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Implementing player suggestions

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Implementing player suggestions

The limits and the possibilities

from JoeUser Forums

I've been reading a lot of discussion both here and on other sites about ideas and suggestions players have for Galactic Civilizations II.  Stardock, I like to think, is reasonably well known for implementing pretty significant changes into its software well after release.  If we think something is a really good idea and it won't dramatically change the product, we'll seriously consider implementing it.  We've been doing that since the first software products we released over 10 years ago.

Of course, the question is, what constitutes a change that is too dramatic? And how can we determine whether a given idea is something that's good for the game or not?

Before we start out there, I should make a clarification on something.  I've seen threads where people will say "Yea, but Brad says it's working as designed so he obviously thinks it's great."  That's not what I mean when I say that.  The context is important. 

As an engineer, I try to be precise as I can be with my words. That's one of the reasons I'm so wordy. What I write tends to be full of qualifications. One of the things I tend to object to strongly is when someone will take a design choice they disagree with and simply label it as a "bug".  A bug, to me, is something that is not working as designed.  Someone may not like a given feature, but if it's working as it's supposed to, it's not a bug. But that doesn't mean that we think it's the end-all be all feature.

One of the areas I want to tackle in the post release is the economic system of Galactic Civilizations II.  But I don't want to do it alone. I want to hear what other people think too.  But such discussions can be problematic.  As with any on-line discussion, disagreements will break out.  With people all around the world, many with strong opinions, you inevitably end up with some people who will state their opinions as facts. "This is how game X did it. Do it like that."  There is no single "best" solution. We all have our own ideas. What we can do, however, is build a consensus to some degree.

Economic Systems & Strategy Games

Some parts of the game I feel strongly about, other areas are open to significant change.

For example, in Galactic Civilizations II as leader of your civilization you can set your tax rate -- the money coming in from your people.  And you can set your "spend rate" which determines what % of your industrial/research capacity to make use of.  I believe that governments should be able to intentionally have deficit spending.  I believe that your financial income should not be tied to your industrial capacity. If you have the factories and labs to do it, you should be able to make full use of them regardless of your income. It's called deficit spending and it's practiced by many governments.  Your population will get angry if you go too far into debt. And right now, we have a -$500 debt ceiling. 

Having taxation and spending separate is something I'm married to. I like it.  I realize it's more complex than in some other games but of the other systems we've contemplated over the years, I think it provides the best balance between realism and simplicity.  People are free to disagree of course.  That's natural. Some % of people will not like it.  But I think most people understand it.

So let's talk about the part of the system I'm not married to -- the UI representation of it.

So you have your spend rate -- the % of your industrial capacity that you want to make use of.  Then the question is, where do you want that industrial capacity to go?  There are 3 sliders that control how that spending is funneled.  The three sliders allow you to decide how much to fund your factories and research labs.  Military and social spending goes into your factories which produce more planetary improvements and build your ships.  Research spending goes to your labs and is converted to research points that go to getting your next tech.

I don't think it's that complicated and judging from the various forums I read, most people understand how it works. But not everyone. Some people don't understand it and others just don't like it.  The group that doesn't understand it tend to be the same people who don't understand why taxation and spending aren't linked because "game X does that".  Part of the reason I put in having taxes and spending be separate was out of frustration with other strategy games that tried to act like ones money income was somehow tied to their industrial production. As if the Germans in World War II could simply have bought more armies with money (yea, I know you can quick build but it comes as a very steep price -- on purpose). Industrial capacity has nothing to do with wealth. Hence the division.

Rhetoric

I confess, I get defensive in response to rhetoric.  I tend to have an aversion to absolutes or people giving their opinions as facts. Every game that has an economic system is going to have people who think they have a better idea on how to do it.  We obviously like our system. We think it works pretty well and we think most players think it's fine too.  But that doesn't stop us from trying to listen and make improvements to make it even better.  But when some player asserts something is "broken" that makes it sound like it's a bug and then puts us in the position of having to defend our design decision. 

Every element of the game is a choice. Why only 5 planets in a solar system? Why not 9? Why do we allow millions of people to come into the tax system in a given week? There's so many design choices that have to be made but at the end of the day, our goal is to make the game fun.  But one man's fun is another man's headache.  I've gotten emails from people who simply can't play the game as long as Earth and Jupiter are on the map in the wrong scale (Earth is much smaller than Jupiter in real life but we try to scale things so that they're usable on screen).  Heck, I should post some of the emails I get, you'd be shocked at some of the stuff.  I got one today from someone who claimed they were returning the game because all the alien races are humanoid. I kid you not. Hey, at least they're not all humans with different nose ridges! ;)

Rhetoric matters.  When someone comes onto the forum and makes a post entitled something like "Map system totally broken" and it turns out it's because we use squares instead of hexes or because the moon rotates around the earth in clockwise or whatever it puts us on the defensive.  I think that's just human nature.  I realize some people find it tempting to say "Everyone with half a brain knows that the moon rotates counter-clockwise around the earth!11!1" But when you're on the receiving end and you know pretty certain that 99.9% of people don't care which way the moon is rotating because it's just a cool graphics effect, it's hard to champion changing it (incidentally, we are going to tweak that since it's in the customplanets.xml file).

