Perplexed by some things I've observed

1. Yep. Though I didn't know the manual said otherwise. Military production on the otherhand doesn't get spent unless your using it (so I've heard). I don't think its been acknowledged as a bug.

2. each megaton feeds 1 billion, not million. And theres planet hard caps based on quality, so be careful not to overproduce food for a colony.

3. Yep. Completely normal. Some of 'em get special bonuses you can't even buy though, like the Yor getting +100% loyalty and +25% miniaturization.

4. My guess (and it is a guess) is your homeworld capital gives you a free production and research bonus. Worth a check.

#1 Isn't a bug, it never was stated anywhere that civic production would be "un-spent"

Thanks for the responses.

Guy-Jay, I beg to differ. Qutoing from the top of page 29 of the printed manual which came with the retail game:

"If you have no projects queud, the number above the hammers will be in parenthesis. In this case, the hammers are not drawing bc from your treasury"

Seems pretty explicit . I also feel that it wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

Some type of official response on this would be greatly appreciated.

Also, is there a table indicating what the population hardcaps are anywhere?

With regards to social production, it was decided after the manual went to print to change that.

Essentially, if social production didn't count, you would huge tilts in how much your spending was going every turn as a new tech would come in and suddenly all your planets started upgrading some building.

As for item 4, production due to an ability is free.

Ok. Thatnks for the quick response Frogboy, it is very much appreciated.

Sadly, however, his response is nonsensical. This feature of social production wasting money is not helping the player any as it stands. It rather causes a lot of micromanagement, as one needs to go through the planets setting special focuses on and off military/research, so you're not totally wasting all of your money.

Indeed. Further, it encourages a player in later stages of the game to micromanage their galactic social spending. I often drop mine completely to zero, raising it again only when I get new tech that allows for upgraded buildings.

I immensely dislike the system as it stands. It's not just described poorly in the manual, it's entirely unintuitive.

What *would* help is sliders on individual worlds, rather than "focus", that allow for each world's social production to be turned off *completely* when there is nothing to build. Futher, a governor should do this automatically.

As it stands, the social spending system is far too much micromanagement, far too nonsensical, and not in any way "fun".

From Frogboy

With regards to social production, it was decided after the manual went to print to change that. Essentially, if social production didn't count, you would huge tilts in how much your spending was going every turn as a new tech would come in and suddenly all your planets started upgrading some building.

Instead of letting bc go to waste, Stardock should consider adding a "Margin" slider that automatically curbs your spending. This new slider would be activated with a check box and have a range along the lines of -5000bc to +5000bc. When the slider is active, it greys out the Spending Slider and automatically adjusts it to yield a net income that matches the Profit slider as closely as possible. Setting the Margin Slider at either extreme would simple max out or bottom out your spending if your economy could not handle a margin of + or - 5000bc.

I don't even understand any of this talk about social production, LOL. I hope it becomes more understandable as I play the game more (I've only messed around with the game a few times so far, playing a few turns here and there after doing the tutorials and reading about half of the manual)...

Why is it so bad if the game spends Social Production (SP) that you aren't using anyway? I'm cornfused...

If it's easier to tell me just to play the game more and I'll understand it, that's cool..just let me know. If you can explain it in simpler terms though, in here, that'd be great too... (Not meaning to derail this thread, however..)

StarBane,

When you are in the late game, a LOT of money goes down the tubes with wasted social production. Trying to avoid this loss involves some rather awkward micro-management.

Thanks for the response Frogboy.

Well you're the designer of course, and I'm just a casual gamer, but I don't really like the solution. It means I've got to watch hard earned money go to waste or micromanage.

If I understand the problem you're trying to solve:
- I've got little or no social production going on, but I've got a social production % set, so I'm showing a nice +bc every week
- I decide to go shopping ... hmmm, yes, let me rush build all these nice things. Interest? Who care, I'm rich.
- New tech arrives and all planets start upgrading ... now I'm big bc's in the red.
- Financial death-spiral or no social upgrades for a long time ... bad choice.

