Serious tax income bug » Forum Post by doogles

Oh, and if anybody wants to see the actual saves, they're here: http://www.nerdbucket.com/blog_files/games/GC2-TA/DrathSaves.zip

The "good" save is "Drath VIII.sav" -- the bad is "Drath IX.sav".

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I'm pretty sure this isn't a bug. If your cash reserves reach $20,000 BC or higher, you take a hit to income. Check and see how much cash you have. If this is the case, just rither give some of it away, or start purchasing ships or improvements flat out to reduce your cash reserves to under $20K. Then your income will kick right back up.

-Jonathan

+1

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that is definitely the solution - look at the screenshots and your treasury

Over 20k gives a malus to income like JonSarik said

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I think I'm beginning to understand the "not enough useful in-game documentation" gripes I keep reading. A simple popup mentioning this fact might have been nice....

Thanks for the tip, though - at least I know how to deal with the situation.

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oh wow! I didn't know the 20k thing, that is useful info!

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Another tip in the same catagory:

Having over 10k bc in the treasury will cause your trade income to be cut in half, similar to this 20k bc cut in tax.
Only solution is buying stuff till your're below those marks again, to enjoy your full income.

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Only solution is buying stuff till your're below those marks again, to enjoy your full income.

Why? What is the point of this? Why does the game have these arbitrary markers that say, "if you exceed X, you're playing a different game?" I mean, is there a purpose in having an arbitrary value that causes your taxes to be cut in half?

This kind of arbitrariness doesn't make the game better; it just makes it more annoying. It's like the tech bug where suddenly your techs cost 2x as much as they did before. If there is some balance issue with having large stockpiles of cash, a simple linear function should be sufficient to bring back the balance. That is, you gradually make less money if you keep stockpiles around. And the game should most assuredly tell you this. And if a simple linear function isn't good enough to repair the balance, then that shows that the imbalance is something deep within the interactions between different rules, and it should be solved at that level, not an arbitrary layer on top.

I'm pretty sure this is a TA-only thing, as I've never noticed it before when I start having getting of money.

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There has always been the graft over 20K since DL. Not sure the entire reason, but you could basically stock pile enough cash to buy the galaxy otherwise(not like you couldn't now, just slower). I didn't know about the Trade/10K graft though, so I don't know if that is new to TA or not(I don't use trade much) .

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Zydor

Join Date 03/2006

+38

I'm pretty sure this is a TA-only thing, as I've never noticed it before when I start having getting of money.

Its a 20% penalty, so it is in effect linear, you an hold more than 20K bc, you'll just be penalised on a percentage basis. Its enough to curb hording without being draconian.

Its always been part of GalCiv from the GetGo. As I understand it, and quiz Support over connected issues, it was put in to curb the worst excesses of instant buying of mass fleets etc. Whilst buying ships etc is clearly fine, there is a limit to that. Instantly buying dozens of ships / fleets severely throws off the game balance, and in the context of the game, to have the ability to instantly buy anything and everything is nuts.

Whilst "unrealities" go with the territory on games like this, the latter ability is going too far, might as well give everyone a pot of gold, buy what you need to win, and game end next turn - save all the bother of going through the game

Monthly incomes - particularly on Gigantic can easily reach 100,000bc + if you work at it. To allow totally unrestricted use of that amount of cash in a Strategy game would be lethal for game balance.

Regards
Zy

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Whilst buying ships etc is clearly fine, there is a limit to that. Instantly buying dozens of ships / fleets severely throws off the game balance, and in the context of the game, to have the ability to instantly buy anything and everything is nuts.

Nonsense.

Balance, for a game like GalCiv2 is about making sure that all sides have the same opportunities. The AI has the same opportunities to make huge stacks of money as the player, and it has the same opportunities to spend that money. That it chooses not to is the fault of the AI, not the game.

If you could argue that the player is the only one with this chance, I would agree. But it's not just the player; it's everyone who has the chance to do this.

To allow totally unrestricted use of that amount of cash in a Strategy game would be lethal for game balance.

Now, I've already destroyed your argument that this violates "balance" in some way. However, let's assume for the moment that it did.

Let's assume that if you give every player 100,000 in cash, that the game would be unbalanced in some way. If this is the case, then clearly something is terribly wrong with the rules of the game. If it naturally becomes imbalanced by taking perfectly reasonable actions, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the rules. Maybe it's the natural result of disassociating planetary production from planetary population growth. Maybe being able to out-right purchase ships and such is wrong; maybe it should simply be a switch on production, increasing it by 3x for a 4x cost increase. Maybe it's something else entirely. What matters is that it shows that the rules have a problem.

