12-21-01: new DEAs dumps

[Master Marcus]

bioharvesting and manufacturing dumps, this is mostly about factors affecting DEAs ( Dominant Economic Activities ) for each colony.

[Don K Hotay]

Bioharvest is food for your people correct? My question is, will it be a possible to trade food surpluses? Not just to supplement a agriculturally poor planet in one's own empire, but to foriegn empires? And can food be used as leverage over a rebellious/discontented population, as in: "be obedient or starve!"?

If food trade is possible, will travel time and distance at all be a factor in getting surplus food to market?

I understand there are ways to improve bioharvesting and food production through buildings and race picks, but will corruption or war or pirates conribute toward the diminishing of food production (or rather the amount of food available after production)?

Will climactic changes (aside from terraforming) ever play a role? I mean, I assume that if the game span was adjusted to our "solar years", we may be talking about millions of years not hundreds or thousands...which is plenty of time for planets to change, stars to explode and so forth.

If these questions have been answered somewhere else, I wish you guys would have a more efficient way of sifting through all this information!!!!! To read everything posted at the forums would give me great pleasure, but I do not have so much time, as I'm not even finished with the data dumps yet!!


Quixote

"I swallowed your c!m, that means something!" Cameron Diaz, Vanilla Sky

[LDiCesare]

climactic changes

Good point. Earth has cycles of ice ages/warm ages, our being currently in the warmest phase. I think the cycle time is around a hundred thousand years. Actually, it had consequences on f.e. farming as the Sahara was a fertile plain around 10000 years ago. Thus regions on a planet gradually warm/cool because of small changes/cycles in their orbit. I guess over 1000 years over 10 planets, you should get major ecological changes. If the models don't do that, surely events could.

[Sencho]

our being currently in the warmest phase.

Actually, we're in a warming phase. It's still a lot colder today than it was 1000 years ago. And this whole interglacial is much colder than the Pliocene.

[Don K Hotay]

Originally posted by Sencho
Actually, we're in a warming phase. It's still a lot colder today than it was 1000 years ago. And this whole interglacial is much colder than the Pliocene.

so we are in a cooling phase, no? (since a thousands of years ago it was warmer). Perhaps we came out of an ice age thirteen-fifteen thousand years back (right?), and somewhere between now and then, another glaciation period started. It is a good thing we have a so much pollution and greenhouse gases! If it is the case, then we could sort of call our pollution tendencies....terraforming?

Quixote

"Well, what do we have here, a comedian, Private Joker. I like you, you can come over my house and f!ck my sister!" Lee Ermey (Sergeant Hartman), Full Metal Jacket

[Stormhound]

Originally posted by Don K Hotay
Bioharvest is food for your people correct? My question is, will it be a possible to trade food surpluses? Not just to supplement a agriculturally poor planet in one's own empire, but to foriegn empires? And can food be used as leverage over a rebellious/discontented population, as in: "be obedient or starve!"?

Bioharvest is more than just food; it can also include things like rare compounds usable in pharmaceuticals, or other such non-food organics. You automatically sell off your food surpluses for cash (except there are government policies which give you other options), so no, you can't trade food, but the food in your empire gets around. And no, you don't get to use Marie Antoinette's (apocryphally) famous line.

I understand there are ways to improve bioharvesting and food production through buildings and race picks, but will corruption or war or pirates conribute toward the diminishing of food production (or rather the amount of food available after production)?

Possibly.

Climatic change is outside the scope of the game, except in conjunction with terraforming.

[Don K Hotay]

Then these non food bioharvests are resources, yes? How will they be put to use? That is, will they be necessary to have in order to further research (for instance, without a certain Chemical "A" that is found only on Planet Z, you cannot research Pharmaceuticals III)?

And since bioharvesting has a resource aspect to it, I'm sure mining (generating cement) will too. Will a resources be abundantly available, and a do they have to be found or will they simply appear when you a colonize/scout a planet? Is there a resource list available?

