dev planning, anyone done it?

[vmxa1]

I have been trying to fool around with the devplans, but so far nothing seems to work. The AI want to starve me and never builds food on anything but the HW.
I have to go back and delete an existing DEA and make a Bio.

[Inverse Icarus]

or you could make "bio planets" on fertile / arable planets in secure systems

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Ianpolaris

1. The AI ignores you anyway.

Wrong

How do I know?

I seriously screwed my core system once by using a bad plan.

Try it, its the system you will see the most obvious effects on. I can't remember what the plan was, but the effect was that I had to manually adjust the military spending all the time. no warhips were being built at all.
Very annoying, that I would have to check them all the time to make sure they wre building properly.

[Inverse Icarus]

i mainly just use the "New" dev plan myself, then i either let the AI handle the colony (if it's ont of those no-name colonies i have to up my power / empire size) or i take off the AI all together and do the queues manually. this is usually for border systems, "specialized" planets (ie major foodmakers, major mineral makers, industrial strongholds), or very well developed planets i want to control myself.

i'm sure if i tinkered with it, i could make a devplan for all my types of colonies, but i like a little hands on

[Ianpolaris]

Asleepathewheel,

You have to readjust your military spending and queus anyway at almost after every turn (and this is *not* my idea of macromanagement) because of the inane priorities the AI has even when it *does* go for military spending.

In short, no difference so the Dev Plans are a good idea that are effectively useless.

-Polaris

[General Ludd]

I've starting to have a some success with dev plans, but I'm still working it out.


The most important one, I think, is the "all planets" dev plan because every planet is effected by it, all the time. I find this is a good layout for it:

Primary: Infrastructre
Secondary: Trade
Tertiary: Military

This keeps the AI building DEA improvements and military when it's able to. I'm just not sure if the military setting only effects building military DEAs or if it also effects military funding. I suspect it does both, though.


Speaking of Military DEA's do they have any effect other then morale? I read that they also increase the stacking of military units or something, but I'm not sure what that means.

[aiin]

Dev plan is worthless for military stuff. It's best never put military in the priority list if you don't want worthless ships and troops. It's best to focus on a few(5-10) planets and micro the military queu while trusting the AI to do the rest. Trust me, you'll want to toss your computer out the window when all of a sudden you get 50 recon ships in the reserves.

[stesergio]

Ok, first let me say I am not a hater or basher of MOOIII but I do think it is a major disapointment and I plan to exchange it tomorrow.

On the subject of DEV plans, you absolutely do not have to use them at all. I have played through several games and never even looked at them. When I settle a colony, the planet gets labeled but since I have not set any priorites in those plans they are blank. The AI does a fine job of developing the planet with absolutely no input from Dev plans. On the empire screen you also have do decide how you want the viceroy to build, "natural", "balanced," or "specialize." I think that has more to do than anything else.

Bottom line, I never even open the dev plan screen and my colonies develop just fine.

[Lotharun]

The AI doesn't ignore you, but I read somewhere(manual or online help) where if the Sitrep sees an overwhelming need for something, it will build that first.

A few simple ones:
Starving
Primary: food

Unrest
Primary: Government
Secondary: Entertainment
Ter: Moral

If you see something across your Empire in the red...say you lack suficient minerals to keep up with demmand then:

All
Primary
Mining

[vmxa1]

Well I just got one to do something I wanted. I had a planet that was the second one I colonized. The AI was all set to cram in all the regions with DEA's and none for food. It slammed mines into a fertile regions, thanks a lot.
I noticed it had one region left, so I created Player1 with only farm and it did it, now I may be able to keep from starving some lessor planets (read red or yellow).

[vmxa1]

This brings me to anther question that I should be able to find a answer for in the doc.
What does Core and Mineral Rich plans mean exactly?
I want to have the plans for all of the defaults.
I look at the planet and it has Core and Min Rich, I pull them up and they have no definitions, so what will the vicerory be building? I may want to slightly change it, but I want to know what it was first. I may want to go back to it or something.

[Razgon]

Originally posted by vmxa1
This brings me to anther question that I should be able to find a answer for in the doc.
What does Core and Mineral Rich plans mean exactly?
I want to have the plans for all of the defaults.
I look at the planet and it has Core and Min Rich, I pull them up and they have no definitions, so what will the vicerory be building? I may want to slightly change it, but I want to know what it was first. I may want to go back to it or something.

