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 3)

amaevis

on Mar 21, 2006

Is this really the case? WHY???????????????? It doesn't make any sense!!!!!!

So if I spend 80% research, then I'm funding 4 rps, but I'm stuck with 20% military and social, which means I'm funding 2 ips. So I'm spending a total of 6 bcs.

That's ridiculous. Why should spending in one category be constrained by another?

And I assume that the total spending slider (100%) is a multiplier after the fact. If I set the spending slider to 50%, and the research/other mix to 80/20, I'm funding 2 rps and 1 ip, for a total spending of 3 bc.

Why can't I use all my capacity if I can fund it? Doesn't this destroy the purpose of specialization (on an empire basis)? To run an economy well, I have to make sure that my base research and industrial capacities are balanced, and I have to rely on bonuses to specialize my empire. I can't really specialize by affecting base spending. I can still specialize by planet, sure, but I can't use a specialized empire strategy? How do I ever get to a Tech victory?

Martimus

on Mar 21, 2006

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.

That isn't what he is saying. Right now, either the labs or the factories are not fully utilized, nor can they be. If you fully fund the labs, then you cannot fund your factories, and vice versa. Since factories are linked to both military and social production, the labs are usually what get the short end of the stick. He just wants to have the ability to completely fund both research and production, instead of having to divert funding from your labs to run extra factories - even if you have the extra money to run both. I would love to be able to run both at full capacity, or even both at 75% capacity, but right now, the best you can do is to run both at 50% capacity. (Which is counter-intuitive, but this is the set up from the original game, so it is kind of a legacy system - even though the research and production are done completely differently.)

ubertaco

on Mar 21, 2006

Is this really the case? WHY???????????????? It doesn't make any sense!!!!!!

Well that's your opinion. I think it makes perfect sense. In the end its the mechanic that's in the game, so once you learn it you can plan accordingly.

So if I spend 80% research, then I'm funding 4 rps, but I'm stuck with 20% military and social, which means I'm funding 2 ips. So I'm spending a total of 6 bcs.

Yep, I don't see what the problem is with that though. Well other than that if you have a planet with such low capacities (actually its not possible) it doesn't really matter how the sliders affect it.

That's ridiculous. Why should spending in one category be constrained by another?

Again, your opinion. Its a tradeoff in how you have to set up and manage your empire. It does mean that complete specialization may not be optimal, but in the other system specialization is the only option. Like I said, this is a different mechanic than what you may be used to, but its not better or worse than any other (reasonable) system.

And I assume that the total spending slider (100%) is a multiplier after the fact. If I set the spending slider to 50%, and the research/other mix to 80/20, I'm funding 2 rps and 1 ip, for a total spending of 3 bc.

Yes that's basically it. I think of the spending slider as being before the fact rather than after but you can look at it either way the effect will be the same. Essentially you can set a tax rate to determine your income, you can then set a spending rate (dependant on your capacities) and you can adjust how much of your total funding goes into which areas. One oddity (well not really, but it will appear this way to some) is that as you change your spending ratio between production and research your total spending will also change depending on if you have more research or production capacity.

Why can't I use all my capacity if I can fund it? Doesn't this destroy the purpose of specialization (on an empire basis)? To run an economy well, I have to make sure that my base research and industrial capacities are balanced, and I have to rely on bonuses to specialize my empire. I can't really specialize by affecting base spending.

You can't because that's the game mechanism. If you think through what you want to be able to do you will realize that it is in effect going to give you the same result. Either that or it will change the pace of the game to where everything gets built/researched faster. Indeed with this system total specialization is not optimal (though it can still be useful), but that is a design decision, and again, its neither good nor bad, it just is.

I can still specialize by planet, sure, but I can't use a specialized empire strategy? How do I ever get to a Tech victory?

Err... tech victory isn't any less difficult with this system than any other. You still will be building more research buildings, and running down the appropriate tech path to do it. Planetary focus will only help you on planets where you have alot of industry and when you don't want to set your tech slider at 100%.

amaevis

on Mar 21, 2006

Saying "it is because it is" isn't an answer at all. I prefer specialization because it leads to a more diverse set of strategies and situations. Designing an economy that pulls everyone back to center leads to generic strategies. It tends to be more boring.

