Why are there so many hard caps hacked into the game?

Population of 21~24B rapidly decline in morale, but if you get past that you're fine (it drops less precipitously)

Wrong, it stops altogether at 27 bil.

You need hard caps. Otherwise you would have 100% taxes and 1000% miniturisation. It's to try and even the playing ground.

How could you get 1000% miniaturization, there's only so many techs right?

How could you get 1000% miniaturization, there's only so many techs right?

You can always capture 9 hyperion shrinkers after making your own.

If you were really crazy or just wanted to see how far you could get, you could keep an enemy alive and only take planets that they build one on. Capture the planet and wait for them to build another, if they get full on buildings, tidal wave attack the planet, wipe it clean and give it back to them. Don't know exactly why you would want to go that far, but you could end up with one of every planet in a gigantic galaxy if you really really really wanted to.

No, there is no way to get 1000% miniaturization. Marcathonas is just trying to be the loyal fanboy and defend Stardock's every decision, good or bad.
I have to say that a miniaturization-cap at 125 seems very low since Yor will have 140 miniaturization from technology and one Hyperion Shrinker alone. IMO the cap should be removed (if it even exists, haven't noticed it myself) or at least be increased to 150 or something so that the Yor actually benefit from all their miniaturization stuff, like all the other races do.

I can see strongly discouraging certain things, but then there's taking it too far. I mean, when a 1% tax increase drops your morale from 100% to 0%, why even allow you to set tax rate to 81% at all? It looks very unprofessional.

I kinda agree. I think that it should be much harder to have a tax-rate over ~50% then it is now. I would imagine that people would begin to revolt if taxes got as high as 81%. But the drop in morale from 80 to 81% is silly.

No, there is no way to get 1000% miniaturization. Marcathonas is just trying to be the loyal fanboy and defend Stardock's every decision, good or bad. I have to say that a miniaturization-cap at 125 seems very low since Yor will have 140 miniaturization from technology and one Hyperion Shrinker alone. IMO the cap should be removed (if it even exists, haven't noticed it myself) or at least be increased to 150 or something so that the Yor actually benefit from all their miniaturization stuff, like all the other races do.

Erm, no I'm not. It's called modding the files. Do try and be remotely accurate next time. Besides, that was an example. 100% taxes would be possible. I run empires that are 100% happy at 80% taxes. And 100% taxes is stupid and unrealistic.

The 80% cap is good -- keeps things from seeming ridiculous. Don't understand the miniaturization cap though, unless too many weapons confuses the game. GCI had a limit at 100 billion per planet where if you landed more colonists on the planet they would vanish. Brad said it was to keep people from breaking the game in ways they couldn't think of.

I would argue that if a race had a different outlook than that of humans (say, a cybernetic collective) that 100% taxes wouldn't be unrealistic. The race gives each member what it needs, and each member gives everything it has to the betterment of the race. I don't think the Borg of Star Trek do much luxury spending. And the 125% miniaturization cap (which I was not previously aware of) is silly. At least cap it at the Yor tech + shrinker maximum of 140%. Even better would be around 250%, so as to make it worthwhile to capture another race's Shrinker. IMHO, it isn't bad to have broken tactics or options in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. You have the option to use or not to use them. If you get off on cake walks, use them. If you don't, then don't use them. I've just figured out file modding. I'm thinking every aspect of the game should be moddable, and that hard-coded caps are unnecessary for a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. Now, if it goes multiplayer, that might be different. I for one hope the single player experience continues to be enhanced instead of multiplayer.

There's two ways to make money in the game. One is to have a high population on a world. This is very difficult, but possible, and it requires the most advanced morale buildings (and possible several morale resources), as well as a large planet with lots of tiles. If you can get past 25-27B (or whatever it is that is the cap), and still have a decent tax rate, then you can make money. Note that this is not easy or often viable, particularly if you wish to retain a 100% morale (for the population growth) on said planet. But if you can pull it off, then that planet can be your money maker.

The other is to have relatively little population, but use taxes and economy buildings to make your money on these worlds. You can pull this off with a much smaller planet, but you won't be able to make the money you could with the above method. The problem here is that you could, with a linear scale and some good morale improvements, literally hit 100% taxes and still have decent morale. The 80% discontinuity exists to keep your profits, while very large, still within some form of reason.