Core planets mean exactly that - the core planets of your empire.

Mineral rich planets are also just that - Planets with the rating "Mineral Rich"

Now, a planet can have both, and will use both dev plans, one for primary and one for secondary.

Try making a dev plan for both, and look at planets rathed core or mineral rich or both, and you will see your dev plans stated on the planet screen.

hopefully, the Viceroy will use them

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Asleepathewheel,

You have to readjust your military spending and queus anyway at almost after every turn (and this is *not* my idea of macromanagement) because of the inane priorities the AI has even when it *does* go for military spending.

In short, no difference so the Dev Plans are a good idea that are effectively useless.

-Polaris

The dev plans have no influence on your military spending or what items get placed in the military queue. You clearly do not understand this part of the game.

Dev plans affect what DEA's and DEA enhancements get built and in what order they are prioritised, nothing else. Most of the time each planet will be working on two separate plans, eg New and mineral Rich. The exceptions are when emergency conditions apply, like unrest or starvation. You can put terraforming and planetary defence into the queue if you really want to overemphasis those, but its unlikely to be efficient to terraform or build a missile base before you have factories to create local production points to build them with. Don't forget that your macro level choice of specialised, natural or diverse colony construction will also impact on how the Ai chooses to build.

To adjust how much emphasis the AI places on the military queue, adjust your empire wide military spending priority (Peace and prosperity -> Total War). If you adjust a planet's spending on military outside the parameters in the spending priority you are causing unrest in your own empire, leading to massive financial penalties to lower it again. Thats why the AI adjusts it back. Your meddling on the micro level is directly contradicting you macro level settings, is inefficient and needs to be corrected.

To adjust what gets placed in the military queue you can manage that part personally for your important manufacturing worlds, adjust the military AI .txt (see separate thread for details) and selectively make certain models obsolete if they become too popular. Its ridiculously easy to make models obsolete and then just reactivate them, ask two planets to make 1x 5x or 10x of them at need and hide them again.

Should you still plan the position of every DEA on your primary worlds? Well duh, of course. Even there the DEA plans will still influence which order they get built in out of the ones you have preplaced and then the order DEA enhancements get added in.

In summary, development plans are not useless or broken. Nor are they the universal panacea to all your colony needs. They are one tool in your arsenal to allow you a more hands off approach to managing your empire. Properly set up and in combination with the other tools they'll allow you to manage a 100 planet empire as easily as you managed a 15 planet empire in MoO2.

[Ianpolaris]

Grumbold,

STOP IT

I understand what Dev Plans do better than you could possibly guess. The only effect a military priority has on a planet is to build a military DEA which has no discernable effect on military building or budget.

This is just like some of you fanbois saying that those of us that are angry, and dissapointed with MooIII don't "get it" or "understand it". I mastered the interface in about 5 hours (3 hours longer than it should have taken me with a more normal game). Once you have mastered the interface, your Dev Plans don't matter because you can not lose!

The fact of the matter is that you are infinately better off during off the Economic AI part (not that this helps much) and preplanning *all* of your DEAs by hand. [You have to turn it *OFF* otherwise the Vicerory will overrule you....which is /not/ good design.]

The point is this: I understand MooIII quite well, thank you. The more I understood it; the more I hated it.

-Polaris

Edit: Grumbold....are you listening to what you are saying?! You are saying that in order to play the game effectively, you should "macromanage" your financial settings....yet in the same breath you are saying you should micromanage your spies and military queus. The point is that Moo III tries to both "marco"manage a game and micromanage it both at the same time....and unsuprisingly fails badly at both.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Edit: Grumbold....are you listening to what you are saying?! You are saying that in order to play the game effectively, you should "macromanage" your financial settings....yet in the same breath you are saying you should micromanage your spies and military queus. ....

Uh, what's the problem? As supreme ruler of my empire, I want firm control of my spies and military (micromanage), while letting the viceroys handle the support structure (economy, dea's, etc.) with loose direction from me (macromanage). That's pretty much how the game allows me to play.

If that's not for you, ok. I'm not even going to suggest that you don't understand the game, but perhaps the game (as designed) just isn't your cup of tea.