't use them so much either (not that it worked; it just made sure ONLY the player could ever get large hulls). The AI is terrible at diplo; what do we do? We introduce the lock-out because the AI was so easy to abuse. I suspect that might be considered much more 'gamey' than being capable of telling factory workers to work in factories on a factory planet. 

This suggests that design decisions are being influenced by poor AI, which doesn't bode well. The game is being changed into something the AI is capable of playing, rather than the AI being improved to be capable of playing the game. That's exactly NOT why I buy a Stardock game. SD have a reputation for good AIs that can play the game in front of them, not poor AIs which have the game deliberately re-written around them until it's simple enough for them to play.

I second this.

In my own post earlier I was trying to make the point rather less forcefully. But the bottom line is that if a game has a good feature but the AI can't use it then there should be an attempt to code it to do so (which obviously will take time and effort but is what the players are hoping to get): rather than having the feature removed so that we humans don't have the option and the poor darlings can compete with smaller bonuses.

Sorry, to clarify I was the long post by Naselus above.

It's a percentage system with all the fiddlyness taken out so if that's not removing the wheel, it's still a bloody big change I'd say

My initial response to naselus is post #55.

If I get what your saying you think that there is going to be zero ways to select individual planets production your interpretation is it's going to be just a Global system?  They wouldn't be that crazy surely?  Get the pitchforks ready if that is the case, they've created a building/tile/bonus system where specializing is the best approach, removing all individual planetary production decisions would render a lot of that pointless.  i.e. build about third factories/research/wealth despite tiles would be near to best strategy. 

A button system is, as Petri notes, just the wheel but with fewer settings; I'll still be forced to go back to every individual planet when I research an upgrade and switch them to 100% manu, then set them back to 100% research one at a time afterwards. Moreover, it does nothing to address the high output problems, which is the other stated objective here, unless the buttons are deliberately set non-optimally. Ultimately, it's not a change worth making.

If there IS to be a change worth making in this, it's either going to be a massive reduction in the players direct control over his economy, or a massive change in the way the economy works, full stop. The latter, we probably wouldn't mind, but almost certainly is not on the table here. The former, on the other hand, is saying 'you can beat the AI too easily even when it has massive bonuses, so let's tie one hand behind your back'. It's actually noting that the AI plays the game badly, and then forcing the player to play in the same way.

Just about the worst possible outcome, and the one I'm most concerned that they're thinking of, would be a flat-out removal of the planet wheel, and then the imposition of governors if we want to engage in any deviation from the global wheel at all (which is the logical extension of the way governors have been set up in 1.3, with offsets and bonuses). This would be horrible, as it mandates and unfairly rewards automation even if you want to micro. But almost any other outcome doesn't weaken the player, and doesn't reduce the amount of micro. 

That's still a lot quicker than entering each planet screen and dragging the mouse to the right location on a wheel.  One click each planet is a lot quicker, or much better yet they could also add planets building X e.g. research center all switch to production focus.  One Click only, job done.  Huge time saved compared to existing system.

It's going to be interesting to see what they do, something has to change though if there are people who are happy with the existing system there can't be many.  I think my worst case scenario is they do nothing.  I'd like them to try something else before giving up on individual planetary management (if that's what they currently intend) preferably my proposals that don't involve tearing up the whole system and starting again.  I haven't tried the opt-in governors yet, not sure if I'm going to bother with 1.3 might just wait.

SD devs: Is the social/military slider going as well? It causes at least as much if nor more micro as the spending wheel.

Hi folks. Let's take a look at the really high level strategy game design for a moment.

It seems to me that fussing over the production wheel is the wrong conversation to be having. The real issue is that planetary specialization is always the right answer. Quoting myself from the Strategy Game Designer's Constitution:

Obvious choices should not be choices.

If you offer the choice between A and B, and A is always better than B, then the choice
should never be presented to the player. This turns into a monotonous tedium for the player
since it is understood to be unnecessary.

This manifests itself in different ways, but most often it comes down to a balancing issue.
Some games have obvious and unbalanced features that players quickly capitalize on. If
option A always works best over other competing options, why would the player ever want
to choose to do anything else?

Another area this problem displays itself is where you have two different situations and each
situation requires a specific and obvious solution. Making the player "solve" the obvious
problem doesn't take any brainpower and does not make the game more fun to play. It
adds no strategic value to the game. If square pegs always go in square holes, there is no
point in having square pegs or holes in the game. Instead you would want varying degrees
of results in varying situations.

