I'm surprised there isn't a thread for this already. Am I the only one who absolutely hates the large empire penalty? I don't want to have to use a trait to avoid it and I like playing on the Insane map size with abundant star and common habitable planets so it will be a problem by the time I even encounter someone else, by then I'll at least 25 planets so a quarter of my morale improvements are down the drain.
This seems to me to be an indication of how the devs want me to play. I hate it and that's why I can't stand Endless Space for this reason too, I can't play the game the way I want to, I can't build enough morale improvements if I build a hundred world empire. I know the patriotic trait avoids this entirely and generally morale isn't a challenge but a 1% per world penalty is a bad option. Scale it based on the size of the map and the abundance of planets, on a small map its not bad but on an insane map its game breaking.
Let's start a conversation about this. Do you like the large empire penalty? Do you think I'm crazy?
I have so far designed and played three custom races, and all of them have the Patriotic trait ... so you can guess I feel the same way as you. I like playing with lots of colonies, and the penalty really kicks in fast.
I agree. This penalty needs serious work on the bigger maps. I understand the need to balance between tall and wide empires but some of us like wide and it would be nice if the cost wasn't so high on bigger maps.
so far i cant get past turn 55 or so but i thought the morale system was to weak in beta 4, so the fact that people are saying something about it means they are looking at it
on the other hand i like large maps and large empires so ill have to see how it goes when i get to late game
On a large map? Play as mavelolent and get that sweet sweet bonus to conquering planets. . Alternatively buy lots and lots of snugglers.
Don't forget, there are several happiness techs still to be unlocked. That plus the new trade resources plus the ideological traits should go a long way to counter-acting the complaints.
In other words, don't waste a trait on this unless you can't find ways around it.
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MY complaint is the the baseline G&S is too low. It probably should be a smudge higher. On the other hand, it's entirely possible the devs thot that it was too easy to get 100% approval in the very early game, so they decided to make the players work for their max happiness. I can see that logic. It wasn't easy at all to get 100% approval in GC II until mid game or so (when the tax base was really humming). Perhaps we testers just got too used too Easy Street.
Yes there are ways around and yes it is something that should exist to create a balance between tall and wide empires especially on larger maps. We are just saying that the penalties may be too high no higher maps. A 1% drop for every 5 planets would be better in an immense map with abundant worlds as opposed to the current 1% drop per planet. On some of the smaller maps with less worlds this would be okay.
Is it really though? I'm a little leery of saying that without all of the full G&S boosters in the game. I haven't really sunk my teeth into a full fledged Insabe Map game (been busy with other projects) but I do wonder if the existence of morale boosting trade resources along with various ideological traits is enough. On a smaller map, for instance, there will be less trade goods available. And if they give us more trade routes on larger maps (like has been mooted) that allows for more luxury trade routes which helps other ideologies.
I mean, I get what your saying, and the player in me would like to see this relaxed a bit. But I m more than a little hesitant to say that the Patrotic Racial Trait is a must have. Not without seeing the alternatives out there.
Morale isn't that big a penalty...
Even if your morale stinks as bad as ass in the dark ages, you still don't have to worry about it as long as you have properly defended planets. It's not nuking your production capabilities, just your ability to defend against takeovers. If you've got the larger empire, the hit to your influence production shouldn't be a problem, you'd be making way more than you're losing thanks to a larger base of planets compared to a smaller empire. All you'll need to worry about is losing defenders and getting invaded on planets with bad morale.
1% per planet is also pretty pointless as long as you have other multiplicative bonuses as well. An intimidation center counteracts 50 planets. If you have 50 planets, you should have quite a few empire wide multiplicative bonuses on top of this, between techs, planet resources, space based resources, and ideology upgrades.
Planet quality needs to factor back into things though, 30 pop on a planet is rough on the morale production, really nice planets are really needy on the morale, while the crappy places to live are just fine.
Really it depends on who you play as to how bad it the penalty is. I was playing the Iridium and that -25% growth rate sucks without the countering effect of good morale especially early game. I do have to admit I was thinking it still effected production and to my way of thinking what's the point of morale if it doesn't give production bonuses?
