Fuzzy math and game development

A trip inside the sausage factory of numbers

Published on March 6, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

World of Warcraft is one of my favorite games. I was in the beta from the start of it and when released, re-did my Paladin. And it was good. I didn't really pay much attention to all the numbers. I knew that doing X was better than doing Y. I didn't really know how much better it was, I just knew it was from the description.

My Paladin today doesn't resemble too much my Paladin of that initial launch (let alone the beta). A lot of that is from player feedback. Third party tools combined with players putting all the stats together resulted eliminating a lot of the "fuzzier" mechanics. Things like "Procs" got dissected and analyzed at levels I couldn't even imagine. That's not necessarily a bad thing mind you, it just means the game has such large appeal that it's attracted both the casual gamers and the ones who want to understand the ins and out.

The first Galactic Civilizations was all fuzzy math. Even I would have a hard time explaining with precision how morale worked or how production worked in terms of putting together a formula. In GalCiv I, your planet quality was central to everything. Various planetary improvements, morale, and bunches of other attributes got in there to do all kinds of multiplications to the various numbers. The order of some of these mattered since there'd be an addition here, a square root there. The system was designed essentially that building improvement X was better for production than improvement Y. The numbers, in essence, were all relative to one another. Someone looking for an entertainment network to make their morale go up by 15% would be sorely disappointed.

For the sequel, I wanted to dispense with as much of that as possible. A factory would build X production units. A research center would produce Y research units. Period. How much of its capacity was used depended on how fully funded the building was.

Entering the sausage factory

Things get murky when you start dealing with civilization ability points. One might argue that if I have a planet where my approval rating is 50% and I have a morale ability of 10% then my approval rating should be 55% (50*1.1). And if I build an entertainment network whose job is to improve morale by 20% that my approval rating would then be 50*1.3 = 65%.

What about production? If I have a factory that produces 10 units of production and it's all on social production and my social production ability is 20%, then my social production should be 12? Sure. But should the player be charged the 12 units? Or should it be 10 units with the other 2 production as bonus? That's the way it is on research.

Speaking of which, if I have 10 units of research being produced and my research ability is 50%, shouldn't my research by 15? No argument from me. On the surface, that's how it should be. And indeed, often that's how things start out. Then you have human beings playing your game and all those good designs go out the window. Probably the biggest reason for that in this particular game is from the mining resources.

There are research, military, economic, influence, and morale resources. To keep the game from being too complex to the casual user, starbase modules that mine these resoruces are the same no matter what type you are building on. That is, A mining barracks adds say 10% to your ability regardless of whether it's a morale resource or a weapons resource. The problem is, a 10% bonus to research is hugely different than a 10% bonus to morale which is a huge difference form a 10% bonus to weapons. I mean, heck, if I have a ship with 8 attack, I won't even get an additional point.

And we're just getting warmed up. Should a 10% bonus to your morale ability increase it by 10%? Or should it add 10 points to it? That is, if my morale ability is 10% and I mine a morale resoruce for 10%, should my morale ability be 11%? Or should it add 10% to it and make it 20%? We add it because otherwise, any semblance of balance could go out the window (create a civ with a 80% morale ability natively and then these percent multipliers would get crazy).

Has your head exploded yet? Because it just keeps getting better. In order to have some semblance of balance, we mess around with the ability values in order for them not to get out of whack.

That morale ability? fCivABilityFactor = pow(fCivABilityFactor,0.80f);

At release, Your Civ Ability at morale was just that. But it turned out on a large galaxy you could have several morale resources cranked up to over 100 points each. So suddenly you could have 100% taxes and 100% morale. Oops. So it was changed .95, then .9, then .7, then back upu to .8. That's the sausage factory that's game development. Where all your nice clean, elegant mechanics start to get murky.

Your research ability? It's chopped in half for the same reason.

Government waste

And what about "wasted" social production? In GalCiv I, military and social production was wasted even if you weren't building anything.

For GalCiv II, we decided to eliminate that. If you weren't building a ship or an improvement, you weren't charged for that production. That makes sense. Except, well, it turned out that players couldn't control their economy if social production was handled that way.

