Implementing player suggestions

The limits and the possibilities

Published on March 11, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

I've been reading a lot of discussion both here and on other sites about ideas and suggestions players have for Galactic Civilizations II. Stardock, I like to think, is reasonably well known for implementing pretty significant changes into its software well after release. If we think something is a really good idea and it won't dramatically change the product, we'll seriously consider implementing it. We've been doing that since the first software products we released over 10 years ago.

Of course, the question is, what constitutes a change that is too dramatic? And how can we determine whether a given idea is something that's good for the game or not?

Before we start out there, I should make a clarification on something. I've seen threads where people will say "Yea, but Brad says it's working as designed so he obviously thinks it's great." That's not what I mean when I say that. The context is important.

As an engineer, I try to be precise as I can be with my words. That's one of the reasons I'm so wordy. What I write tends to be full of qualifications. One of the things I tend to object to strongly is when someone will take a design choice they disagree with and simply label it as a "bug". A bug, to me, is something that is not working as designed. Someone may not like a given feature, but if it's working as it's supposed to, it's not a bug. But that doesn't mean that we think it's the end-all be all feature.

One of the areas I want to tackle in the post release is the economic system of Galactic Civilizations II. But I don't want to do it alone. I want to hear what other people think too. But such discussions can be problematic. As with any on-line discussion, disagreements will break out. With people all around the world, many with strong opinions, you inevitably end up with some people who will state their opinions as facts. "This is how game X did it. Do it like that." There is no single "best" solution. We all have our own ideas. What we can do, however, is build a consensus to some degree.

Economic Systems & Strategy Games

Some parts of the game I feel strongly about, other areas are open to significant change.

For example, in Galactic Civilizations II as leader of your civilization you can set your tax rate -- the money coming in from your people. And you can set your "spend rate" which determines what % of your industrial/research capacity to make use of. I believe that governments should be able to intentionally have deficit spending. I believe that your financial income should not be tied to your industrial capacity. If you have the factories and labs to do it, you should be able to make full use of them regardless of your income. It's called deficit spending and it's practiced by many governments. Your population will get angry if you go too far into debt. And right now, we have a -$500 debt ceiling.

Having taxation and spending separate is something I'm married to. I like it. I realize it's more complex than in some other games but of the other systems we've contemplated over the years, I think it provides the best balance between realism and simplicity. People are free to disagree of course. That's natural. Some % of people will not like it. But I think most people understand it.

So let's talk about the part of the system I'm not married to -- the UI representation of it.

So you have your spend rate -- the % of your industrial capacity that you want to make use of. Then the question is, where do you want that industrial capacity to go? There are 3 sliders that control how that spending is funneled. The three sliders allow you to decide how much to fund your factories and research labs. Military and social spending goes into your factories which produce more planetary improvements and build your ships. Research spending goes to your labs and is converted to research points that go to getting your next tech.

I don't think it's that complicated and judging from the various forums I read, most people understand how it works. But not everyone. Some people don't understand it and others just don't like it. The group that doesn't understand it tend to be the same people who don't understand why taxation and spending aren't linked because "game X does that". Part of the reason I put in having taxes and spending be separate was out of frustration with other strategy games that tried to act like ones money income was somehow tied to their industrial production. As if the Germans in World War II could simply have bought more armies with money (yea, I know you can quick build but it comes as a very steep price -- on purpose). Industrial capacity has nothing to do with wealth. Hence the division.

Rhetoric

I confess, I get defensive in response to rhetoric. I tend to have an aversion to absolutes or people giving their opinions as facts. Every game that has an economic system is going to have people who think they have a better idea on how to do it. We obviously like our system. We think it works pretty well and we think most players think it's fine too. But that doesn't stop us from trying to listen and make improvements to make it even better. But when some player asserts something is "broken" that makes it sound like it's a bug and then puts us in the position of having to defend our design decision.