Of course, balancing a system that has more specialization is difficult, and you have to guard against highly tuned strategies that lead to zerg-like rushes. But IMHO, the effort is well worth it.

It just hurts to think that I can't implement a truly tech-heavy strategy. If I build more labs, I get more rps, but I have less space to build factories, which necessarily leads to less ips. If I try to crank up the research spend rate, then I'm forced to fund even less of my already limited ip pool. I take a double whammy in social and military production.

ubertaco

on Mar 21, 2006

Saying "it is because it is" isn't an answer at all.

Of course its an answer. In fact its *the* answer. Its really not anyones problem but your own that you don't like the answer.

prefer specialization because it leads to a more diverse set of strategies and situations. Designing an economy that pulls everyone back to center leads to generic strategies. It tends to be more boring.

I get what you prefer, only you don't get that you havn't thought either system through. Unless you allow for individual planetary sliders it doesn't matter if you keep production and research coupled or not. I do not believe that Brad intends to introduce individual planetary control for reasons of micro, but who knows he may decide to do it. You also short change the available strategies to you under this system. Indeed I would say that since you have to make more difficult choices you have more strategy not less. You can still make specialize planets with this system, indeed when you find good bonus tiles you really need to do so to take advantage of them. The difference is that you still need to consider how far towards complete specialization you want to go.

Of course, balancing a system that has more specialization is difficult, and you have to guard against highly tuned strategies that lead to zerg-like rushes. But IMHO, the effort is well worth it.

Balancing specialized systems is trivial and uninteresting. Indeed they cry out for rush strategies, which aren't very interesting now are they?

It just hurts to think that I can't implement a truly tech-heavy strategy. If I build more labs, I get more rps, but I have less space to build factories, which necessarily leads to less ips

How the hell would this be any different with your suggestion? The answer is it isn't any different, you just have to understand the current system and how to use it to its fullest effect.

Pode 697

on Mar 21, 2006

Advocates of total planetary specialization should bear in mind the unholy amount of energy/resources required to haul stuff between planets. Even on this one tiny ball of rock, shipping costs between countries are such that EVERY single nation on earth grows at least some of its own food, produces some of its own energy, and builds some of its own stuff. Fusion = cheap energy, sure, but climbing up two gravity wells to deliver boxes of Wheaties to a planet with perfectly good farmland I don't think will ever make economic sense.

Konradius

on Mar 21, 2006

How I'd like to see it (and I've read parts of this already above):

- percentage sliders for military/social/research independant, so each can be set from 0 to 100%, 100% meaning that all buildings of the type work at max capacity.
- For balance reasons all buildings must therefore produce about 80-33% of their current amount.
- No wastage. This means if I need half production to finish that building or that ship, I'm only charged half.
- No transfer over to other categories. If you built a factory you didn't build a research station.
- If factories would have to produce more than 100% (because they supply both social and military production) they produce 100%, and social/military production on that planet is reduced accordingly.
- If in above case a project finishes the other category produces to max the percentage set in economics. Again, a factory produces max 100%.
- I like the initial part saying that you only get charged half for the bonusses. It's possible to do that combined with these points.

The reasons why I think this would be the best

Reason no 1: People who are not into numbers arn't disadvantaged in the game.

Right now mindnumbing numbercrunching and meticulous micromanagement get you a bonus.
Why charge people who do not fiddle with the sliders to get the most production for the least bc's for the extra social production they actually waste? Sure it may give an advantage to the computer players, but I'd rather give them a plain 25% production bonus than knowing that I could get that bonus myself by spending 10 minutes per turn extra.
Do I not do this and feel like I'm not playing to the fullest? Do I do this and lose the fun in the game?

In a turn where you spend 200 bc's social/military wastage can be as high as 50 or so even when you're not making mistakes. Not fun.

ubertaco

on Mar 21, 2006

- percentage sliders for military/social/research independant, so each can be set from 0 to 100%, 100% meaning that all buildings of the type work at max capacity.
- For balance reasons all buildings must therefore produce about 80-33% of their current amount.

This changes noting, so why bother doing it?

Your points about overrun are fine though, either carryover or rebate would seem appropriate solutions to that issue.