So you are trying to make the weekly bc indicator stay more constant to help financial planning? Well, why not just leave the money from non-social producing planets out of the weekly bc change number displayed on the screen? You can still drop it into the treasury, showing it on the summary profit and loss as a "social produciton surplus" or something AFTER calculating the bc change number. This means you've got a constant number to plan spending with, but still get the money dropped iin after the calculation. It happens all the time in business of course - that's why there are so many profit measure, e.g. EBITDA, NPAT. The number shown as the bc change number would be the profit before the social production surplus. Any way, just a thought.

Sure, not a perfect solution, but none of them are here.

With regards to social production, it was decided after the manual went to print to change that.

Galactic Civilization II is a very different game in many ways from the Civilization series. One of the biggest differences is that money is the foundation of everything that a "city" does.

What this means is that managing money therefore becomes the most important thing that a civilization can produce. Now, this has its good effects and bad effects, neither of which is important for the purposes of this discussion. What matters is that, objectively, the most important thing that a player must, must do to stay compeditive in the game is manage their money well.

This means watching what they build. In terms of military spending, this is pretty easy. That is because military production only draws from your account when you use it. If you need extra money, you know that you can just stop building ships. Or, looked at from the other way around, if you know that you're going to be building a grand fleet, and your total military spending outstrips your economy, then you know you'll be into deficit spending.

The tools necessary to monitor and manage military spending are pretty decent (though there could be improvements, but that's neither here nor there). Specifically, the most important tool is the ability to just not build anything. Another tool is to prioritize production on a per-planet basis. The last tool is the global slider for cross-empire production.

Now, the thing about building stuff is that there are times when you need it and times when you don't. When you don't need to be building ships, you're not building ships. When you don't need to build improvements, you don't build them. Simple.

The tools necessary to manage social production are fewer. Without the ability to return unused social production, you're left with the global slider and the per-planet priority. Neither tool is good enough. You can't "deprioritize" spending, so if you just want to return some of your social production, you have to pick whether you want to focus on research or military at that base. And the global slider is right out, unless you don't need social projects anywhere in the empire. Which is unlikely.

The thing is that the two tools are probably enough to get away with things, but it's a pain to use them. Using the production directly to control it is easy: you're either building stuff or you're not. If you use the queue correctly, it happens automatically. The other way is to alter the global sliders and then go to each planet and change their priority settings. Those planets that still need social should specialize in it. Those that don't need to specialize in military or research. However, you also adjust the global slider so that, by specializing in military (for example), military and research are equal (all other things being equal, of course). This would require upping the research slider significantly.

This is painful. And unfun. But, because the prime function of the player is to manage their funding, players either do it or they miss out on an opportunity for a more optimized economy.

So, by applying this feature, you have effectively made it much more difficult for the player to execute his prime function: managing funding. Remember, we already decided that, as a basic game design decision (indeed, what separates GalCiv2 from Civilization) that managing funding was a primary player operation. You have made this job not only more difficult, but you have made it possible for the player to spend a great deal of time doing something unfun, simply because it makes their empire (significantly) more efficient. There's a big payoff, so players will do it. But they'll hate you for it.

BTW, your argument for this misfeature (a technical term for a designed feature that damages the game rather than enhances it) about wild swings in money is ultimately rooted in a deeper problem: automated upgrades of facilities beyond the user's ability to control. Ships are not required to swap out Laser IV for Laser V, despite the fact that I just researched it. So what is the logic behind forced building upgrades?

Now, to some degree, this goes into one of your journal entires on the weakness of the Dread Lords: they're tech advantage means that they can't use low-end stuff. So, when they take a world, they have to upgrade everything to DL-quality stuff before it becomes useful to them. This is all fine and good for the campaign, but forcing the player to spend time and building effort on such things in the regular game seems oddly like punishing the player for getter farther along the game.

It's one thing to restrict the culture from being able to build the low-end buildings after upgrades become available (though, personally, I prefer the Civilzation method of you have to build the low-end buildings as prereqs to get the high-end ones, per city). It's quite another to take money out of the player's hand to force them to "modernize" their cities. Or, as you have done with this misfeature, to take money out of the player's hand all the time.

