Playing with numbers in GalCiv II in-depth

Danger..boring..boring..

Published on March 20, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

So how exactly does/should production work? Here's how it will work in v1.1 which will seem pretty much the same to people who aren't really into the numbers but will be a major improvement to people who follow stats.

On your planets you build factories and research labs. These factories and labs produce industrial units and technology units.

Your spend rate determines what % of your factories and research are to be funded. In addition, the 3 sliders funnel that funding in to military, research, and social production.

What affects production?

You also have a number of bonuses that come into play:

1) Special tiles will add a bonus to the given factory or lab's production level.

2) Starbases can assist factories and labs by cranking up their production by a %.

3) Planetary bonuses (from events) can increase research or manufacturing.

4) Your civilization ability in research, social production, and military production can have an impact as well.

Half of your bonuses (2, 3, 4) you are not charged for. You simply get them for free. Yay.

The code: (for those interested)

CalcCommerce(). This function looks at your factories and multiplies that by any special buildings (like a manufacturing capital). It then takes into account things like whether there's a United Planets issue involved (like the galactic prison).

CalcTechnologyProduction(). This function looks at the total value of the labs and other research providing buildings, multiplies that by any buildings that increase research production by a % (like a technology capital) and puts it together.

CalcResearchProductionBonus(). This function looks at CalcTechnologyProduction() and then returns how much bonus research you get from your ability, whether the planet has rings (10% bonus), whether there's some other event in action, etc.

CalcProductionBonus(). Same as ResearchProductionBonus except it looks at industry related bonuses.

Sins of the past

Galactic Civilizations II's system was a carry over from the original game (2003) in which the various abilities, values, etc. were morphed based on play testing. And in the case of things like morale which generates your approval rating, your morale ability is literally added to your approval rating at a rate of Morale Ability to the .90 power. Why? Because from play testing that was the most fun in how the various buildings and abilities worked.

But sticking with production and research, which is the real nuts and bolts, the idea here is to streamline this so that the mechanics are straight forward and easy to understand. I also want to add tool tips that spell out this stuff if there's time. If you have the non-English version of Galactic Civilizations II you may want to switch to the English version for 1.1 until the new text is translated.

Real world examples

So for spread sheet gurus, what can we expect in the terms of numbers? In the game I'm in I have two planets: Haven and Vizzard II.

My spend rate is 100%. And all my money is going into research. Haven is my capital and has 3 labs. The planet has a 12% research bonus due to an event. I have a bunch of starbases around it that double my factories and lab production. What should it look like?

I'm only charged for half the bonus production (so half the starbases, half the planet, and half the ability). So even though I'm getting 134 research per week from Haven, I'm only being charged for 94 of it. Yay. The other 40 of it is "free". Where did that number come from? Well, the base production on Haven is 54 (24 + 30). My total research is 134. 134 - 54 is 80. So 40 of that extra research is free and the other 40 I'm charged for. The original 54 I'm charged for so 54 + 40 = 94.

To the average player, this is a bunch of either "who cares" or "This is so complicated". The system isn't really designed to be spread sheeted this way and in GalCiv 1, few people did. But enough people had a huge outcry that they couldn't just spreadsheet this stuff that we ended up in a situation where we needed to be able to put this stuff together in a way that people could understand.

Eventually I get something like this:

If this all looks confusing and such, don't worry about it. It should look confusing and complicated to most people. But to people who really get into the numbers, this is what I think many of them were looking for. Very clean, straight forward economics, albeit with a lot of modifiers involved but at least it's knowable.

Where things get really a pain in the rear is when you deal with the new social wastage elimination. Should unused social production get to get all those nice military bonuses? That is, if I've got say 50 social production going but I'm not building anything, should that 50ip's get all the bonus modifiers and become say 100 military production?

After a weekend of playing it both ways, I decided on no. That social production is transferred to your total military production on the planet but it doesn't get all the bonuses. There has to be something to benefit the player who runs their economy well, otherwise we might as well just get rid of the economic system entirely and just have it a be a mindless grind of cranking out ships.

