Building a powerful economy is more intuitive in Galactic Civilizations III than in previous titles while still letting players customize their empire’s productivity to the level that hands-on space emperors expect. However, we’ve refined how the basic population input is transformed into manufacturing, research, and wealth outputs. Read on for a detailed breakdown.
(click the pic for the full-size version)
One Slider to Rule Them All
Ever at the forefront of production-slider technology, Stardock has blown up every assumption and leveraged every synergy to bring an unbelievable game-changing innovation to the table:
A second dimension. To the Galactic Civilizations III production control. Minds: blown.
I joke, but changing the mess of sliders for overall/research/manufacturing into the unified production wheel (we really need a better name for it. The Production Palette?) is a huge improvement over the individual sliders of the past.
My favorite part of the production wheel is dragging the nexus around and seeing my empire’s (or colony’s, if I’m managing a single colony’s allocation) production numbers change in real time. I personally tend to start with an idea of what kind of credit surplus/deficit I’m aiming for and a general balance between research and manufacturing, and finding that sweet spot takes only a few seconds with the wheel.
Population = Production
Like most 4X strategy games, Galactic Civilizations III models empires around the production unit. Rather than mere settlements and outposts, we look at entire planets. Each colony has its own population, special attributes, and improvements that determine its output every turn. The way it breaks down in our game is all based on population first and foremost.
Each unit of population (a billion individuals -- ancient fanatics, semi-autonomous calculation nodes, bloodthirsty reavers, or something else depending on which race you’re ruling) produces one production point per turn. This point is then split according to your allocation strategy (see One Slider to Rule Them All, below), and modified by improvements like factories or research labs, planet specials like Ghost World or Bountiful, racial traits, and any other bonuses you might have.
Numbers, Numbers Everywhere
The formula works like this:
(Population * AllocationPercentage) * (1 + ImprovementMod + PlanetMod + StarbaseMod + RacialMod) = Output
Let’s say we have a Drengin (no production bonuses) colony on a world with an Active Core (50% increased manufacturing), in range of a starbase with an Economic Ring (10% increased manufacturing/research/wealth), with population 10, with two basic factories and three labs (10% bonus manufacturing each) and an allocation of 30% manufacturing, 40% research, and 30% wealth.
(10 * .30) * (1 + .20 + .50 + .10 + .00) = 5.4 Manufacturing(10 * .40) * (1 + .30 + .00 + .10 + .00) = 5.6 Research(10 * .30) * (1 + .00 + .00 + .10 + .00) = 3.1 Wealth
Aside from this general concept, you can also dump your manufacturing output into research, wealth, culture, or growth at a reduced rate via planetary projects that boost those numbers rather than producing an improvement or starship directly.
Strategic Applications
Specializing planets is obviously a huge part of building an efficient and deadly empire with this economy model, but bear in mind that while research and wealth are abstracted to a global level (you just have the one research project at a time, and a single treasury), manufacturing is local.
Being able to crank out transports from multiple planets means you can keep your population growing faster during wars of conquest. Decentralized production of warships can be a huge benefit, depending on the map. New improvements you’ll want to build come up regularly as you progress down the tech tree, and those come with non-trivial construction costs as well.
The reduction in flexibility in an over-specialized empire can be a disadvantage as well. An empire of three planets where one is full of markets, another labs, and the last factories has little headroom to switch over to an emergency wartime economy – the industrial world is presumably already tasked with 100% manufacturing, and without factories the other colonies’ output will be stunted.
Coming Soon: Econ 102?
You now have the basic idea of how the economy works in Galactic Civilizations III. We haven’t even touched culture yet, or population growth, or the whole concept of improvement levels and adjacency bonuses. Frogboy is kicking around an idea that hasn’t been implemented yet and may come with some changes to the core economy equation too, so don’t be shocked if things change a bit before release.
We can’t wait to see what our Elite Founders think of the alpha when we open the doors to them on March 27.
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Very Interesting, I like the system. Is it still in the plans to make the economy focus micromanagable on a per world basis?
This is what caught my attention the most. Are these like traits that planets have? If so I like it, it would make planets seem more interesting.
Yes, it's per-world currently if you want -- there's a checkbox for "use civilization-wide settings" that you can override.
My bad on research example, thanks for catching that. Fixing.
Also yes, there are a ton of traits that planets can have now. And yeah, they're as good as 50% bonus manufacturing -- that's basically five free factories.
Another great read Abiessener. I can hardly wait till I become a founder. Karma to you. (I hope Brad finds a solution to the whatever he is planning.)
DARCA
Great post, thanks for the update!
Each unit of population (a billion individuals -- ancient fanatics, semi-autonomous calculation nodes, bloodthirsty reavers, or something else depending on which race you’re ruling)
I hope we'll be able to customize the name our units of population. Its little details like this....
unified production wheel (we really need a better name for it. The Production Palette?)
The Master Wheel.