Yes, both of these are what a programmer would call "hacks". They're patches to make a specifically designed system work when someone finds a way to break it. That's one of the downsides with a more free-form building system like GalCiv2 (as opposed to the way Civ games work, where you can only build one of any particular building in a city): if you let poeple compound bonuses, they may find ways to achieve things you never intended.

If you didn't have the first hack (ie, the eventual stopping of morale drops due to population), then the first method of money making would never work nearly as well as method #2. It already requires a big planet to make it work as it is, as well as the most expensive morale building. Even then, it requires a huge population (35+B) to really make it worth the effort. The other method can pay off with 17B people.

If you didn't have the second hack, you make money method #2 preferential, because you can hit 100% taxes and make that much more money. Whether this is "reasonable" or not is irrelevant; this is a game. Balancing the game means that both methods of revenue generation should be viable. 80% was considered a reasonable cap on taxes.

I would like to point out, however, in one of my games, I could hit 81% with only a drop to 67% morale.

I think I'm tending to steer the opposite way compared to everybody else on this one...

I think the tax cap is goofy, but the miniturization cap makes perfect sense:

(a) If you created an essentially pure communist or hive society (Thalans) the main goal of your society would be to better the society. In such a place there would be no need for personal income. Therefore 100% taxes would be a well functioning commune.

(b) Matter is matter, you can only shrink things so much. After a while there just aren't enough atoms to get the job done. Now I'm not saying the cap is necessarily the "correct" amount, but things can only be so small. Now I guess one could argue that things could be almost non-existant with the proper applications of quantum physics, but at that point huge ships would be pointless too..

each race should be different.... they should all have different caps for different things...


the custom races should have a menu where you could control the caps through a point system in order to make them competative with the hardcoded races...

Erm, no I'm not. It's called modding the files. Do try and be remotely accurate next time. Besides, that was an example. 100% taxes would be possible. I run empires that are 100% happy at 80% taxes. And 100% taxes is stupid and unrealistic.

I was accurate. I know that it's difficult to realise that Stardock might have done a bad decision but I guess that if my Yor-example won't convince you, nothing will.
Anyway, let's consider two different examples of how a hard cap will limit modding since you brought that up:
If you are modding so that all races get 1000% miniaturization, a hard cap will only hinder that. If you are modding so that only you get 1000% miniaturization, I would say that is actually cheating, and no game will ever be balanced for people that cheat.
So in both examples, a hard cap will only limit what you can do with modding.

And FYI, if you would have read the rest of my post, you would have noticed that I commented on your 100%-taxes example too, with IMO a much better solution. Make it more diffictult to have high taxes.

I have no idea how a society could function when the government is sponging 80% of its subject's earnings. I sure as heck would not want to go to work just so I could take 20 cents home and give 80 to the man. 80% taxes is beyond exhorbitant.

I did read your post, and would rather more AI time than a new tax mechanism. Not once did I say the game was perfect. If I can't persuade you to learn not to be an idiot and take things literally, nothing will. I used 1000% miniturisation as an EXAMPLE. Not as something that could happen. The fact is, in reality people will accept things to a point. Everything bubbles up, but it has to hit some form of cap and revolution begins. If you decrease the food, the people will make do and survive. However, once it's passed below the living threshold, revolutions happen.

And the Yor miniturisation is still immensely useful. How many of you have equalled their ability during the colony rush?

I think one point made originally is still a valid one. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

I did read your post, and would rather more AI time than a new tax mechanism. Not once did I say the game was perfect. If I can't persuade you to learn not to be an idiot and take things literally, nothing will. I used 1000% miniturisation as an EXAMPLE.

So you want to learn me not to be a idiot? Well, I wouldn't want to learn anything from a person who apparently has serious problems understanding writing.
My latest reply was to your comment that a huge miniaturization would be possible with modding and thus unbalance the game unless there was a hard cap, nothing else. Replace 1000% with 200% in my post and it won't make any difference. The hard cap will limit modding either way.

I think one point made originally is still a valid one. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Thats exactly what I thought.

So you want to learn me not to be a idiot? Well, I wouldn't want to learn anything from a person who apparently has serious problems understanding writing.

The same way I would learn not to be a "fanboy" from a raging prat? I have a far better understand of writing than you it seems. Caps are there to stop absurdly high values being put into the game. What if a planet could hit about 700bil pop? 100% taxes? 200% miniturisation? Right, because that makes sense.

. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

If you could use the entire slider, it wouldn't be a "tax rate" slider any more but just a "money slider." You wouldn't think "Oh, I'm raising my taxes to 49% now," you'd think, "Oh, I have to get the rest of the way to 100%." 100% of what?

Marcathonas: I understand that it's difficult to comprehend that I have only discussed caps for miniaturization and taxes, not population. I think population caps based on PQ is fairly logical. But having morale lowered from 100% to 0% while changin taxes 1% is to me silly. If you didn't get it the previous time, my solution instead of a cap for taxes is to make it a lot more difficult to have such high taxes. If it's difficult enough, no-one will ever be able to have 100% but it won't look so artificial.

I think one point made originally is still a valid one. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Because it doesn't drop your morale to 0. What it does is tripple (or more) the taxation morale penalty. If you don't have lots of morale buildings to absorb that cost, then it drops it down to 0.

If it's difficult enough, no-one will ever be able to have 100% but it won't look so artificial.

That is the essence of my post! Thank you for articulating it so well!

I was not trying to suggest rebalancing the game or say that 100% tax is something that every civilization is entitled to do with no down side, I was saying that doing these things the way that Stardock has done them does not make sense and is very unprofessional anyway.

If Stardock wants to make the statement that no citizen in any conceivable civilization will accept being exhorbitantly taxed by their government (despite mining resources which are described in game as liquid joy and other crazy things), that's fine. What's NOT fine, is that Stardock saying the same thing but that marker is at 81% no matter the situation of your society.

Is there a universal switch in everyone's head that says "80% tax, no worries. I'm in excess of 100% contentedness so I can't conceive of any flaws in this government. Wait, taxes are actually 81%? Down with the government! My contentedness is now below 0% and ANY other government in the universe is better!"

If they're gonna do that, at least do it professionally and cap the tax slider at 80%.

If they're gonna do that, at least do it professionally and cap the tax slider at 80%.

First off, I also wish they wouldn't use these hard caps and even morale drops at the 10s percentages, though I suppose there is a some logic to that since people are often fooled to an extent by number manipulation like that. I don't see why they can't just use a curve that can slope drastically as it nears percentages that they don't want to be attainable. Morale not dropping at all after a certain point seems like an oversight to me and feels like using it is an exploit of the system.

However, I see potential for some very limited use of leaving the tax slider open to a full 100% even in your morale will be 0. Though rare, it is possible that you could need a few extra BCs for rush buying a wonder or getting out of debt or something that you might want to slip it up above 80% for just a turn or two. I've never needed to or tried it myself, but I don't think you'd lose any colonies if you just had to pull in a little extra money for a vital turn, just some people which can grow back afterwards. Please tell me if 0% morale does something horrible like cuts your population in half every turn, I've never tried it. Unless that's the case, I don't think they should cap the tax slider. I would like them to reconsider the drop offs and caps they have in place though.

Ah! Yes! If the tax slider stopped at 80, you'd never be tempted to raise it above 80 and see what it does to your people.

I think it might actually add to the fun of the game to have something built into the slider that you can discover. What's fun about this kind of game is learning "OK, +10% morale is good, but +20% is not worth it, Plasma Weapons are good but Laser III is all you ever need, and keep your tax on the nines and you'll get the most morale and revenue."

I have no idea how a society could function when the government is sponging 80% of its subject's earnings. I sure as heck would not want to go to work just so I could take 20 cents home and give 80 to the man. 80% taxes is beyond exhorbitant.

In the USA alone, _maximum_ income tax rates have been over 80%. World War I : the top tax bracket was 77%. During World War II, the rate for the highest income brackets went to 91% and remained there until 1964, when it was lowered to 70%, then to 50% in 1981.

The USA still seems to have functioned. Mind, most people never paid that high a tax.

If they're gonna do that, at least do it professionally and cap the tax slider at 80%.

Excuse me, but were you not paying attention?

81% does not drop your morale to 0. Well, it does for yours, but that's because you don't have enough morale buildings. You can maintain a tax rate > 80% if you have enough morale. The 80-81 disjunction is not much different from the 39-40, or 49-50, or the disjunction that happens between any other 10 tax rate increments. It just happens to be much bigger.