Other Economic options

I have some ideas on economic tweaks that I could see us making.

For example: Social Production.  Social Production could be automatically transferred to ship building when all planetary improvements are done.  This would solve the potential issue of people's economy becoming crazy when all social projects are completed.  And if there's no ship to be built, it would just go back to your treasury.  It wouldn't be hard to do, would only require modest AI changes.  I can assure you the AI would love it.

Another area I could see tweaked is the relationship between research labs and factories.  Right now, spending is rationed between factories and labs.  But that's not the only way it could be done.  Other ways would require some UI thought though to keep it from being too complex. 

For example, rather than having a spending slider, you would simply have an industrial slider and a research slider that would be independent of each other. Then you'd have a dial that would let you decide how much of that industrial output was going to planet improvements and how much to ship building.  But doing it in an intuitive way would take some thought.

There are many other ways it could be done too.  All would require thought on how best to present it so that it's intuitive to players and doesn't radically change the game.

Conclusions

It's always tough trying to know where to draw the line on improvements. Game developers want to satisfy their gamers -- all of them. And often times, great ideas come from players. The whole starbase concept in Galactic Civilizations came from players for instance.

But you also have to take into account the people want to feel like they're playing on solid ground. That the game they're playing isn't that fluid. Because every change one makes is going to disappoint someone.  So we have to be very careful about how we do things.

That's my 2 cents on that anyway.

139,766 views 130 replies
Reply #101 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"The arguement that you will have 'more control' over production/research by decoupleing the sliders is also bogus, though the control from the decoupleing is more intuative perhaps."

Its not bogus. An example:

Say I have 10 MP's and 5 RP's. I'm restricted to spending at most 10 bc (in the case of choosing 100% spending, and a 100%/0% breakdown). If I'd like to fully fund everything, and pay the bills via, say, selling off techs, I am constrained from doing so. I am likewise constrained from fully utilizing my labs without shutting down my factories. Also a loss of control.

Clarity is a separate issue from control. It's unclear what the percentages on the breakdown slider are actually breaking down. The fact that they do in fact breakdown different quantities, and that how you set your breakdown changes the overall budget amount is very strange and counterintuitive. Strange and counterintutive can be good (that's what makes good games interesting), but I'm unsure of the purpose of doing so in this case. The current system does have the advantage that it resembles life, with all its unintended consequences and things outside one's control and ambiguities.
Reply #102 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
I have some issues with the current system of production and spending. First of all, I need to tell, how I usually play.

At the beginning of the game I put all money into production of colonizers. I usually buy the basic infrastructure - the first factory and a research facility. Here's the first problem: after I build my very first lab, it doesn't produce anything, because I'm spending 100% into shipbuilding. At the same time I'm buying factories, that ALSO don't produce anything (HUH?! ), and that continues until my colony rush is over. Only this way I can stay competitive with the AI in a race for habitable planets. After the rush is over, I switch to research (to catch-up in tech trade with the AI, that is usually 10+ techs ahead) and production of planetary structures (mil. production 0%, balancing other two to not waste scarce money on 98% finished buildings). This is the most MM-intense phase, as I'm usually in red numbers with money, so I can't buy off those few percents of unfinished build, and I can't sell tech to get money as I need it for buying tech from other players. Brad and Stardock, please make that phase (and the rest too) less MM intense by returning the excess money from project(s) into the reserve.

Now my empire is out of childbed, and I need to get some tech edge over the other players. I start intense research in planetary infrastructure tech, and in weapons, so my spending changes to what will remain for most of the game: about 15/15/70. Now here's the catch again: I have on a planet 3 factories, that could produce 30 "shields" and a colony center with 12, but I'm using only 30% of that - 14 "shields". That is about the output the basic colony center is providing! I can imagine you'd say "Spend more on the production!". Well, for some time I can do that. But then my highly productive and smaller planets run out of free tiles or upgrades. Then what? Dump social spending to 0%, when bigger planets are only half built? Even if I set my mil production on 50% and research at 50%, I'm be using only 50% of both types of installations. This way about one quarter of those precious green tiles on planets are WASTED.

Also I've noticed that some new players complain about AI heavily outperforming them. That IMO comes from the simple fact that game starts with the general spending slider not at 100%, and they don't know they have to set it to 100% manually. But why should someone tell the game to run econ at 100% anyway? Isn't much more naturaly labs and fact's run at 100% until ordered not to?

