Tweak economic and industry model

It can be both simpler, better, more intuitive, strategic, practical with these suggestions.

Overall I like the game concept. It's just too bad that the economic and insdustry / research model is so very awful.

What can be done?

1) Remove Military / social / research slider completely.

Why? It doesn't make sense, it does not add any good strategical element and is downright absurd and faulty.

example) Social production gets wasted, you have to monitor and micromanage all your bases a lot more often to make sure resources aren't wasted. Often it doesn't make sense to upgrade, as it is much to costly compared to benefits.

2) Keep taxes / spending slider.

Why? No need to change something that works well, and also makes sense. You can manage your empires finances and approval easily here. However I wonder why taxes is the ONLY thing that affect your approval rating. Oh well.

3) Factories / research buildings that are being built will add production when they are built. They only depend on the overall spending slider, and no other splits. If it has x production or research, it will add x*tax-spending.

Why? It's makes more sense, it works better in practice, it requires less micromanagement, it will be more strategic as you can actually specialize your planets better.

4) Population is the source of tax as before. This makes sense and works well. Most people aren't scientists or work in starports etc.

5)* Keep obsolete buildings and make them available even though there are more advanced versions available - IF - (I'm not sure about this part yet, as the game lacks so much feedback and information) - they are more expensive than there basic counterparts.

Why? Because this would help you set up working worlds faster lategame without having to buy all the improvements. But as I said, this is only an issue if the more advanced buildings are more expensive than the basic ones.

6)* Make upgrading cheaper than building a completely new same type structure - IF (Again I don't know if this is true or not yet for the same reason) - it costs as much as of now to upgrade as to build a new one.

Why? Because otherwise you wouldn't want to upgrade a building as long as there are available space on the planet.

7)* Consider separating factory production from social production.

example) Factories are instead starport shipyards. More factories means you'll build ships faster. period. Population decides how fast buildings are being built. The higher population, the faster you can finish buildings, but it would probably be best if this was not in direct proportion. Just a thought.

8)* Consider population playing a part in planets productive output to some extent.

9)* Consider population increase depend on available space as well. It won't grow as fast when they approach planet quality limits as in the beginning on a new fruitius world.

10) Overall better feedback, like information on population growth, effects of approval rating etc.

These are some glaringly appearant flaws I noticed right in the beginning while playing the game, as well as some other suggestions that could be considered in future patches.

1, and 3 are MUST CHANGES imo as it doesn't work well at all as it is, since it's counterintuitive, impractical, faulty etc etc etc.

Too bad economy is so awful, since there are other aspects of the game I like.

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I forgot:

- Either separate social production factories from military production factories / starports, or you might actually want a slider for this. Like Wartime / peacetime - slider. Since I don't like this slider, and it doesn't work at all if research is on the same one, I'd prefer it if starports and factories were separate buildings, or social production based on pupulation.

In the end it doesn't work as well with a wartime / peacetime slider as just separating the two would, since it'd mean that you'd be forced to buy social projects lategame on newer worlds. Why couldn't one specialize a new planet for improvement apart from a developed one to spaceship production?

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Brillig

Join Date 03/2003

1) Remove Military / social / research slider completely.

Why? It doesn't make sense, it does not add any good strategical element and is downright absurd and faulty.

I disagree. Having to focus spending on research vs production *is* a strategic decision. And strategical is not a word. I would point out that Civ4 also uses a similar paradigm of splitting between hammers, culture and beakers. Is that absurd and faulty too? In that case the two best TBS games in the last year are horribly flawed. I encourage you to make your own right away.

2) Keep taxes / spending slider.

Why? No need to change something that works well, and also makes sense. You can manage your empires finances and approval easily here. However I wonder why taxes is the ONLY thing that affect your approval rating. Oh well.

This cracks me up. You say at the end that "1, 2 and 3 are MUST CHANGES imo as it doesn't work well at all as it is, since it's counterintuitive, impractical, faulty etc etc etc."

Except #2 is to keep everything as it is. Excellent MUST CHANGE! I'M TOTALLY IN AGREEMENT!

3) Factories / research buildings that are being built will add production as they are built. They only depend on the overall spending slider, and no other splits. If it has x production or research, it will add x*tax-spending.

Why? It's makes more sense, it works better in practice, it requires less micromanagement, it will be more strategical as you can actually specialize your planets better.

