Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

GalCiv III: Economics, Command Economies and Citizens

With GalCiv III v1.4, we’ve removed the per planet production wheel. You can read more about that here.

This has sparked a lively debate on just how much control a player should have on their economy.

Planet Specialization

Planets in Galactic Civilizations III can be specialized much more than in previous versions. An industrial world, through adjacencies, can result in massive bonus manufacturing. However, on top of that, players can direct their citizens to work more in those factories via the global production wheel (and previously the local production wheel).

So let’s talk about what that actually means.

Command Economies

By default, your citizens work at whatever jobs are available on your planets.

If you live in the West (USA, Europe, Japan, etc.) you are free to choose the job you want.

By default, your citizens work the jobs they want.

Earth in 2251. M:23, R:15, W:9: Total of 47

So in this model, Earth is producing 23.7 quadrillion tons of manufactured goods, 15.1 units of research, and is generating taxable income of 8.7T credits (for GalCiv III we’ve gotten rid of the units of measurement).

However, new to GalCiv III is the concept of being able to FORCE people to work certain jobs. That is, I can draft people to go work in the factories or in the labs or raise their taxes:

Through the production wheel, I can make people to work in the factories, raise their taxes or help out in the labs.

In every previous GalCiv, if you raised taxes, there was a corresponding morale penalty. We don’t have that here because it was decided it was too convoluted to have it just for taxes. However, what we really should have considered is that it’s not that people hate taxes per se, they had COERCION. They don’t like their government controlling their activity. If my taxes are 50%, for instance, that means 50% of the time I’m working FOR the government.

When I move my wheel to 100% manufacturing I’m conscripting my citizens to work in the factory and I get a corresponding boost to manufacturing:

Now, I get 70.8, 0, –3.6. You’ll note that this number if much MUCH higher. Total: 67.

Note that in this example, my morale is still 78%. In GalCiv II, if you raised your taxes to 100%, your morale would plummet unless you invested heavily into things to keep them happy. But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%.

I understand why people like the production wheel

Imagine if in GalCIv II we let people set their taxes to 100% and there was no downside to this. Now, imagine if we put out GalCiv II v1.4 and we made it so you couldn’t change taxes. People would have been ticked off. Understandably. But I hope also that people would understand that such a system is broken. There’s no such thing a a free lunch.

Ending the Free Lunch

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the production wheel. By reading the forums, at length, I’ve gotten a much better idea of what the issue really is. It’s the free lunch aspect of the production wheel I don’t like. In the real world, command economies don’t do well against free markets in the long-run. But in GalCiv III, they’re absolutely the way to go. The problem ISN’T the wheel on its own (I don’t like the micro management but I have no issue with people voluntarily choosing to play that way). The problem is that you get to coerce people without any downside.

How I’d like to solve this

First, the Terran Alliance won’t support the command economy. That is, you won’t be able to set tax policy on a per planet basis as the Terran Alliance. However, a new racial trait called “Command Economy” can be added that will be part of the Yor. The Yor aren’t mindless robots but unlike humans, they can be micro-managed in ways that humans can’t.

Second, we will introduce the concept of COERCION into the system.

How Coercion would work

Let’s say your planet is producing 11 units of goods and services (as seen in the screenshot below).

What coercion would do is that for every point above 33 your maximum focus is, you’d diminish those goods by a percent.

Example: Let’s say I set Manufacturing to 100%. That’s 67% above the 33% natural rate. Your goods and services would then be multiplied by (1 – 0.67). Thus, I would suddenly only get 4 goods and services and I would thus take an overall production penalty. In this example, instead of getting 70.8 manufacturing I’d only get around 50 and my planet’s population would grow slower. But it’s still massively above the 23 that is the default.

Right now, your approval is based on the goods you provide per citizen.

Random example explaining coercion.

How the UI would communicate this

Similarly, civilizations with a command economy could set it on a per planet basis but it would work the same, you could just micro it on a per planet basis if you wanted.

NOW, let’s talk about the future

Eventually, GalCiv III is going to have a bunch of different types of governments to choose from. The reason the Economy tab is done the way it is is because it’s been designed with the idea that eventually the type of government you have will determine what shows up in that tab. So one type of government might have a bunch of sliders, another might have almost no controls, another might have players choosing a series of subsidy policies and so on. For now, we just have the production wheel. But it’s never been intended to be the end-all be all.