Here's my proposal of econ model and UI:
  1. drop general spending slider, keep only tax slider,
  2. tax slider gets an additional feature: a warning sign that turns on when one or more planets turn "red" when setting tax rate too high,
  3. industrial spending has 2 sliders for mil and soc (they share the same factories), and has a "box" that displays cumulative spending percentage,
  4. research funding is separated from industrial and has its own slider,
  5. both spendings start at 100%, industrial is divided 50%-50%,
  6. a net financial output is visible close to those sliders, so the player can see the financial outcome from his decisions, and adjust sliders properly,
  7. planets keep "focus" ability for spending, but only on mil and soc, and 2 levels of "focus": the current one and full 100% (no more "empty social queue" waste),
  8. game checks "prices", spendings and the completion of the current project, and spends only the amount of money that is needed to complete the project.
IMO those settings are much closer to the econ models we gamers know, they allow serious planet specialization, eliminate waste of money, and keep more precious tiles on planets available.

Thoughts or comments are welcome!
BR, Iztok
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #103 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
First of all, good job guys on the work you've put in so far for this excellent game. I think that the economy is pretty well done, (even the slider bars, which make sense to me since I haven't played MOO2 in several years) with the exception of the social idle production. My ideas on this subject are as follows :

1. Allow idle social production to filter into military production, though not at a 1:1 basis, otherwise everyone will just take social prod bonuses, and those races with mil. prod bonuses are screwed. Perhaps something like .25 (Social) : 1 (Military).

2. Another idea is to borrow from another game, and allow your Social Production to make money. This can either be done straight forward (excess production turns into money through some ratio), or a bit more interestingly (only allow it on planets with trade routes, as they're producing more stuff to send out for trade, thus upping the income of the trade route, not necessarily creating money ad hoc).

3. Set a slider to determine if excess social production goes into Military Production, Money, or to assist research (helping design/build prototypes, etc).

Personally, I'd like to see #2 & #3 implimented, on a planet by planet scale though, not globally.

I hope SOME of that made sense. It's a little late and I'm sleepy

Any comments, etc - [email protected]
Reply #104 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"Say I have 10 MP's and 5 RP's. I'm restricted to spending at most 10 bc (in the case of choosing 100% spending, and a 100%/0% breakdown). If I'd like to fully fund everything, and pay the bills via, say, selling off techs, I am constrained from doing so. I am likewise constrained from fully utilizing my labs without shutting down my factories. Also a loss of control."

It is not a loss of control, it is a different mechanism that you have to use. Indeed this mechanism means that focused planets are less useful than diverse planets (generally, though not always). Its a transition that is perhaps difficult to accept coming from other games which use other systems, but in the end you have the same amount of 'control' you just have to plan for it differently.


I can see why decoupleing the production and research sliders is more intuitive, but its also a completely different dynamic, which apparently stardock did not want. I won't complain if they change it to a different system (unless its somehow worse, which I doubt), but I will continue to point out why the arguements that the system restricts control are bogus.

"The fact that they do in fact breakdown different quantities, and that how you set your breakdown changes the overall budget amount is very strange and counterintuitive."

I disagree, but then again I played GC1 so I'm more used to the system perhaps. The end result is that you don't ever waste money, which is the most important element. The problem alot of people seem to be having is in the optimal way toset up their planets, which isn't to make completely specialized planets, but to arrive at some kind of blance between production and research on each. Obviously due to the capitols you are going to have some planets with greater abilities in one area or another, and there will be some 'waste', but as these rules apply to everyone its really not that large of an issue.

It would help though if there were a better understanding of where the 'free' production and research came from. For example if the capitols gave you 100% free production and research then there would be no extra waste due to having higher unsed capacities. The way it seems to be is that you have a base amount of production from your factories, then your max capacity gets modified by any bonuses you have at that planet, which helps, but it also adds more 'waste'. Easy example is if you have one factory(8) and your colony (24) you have a production capacity of 32. If you have a 50% bonus to production you now have a capacity of 48. So when you fund at 50% you are getting 24 production, and you are paying for 24 production . If the 50% effected your production after its paid (that is it doesn't modify capacity, rather final production) for you would have a production of 16 + 8 for 24 again, but you'd only be paying for 16 of it. It would also look like you are 'wasting' less of your capacity, though that's not completely accurate.

Basically the system as it is is fine, especially if they clean up the wasted social production, its just a matter of changing the mindset on how you build up your planets, which also requires a better understanding of which bonuses affect what and how.

{edit not sure if I got the numbers right above, colony might be 12 not 24, but you get the drift right?}
Reply #105 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"but in the end you have the same amount of 'control' you just have to plan for it differently."

Um, no. If I was able to decide to spend 15 instead of 10, I'd have more control than the present case.

The instructions with the game say that each mp or rp utilized costs 1 bc. Any constraint on a player's decision to so utilize said mp or rp, or the charging of players for mp and rp not utilized, should arise from either play balance concerns or preferably a desire to model the underlying reality the game seeks to convey in an interesting way.

If such constraints, are, on the other hand, an artifact of the UI alone, then they serve to impede enjoyment of the game rather than further it; even moreso when such constraints are not clearly communicated.
Reply #106 from Stardock Forums Top
"Um, no. If I was able to decide to spend 15 instead of 10, I'd have more control than the present case/"

You can decide to spend 15 instead of 10 though, the issue is that your production and tech are linked, so that increasing one decreases the other. You may not like that system, but you have the same choice as otherwise, only that you have to plan for it differently.