Ex Mudder

on Mar 21, 2006

Nice to know, Brad, but my eyes glazed over about halfway though. My main concern was if I was paying 40 BCs into social production, I want those 40 BCs to be used, not watsed. If I'm reading you correctly, that is what you did - my X BCs spent on social produciton will add X MPs to military production, no boni, if I run out of planetary improvements to build. Thats fine, so long as they are not wasted. Getting social boni, or military boni, or worse, both boni stacking, would be absurd.
Is that a concise if not completely accurate summation?

Kalin

on Mar 21, 2006

@Ex Mudder:
You are partially right, but you have to take into account the bonus for social production. Here's what I believe they are doing in v1.1.

Here's the setup (numbers are nice and even for demonstration purposes):

Planet A: 100 pp (production point), 100 rp (research point).
Spending: 100%
Sliders: 25% military, 25% social, 50% research.
Civilization Bonuses: 100% military production, 100% social production, 100% research.
(no other types of bonuses to make things simple, all of them work the same anyways, the tiles only add to pp and rp)

Planet A's production with all three sectors doing their own projects BEFORE bonuses are applied:
25 pp military - cost 25 BC
25 pp social - costs 25 BC
50 rp research - costs 50BC
Total: 100 BC (this never happens, I'm just putting it here to show base numbers)

Planet A's production with all three sectors doing their own project WITH bonuses:
50 pp (25 base + 25 bonus) military - costs 37 BC (or 38? rounding 37.5. Charged half of the bonuses)
50 pp (25 base + 25 bonus) social - costs 37 BC (or 38 like military)
100 rp (50 base + 50 bonus) research - costs 75 BC
Total: 150 BC (if the game doesn't round internally, 148-152 BC if it does)

Planet A's production with only military and research projects WITH bonuses:
75 pp (25 base + 25 bonus + 25 social) military - costs 62 BC (or 63. Social is added after the bonuses, at full cost)
0 pp (-25 base diverted to military, + 0 bonus) social - costs 0 BC
100 rp (50 base + 50 bonus) research - cost 75 BC (unchanged)
Total: 137 BC (or 138)

The end result is you save 37 (or 38) BC of social waste that would normally occur if social had nothing to build. However, only 25 BC of that is applied to military. On the other hand, you could potentially waste all 25 of those BC if the military project was near completion, because unless I'm mistaken, military spending doesn't return money it doesn't use for that turn. As some have pointed out, it would be great if military spending only use the exact amount that it needed, but you have to keep in mind that will all the bonuses and half free and the social adding in, I don't even want to think about how they will calculate which will go where, and how much BC should be 'exact' for the amount of pp needed. The potential for waste IS there, but it is less than before. If nothing else, you will have saved 12 (or 13) BC that the social bonuses would have wasted. This way, social bonus will actually be a bonus, and not a handicap.

Before I stop, for those who are wondering,

Planet A's production with only research projects WITH bonuses:
0 pp (not building) military - costs 0 BC
0 pp (not building) social - costs 0 BC
100 rp research - cost 75 BC (unchanged)
Total: 75 BC

... so if you don't want to waste any BCs, simply don't make anything. It makes sense, sort of. The hard part is to figure out how the 'focuses" affect these value. Unfortunately, I haven't messed around with that enough to give a specific answer.

On a side note, the reason I advocated the changing of the sliders is for those who HAVE money to run their economies. There are times, like in the starting game, where you have massive excess of BC that you can use to give your civilization a kick in the rear to get to the next level (I can foresee this as somewhat of an alternate to the planet grab, maximize your production and research planetary invasion really fast. Or when the AI declares war on you, and you have plenty of money to crank out ships and still research). Having two spending sliders (one for factories and one for labs) and another one to split how much of the factories go to social/military allows someone to REALLY defecit spend. The way it is now, the numbers of pp or rp produced by labs/factories are so superficial, at any given time, only half of those numbers are really used. Besides, why NOT allow people to really deficit spend if they have the money for it? As some have pointed out, most of the time, you CAN'T afford to max your planet's potential, you just don't have the money to, and that's fine. Unlike the changing bonuses, in this case, there's no need to adjust the factories/labs capacities to change the game at all. All it does is give players who have enough money another option to use them instead of buying up everything they feel like (which is way more wasteful than deficit spending). It's just another play style for the all the BC whores, and I don't think it would change the game all that much. The reseach/social/military system is a legacy system from GalCiv1, which is fine there, but with the advent of labs and factories, rp and pp, the system makes very little sense in its current form.