Every element of the game is a choice. Why only 5 planets in a solar system? Why not 9? Why do we allow millions of people to come into the tax system in a given week? There's so many design choices that have to be made but at the end of the day, our goal is to make the game fun. But one man's fun is another man's headache. I've gotten emails from people who simply can't play the game as long as Earth and Jupiter are on the map in the wrong scale (Earth is much smaller than Jupiter in real life but we try to scale things so that they're usable on screen). Heck, I should post some of the emails I get, you'd be shocked at some of the stuff. I got one today from someone who claimed they were returning the game because all the alien races are humanoid. I kid you not. Hey, at least they're not all humans with different nose ridges!

Rhetoric matters. When someone comes onto the forum and makes a post entitled something like "Map system totally broken" and it turns out it's because we use squares instead of hexes or because the moon rotates around the earth in clockwise or whatever it puts us on the defensive. I think that's just human nature. I realize some people find it tempting to say "Everyone with half a brain knows that the moon rotates counter-clockwise around the earth!11!1" But when you're on the receiving end and you know pretty certain that 99.9% of people don't care which way the moon is rotating because it's just a cool graphics effect, it's hard to champion changing it (incidentally, we are going to tweak that since it's in the customplanets.xml file).

Other Economic options

I have some ideas on economic tweaks that I could see us making.

For example: Social Production. Social Production could be automatically transferred to ship building when all planetary improvements are done. This would solve the potential issue of people's economy becoming crazy when all social projects are completed. And if there's no ship to be built, it would just go back to your treasury. It wouldn't be hard to do, would only require modest AI changes. I can assure you the AI would love it.

Another area I could see tweaked is the relationship between research labs and factories. Right now, spending is rationed between factories and labs. But that's not the only way it could be done. Other ways would require some UI thought though to keep it from being too complex.

For example, rather than having a spending slider, you would simply have an industrial slider and a research slider that would be independent of each other. Then you'd have a dial that would let you decide how much of that industrial output was going to planet improvements and how much to ship building. But doing it in an intuitive way would take some thought.

There are many other ways it could be done too. All would require thought on how best to present it so that it's intuitive to players and doesn't radically change the game.

Conclusions

It's always tough trying to know where to draw the line on improvements. Game developers want to satisfy their gamers -- all of them. And often times, great ideas come from players. The whole starbase concept in Galactic Civilizations came from players for instance.

But you also have to take into account the people want to feel like they're playing on solid ground. That the game they're playing isn't that fluid. Because every change one makes is going to disappoint someone. So we have to be very careful about how we do things.

That's my 2 cents on that anyway.

Comments (Page 8)

106

ubertaco

on Mar 14, 2006

"Um, no. If I was able to decide to spend 15 instead of 10, I'd have more control than the present case/"

You can decide to spend 15 instead of 10 though, the issue is that your production and tech are linked, so that increasing one decreases the other. You may not like that system, but you have the same choice as otherwise, only that you have to plan for it differently.

"The instructions with the game say that each mp or rp utilized costs 1 bc. Any constraint on a player's decision to so utilize said mp or rp, or the charging of players for mp and rp not utilized,..."

There is no constraint on utilizing your production, there is a constraint on how you have to set it up to use it in certain ways. You are never charged for mp and rp not utilized either (assuming the social to military back to treasury is implemented).

"If such constraints, are, on the other hand, an artifact of the UI alone, then they serve to impede enjoyment of the game rather than further it; even moreso when such constraints are not clearly communicated."

I can agree that the documentation of the system is not clear, but there actually are not any constraints, or to be blunt, the constraints are there for a reason, that is to force you to chose between production and research. You simply do not like having to make that choice, in essense you want a 'dumbed down' system.

The dynamic in GC is different from the dynamic in other games, specialized planets are not as useful as general planets, you can dislike it if you want, you can ask for it to be changed if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the system works as intended, and provides some additional depth to the system. Further you are only constrained in the sense that you do not seem to understand the way the system works, and thus how to maximize your use of it, get out of your box.

