Evil Muppet

Join Date 03/2006

Trying to understand the numbers

I've played this game for a long time, however I'm very lazy and spend most of my time hovering around Tough and couple of difficulties higher. Normally I just "wing it", and don't put a lot of thought into the numbers that various screens are throwing at me. I want to change all that though, and take the game more seriously, so I sat down earlier with the intention of paying more attention to my civilization's economy. This is where I'm a bit puzzled. I don't know which bonuses apply to what, and in what order. Some of the numbers don't seem to make sense. This is where you come in hopefully).

I started the game as the Torians and chose the Populists as my party. I didn't allocate any spare ability points or tech points, and this is how I started out:

Race Bonuses

+10 Morale
+10 Population Growth
+6 Logistics
(SUPER BREEDER)

Technology

I started out with the following technologies...

Hyperdrive
Galactic Warfare (+10 Military Production)
Xeno Engineering (+10 Social Production)
Xeno Industrial Theory (+10 Social Production)
Xeno Economics (+10 Economics)
Stellar Cartography

Political Party

The Populists give me the following bonuses...

+10 Morale
+10 Diplomacy

Abilities

All this with my natural gives my race the following abilities...

Economics +10%
Morale +20%
Population Growth +10%
Social Production +20%
Military Production +10%
Diplomacy +10%
Logistics +6%

Economy

I turned down my tax rate to make sure my morale was at 100%. I split my production between Social and Research, so that my first technology would be ready in one turn, and I'd still have the highest social production possible. Here are my settings:

Tax Rate 20%
Production Capacity 100%
Military Rate 0%
Social Rate 55%
Research Rate 45%
Espionage Spending (max)

This is how it translates into bc/wk:

Income (Total 15bc)

Taxes 15bc

Expenses (Total 45bc)

Social 13bc

Research 14bc

Colony Maintenance 13bc

Bonus Production/Research 2bc

Espionage 3bc

My Empire

So far I have my homeworld of Toria, and the newly colonized Toria IV. I filled up my colony ship to the max before colonizing the second world. I haven't rush-built any improvements, but I queued up some buildings on Toria, and left Toria IV's build queue empty to see if bonuses only apply when production is in use. Here are the details of the planets...

Toria

Improvements

Civilization Capital (24 production, 24 research, 16 food, 40% morale, 30% influence)

Starport (1bc maintenance)

Population

7.85b/16b

Planetary Bonuses

Research +10%

Production

Military = 0

Social = 15

Research = 12

Finances

Income 13bc

Spending 24bc

Maintenance 1bc

Toria IV

Improvements

Initial Colony (16 production, 10 research, 6 food, 5% morale, 12bc maintenance)

Population

0.25b/6b

Production

Military = 8 (from unused social production)

Social = 8 (unused)

Research = 4

Finances

Income 2bc

Spending 16bc

Maintenance 12bc

Questions

Ok, Toria's spending is 24bc. I'm assuming this works out at 24 production * 0.55% (13.2bc) + 24 research * 0.45% (10.8bc). So obviously bonuses to production don't cost anything (or the social production cost would increase by 20%, and the research cost would increase by 10%). So the question is, how come Toria IV's spending is 16bc? It produces 16 production * 0.55% (8.8bc) plus 10 research * 0.45% (4.5bc) is 13.3bc. where does the extra come from?

Toria's social production is 15. My social production bonus is 20%, my social production rate is 55%, and my total production capacity is 24. How does it arrive at 15 in total? 24 * 0.55 = 13.2. 120% of 13.2 is 15.84. Wouldn't that round up to 16?

Likewise, Toria IV's social production is 8 (unused). 16 production * 0.55 = 8.8 - I'm unsure if the social production bonus is appllied if the build queue is empty. Now that I think about it, does this mean that fractions are dropped?

Toria's research is 12. 24 research * 0.45 = 10.8. If I add another 10% of that for the planetary research bonus, that still only leaves me with 11.88. So, if it drops fractions, shouldn't the research output equal 11?

Toria IV's research is 4. 10 research * 0.45 = 4.5, which would either round up to 5, or if the fractions are dropped, round down to 4.

Anyone have any idea what I'm missing here? The numbers don't seem to make sense. Are there any hidden variables that I'm not aware of? Just how are these values arrived at?

This is on turn 0 by the way, so I have no starbases, mining colonies, or anything like that.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

I thought of a few more questions after going over my expenses:

The cost of my social production to my empire is 13bc. I'm assuming this is the social production I'm using on Toria (minus the 20% bonus) which is 13.2 units of production. Toria IV costs nothing because the social production isn't in use. Am I right so far?

The research for both colonies is 14bc (10.8bc from Toria - minus the 10% bonus- and 4bc from Toria IV). The fraction is dropped I take it. Correct?

I am losing 2bc a week to "bonus production/research". What would that be? From what i can tell, the extra social production on Toria comes to 2, while the bonus research is 1 or 2 (more like 2 I think). Obviously that comes to more than the 2bc I'm losing. Where does this value come from?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Bonus production from abilities cost 50%, so you pay for half your bonus.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

This topic has been discribed in quite a bit of detail in a number of threads. The best one to read is probably Production explained - how various bonuses apply by Iztok Bitenc.

However with the above reference I still seem to occasionally encounter discrepancies that just don't quite seem to correlate to all the explanations. Whether it's because I'm missing something or whether there are exceptions to the rules I don't know, I usually declare victory once I can get "close enough".

One major source of discrepancy seems to be the Artifical Slave Center and it's effect on military production. By everything I've read and experienced the ASC provides a "hard coded" 50% bonus directly to base military production that essentially gets multiplied by all other sources of military production bonus. However this bonus is not visible in your stats and graphs section and precisely how it works is a little vague to me.

Basically the gist of how bonuses work is that you pay for all "on-planet" bonuses directly. This includes things like your manufacturing capital and ASC bonus. This excludes any bonus that you get from economic starbases and bonuses that appear along with racial abilities that are listed in your stats and graphs screen.

As Onde Abefar mentions, econ SB bonuses and racial ability bonuses cost 50% but they don't appear as an expense in your planet screen. The only place to see these costs are in your domestic policy screen which lists the sum of all bonus research/production from all planets as a single entry listed under expenses. This makes it difficult to figure out what applies to each individual planet. However if you mouseover the production number in your planet screen you do get a tooltip display of how much is from "base" production and how much is due to bonuses but again it's not totally clear if there is a distinction made between "on-planet" bonuses paid for directly in the planet screen and "off-planet" bonuses paid at the rate of 50%. I suspect that "on-planet" bonuses are simply included as part of base production from the point of view of planet costs.

Again with all of this said, don't be too surprised if you occasionally encounter a situation that simply doesn't make total sense.

Successfully updated karma reason!

AAARRRGGGHHH,

Successfully updated karma reason!

Aww, well thanks guys. Cheers for the link too. I hope the workings of GC3 are a bit more transparent.

Successfully updated karma reason!