All of the penalties can be mitigated by techs later in the game. However part of my dislike for the penalty is how it is implemented, a percentage penalty where most of the bonuses are flat bonuses.
I agree that rather than being 1% per planet it should scale dependent on the map size. I don't think the penalty is a bad idea in itself though.
Well, I guess I'm going to go against the tide. I also love to have large expansive civs and am currently playing on an excessive sized map. Approval has not been a problem for me at all. I'm on turn 445 and have 38 colonies and 98 approval. I don't think it has ever sunk below 70 in this game. My custom race does not use the Patriotic trait. I just make sure early on that all my people get nice cheap TVs and play a lot. Seriously, I just make sure I research and build entertainment centers relatively early on and it's a non-issue for me, at least in this game and I've been expanding as quickly as I can without upsetting the apple cart. I'm now ready to begin wiping the rest of the galaxy out of these "insignificant" little races that have been kind enough to colonize and develop other colonies for me. I say, keep it the way it is.
This I agree with. But given how pointless morale is right now, it doesn't really matter.
I'm going to have to retract SOME of what I said earlier about this. I don't have a problem with the concept of a large empire penalty. The problem I currently have is... It appears there aren't many sources of percentage based bonuses to approval.
And one of the few guaranteed ones (approval relics) in the game STILL isn't working at the moment.
See, here's the problem. Each planet one has is 1% penalty. Fine. No problem in theory. IF there were enough percentage based sources out there to counteract that. Problem is, most boosts to approval seem to be flat. Including the malevolent one when invading other planets. Which... blows a hole out of one of my earlier suggestions to counteract this.
And, after checking, I found out that Harmony Crystals are flat as well (I had presumed they were percentage based like everything else).
I can't really get luxury trade routes to work on a quick and dirty test of this, so I don't know if they are flat or percentage based. But even there, it's only for that planet.
No, I don't have a problem with this in concept (which is why I made my earlier comments). But unless there is a way to counteract a 2000% penalty or more, then I think I have to join the chorus that says this needs to be tweaked. If only giving us more avenues for percentage based boosts to approval.
I said in another thread that perhaps making Harmony Crystals percentage based instead of a flat +1 bonus might work here. But I don't know how that would add up over time.
Luxury trade routes are only good for +5% each from what I can tell.
Yeah...morale lost its meaning again, would be nice to have the bonuses back for having happy planets,it really helped with early building and culture flips. So beta 3-4 had it imho, usable bonuses and incentives to keep morale up or you lose production and security. Plus goods and services is a good easy system, just a bit more tweaking Stardock, almost got it right!!!
DARCA
I hate to mention this because the Over Powered faction will be on it like a duck on a June Bug. The Morale relics make it all go away.
I am on T100 in an excessive game, about 25 colonies. My overall approval was at about 60 with 14-15 colonies, when I researched precursor archaeology. I built 2 sb to control 3 morale relics and after upgrading 3 levels I am at about 90 approval. There are still several levels to upgrade and there are more relics if I need them.
I hope I am not kidding myself about this. This morale problem is new to me I don't recall anything in GCII that I couldn't handle with little entertainment. If the relics don't manage it, and it comes back hard, I will be back here crying the blues.
I started a new game and so far have ignored morale, I got down to 37% morale and the penalty to influence and defense was only 3.2%. Basically morale isn't a big deal even if you do have a large empire and not many morale improvements. Playing the Yor so I don't know what the growth penalty is but I'm assume its the same.
Morale may not have much in the way of percentage bonuses, but the the things it factors into do, you can zero out your approval, but you can't zero out your soldiering, influence, and growth along with it.
Right which is why I've come the conclusion that the patriotic trait is actually a waste of a trait, the bonuses to what gets penalized for low morale are easily maximized, although the penalties are percentages and again many of the bonuses are flat rather than percentages.