Aquiantus

on Mar 21, 2006

I had posted a number of problems that may happen on the Social to Military system in this thread.

https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=108974

Someone posted a link to this thread on how you plan to bring about the changes. There are a number of issues I want to take up.

1. How will you tell in the Domestic Policy: Expenses what money is going to Military and what is going to Social? I assume this doesn't change, you wont ever have an accurate read on whats going to what. If you have 100 extra Social pork going straight into Military you won't ever know that from this view.

Lets say you decide to change it, then the numbers wouldn't add up to the sliders. Lets say your Empire Spending is 1000 and 50% of that is for Social the other half is for Military. Lets say you trim the 100 extra Social pork and place it into the Military expenses. So now you look at your expenses and you see 400 Social and 600 Military. But, that leaves you wondering why because the sliders are at 50%. So you would think it would be at 500.

So the Social to Military has the problem of inability to display the funds accurately in the Domestic Policy screen, no matter which way you decide to display it.

2. How will you tell what the Base of Social spending is per planet? Will it show what is transfered or will you have to bring a calculator to figure this out? Since we dont know the base of Social spending at all from looking at the the Planet view currently, I don't think it will ever be readily available for us.

3. How will you tell how much Military spending your doing per planet if Social isn't added into it? You would have to find the base of Social spending and add it to the Military spending to figure out the output of your Military spending? So a 70 Military Planet wouldn't have the extra 20 or so from Social, so you wouldn't be able to tell right away that it is 90 Military?

4. If you think this is a problem, think about it the Other way around. You decide you want to add Social that isn't being spent on Buildings into the Military. So now that extra base is showing up in the Military spending. Now your social is spending Zero and showing you spending zero. Only you actually are spending something in Social, you just don't know it because you have added it to Military and it is displaying wrong. So you wont know how much Social is being spent in Planets that aren't building anything. Bad Idea if your trying to figure out what Planets need alittle less Factories on it because the Social is way to high.

5. Lets look at it a third way. Well ok what if we add the Military + Social Base and display that, and keep the Social spending in the Planet view so that they can see that is was spending money in Social but now its in Military. Well then it would look like you are spending to much all around. The phantom money being spent on Social really isn't being spent there, so you add up your Military and Social and find out your total spending for that Planet doesn't match up to the numbers at all.

So again Social to Military won't let you get an accurate read on whats going on with the current system. Not only is your Empire Displays wrong in where your funds are going, so are your Planet displays wrong aswell. They will never be accurate, and they will in turn be more complex and confusing than the current system.

6. Ok so now, instead of having to figure out the current system, you also have to figure out what is the base of Social is so you can add it to or minus it from your Military spending to get an accurate read on what is happening. Now you spend 5 minutes per planet, per everytime you change the slider to figure this out. Thats just too frustrating.

7. So the inability to tell where funds are going, Inability to display any of this accurately, inability to tell what your production output is on your Planets. These are just a FEW of the issues I have raised. Please read the link I provided for more examples and concerns about this Social to Military.

There are just too many problems with this Social to Military system. Its not simple, its complex, its so complex it forces everyone not to micro anymore but just to simply slide the sliders back and forth and to guess at everything because no matter how you display the numbers, they wont ever add up currectly in the Social to Military system. Atleast the current system allows you to do this. I can tell a 70 Military Planet can produce a 140 cost Ship in 2 turns. You will be unable to in the Social to Military system.

You would think that if your Planet does 50 Military, and you set the slider to a certain funding of the Military then that Planet will have exactly 50 Military. But in the Social to Military system, not only would you be unable to tell that from the Domestic Policy screen, you would be unable to tell that from the Planet screen. And if you were unable to tell from any displays, then whats the point in even using the sliders. Just set Social to 0% and focus on planets that need buildings because you wont be able to gauge or display the numbers right unless you did that.

And finally, if your Planet was producing 69 Military and you didn't know this, you had 54 and the rest from Social, you would be Unable to guess how much you needed to increase your funding in Military to get it to 70 Military. Want to build that 140 ship? Its easy in the current system. If I am spending 285 on Military and I know that it needs 1 more Military point for my Capitol planet, I can increase the spending from the Domestic Policy screen and know that if the funding is at 300+ on Military that it would put the Planet over 70 Military allowing me to produce the 140 ship easy. In the Social to Military, you would be unable to tell how much more is needed to be placed into Military because the display is all wrong.