The other tough question is whether your base social production should get bonuses and all that good stuff and then have that magnified amount be transferred over to your military. Again, after playing it for awhile, it just seemed incredibly cheesy that a player could see their ships get cranked out really fast because they had picked a high social production value. It also seemed counter intuitive.

Here's how I tried to game the system with a 2% Military and a 98% social:

So what Haven ended up getting in terms of military production was 1 from its base and 2 (rounds up on bonuses) on the bonus for a total of 3 natural military production from the 2% ratio. Then the 52 from the base output from social spending is transffered over for a total of 56 military spending.

You can imagine some of the cheesy scenarios I went through though. In one case, I had something like 300 military production because I got the bonuses from the social production and then that production got re-bonused when it was transferred over. And at that point the entire game mechanic starts to fall apart.

In extreme cases there will probably be some slight round off error. It's unavoidable when you're taking 50% of 3 (for instance). But you get the idea.

Damned if you do and...

What's ironic about all this work on streamlining this is that you will have more people who like the fuzzy stuff and argue the game has no "soul".

We could have just used flavor text on the abilities and saved ourselves a lot of trouble and had one group be happier with things like:

Military Production Ability:

( ) Basic
( ) Industrious
( ) Magnificient

And let the user "imagine" what those values meant other than "something really cool".

Master of Orion 2 had a bit of both. "Fantastic Traders" instead of Trade Bonuses. And "Charismatic" instead of a set Diplomatic Ability.

I think if there's a Galactic Civilizations III that you'll see the abilities evolve into something that has elements of this. It's important to note that Galactic Civilizations preceded Master of Orion in terms of a public release (original OS/2 version) so when someone thinks that GalCiv is really a "MOO clone" they don't realize how far back the game goes.

My view on this kind of thing is that games have to evolve over time and good games integrate features from proven successes. Otherwise, the game designer's just being obtuse IMO.

Comments (Page 2)

Kalin

on Mar 21, 2006

It sounds good, a lot better than before at least. Having massive production worlds was just crazy, you have to set social spending to zero and focus into social to build anything or buy it (counter intuitive and wasteful, but much better than leaving a ton of waste from social upwards of several hundred BC per industrial world per week).

Though, in alll honesty, I still think research should be separate from social and military production since labs uses a different type of point than factories. Basically, have three sliders like this:

Production spending 0% ----------|--------------- 100% (35% of maximum - 700 BC)
Social/Military focus: Social ------|---------------- 100% (30% to social - 210 BC, 70% to Military - 490 BC)
Research spending 0 -------------------------|---- 100% (85% of maximum - 850 BC)

For a total spending of 1550 BC.

This is the only way that you will be able to use 100% of a planet's potential. Right now, if you put 100% in research, you waste all your production points and vice versa. With something like this, you can use both your factories and labs at the same time (if you can afford to, of course). In this sense, the defecit spending makes a lot more sense, and doesn't even need an explaination. The research and production sliders basically sets how much money you feed into your labs and factories which takes care of defecit spending nicely. While the social/military slider determines how much and where your factories should focus.

Obviously this is a huge change, so it probably wont happen, but if you guys are thinking GalCiv3, maybe it'll have some use...

Prince of Crows

on Mar 21, 2006

Have you considered unlinking cpacity and productivity for manufacturing and research?

Allow me to explain. Capacity reflects the maximum amount of units of production / resarch you can purchase, productivity is a reflection of how much each unit costs. A more advanced factory or lab has a higher capacity than a less advanced one, but the same productivity. Rateher than making 50% of all bonus units free, you could designate different types of bonus to be capacity increasing for example, better facilities, resources, starbases, tile bonuses maybe, while others new techs (as distinct from better facilities), moons / rings, civ bonuses perhaps would be productivity based and reduce the price of buying each unit of production or research. By labelling each type of bonus separately it would be easier to know where you stand. You could also give information on the capacity and productivity of each planet. You could also have different productivity for each of military and social production.

Just my 2 cents.

Camp Freddie

on Mar 21, 2006

Nice one Brad.

