zuPloed

[quote who="tungchiawah" reply="155" id="3691758"] I think the simplest solution is to have Factories give a flat bonus. No population requirement. It's easy to implement, it doesn't change the system , and it doesn't break the AI. [/quote]This. We haven't even seen to potential of the current system because the numbers are off. In the spirit of keeping with the current system and with frogboys preference of not having commutative addition (I'm not s

[quote who="Go4Celerity" reply="138" id="3691703"] There's a lot of PopulationtoProductionExponent between the current 1.0 and the earlier 0.5. [...] If the game mechanics have crashed, then treat them like you would your computer. Restore it to the last stable state and make different choices. [/quote]The functional relation doesn't really matter that much. It only makes calculating it more tedious. I think linear is best because it is easiest to see the benefit as

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="131" id="3691680"] Broadly speaking, the goal is for a planet to remain within a certain, manageble level of development. If a planet starts at N production, we don't want it to go beyond 3N by end of the game. 3N is a huge jump. But we have frequently seen cases where people are getting 100N or 200N. [/quote]Well I learned to love vanilla for its 100N's.I love to play like the Asgard from stargate, not particulary wide spread, but t

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="108" id="3691555"] I don't think this would work well. It boils back down to the commutative property of addition. Whether it's the population or the improvements providing the flat doesn't really matter. [/quote][quote who="zuPloed" reply="112" id="3691564"] Hmm, but the multiplicative version only means there is an optimal ratio of flat to percent, which is governed by tile efficiency of improvements (currently ratio is so high that % is vanishing

[quote who="trims2u" reply="117" id="3691582"] But that doesn't address the primary problem we have here, which is that under the current setup, the best strategy for something like a Quality 10 planet is 2 cities + 4 farms in appropriate configuration, plus 4 Approval buildings, and NOTHING else, and still be close to 75% Approval. That can get you to a Pop 20 or more planet that's a powerhouse compared against anything else you could do with that those 10 hexes. To say nothing if you d

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="108" id="3691555"] I don't think this would work well. It boils back down to the commutative property of addition. Whether it's the population or the improvements providing the flat doesn't really matter. [/quote]Hmm, but the multiplicative version only means there is an optimal ratio of flat to percent, which is governed by tile efficiency of improvements (currently ratio is so high that % is vanishingly small). This is nice for doing spreadsheets, but

[quote who="Alodan" reply="102" id="3691538"] So you have 1 farm 1 approval building and 1 city, what is the difference to 1 money, 1 factory and 1 research building? You can move numbers as much as you want, either it is redundant because both do the same or either specialized buildings or population is useless. [/quote]Not a bad point. One difference is that population gains you votes in the U.P., which the others don't. In vanilla it used to be almost the only pro

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="82" id="3691496"] What is YOUR suggestion then? Specifically? [/quote]Just for the record, I told you in the coding extravaganza thread, that this was gonna happen if you do 1:1 instead of .25:1 or .333:1. I also seem to recall you answered my first warning about making changes to trigger a cascade of things which need rebalancing by telling me to go balance my own game. I DID make suggestions. ...Anyways, I'm ready to put this to the bygo

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="74" id="3691459"] You will only be able to build two cities on planets in 2.6. [/quote]*sigh* Well do whatever you want... you are doing it anyway... I don't like this approach to balance at all. Putting numbers way out of proportion to each other and then putting in hard caps everywhere. The space of interesting options to think through is now severely reduced compared to how vanilla used to be.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="27" id="3691199"] I agree on that. In 2.6 you can only build 1 city and 1 metropolis. This still lets you go from say 3 population to 11 population (more than tripling) but you won't be able to go unlimited. [/quote]I'm not really sure what you are talking about... I checked yesterday in the last opt in version and I can fill an arbitrary number of tiles with cities and farms. Let's calculate together what the per tile benefit of a two far

[quote who="Uncle_Joe" reply="10" id="3691145"] Also, each major iteration requires ‘re-learning’ what to do again. This isn’t ‘strategy’ per se, it’s simply puzzling out the mechanics…again. [/quote]The worst about it is, that puzzling it out is not even stimulating because it is so easy. [quote who="Frogboy" reply="8" id="3691142"] Quoting tungchiawah,</div

