Production: Social vs. Military

[Hansolo88]

I think they should take a page from Paradox and limit the amount you can move the sliders each turn, similar to the sliders in Europa Universalis 2. After all, who ever heard of an entire economy completely changing direction in a week?

If it was limited to like 5 or 10 clicks or something, then the player could gradually emphasize something in his economy, but would be taking a risk if he suddenly needed something else. For example, you could have your economy primarily geared towards research and then go to war suddenly and start gearing towards military production but it might take you a few turns while your economy "mobilizes" for war. Seems very realistic to me, and adds a whole new "guns or butter" dilemma for the player.

This could be worked into other elements, such as the governmental element. Perhaps an Imperial govt. would be able to more rapidly move sliders around, but the "higher" forms of government would have those huge economic bonuses. Or it could take into account your control of the Senate, with more control allowing more clicks.

Some people might find this lack of control less fun, but you have to admit it would add a huge amount of strategy and realism to the game, while limiting the rather (IMO) cheesy tactic of switching from 100% something to 100% something else in a week. And of course the actual number of clicks could be tunable, so it could be turned up to allow still rapid transitions or turned down to force players to really think about each one.

It also would not be difficult to incorporate for the AI. The AI already has "desired" settings that it puts its sliders on each turn, in this case it would simply move towards those as many clicks as possible each turn. If its priorities changed before it ever got to that other desired setting, no problem, it just starts moving towards the new values. The only problem I see as far as AI is concerned is that the human player will gear up for war prior to declaring it, while the AI player doesn't seem to adequately prepare for war. This might require a bit of tuning for the AI to prepare its economy for war rather than just declaring it out of the blue, but again would be an addition to the game in my opinion.

[mike2h]

i think this sytem is more 'realistic' too. you are not going to have an entire planet(several bilion+ people) devoted to just one thing. as alo stated above it also reflects various politics & other human/logistical issues on a given planet & empire wide.
imo some people make the mistake of confusing a planet with a city ala civ4.

[tetley]

They're not people, they're aliens. I think several billion Borg can handle one thing fine.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Sarcastic


But could that be more easily achieved without the split in production? If you needed military, you'd build ships. If you needed infrastructure, you'd build that. The point is, if you almost never split your production, why complicate the game with this mechanic which could cause unnecessary slider adjustments throughout the game?

EDIT: I should make something clear. I am not advocating creating mechanics to encourage balanced spending. If that could be done in a fun way, then great, but otherwise, why not just eliminate it?

I'm not really sure I understand your points. This game isn't Civ 4 or Civ 3. It's different. The key is that you can build both military units and buildings *at the same time* which you can't do in the Civ series. Are you saying this is bad? Honestly I wish the Civ series could build both at the same time. It would be a bad thing for GalCiv 2 if you couldn't do both at the same time.

[Shadowlord]

Originally posted by Hansolo88
I think they should take a page from Paradox and limit the amount you can move the sliders each turn, similar to the sliders in Europa Universalis 2. After all, who ever heard of an entire economy completely changing direction in a week?

That sounds like a good idea to me. I wonder if it would be possible to limit the sliders' ranges from a mod?

[mike2h]

Originally posted by tetley
They're not people, they're aliens. I think several billion Borg can handle one thing fine.

until i destroyed them & used them for parts!

[Sarcastic]

Originally posted by bonscott


I'm not really sure I understand your points. This game isn't Civ 4 or Civ 3. It's different. The key is that you can build both military units and buildings *at the same time* which you can't do in the Civ series. Are you saying this is bad? Honestly I wish the Civ series could build both at the same time. It would be a bad thing for GalCiv 2 if you couldn't do both at the same time.

Why is it good? What possible benefit does it give? Does it make the game clearer? No, it makes it more complicated. Does it remove micromanagement? No, it forces you to shift the sliders back and forth to prevent waste. Does it add a new level strategy? As far as I can tell, no, because there seems to almost never be an advantage to doing more than one thing at once.

As for realism, I say forget it. Realistically, a planet would be building way more than two things at once anyway, so it is already an abstraction. Why not take it to the next level to remove some unnecessary complication?

The idea of making the sliders change graudally has appeal, but it adds even more to the complication and potential for micromanagement.

[mike2h]

i think you are making it to complicated. i dont worry about micro efficency. they seem to have that covered in the game. i adjust the mil/sci/soc sliders only when i am changing tactics. which is not to often.
imo it is not complicated. if you want complicated try moo3
never an advantage to doing more than one thing at once? then how do you even get started? you have to build colony ships while developing the infrasrtucture of you planets. scouts & other ships to. i really dont get how you play but every one has their own style.