What happened is that say you're playing on a really large galaxy with 100 colonies and your economy is producing 5,000 net revenue per turn. Your planets have no improvements being built. Then an alien offers to trade you xeno factories. You take it. Then suddenly your net revenue goes to -2,000 per turn. Huh? What happened? All your planets started upgrading their factories and all that social production started to get charged for again. Yikes! Worse, it would gradually come back down as those improvements were completed all without the player doing anything.

Given that there's people who find the economic system in GalCiv II to be complex (what? separate tax and spend sliders?) having massively changing net revenue without user intervention would have put them over the top. So we ended up charging for social production. Which, is probably more realistic anyway and requires the player to put a little bit of effort into making their government more efficient. Still, it's not ideal because it has to be rationalized.

One of the ideas we had was to have social production go towards approval rating. But it's the same problem. Players see their approval alter by moving the spending slider and it's just another complexity.

Another idea was to have social production be added to military production on a given planet if there's nothing else to build. This is possibly more doable. And if there's no ship being built, it would still be spent. But at least that way, there's some benefit.

You have the power

Just like with World of Warcraft, games, especially statistics laden games like Galactic Civilizations are designed to evolve. We'll listen to what you have to say and together we'll keep improving the system. But never think there's a "best" system. There is only, at best, a system that annoys fewer people than the alternatives.

Comments (Page 5)

Luhh

on Mar 08, 2006

The problem started when you decided to mix different economic areas into one. Everything is being managed by and paid by the state right now, and there aren't any other things to spend the money on other than 3 things. However one of these things are quite different from the other 2, and that is social production. The fleet and perhaps most of the research can be considered the interest of the state, but there are no local contractors in this game. You get money from the people to build things for the people, and other things that will let you build things for yourself. It's just a mess. The irony is that there are probably too few things to spend money on that spawned this economic model.

The slider in civ 4 served the purpose to set how much was culture (happyness), money, and technology. Production was done locally, and did not cost anything. It required less micromanagement in regards to spending of income.

I'm not sure the economic model can be salvaged unless you let all waste go to either research or military. Micromanagement hassle would remain if the transfer was not a full 100% even though it would not make sense, but then the economic model doesn't make all that much sense in the beginning.

So how about differentiating social production and make it free, unless you rush buy? What a headache..

zp00k

on Mar 08, 2006

Frogboy:

I'm open to suggestions on this stuff. I could be talked into all kinds of things including diverting social spending military spending automatically (for example).

I like the idea to just convert social production into military production 1:1 if there is no social project. If the player is building ships on all his planets with factories, as is likely, he will not get economy swings, and no production will go to waste so there will be no need to micro. If the planet is totally idle, not building ships nor buildings, the social would get turned into military production wich is not wasted. Only way there can be budget jumps is if such a idle planet starts upgrading factories. I think most unexperienced players will be building ships on all planets with a lot of factories all the time so this shouldn't be a huge problem for them. If it is then we can have wasted social if there is no military spending to redirect it to. Then the experienced players will have to live without the ability to "turn off" planets tough.

Please scrap the realism arguments, we dont want to play galactic accountant 2. Adding stupid micromanagment for "realism" is a crime.

The current system is like playing doom and your character randomly drops stuff on the floor. Yeah sure it's realistic to model the need for the player to keep track of his stuff. Things might fall out of the pockets, especially considering the huge amount of stuff you are carrying. Also the beggining player might get confused by all the weapons he got so it's best if he looses them slowly over time without noticing. Not to mention how confused he will be by the sudden change in firepower when he runs out of ammo, it's better if he's out of ammo all the time. But this would of course suck gameplay wise for the not so clueless player, who wants to turn around all the time to see if he happened to drop his BFG or bullet packs. Just like it sucks going through your planets all the time to see if you can avoid having money fall out of your pockets by wasted social.

callmewoof

on Mar 08, 2006

I agree that if social waste can't be removed (i.e. no economic engine revamp), it should be redirected towards military. Afterall, a factory is what creates Military/Social production in the first place, right? So if my factory is currently churning out warp engines but isn't making space-tractors for a xeno farm, then my military should pretty much get to use all of the factory.

