I would like to start a discussion about this.
Back in GalCiv II I used to make plenty of multi purpose planets. More or less depending on several factors such as what race I played. I.E the Iconians were good at making general purpose planets.
Now, thanks in part to the new population based economy and the per colony Production wheel, I seem to be doing ONLY ultra specialized planets. It simply seems more cost effective.
It is hard to tell how that would play out in the long term though, as the need for flexibility might overcome the need for optimization on a larger empire.
Larger maps and civilizations actually require even more specialization to stay competitive. Smaller maps have too few planets to specialize to the same extent, as you don't have enough tiles, and you have fewer, more critical targets.
On a big map, losing a manufacturing planet is "meh, whatever", as you have dozens to replace it. On a small map (like the one where you kicked my ass) losing a manufacturing planet is a crippling defeat, as it can effectively halve your ship output. Remember my planet "Please don't invade me"? That was a manufacturing planet, and taking it lost me the game.
A good point, but in small map/short games I guess it is also less critical as your infrastructure is not very developped. So you could ( in theory ) flip a type of world around pretty quickly.
I.E My mainworld had 1 starport and 4 factories. I could have turned it into a research world by switching it to 70/30% research/production and started building labs on all the free spots.
Well, I wanted to start a discussion about this too. So, here's my two cents.Balanced planets are more flexible (you can easily switch to money if you need quick cash), so it makes sense for specialized planets to be more efficient. But at the moment, specialized planets are far too efficient : my estimates (see maths below) show +75% to +150% more efficient, when I feel it should be between +20% and +50%.I see a few ways to address this issue :-Reducing the effects of adjacency bonus.-Increasing the effects of terrain bonus.-Creating some sort of synergy bonus : for example, the first market on the planet gives +1 level to all factories, and so on.-Limiting the production wheel to minimum values (for example, at least 10% manufacturing, 10% money, 10% research).-Creating the need for local production of science and money : at the moment, a bit of manufacturing is needed on every planet (to build and upgrade improvements). The idea would be to create some sort of similar need for money and science, for example a malus to happiness if the planet doesn't produce enough science.
Math estimates : On planets with 9 improvements and without any other bonus. Balanced planets are considered to have 3 money, 3 science, 3 manufacturing improvements, while specialized planets have 9 times the same improvement.Early game : improvements giving +20% each (basic improvement + 1 adjacency bonus), balanced planets output is multiplied by 1.6, and specialized planets output is multiplied by 2.8. Specialized planets are 75% more efficient.Mid game (?) : improvements giving +50% each, balanced planets output is multiplied by 2.5, and specialized planets output is multiplied by 5.5. Specialized planets are 120% more efficient.Late game (?) : improvements giving +100% each, balanced planets output is multiplied by 4, and specialized planets output is multiplied by 10. Specialized planets are 150% more efficient.
Yeah I think the current bonus for very specialized planets compared to mixed planets are a bit too much. They make mixed planets undesirable.
I agree with you on that specialized planets should be in the +20% to +50% range compared to mixed. That seems about right.
-Amongst your proposed solutions, I do not like the production wheel minimums, that would annoy me.
-I kinda like increasing the effect of terrain bonus, maybe could be extended to terrain malus, and maybe more terrain types, like building Factories over Swamps would suck.
-Another Idea could be to have adjacency bonuses for Mixed things rather than similar things. ( although I am still trying to figure how this would make sense )
I actually disagree across the board; players should be encouraged to specialize as much as possible, to make individual planets and shipyards important targets, rather than having every planet be equally-valid as a target.
You might be right for the strategical choice aspect, but on the other hand this is restraining part of the sandbox aspect I kinda liked in GalCiv II.
In GalCiv II mixed planets were actually a valid approach. You still needed to have many specialized planets but It was a good thing to have some mixed planets ( I could build as much as 50%) as they were flexible and they were not that much less cost effective that fully specialized ones.
Some races, the Iconions in particular, due to their unique improvements were so well suited to mixed planets that it was often the optimal choice for them.
This contributed to making playing them feel unique and different.
I think at this point it is hard to say what Stardock has in store for the final game, but in the alpha mixed planets are pretty much goners so far.
This has another side effect that I do not use the global production wheel at all. I set it on each planet according to its specification. Seems weird to have such a central feature made almost irrelevant.
This being said, I actually like playing this way, it is kinda fun but very different than GalCiv II. I still have to see how this all scales in longer games.
