It's an interesting system that involves several levels of "potentials" but it's working as designed and both the player and AIs operate under the same system.

Brad had previously commented that he was considering getting rid of the overall spending slider and replacing it with a research and production slider in version 1.1. (Of course you would need to have an additional slider to subdivide the production between social and military) This would solve the problem that you are talking about, but it makes the screen even more complicated than it is. We will see if he implements it.

I have to honestly say that if someone doesn't understands a screen like you stated (with some few extra sliders) that person needs to go back to school... The interface is intuitive enough to explain it, if not, add a fluxogram between the sliders as the background image to show where the money goes step-by-step... It'd look pretty too

I think that "fixing" this "problem" would cause a major problem with balance. It would also probably take away most strategies that don't focus on economy, because being able to afford using 100% of every building will make you far superior than someone specializing in technology or military production.

If I'm understanding your issue, you primarily work with a heterogeneous layout for your worlds (i.e., multiple different building types on a single planet), correct? Here's a bit of a suggestion: Try my method of play -- Homogeneous worlds (Research-dominant/Manufacturing-dominant/Monetary-dominant worlds). With this, my shipyards are built on my manufacturing-only worlds to allow for faster production, and when I need a ship, I open that planet's window and adjust the spending to focus on Military (i.e., using the little buttons for each spending type). When not producing a ship, I revert it back to cultural spending, but only if the planet is in the process of building/upgrading it's facilities (bcause at current, unused cultural spend is lost, while unused miltary spending is put back into your coffers -- until v1.1). With my research-dominant planets, I open up and change their spending to focus primarily on research (no real worry about loss of production there, because at most I have one, maybe two factories on these planets). My monetary-dominant/cultural-dominant planets... Well, now there's the monkey wrench in the works. My strategy doesn't really apply there. So, I generally have them set to cultural spending as facilities are being built, and when I'm between techs that will upgrade them, I usually just focus them on research (every little bit helps, eh?) Anyway, I'm sure you get the point. It doesn't fully solve your dilemma (maybe even not at all), but it does allow for a little bit more control of your resources -- Kind of a minimalist way to adjust between your cultural and military spending on your manufacturing planets, anyway.

I guess what it boils down to is that some set-up/functionality in the game is not going to be conducive to yours or my style of play, while on the other hand it may benefit mine vs. yours (or vice versa).

First off, I hope I'm understanding this thread correctly, if I'm not then just feed me to the Drengin's already

I believe the 1.1 patch, by allowing overflow production to be reimbursed to the treasury, will solve the issues as for how the game's econ was meant to operate. Being able to better define the three branches of spending would only upset the game's initial balance. Imagine it like this (and hopefully I'm not to far off base here) your--real world--government allocates so much funding to social projects such as education, medical, parks and recreation, housing, etc., and so much to military or scientific research. It's impossible to have every branch of the budget equal out to where each is operating at full capacity. If more money is pumped into schools, then it must be pulled from elsewhere be it military, research, Congressmen's retirement (haha), etc.

Then again, let's say you put every penney earned, stolen, or cheated into one branch, let's say education for now. Do you actually think that our schools would even then operate at 100% capacity? NO, because no matter how badly you might want to do this, you just can't completely shut down the other branches--they must maintain at least some level of operation whether they are productive or not, and this costs money, or in Galciv2's case, BC's.

As for in-game, simply going from planet to planet clicking on the focus button in each spending window reflects this (in accordance with the sliders of course). And if you want balance across the board, the make sure not to click a focus group for the time being. But, I agree that having overflow from the social production queue when nothing is being made, allocated back into budget is ideal and 1.1 ought to fix that little tid bit. Nonetheless, and hear me out, anything which makes the game all that much deeper and fun, I'm all for it!

Thanks for your commitment Stardock, to an already splendid game You guys are definitely the Tidal Disrupters to a waning industry--keep rockin' the boat!

First off, I hope I'm understanding this thread correctly. If I'm not then just feed me to the Drengin's already

I believe the 1.1 patch, by allowing overflow production to be reimbursed to the treasury, will solve the issues as for how the game's econ was meant to operate. Being able to better define the three branches of spending would only upset the game's initial balance. Imagine it like this (and hopefully I'm not to far off base here) your--real world--government allocates so much funding to social projects such as education, medical, parks and recreation, housing, etc., and so much to military or scientific research. It's impossible to have every branch of the budget equal out to where each is operating at full capacity. If more money is pumped into schools, then it must be pulled from elsewhere be it military, research, Congressmen's retirement (haha), etc.

Then again, let's say you put every penney earned, stolen, or cheated into one branch, let's say education for now. Do you actually think that our schools would even then operate at 100% capacity? NO, because no matter how badly you might want to do this, you just can't completely shut down the other branches--they must maintain at least some level of operation whether they are productive or not, and this costs money, or in Galciv2's case, BC's.

As for in-game, simply going from planet to planet clicking on the focus button in each spending window reflects this (in accordance with the sliders of course). And if you want balance across the board, the make sure not to click a focus group for the time being. But, I agree that having overflow from the social production queue when nothing is being made, allocated back into budget is ideal and 1.1 ought to fix that little tid bit. Nonetheless, and hear me out, anything which makes the game all that much deeper and fun, I'm all for it!