107

Damaleon

on Mar 14, 2006

One way to adjust the frustration with social production could be as simple (and complex) as adding another feature similar to focusing production on a planet. In addition to allowing players to increase 1 area at the expense of the other 2 types, let us sacrifice one to increase the other 2 as well.
The new feature could reallocate spending based on current slider system, with an amount of loss/waste similar to or even greater than focusing has.

Say you're spending 30% mil, 30% soc, and 40% research and you deemphasize social on one planet, splitting the social budget with 10% remaining in social (something always needs repair in real life so you wouldn't move everything), 20% lost to inefficientcy, and the remaing 70% gets split 60/40 between military and research respectively. If that is to much, make it a "make trade goods" button for each, and have it convert half the spending into cash.

With something like this, once a few planets are done with building infrastructure, we could click a button on each and be done, and then when all our planets are done we move the sliders.

Everything being said, I am still quite satisfied with the current system and love the game, even if I only use deficent spending at the beginning and if I end up fighting multiple wars at once.

108

Sirian

on Mar 14, 2006

The solution is that you build farms to increase your population and more trade centers/banking centers to get more income out of them.
Your industrial capacity will never be tied to your tax base in any game I write. Ever.

I understand the economic system. Funneling social spending (when there is no social project) in to military spending is less than ideal.
* It's a minority case. Most waste comes from overflows, so this approach leaves most of the problem still in place.
* If there is no military project, the money is not spent. Why not apply that solution to Social Spending, too? Funnel the Social Spending directly back in to the treasury. Simpler and cleaner.

Building more farms is not really a solution as player, by the way. Past a certain point, that can only hurt income as you are forced to lower taxes due to morale problems from overcrowding. The ideal population mix is one that puts all planets at the same morale level or close to it, so that you can run high tax rate with most of your planets in a pack at 70% morale, give or take a few points, with none down in the red. Tiny planets can't get to 5Bil pop anyway, so don't need any farms. Small planets (<10) can use one farm. Good planets can use two or maybe three farms, tops, or they are up in to the hopeless morale range. Anything over 20Bil is going to be pushing it even if you have multiple Morale resources fully mined. Past about 23Bil, the only way to keep the planet happy is to build transports and remove some of the population. You then have too many farms and should not have built that many in the first place! Some Morale boosters on the planets are crucial, but you can't afford to fill the entire planet with farms and morale boosters. You've got to have some spending capacity in place to build all these projects!

I appreciate your devotion to the realism of dividing income from spending. It's your design choice to make. I'm pointing out that this divide is a puzzle with only one right goal for the player: to ride the waves that will most closely match income with output at the global level over the long haul. This takes some vision, but once a player has figured out how to do it, the gameplay becomes repetitive. Excess spending capacity is useless long term. Deficit spending doesn't work over dozens of turns nonstop. The net difference for the player is to force the player to marry the two values at the global level in an effective way. Combining the two would abstract this process, freeing player's attention to be focused on to other things. If you want the player's attention on solving the puzzle of how best to marry the income vector with the spending vector, that's fine, but it leaves less room for other gameplay options. It also puts the game in danger of being "solved": the farms are a perfect example. You say to build more farms, but if population pressure forces lower taxes, then it's a losing move on the income side. There's a mathematical crest to that wave, where population increase and morale decrease meet with global tax revenue settings at the top of the curve, providing the maximum income possible from that part of the system. That's the same gameplay path over and over and over in each game, once the player understands the system. It's not something I think about or get enjoyment out of at this point, as I grok the formula and can apply it without any need for thought or analysis.

The morale system must be managed empire-wide because the tax rate is set empire wide. The player must make all his planets the same, tune them all to the same tax/morale harmonic, because there are no local controls. Really, it's not the economic system at fault, but the empire-wide controls. There could be interesting things to do with "special case" planets -- planets who have run out of social projects or who have extra farming specials or extra morale specials, etc -- but you can't do these things because you CANNOT bend your entire empire's monochrome tax or spend settings around the needs of one planet. You MUST set the sliders to values that bring you the best global return. There is a very limited amount of gameplay available under this model. You choose one global setting for each slider and then lean every planet you own toward it as best you can.