So when?

I’d like to see this change put into 1.5 or sooner. It’ll take a little balancing to make sure pacing isn’t hosed. But ultimately, it will result in a much more balanced, less…arbitrary economy and allow us to justify more types of planetary improvements, super projects and other goodies that offset this.

Oh, and we can get rid of the large empire penalty too since it won’t be needed under this system.

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Quoting naselus,

reply 16

Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 15

Well, if it's going to be a race trait it should impart some level of advantage, so it would have to be better.

Every Trait give you an unfair advantage compared to those that don't have them... that's their entire point.

The only real question is, HOW strong this advantage can/should be.

Well, that's the problem - it can be a bit better, but nearly doubling output is insanely OP. But strength is relative, and the strength of focuses is variable. It's attempting to hit a moving target. You'd be looking at something around 30% reduction in production at a minimum, just to bring it in to line with the costings model, and even that might not be enough.

Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 15

One thought I was playing around with, was making the local wheel race trait cost 2 trait points, making it the whole point of the race in question. This would greatly balance it, because it would basically be the equivalent of (Patriotic & Prolific) picked together.

It's still much more powerful than any 2 existing traits combined without some kind of big hefty raw production nerf attached to it (and even with such a thing, any source of raw production, like techs or wonders, would be substantially more valuable to the wheel users).

Also, although it's a bit off-topic, I do think that just about everything on the race design screen should have different points costs anyway - some stats are just more valuable in-game than others, so having them all on equal pricing when picking traits and abilities is problematic. I'd consolidate all the points int one pool, and just allow you to pick 2 abilities and as many traits as you liked - but have everything cost as many points as it was genuinely worth.

Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 15

From a setting standpoint, I also considered, that a race with it really shouldn't have this kind of approval mechanic. Basically, I was thinking, that just like the synthetic trait that replaced food and overpopulation with an assembly project and energy resources, the wheel trait could replace approval with a strength-of-control type thing, where they would be able to build a building and starbase module that raises the value to prevent it from being influenced(or hacked) by other civilizations. furthermore, a low value would cause inefficiency (meaning reduced output) while a high value would increase efficiency (100% Control equaling to the wheel prior to 1.4)

The only problem would be, that it would require a new 'Control' Tech Tree as well as a change to the Yor Tech Tree.

Could mostly just use approval still, tbh. The underlying mechanic you're describing is exactly the same. As an added bonus, since Raw production bonuses are higher for wheel-use, that also means any penalty to raw production is also higher (like the one that comes from low approval). Just re-label it in the interface. You could set up alternative building sets for the race easily enough and just tag them into the equivalent techs for the normal approval stuff, then locked races with the trait from getting stadiums etc. You could then use those alternative buildings to make the wheel races much, much more approval-dependent.

Getting the production balance right is the central problem, and is pretty insurmountable. The funny thing is, the easiest way to deal with it is resetting Focuses to 100%. Once that happens, suddenly production on both sides balances again... but it does kind of raise the question as to what benefit there is to removing the wheel in the first place.

It wouldn't be the same as approval, actually.

The reason for that is, that if you colonize a world outside of your usual range of influences, you effectively have no control (0) over it, which means you can't build anything, you can't decide what it produces and it will still cost you maintenance for anything it builds and uses at RANDOM!

On the same note, ships (except for tiny fighters and/or Drones) wouldn't work outside your zone of influenceunless build with a quantum-receiver. Which would probably cost and weight the same amount as a colony/spacestation module. And fighters won't work outside unless you accompany them with a bigger ship that does.

oh, and obviously no LEP. But I don't think that would be an issue, since the control mechanic prevents quick expansion in favour of steady expansion.

Also, maybe the wheel CAN come back for all races, but only those with control can shift on a dime... while regular races would have to shift gradually over time. (taking approximately 50 turn to switch from 100% to another 100%)

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The coercion thing sounds good...

But I think it would be nice if there was a trait that made that a non-issue... again, for races like the Borg.