Thanks for your commitment Stardock, to an already splendid game You guys are definitely the Tidal Disrupters to a waning industry--keep rockin' the boat!

dagstyrr: i think you didnt really get what i mean

lets say i have two factories (industrie) and two schools (symbolising research), all equal expensive to run, shut down they dont cost me a penny
if my income allows me to operate two buildings, then i may chose 2 factories (100% industrie), 2 schools (100% research) or 1 each (50% industrie, 50% research).
but if i have enough spare money, some backup cash or high income, then i can - without any problems - run both factories and both schools simultaniously
but thats not possible in gal civ, even with spending at 100% i still can only have 50% research and 50% industrie at a time

100% spending in gal civ doesnt mean you spend 100% of what you earn (as we all know since i'm sure we all get negative spending once in a while ), it means you run your stuff at full capacity, meaning you give the factory that can produce 8 hammers the 8 BC it needs to do so
and if it can produce 20 hammers you give it 20 BC, regardless of your income (if spending is 100% and industrie is 100%)

hope that did make it clear: that factory, supplies with enough money, can make 20 hammers. there is abolutely no reason why it should only produce 10 hammers, when a research lab is built next to it which i supply with _additional_ credits which i _dont_ (want to) take from the factories funding, i want to pay _each_ (factory and research) lab 20 BC and i see no reason why that should not be possible
right now i am forced to take it from the factories funding because of that (in my optinion) not optimal solved economy, so to get the same effect i have to build twice the factories (more tiles wasted, more upkeep), so my 40 hammers factories will finally produce these 20 hammers i want to pay for

it is possible to say that this is a design choice and intended that way but (imo) its flawed because not realistic. making factories less effective or more expensive to compensate for their increased effectivity while making spending more flexible would help the game (imo) a lot

another (even easier but not that flexible) solution:

simply replace the research/social/military slider by one slider for social <-> military
spending then allocates overall spending, set too 100% all factories run at 100% and all labs run at 100% (simultaniously), set to 20% they all run at 20% (simultaniously)
then the military <-> social slider tells how to devide between those production types
i prefere to have seperate spending for research and industrie because it seems more real to me and it allows the player to prioritize during economic problems but this way at least the problem with stuff only being able to run at half capacity would be solved

to be honest, this is the only major flaw (in my opinion) i am aware of now

btw downtweaking labs and factories if you make seperate sliders could be not that good ... right now you have the ability to double your research at the expense of industry, that doesnt make sense but it is a nice strategic option if you need something researched very fast
that option would vanish if you had seperate sliders
right now you always have 50% backup capacity which you can choose to use whenever you want, that wouldnt be the case any more

anyway i thing to option to seperately change those spendings is more valuable then the option to have backup capacity available all the time (if you want it, you can still build twice the labs and go 50% spending - if labs are downtweaked you would need more labs to achive the same as now but i dont think thats a big issue)

Hello again.

I'm glad this idea has gotten so much positive feedback from you. Also, I notice Frogboy has written in the Journals section of this website that the floodgates have been opened. And here I am writing a 1250 word essay on a possible change.

I also see a breakdown of the people that normally voice their opinion about game design. I really hope I don't fit into the fourth category.

I don't think that the way the game works now is wrong, and I certainly don't think it isn't fun. I can form my strategies around the way it works now, and I'm sure a lot of people are used to the way the game works now and wouldn't necessarily welcome a change. However, I think that a change could still be a good thing, in terms of making the game mechanics more transparent, and decisions about how to run the empire more intuitive.

Essentially what this issue boils down to for me is that regardless of how well you've managed your economy, or how many trillions of credits you've accumulated, you can't use both your factories and your labs at the same time. And the issue looks even stranger if you have an assymetrical distribution of the two. The example I gave above was a single planet with 24TP and 24MP, but what if your empire has an optimal capacity of 100TP and 500MP. With 100% funding to military and social, you're spending 500BC per turn. Now suppose you reduce that to 80% military and social. You've just taken 100BC out of your factories and put that into research, right? Wrong! You are now spending 400BC on factories and 20BC on labs. The limit here is not one of funding or economy, but that you physically cannot give the order to spend that money that you have. To me, that seems counter to common sense.

But of course there is one important point about that. It's a game, and it doesn't have to make sense if it's fun. But the thing is, from my perspective, it's nice when the rules make sense, and I'm not convinced that the game would be less fun for the people that play it if it worked differently.

So that's my point again, and in substatially fewer words. I'm quite pleased. Please respond and tell me what you think, and thank you for reading.

There has been some small changes to the economy, but the sliders still work the same way.

I found it to be a big deal.  I tried to work out some reason why my research planet had to shut down so my production planet could go to work, and I just couldn't imagine how that would be necessary (assuming enough funds to run both).  It took me out of the game - I wasn't managing an economy, I was manipulating arbitrary numbers.  These weren't "factories" anymore, they were point generating boxes.

The game is playable of course, and the rules work great for getting the challenge and gameplay right.  However, this detail caused me to not be able to imagine the universe, and for me that broke the immersion.  A pity, because otherwise it was a great game!

I've just started playing the game, but as a long time Sid Meier Civ player, I was happy to see the sliders disappear in the move from Civ IV to V.  In that case, now research goes directly to techs, food goes to population increase, coins go to expenses. It's straightforward and works well with the selection of what one builds in each city determining the weight one puts on what gets done in that city.

I would highly recommend GC go the same route as it removes a source of confusion.