If I hold population and morale in harmony at the top of the bell curve, then that takes some slots from the planets: more slots used on better planets, but a minority of slots in all cases. The rest of each planet is divided between factories, labs, and economic boosters. One can lean more to tech or more to production, but some production is needed to BUILD the pricey labs, so here too there is a narrow range of success. You have to spend planet slots on factories, and you have to lean THAT to a global setting too because slow-producing planets will have their Social Spending shut off when the important planets are done with their projects.

Those global controls reduce micromanagement by making it unavailable, and yet the system you have built cries out for local specialization, begging to be micromanaged! I can see the possibilities of various planets to do fun and different things with them, but I can't realize these imaginings because the need to lean every planet toward the empire-wide settings is paramount. ... Since I personally worked out all of the gameplay involved in this process in GC1, I am not finding much to explore or do in GC2. Others may see it differently, but if literally every game you design will be built around this principle, and every game you make will provide this same model, then I have to wonder if they are all going to play exactly like this. This gameplay is good, but it has a limited run before a player has explored all it can offer. That run may be different lengths for different customers, but it is not infinite. Strategic success depends on successfully working the economic model, and I'm already at the pinnacle of knowing how to do that. If you've got more tech, more industrial capacity, more income and stronger fleets, you win. The ecomony is practically the whole game: there is something to military tactics, but the key enabler and lever for success is tech and production: economy! The empire-wide controls provide a narrow range of maximum efficiency and that target is easy to hit if you already understand all the components involved.

I accept that for you this is about preference and taste, and I concede that this is true. For now. At some point, though, it may turn in to an issue of staleness, where the vow "not ever" to transcend this concept may come back to bite you. Never say never.

- Sirian

109

sgallaty

on Mar 14, 2006

The interface for industrial spending is bad, and is misleading people. Rather than 3 sliders, if that were a 'circle' with pie-slices of red green and blue representing the three possible outputs it would be more obvious that the choice is which sort of output to emphasize.

The selection interface would be the player placing a dot within the circle. Three unselectable boxes to the side would show the 'weights' of the three factors on a scale of 1-100.

110

Kythorn

on Mar 14, 2006

Brad:

I don't think it's that complicated and judging from the various forums I read, most people understand how it works. But not everyone. Some people don't understand it and others just don't like it.

My experience/observation is that the number of people who understand it is signifigantly less than the number of people who say they understand it.

111

ubertaco

on Mar 14, 2006

"* If there is no military project, the money is not spent. Why not apply that solution to Social Spending, too? Funnel the Social Spending directly back in to the treasury. Simpler and cleaner."

Because under that situation you cannot use as much of your production on military as you could otherwise. If you return social to the kitty you have to micro more. I understand you like to micro, Sirian, but not everyone enjoys it. And spare us any arguements about it being optional, it's not optional if you want to compete at the same level as the AI.

As to the rest of the details on setting up multiple planets or a single empire...

One can easilly apply your general complaint about maximizing your empire potential being 'solved' to having 'solved' the maximization for each planet in turn. So the question then is do you want to force people to spend X-times as much time dealing with this on a planetary basis (where X is the number of planets)? What do you actually gain from doing this? A better running empire? No you don't actually gain that, you just think you do, since the economy of your empire is only reletive to that of the AIs in the game. So long as you change the rule set so that it applies to everyone there is esentially no bonus gained, only an added pain in the a$$ factor of additional needless micro.

"The ecomony is practically the whole game..."

Yes, and that's true for basically every 4x game out there. That SD has implemented a different approach to the economy is really neither good nor bad, it just is. As you say, once you figure out how to maximize the rule set you don't have to think about it. Thats true for just about every 4x out there though. The only differences are in how you have to set up your empire depending on what the local conditions are (PQs, planet boni, galactic resources, ...). SO you won't necessarilly have carbon copies every game, but you will have the same goals for development every game. Compare to Civ4, you have essentially the same goals for your economy every game, what affects the way you go about setting it up is in your starting position, both the chosen (civ) and the random (map). Granted you have more options in civ4 in how you build your economy, but that's due to additional game elements which do not exist in GC.