I don't have a problem with my of this and I hope it stays the way it is.
Less bonus tiles is all I want, they make planning the world I want hard to do because the tiles are to good to pass up and I end up making a world specializing in something I didn't know I needed.
DARCA.
Most of my planets in GalCivII are not specializaed in anything. A backwater manufacturing planet here, a secondary research colony there... Exceot the planet in my initial system, that always goes manufacturing.
Being forced to specialize all my planets doesn't sound good to me.
I agree with this, but also that depend on the overall quality of planets and the race you're playing. E.g., Yor was ideal for a galaxy with a lot of PQ<9 because of its technologies, they were one of the best researchers in the colonization phase, specially if you expanded like crazy at the beginning without being picky.
The deal right now is that with population being the central key in production things are blurry. You might have a planet full of farms-population buildings and make it a mixed bag that suit your needs. How many farms are you going to need to replace 1 factory of the same level? if the thing is pretty much similar, like, for example, 1.2 farms = 1 factory (oversimplification) you can have your mixed planet with just farms and one or two only-one-per-planet building (production and research or economy) mainly because population is also used to generate other things like income and research. This is specially true for PQ<10 planets where using just farms are only cost you 1 factory (with 1.2 farms = 1 factory). The only place where a specialized planet is "needed" is in high PQ planets, but being realistic, such planets are great for creating your most powerful and largest ships or being one of the best moneymaking planets or research capitals. In the end, I think that if SD does a good job balancing population vs factories you can end with something like this:
PQ<10: Hot spot for mixed planets.
20>PQ>10: Depends on the bonus tiles, sometimes mixed, sometimes specialized.
PQ>20: Most of the time, if not always, specialized.
If all planets have the same PQ this would hold true in most cases, but your targets usually are high PQ planets because it is a big hit on your enemy if you get one of his and a great bonus to your empire and those planets are his production backbone. Star bases-mining bases are usually the second or third targets (specially if they are mining good resources). A good strategist does not put all his eggs in one basket, you always have a back-up plan when everything fails. Being forced to specialize on all planets is not a good idea strategically speaking.
I hadn't thought about farms and I agree with your conclusion. Farms and factories multiply each other, so the more farms you have the more factories are efficient, and vice versa. On LQ planets, you may get away with building only farms and mixing production. On HQ planets, after a few farms, you would prefer to build other improvements, thus specializing the planet.
We'll have to see how population works, but I could very well live with that.
Yes a good point about the farms on lower PQ worlds. Ultimately this whole issue will depend on how everything is set in the final game.
It might be that some birth rate enhancing buildings would be the best things to build on any world initially.
I dislike terrain-type induced penalties for structures, at least beyond a one-time fee while building there to represent land improvement, or perhaps a slightly increased maintenance cost.
If you want to encourage mixed planets, or at least make them competitive in comparison to specialist planets, I'd much sooner see some kind of synergies between structures of different types than having penalties from terrain, especially given that it's annoyingly difficult to see where the terrain bonuses are as things stand, and it looks like it'll get worse if terrain bonuses are kept and Planet_Screen_Beta_1b becomes the new planet view. An example synergy might be along the lines of giving factories +5% wealth per wealth level and +5% research per research level. Another example would be counting off-type bonus levels as half-levels to the main type, so a factory with +2 manufacturing, +1 research, and +1 wealth might get +30% production (2*10% from manufacturing levels, 1*5% from research levels, and 1*5% from wealth levels) as compared to the +40% manufacturing bonus that the same factory would get if it were surrounded by things giving +1 manufacturing. Note that both of these are just examples, and the numbers are arbitrarily chosen and do not reflect any significant amount of thought upon what to do as far as deemphasizing planetary specialization.
Also, side note: if every 1 billion people are worth 1 unit of production which can be split between wealth, manufacturing, and research, then a factory that provides a 10% bonus to manufacturing is worth a 10% increase in total production (or population) on a planet putting all its resources into manufacturing, or a 3.33% increase in total production (or population) on a planet putting 33.3% of its resources into manufacturing. If food is supposed to work the way it did in GCII, where the total food production in megatons is equal to the population cap in billions of people, then for a planet with 8 mt of food production, a structure which provides 1.2 mt of food is a 15% boost to the population (adding a multiplicative food bonus into this will not affect the effective bonus), and therefore represents a 15% bonus to each type of production generated by the planet.
