e-stab

Join Date 05/2003

Strategy in 1.1 / Suggestions for 1.2

Economy too strong? - and other issues

This topic is meant to highlight an approach to 1.1 that works on all difficulty levels. To put it shortly: It's the economy, stupid!

I was inspired to it be reading game reports of Magnumaniac, then made my own trials and was surprised that it works so well.

Basically it's all about the economy: I like to start with +30% economy, +20% morale (more people = more taxes), +30% pop growth and the Federalist party (another +20% economy). This maxes out the economic bonus, the other picks could be replaced, but the ones I wrote down ensure that you'll get even more money.
There's not much to say after these starting picks: Build one or two farms on each planet, try to get the morale wonders and build stock markets, and sooner then you know, you'll swim in money. This enables you to buy a lot of things, both in your factories and on the diplomatic screens - it results in a lot of flexibility for you overall. In other words: Galactic dominance.

This led me to several conclusions and suggestions:

- Either the base tax income is too generous, or the economic bonuses that you can choose are too powerful.

- Coupled with a good diplomacy value (it's relatively easy to get the Diplomatic Translators, the Galactic Showcase and the Galactic Bazaar - a very powerful combination!), you can directly buy lots of techs for little money from the other races - like half a dozen good techs for 2K bcs from a "neutral" neighbour. It's that easy to do that you can even refrain from doing own research if you want to! (so maybe diplomacy is too powerful as well?)

- Compared with the tax income that you can achieve, trade income is highly underrated: It's usually less than 10% or even 5% on larger galaxies, making it obsolete if you have a nice surplus (except for diplomatic reasons).

- In my opinion research is too fast in 1.1. What's called "slow" now should be "normal" (although that is a matter of perspective).

- To better adapt both the trade income and research costs to different maps and galaxy sizes, it might be a good idea to base their values not on the galaxy size, but on the total number of planet quality available in the galaxy. The sum of all planet classes seems like a good measure for the potential productivity of a given map to me.

- Last but not least, some small suggestions for the tech tree: It would be nice if every tech had at least one effect (other than enabling the next one), there are some techs that have no effect whatsoever. Here's the full list: Armor Theory, Missile Defense Theory, Shield Defense Theory, Superior Hulls, Deeper Knowledge, Galactic Understanding, Near Omniscience, Beyond Mortality. Especially the techs next to the Technological Victory could have some nice effects in order to give the players not aiming for the tech victory (most of us, I guess) an incentive to research them. I remember "Near Omnipotence" in GalCiv 1 as a good example.

- Regarding the tech tree, number 2: The range bonuses given by the range techs are too high in my opinion, they make using a significant number of support modules almost obsolete. Most of them could be halved, I guess.

- Tech tree, number 3 (and last one): There could be bonuses in areas where there are none right now, like giving +5% research when you get the tech for a new research building. The bonuses to hit points given by the last hull techs should be higher, I think. More (small) bonuses in general (to economics, production, weapons, defense...) could make research more attractive - even when you don't plan to upgrade your planetary buildings right now.

Thanks for reading all this if you're still with me, I hope my suggestions will find an open ear.

Feel free to comment or to show your support, 1.1 is much better (again!) than the earlier version, but there's still a lot that could be done. I deliberately refrained from writing down complicated suggestions that would require a lot of work and balancing. If I'm not mistaken, all that is listed above should be relatively straightforward to change.

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Nice post

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It is true that economy and diplomacy are too important. Every time I am struggling with a game I just go to all the different races and with the high diplomacy rate I can buy a tech they have and then use it to trade for many other techs and the end result is that I always own all the tech everyone else has. There needs to be a little more balance. I used to try trade but now I do not even bother as when I go to war the ships are blown up and I usually do not need the extra cash.

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Lol. I red another thread saying that since 1.1, the military has taken over the game...

Let's just say, we all have our favorite strategy that we excel in. And it will always work, whatever kind of game you choose..

if you think you always use the same strag, pick different race ability...

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Regarding the "way toos" and difficulty: Everything you say is true but remember you are the 10th ranked player and glancing at your profile it appears that you deserve the ranking.

Ways to crank up the difficulty are fine as long as there are ways to crank it down without turning the AI into total idiots. I will never be as good at this game as some but even I am better than most.