And be honest, you want to be able to powergame and micro this to death. I've read your games on Civ (and they are impressive) but it speaks to performing every action at such a fine level that for many people it becomes far too tedious and annoying to want to bother.

112

crass_monkey

on Mar 14, 2006

This is pretty much exactly what I would like to see with regard to this element of gameplay. Just my 0.02$.

113

Alfonse

on Mar 14, 2006

Say I have 10 MP's and 5 RP's. I'm restricted to spending at most 10 bc (in the case of choosing 100% spending, and a 100%/0% breakdown). If I'd like to fully fund everything, and pay the bills via, say, selling off techs, I am constrained from doing so. I am likewise constrained from fully utilizing my labs without shutting down my factories. Also a loss of control.

Well, let's say the developers allowed you to fully fund that. However, in order to slow things down (thus retaining the pace) they would need to reduce your MP and RP allotment accordingly. So, you would not in fact have 10MP and 5RP; you'd have something more like 5MB and 2RP.

So, while you gain more control, you don't suddenly gain the ability to get the levels of production vastly higher than you get in-game currently.

114

Sirian

on Mar 14, 2006

So, while you gain more control, you don't suddenly gain the ability to get the levels of production vastly higher than you get in-game currently.

Actually, all this would do (in effect) is to dictate that your sliders will be set at X and Y, instead of allowing you to choose.

If Brad is serious about keeping income and spending divorced, then he can't do it that way. Unless he offers players the chance to have vastly more spending capacity than income, or vastly more income than spending capacity, then the distinction between income and spending becomes useless, and he will have done away with it in fact if not in name.

- Sirian

115

Sirian

on Mar 14, 2006

If you return social to the kitty you have to micro more. I understand you like to micro, Sirian...

You don't understand me, but that's OK.

Returning social to the kitty changes nothing. If you are building social and military at the same time, you're choosing to prefer aesthetics over strategy. You can do that, but it is so far inferior in performance that you either don't understand the strategics or the strategics are not important to you. In Case A, there's no need to increase micro because the situation doesn't come up. In Case B, there's no need to increase micro because you don't care about the strategics. Either way, my suggestion simplifies, rather than complicates, things.

On the other hand, if Brad does not intend for players to lean 100% this way, then 100% that, in cyclical fashion, then he shouldn't put that option in the game and make it the most profitable way to operate. It's not even a close call: it's the runaway path to victory. There's only micro attached to trying to minimize waste -- and to managing large fleets of warships or constructors. There doesn't need to be any micro in the economy other than choosing what to build on each planet and in what order.

- Sirian

116

ubertaco

on Mar 14, 2006

"Returning social to the kitty changes nothing. If you are building social and military at the same time, you're choosing to prefer aesthetics over strategy."

I fail to see how that is a preference of aestheitcs over strategy. Are you saying that people will simply set their military to 0% in all circumstances? I think it rather obvious that this is not what will happen, at least no more so than it already does happen for those who simply purchase all their ships, but then they have likely set their social to 0 as well (later game anyway). All you would be doing is changing where the micro occurs, either by not having anything in your social queue, or on the economy screen flipping between soc and mil.

"You can do that, but it is so far inferior in performance that you either don't understand the strategics or the strategics are not important to you."

What strategics are you talking about? You are talking about throwing away potential production by returning a portion to the kitty, I am saying that if you wish to streamline this and not have to tweek your mil/soc sliders constantly then dumping the social into military automatically makes more sense. Or you talking about overflow waste? There is a simple solution to that as well, which is completely slider independant.

Or if you are talking about flipping mil/soc I don't see why it matters that you return it to the kitty or not. Indeed slipping it to mil is superior as it allows you to tune your planets to still build mil while you otherwise pump your soc spending where you want to.