From this, it can be seen that, without adjacency bonuses, adding a booster for a specific type of production instead of a farm is less efficient until the percentage increase in population granted by the farm becomes less than the percentage bonus granted by a factory/lab/market. In other words, on a factory world, a farm which increases the population cap by 1.2 billion people is worth more than a factory that provides a 10% manufacturing bonus unless the population cap is already at least 12 billion. On a world which splits production evenly between the three categories, 3 farms worth 1.2 billion people each are worth more than 3 structures which together grant +10% to each of the three production categories (which represents a 10% increase in total output). Thus, 3 farms worth 1.2 billion people each will be more effective for boosting planetary output than three structures which together provide a 10% bonus to total production output until the planetary population is at least 36 billion people. Note, however, that this is ignoring adjacency bonuses, and also that this is the long-term perspective - a factory that provides 10% to manufacturing will provide that bonus as soon as it's built; building a farm which increases the population cap by 1.2 billion will not affect the planetary output until your population actually starts to be enough to use that increased cap, and it may not exceed the bonus granted by adding e.g. a factory for a fair amount of time while the population grows.
joeball123, the point is not to make mixed planets to be as effective as specialized planets. Is that mixed planets can be a viable option for some part of your empire consisting of low-medium PQ planets where specialize are going to hurt them more than help. There are always going to be an equilibrium point where, before that point,farms are going to offset factories and, after that point, factories start to kick in. If the equilibrium point is close to zero (or the minimum PQ) you're always going to have specialized planets but, if that point is closer to the PQ's mean half of your planets can be mixed and work as a back-up plan or oriented to a specific strategy. There is not need to change the adjacency bonus tiles from buildings, what is needed is to effectively balance population with all resource generator like wealth or research to reach that sweet spot.
None of what I said would make mixed planets as effective as specialist planets, and both of the synergy bonuses were more concepts than solid numbers.
Let's look at a class 4 world where the three tiles you can improve are each adjacent to the other two. Let's further assume that you are only building the basic production structures (basic factory, market, basic lab) and that none of the three tiles has any special properties or is adjacent to the initial colony, and that you dedicate resources only to production types which have a multiplier. Then a world with full specialization in one area will have a production multiplier of (1 + 0.1*3 +0.2*3) = 1.9 to the chosen resource, and since it's a specialist world this means you're probably doing full production of the chosen resource, so you're looking at multiplying total production by 1.9. Under the current system, if you replace one of those production structures with a production structure of a different sort, you get a 1.1 multiplier to one resource, and a 1.4 multiplier to the other resource. Thus, assuming you dedicate all resources to the two types of production that you have multipliers for, the total resource multiplier for the world will be bounded between 1.1 and 1.4, with the exact value being the weighted average of the multipliers. If you split things so that you have one of each production structure, you'll have a 1.1 multiplier to each resource, with the total production multiplier being 1.1.
If you consider the system which counts off-type bonuses as half-levels, then the total production multiplier for the fully-specialized world is unaffected. The total production multiplier for the two of one, one of another world becomes bounded by 1.2 and 1.5, again assuming that all resources are dedicated to the two production types with multipliers. The total production multiplier for the world with one of each boosting structure becomes 1.2. Clearly, the specialized world is still the 'better' choice as far as maximizing production goes. However, it's not nearly as much better as it would be under the current system.
Also, if you compute the weighted averages for each of these cases, you will see that the total production multiplier for the specialized world is better than the total production multiplier for the less specialized worlds except when the weighting significantly favors the lower-multiplier production types. What it does do is reduce the magnitude of the difference between the two extremes. Taking the specialized world and comparing it to the 2-and-1 world, and assuming that you have a 50/50 split between the two production types multiplied by the 2-and-1 world, then the total production multiplier for the fully specialized world is 1.45; under the current system, the 2-and-1 world gets a total production multiplier of 1.2, and under the half-level for off bonus system you'd get a 1.35 multiplier to the total production. If you did a 33/33/34 split between all three resources, then the specialized world would have a multiplier of 1.3, the current system would give the 2-and-1 world a multiplier of 1.17, and the half-level for off-type bonuses would give a 1.23 multiplier. Almost any way you split the pie, the specialized world will still come off better; what differs is just how much better it will be.