However this isn't perfect, because not ever planet has/needs a starport, and the player won't always be producing ships like crazy. But at least it'd be somewhat better than the way it is now, I guess.

Or, although I haven't really done much with the Influence part of the game yet, why not turn excess social into influence points or something? Social spending is money that goes towards the people, for the people. So if I've got untapped social points flying out the window, why not turn them into influence? Reasoning: Social shields go towards social things. Society benefits from it (hospitals, libraries, colleges, art, etc) with increased culture. Influence points, as I understand them, are basically 'the influence your culture has on others'. Therefore, Social spending (not being used) = money spent on improving society's value = better culture = stronger influence.

Veinless

on Mar 08, 2006

1) No dramatic shifts in net revenue that aren't user controlled. That's why we have the social spending as-is. To prevent a scenaroi where smeone ends up going from +3000 per turn to -2000 per turn because they traded some tech with an AI.

2) No increase in micro management.

3) Does not involve totally redoing the economic system.

OK. You asked for it. Make social project UPGRADES free of charge. That is, they take time based on available social production, but not money. The economy will not swing.

In fact, this way you could always allocate unused mil spending towards soc spending, if any exists.
Likewise, unused soc spending could be allocated towards mil spending if no soc spending exists.
If neither type of spending exists, the UI transparantly allocated all budget for this planet to research.

Gott a go, will think more later.

kaspar42

on Mar 08, 2006

Frogboy:I'm open to suggestions on this stuff. I could be talked into all kinds of things including diverting social spending military spending automatically (for example).

The great problem with the current system, is that it forces the player to do micro management, to avoid a lot of waste.

So, what if it goes like this instead:
Military and research spending is state spending, which you should pay for. Social spending however is private spending (civilian spending), as the factories, entertainment networks, farms & labs (in which the state then sponsors research) would be privately owned.
Thus social spending should be free for the state.
This would also reduce the need number of spending sliders from 4 to 2:
1) Military/social production allocation. How large a percentage of your civs industrial capacity should be reserved for the military, with the remainder going to social/civilian production. As with all real nations, tyou would always need to used some amount of production on social spending, to avoid civil unrest (you cant have all your factories produce weapons, some has to be making consumer goods).
2) Research slider. At 100% your labs would be working a full capacity and thus at full spending, ect. This would be completely independent from the 1st slider.

As social production would thus go towards build tile improvement and consumer goods, the empire percentage of your social spending should give your empire wide bonus to morale, thus forcing the player to always maintain some level of social spending. This bonus should be applied regardsless of whether you are building a tile improvement or not.
On those planets where you are not building a military project, 100% of your production should go towards social prod.

The advantages of this system is:
1) It is simpler to understand and more realistic, IMHO
2) No micromanagement to avoid waste
3) No BCs wasted
4) No wild fluctuations in spending or approval rate (unless you start building a lot of ships, and then it is by direct player action)

Disadvantages:
?

I hope you will give it some thought.

On another note, I totally agree that you need to make it transparent to the player what exactly the consequences of his actions are.
Not doing this, is what have ruined countless Paradox games, which could otherwise have been great. Please dont repeat their mistakes, as that would really be a shame for the great work you have done with GalCiv2.

Veinless

on Mar 08, 2006

I like the excess soc prod = influence idea. It makes me feel like I am subsidizing my culture's chief exports in order to undercut the competition and therefore spread the influence of my evil^H^H^H^Hbenevolent empire.

However (much like many of my suggestions) this may drastically change the game mechanics.

marioflag

on Mar 08, 2006

As frogboy said is not the economic system that is broken and it doesn't need to be reworked. But i second the opinion of other people that the game needs truly a better information system because the relation cause-effect is never clear.But i would also add that as is the game now the problems doesn't affect only the "economic"part of the game but affects the FULL GAME and it's a fact.In the game for now there are a lot of HIDDEN FEAUTURES that needs to be explained.Let's give some examples