"The instructions with the game say that each mp or rp utilized costs 1 bc. Any constraint on a player's decision to so utilize said mp or rp, or the charging of players for mp and rp not utilized,..."

There is no constraint on utilizing your production, there is a constraint on how you have to set it up to use it in certain ways. You are never charged for mp and rp not utilized either (assuming the social to military back to treasury is implemented).


"If such constraints, are, on the other hand, an artifact of the UI alone, then they serve to impede enjoyment of the game rather than further it; even moreso when such constraints are not clearly communicated."

I can agree that the documentation of the system is not clear, but there actually are not any constraints, or to be blunt, the constraints are there for a reason, that is to force you to chose between production and research. You simply do not like having to make that choice, in essense you want a 'dumbed down' system.

The dynamic in GC is different from the dynamic in other games, specialized planets are not as useful as general planets, you can dislike it if you want, you can ask for it to be changed if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the system works as intended, and provides some additional depth to the system. Further you are only constrained in the sense that you do not seem to understand the way the system works, and thus how to maximize your use of it, get out of your box.
Reply #107 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
One way to adjust the frustration with social production could be as simple (and complex) as adding another feature similar to focusing production on a planet. In addition to allowing players to increase 1 area at the expense of the other 2 types, let us sacrifice one to increase the other 2 as well.
The new feature could reallocate spending based on current slider system, with an amount of loss/waste similar to or even greater than focusing has.

Say you're spending 30% mil, 30% soc, and 40% research and you deemphasize social on one planet, splitting the social budget with 10% remaining in social (something always needs repair in real life so you wouldn't move everything), 20% lost to inefficientcy, and the remaing 70% gets split 60/40 between military and research respectively. If that is to much, make it a "make trade goods" button for each, and have it convert half the spending into cash.

With something like this, once a few planets are done with building infrastructure, we could click a button on each and be done, and then when all our planets are done we move the sliders.

Everything being said, I am still quite satisfied with the current system and love the game, even if I only use deficent spending at the beginning and if I end up fighting multiple wars at once.
Reply #108 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The solution is that you build farms to increase your population and more trade centers/banking centers to get more income out of them.
Your industrial capacity will never be tied to your tax base in any game I write. Ever.


I understand the economic system. Funneling social spending (when there is no social project) in to military spending is less than ideal.
* It's a minority case. Most waste comes from overflows, so this approach leaves most of the problem still in place.
* If there is no military project, the money is not spent. Why not apply that solution to Social Spending, too? Funnel the Social Spending directly back in to the treasury. Simpler and cleaner.


Building more farms is not really a solution as player, by the way. Past a certain point, that can only hurt income as you are forced to lower taxes due to morale problems from overcrowding. The ideal population mix is one that puts all planets at the same morale level or close to it, so that you can run high tax rate with most of your planets in a pack at 70% morale, give or take a few points, with none down in the red. Tiny planets can't get to 5Bil pop anyway, so don't need any farms. Small planets (<10) can use one farm. Good planets can use two or maybe three farms, tops, or they are up in to the hopeless morale range. Anything over 20Bil is going to be pushing it even if you have multiple Morale resources fully mined. Past about 23Bil, the only way to keep the planet happy is to build transports and remove some of the population. You then have too many farms and should not have built that many in the first place! Some Morale boosters on the planets are crucial, but you can't afford to fill the entire planet with farms and morale boosters. You've got to have some spending capacity in place to build all these projects!


I appreciate your devotion to the realism of dividing income from spending. It's your design choice to make. I'm pointing out that this divide is a puzzle with only one right goal for the player: to ride the waves that will most closely match income with output at the global level over the long haul. This takes some vision, but once a player has figured out how to do it, the gameplay becomes repetitive. Excess spending capacity is useless long term. Deficit spending doesn't work over dozens of turns nonstop. The net difference for the player is to force the player to marry the two values at the global level in an effective way. Combining the two would abstract this process, freeing player's attention to be focused on to other things. If you want the player's attention on solving the puzzle of how best to marry the income vector with the spending vector, that's fine, but it leaves less room for other gameplay options. It also puts the game in danger of being "solved": the farms are a perfect example. You say to build more farms, but if population pressure forces lower taxes, then it's a losing move on the income side. There's a mathematical crest to that wave, where population increase and morale decrease meet with global tax revenue settings at the top of the curve, providing the maximum income possible from that part of the system. That's the same gameplay path over and over and over in each game, once the player understands the system. It's not something I think about or get enjoyment out of at this point, as I grok the formula and can apply it without any need for thought or analysis.