Most of the people playing the game are probably in over their head on normal. The law of unintended consequences too often comes into play.

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Hi Franco, not all things depend on the gamingskill, let's take the range of the ships as example. When researching the first two lifesupporttechs, you get a initial range (without lifesupport-pods build in the ships) to nearly cross a map of middle size. Such things are independent of the skill to play, they are things being noticed.

Things like "all techs should give you something apart from providing access to new techs" are also independent from the gamingskill

Shure, there are posts and points going deep into details, but this post is mostly a general setting.

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Especially the techs next to the Technological Victory

The sole purpose of the techs before Tech Victory are to keep you from having to research all of tech victory at once. They exist so that you can get to stopping points that let you research other things.

I agree that diplomacy is overpowered in GC2. In 1.0x, it was godlike, but now it's more of a minor deity. The AI has gross tools to keep the user from abusing diplomacy (logic like, "I won't trade him weapons tech no matter what"), but it has no real fine-grained control. It can't look at a guy and say, "I won't give him any more techs for a while, because I've given him too much." Nor will it even consider how much money it needs when it sells techs.

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You describing very well what I wanted to express about economy and diplomacy. Thanks for making it more clear to everyone.

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Let's just say, we all have our favorite strategy that we excel in. And it will always work, whatever kind of game you choose..

I agree about the personal favourites and I'm fine with strategies that simply work well. But I think the economic thing is working too well at the moment - either you get money too easily or things are too easy to buy.

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Ways to crank up the difficulty are fine as long as there are ways to crank it down without turning the AI into total idiots. I will never be as good at this game as some but even I am better than most.

WarEagle put it quite well already: It's not so much about game difficulty (and the different settings), I intended to show aspects in the current game setting which should be improved. That would also affect the general game difficulty, but the first goal is to make the game feel more realistic and fun to play.

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I understand your point but it's a very articial thing then: Since your progress is saved anyway, there's no reason for the "intermediate" techs without consequences (except being able to trade them, perhaps).

I agree that diplomacy is overpowered in GC2. In 1.0x, it was godlike, but now it's more of a minor deity. The AI has gross tools to keep the user from abusing diplomacy (logic like, "I won't trade him weapons tech no matter what"), but it has no real fine-grained control. It can't look at a guy and say, "I won't give him any more techs for a while, because I've given him too much." Nor will it even consider how much money it needs when it sells techs.

Yes, that's one of my complaints: The AI trades away lots of techs for little money - without regard for its need for the money and for potential consequences to the galactic balance or diplomatic aspects.

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Very very good post with some great responses. I second most of what the original poster pointed out, as well as what others said.

What I would like to add is that tech trading should be more dependant upon good relations. On Neutral, AI shouldn't be willing to to supply you with -any- military related technology, such as weapons or armor -or- logistics. That should atleast limit some early tech trading mania.

Also, perhaps have higher "rates" for technology when it comes to AI selling it? What I mean is that now you can buy technology for pennies. So increase the amount of money the AI wants for techs. Making it some ten times costlier to but new tech wouldnt be overdoing it.

And lastly, if anybody is concerned that this would make the game too hard for beginners... Simply add these (or any other changes) at the higher difficulty levels only. But I think the better players deserve a good challange without handicaping their own strategies and shouldnt play "while limiting" themselves just to compensate for AI shrotcomings.

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Good analysis e-stab.

- To better adapt both the trade income and research costs to different maps and galaxy sizes, it might be a good idea to base their values not on the galaxy size, but on the total number of planet quality available in the galaxy. The sum of all planet classes seems like a good measure for the potential productivity of a given map to me.

I really like this idea. Since I play mostly on gigantic galaxies, in later stages trade is only used for diplomatic relations, but not for a real income. And researching on those maps is also way too fast sometimes, especially in the later stage of a game.

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What I would like to add is that tech trading should be more dependant upon good relations. On Neutral, AI shouldn't be willing to to supply you with -any- military related technology, such as weapons or armor -or- logistics. That should atleast limit some early tech trading mania.

Also, perhaps have higher "rates" for technology when it comes to AI selling it? What I mean is that now you can buy technology for pennies. So increase the amount of money the AI wants for techs. Making it some ten times costlier to but new tech wouldnt be overdoing it.