One way to do that from my previous idea, would be to separate the wheel trait and the body-control within territory (that replaces approval with control)trait into two, one for each trait point.

I would say 'Dominance' for the wheel and 'Control' for the other.

Also, how does the 'choose a form of government' make sense? Unless you choose an empire, you, as the player, shouldn't be able to input ANYTHING. Regardless of whether it's what buildings to build, what ships to make, where to build starbase etc.... basically, the game would have to play itself without you... UNLESS you're an emperor. (which is not inherently bad, Tyrant is the word for the bad guys)

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"But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%. "

This is incorrect. By setting manufacturing (or wealth/research) to 100%, there is a corresponding decrease in the opposite corresponding resources (wealth/research, etc.) of that planet.

So if you make that planet have 100% manufacturing, then you aren't going to get jack squat for money or research from it. That's the balance already inherent in the system which you are ignoring here.

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Quoting Mashintao,

reply 3

"But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%. "

This is incorrect. By setting manufacturing (or wealth/research) to 100%, there is a corresponding decrease in the opposite corresponding resource (wealth/research, etc.).

Positive.

And I also think, from what the problem description gave us, the problem was that they set the costs before seeing the potential production.

Put simply, just inflating the cost for everything would have probably minimized the effect of the wheel... doesn't mean it can't be implemented better though.

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So when you play the Yor you will get the same issues as before.I just think it should stay scrapped.Nobody will care in 5 mins and just get on the game.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Quoting Mashintao,

reply 3

"But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%. "

This is incorrect. By setting manufacturing (or wealth/research) to 100%, there is a corresponding decrease in the opposite corresponding resources (wealth/research, etc.) of that planet.

So if you make that planet have 100% manufacturing, then you aren't going to get jack squat for money or research from it. That's the balance already inherent in the system which you are ignoring here.

That's not true in reality though. If my total planet production is 47 when balanced but goes to 71 when put to 100% on manufacturing, that's not a penalty. If you wanted it to be truly reasonable, it would be 47 on manufacturing, not 71.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Quoting Ashbery76,

reply 5

So when you play the Yor you will get the same issues as before.I just think it should stay scrapped.Nobody will care in 5 mins and just get on the game.

No, the coercion change will affect all players. It addresses the imbalance both globally and locally. But for players who want to micro their planets, they can have at it.

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Quoting Mashintao,

reply 3

"But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%. "

In fact, the current system works with the logic of INCENTIVE. You are lowering taxes to encourage people to work in the industrial (or technology) sector. It makes perfect sense.

My point: you don't need COERCION to justify the current system.

Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Nobody likes when things get too messy.

EDIT:

Here's my suggestion. Get rid of the wheel and replace it with two separate sliders, each with a pro/con. You can call it coercion for the evil races and incentive for the good races - whatever. For balance reasons, the affect of the production sliders should be only a minor modification of the base value. So changing the Economic coercion/incentive to 100% Industry would change a value of 23 to something more like 30-40. By changing the value farther from the 50%/50% state, you receive increasingly greater penalty to wealth and/or morale.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Quoting Mashintao,

reply 8

Quoting Mashintao,

reply 3

"But in GalCiv III, there’s no penalty at all for setting manufacturing to 100%. "

In fact, the current system works with the logic of INCENTIVE. You are lowering taxes to encourage people to work in the industrial (or technology) sector. It makes perfect sense.

My point: you don't need COERCION to justify the current system.

Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Nobody likes when things get too messy.

Right now you can set your wealth creation to 100%. That's 100% taxes. You can force your people to work in the factories at 100%. You can make them work in the labs at 100%. That's coercion.

Like I said in the topic. I'm sure plenty of people would be unhappy if GalCiv II introduced a morale penalty for 100% taxation after it released. But the idea that a planet can go from 23 to 71 right off the bat with the flick of a wheel without a single downside is just not going to work.

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Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 1

It wouldn't be the same as approval, actually.

Anyway, to discuss the topic at hand.