However, if you're going to continue to keep this misfeature around (auto-upgrading), then Makris's suggest is pretty reasonable. It should, of course, include the display of both the unadjusted bc income as well as the actual (for this turn) bc income (perhaps in parenthesis).

With regards to social production, it was decided after the manual went to print to change that.

Galactic Civilization II is a very different game in many ways from the Civilization series. One of the biggest differences is that money is the foundation of everything that a "city" does.

What this means is that managing money therefore becomes the most important thing that a civilization can produce. Now, this has its good effects and bad effects, neither of which is important for the purposes of this discussion. What matters is that, objectively, the most important thing that a player must, must do to stay compeditive in the game is manage their money well.

This means watching what they build. In terms of military spending, this is pretty easy. That is because military production only draws from your account when you use it. If you need extra money, you know that you can just stop building ships. Or, looked at from the other way around, if you know that you're going to be building a grand fleet, and your total military spending outstrips your economy, then you know you'll be into deficit spending.

The tools necessary to monitor and manage military spending are pretty decent (though there could be improvements, but that's neither here nor there). Specifically, the most important tool is the ability to just not build anything. Another tool is to prioritize production on a per-planet basis. The last tool is the global slider for cross-empire production.

Now, the thing about building stuff is that there are times when you need it and times when you don't. When you don't need to be building ships, you're not building ships. When you don't need to build improvements, you don't build them. Simple.

The tools necessary to manage social production are fewer. Without the ability to return unused social production, you're left with the global slider and the per-planet priority. Neither tool is good enough. You can't "deprioritize" spending, so if you just want to return some of your social production, you have to pick whether you want to focus on research or military at that base. And the global slider is right out, unless you don't need social projects anywhere in the empire. Which is unlikely.

The thing is that the two tools are probably enough to get away with things, but it's a pain to use them. Using the production directly to control it is easy: you're either building stuff or you're not. If you use the queue correctly, it happens automatically. The other way is to alter the global sliders and then go to each planet and change their priority settings. Those planets that still need social should specialize in it. Those that don't need to specialize in military or research. However, you also adjust the global slider so that, by specializing in military (for example), military and research are equal (all other things being equal, of course). This would require upping the research slider significantly.

This is painful. And unfun. But, because the prime function of the player is to manage their funding, players either do it or they miss out on an opportunity for a more optimized economy.

So, by applying this feature, you have effectively made it much more difficult for the player to execute his prime function: managing funding. Remember, we already decided that, as a basic game design decision (indeed, what separates GalCiv2 from Civilization) that managing funding was a primary player operation. You have made this job not only more difficult, but you have made it possible for the player to spend a great deal of time doing something unfun, simply because it makes their empire (significantly) more efficient. There's a big payoff, so players will do it. But they'll hate you for it.

BTW, your argument for this misfeature (a technical term for a designed feature that damages the game rather than enhances it) about wild swings in money is ultimately rooted in a deeper problem: automated upgrades of facilities beyond the user's ability to control. Ships are not required to swap out Laser IV for Laser V, despite the fact that I just researched it. So what is the logic behind forced building upgrades?

Now, to some degree, this goes into one of your journal entires on the weakness of the Dread Lords: they're tech advantage means that they can't use low-end stuff. So, when they take a world, they have to upgrade everything to DL-quality stuff before it becomes useful to them. This is all fine and good for the campaign, but forcing the player to spend time and building effort on such things in the regular game seems oddly like punishing the player for getter farther along the game.

It's one thing to restrict the culture from being able to build the low-end buildings after upgrades become available (though, personally, I prefer the Civilzation method of you have to build the low-end buildings as prereqs to get the high-end ones, per city). It's quite another to take money out of the player's hand to force them to "modernize" their cities. Or, as you have done with this misfeature, to take money out of the player's hand all the time.