I would also point out that the farm example was just an example, and that it supports the point that for lower-quality planets, more generalized production is better. What could possibly be more generalized than a world with only population boosters in a game where population is linearly related to production? Incidentally, if you assume that none of your structures have any levels on them, then a class 9 world will produce more with 8 colonial farms on it than with any other combination of basic factories, colonial farms, markets, and basic labs, while a class 10 world with 9 farms will equal the total production of any other world with 8 farms and a 10% bonus to total production (where the bonus to total production is the weighted average of the bonuses to each of the subcategories of production).
I read it as "no mater the PQ a mixed planet could be similar or close to a specialist planet" that is why I said that the point not to make bla bla bla.
You forgot/ignore/avoid one important fact about population as the way was implemented in galciv2 and it is happiness. I do not know if happiness is going to be in galciv 3 but SD surely have a way to implement a diminish return for farms, making them useful until x quantity and less useful after that point. The relation between population and production is linear, yes, but that does not mean that you can linearly grow your population in any given planet. A simple diminish return that can be applied into the calculation would be a 10% reduction per farm: 1, 0.9, 0.81,..., etc. you can also say that the first 3~4 farms are free for the diminish return.
Even though, at this point being forced to do complex maths are going to reduce the attention of fellow readers, specially since we ignore more mechanics that we should in order to make those calculation interesting and useful for non min-maxers.
Approval isn't in the current Alpha-version, but it may be in the next, based on the new planet screen in the Vault. However, Frogboy has already said, that they are not going to use Approval as a soft cap for population.
You want something that works for 'non-minmaxers'? Fine. Let's call the current population of the planet as X, the increase in maximum population from building one farm as Y, the current weighted average production multiplier of the planet (weighted to however you want the planetary production to be set in the long-run, not the short-run) as A, and the increase in that multiplier from building one production structure as B (i.e. if you build one new factory on the planet, the new weighted average production multiplier becomes A + B ). Then if the product (X+Y)*A is greater than the product X*(A+B ), you should build a farm on the planet; if the product X*(A+B ) is greater than the product (X+Y)*A, then you should build a production structure on the planet. If the two products are equal, then it doesn't matter which you build. You can also normalize X and (X+Y) to 8 (i.e. current maximum population divided by basic maximum population) to make use of smaller numbers. The weighted average production multiplier is calculated as
total_production_mult = wealth_frac*wealth_mult + research_frac*research_mult + industry_frac*industry_mult
where *_frac is the decimal representation of the percentage of planetary resources allocated to production type *, and *_mult is the planetary multiplier to production type *, which can be computed as
*_mult = 1 + sum(B_i*boost_i + total_level_i*level_bonus_i)
where B_i is the total number of structures of type i which provide percentage bonus boost_i (expressed as a decimal), total_level_i is the sum of the levels of the structures of type i on the planet, and level_bonus_i is the percentage bonus granted per level by structure type i, expressed as a decimal.
Thus, if you have a planet which currently has 1 farm for a maximum population of 12 billion people, three factories granting a total of +50% to manufacturing, and a market granting +10% to wealth on a world with 90% going to manufacturing and 10% going to wealth, and are deciding between adding a farm for +4.4 billion people or a factory for +60% manufacturing, X would be 12/8 = 1.5, Y would be 4.4/8 = 0.55, A would be 1 + 0.5*0.9 + 0.1*0.1 = 1.46, and B would be 0.6*0.9 = 0.54. So (X+Y)*A = (1.5 + 0.55)*1.46 = 2.993, while (A + B )*X = (1.46 + 0.54)*1.5 = 3, indicating that you should build the factory instead of the farm. I normalized the maximum population to the basic maximum population of 8 billion people, but there is no real need to do so. If, instead of a farm, we're considering building a food distribution center for +25% population, we instead make the computation as 1.25*X*A = 2.7375 and compare that to X*(A + B ). If the factory we were considering adding only increased the manufacturing multiplier by 0.5, then (A+B )*X = 2.865, and we'd choose the farm to maximize planetary output. Because the weighted average of the production multipliers is bounded above by the maximum individual production multiplier, you can use that multiplier instead of the weighted average and come to a similar conclusion, although the choice made using the maximum individual multiplier may be suboptimal depending on the exact weighting of the planetary output (in the example above, if the new farm were only to grant 4 billion new citizens and the new factory grants +50% production to the planet, using the maximum individual multiplier tells us that building the factory is as good as building the farm; however, since the planetary production is split 90% to manufacturing and 10% to wealth, the optimal choice is to build the farm instead of the factory, but there won't be a terribly significant difference; the more strongly one multiplier is favored over the others, the more accurate the use of that multiplier for the weighted average planetary multiplier becomes, and for greatest efficiency the production type with the highest multiplier should be the production type most favored by the weighting).