This frankly seems like a bizarre U-turn after a month and a half of strident declarations that the wheel had to go because micromanagement, or is it flavour, or is it balance, and the cascade of posts yesterday about how the wheel was never coming back to the main game. I can follow the reasoning - hell I even agree with it - but tbh I'm not particularly comfortable with this sudden massive change of direction adopting an semi-formed drop-of-a-hat idea Brad read about 18 hours ago into the core of 1.5, completely reverting a changes introduced in 1.4. Surely this is basically just going to piss off the half of the community who have been running around telling us what a great idea taking the wheel out was? This makes the game's ongoing development appear confused, arbitrary and directionless, with sudden wild experiments being thrown into the game half-formed in a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis that was essentially created by exactly the same sort of behaviour?

Don't get me wrong; I like the idea of different governments having different economic systems etc (not so much the race trait thing really, since there's no reason humans wouldn't try communism - a fairly large portion of the planet's population were quite taken with the idea for nearly a century, after all), and I love the idea of getting the wheel back. But might it not be wiser to leave it with the toggle for now and then just bring the wheel back into the main game once a full-on, properly balance government module is ready for inclusion? You made a sudden, massive change to the game. Leaving it to settle for a month or two might be a better course of action before essentially reverting it.

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Quoting naselus,

reply 10

Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 1

It wouldn't be the same as approval, actually.

That wouldn't, no. But then, that's nothing like the mechanic as you originally outlined it, which was completely identical to approval(down to increased output at high levels and reduced output at low levels, and the direct effect on influence), so I'm not sure how you expected anyone to infer this 'no control' thing.

Anyway, to discuss the topic at hand.

This frankly seems like a bizarre U-turn after a month and a half of strident declarations that the wheel had to go because micromanagement, or is it flavour, or is it balance, and the cascade of posts yesterday about how the wheel was never coming back to the main game. I can follow the reasoning - hell I even agree with it - but tbh I'm not particularly comfortable with this sudden massive change of direction adopting an semi-formed drop-of-a-hat idea Brad read about 18 hours ago into the core of 1.5, completely reverting a changes introduced in 1.4. Surely this is basically just going to piss off the half of the community who have been running around telling us what a great idea taking the wheel out was? This makes the game's ongoing development appear confused, arbitrary and directionless, with sudden wild experiments being thrown into the game half-formed in a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis that was essentially created by exactly the same sort of behaviour?

Don't get me wrong; I like the idea of different governments having different economic systems etc (not so much the race trait thing really, since there's no reason humans wouldn't try communism - a fairly large portion of the planet's population were quite taken with the idea for nearly a century, after all), and I love the idea of getting the wheel back. But might it not be wiser to leave it with the toggle for now and then just bring the wheel back into the main game once a full-on, properly balance government module is ready for inclusion? You made a sudden, massive change to the game. Leaving it to settle for a month or two might be a better course of action before essentially reverting it.

I am sorry if I was unclear with my original post.

I though it would be clear enough with the mention of the buildings and colony modules, and the fact that we are talking controlling people similar to either the Borg or the Leviathans/Reapers that the zone of influence from different parts of the empire played a role in the effectiveness of said parts.

Taken all the way to the place that, if you settle a place without having established a zone of control around it first, you are not going to have any control over that colony. And that ships that go outside these control zones would require an anchored quantum connection... Much like the Leviathan Orbs in Mass Effect 3.

heck, maybe the control thing can somehow even be interwoven with the Influence system already present, providing a tech tree that provides buildings that increase both control and influence and maybe an extra tech to increase ship capacity.

Having different forms of state really doesn't make any sense... if they were communists, they would have no reason to listen to what you are ordering. The same goes if they were socialists, capitalists, theocrats (unless you're their god), oligarchs or any other form of state not ruled by a single person.

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Seleuceia

Join Date 01/2008

+240

I think this is a really promising feature that is akin to many of the quantities/variables you see in Paradox strategy games...while it is not perfect representation of reality, it is an excellent abstraction that captures the essence of the inefficiency that would result from such specialization...

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Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 11

Remember that the older titles in the series even had elections, and you had to win senate votes to declare war. Any system aside from anarchism generally has someone calling the shots; there may be checks and balances on his power but he can still pretty much dictate the direction of government. Different forms of political and economic organization make more or less perfect sense, and have the advantage that they can be changed in-game. Several of Brad's posts in the past have indicated he'd like to see the game moving back in that direction (including the OP of this thread), and it's a lot easier to justify any remaining imbalance if everyone can use it. I don't think we want to see MP being reduced to 'everyone uses trait X because it's better'.