However, if you're going to continue to keep this misfeature around (auto-upgrading), then Makris's suggest is pretty reasonable. It should, of course, include the display of both the unadjusted bc income as well as the actual (for this turn) bc income (perhaps in parenthesis).

double post

Uhm ... I was just about to create a thread about this. And I don't really find the explaination sensible. It can be reasonable at first, but later in the game it's a huge problem:


- Problem 1: Because the Military and Society production draw from the same source (factories), so if you increases one, you have to increase the others. Now later in the game when you start building Destroyers class vessel (and trust me, the one the players design will be very expensive comparing to the default destroyers). I need to keep a full array of factories even on a full developed planet so I can produce these vessel at a reasonable race.

- Problem 2: the focus option can not solve the problem for 2 reasons:
+ It shifts by percentage, so on a planet that has a huge capacity, even if you place forcus on shield you still waste a whole lot of hammers.
+ Not only it shifts hammer to shield, it also shifts research point, which something I don't want to. Later tech is rather expensive and shifting certain planets can increases the time of researching by several turns which is unacceptable.


- Problem 3: this especially bad for a Conquest type. Say even if you fully developed your planets, and shift social spending to zero, and start attacking. However most of the time after conquering a planet I have to remodel it. Either upgrade because it's outdate, or rebuild because of Mass Driver warfar, or simply because the planet is built totally whack. That means I have to turn on Social Product again. And woot, you turn on 1 planet you turn on several star systems . As I said, as this state of the game usually the core's planets have very high production capacity for the war afford, this action can easily shift the spending from barely enough to huge defeciet . At this state even if I focus the shield (and my research point as a result) I can still easily waste 100+ hammers on several core planets of mine, and that's ALOT !.



I think there are 2 issue here, first it doesn't make sense (doh!), second it doesn't help anything really . I think the main reason here is because only a couple of options handle too many mechanisms at the same time. If this issue is not fixed (ala stop costing shield when it's not needed), it needs to be improvised, and that means the mechanisms need to be "individualized"

+ You shift hammer, you also shift research point ----------> Need to separate this. Allow only shift ONE THING as will.

+ Each planet need to be individualize ------------> So what you do to one planet doesn't affect the whole empire.

Or the easiest way, treat the Hammer like the shield. I don't really understand why it is this way if the designer delibrately want it to be this way, since it's a design that doesn't make lot of sense and on large scale game, trust me when I say it seriously handicaps the players.

I could go either way on this. I agree with many of the points on why it would seem logical to change this.
At the same time however, remember that the AI is forced to deal with the same limitations.

Changing the way this feature behaves isn't going to give you more resources or money to use against the AI, they'll get the benefit to use against you as well.

Forcing social spending in the absence of projects reallycan be thought of as a tax on your manufacturing base. That may actually be a good thing for balance reasons.

Think about it this way. Under the current scheme, the more colonies you have, the more you are 'taxed' due to wasted social production. It's kind of an anchor on the players that have the most colonies. Not too much of one, but it is. In a game genre that's easily plauged by snowballing, or he who has the most worlds generally wins by wearing the other side down, any sort of penalty on the game leaders is ok in my book.

Would it be more logical if it was changed? probably.
Would it be more fun? *shrugs*

@Burianek : That doesn't really work:

- We play as the leaders, we're not supposed to be taxed, but the other way around.

- Each planet alreadys has a mantain fee. In most case the amount of money that's waste by production is a lot more then the mount of money you use to maintain the planet.


If the fee is considered neccessary, I think it need to be scale to certain ratio. Also, the game interprets hammer as the value of resouce on the planet, it doesn't make a lot of sense when I have a ship wating to be finish up in orbit while I'm wasting nearly half of my resource down on the planet

I'm sorry to say, but this breaks the game completely. I'm not gonna waste time prioritizing every single planet of a large empire just so a few additional bc are not wasted. On a 100+ production planet, prioritizing something else still leads to wasting 100+ bc every single turn, and that's per plamet!!!!! Damn, it's so difficult to produce income for starter, if the design of the game makes it so that you can't help but waste it then there is simply not point in playing it.

I'm really pissed by the official answer... It's pushing "a known bug is a feature" far behind any resonable line.

Shit, $40 down the drain!