And this is my point: if I want to get the best balance of research and production on a planet, the best way to do that should be to build a balance of factories and labs, not go all-factories or all-labs and use the focus button because it provides almost the same amount of the off-type while providing significantly greater amount of the on-type.

I still think the new slider system separating empire-wide research and production is a good idea, but I also think that the planetary slider system is, as you said, too complicated. So how about nerfing focus instead? As it is, it's a straight transfer of one to the other, but it doesn't work that way in real life: sure you can do research in a factory or use a lab's fabrication equipment to produce goods, but it's not nearly as efficient. So how about instead of a straight transfer of 25%, you lose 30% of the other for a gain of only 20% to your focus?

Example: 60 Mil, 60 Soc, 60 Research.

Old system: Production Focus takes 50% of the other production type (30) and 25% of research (15), research focus takes 25% of production and converts to research.

Mil Focus gives you: 105 Mil, 30 Soc, 45 Res
Soc Focus gives you: 30 Mil, 105 Soc, 45 Res
Res Focus givees you: 45 Mil, 45 Soc, 90 Res

New System: a Production Focus takes 60% of the other production type (36) and gives 40% (24), takes 30% of research (18) and gives 20% (12), research focus takes 30% of each production type and gives 20%

Mil Focus gives you: 96 Mil, 24 Soc, 42 Res
Soc Focus gives you: 24 Mil, 96 Soc, 42 Res
Res Focus gives you: 42 Mil, 42 Soc, 84 Res

Something like that. . . in any case, using focus should be something you do to ramp up production in a specific area because of time constraints, not a way to game the system and get much more of one for a relatively small cost in the other (and a bit of a hit to income).

And for the record, I have tried both systems. Focusing on Research in the beginning game and flipping to Industry halfway through is much much easier than trying to build a balanced planet from the get go in my experience.

I actually didn't miss the point and wasn't trying to dismiss it, I just addressed it indirectly. IMHO, the single-production strategy is a different way to play the game. Having tried the all-factory approach, I found that it has strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis a mixed-structure approach. I did not find it to be unbalancing or a guaranteed-victory strategy.

I consider something to be "wrong" when it exploits loopholes in indifferently written code and/or clearly violates the spirit of the game. I would like to point out to everyone here that concepts like "what should be done" or what is "wrong" or what is the "spirit of the game" are entirely subjective from one person's point of view.

If Brad or some of the development team were to weigh in on any issue, that is something else again. However, when you read posts from other players making assertions about how the game "should" be played or what is "intended", don't let someone's strong feelings about an aspect of the game unduly influence your own ability to think through the topic.

If you think something might be exploitative, try that thing out in a sandbox game and see if it really is. When I first discovered in a game during the DA beta that dropping a spy on a farm tile would reduce the planet's population and make it easier to invade, I posted that I thought it might be an exploit. Some people agreed, some didn't, then a dev popped by to say it was working as intended.

Using spies to reduce the population goes against my idea of the spirit of the game, so I just don't do it. If an AI ever does it to me, I might reciprocate, but that's it. Not everyone is going to agree about what is good or "right" in a game, but that doesn't mean that options "should" be taken away from everyone.

Lol really? And by "logical" you mean cookie cutter strategy ? - in all games most advanced strategies are alwasy exploiting some nontrivial hole in the system in creative way .That what is fun about it - finding new ways to play by old rules

I like the idea of sticking a spy on a farming tile: there's something incredibly sinister about it, like if someone had hired an agent to infiltrate the American Midwest and seed the nation's breadbasket with herbicides to wipe out the harvest: famine strikes the land, chaos ensues, mass deaths from starvation, bodies in the streets, and then the Canadians invade. . .

Anyway, my complaint isn't really with the fact that these strategies seem exploitative, it's the fact that there is no real efficiency penalty for doing so. You should indeed be able to do an all-or-nothing strategy, but it should basically crash your economy even more severely than it does right now and it should be quite inefficient anyway: Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" comes to mind.

I'm sorry for the late reply and if I wasn't being clear. There are two issues here.