What we should be doing instead is considering points like these:

• How can we make a "balanced planet" strategy meaningful?
• Can we think of a strategic reason or gameplay obstacle that necessitates non-specialized planets?
• If specialization is always the correct answer, then it should come with some sort of inherent risk. What should that be? (Low morale? Strategic vulnerability? Loss of output?)

Thoughts?

Well, to a point. Let's look at what they are doing in 1.3. They took a mechanic that already existed in game, AI governors, tweaked them to add some gameplay elements, and put a tiny bit of UI around it to make it available to players. It was a weekend worth of work. Implementing any of the other 150 ideas would take much more effort. They took the easy road, which also serves to narrow the gap between the terrible AI and the good player, with the promise that the new system will still offer the player with the ability to specialize sometime in the future, perhaps 1.4, but I'm not holding my breath.

To be clear, I am ambivalent that the per planet wheel is going away, even as a player that made heavy use of the per planet wheel. I'm just not excited about what appears to be replacing it.

I have always said that the economy system is a dysfunctional mess. The per planet wheel was always at odds with planetary bonuses and buildings on the planets and made for very few actual choices,

In my opinion population should just be divided to each sector based on each hex that you build a building in. Some will simply waste population (raw production) but you can still specialize the planet if you really want to.

But you also need to remove the rather unbalanced and cray additive bonus system and each building would produce its own points based on its level and bonuses and people actually working there.

If you changed to this system you would get real choices and be able to actually exploit terrain and planetary bonuses and the distribution of raw production on the planet would make more sense.

My opinion...

Wonder if the new system will allow delaying upgrades?

  Okay, how about this. (I'll use arbitrary numbers for the sake of making it easier to follow.)

  Each unit of population produces 1 manufacturing, 1 research, and 1 wealth. You can get more population by increasing the food limit/population growth/assembly project/etc just like you do now.

  Each specialized building produces 1 unit of the relevant item (manufacturing/research/wealth/influence). However, these buildings, put together, can not produce more than the planetary population itself does. (So a planet with 10 population can't generate more than +10 manufacturing from factory buildings no matter how many you have or what quality they are.)

  Now you can do two things:

  Generalize the planet by building a few buildings of each type. The 10 population planet can produce 20 of everything this way.

  Specialize the planet by focusing on population buildings and one (or maybe two) specific types. Assuming that different building types and support are balanced against each other, this might result in a planet with 15 population, producing 30 of one thing and 15 each of the other two.

  Of course, more population brings other benefits (such as being harder to conquer and generating more influence), but that's balanced against the fact that you need more morale buildings to keep large populations happy (which is part of balancing buildings against one another - population buildings should probably be a bit less potent than specialized ones).

  The empire-wide production wheel still works reasonably well in this case: sliding it around would alter the base output of the population in each area. This would result in the same gain across all planets (going from 1/1/1 to 3/0/0, for example) because the specialized buildings types aren't granting a multiplier anymore - in fact, the specialized buildings in that now-focused area wouldn't add anything at all unless a planet happened to have unused specialization capacity lying around (more factories/etc than the middle-of-the-wheel population could support). It would certainly impose a downside because the specialized buildings of OTHER types would lose their output as the population support disappeared though:

  Consider the pop 10, 20/20/20 planet and pop 15, 30/15/15 planet above. The specialized planet is a manufacturing world. We set the wheel from dead-center to 100% of manufacturing.

  The pop 10 planet now produces 40/0/0 (because the research and wealth buildings aren't getting any population input anymore, and the factories are still only able to add +10 to the 30 manufacturing produced by the 10 population).

  The pop 15 planet now produces 60/0/0 manufacturing (45 from the 15 population, +15 for the factories).

  The specialized planet is getting the same total output, albeit all focused on manufacturing, but the balanced planet is losing out on 20 production. It's a valid thing to do if you really need empire-wide production NOW, but it still hurts your efficiency.

  Of course, an equivalent research or wealth focused planet would be losing efficiency (because its specialized buildings would be nonfunctional), but it would still get the 3 x population manufacturing output.

  Again, these are arbitrary numbers being used to illustrate the idea; the actual population/specialized building/wheel effect/etc would need to be tested and balanced for the actual game.