HIDDEN RACIAL ABILITIES:
COURAGE: In the game isn't explained how it affects the game. So i have torians,korx and drengin which have +10 courage but i don't know how it's applied
LOYALTY: I know what is loyalty but i don't know how it affects the game.So i really don't understand differences between +10 loyalty of drengin and +100 loyalty of yor.I'm doing assumptions that to convert a yor planet to my cause i should need an influence 8 times higher instead of 4 as other races but it's only my assumption because there is no explanation in the game
LUCK: it's explained what is luck but having +25 or + 30 of luck what is the difference
CREATIVITY: same as above
SOLDIERING: How soldiering level influence advantage factor? Not yet explained.So the only thing i know is that 70 soldiering is better than 25 soldiering and 25 soldiering is better than 5 but i don't know how much in terms of advantage factor 70 soldiering is better than 25

HIDDEN CONCEPTS:
ADVANTAGE FACTOR: How to calculate the advantage factor considering my soldiering, tech level, tactic invasion, courage?
TECH LEVEL: One of the factor which influence the advantage factor is the tech level but there is no explanation how the advantage factor is influenced by it
STARSHIP BONUS EVENT: There is a random event which allow you to increase your straship bonus of a certain degree.But what is starship bonus?It is aplied to hit points,attack,defense, or all these parameters?
RACIAL DESCRIPTIONS: when you are choosing your opponents there is a racial description which sometimes is a bit different from racial bonus. For example i have Iconians with +20 research Racial description: strong diplomacy, weak research skills.Iconians have no bonus to diplomacy and are the race with best research bonus so why they have weak research skills?Korx strong economy, High defection rate. What is high defection rate considering that they have no hit to loyalty.Other races have weak diiplomacy description but they don't get any hit to diplomacy.

So i know that this thread was treating the economic part of the game but i want to underline that HIDDEN CONCEPTS are not only related to economics but also to nearly every aspect of this game.And if not explained it could waste the complexity and potentiality of this great TBS game. I really think that this game has a far better potential than CIV4, but all this potential is wasted by poor informations that are related to ALL aspects of the game.

LintMan

on Mar 08, 2006

#54 by Avatar Frogboy [Stardock]
Wednesday, March 08, 2006 2:19 AM
I haven't heard any alternatives that wouldn't create a worse issue or require a drastically different economic system which isn't going to happen in a 1.x, that's more of a sequel thing.

Any changes to the system would have to fall under these guidelines:

1) No dramatic shifts in net revenue that aren't user controlled. That's why we have the social spending as-is. To prevent a scenaroi where smeone ends up going from +3000 per turn to -2000 per turn because they traded some tech with an AI.

2) No increase in micro management.

3) Does not involve totally redoing the economic system.

Ahem. I think I posted a solution that pretty much satisfies all three of these way back up at #8. Or at least, no one's addressed any problems with my solution.

I'll quote the main part here:

What if, instead of the auto-upgrade being purely automatic, whenever research or trade triggers an upgrade event, the player is presented a dialog box detailing the upgrade costs and potential revenue impacts, and offering a choice of what to do. Then the player will *know* what's happened and have directly approved his revenue going to -2000, or have the option to avoid that hit. If you do this, then unused social production doesn't need to be paid for, and auto-upgrading won't result in baffled players wondering why their revenues dropped (at least not if they're reading the dialog boxes they won't).

Another help could be to highlight any numbers on the economic page (and/or on GNN) that have changed significantly from the previous turn.

So, to address your requirements, for this solution:

1) "No huge revenue swings": OK, so if they choose "yes" to the upgrade dialog, their revenue *will* swing, but the problem you're concerned with isn't the swing itself, but the player's *confusion* with the huge swing. By presenting a dialog right up front in their face *explaining* the impact cost that happen if they choose to upgrade, the confusion is eliminated and the problem is solved. (My second paragraph about highlighting big changes on the econ screen or in GNN would also help understanding, IMHO)

2) "No increase in micro-management": I don't think clicking "yes" or "no" in an upgrade dialog popup once every few turns is extra micromanagement. Also, I'd argue that as it stands now, the extra micromanagement to minimize the social production waste is equal or greater than the micromanagement saved by having the auto-upgrade feature in the first place. My solution removes the need to the social production micromanagement while still giving 99% of the micromanagement reduction benefit of auto-upgrades.

3) "No redoing the economic system": Nope, the only thing I'm asking is to stop paying for unused social production, like for military production. No major rethinks or rebalances of the economy.