One, the OP, which is a continuation of a prior thread bemoaning the realism of an all factory or all labs strategy. The question was if the strats should remain. I answered "yes".

As it is, there are essentially three basic strategies. From easy to hard, they are...

1. A semi-balanced approach that focuses a little on either research, influence or military. The economics aren't pressed too hard and the game is slow.

2. Ignore labs and build mostly economic buildings with some factories. The game goes quicker and is well suited for an early military victory or economic collapse. Research is limited to no more than 25% of your factory potential.

3. Ignore factories and build mostly economic buildings and some labs. Social and military combined are limited to 25% of your lab potential. If you stay with it, you can get a quick tech victory. Switching to a balanced or "all factory" strat midgame can gain a decisive and high scoring military victory. This strat can crash your economy even quicker and more thoroughly than #2 above.

Taking two of the three basic strategies away will just limit the game.

The second issue was about putting both strategies back in simultaneously, via a succession of sliders. I am against that idea. The AI plays to an economic balance. That would be its downfall if the live player could simply apply both strategies independently in the same game. The live player can adapt quickly and gain the upper hand on research and social at the same time simply by moving the global sliders to refocus when it's appropriate. The economics would be almost automated by a simple slider. Sounds more like a recipe than a game.



Then you have the experience to speak to this issue. I only tried that once and agree that it was easier to win with the midgame flip. I had a research bonus on my homeworld though and that's when I chose that strat. The balanced approach is still simpler though. The economy was a challenge, don't you think?

LOL YEAH RLY!

You don't really have a valid point since any dominant strategy will be come the standard and thus become your evil "cookie cutter". oh no!

Re: Research then Flip

The economy was a nightmare, but then again my game economies usually are. Actually, for me it was easier than doing a standard build type because I'd drawn a scenario with quite a few races and I was able to keep afloat by selling things like Fertility Enhancement to the minor races. Eventually, though, I wound up having to flip when I was down to selling things I didn't want to get rid of, like Advanced Logistics or my best weapon techs.

My point is, though, that you're not describing three strategies: you're describing six. Think of it as a three-by-two matrix: on one axis, my choices between building all labs, all factories, or a balance of the two. On the other axis, my choice to utilize all my production and kill my economy (fast), or utilize some of my production and keep financially solvent (slow). Because I can't utilize 100% of my production when I choose a balance, I'm denied one of the six:

Res Bal Ind
Fast x x
Slow x x x

I can't pursue a crash economy and burn all my cash into a 50/50 split of Resources and Industry. The current system takes away an option instead of adding two as you describe. A new slider system would still let me choose between a crash economy or a more stable one. It's just that now I'll be able to see much more clearly which one I'm doing, and I'll be able to crash myself in many more different ways than a 75/25 split.

In other words: if I say I want 100% production, I want 100% of all my buildings being used, not 100% of some nebulous number based on a weird average based on three other sliders. If I take an all research option, the penalty should be to my industry, not to my economy. The thing that should penalize my economy should be my tax rate and my production rate, not whether I want to send more money to Chevy or Honeywell.

As for the implication that this would create a cookie-cutter strategy, that's only if you play cookie-cutter games. Super Hivers would still want to take the factory-and-focus method because factories are much cheaper and faster for them than labs, etc. etc.

Yes.


No kidding. The economy side is what keeps these strategies balanced. They keep lowering and lowering the amount of money you make in each patch, why target such a difficult and expensive strategy?


Sorry, I disagree. Its a focused strategy. With all factories (by far the easier of the two) you will really hurt with research for many many map combinations. The slower the research setting, in fact, the harder this strategy is. If you play on Very slow research on suicidal, you often will lose early because you haven't even whiffed planetary invasion when enemy transports start showing up. If it were an exploit, it would always work.


Point taken. I have good news for you. This is already the case. If you want BALANCED research and production (50/50), a mix of buildings IS the way to go. All factories limits you to only 25% research, that is an unbalanced 75/25 split. Likewise with all labs. If you like even amounts of both, these strategies are not for you.