If we accept that having lots of money is imbalanced, then this arbitrary rule cutting back on income is clearly a kludge. A hack. Instead of fixing the underlying problem that causes players to be able to game the system, they just threw in a quick hack to make the problem less severe.

So, the rule can either be "utterly arbitrary," or "a hack to fix bad rules." Either way, there are better alternatives to solving the problem if a problem even exists.

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Zydor

Join Date 03/2006

+38

Maybe being able to out-right purchase ships and such is wrong; maybe it should simply be a switch on production, increasing it by 3x for a 4x cost increase. Maybe it's something else entirely. What matters is that it shows that the rules have a problem.

Exactly ..... "Maybe being able to out-right purchase ships and such is wrong" .... So whats with the "nonsense" ..... you just said it yourself!

The capability to pile up cash, can attract "Strategies" involving filling every tile on every planet with eco buildings, doing instant purchase with the proceeds, and individuals kidding themselves they are using some "deep" strategy. There's nothing "strategic" about going to the local WalMart and buying Planets and Fleets on a "get one buy one free" basis.

At the end of the day its a game, nothing more, and lets not kid ourselves that filling Planets with eco buildings is emulating some kind of Galactic General, Galactic Banker maybe, General no. Is that "wrong", no of course not, people want to do it, go ahead, geez its just a game. Just dont ask others to believe its "deep strategy". Its not exactly hard to achieve.

Either way, there are better alternatives to solving the problem if a problem even exists.

Excellent, I look forward to seeing your solutions being fine tuned by the Devs.

Until then, we are where we are, yell at Stardock if you feel that strongly in what to do about it, not other players - lifes too short....

Regards
Zy

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Exactly ..... "Maybe being able to out-right purchase ships and such is wrong" .... So whats with the "nonsense" ..... you just said it yourself!

You may have noticed that the line in question was under the section where I assume that the "nonsense" was true.

The capability to pile up cash, can attract "Strategies" involving filling every tile on every planet with eco buildings, doing instant purchase with the proceeds, and individuals kidding themselves they are using some "deep" strategy. There's nothing "strategic" about going to the local WalMart and buying Planets and Fleets on a "get one buy one free" basis.

But that's not how it works.

The way it's supposed to be balanced is that spending money for purchasing ships is so much more expensive than building them that you would quickly bankrupt yourself. Even if you had 100 planets, the guy with 100 full-on econ planets will simply be using his money too inefficiently compared to the guy with a more balanced approach.

If the 100 econ planet guy wins, then either the balanced guy didn't know what he was doing or the game's rules are producing the wrong effect.

And I still don't see how the 100 econ planet guy vs. another 100 econ planet guy is imbalanced.

yell at Stardock if you feel that strongly in what to do about it, not other players

I'm not yelling at anyone; I'm presenting a reasoned argument.

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I agree with Alfonse here - the limit is silly for sure. If the problem is that buying ships and improvements is too easy, then the game shouldn't allow instant purchases of those things.

But even so, instantly buying ships is so outrageous that I almost never do it, so I still really don't see a true balance issue. A colony ship starts out costing something like 150 production points, but costs around 1300 BC to purchase. This is a huge discrepancy.

For instance, in my saves, you'll note that my best money-producing planet was netting around 575BC per turn and a total waste otherwise. My best ship-producing planet is at about 200 IUs per turn and loses something like 100BC. The difference, then, is 675BC for 200 IUs. Buying 150 IUs outright is 1300BC, so buying 200 would be in the realm of 1500+, which is over 2.5x the econ gains from my money-only planet.

Money planets are clearly not going to break the game.

So what is the problem? Why would Stardock choose to do this to the economy? I think it boils down to the base problem all strategy games face - "tricking" the AI. Get a lot of research and money piled up, wait for the AI to declare war, buy a giant military and crush the AI. Funny strategy for sure, and saves on ship maintenance while building up your cash.

The proper solution, though, is not to nerf income just because your treasury is high (though I'm okay with this if they add a popup that gives a reasonable "the people demand some of their tax money back since we're so wealthy" popup). It would be to actually make buying things harder to do:

* If you instant-buy a ship, you cannot instant-buy from that planet for another X weeks. Same for improvements. Production continues as normal, but instant-buying could simply have a waiting period.

* If you instant-buy anything, its cost is based on the number of instant-buys you've done in the last X turns. If 0, cost is fairly reasonable, but at 20, cost is so insane that even a simple colony ship could be 20,000 BC. It's arbitrary, but it's more interesting, and can be explained as a resource issue - more money means more citizens are willing to put in their personal time to devote to this civilization-critical project. But as you throw more people into these projects, it costs more and more to continue with rushed projects.

* Instead of instant buying, make it a payment that jumps something to 75% done or so. Money can only go so far. If the project is already 75% done or more, no amount of spending matters.