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Quoting naselus,

reply 13

Quoting Dracul_JOSHI,

reply 11

Um... what? Do you just break the law where you live constantly, or do you live in Saudi Arabia and assume everywhere in the West is an anarchic wasteland of dog poo and rape? I live in Britain, and it seems to me that for reasons unknowable people tend to listen to what David Cameron is saying far more often than they should.

Remember that the older titles in the series even had elections, and you had to win senate votes to declare war. Any system aside from anarchism generally has someone calling the shots; there may be checks and balances on his power but he can still pretty much dictate the direction of government. Different forms of political and economic organization make more or less perfect sense, and have the advantage that they can be changed in-game. Several of Brad's posts in the past have indicated he'd like to see the game moving back in that direction (including the OP of this thread), and it's a lot easier to justify any remaining imbalance if everyone can use it. I don't think we want to see MP being reduced to 'everyone uses trait X because it's better'.

I live in switzerland, we DON'T have any one person in a political position of power. It's called a direct democracy. We have 7 guys that share the highest authority, but every law and change has to be approved by vote from everybody who's got the right to vote.

As I said before, I don't play MP and I don't care about multiplayer... and even if it WAS incredibly unbalanced, it would be easy to make the trait/s in question illegal for multiplayer. (as in, races that own one or two of those traits are not allowed to be picked for a MP game.)

Furthermore, how are patriotic and prolific doing in MP?

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Dear Frogboy,
I've read your post "GalCiv III: Economics, Command Economies and Citizens".

You speak about command economies and coercion and your idea to address that with penalties at the wheel. I want to ask you about a scenario and how your penalty would effect it and thereby show you how you're looking at this whole thing wrong.

I play by setting each planet entirely on only 1 of the 3 'spending' options by only having buildings of that type on that planet. Based on your 'adjacencies' and percentage bonus buildings, this is the smartest thing to do.

For example: Planet "PumpItOut" has only production buildings on it.
If I set the wheel to 'All Production', how is that coercion when it's the only job in town? If I set the wheel to 33/33/33, why should that planet be losing 2/3 of it's production? (1/3 going to 'no income buildings' and 1/3 going to 'no research buildings').

You have already setup the game to reward planetary building focus which
nullifies the way you're looking at it now and the penalties you want to impose on the way you're looking at it. All that convoluted penalty stuff is crap.

The solution that makes everyone happy, except you, is to give the planetary wheel to everyone by default, including the Ai. That way, everyone has the same advantages/penalties in regards to the planetary wheel and the option of using it or not!

It's not a free lunch.
It's not coercion.
It's not micro-managing
It's not a trait (if everybody has it).
It's not any of that crap your talking about.
It's a Playing Style!
A playing style that everyone should have the option of using.

And the funny thing is, your solution is just a version of the wheel that doesn't look like the wheel and it's a lot more confusing.

Final note: Why is it so obvious to you that the Ai should be using the planetary wheel?

Take the answer to that and apply it to why we should have it to!

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 9

But the idea that a planet can go from 23 to 71 right off the bat with the flick of a wheel without a single downside is just not going to work.

That's another good point: it's unrealistic how fast the wheel (global or planet) can be changed. Maybe changes to the wheel should only be able to be made in smaller increments. For example, maybe only 10% at a time (each turn). This would represent the idea that such sweeping changes and reallocations of industry couldn't happen overnight; but would occur over time, as part of committed, persistent policy changes. Could be interesting for gameplay as well. It might reduce the tedious min/max every turn micro-management.

Also Brad, I just wanted to say that I like the direction GalCiv 3 is taking. Thanks... and looking forward to it's future.

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I personally do not like the new system. I do appreciate that we will have the ability to bring the wheel back.

I just want to say, I'm just not sure about the rationale behind the change; I lost choices that I used to have, and I don't feel like I've gained anything gameplay-wise.

Frankly, it doesn't feel like any less of a command economy, because now every planet is more or less following one centrally set economic plan. If anything, it feels more like a command economy. This system would make more sense to me personally if planets set their own "ideal" local wheel, based on the jobs available (and any number of other factors). The deviation between the local wheel (how the people of the planet want to work & be taxed) and the empire wheel would be the actual coercion.