Fully agreed!

@Vandenburg:
Thanks for your show of support.

The "sum of all planet classes" idea is a bit longer in my brain already, but it never got real attention up to now. It would cause some calculations and trials to find the right relations, but I hope the importance of this work will be realized.
OT: Your metaverse profile is impressive! More than 200K points in a single game with the new scoring system, wow!

How about joining the Galactic Diplomats, we're a nice bunch of people!

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As to suggestions for 1.2, I think it would make sense that if you have an Advanced Espionage (which means that you know more about this civ than its highest ranking memebers) that you should have a noticeable bonus in influence on that race. You HAVE bribed high-ranked officials, shouldn't that give you some say? Another thing, I think that you should gain the ships and starbases of a civ when you conquer it.

Lastly, If conquering a capital world doesn't give you the civ immediately, it should.

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Lastly, If conquering a capital world doesn't give you the civ immediately, it should.

Did the US lose the war of 1812 when British forces burned down the Whitehouse?

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Lastly, If conquering a capital world doesn't give you the civ immediately, it should.

I disagree, too. Losing the capital doesn't mean that your whole race gives up. And it would be a pain to teach that to the AI...

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Good post e-stab. It's pretty much the same with any 4x game though - get a strong economy and you can do what you want. They need to make it so that people who don't focus on economy specifically can get by with another strategy without constantly being in the red. If you really try to maximise economy, you can (as you know) get a huge income.

I have to say that v1.1 has made a considerable difference to the use of diplomacy. Certainly on suicidal, the AIs will not trade resource starbases for anything - which is how it should be, and certain other things are a lot more expensive to get aswell.

Tech trading is still highly exploitable though. I have now played a number of games where I have researched every single tech myself. I don't disable tech trading as I still want the AI to trade between themselves (otherwise they are very limited in what they can do). It also means keeping espionage below advanced, and not invading anyone that has techs I don't have - makes for an interesting game. Giving every AI the top level weapon and defense techs before invading them makes it less of a walkover aswell.

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They do give up. Hit them in the capital, and they're on their knees, or whichever equivalent they have. Surrender however, that's a bit extreme.

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Good points.

Just a couple quickies.

Perhaps a basic 1 armor rating on ships once you get armor theory;... same with shield theory and point defense theory. But I agree that new techs should be more than stepping stones.

I think losing a capital should have some great additional effect, but not be a civ destroying event. Perhaps something could happen to the government... anarcht until a provisional government is set up. or a degrading of the governemnt back to a more primitive form.

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They need to make it so that people who don't focus on economy specifically can get by with another strategy without constantly being in the red. If you really try to maximise economy, you can (as you know) get a huge income.

Agreed. Perhaps the problem is not the money you make, but all the things you can get for it, especially from the other races.

Yes, not being able to get the starbases for money is a good change. It's more an exception though, as techs and trade goods are still easy to buy.

Tech trading is still highly exploitable though. I have now played a number of games where I have researched every single tech myself. I don't disable tech trading as I still want the AI to trade between themselves (otherwise they are very limited in what they can do). It also means keeping espionage below advanced, and not invading anyone that has techs I don't have - makes for an interesting game. Giving every AI the top level weapon and defense techs before invading them makes it less of a walkover aswell.

I made similar experiences, although my rules were less strict than yours.

Some AI directives like the ones proposed in #11 could be a good idea. I'm against strict rules for the AI in general, but right now the AI is little selective when it comes to trading technology.

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I played some more with close attention to the economy (trying to abstract from my playstyle) and experimented without any economic bonuses, and now I'd like to relativise what I said about the tax income: The base tax income seems about right to me, perhaps the economic bonuses you can take are a bit too powerful or too cheap to choose. The problem lies on the other side: It is too easy to buy techs and trade goods for money from the alien races, regardless of what relations you have (like the Altarians selling me, the Drengin, a trade good for 2K when we have "hostile" relations).

I'm sorry if this has caused any confusion, I certainly don't want to provoke an "economy always running in the red!" kind of thing in 1.2.

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I'm sorry if this has caused any confusion, I certainly don't want to provoke an "economy always running in the red!" kind of thing in 1.2.

No confusion, this has been one heck of a topic by you that Stardock should definetly take into account for the next patch.

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