Food bonus tiles

from GalCiv2 Forums
As many of you know, I've been focused on bonus tiles in the beta for several days now.

Now this report isn't exactly a beta fault report but I had what may be a worthwihile idea.

For some time now (since about 1.5x), food bonus tiles have been of marginal use.

Since the pop morale penalties were so significant, there was little point to building planet pop caps above 20; and using more than one tile for farms, and any tiles other than Mystic Springs for morale was mathematically less advantageous for your economy than using those tiles for Bank/Stock Markets.

I think some of this could be corrected, and the possibility of building at least certain planets as pop/tax super centers could be restored, with, I think, little effort and little impact on other aspects of the game.

Option 1 (lesser impact): Make food bonus tiles also minor morale boosters, if a farm is built there.
Off the cuff I would suggest a morale boost of 1/10 of their food prod bonus.

Option 2 (slightly more involved, but I think better):
Count the extra population allowed by a farm on a food bonus tile at only 50% value in the morale calculations. (Similar to the way off-planet prod bonus points only count for 50% for production expenses.)
Example: Planet has a capital (16 mt/wk) and one Xeno Farm on a 100% food bonus tile (5 mt/wk + 100% bonus, 5 more mt/wk). Pop is maxed out at 26B, however, for morale calculation purposes it only counts as 21B, because the main agriculturual district is around that very nice heartland river system (bonus tile) that allows masses of people to live very comfortably.

Option 3: Do both.

By my rough calcs, this would allow a planet with the right combination of bonus tiles to get the pop up to ~30-35B while still maintaining tolerable morale, and the pumping of the population using the bonus tiles should have a slight edge in tax production over just building Stock Markets on the same tiles.

If not for the TA expansion, then perhaps for 2.0.

drrider
11,396 views 20 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My suggestion,

Make 300% morale tile occur at the same variance of the 300% food tile.

Either that, or I like the idea of giving a small morale bonus if the farm is built on a farm tile.

I do think that a 300% morale tile is needed, if not to balance out the 300% food.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I will point this out to the people in charge. 
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the current system is good for larger worlds with only 1 food bonus, however, I agree with you with the smaller planets, especially when you get a class 3 or 4 with 2 or 3 food bonus' where one or more is a 300% bonus' It is completely useless on these worlds. All three of your options are good options, and I decided to build on this topic and add 4 more of my own

1. My suggestion would be for 300% bonus food tiles have it also give you a morale bonus but, only if used for farming.

2. Limit food bonus tiles for smaller worlds.

3. Link food bonus with morale bonus tiles, for instance if a world has 1 food bonus it also has to have 1 morale bonus.

4. Along the same note add a 300% or 700% morale bonus.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i pretty much never build a population over 19 billion due to the sudden and marked difference in morale. to get that high, it usually build 1 top tier farm (+7) and one second tier (+6) and disable the auto-upgrade. and as you said, that's usually only when there's a morale bonus tile as well.

option 4 would be to re-purpose farm tiles all together.

option 5 would be to gimp farms and make it harder to reach high populations.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For those who are suggesting 300% and 700% morale tiles:

While I don't necessarily disagree with you about the need for some other graduations of morale bonuses, I think there is some misunderstanding about how the morale bonus tiles work. Not surprising, because it is not entirely intuitive.

If you build a virtual reality center on an regular tile, you get a 40% morale boost...to the morale of the entire planet.

If you build a VR ctr on a morale bonus tile, you DO NOT get a bonus of 40% + 40% more for the bonus (100% increase in the benefit) = 80% morale boost.

Instead, a VR ctr on a 'water drop' gets a morale bonus of 40% + 100% for the bonus tile = 140% morale boost! This makes the Mystic Spring already one of the most powerful bonus tiles available, especially in the critical early game.

(It also makes a Mystic Spring the ideal place to build a Counter Espionage Center - go figure - sort of a Zen philosophy vibe going there!)

BTW, dystopic - great idea about gimping the farm improvements. Making the sequence Farm = +3, Xeno Farm = +4, Intensive Farm = +5, Advanced Farm = +6 would put significantly more premium on Farm technology, and on the Food Distro Ctr as a cap development, and make farm tiles more significant while keeping within a manageable total population. The one thing I DON'T think it would do vs the current tile management dynamic is make farms competetive with banks/stock markets as tax growth developments. Hmm...

drrider
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't know if it's just certain races, but in TA I thought that farms were gimped. I have no farming options to start, a +3 on the first tech, and then two more techs that I haven't researched. It may still hit +7 on the final tech, but I'd expected it was +3, +5, +6, leaving off the +7.

