I'm saddened with decision that tech inflation should be put out of the game. Don't get me wrong I didn't like the effect of the same ingame, but the problem I (and I believe most of others who complained about it) encountered wasn't the inflation itself, since it represented only few percent increase after each new tech researched. The main problem was that after XX tech researched the cost of all techs would double ! That steep increase in cost is what was "gamebreaking" since it led to the situation that after only 1/2 of tech tree researched the costs for all techs would be 6 (or even more !) times the base price. I've read that tech inflation was WAD, but only with small inflation percentage; there was no mentioning of doubling of prices that IMHO was the original problem.
If there is some possibility, could you kind people at Stardock look into it one more time and just check for some random poster's sake that tech inflation works as it should Personally I like the idea of tech cost increase very much, and I think that with minor tweaking it could work quite fine.
Ofc. maybe the sudden increase is indeed WAD in every aspect. If thats really the case, oh well, won't be first time I've got something wrong.

Slight increases in cost over time wouldn't have annoyed people, but needed some sort of realism. Sudden doublings looked a lot like a bug though, and acted like a bug- not to mention crippling of the AI.

Also, it made creativity the most powerful trait in the game.

Arstal's comment was along the lines I was thinking of, after reading again through the posts, and the 'doubling up of tech point's' comments throughout. It's almost as if the Z factor starts at 2, then jumps to 4, 8, 16, etc.

Is there a possibility it would work more effectively (and almost practically unnoticeable until the end stages of massive map games), if the z factor started off as a fraction, then worked up on a gradual curved scale? IE: starts off at 0.01 and works up exponentially to 1, or whatever figures balance out the gameplay? This might then shove the larger tech increase amounts to the larger maps at the end, and leave the smaller maps playable on the same exponential logarithm, without having to adjust all the current base tech points?

Or have the team already considered this and gone, 'great idea in theory, but just doesn't work / absolutely nukes a hundred other things in the balance'?


Also, include an option to turn the tech increases off/on on the game start. Allows those who just want to play with base tech points, do so.

Regardless of the merits of this research model, this illustrates my long term pet peeve with GalCiv--the game is just not as transparent as a grand strategy game should be. Because of a combination of a poor and incomplete manual, vague or absent rollovers and other ingame descriptions, an unwieldy UI, and the lack of a (IMO almost mandatory) Civilopedia-like feature, I often only know generally, but not precisely, what the results of my actions will be. How much additional revenue/morale/influence will a particular improvement generate? How many turns will a new/upgraded factory or lab save me in production or research? In too many instances, I don't know exactly because the game just does not provide such information. I do know precisely the anwsers to these kinds of questions in Civ or EUIII (though Paradox's UIs are only middling themselves). This is one of the reasons I love Civ but only like GalCiv.

I'm certain that we will continue to tweak the tech costs among other things, but for now we're just setting it back to the way that it was because that's fastest.  We still have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, especially support.  If anyone here has a ticket open with Support that was assigned to a developer or you e-mailed me directly and you haven't gotten a response, I really apologize and ask that you please continue to be patient while I try to catch up. 

I want to chime in that in the main, we understand that Stardock is a small and striving game company. I can't believe that the vocal minority have truly played games where the QA was absymal and the support non-existent.

Compared to those companies and games, and without reservation, Brad and the rest of the Stardock team are golden.

"not-mom" will come b4 galciv3.

I don't find the delays for patch that long or bad. For one, the research cost feature tweak is not really a bug. Also, some people whom complaint are forgetting that this is pc/video gaming industry we are talking about. There are not that much other options for TBS game floating around in the market, so it is not a big that a deal if SD delays releasing a patch for justifiable reasons. And they have given lots and lots of notice ahead of time. Also, as CariElf and Brad have said many times, this upcoming tweak/patch is separated from support issue. A company can be blasted for delaying giving technical support or give useless technical support, but it can not be faulted for when it delays releasing upgrades while at the same time keeping its customers base updated on a continual basis.

Some softwares might released at most two patches between iteration cycles, or more or none, while SD has stated that they will continually update the game and support it post development for one year. This is a GUARANTEE they made to their customer base. I don't see that they need to be given a hard time over 5 weeks delays.

Quick questions regarding your development/business/PM strategies (if you don't mind me asking)...
1) Are you utilizing industry Agile dev principles such as TDD, CI in accordance with automated testing?
2) Working late hours to get out a game tells me that your weekly development velocity is not being evaluated properly potentially, your scope is erratic or a number of other issues...

I'm actually a BA/PM consultant in agile-blend techniques, just curious. Thanks.

LoL!

They're in game development. Nobody in game development does that. You get a piece of code, you hammer it into the shape that your designer requires, and you move on to the next game. Doing those "agile development" things would slow this process down.

Sure, it might also lead to some positive effects like fewer bugs, less debugging, and so forth. But game design is ultimately an art. It must be flexible, which means that the coders building that game must also be flexible. They can't be locked into a rigid structure built because of a TDD that was written a year ago when the game's design was different.

antracer: Completely and totally agreed.



Actually, agile development is generally a lot more flexible than other methods of development, and can adapt well to changing requirements. It needs not be TDD: Other forms of agile development, such as Scrum, can be used.

In the end, it's up to the development team what works for them. It should be noted that the size of the development team (9 people) is actually the recommended maximum size for a Scrum team. Any bigger, and they'd probably have to break it up into two or more teams to maintain their agility.

Forget my above post. Turns out a developer did in fact respond in detail to that topic and I just missed it.

Really wish there were a way for me to delete it.

EDIT: Wait, there's an edit button on this post but not the last one