Again, I think it is just because you are ignoring the penalties. They are more expensive. They require you to plan what you are doing well in advance. Your empire is less flexible (for instance, if you are going all factories, there is no way to ramp up research, you are just stuck at whatever level you can manage - and its even worse for all labs). You need to be winning the game in a very different way with either of these.


A mixed structure setup is cheaper and more flexible. In many situations this is superior.


Maybe. It depends on how difficult the dominant strategy is. And how much more dominanat than easier approaches it is. If you get everything to work right, there is nothing more dominating than what you can do with an all labs approach. If you get everything to work right. I don't see this ever becoming the dominant approach, there are too many pitfalls.


As a slight aside, I'm glad that at least people have stopped saying that tech trading = auto win for the AI. Now we have moved onto this...

~ Wyndstar

Wyndstar,

Hey, we wouldn't be gamers if we didn't have something silly to argue about. And I respect your opinion, but I still think you're wrong, not because all labs or all factories are overpowered, but because the slider doesn't do what it seems it's supposed to do. Admittedly, though, it's something that's middle priority. . . it's nowhere near as game-breaking as, say, the infamous "Nothing but Fusion Beams because you can miniaturize them down to having massive banks of 99 that totally pwn any of the higher-level weapons" exploit from MoO2. . .

I finally switched from GC:I to DA last Tuesday, and after reading the forums I decided to try both an all labs approach and an all factory approach, while I eventually won the all labs game with a tech victory it totally ruined my economy to the point where I never did get it to run in the positives, and would often be running only 2-3 weeks out of any given month and it ended up taking years for me to get a tech victory. The all factory game is still in progress and victory is doubtful, I just can't get enough research done and I'm way behind the AI in most areas.

Both approaches seem to be more difficult to implement than the "balanced" approach and have required a lot more planning than I usually put into my production centers. I think they add an extra dimension of fun and, for me at least, have transformed the handicap of the linked production sliders into an interesting problem. Better yet, I'm having a lot of fun trying to find ways to make these strategies work for me.

I hope that focus stays in and that this strategy is not nerfed, after all, the entire point of playing at higher levels of difficulty is that the human has to play smarter and more efficiently than the AI can. With the addition of the mid-game flip (something I haven't been brave enough to try yet) it strikes this novice as a brilliant application of concentrating forces at the decisive point on a grand strategic level.

I didn't read this entire post, mainly because I'm lazy, so I apologize if this has been brought up somewhere higher than mine, but for the sake of argument.....

If a planet with all factories is set to all research, couldn't those factories (in theory) be producing research goods, thus improving the race's research ability? If you were researching, lets say, the doom ray, couldn't (again, in theory) all of those factories be producing the parts needed for such a technology to be produced galaxy wide by every planet that race owns? Perhaps when you "finish" the technology it simply means that's when the new building, weapon, good, etc can be massed produced on a ridiculously large scale...... In reality, a factory can aid in research (even if it's indirect), and a research facility can have limited production value.

I'd be disappointed and a little sad if we lost the feature. Just because something can be abused doesn't mean everyone should use the feature, this isn't a pvp game. Don't click on it if you don't like it. It could be improved, by many ways including some listed here, but loosing the feature totally is just a silly idea, mainly because it actually does make some since.

I use it, but I don't like it.

I'd prefer the global economy slider-settings to be changed (as mentioned above), so you could adjust research and production both individually from 0-100%.

if that were implemented I'd then add a "penatly" for focussing production, like if you wanted to focus on research on a world 50% of your production capacity would get taken away but only 25% added to research. or some such.

Would make the gameply much more realistic imo.

But barring a change to the global sliders I'd like to keep those 2 options in game.

developers could always try to lower the research output for factories and industry output for labs to make the all-lab and all factories strategy even tougher to implement and thus harder to abuse by most of the players. A compromise perhaps?

I'm a complete newbie at this game (only been playing for a few weeks), but allow me to give my two cents. The issue in my mind is the interplay between the two resources in this game: money and potential production (i.e. # of tiles that can be dedicated to factories or labs). At any given point, one of these is the limiting factor for my empire.