The morale system must be managed empire-wide because the tax rate is set empire wide. The player must make all his planets the same, tune them all to the same tax/morale harmonic, because there are no local controls. Really, it's not the economic system at fault, but the empire-wide controls. There could be interesting things to do with "special case" planets -- planets who have run out of social projects or who have extra farming specials or extra morale specials, etc -- but you can't do these things because you CANNOT bend your entire empire's monochrome tax or spend settings around the needs of one planet. You MUST set the sliders to values that bring you the best global return. There is a very limited amount of gameplay available under this model. You choose one global setting for each slider and then lean every planet you own toward it as best you can.

If I hold population and morale in harmony at the top of the bell curve, then that takes some slots from the planets: more slots used on better planets, but a minority of slots in all cases. The rest of each planet is divided between factories, labs, and economic boosters. One can lean more to tech or more to production, but some production is needed to BUILD the pricey labs, so here too there is a narrow range of success. You have to spend planet slots on factories, and you have to lean THAT to a global setting too because slow-producing planets will have their Social Spending shut off when the important planets are done with their projects.

Those global controls reduce micromanagement by making it unavailable, and yet the system you have built cries out for local specialization, begging to be micromanaged! I can see the possibilities of various planets to do fun and different things with them, but I can't realize these imaginings because the need to lean every planet toward the empire-wide settings is paramount. ... Since I personally worked out all of the gameplay involved in this process in GC1, I am not finding much to explore or do in GC2. Others may see it differently, but if literally every game you design will be built around this principle, and every game you make will provide this same model, then I have to wonder if they are all going to play exactly like this. This gameplay is good, but it has a limited run before a player has explored all it can offer. That run may be different lengths for different customers, but it is not infinite. Strategic success depends on successfully working the economic model, and I'm already at the pinnacle of knowing how to do that. If you've got more tech, more industrial capacity, more income and stronger fleets, you win. The ecomony is practically the whole game: there is something to military tactics, but the key enabler and lever for success is tech and production: economy! The empire-wide controls provide a narrow range of maximum efficiency and that target is easy to hit if you already understand all the components involved.

I accept that for you this is about preference and taste, and I concede that this is true. For now. At some point, though, it may turn in to an issue of staleness, where the vow "not ever" to transcend this concept may come back to bite you. Never say never.


- Sirian
Reply #109 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The interface for industrial spending is bad, and is misleading people. Rather than 3 sliders, if that were a 'circle' with pie-slices of red green and blue representing the three possible outputs it would be more obvious that the choice is which sort of output to emphasize.

The selection interface would be the player placing a dot within the circle. Three unselectable boxes to the side would show the 'weights' of the three factors on a scale of 1-100.



Reply #110 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Brad:

I don't think it's that complicated and judging from the various forums I read, most people understand how it works. But not everyone. Some people don't understand it and others just don't like it.


My experience/observation is that the number of people who understand it is signifigantly less than the number of people who say they understand it.
Reply #111 from Stardock Forums Top
"* If there is no military project, the money is not spent. Why not apply that solution to Social Spending, too? Funnel the Social Spending directly back in to the treasury. Simpler and cleaner."

Because under that situation you cannot use as much of your production on military as you could otherwise. If you return social to the kitty you have to micro more. I understand you like to micro, Sirian, but not everyone enjoys it. And spare us any arguements about it being optional, it's not optional if you want to compete at the same level as the AI.

As to the rest of the details on setting up multiple planets or a single empire...

One can easilly apply your general complaint about maximizing your empire potential being 'solved' to having 'solved' the maximization for each planet in turn. So the question then is do you want to force people to spend X-times as much time dealing with this on a planetary basis (where X is the number of planets)? What do you actually gain from doing this? A better running empire? No you don't actually gain that, you just think you do, since the economy of your empire is only reletive to that of the AIs in the game. So long as you change the rule set so that it applies to everyone there is esentially no bonus gained, only an added pain in the a$$ factor of additional needless micro.

"The ecomony is practically the whole game..."

Yes, and that's true for basically every 4x game out there. That SD has implemented a different approach to the economy is really neither good nor bad, it just is. As you say, once you figure out how to maximize the rule set you don't have to think about it. Thats true for just about every 4x out there though. The only differences are in how you have to set up your empire depending on what the local conditions are (PQs, planet boni, galactic resources, ...). SO you won't necessarilly have carbon copies every game, but you will have the same goals for development every game. Compare to Civ4, you have essentially the same goals for your economy every game, what affects the way you go about setting it up is in your starting position, both the chosen (civ) and the random (map). Granted you have more options in civ4 in how you build your economy, but that's due to additional game elements which do not exist in GC.

And be honest, you want to be able to powergame and micro this to death. I've read your games on Civ (and they are impressive) but it speaks to performing every action at such a fine level that for many people it becomes far too tedious and annoying to want to bother.
Reply #112 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For example, rather than having a spending slider, you would simply have an industrial slider and a research slider that would be independent of each other. Then you'd have a dial that would let you decide how much of that industrial output was going to planet improvements and how much to ship building. But doing it in an intuitive way would take some thought.