Why wouldn't this be acceptable?

Zartax

on Mar 08, 2006

No. You told the game to spend 100% of the income that can be spent on each planet.

That's not it, ether. What it really does is take the Industrial Capacity percentage (Spending slider) times the military, social or research slider percentage respectivly, and then multiply it by the output of your factories/labs. Thats how you get the final number. But it's, to quote Heavensblade23, very counterintuitive to have your factories/labs just sit and do nothing if you have the funding.

Let's play a little scenario:

Let's say you have an empire with very good economics. At the core of that empire, you have a planet with research bonus tiles. Naturally, you build lot's of labs and make it your technological capital. But, suddenly you see an invasionforce closing in on your borders. You need ships, fast! The logical choice here would be to maximize the military slider while putting the others to 0%. But that would completly stop all research on your tech capital planet. I can take that as long as the reasons for it is logical, that is your don't have the budget to do both. But with my good economic empire I DO have the funding to do both, just that the sliders won't let me. So how do I maximize my output? I put the sliders both at 50% and BUY the rest of the ships, even though I have the industrial capacity and funding to actually produce them myself. A bit more expensive, but hey, at least I get to use my money! Now, this is where the optimizing hell begins. How much should I set my slider to? 40/60, 70/30, 45/55, 46/54 etc, etc. See the problem? The game has turned from a strategy game to an optimization calculation contest. And there is no way I can beat the computer on that if they have coded it right.

If you have to change the output of your whole empire just because you want to produce a ship quickly at one planet, there's something wrong. To not screw up your entire production line you have to buy the ship. Those factories on that planet are just for show, right?

Having to change the bias of you production on a global scale is just to dynamic and complex in a counterintuitive and illogical way for it to be fun or even understandable any time this year. If I need to take into account the effects on every single planet of my 45 planet empire when I need that starport fast it's just too much to handle!

Zeta Gundam

on Mar 08, 2006

I agree with Augusten... or at least something to that effect.

Pretty much I want a check box / option for players who don't mind monetary fluctuations in their economy. I'd rather budget accordingly for sudden increases and decreases in spending rather than track my planets to see if spending on social projects is really necessary.

I don't like the redirecting of spending because it makes the sliders ineffective. The sliders would no longer necessarily reflect spending, especially in the event that both military and social spending are actually *not* being used.

Walldorf2000

on Mar 08, 2006

I haven't heard any alternatives that wouldn't create a worse issue or require a drastically different economic system which isn't going to happen in a 1.x, that's more of a sequel thing.

Hi Frobboy,

please comment on that one:

I looks like a very good solution to me. Sure, the dialog only needs to come when there is an impact or maybe only when the spending would go into dept. I would be a good idea to have another option to switch this popup off, too.

Wasting the social spending does lead to a lot of micro management which is no fun at all. At least for me.

cyberj914

on Mar 08, 2006

Oh I've just gotta throw my 2 cents in so here it goes...

This stuff makes my head hurt and I'm really good at math. A game is about fun. Something adds to the fun or it doesn't. I don't want spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of numbers representing all my production I get enough of that in the real world. Here's a news flash for ya. The real world is a pretty complex place. This game does a very good job of modelling certain aspects of that world. Of course they take liberties with some things in order for the game to actually stay balanced. And trust me when I say balancing something of this magnitude is a monster undertaking when you can go from a map of like 10 stars to a map of over 100. So I say job well done devs.

Now as for the *well I need to know what this does to make an informed decision*. Hey guess what. Play the game. If you build a research center and your research goes up guess what that building did. Hey look at that it gave me a larger number at the top of the screen then I had before. Why? Who cares. It went up. Obviously I can now research something quicker then I could before I built the thing.

The economy has got to be the simplest thing in the world if you look at it this way. You have revenue and you have spending. If revenue is larger then spending then guess what the little number on the lower left of the screen is green. If spending is higher then it is yellow. What more could you possibly gain from getting all the little under the hood bits that most likely will just confuse the heck out of you even more. Sure a hard core numbers player is frustrated by this but too bad. The rest of us that just want to know the text is green. Why is it green? Who cares.