117

warui1978

on Mar 14, 2006

Hmm...I would actually like to see 'focus spending on this planet' button in the colonies tab because basically some of you more developed planets dont need as much funding as some of your growing planets. It would also make it easier to re-developed conquered planets. (basically SD should design a system that allows full production on certain planets or lowering spending certain planets (ie less funding on fully developed planets) or some other system that has a semblence of both.

but i like the idea of waste because no empire is 100% efficient, there's always waste going to buraucracy or soemthing. Although I do have an idea for what Frogboy said.

"For example: Social Production. Social Production could be automatically transferred to ship building when all planetary improvements are done. This would solve the potential issue of people's economy becoming crazy when all social projects are completed. And if there's no ship to be built, it would just go back to your treasury. It wouldn't be hard to do, would only require modest AI changes. I can assure you the AI would love it."

maybe you can use the system above and tie it in to the different government types!!! for example: the stellar republic could recieve 20% of unused social production back, and then 50%for the next one, then 80% return for star democracy.

It isnt exactly an overhaul to the system but what do you guys think?

118

Bezuhov

on Mar 14, 2006

You can decide to spend 15 instead of 10 though

I intentionally chose the simplest possible example, and its still misunderstood. Exhibit 1A of my second point.

If I have 10 mp and 5 rp, how exactly, with the current UI, do I spend 15?

I can agree that the documentation of the system is not clear, but there actually are not any constraints, or to be blunt, the constraints are there for a reason, that is to force you to chose between production and research. You simply do not like having to make that choice, in essense you want a 'dumbed down' system.

No, as I stipulated in my last post, I'd prefer that choice be meaningful, not merely an artifact on the UI.

Another way to look at it is that the choice is overdetermined. I've already got a budgetary constraint that is straightfoward and clearly meaningful: if I spend too much, I'll go bankrupt. Why is that constraint not sufficient?

119

ubertaco

on Mar 14, 2006

"I intentionally chose the simplest possible example, and its still misunderstood. Exhibit 1A of my second point.

If I have 10 mp and 5 rp, how exactly, with the current UI, do I spend 15?"

If you are talking about total capacity then you can't. If you have 20 production capacity and 10 research capacity then it is trivial, put your sliders on 100% spending and 50% production/50% research. You will spend 15BC and get 10 production and 5 research.

The problem you have is that you think it should be possible to reach full capacities, the facts are that it is not possible. I consider this a design choice to force you to balance your production with your research, I think this is how Brad designed it as well, it was certainly how it was done in GC1.

"No, as I stipulated in my last post, I'd prefer that choice be meaningful, not merely an artifact on the UI."

The choice is still meaningful, how can it not be? You chose your tax rate, you chose your spending rate, then you chose how to balance your spending between production and research. Where exactly do you have a meaningless choice? What you seem to object to is the way the game determines how much capacity you have, and thus, how much mp or rp you can produce. For whatever reason you insist that you be able to produce 100% of your capacity, while that may be more intuitive it removes the tech/production balance as it is now. You can restore the balance by cutting the capacities of mp and rp in half, but then what is the point of making the change in the first place?

"Another way to look at it is that the choice is overdetermined. I've already got a budgetary constraint that is straightfoward and clearly meaningful: if I spend too much, I'll go bankrupt. Why is that constraint not sufficient?"

I don't agree that it is overdetermined, but I do agree that you can do it either way and it doesn't make any difference to the end result. Therefore I am against changing it, since there is no need to do so.

120

Bezuhov

on Mar 14, 2006

"Therefore I am against changing it, since there is no need to do so."

Other than the basic game design considerations I've already stipulated and which you've ignored. Very persuasive.

I'm glad to find out that if I want 10 mp and 5 rp, I've got to build double that amount due to UI restrictions. What underlying reality is this attempting to capture that isn't already sufficiently modeled by the overall budget constraint? If I have 10 factory workers and 5 scientists ready to roll if I can somehow get their salaries paid, what is it causing me to choose one or the other?

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