[Hansolo88]

Originally posted by Sarcastic

The idea of making the sliders change graudally has appeal, but it adds even more to the complication and potential for micromanagement.

I don't think it would add any more to micromanagement, since those players who are constantly adjusting their sliders would continue to do so. It would just limit how much they could do in one particular turn. It would add a small amount of complexity, but the information could be easily displayed as a small "economic moves remaining" box, with perhaps a popup tooltip showing where the number of moves is coming from (Senate control, approval, govt., or whatever factors effect it). It would contribute to the strategy of the game by presenting the player with an important decision with simple mechanics but far-reaching effects, the best of both worlds. And it would help remove the detached, gamey feel the sliders have right now.

I guess the reason I am so passionate about this idea is that I hate to think that these bizzarre 100% flip strategies are actually the best way to play the game. While I am playing I rarely let one of my sliders drop below 20% and I usually don't move them more than 10-20% at a time. It just seems more natural that way, and I know that I am always making progress in each area, though I may be emphasizing one or two. Yet, I am also an engineer and grognard, and am obsessed with efficiency, so it bugs me that all along this very reasonable and realistic way of setting my sliders is actually less efficient than wildly throwing them from 0% to 100%.

So I stand by the idea that a limited number of slider adjustments would add to the game, though I highly doubt it will be moddable or that the developers would add this concept.

I do think something should be done to make wildly flipping from 100% something to 100% something else less efficent than more balanced sliders adjusted more slowly. I realize that the economics in the game are heavily abstract, and there is the xeno factor, but even abstractly no economy can efficiently switch its entire emphasis in one turn and then switch back the next turn without some type of loss.

[tetley]

It's a game. I like the 100% flip strategies, and don't see how forcing a gradual slider change improves the game. I like the strategy of going 100% research till you unlock a Trade Good and then going 100% social.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Hansolo88

I don't think it would add any more to micromanagement, since those players who are constantly adjusting their sliders would continue to do so. It would just limit how much they could do in one particular turn.

If you limit how much the sliders can move each turn, then people will want to precalculate in advance how much more they will produce in a given area if they start moving the slider down now. That's way more complicated (more work, more micromanagement) than the current system where you can wait until you finish a current project and then just move the slider down all at once.

[Shadowlord]

Good point. What if there was just a temporary efficiency penalty for moving the bar more than 50% in a turn? Either you'd move it all at once and take a small penalty, or you'd move it over two turns and take no penalty. Having to move it twice instead of once isn't that much worse, is it? It certainly wouldn't be as bad as moving the slider 10% for 8 or 9 turns in a row.

On the other hand, if the slider only represented where you *wanted* it to be at, and the computer took care of gradually moving what the slider currently represents, then you'd only have to move it once. Probably you'd want to move it before you were done with your project, so that is still more confusing than getting an immediate effect when you move the slider from 100% to 0%. And you'd still have to precalculate how much it would change, which isn't good.

That reminds me of shuffling citizens around in games where production overflows didn't carry over to your next project. I actually did that in MoO II for a long time before I realized overflows actually carried over. I don't recall reading anything about that in the manual, but it seems to be there nonetheless. (Unless it was added in Lord Brazen's 1.40b* patches)

As for whether limiting the slider is good or bad... Well, now I'm on the fence.

[Hansolo88]

Well, there is likely no chance that my idea will ever be implemented, so you guys probably have nothing to worry about.

I will continue to hold out hope that the game will somehow be tweaked so that 100% flips are still possible but are somehow penalized so that they don't represent the most efficient way to run your economy.

[oldstatesman]

Originally posted by EternalSpark


My gut says that it was a choice to be something different than Civ In Space.



Why are you playing a Civ game, then?

Sorry, I didn't realize Civ type games were only for micromanagers. I guess I'll go back to lurking and not disturb anyone here again.

[Shadowlord]

Now, now, no need to run off because of one person's comments. (Personally, I like how Civ IV has made it possible for you to leave the micromanaging to the AI to whatever extent you want. If you like micromanaging cities' citizens, you can. If not, the AI will do it for you. Or explorers, workers, city production, etc.)

It sounds like GalCiv II abstracts away a lot of the micromanaging that you'd have in other games (MoO II has a fairly large amount of micromanaging, for example).