The all-labs or all-factory approach is extremely difficult to pull off at the beginning of the game, when money is the limiting factor. You're increasing production to levels that your economy cannot support, and pulling every trick in the book to keep solvent. I really don't think this is unbalanced, as many others have pointed out.

My issue, though, is with how this mechanic plays out from midgame onwards. At this point your economy is roaring along, and the limiting factor for your empire is potential production, NOT money. Potential production is largely fixed, based on the number of tiles you can devote to factories or labs, your bonuses, starbase layout, etc. At this point, compare the two extremes for tile usage:

Option 1: 50% labs and 50% factories. I have freedom to shift my potential production between 50%-0% and 0%-50% research/production or anywhere in between. Total pp: 50%.

Option 2: 100% factories, 0% labs. I can choose between 0%-100% or 25%-75%. The amount of freedom I have between these two extremes depends on the number of planets I have; more planets = more freedom (focus the planets in the desired proportion). Similarly for 100% labs / 0% factories. Total pp: 100%.

So by moving from option 1 to option 2, I lose the freedom to put more than 25% possible production in one of my areas. There are also bonus penalties, as I lose some bonuses to one area or the other. However, I DOUBLE (!!) the amount of potential production I can use each turn. This seems pretty unbalanced to me, and as a result I've developed a habit of flipping from a balanced to a specialized economy in the mid to late game.

Of course, if you are so good at this game that you never reach a point where potential production is your limiting factor (i.e. you ride the crest of economic collapse until you win), this is not an issue. However, since I often find myself with more money than I can spend, I think it's a flaw in the game design that specialization increases the amount of production available to you.

That being said, I don't like independent research/production sliders. Why? Because when potential production is your only limiting factor, you would just keep all sliders at 100% all the time. This basically just removes the sliders from the game. Boring.

I think a better change is to nerf double-specialization (buildings+sliders). Why not tie the effects of focus on the buildings present on a planet? Instead of thinking of focus as "using the factories for research," we'd think of it as "diverting some factory workers to the labs for this planet only." For example, the amount of production diverted from factories to labs could be min(25% current factory production, 25% max lab production). That way, if you wanted to run 100% prod/0% research, you'd have to keep an equal number of factories and labs on a planet to get the full benefit of focus. Thoughts?

I don't like all factory/all lab approaches on principle, but I recognize that they are difficult strategies that allow you to win in certain situations that would otherwise be impossible, but they are certainly not sure fire paths to victory. Whether it's an exploit or not is a subjective question.
There are several issues at stake.
On one hand, there is the issue of the connection between research and production, i.e. you cannot fund your factories and labs both at 100%. Yes, it's at the heart of the all factory/ all lab debate, but from a game design perspective, it's another issue.

Second there is the question of whether focus should allow you to change production from one type to another with no penalty to efficiency. This is another game design issue, and other solutions, i.e. focus changes production with a penalty or focus increases the production of a given type rather than moving production from one type to another would all have their own advantages and disadvantages.

But let's get to the heart of the matter. What advantage does the all lab/all factory strategy offer? And why is it not always the best strategy?

First, we have to remember that the goal of GalCiv game is to win the game and (if you're into the metaverse) get the most metaverse points possible.

Generally, being able to produce more points (research and industrial) allows you to win, but obviously those points have to be spent intelligently (getting the techs in the right order, building ships that can fight and win) and the whole "positioning" part of the game has to be played intelligently (moving ships, taking certain planets) as well as the diplomatic portion - avoiding fights you don't want, starting fights between other players, getting allies, etc.

The all labs/ all factories debate focuses on the production of research and industrial points.
There are two limiting factors to the production of points - the "point production potential" of your empire and the amount of money you have to spend.

In theory, the "point production potential" of your empire would be all the factories and labs you have times the output of each one. But this is where the sliders come in. As is well understood, you cannot fund factories and labs to 100% at the same time, so the theoretical "point production potential" can never be reached.