I'll never do the maths in the game, but knowing that % bonuses are added up and applied to base production (with half free) means that I can easily judge what a building or bonus will actually do.

I can easily decide if 50% more apples is more useful than 20% more oranges. Deciding if you want 'many' apples or 'lots' of oranges is where things get awkward.

Good call on the social redirection. I was beginning to wonder what the implication would be if you just went 100% social, letting the redirect handle all your military production. It's good to see that you will get some benefit from direct military spending.

Martimus

on Mar 21, 2006

I agree with Kalins idea. I would love to be able to fund both my Labs and Factories when I have the cash.

ubertaco

on Mar 21, 2006

This is the only way that you will be able to use 100% of a planet's potential. Right now, if you put 100% in research, you waste all your production points and vice versa. With something like this, you can use both your factories and labs at the same time (if you can afford to, of course)

Though you have to realize that what you suggest really doesn't change anything from how the game is set up now. Especially since Brad already commented in the other journal that they would (and are) tweeking the capacities of the factories (and labs I assume) to keep the same relative pace in the game.

If you unlink production and military sure you can now run both at 100%, but if they chop the capacities in half what difference does it make? Now if they don't chop capacities in half then it nearly amounts to the same thing as you'd have to devote more room on planets to income generation, again, lowering your available space for factories and labs. If you don't do that you won't be able to run at 100% spending anyway, so you'll still be 'wasting' (though it isn't really waste, but whatever) whatever % of your production and research.

Seriously, the system in place makes sense and works. Unlinking production from research might seem like a huge change, but realisticially it only means having to change the way the AI deals with the situation, it will not change anything substantive in how your economy functions.

The implemented method also serves as a bit of a check on the diplomacy tech traders from being able to constantly fund their deficeit spending through the (some call it cheesy) tech resale tactic.

Wuffles

on Mar 21, 2006

One thing that put me off Galciv 2 after playing Civ 4 is the micromanagement. The thing I would really like is for any excess research to be carried over to the next item and not just vanish rather than having to play with the sliders all the time to prevent major waste. I appreciate this reduces the computers advantage of being willing and able to manipulate this all the time to be more efficient but from a human perspective its pointless micromanagement for the sake of it.

If this has changed then sorry as been a while since last played but pretty sure I noticed it working with just losing the excess research last time I played.

ignuss

on Mar 21, 2006

It already does that. I have actually researched 2 technologies in one turn.
But it seems bugged, sometimes the research is carried over and sometimes it isn't.

Haasen

on Mar 21, 2006

Thanks for the info. One thing I don't understand is the how the focus buttons work.

I have a planet that is my manufacturing capital. On the summary screen for it, my stats are:

Industry = 172, with 100% bonus due to capital
Research = 26
Starbase bonus = 50%

My global settings are Military 20%, Research 40% and social 40%.

When I click to focus on military, I kick out 339 shields. The odd thing (to me) is that when I focus on research, I get 198 beakers! With my base research of 26, how in the heck do I get that many beakers? It just seems odd that my highest production planets are also some of my higher research planets.

pdesrivieres@yahoo.com

on Mar 21, 2006

Thanks Brad for removing some of the fog! Would you please explain how combat works with an attacker with multiple weapons types vs. a defender with multiple defenses? From what I understand weapons of the same type are combined in attacks but different weapons are separate attacks against the defenses. Defenses are combined against each attack with non-optimal having an effective defense of only sqrt(N). Thus it makes sense to have only one weapon type per ship but multiple defenses make sense if you have the room.

Please make all floating point calculations ROUND OFF TO THE NEAREST rather than always rounding down; many bonuses are lost as a result!

Currently excess research is carryed over to the next item but excess social / military is not carried over to the next planetary improvement / ship. Please eliminate this waste in v1.1!

Dewwar

on Mar 21, 2006

So now my question to Brad is, what if you aren't building any ships on that planet? Does the social spending that's converted to military spending then come back to your treasury as unused military production?

-Dewar

pdesrivieres@yahoo.com

on Mar 21, 2006

Yes. Read Brad's previous dev. journals on v1.1.