This is pretty much exactly what I would like to see with regard to this element of gameplay. Just my 0.02$.
Reply #113 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Say I have 10 MP's and 5 RP's. I'm restricted to spending at most 10 bc (in the case of choosing 100% spending, and a 100%/0% breakdown). If I'd like to fully fund everything, and pay the bills via, say, selling off techs, I am constrained from doing so. I am likewise constrained from fully utilizing my labs without shutting down my factories. Also a loss of control.


Well, let's say the developers allowed you to fully fund that. However, in order to slow things down (thus retaining the pace) they would need to reduce your MP and RP allotment accordingly. So, you would not in fact have 10MP and 5RP; you'd have something more like 5MB and 2RP.

So, while you gain more control, you don't suddenly gain the ability to get the levels of production vastly higher than you get in-game currently.
Reply #114 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So, while you gain more control, you don't suddenly gain the ability to get the levels of production vastly higher than you get in-game currently.


Actually, all this would do (in effect) is to dictate that your sliders will be set at X and Y, instead of allowing you to choose.

If Brad is serious about keeping income and spending divorced, then he can't do it that way. Unless he offers players the chance to have vastly more spending capacity than income, or vastly more income than spending capacity, then the distinction between income and spending becomes useless, and he will have done away with it in fact if not in name.


- Sirian
Reply #115 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If you return social to the kitty you have to micro more. I understand you like to micro, Sirian...


You don't understand me, but that's OK.

Returning social to the kitty changes nothing. If you are building social and military at the same time, you're choosing to prefer aesthetics over strategy. You can do that, but it is so far inferior in performance that you either don't understand the strategics or the strategics are not important to you. In Case A, there's no need to increase micro because the situation doesn't come up. In Case B, there's no need to increase micro because you don't care about the strategics. Either way, my suggestion simplifies, rather than complicates, things.

On the other hand, if Brad does not intend for players to lean 100% this way, then 100% that, in cyclical fashion, then he shouldn't put that option in the game and make it the most profitable way to operate. It's not even a close call: it's the runaway path to victory. There's only micro attached to trying to minimize waste -- and to managing large fleets of warships or constructors. There doesn't need to be any micro in the economy other than choosing what to build on each planet and in what order.


- Sirian
Reply #116 from Stardock Forums Top
"Returning social to the kitty changes nothing. If you are building social and military at the same time, you're choosing to prefer aesthetics over strategy."

I fail to see how that is a preference of aestheitcs over strategy. Are you saying that people will simply set their military to 0% in all circumstances? I think it rather obvious that this is not what will happen, at least no more so than it already does happen for those who simply purchase all their ships, but then they have likely set their social to 0 as well (later game anyway). All you would be doing is changing where the micro occurs, either by not having anything in your social queue, or on the economy screen flipping between soc and mil.

"You can do that, but it is so far inferior in performance that you either don't understand the strategics or the strategics are not important to you."

What strategics are you talking about? You are talking about throwing away potential production by returning a portion to the kitty, I am saying that if you wish to streamline this and not have to tweek your mil/soc sliders constantly then dumping the social into military automatically makes more sense. Or you talking about overflow waste? There is a simple solution to that as well, which is completely slider independant.

Or if you are talking about flipping mil/soc I don't see why it matters that you return it to the kitty or not. Indeed slipping it to mil is superior as it allows you to tune your planets to still build mil while you otherwise pump your soc spending where you want to.
Reply #117 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hmm...I would actually like to see 'focus spending on this planet' button in the colonies tab because basically some of you more developed planets dont need as much funding as some of your growing planets. It would also make it easier to re-developed conquered planets. (basically SD should design a system that allows full production on certain planets or lowering spending certain planets (ie less funding on fully developed planets) or some other system that has a semblence of both.

but i like the idea of waste because no empire is 100% efficient, there's always waste going to buraucracy or soemthing. Although I do have an idea for what Frogboy said.

"For example: Social Production. Social Production could be automatically transferred to ship building when all planetary improvements are done. This would solve the potential issue of people's economy becoming crazy when all social projects are completed. And if there's no ship to be built, it would just go back to your treasury. It wouldn't be hard to do, would only require modest AI changes. I can assure you the AI would love it."

maybe you can use the system above and tie it in to the different government types!!! for example: the stellar republic could recieve 20% of unused social production back, and then 50%for the next one, then 80% return for star democracy.

It isnt exactly an overhaul to the system but what do you guys think?
Reply #118 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can decide to spend 15 instead of 10 though



I intentionally chose the simplest possible example, and its still misunderstood. Exhibit 1A of my second point.

If I have 10 mp and 5 rp, how exactly, with the current UI, do I spend 15?

I can agree that the documentation of the system is not clear, but there actually are not any constraints, or to be blunt, the constraints are there for a reason, that is to force you to chose between production and research. You simply do not like having to make that choice, in essense you want a 'dumbed down' system.


No, as I stipulated in my last post, I'd prefer that choice be meaningful, not merely an artifact on the UI.