This will also work if adding 1 farm requires you to add N approval structures to maintain whatever approval rating you want the planet to have; the only difference is that instead of comparing (X+Y)*A to X*(A+B ) where B is the change in the multiplier for adding one production structure, B is now the change in multiplier for adding N+1 production structures.
My bad, what I meant is that at this point doing math is wrong because we ignore a lot of things and that is not going to help anybody. And with non min-maxer I was referring that the maths should be much more calm with fewer numbers and less text to become easy to read. I apology for my mistake.
Joeball gives me a headache with his scary posts
I was hoping we could discuss concepts without going into convoluted blocks of text peppered with mathematical extrapolations of the game. Considering everything could change from the Alpha to the final game, I do not see the point of going into such details now.
The main thing that I find interesting so far is that it looks like there might be a balance point between using population boosting improvements( resulting in general purpose production ) and specialized multiplier improvements ( resulting in specific production )
It's really not that difficult if you read it; it boils down to if your current maximum population multiplied by the change in the production multiplier is greater than the change in maximum population multiplied by the current production multiplier, then you build the production structure, while if it's less you build the farm. The change in multiplier or maximum population is simple to compute, you ought to know what your current maximum population is, and in GCII you could get the production multiplier from the planet details screen, which I assume will become available at some point.
If you want to consider the balance points, then you have to consider what the adjacency and tile bonuses do for you, or you have to ignore them. If you ignore them (and any other planetary bonuses) and assume that you have the option of a Colonial Farm or one of the basic production facilities and are putting 100% of the planetary resources into only one type of production, then a Colonial Farm will be your best choice until you have 8 of them; after that point, it's better to evenly divide your structures between farms and production boosters. If you do the same computation for Xeno Farms and the +20% to production type structures and work with the same assumptions, then you're better off building farms until you have 4 of them, and then you switch over to alternately building 1 production booster and 1 farm.
If you instead assume that every structure on the planet has an average level of 1, then for the Colonial Farm and basic production facilities example, you want to build 4 farms, then switch to alternately adding 1 production structure and 1 farm. With the Xeno Farm and +20% production structures, the point becomes 3 farms, then you switch over to alternately adding 1 production structure and 1 farm.
Side note: if you assume that the average level of your production facilities is 4 and that the average level of your farms is 0, and that you're using the Colonial Farms and the basic production structures, then it is equally valid for your first structure to be a farm or a production structure and start the alternating building pattern from there. The average level of a basic production facility has to be 9 or more before it's a better choice to build two production facilities before your first farm, so good luck with that one (you get the same end result with, say, +40% from a starbase and +100% from planet traits and having two tile resources on the planet which together total +4 levels to a specific type of production structure).
Because farms get fairly little from their level bonuses, the higher the average level of the structures on your planet, the fewer farms you want to build before you switch over to alternately building 1 farm and 1 production facility. This point will also shift once approval enters the game (assuming that its presence in the vault mock-up planet screen indicates its return) unless there's no reason to care about the approval rating.
I wouldn't want to play a game where you have to meticulously manage small percentages to to win, without variation every game. That would be as boring and lifeless as a black and white colony screen.
you can't keep doing all this math without any solid info Joe. Population can grow infinitely right now so farms are worthless. The nextt build will have many different things and just don't know enough.
I posted in my own Galciv2 wish lists multiple times that I wanted LOTS more specialized planets. Or more specifically, lots more specialized tiles, and more importantly lots more different KINDS of bonuses. i.e. instead of just the vanilla +100%/+300% research/manufacturing/farming, you would have continuous scales of bonuses (e.g. +74%), and things like +% planetary defense tiles, or +40% mass drivers, +%ship-production-only, +53% armor, +10% asteroid production, +1.5% population growth, +10% tax revenue, et. al.. Like you build an Entertainment Center on a +10% tax tile and the planet gets +10% tax for the same population. And even bonus asteroids which give bonuses to starbases.
Speaking of which: I love asteroids. I wanted a whole lot more of those as well.
The only thing I agree with is more variations of asteroids. Not all asteroids are created equal. But the rest of the last post is not very important to me for game purposes.
Someone once suggested asteroids that gave credits or added to research.
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