I loved that in TA there was no initial farm to build, so I hope I'm not mistaken in thinking this is what happens for all races...
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I loved that in TA there was no initial farm to build, so I hope I'm not mistaken in thinking this is what happens for all races...
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All but Yor and Torians now.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While i disagree that there is no point in building morale improvements on non-bonus tiles (esp in TA), i do wholly like the suggestions made here. This has been an ongoing bone of contention in my games, to the point where i stopped trying to build up significant population on planets. If i were to have a super-populated planet, 50% or more of it's tiles would have to be morale improvements just to maintain a basic morale level, leaving little room for the improvements to take advantage of that population. For me, that also rendered the advanced farm improvements mute, as well as the newer food distribution center.

I really like the idea of a 300% morale tile bonus, morale bonus seems to be the only one without a second tier. And the morale calculation, while complicated, seems like a good idea, at least if there's not going to be a whole re-vamp of morale penalties due to population. I suppose the other route would simply be to half the morale penalty due to population, or to add a new morale improvement that virtually eliminates, or significantly reduces, that penalty. Something like 'Planetary Arcologies".

Arcologies (for those unaware) are super-buildings, basically self-contained cities in a single, huge building, a building that may be miles high, and even larger in base diameter. This would support a vast population in a contained 'small (relative to planet size)' area. Since the Arcologies are self-contained, everything needed for everyday life (places to work, schools, restaurants, and of course, housing) are all within the structure, there is no need to venture out of it. This would have a tremendous effect on morale because overcrowding wouldn't be an issue if everything you need to live is right there with you. And thus the planet can support uber-populations without an (or without a significant) impact on morale.

Plus it's a cool excuse for a shiny new improvement for TA. Here are some ideas of what an arcology might look like:





This is an actual arcology designed for Japan, called Try2004


Another proposed arcology for japan, sky city 1000


And another called X-seed 4000
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd like to see some combination of tweaks that would make a world with a low population but maxed out farm improvements (a "breadbasket of the empire" kind of world) a viable type of specialty build. In other words, a way to export an agrarian world's food surpluses to other planets of the empire. You could then have a high population world that would, for example, suffer a mass die-off from starvation if the farm worlds supporting it are conquered. The game mechanic for it could be analogous to the connections between asteroid mines and the planets they send their goodies to.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I really like the idea of a 300% morale tile bonus, morale bonus seems to be the only one without a second tier.
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influence.

Arcologies (for those unaware) are super-buildings, basically self-contained cities in a single, huge building, a building that may be miles high, and even larger in base diameter. This would support a vast population in a contained 'small (relative to planet size)' area.
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Sim City 2000!!!

also, i saw those two japanese designs on a discovery channel special. the pyrmid-shaped one is designed to be built on the bay of tokyo and supposedly able to withstand tsunamis.

the tower-shaped one is designed to tesselate - that is, after you build 3 in a trigular array, they can be connected at higher levels (the building itself already is more like several tall towers with several connection levels between them - allowing airflow and accessability to helicopter-based fire fighters).
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Instead, a VR ctr on a 'water drop' gets a morale bonus of 40% + 100% for the bonus tile = 140% morale boost! This makes the Mystic Spring already one of the most powerful bonus tiles available, especially in the critical early game.
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IIRC that was just a display error in one of older versions of DA. In DL and DA the Mystic Spring just doubles the effect of morale building. Tested in my recent DA game where I used the first morale building on Mystic Spring with expected modest effect (below +20% additional approval), and not the +100% like it should work by your statement. However if you're describing the effect in TotA, I can not comment, because I don't have it.

BR, Iztok
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd really like to see some of the changes proposed. Currently I'm not even bothering researching and building food improvements, but if farm bonus tiles also provide a morale bonus, they'd be much more useful.

Also, the idea that a world could export their excess food to other worlds, maybe with a special building required.

Alternatively, you could use freighters to manually establish such export routes. You would have to give up a foreign trade-route, but you could then distribute food the exact way you want.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The manual method of food surplus shipping via freighters is an interesting one, but I wouldn't want to have to sacrifice a normal trade route to do it. The scale of it would be along the lines of the connections between mining areas and planets. Think gigantic and immense galaxies (I play a lot at the larger sizes). Food surplus benefits wouldn't be nearly as useful in the smaller games. Automating food export would make it easier to manage, and you'd have interesting effects like espionage agents attacking bread basket planets to cause famines on other planets.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Arcologies (for those unaware) are super-buildings, basically self-contained cities in a single, huge building, a building that may be miles high, and even larger in base diameter. This would support a vast population in a contained 'small (relative to planet size)' area. Since the Arcologies are self-contained, everything needed for everyday life (places to work, schools, restaurants, and of course, housing) are all within the structure, there is no need to venture out of it. This would have a tremendous effect on morale because overcrowding wouldn't be an issue if everything you need to live is right there with you. And thus the planet can support uber-populations without an (or without a significant) impact on morale.
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You must be an urban dweller. Personally, I can hardly think of anything MORE depressing and counter-morale than widespread arcology living.

drrider
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
IIRC that was just a display error in one of older versions of DA. In DL and DA the Mystic Spring just doubles the effect of morale building. Tested in my recent DA game where I used the first morale building on Mystic Spring with expected modest effect (below +20% additional approval), and not the +100% like it should work by your statement. However if you're describing the effect in TotA, I can not comment, because I don't have it.