If there is not way to accurately gauge what is going where from the Displays, how does someone Micro at all? The answer is they wont, and you would have crippled their ability to micro so vastly that it would be pointless actually to micro. You would just set your social slider to zero percent, and thats all the skillz you needed to be as efficient as the next guy. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy knowing the next guy can micro just as efficient as you with the Social to Military, and neither of you would have a clue what is going where. The Social to Military system is a good way to punish the skilled players willing to micro.

I don't think the current system is that bad, certainly not as bad as not knowing what is going where. I would rather have the knowledge then feel helpless with my economy. Right now I atleast have a limited capacity to micro things for the better. The Social to Military makes it way worse. Certainly the game would not have been rated in the 90's by alot of reviewers if the economy was that horrible to handle

Campaigner

on Mar 21, 2006

*Looks at the spreedshett and tries to understand it*
*Feels dissy and gets a headache*
*Focuses harder and tries to make up own examples. Gets a major headache*

Ok, I'm one of those that want to know everything in detail, but I'll make this numbercrunching an exception.
Ooooh my head

ubertaco

on Mar 22, 2006

The Social to Military system is a good way to punish the skilled players willing to micro.

Maybe that's the intent? Death to micro I say

Though really it doesn't change much of anything. Once you have more than a handful of planets it becomes neigh on impossible to micro effectively for all of them anyway, so indeed, what is the point?

Seriously, if you want a game in which you can micro like crazy reinstall MoO3 (get the latest user mods/patches) then you can satisfy your power gamer urges.

Camp Freddie

on Mar 22, 2006

If tech and industry were decoupled, it would mean LESS zerg rushes, not more. The only way to increase your production would be to build more factories and/or have lots of excess factories everywhere so that you can temporarily boost the spending if necessary.

Play the campaign and you'll see that a great tactic goes like this:

Buy ships/factories and set 100% research for engines/cartography techs.

Set 100% military once you've bought enough factories and build fast colony ships and constructors

Set 50+ % social to get those colonies some factories and other improvements, research a few useful techs and build up starbases

Once you've built a stable economy, set 100% research to rush to lasers and invasion tech.

Set 100% military and ZERG! ZERG! those Drengin.

This strategy works incredibly well despite seeming really stupid. The 'problem' is that setting 100% research is actually a sensible thing to do, because it's the only way to max out research.
If research and production were decoupled (and the buildings capacities reduced), then you couldn't do these crazy swings between production and research. The best strategy would be to max out both, allowing a little spare capacity if you need some cash.
Of course, it would make for some radically different gameplay, since you couldn't rely (as much) on a quick 100% military shift to get some emergency defence ships built.

I can see my Terran police running round the building sites, yelling "Oi you! Stop wolf whistling at those women and get those overalls off, NOW! I want you in a lab coat, working on the latest advancements in quantum singularity drives, you lasy git!"

I hope Galciv3 (whenever that happens!) will make some changes this system. Meanwhile, I'm fine with the Galciv2 system, just as long as I treat it as a quirky gameplay mechanic and don't try to rationalise it too much!

Mishlai

on Mar 22, 2006

The tradeoff on a planet between research and production makes sense, because you can view the production slider as being an allocation of people, which are a limited resource. Having more tax dollars or a reserve of funds doesn't change the maximum possible research that can be done because only so many people can put on a lab coat.

I would like very much to see individual planet sliders though. I often find myself wasting social production on planet X because nothing is being built because I need the production on planet Y. Focusing a planet helps, and so will converting unused social to military (though the loss of bonuses makes this inefficient too).

It seems reasonable to me that I could set my new planets to full social production, my research planets to work on my tech problems, and my factory planets to producing the latest and greatest design of warship. I don't want to have to waste production throughout most of my empire because a newly conquered planet needs some social.

Basically, there's waste because we don't have the granularity, and because there are not mechanisms in place to automatically convert or rebate unused production.

I would also like to see the carryover for social and military production (from one building to the next) - similar to the way research works, or at least a rebate.

I realize that some people like this kind of thing, but for me turn by turn tweaking of the production numbers distracts from the elements of the game that are more fun. I want to manage the economy, but not with a calculator in hand.

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