That's just my 2 cents. The game is still great, and I'll definitely pick it up again once I can enable the local wheel.

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This all sounds very interesting, but I want to make sure about something with the coercion idea. You say that setting wheel(s) to 100% production of, say, research, is coercion, and I agree with this. But isn't keeping the wheel(s) at 33,33,33% production amounts still coercion? You're still forcing your population to do certain jobs if I'm not mistaken. Again, I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, and I enjoy reading your ideas on the future of the game.

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the idea that wealth generation is 100% taxation is null and void along with the idea that the wheel represents the entire activity on the planet. The game abstracts other productive forces behind the scenes: Where does the production comes to create a ship when you buy it with credits in a pure research or wealth world?

100% wealth generation means that all of the managed portion of the economy is dedicated to activities like investment or banking or whatever that generates cash, with employees and other activities to funnel the wealth to the coffers. You still have salaries and bonuses for staff and you don't tax their skins off.

Perhaps a visual seperation of the state and the free economies in the game gui would help to flesh out both the political party features as well as solve the wheel problems in an elegant way: you only control the state economy: switch to a free market, and the game decides for you your allocation either with an algorithm or by just rolling 3 numbers.

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So let me get this straight: a game that had an alpha stage, a beta stage, and a final release is randomly, drastically, changing a core game function 6 months after the game is launched.

Why even end the alpha/beta when we're clearly still in it?

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Quoting The_Poena,

reply 18

Yes, yes it is.

Now please stop poking holes into Frogboy's arguments, otherwise he may eventually start feel so bad that he completely cancels and removes GC3... and nobody wants that... Blackmail? NO! It's coercion, stupid!

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I definitely agree about the no free lunch, but yamann777 touched on an important consideration: If planetary improvements are 80% research, 20% manufacturing and 0% wealth, is the natural (non-coerced) balance of job choices 33/33/33? IDK, maybe you could argue it is - maybe a lot of people born on a research-heavy planet are unhappy because they're not smart enough to do it, so that's captured in the coercion penalty.

But kind of like I would expect farmers to be more likely to leave Silicon Valley to go to Nebraska, for reasons of opportunity, I would expect people to seek out planets where they have opportunities. Perhaps some combination of the two? Something to reflect planetary focus and incentives?

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Quoting yamann777,

reply 15

For example: Planet "PumpItOut" has only production buildings on it.
If I set the wheel to 'All Production', how is that coercion when it's the only job in town? If I set the wheel to 33/33/33, why should that planet be losing 2/3 of it's production? (1/3 going to 'no income buildings' and 1/3 going to 'no research buildings').

This pretty much sums up the disconnect I've had with the economy stemming back to Galactic Civilizations II. The idea that no matter how efficiently I set up my planets and structures, there was going to be a sizeable (67% by default) inefficiency.

Late in the game, after the core worlds were built up, spending would typically be 50/50 between research/military, with the spending sliding either way depending on war conditions and the like. But after finding and colonizing new worlds or conquering them from opponents, the dilemma of how to build these new worlds popped up. Absent cash purchasing all the buildings on the planet (which in many cases turned out to be the preferable option) there was no realistic way to get the social production started up on a new world without taking a sizeable chunk out of the military or research production of the entire rest of the empire. For me, that's always where the disconnect felt most intense.

In examining the discussion on this thread and the various ideas you've had Brad, I think perhaps the problem isn't the wheel or lack thereof, it's the concept of raw production controlled at an empire level. Based on the concepts that you were postulating with the ideas of coercion and governmental systems. I think an economic system that might fit your desires better would be to look at planets through an employment lens. Rather then population converting a raw production stat which then has the wheel or basic formula applied to it, what if population was just that, the amount of people that were willing/able to work? Rather then buildings providing a bonus to the production formula, they would provide a certain number of employment opportunities.