Astax

on Mar 21, 2006

Good post

But boy isn't this economy thing a big pain in the arse? I knew people wouldn't go with it. I still think that having obvious tradeoffs between military/social/research is the way to go. Being able to have all 3 at 100% would just be too powerful and to coutner this every buildign would have to be nerfed to 33% of its productivity which wouldn't be good for peopel who want to do MEGA research or MEGA industry planets.

I enjoyed the reference to GALCIV III, boy I got idea for that! But time will come :/

Moo2 reference also noted and appreciated. And the thing about barrowing idea, yes I do believe I said soemthing exactly to the same effect. There is infinate number of ideas, but only finite number of good ideas. Reusing good ideas is itself a good idea. thou some of the moo2 special abilities could have been scaled, others you just couldn't scale at all, that's why they were named. Stuff like Aquatic and subterran you couldn't really scale, so they were just on or off switches. But Charismatic, in a game like Galciv should be scalable. Mostly because you can apply monetary value to things where you really couldn't so well in Moo2. Making it a hard bonus liek +30% to diplo and that's it may not be the best idea. But I do get ahead of mysel, galciv3 is way down the road.

Good luck and I hope to see v1.1 soon!

EDIT: Sorry this just in fromt he dephts of my brain. Why nto add an option for simplified economy where the 3 expenditure sliders are disabled and only have a tax slider and spending slider and everythign is evenly divided into 3 areas. Might help new players to pick up few things before they need to learn the economy more. Of course AI woudl also have the same restriction. I'm nto sure if that wouldmess with the AI too much to include thou

accidjazz

on Mar 21, 2006

In Moo2, you could do a right click on any item, and it would display every number that factors in the calculation of the final number. Still they had flavor names like "fantastic traders" instead of "100% more tax income and improved revenues from trading". If you weren't interested in those numbers, you didn't HAVE to right-click (and apparently some people didn't even discover this feature...) but for those who were (and sooner or later you became interested because of getting better and better), it was there.

I think this was the exact right approche. Moo2 deserves the love it gets. Despite some flaws, it has done many, many, many things right that no one has done right in following space empire strategy games (not even it's successor)

Accessabilty and complexity was one of the main reason for moo2 success and legendary status.

amaevis

on Mar 21, 2006

I still don't understand how the three sliders allocate spending, if spending in a given category exceeds capacity.

For example, let's say I have one planet with 5 rps and 10 ips. Forget bonuses for now. That means the planet can spend 15 bcs per turn. If I have the ratios set to 33% research and 67% total military and social, then I'm funding all of my capacity.

But what if I increase research to 50%? Does that mean I'm paying for 7.5 rps? That exceeds my research capacity by 2.5 rps. What happens? Do I actually spend 5 bcs to get 5 rps? Do I spend 7.5 bcs to get 7.5 rps? Or do I spend 7.5 bcs to get 5 rps?

I'm afraid the last scenario is the case. Why should the game have any waste? That's the most unfun...

It would be infinitely clearer to separate rp funding from ip funding.

ubertaco

on Mar 21, 2006

For example, let's say I have one planet with 5 rps and 10 ips. Forget bonuses for now. That means the planet can spend 15 bcs per turn.

Actually it doesn't mean that at all. It means if you fund either at 100% you will get your 5 and 10, but 0 in the other.

If I have the ratios set to 33% research and 67% total military and social, then I'm funding all of my capacity

No you don't have the mechanics down correctly. If you set your funding to that ratio (assuming 100% spending) you will get 2 rps and 6pp (assuming rounding down). If you set your spending to 50/50 you will get 2rps and 5 pps (again rounding down). The bottem sliders tell your planets how to spend the amount of money you have allocated in your spending slider between production and research. Currently (and likely permanently) you cannot ever use 100% of both production and research capacities.

I'm afraid the last scenario is the case. Why should the game have any waste? That's the most unfun...

There is no waste (other than social in 1.0X) the only posible waste is in your money, you cannot waste pp or rp.

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