Another way to look at it is that the choice is overdetermined. I've already got a budgetary constraint that is straightfoward and clearly meaningful: if I spend too much, I'll go bankrupt. Why is that constraint not sufficient?
Reply #119 from Stardock Forums Top
"I intentionally chose the simplest possible example, and its still misunderstood. Exhibit 1A of my second point.

If I have 10 mp and 5 rp, how exactly, with the current UI, do I spend 15?"

If you are talking about total capacity then you can't. If you have 20 production capacity and 10 research capacity then it is trivial, put your sliders on 100% spending and 50% production/50% research. You will spend 15BC and get 10 production and 5 research.

The problem you have is that you think it should be possible to reach full capacities, the facts are that it is not possible. I consider this a design choice to force you to balance your production with your research, I think this is how Brad designed it as well, it was certainly how it was done in GC1.


"No, as I stipulated in my last post, I'd prefer that choice be meaningful, not merely an artifact on the UI."

The choice is still meaningful, how can it not be? You chose your tax rate, you chose your spending rate, then you chose how to balance your spending between production and research. Where exactly do you have a meaningless choice? What you seem to object to is the way the game determines how much capacity you have, and thus, how much mp or rp you can produce. For whatever reason you insist that you be able to produce 100% of your capacity, while that may be more intuitive it removes the tech/production balance as it is now. You can restore the balance by cutting the capacities of mp and rp in half, but then what is the point of making the change in the first place?

"Another way to look at it is that the choice is overdetermined. I've already got a budgetary constraint that is straightfoward and clearly meaningful: if I spend too much, I'll go bankrupt. Why is that constraint not sufficient?"

I don't agree that it is overdetermined, but I do agree that you can do it either way and it doesn't make any difference to the end result. Therefore I am against changing it, since there is no need to do so.
Reply #120 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"Therefore I am against changing it, since there is no need to do so."

Other than the basic game design considerations I've already stipulated and which you've ignored. Very persuasive.

I'm glad to find out that if I want 10 mp and 5 rp, I've got to build double that amount due to UI restrictions. What underlying reality is this attempting to capture that isn't already sufficiently modeled by the overall budget constraint? If I have 10 factory workers and 5 scientists ready to roll if I can somehow get their salaries paid, what is it causing me to choose one or the other?
Reply #121 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If I have 10 factory workers and 5 scientists ready to roll if I can somehow get their salaries paid, what is it causing me to choose one or the other?


Apparently you don't have that. You have X workers, period. You can leave your labs completely empty and have the X workers work the factories, producing M units and costing M bc (if you have it), or you can put your X workers in the labs and leave the factories empty, producing N beakers and costing N bc, or you can put a fraction of the workers in each location and split the output.

Nevermind the "realism" of reassigning your entire workforce from factories to labs and back on a dime.

I think you have a point when you cite the limitation of the budget. That IS a hard limit. However Brad wants there to be two limits. There's the limit of the income, and the limit of the spending capacity, and your total output will be the lesser of the two, in the long run. So the gameplay centers around pulling the levers in such a way as to match the two types of limits as closely as you can manage to do by the point in the game in which you will reach a winning position. (After that it stops mattering, because you've won already and are just mopping up).

I don't see why having two limits would not be valid. There is a little more wiggle room than there is in having only the one limit. For instance, picking up cash through tributes or tech sales, or racing your spending capacity out front of your income but expecting the income to rise later. You spend extra up front on spending capacity infrastructure and then can ZOOM along full speed on military or research spending as the income levels are rising.

There is a fun game in there with the two limits. I have enjoyed the difference between that and all the one-limit systems. BUT the game could stand to clean up the need for player to do simple little repetitive things like haggling for exact prices or messing with focus buttons instead of being able to control individual planets more precisely.

Why can't I have lower taxes on overcrowded planets, for instance? Or run my 3-Lab Mars planet on research all the time? Why is Mars's Research Focus spending based on its FACTORY output, just because at the moment I'm running 100% military spending? Those focus buttons are a giant PITA. My Mars can put out 56 beakers if I run 100% research, but can only put out a pathetic THREE beakers if I run 100% military and have Mars "focus on research"? You've got to be kidding me. Only a programmer can come up with these kinds of things. It's not buggy, per Brad's description to open the thread -- it's doing what it is designed to do. ... This element could stand for some redesign, though.


- Sirian
Reply #122 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Thanks guys for all the feedback.

To summarize what I've read:

There's 4 camps:

1) The board gamers (grognards). They want every number, every detail spelled out. There should be a way to click on anything and find out precisely how it came from. The cleaner and simpler the mechanics, the better.

Ex: 1 unit of populatoin should produce 1 unit of wealth. If I mouse over my income, it would display this information.

2) The intuists. These are the people who want the game to be more like a simulator. The more complex, the more realistic. They don't want the numbers spelled out because they want to use their intuition to lead the way. They considering learning how the relations work as part of the fun.

Ex: 10 billion people are made up of many different socio-economic classes of people, as the population increases, the wealth collected should increase at a sub-exponential rate.

3) The Realists.  These are the people who simply want a tweak here or there or a tooltip here or there or maybe just a clarification.