Ex: Factory (employs up to x population to produce 3x production units, etc.) Adjacency bonuses could be applied to the production output, along with racial, researched, starbase bonuses and the like. Advanced buildings could offer a better ratio, or higher employment capacity (or maybe have research specialty effect it... hmm... more choices

This would make population a bit more tangible then it is currently, since your population would literally define the upper bounds of a given planet's productivity. Approval would determine how many of the total populace are employable workers (disgruntled folks have less incentive to get out there and help their fellow man/robot/evillizardthing). Underemployment could also be a thing in this setup.

The concept of coercion could still be applied on a empire level but examining not how far you've pushed the wheel from center (33/33/33) but instead on the total employment opportunities available in the empire (penalty to kick in if you don't have y% employment opportunities in each of the various fields (industrial/research/finance/entertainment/health/culture)) The weighting of the various fields could definitely serve as flavor for the races as well, helping to reinforce their existing play patterns.

This would take away some of the power gap between pure managed efficiency (wheel) and let them do what they want to (forced 33/33/33 split), without removing the benefit (and enjoyment (at least for me)) of settling up well designed efficient worlds. On the plus side, it could also help lower late game micromanagement, since even if you're not using a governor to set up your building plan, once you've got the bulidings in place, the world is largely done. It turns your attention back towards a combination of analyzing the native benefits of the world (tile bonuses, various adjacency opportunities, boy this world would be a nice production center) with the needs of the empire (if I don't open up some more banking centers, there's gonna be a riot on my hands) which seems to me to be the decision point that you want to emphasize for the players (you can't have it all, so what do you give up?)

Anyway, hope some of those ideas may be of use. I know I was rather excited about the addition of the wheel (or more specifically, the control it enabled) in GC3, and was a bit bummed when you announced it was going away last patch. I really think the problem with the system is the basic production->sliders setup as it currently exists. Whatever solution you do end up with, I look forward to seeing how the game continues to evolve.

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Maiden666

Join Date 12/2008

+62

tbh there's so many logical contradictions to this subject I just think of it that people are either send to work in (a) industry facilities ( labs (c) markets.

and please, for the sake of making a good *strategy* game, don't base its mechanism on some sort of "realism-sense" because (a) alot of people will only come to different conclusion and don't see it as being realistic at all ( this will only drag down your available options of what can work out or intermingle

the most important focus should be to make tje game challenging & fun, in a strategy game that is to place or force a player to might meaningful decisions, decisions that are not no-brainers, ie. different paths rivaling in same strength.

your approach to penalise it if individual planets go full mongo by completely neglecting the other 2 fields is actually a good one. such a mechanism could have solved the whole overkill-output-superspecialized planets in the first place.

nevertheless, I like the focus options anyway but I would wish a few steps in strength, that is, if I click it two times it should be doubled. naturally, there could be a penality in place, even for the normal focus use, which reduces the focus output a bit, and that penalty increases in percentage as I raise the focus specialization a step or two.

that would cause one thing: if a world lacks sufficient adjacency bonuses or specific placement of buildings, then going full mongo wih focus will not pay off. it might be better here to leave it in a balanced fashion. and that would naturally be have to looked for as the tiers of buildings rise.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

I've said my peace on this topic.

I'll leave with one final thought to share:

When you design a game, any game, you design it around a set of assumptions on how the numbers will work out. In GalCiv II, I'd get save games where people had managed to make 20,000 credits per turn. So I made an update that started to heavily penalized income after a certain point and referred to it as graft.

Now, back then, the community was much smaller. I can't even imagine the riots we'd get today if we released an update that simply lopped off all production after a certain point. Here, we're TRYING to come up with mechanics that feel less arbitrary.

But at the end of the day, the numbers need to work within a certain range or else they have to be hard-capped or the entire game starts to collapse on itself.

I've seen saved games where people were getting over 2,000 research PER TURN from a planet. They weren't cheating. They had just mastered the system we had setup beyond what we ever imagined. Same has happened in every GalCiv and we always respond by coming up with ways to try to bring those numbers back into line with how the game was designed.

(this was particularly true in the OS/2 version when all the ships were in a 1000 member array, I simply brought up a dialog telling the player that the galaxy was too crowded).

Obviously, the easiest way to solve this would be to just hard cap the production of planets. We could just say, anything after say 500 research per turn is lost to corruption and cal it a day. That's how GalCiv II would have handled it.

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