BR, Iztok
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APOLOGIES EVERYONE! RESET!
Iztok knows these game calculation issues much better than I. I was basing my statement off a very early discussion in the forums, for DA. I bow to his more extensive research / knowledge on the subject.

Population mgt / food (etc) production / morale limits still needs to be tweaked, however.

drrider
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've always wanted to have a "breadbasket" world. Maybe that's what a food distribution center could do, allow a planet to share it's 300% farm bonus with everyone else.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Food distribution center certainly needs some kind of boost.

Maybe make it a Super Project that causes ALL planets to get a % food boost?
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


Arcologies (for those unaware) are super-buildings, basically self-contained cities in a single, huge building, a building that may be miles high, and even larger in base diameter. This would support a vast population in a contained 'small (relative to planet size)' area. Since the Arcologies are self-contained, everything needed for everyday life (places to work, schools, restaurants, and of course, housing) are all within the structure, there is no need to venture out of it. This would have a tremendous effect on morale because overcrowding wouldn't be an issue if everything you need to live is right there with you. And thus the planet can support uber-populations without an (or without a significant) impact on morale.


You must be an urban dweller. Personally, I can hardly think of anything MORE depressing and counter-morale than widespread arcology living.

drrider
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Funny, i can't think of anything MORE exciting and awesome . However, i think the main point is that when you're faced with overcrowding on a planetary scale, with 10s of billions of people, the idea of free "wide open spaces" living isn't feasable, and arcologies are one of the best alternatives. Not to mention they look uber cool and they're super futuristic.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Funny, i can't think of anything MORE exciting and awesome . However, i think the main point is that when you're faced with overcrowding on a planetary scale, with 10s of billions of people, the idea of free "wide open spaces" living isn't feasable, and arcologies are one of the best alternatives. Not to mention they look uber cool and they're super futuristic.
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actually i must respectfully disagree. the entire 6+ billion people on earth, if we were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, would occupy the space of Rhode Island. in 4-person suburban-style homes, we'd take up a space the size of Texas.

over-crowding is really an issue of providing lives for so many people, not just space. food, clothes, possibly even personal transportation and entertainment. no real proposed arcology or mega-structure of any sort has meant to be completely self-contained. they still need food, air, power, and information from the outside world. food and air would be the hardest challenges, as shown by the failure of Biosphere 2.

however, arcologies do solve, or at least address, some of our over-population problems. it curbs suburbanization obviously, and with it the need to provide personal transportation to people. in that pyrimid-shaped design above, those links that connect the buildings are actually like subway tubes. transporting needed resources is also a bit easier, since you really only have one destination. given a bit of technological advancement, power shouldn't be an issue, and information can obviously be made lightweight (literally... anyone get that?). arcologies, it seems to me, can make more efficient use of consumed resources (distributing resources in a pre-organized and contained area the size of downtown LA would be a lot easier than a haphazardly-developed LA county with its malignant suburbs). it can also potentially mean we use less arable land for living on, and more for growing on. and if the environment were more hostile to us, it'd make coping with that a lot easier.

but sorry i lost track of my point. "wide open living" is unfeasible, not because of the raw number of humans, but because of out subsequent needs. arcologies in and of themselves would have a marginal effect on that at best, plus represent considerable resource expendatures in themselves. Star Trek -like technologies, such as anti-matter power generation and food replication, on the other hand, would allow us to spread out to a population 10 or 20 times what we have now before the wide open spaces were totally gone.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well we'll have to respectfully disagree on some issues .

But i never meant to say they were completely self-contained, obviously they would require food and other consumables from an outside source, what i means was that within the structure, all the means for getting access to that food would be there, ala grocery stores, food courts, restaraunts, etc... Which ties it even more into the idea of the food and population issues with GC2, which is why i think they would make a good addition ot the game.

With multiple arcologies (and by that i don't mean more than one improvement on a planet in the game, i'm talking abstractly) a planet could support a much larger poplulation in the same relative area. I don't see them as being counter-morale in any way, quite the opposite, they would relieve the over-crowding unhappiness casued by lack of individual space, traffic congestion, lack of jobs, not to mention the added bonuses if you were living in a hostile environment.

With arcologies you could see planets supporting populations in the trillions, not just billions. Provided you have the food situation in check, you could make a fortune from the taxes on a planet like that in the game. Granted, they may not be the best solution for every race in the game, especially in TA, but for some races they would be. You could easily come up with equivalents for the others, such as 'subterranean communes' for the thalan, or 'sub-aquatic colonies' for the torians. Perhaps races like the Drengin or Korath would have no such native tech or improvement, as it doesn't seem like something they'd be interested in.