But since you need a money to turn "point production potential" into real research and industrial points, this limit may not be an issue. If your economy cannot produce enough money to fund all that production, that higher potential does you no good.
This is clearly seen in the fact that, no matter the strategy, you always need to put stock markets down on planets. A "no stock market" strategy would give you a higher production potential, but the economic cost would be so high all that potential would be unusable.
The all lab/all factory strategy allows players who are so good at developing their economies that they get tons and tons of excess income to use turn that income into production points at a greater level at the expense of flexibility.

So an all lab/ all factory strategy does give you a much higher production potential by "circumventing" in a sense the slider limitations. That potential would be useless in terms of winning the game, of course, if you could not focus to get some production or research. But focus does work, so the strategies are viable.

But they require a few things - you have to sacrifice flexibility, and you have to be able to generate tons of money, often (as Wyndstar's AAR shows) selling techs to the AI.

The long and short of it is that I don't like the idea of focus working the way it does, but if it allows certain players a different way to play the game certain situations I think it should stay in.

I agree completely. The thing is, I've found that having a surplus of money is not an "if" but a "when." When the game does reach that point, it seems to me that the economic system breaks down and the disadvantages of 100% specialization disappear.

I hope they leave it alone. On thing I like about them is even though the all-factory strat gets along well with my style of play, the all-lab strat falls on it's face for me. Which is good, I like the challenge it presents to make it work.

Until they do make changes to the overall slider system(probably not before GCIII) I like what they have and discovering the many nuances contained within it.

Whenever I consider whether I should argue for a change or not, I wonder whether, if the change were going in the opposite direction, people would argue so vehemently for it as well. For example: if in Dread Lords, the game system had allowed each weapon to attack separately, but if in Dark Avatar the system were changed to allow each ship to target only one enemy at a time. I can see a valid argument that the prior system made fighters too weak, but also a valid argument that the newer system allows Huge ships to walk over everything.

When it comes to this debate, though I'm finding it hard to believe that if we were starting from separate sliders for research and industry, people would argue that the system should be changed to have research and industry linked by the same slider on the grounds that it would allow people to pursue an all-labs or all-tech strategy that would result in severe spending, but allow greater specialization. There would be no point: you could pursue an all-labs strategy anyway by building nothing but labs, setting your research slider to 100%, and setting your production slider to 0% You could pursue an all-factories strategy by building nothing but factories, setting your research slider to 0%, and setting your production slider to 100%. You could do what balanced players are forced to do now by building a mix of labs and factories and setting your sliders to around 50% or 60% or however much it is. But it also opens up a new strategy: build a mix of factories and labs, set your research and production to 100%, run yourself to the ground just as fast as the specialists, but getting a mixture of research and production: which is what the specialists get now, by the way, with their "build all of one and use focus" method.

I mentioned the MoO2 Fusion Beam Cheese before, mostly because I remember how PO'd my friends were when the game was patched to get rid of the exploit. A lot of them refused to install the patch. The game was better with it, but they didn't want to give up their neat trick. I applaud the people who discovered the "specialize and focus" method, but the fact is, it's a neat trick, nothing more. The game would be better with a more transparent interface instead of having to pull arcane tricks like this to make sure that 100% production really means 100% production.

To sum up: "But the specialize and focus method requires you to manage your economy better" argument is bull. You'd have to do just as much economy management with a true 100% mixed research and factory method: spending would be just as severe because you'd be exploiting 100% of your buildings. But you'd be able to do it without resorting to silly tricks like building all labs and using focus because the game doesn't allow you to exploit 100% of your buildings otherwise.

Side note: I once heard a phrase that went "It's like complaining the Venus de Milo has no arms." This is silly. The Venus de Milo did have arms to begin with, they were lost or broken off over time (I believe she was supposed to be holding a golden apple). The statue was also originally painted to be more lifelike, and probably also dressed in actual clothing. So people who talk about how the fact that the Venus de Milo has no arms and is sculpted in white marble makes it more beautiful don't know what the heck they're talking about. Likewise GalCiv. People who claim that the three-sliders and one production method gives the game more nuance ignore the fact that it's basically an annoyingly arcane system that encourages metagaming and is unnecessarily obtuse. It's one of my few real complaints in a game that is, otherwise, exemplary.