Nope, makes no sense. Having removed the sliders, it makes sense that the output of a planet (there are no bases, m'kay?) would be solely dependant on spending rate. That said, how does that have ANYTHING to do with buildings adding production as they are being built? And have you noticed that buildings can be moved around in the priority queue while being built? Welcome to a micromanagement nightmare, as the best worlds will consist entirely of partially built buildings!

4) Population is the source of tax as before. This makes sense and works well. Most people aren't scientists or work in starports etc.

Another important tweak to do... nothing. At least it's not a MUST CHANGE!

5)* Keep obsolete buildings and make them available even though there are more advanced versions available - IF - (I'm not sure about this part yet, as the game lacks so much feedback and information) - they are more expensive than there basic counterparts.

This one might actually be useful. However, you *add* problems to the game in that people will accidentally build the wrong structure. And since the governor automatically upgrades, you're not buying a whole lot. If you're still colonizing worlds late enough that this is a problem, you're usually able to afford to rush-buy the first factory anyway. And after that everything comes pretty quickly.

6)* Make upgrading cheaper than building a completely new same type structure - IF (Again I don't know if this is true or not yet for the same reason) - it costs as much as of now to upgrade as to build a new one.

Why? Because otherwise you wouldn't want to upgrade a building as long as there are available space on the planet.

It *is* cheaper. Bad UI though. If you select a structure, select the upgrade and click the "UPGRADE" button, then go to the queue and select "BUY", you'll find it significantly cheaper.

8)* Consider population playing a part in planets productive output to some extent.

This is being considered by the folks at Stardock.

9)* Consider population increase depend on available space as well. It won't grow as fast when they approach planet quality limits as in the beginning on a new fruitius world.

And this isn't absurd? A smaller population breeds faster than a larger one? What's a fruitius?

10) Overall better feedback, like information on population growth, effects of approval rating etc.

Stardock is working on improving those tooltips.

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I owned about 60 planets during my last game, and I was not spending my time on micromanagement at all ! Generally you set the 'configuration' of a planet only once you get it, you let it build, grow, just live... And then you can have an overall view of all the colonies thanks to the screen for colonies management. You can then adjust the colonies in function...
Having 3 different ways of spending the income _is_ strategic. If you don't use those sliders, then I suppose you did not play much, or got killed by the AI after a while...

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Nope, I won easily.

Heh, seems I worded quite a few things wrong. English is not my first language so to clarify Brillig:

1) You can't compare it to civ 4 since they actually do not use this system. The slider from civ 4 is different and only affects income, and not production. Big difference. If you have this slider, it means that you just let a lot of things lie idle. Why would you ever want things to lie idle?

3) It was thinking and typing at the same time so it came out wrong. Of course I meant after they are built, ut they give the set amount, since they are being worked. However, you can choose if they will be used to their full potential or only partially (<100% spending). This should not depend on an arbitrary let industries / research facilities lie idle. It just does not make sense.

How would anyone else explain it then? That you can move all your scientists and citizen workers into the factories for 200% extra output? It just does not make sense.

9) Is it spelled fruitious then? It does make sense that population increase would decline by the end as they reach whatever arbitrary habitable limit the planet has. I'm not saying a smaller population increases faster than a large one.

Like 2 and 4 I typed to keep track on the things already in play, and also to clarify what does not need or really should be altered since they work just fine. No need to nitpick, I'll edit my OP.

- Farms. As they are right now, there's not much point in them apart that you need one or two. But compared to all the other types of buildings, you don't need many or any at all. If you want to max a planet, you still only need to build a few, while you generally have to build lots and lots of moralimproving buildings. These ratios seems quite a bit off. Oh, and generally you never want to build on the special food boost resource tile. Doesn't that tell them something they balanced this resource wrong.

So you two who already posted then think it's just fine that 25% the income is spent on NOTHING! What a great idea! Hey, if you build a Manufacturing Capital, you spend even more money on nothing at all. Isn't that clever?

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One of the best ways to use the expense slider is to minimize wasted production. If your colonies aren't building ships or social projects, put all your money into research. It's not like it takes an hour to change it around or that it's effects aren't obvious. Also, have you tried playing harder difficulties? Try some of the higher ones, and if the production slider is still useless, then you ought to e on top of the metaverse in minutes.

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