Now as for how things affect your numbers again play the game. You can't be an expert right out of the box even if they did give you all the fancy numbers you want. Take the time to get a feel for what things you need to do in certain situations. Oh hey look my revenue is negative maybe I should try to build a few ecomony buildings or maybe a trade route or two. Couple of turns later it's green. Go me! Or maybe I should raise taxes a little. Hey look at that it's green but now my approval is red. Hmmm.... maybe they don't like that... I wonder if there is a tech that would help. OMG look there is an entertainment tech maybe I should research that.

I'm sorry if this sounds very simplistic. I think that if you just stop and look at the information you are given in the game you'll realize that it gives you everything you need to know. And sure it's tough to predict how something is going to affect your empire. But you know what? After you've played a dozen games you'll be able to very accurately predict how something is going to affect your empire. And without all the fancy math or numbers.

JamesACG

on Mar 08, 2006

Pode:

To some extent the fuzzy math is realistic. I sincerely doubt even the legendary Alan Greenspan could sucessfully predict the EXACT impact of any decision on one country's economy, let alone a star-spanning empire of hundreds of billions. Galactic emperors will not have total and absolute control or transparency into evry aspect of their empire. Don't go MoO3 with that idea, but I'm actually enjoying the fact that I don't understand the game well enough to optimaize my strategy. I'm absolutley anal about doing that and often spend more time in excel than I do in the game of the month. It's been nice to be forced to throw up my hands and just have fun trying stuff. I know, I know, performance anxiety in my gaming marks me as a pretty neurotic individual, but hey.

Pode, you're 100% right in my opinion. Maybe it's just because I'm way too much of a gambler, or maybe I just understand a bit more of how the real world works

but knowing how to crunch numbers to determine an optimal strategy in a game like Civ isn't fun. If all I have to do is do a couple of simple equations to figure out how I can win in any given situation at any given moment, there's no point in even playing the game.

I think that the players should only ever be given maybe half the answers to why things happen in any given system, because that tends to be far more realistic. Weighing certainties against each other takes no skill, weighing two choices with uncertain results and picking the best takes skill.

Fogia

on Mar 08, 2006

Fun and realism are two different things and sometimes they go in opposite directions. It might be more realistic to only have a vague idea of how to plan your economy, but I don't think it's more fun. GalCiv2 is a strategy game. In order to make good strategy I need good information, and right now I don't think we're getting it.

I think transparency is more important than balance. You can tweak the numbers all you want but the player needs to know what they are in order to play logically. If a 50% bonus doesn't really give a 50% bonus, don't call it that. Call it a 25% bonus or whatever bonus it really gives. If the bonus is dynamic then tell me what the bonus is for me, right at this very moment.

I completly agree with that.

For me, playing a strategy game is like playing chess. To truely appreciate such a game, you need rules, well written, clear and with as little randomness as possible. Once things become too fuzzy, this is no longer strategy. This is gambling.

Right now I appreciate GalCiv2 but I am spending way too much time trying to understand how things work, saving / reloading maps, testing how things turn when I build this or destroy that ... and in the end I haven't even really played the game over 2 weeks while I have spent much time on it.

I think this is sad, not only for me because I more and more feel like I am losing time, but also sad because I feel like this game doesn't get the chance to show me it's full potential.

I really hope this can and will be improved, and that I'll be able to finish a game once

JamesACG

on Mar 08, 2006

For me, playing a strategy game is like playing chess. To truely appreciate such a game, you need rules, well written, clear and with as little randomness as possible. Once things become too fuzzy, this is no longer strategy. This is gambling.

What's wrong with that?

I like the idea of having to be on my toes, the room for something going FUBAR despite the best planning is what makes things interesting. That's part of the reason I was never a big fan of chess. I always know the exact result of X move. It requires no contingency planning.

That said, uncertainty in too big a helping can make the game pointless. Like attacking another unit in Civ. I don't want to have to hope my tank beats the spearman. Sure there can be that one in a million time where the spearman somehow dislodges the tread without the crew realizing he's there, they get out to fix the tread and he can kill them. But it's exactly that, one in a million. Not one out of twenty or whatever the base odds in Civ IV work out to be in that instance.

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