I think the system will not change, but I do think it's a hack -- and a poorly-executed one at that. Stardock could at least pop up a message just like the -500BC message they already have, and probably code the thing in a matter of days. (Probably a few hours, but then there's QA and such)

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Zydor

Join Date 03/2006

+38

We are Poles apart on this, and always will be.

The game mechanics, especially the AI is programmed to meet an agreed concept for the game, true of any game not just GalCiv. Its impossible to write software to cater for all and any eventuality. You'd never stop.

And I still don't see how the 100 econ planet guy vs. another 100 econ planet guy is imbalanced.

Thats just putting on blinkers, of course its unbalanced, unless you believe a software AI has the same intelligence as you, or could be programmed to be anywhere near the same level of intelligence - people have been trying to write the perfect AI for decades, and doubt we ever will the human brain is far too complex and flexible a beast.

This game is all about balancing the use of resources to build whatever we need to get at the Nasty guys, and build in conundrums to force the Player to think - its what Strategy games are supposed to do. Change or abuse the concept, and you you drive a coach and horses through the design basis of the software model. The aim of the game is to give Players a game of Strategic choices to achieve the stated game end, not create some mythical "I beat the AI yaboo" mindset.

Introduce a concept that is so off the Wall as to be unreal as a concept, and then expect them to programme for it in huge detail is not logical, and patently daft.

There is no way anyone will convince me that slamming eco buildings on all tiles in the known Galaxy, then nipping down to the local WalMart to spend the dosh at this weeks Sale of Planets and Fleets is "Strategy" - its a game mechanic to by pass having to face up to the issues of natural resource, building time, population, taxes etc etc, all the checks and balances of making and growing an empire. If people want to do that, fine, be my guest, its a game not the race for the Presidency.

But Strategy, at a conceptual level, it patently is not, to call it that is an exercise in self delusion.

I understand totally why they just put a penalty in there and left it at that, why should they programme for something thats outside the bounds of any realistic concept, whose only basis and motivation is the by-passing of all other checks and balances in the game to make life easy. Therefore I am not getting into a drawn out conversation on the details of a concept that is flawed, because I will never agree that slamming eco buildings on all Planets is a "Strategy". Because of that I could care less how you build the checks and balances of what amounts to WalMart shopping.

I doubt Stardock will either, its a futile exercise.

Regards
Zy

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Zydor, you're missing the point. There is literally no explanation about this event whatsoever, much less a nice fix.

Your suggestion sounds like avoiding programming an interesting and deep game because balance issues are inevitable. That's absurd when you consider the time spent building all the back stories and separate tech trees. Even though SD knew there would be balance issues and possibly a lot of updates to deal with those issues, and tons of new ways to exploit the AI, they gave us this new expansion. Why? Because the extra depth is interesting and outweighs concerns of having to build a better AI to account for all the new content and strategies.

Will they fix this issue? Probably not, but not for the reasons you think. They would fix the issue if it was happening in every game and a lot of people noticed it. The fact is, most people with a treasury of 20k aren't paying a lot of attention to their cash flow, so it's not likely to bother them. If for some reason a lot of people griped about this issue, SD most certainly would at least include a popup explanation, even if they didn't find it worth the resources to truly fix the problem.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

Will they fix this issue?

I doubt it. As has been pointed out it's been in the game forever and unlike something like the MCC, this was actually intended.

See Frogboy's reply (#5) in the following thread from a couple years ago. There's a penalty if you keep your treasury above 20,000 bc???

Basically most everyone I know doesn't like this. I've always argued that if a limit is necessary then at least it should be proportional to the galaxy size. A 20K limit in a small galaxy is far less onerous than in a gigantic galaxy.

This is documented in the Wiki Treasury article. This article also mentions an unconfirmed small morale penalty for negative treasury held long term. I can both confirm this to be true as well as contradict that such a penalty is small.

I'm not sure if the magnitude of your negative balance affects this but I've seen a negative treasury take approval from 100% to below 40% within three years.

Anyway, this is basically the way things are and I wouldn't expect that will suddenly be changed, but stranger things have happened.

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No, as I said I doubt it'll be fixed. But at least the morale penalty, for instance, has a popup. Once you've been in the red a while, you get a warning that debt is making people unhappy. This issue doesn't even tell you what's going on, which is why I think it's so broken. A real fix won't happen, but can't we get a popup like the debt moral penalty?

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I can almost see the reason for the 20k treasury penalty..as a society gets wealthier, it becomes more corrupt. Although, I think 20k is a bit low as the limiter.