Quixote

[Stormhound]

There are seven strategic resources that are required for construction of certain items (not for research, so far as I know), but there are many more "planet specials" that are more along the lines of "Gold" from MOO2, though with rather more variety than that.

The list of the seven is out, but I don't have it handy at this moment; the names were kicked around on (and off) the Delphi forum until we were happy with them. These seven will not be abundant, but you can trade access to them. Such trading does NOT deprive you of access, as opposed to the Civ3 model.

[Don K Hotay]

can resources or planet specials be exhausted, and where exactly can I a look in the forums for these resources?

I'd like to ask a question off topic from the new data dumps. It is about the AI and expansion. In CIV3, expansion is rapid, and it seems by very very early in the game, not a single part of the map is left unclaimed/uninhabited. What will limit expansion in MOO3? Could a better strategy be to run a tight-nit consolidated empire as opposed at an expansive hegemon of one? Or will it ultimately come down how many planets/system one owns.

[Stormhound]

I'll see if I can find the list somewhere in my emails...the Delphi search function has been kind of flaky.

Yes, they can be exhausted.

The expansion question is a good one. The two biggest controls on expansion, right off the top of my head, are:

IFP: The bigger you are, the less "tight" your control over your empire, because IFP do NOT increase with the size of your empire. Players will have to find their own comfort levels here, but as you grow you'll have to use more macromanagement tools to control things, and both of those cause the next item...

HFOG: The Heavy Foot Of Government is (in basic terms) a measure of how much inefficiency there is in your government, and acts as a multiplier to all costs. There are ways to help control it, but a large empire is almost inevitably going to have a higher HFOG than a small one. Small empires may be able to make a tidy profit selling things to bigger empires more cheaply than the big empire could make them.

So no, it won't all come down to how big you are, at least not if we get the numbers right.

[Don K Hotay]

Merry Christmas!

Seniore Stormhound, I've found the resource list, but I wish it was mentioned what they were for! And seven seems to few!

Now, in addition to inefficiency, will a the HFOG spur any unrest? Could it lead to civil war if unchecked? How exactly would an empire split or splinter do to the government's heavy foot (is it a factor)? I'd like to think that when inefficiency/beaurocracy becomes so great, that indeed their will be uprisings in small or large corners of one's empire...with a significant chance of seperation

What sort an information database/screens/menus will be available for your empire or your opponent's empire (relating to leaders,reserves,army leaders,governments seats,planet info) to view? And is this the stuff that could be freely observed without the heavy foot of IFPs? Espionage information? Or, will most of this info be irrelevant and not necessary to view or know? I would think it would be, so as to (for example) plan an attack/invasion as best as possible.

Quixote

[Stormhound]

As things stand right now, HFOG doesn't cause unrest. I'll talk about it with Alan, though.

So far as screens, if a screenshot isn't out I can't give details, but the intent is to allow you to view any information which is relevant, so there are a good many screens...I've lost count of how many. And yes, viewing information is free. Acting on information is what costs you IFP.

Merry Christmas, folks...see you around tomorrow.

[playshogi]

I thought you had no control over expansion. Your "people" go where they want to go on their own volition. So, if HFOG is high, it may not cause unrest, but rather an excuse for your "people" to go find another planet, or maybe even, go to another empire's planet. My understanding is that you cannot order a certain planet colonized, at least not directly. Rather, you have to create conditions that enable your "people" to want to go there.

[Stormhound]

You can order the direct settlement of planets, and build colony or outpost ships (well, you build modules on the ships, but you know what I mean). This is one way to make sure that you get control of those little places your people settle.

One point: when your people settle a new world, they tend to do so in very small groups, too small to actually give you control. They will eventually grow big enough to become a full colony, but the moral is if you really want a specific place, make sure you don't leave it to chance.

[playshogi]

OK, but it's my understanding that you cannot directly order x millions from an large fully populated world immediately go to that new colony and fill it up at once, like in MOO2. Once you establish the colony, you then (or rather the AI planet leader) has to make it attractive for immigration which cannot be directly ordered. Further, immigrants can come from other empires, like US citizens settled Texas when it was a part of Mexico.