Between FPS, RTS, racing and sports games you have mentioned a wide variety. I am alittle surprised there are no tactics games among them. I got Sunless Sea, too, put some hours ino it, but it allways feels like 'those apples you just can't reach'. It was interesting, but I didn't quite like it. So if you want to check that genre out, I can suggest the two more recent XCOM titles (the newer of which will shortly get an addon) and as an Indie title: Thea - The Awakening (which

If your starsystem has 4 or more asteroids, you can start by: turn 1) rush shipyard, rush constructor turn 2) rush space elevator turn 3+ remember to keep some money in reserve for potential future asteroid mines. place the constructor next to at least two asteroids and build the mines as soon as possible. If you make a custom civ, take 2 constructors as starting ships and get the asteroid mines that way. If you find a star with 5+ asteroids it is wor

[quote who="ProudCanadian" reply="4" id="3688749"] I guess it depends on how much you gain from the opponent that you rush and how quickly you can finish them off. [/quote]Potentially a lot. I think it was neilkaz, who once scored a 91 turn research victory back in vanilla on huge vs godlike, by being very aggressive about early invasions. In sc2 free-for-all an early kill means you are behind in economy for some time to come, since you destroy enemy infrastructure.

[quote]Other than knowing I was going for a rush attack, there's not much they could have done. If they had met me a little sooner, they might have been able to tell that I was b-lining towards invasion tech [...]. But I was careful to stay away from them. [/quote]Interesting Dilemma you are having there. This problem is actually similar to some situations in starcraft 2 ladder. In early-game sc2 you almost always operate on limited knowledge, but sometimes you run into someone w

Just noticed all my pre-2.5 custom factions start at 10 population. Newly created custom factions have 5 pop.

Started two short-ish rounds (medium galaxy, normal difficulty). First Round: as Terrans vs. Iconians, Drenin, YOR, Onyx, Torians. The Good: Got strat. ressources form scavanging for the first time. Only technical issue I ran into was a missing description and name on some kind of thulium U.P. resolution. Turned Earth into a hiveworld with 30 billion population, looks good to me. Made me use celecrity cit

You mentioned, you wanted to rebalance the population to production (pop-to-prod) curve and nothing since. If you do/start this over the weekend, keep in mind, that production got buffed with crusade: - in vanilla one point of prodcution meant 1 point was distributed between manufacturing (civil and military), research and credits - in crusade one point of production gives one to each of the four above. Depending on how much one values credits and the economy wheel, one can arg

[quote who="gyan42" reply="16" id="3687491"] I really want to like this game, but it's terribly imbalance and exploitable. [/quote]Well... You took a bad time to get into it, in my opinion. I have a couple hundred hours into this game (pre-Crusade). I do like it. But so far Crusade, though it some interesting stuff, is a downgrade I paid for so far. There is a bunch of options for modding the balance and like to tell others here, that they should just mod game in a way they

[quote who="admiralWillyWilber" reply="12" id="3687462"] Crusades have been out for 3 months, not a year. [/quote]They didn't give a damn about it pre-Crusade. See the links I gave before. Missile Attack speed stacking is known for 27 months. Evasion stacking for over 15 months.

[quote who="gyan42" reply="10" id="3687451"] do fleet rate of fire mods stack? [/quote]Yes they do. And not the way you'd expect.[quote who="gyan42" reply="10" id="3687451"] missiles are clearly OP. [/quote] Yes they are. And always were (note the date of the op is twenty seven months ago).

[quote who="SarahAustin" reply="6" id="3686024"] Because AI: Programmed and therefore limited on what it can do. [/quote]It can't for example buy asteroid mines as soon as they are in their empires ZOC. They leave them lying around for over ten turns sometimes. The AI couldn't push improvement upgrades down the priority list (e.g. xeno factories, when terraforming just got available and could let it build a factory providing adjacency to a starport and a space elevator). I d

[quote who="admiralWillyWilber" reply="1" id="3685760"] You shoulf fire the spy. [/quote]Synths get disassembled and/or memory wiped, not fired. Had to chuckle on your comment though.

Sounds to me like you copied from the GC3/data folder. That's where the base game is located. Try to copy from DLC/EXP2_Crusade/... That's where the files for crusade are located.

[quote quoting="post"] Balancing Thoughts There is no perfect balance[/quote]Nobody asked you to make it perfect. But a balance that does not render other game elements irrelevant (e.g. jamming renders defenses nearly irrelevant) should be expect from a veteran game designer.[quote quoting="post"]because what is balanced is in the eye of the beholder.[/quote]No. 'Balanced' is a state of the game where from several different ways o