Having said that, I have a question..what is the point of the trade penalty? It seems to me, that as a society increases its wealth, it has more to trade, so why should trade revenue go down? What is the point of having techs like Advanced Trade and Master Trade if you are just going to be penalized for using them? That's like researching Photon Torpedoes and having them cause less damage than Harpoon Missiles.

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There is no way anyone will convince me that slamming eco buildings on all tiles in the known Galaxy, then nipping down to the local WalMart to spend the dosh at this weeks Sale of Planets and Fleets is "Strategy" - its a game mechanic to by pass having to face up to the issues of natural resource, building time, population, taxes etc etc, all the checks and balances of making and growing an empire. If people want to do that, fine, be my guest, its a game not the race for the Presidency.

But Strategy, at a conceptual level, it patently is not, to call it that is an exercise in self delusion.

Strategy: (noun) - (1) the science and art of employing political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war.

(2) the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions.

(3) a careful plan or method

So, I might not be able to convince you that plopping down econ structures on every available tile and buying your warships is strategy, but by the definition (especially #'s 1 and 3) of strategy, it actually is. The fact that the AI can't adapt, copy, or compete with this strategy actually just goes to show that it is, in fact, a very successful strategy.

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Zydor

Join Date 03/2006

+38

The fact that the AI can't adapt, copy, or compete with this strategy actually just goes to show that it is, in fact, a very successful strategy.

It only shows that Brad has not programmed the AI to respond to that tactic. Just because a software programme has not been written to counter something, does not qualify that something as a "Strategy". There is a difference between a game mechanic and a strategy.

the science and art of employing political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war.

Slamming eco buildings on every tile in the known Galaxy meets one of those criteria - its kinda short on the rest, nor is it exactly difficult .....

At the end of the day its a game, nothing more, and if doing that gives individuals fun - great, fun is what makes the world turn round - or should do

Regards
Zy

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

I can almost see the reason for the 20k treasury penalty..as a society gets wealthier, it becomes more corrupt.

So, Switzerland is more corrupt than Zimbabwe? Singapore is more corrupt than North Korea?

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Obviously wealth is the only factor contributing to corruption. You're pulling a classic straw man argument here, jmgarth. Nobody stated that when wealth = X, corruption = X * C. And furthermore, the specific corruption of which he's speaking is monetary only, as that's the topic at hand.

A nation that's excessively wealthy (again, the topic of this thread is about the penalty for having a very high treasury) is certainly more likely to have corrupt leaders skimming from the top than a nation without such a gold mine.

Again, though, the heart of this issue is why isn't it explained in-game in any way? I can think of dozens of ways to improve this system, but the most basic "fix" is to let the player know what's going on.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

Obviously wealth is the only factor contributing to corruption.

I assume you meant to have a NOT in that sentence? Because otherwise it's not at all "obvious".

A nation that's excessively wealthy ... is certainly more likely to have corrupt leaders skimming from the top than a nation without such a gold mine.

Prove it. You might wish to start with the Corruption Index published by Transparency International. See

this article for details.

Meanwhile, back in the universe of GC2, since the same situation applies to all races, explaining it by reference to corruption means that the Altarians and Drengins are equally corrupt, which seems to contradict the long established characterizations of those races. A different explanation is needed. If one is needed at all.

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Yes, I meant to add a "not" in there. My main point was that general corruption is going to have a lot more than just the factors present in a game, so citing real-world examples is pretty meaningless.

As for proof, it's not possible. In GC2, the treasury "limit" of 20k is supposed to represent a civ that's outrageously wealthy. We're talking about having enough liquid assets to build the most complex structure in the span of a single week. In the GC2 world, this is possible because larger games have so many people that insane cash flow is a reality, but to show you a real-world example is asking the impossible. No nation on Earth has that kind of physical wealth. The United States is a pretty big economic power, yet we're deeper in debt every day.

What you ask, I cannot supply, and if you're really big into real-world comparisons of GC2 mechanics, you should already know this.

...

Back on topic, my overall point stands - the system in the game for dealing with excessive wealth doesn't have any explanation of any kind, and really needs at a minimum some sort of popup.

It should also scale with the size of the galaxy or number of inhabited planets or total galactic population or something. A 20k limit in a tiny game will probably never be reached, but in an immense galaxy, there's no reason to think that limit won't become a burden.

I'd also really love to see all treasury limits have outside factors. The Korx should get really depressed when they're in any kind of debt, because they're so focused on financial gains. Your income should determine what amount of debt is actually going to stall your entire economy.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

If you have a big cut of the tourism income it's quite possible to have more money than you can reasonably spend after a tourism-boosting mega event. It isn't quite unbalancing per se, as the computer opponents can certainly try and increase their share of that lucrative market, but it does mean that you can afford to have the biggest and baddest fleet out there and have a boatload of research into making it badder. Cue massive race-destroying invasion.

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