The Executive Hoop
The Regulatory Round-a'round
The Trolley of Decision
The Ring of Control.
Teh
Perhaps the MRAWW (mr-aww)? The Manufacturing, Research, And Wealth Wheel?
Excellent article though. It helps to see exactly how things work and understand where your resources come from.
Two questions;
#1 Can we "Shift-Click" two or more planets and change their allocation manually?
#2 Do Manufacturing and Research production still consume 1 BC/unit?
I actually kind of like the sound of Production Palette, to be honest X-) or, if not Production Palette, then ____ Palette, for whatever other descriptor is appropriate
Shift-clicking -- No, but that's an interesting idea. We have some ideas to let players assign production allocations to multiple planets simultaneously, but I'm not sure where dev is on those. They won't be in for alpha, at least.
Consuming BC -- No! That idea is abstracted away into the concept of generating wealth directly. So they "cost" 1BC in the sense that that's a production point that could be assigned to wealth that's instead going to manufacturing or research, but you don't have to pay for them in addition to that.
I predict everyone will simply call it the production wheel. ( or economy wheel )
Btw, I find the first screenshot is looking all empty withouth BC beside the numbers
A better name...How about The P.E.R.S.O.N screen,
The Production Economic and Research from Systems Of your Nation.
or change the last bit to Systems Organized Nationally.
or the economy screen works to.
Shouldn't there be some kind of basic tax revenue (not the trade, tourism, or treaty revenue, but something population-related) listed under the income? I mean, 'Saving' isn't exactly income, unless you mean 'interest on my savings account'; rather, it's the portion of my net income that I decided not to spend and now have sitting in my savings account (or treasury, since we're a galactic empire in the game). I just feel that if there's a 'Savings' listed on that screen, it should be the amount of money that gets deposited in the treasury this turn or the amount of money currently in the treasury, not the number that appears to represent the tax income for my empire.
Love the concept of special planet bonuses!
Sphere sounds more sci-fi than wheel: Production Sphere maybe? I also like the other ideas about creating a cool acronym for it; that also seems really sci-fi.
Well, it seems they removed the Tax slider, it no longer exists. Instead you have Work. Citizens provide work. Hence why you have no tax revenue.
This is either a cause or an offshot of the removal of the Planetary morale. I wonder what new system will replace tax as a mean to extract more ''juice'' out of your citizens. I imagine perks in the Ideological trees will do that, but then it is different as I do not see those being able to be changed on need.
Edit: Unless perks in the trees can be re-specced, which might actually be an interesting system.
SO MUCH CHANGE
MY BODY CAN'T TAKE IT
Great update! I only have one question.
I'm one of those players that focuses more on diplomacy and military than my economy. Could I just keep the economy set to the center of this circle, and I automatically get a balanced budget?
Thanks and keep up the posts!
You could always adjust your focus by tweaking what you build on your worlds and get by without tweaking your economy. But my feeling is that you are not only missing a part of the game but that will also prevent you from playing at higher difficulty level.
From my understanding, I think that depends on what you mean by balanced budget.
If you mean balanced in terms of a balanced allocation of people between the various production focuses, then yes.
If you mean balanced in terms of income vs expenses, then I believe the answer is no, since the allocation set here is just that, the allocation of people to specific production and not the result of the production.
It does raise a good point that a resulting production indicator might also be useful, both for display and control purposes. Imagine if rather than setting the default allocation for your colonies you could instead set the desired output ratio and the engine automatically computed the ideal allocations for each individual colony to achieve that overall ratio.
Of course, it may be too complex / confusing to have two different draggable indicators on the screen, with each one moving automatically when the other one is dragged, but it could prove useful.
Regardless of what you think it represents, 'savings' is an inappropriate name for it. 'Savings' are what's left over from income (or income + bank balance) after expenses, not a part of my actual income. If I have an income of X, and expenses equal to Y, then my savings for that turn are X - Y (or previous balance + X - Y, if you want savings to refer to the balance in the treasury).
Also, the more appropriate slider for this to interpret as having replaced would seem to be the slider for how much of your capacity to use, rather than the tax slider, although it is true that the tax slider appears to have disappeared.
I'd like to see a 'break even' envelope on the wheel.
The idea being is that functionally 'money' is the real driver as to how your economy can go. Thus visually understanding how the sliders would cause you to either go into the black, or the red, would be useful. It would give users a real visual representation of how far you can 'push' the economy before going into the red.
Double post by quote syndrome again , sry.
True enough, I guess you could replace ''Savings'' by ''Wealth Production''.
This is already planned to be in the game, it just isn't implemented yet, nor will it be until after/during alpha.
How has no one in house yet to come up with "The one ring to rule them all"! Shorten it to 'The Ring" and you've got a real easy winner haha!
I'm really liking the changes to the economy that you have outlined here, this looks like a good overhaul! I'm very excited by the planetary bonus' and can't wait to hear about the building placement bonus'!
Fate,
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