4) The armchair game developers. These are the people who really could make a much better game if only they had the money and developers to convey their genius onto the screen. To prove their genius, they'll use terms like "broken" or "unusable" to describe anything that they consider non-idea.

Group #4 won't ever be satisfied. It's not like there's a scenario where we'd put out some update that totally guts the economic system.

Group #3 will likely be largely satisfied by v1.1 since social production won't be "Wasted" and we'll likely put in additional tooltips.

Group #2 is going to be unhappy that social production is going to transferred to military production which is totally unrealistic. Shouldn't the economy have waste? After all, in the real world it's a fact of life.  A business, like Stardock, has to plan its resources accordingly. If we bring in too many employees, then we don't have enough for them to do and waste money on salaries.  If we don't bring in enough, we don't spend enough and the government gets that money in taxes.

But things like social spending drives some people nuts and so it's a matter of guessing whether changing a feature  akes more people happy than unhappy.

Group #1 would consider the change to remove social waste as "obvious" because such micro management wouldn't be in a board game. 

That group also was probably driven nuts by Warcraft 3 which had all kinds of fuzzy math in how battles were handled. 

This group could can probably be generally satisfied with simply more tooltips or some sort of analysis on how money is done.

For instance, tax income is non-linear.  It's your population taken to something like the .80 power.  There's a lot of exponential relations in the game.  What other games will often do is cap it or take out any mechanics that get near a race condition.

Reply #123 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
4) The armchair game developers. These are the people who really could make a much better game if only they had the money and developers to convey their genius onto the screen. To prove their genius, they'll use terms like "broken" or "unusable" to describe anything that they consider non-idea.


Whatever.

Have fun with "your" game and the zero-sum, patronizing attitude. I've got better things to do.

Reply #124 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Whatever.


Did you even read the rest of the post? Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be nice. I can only hope most people appreciate the extra effort Stardock *do* actually put in.

There is one game that people can set up EXACTLY the way they want it. EVery single detail is alterable. It's call C++, you should check it out (bit of a steep learning curve though, and takes a while before you can actually get into the game).
Reply #125 from Stardock Forums Top
Why can't I have lower taxes on overcrowded planets, for instance? Or run my 3-Lab Mars planet on research all the time? Why is Mars's Research Focus spending based on its FACTORY output, just because at the moment I'm running 100% military spending? Those focus buttons are a giant PITA. My Mars can put out 56 beakers if I run 100% research, but can only put out a pathetic THREE beakers if I run 100% military and have Mars "focus on research"? You've got to be kidding me. Only a programmer can come up with these kinds of things. It's not buggy, per Brad's description to open the thread -- it's doing what it is designed to do. ... This element could stand for some redesign, though.


Actually the redesign required isn't necessarilly on Brad. It falls squarely on the player as well. That is no matter what the system once you figure it out it becomes a simple (or complex) exercise in min/maxing. The obvious answer to your Mars question is to not build 3 labs on Mars, bang problem solved under the current dynamics. We realize this isn't the solution you are looking for, but its the solution you have. Its also a step in the direction *against* your prefered method of jumping sliders to 100% every cycle, which again may be why you are finding it unlikeable.

Seriously Sirian, why did you hate MoO3 so much? It has all the nitty gritty controls that you are asking for here. Especially today with user mods and patches it runs and plays so much differently than even 1.25 that if you are begging for this individual planetary micro you have a game (assuming you still kept your copy) which lets you do all of that. Oh and it has ship design and fleets and all the rest of it too.
If I have 10 factory workers and 5 scientists ready to roll if I can somehow get their salaries paid, what is it causing me to choose one or the other?

If I have 10 factory workers and 5 scientists ready to roll if I can somehow get their salaries paid, what is it causing me to choose one or the other?


Because you don't actually have 10 workers and 5 scientists ready to roll. You have *capacity*. At this point I don't think you even care to understand the way its set up, you're just being a tool since you don't like the existing set up. To follow on that thought you don't realize that it doesn't really even matter what the game 'names' production, they could call it monkeys and donkeys, its the dynamic which matters, and the dynamic which needs to be understood, not the semantics of how its set up. SD could agree to change the system to what you propose, but in effect it would change nothing in the way the mechanic works (assuming they cut down the capacities). Basically you are argueing over the way the game presents this dynamic, its a pointless arguement, especially presented in the mannor you present it.

Sirian is argueing over something different, putting down individual planetary sliders. This is more a question of how much micro to add to the game. While Sirian is free to claim it won't add any, I think it rather obvious that this is not the case. Beyond which at some point Brad should simply adress this issue of where the game is meant to be focused, either at the planetary level or at the empire level. The answer as I see it right now is that the game is focused at the empire level. That means that you get to decide basic policy, what is built where, and how to fund the overall empire. You do not have individual control on planets other than to broadly focus on one aspect or another. You can quibble with that decision, but as Brad says, it's his game and he made it the way he wanted to. I for one prefer this implementation to a more micro intensive implementation (ala MoO2).