I still don't like the way the mechanic presents or is implemented but as it currently stands isn't a big deal. Although I constantly see the red approval icon and think I need to fix that then remember its not actually a problem. Very annoying though.
as near as i can tell the approval relics dont work according to the xml's they provide an 'approval' bonus which was gutted in B4 (possibly B3)
I can't play the game right now to see how bad it is. I think the best idea is scale penalty per map size this way you can't exploit this on small maps. Unless you tweaked tech trees for bigger maps adding approval bonuses to techs would make this overpowering on smaller maps. This would have to be takrn into account on harmony crystals. The problem with this is the description would have to change for each map size. Not taking the previous point into account, and going with the next best idea which is tweaking harmony crystals. Instead of a flat empire wide bonus this could increase every so many turns. This could be done to other stuff for more variety of bonuses, both for planetary, and empire wide bonuses. Also, we could have this be a super project, or tech that everyone else has, but at least a trade good is something everyone can yrade for.
I just checked and Approval Relics ARE working in Beta 5.
Proof (clicking on the pics makes it more obvious):
Just before installing a module for an Approval Relic:
One turn after installing the module that tapped into the Approval Relic:
In fact, I actually saw the approval go down for a moment as the population increase took hold, but then shoot up once the Approval Relic check was made.
So it appears it is working at least a little.
EDITED::: Hooked up a second Approval Relic (no pics this time) and the approval rating of that world went up again. So it does appear to be working at the moment.
EDITED POST NOW THAT I HAVE SOMETHING NEW TO ADD INTO THIS ONE.
Upon further testing, it is a little curious though. I decided to try to figure out the exact mechanics of what was going on. Not counting my capital, which has a higher baseline G&S, my current Goods & Services is 10. I have an large empire penalty of 16%. I have two approval relic modules installed and they should be giving me a 20% bonus. But it appears that they are only giving me a total of a 16% bonus as I start dropping below 100% approval right as I go past 10 billion population on a planet.
That's a bit odd, to tell the truth, as I should have a 4% bonus to G&S at the moment which in turn should mean I should be able to have 10.4 billion on a planet before dropping under 100%.
That the tooltips are't picking up the Approval Relic is making the testing harder.
So they are working. I'm just not certain they are giving the full 10% bonus to all planets like they are supposed to.
Odd. Way too late at night for me to fully test what is going on, but I think I might look into this more if I have the time over the weekend.
so if they are working as your testing shows the only thing i can assume is that they are using leftovers from the approval system that was scrapped earlier so that the values reported are not accurate to what you should be getting
heres the xml from approval relics.
<StrategicResource> <InternalName>ApprovalRelic</InternalName> <DisplayName>APPROVAL_RELIC_LABEL</DisplayName> <Type>Relic</Type> <ArtDefine>MoraleRelic</ArtDefine> <HowToTapText>STRATEGIC_RELIC_TOOLTIP_UNTAPPED_MSG</HowToTapText> <Resource> <EffectType>Approval</EffectType> <Scope>Global</Scope> <Target> <TargetType>Colony</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType> <ValueType>Special</ValueType> <SpecialValue> <Special>GetValueFromStarbase</Special> </SpecialValue> </Resource>
and heres a sampling of others that give approval bonus's
<RaceTrait> <InternalName>Content1</InternalName> <DisplayName>Content1_Name</DisplayName> <Description>Content1_Desc</Description> <Mod> <EffectType>GoodsAndServices</EffectType> <Scope>Global</Scope> <Target> <TargetType>Colony</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Flat</BonusType> <Value>2</Value> </Mod> </RaceTrait>
<PlanetTrait> <InternalName>SereneWorld</InternalName> <DisplayName>SereneWorld_Name</DisplayName> <Description>SereneWorld_Dec</Description> <RelativeWeight>9</RelativeWeight> <PlanetClassSelect> <MinPlanetClass>10</MinPlanetClass> <MaxPlanetClass>16</MaxPlanetClass> <Weight>95</Weight> </PlanetClassSelect> <PlanetClassSelect> <MinPlanetClass>25</MinPlanetClass> <MaxPlanetClass>26</MaxPlanetClass> <Weight>5</Weight> </PlanetClassSelect> <EffectModifier> <EffectType>Influence</EffectType> <Target> <TargetType>Colony</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType> <Value>0.25</Value> </EffectModifier> <EffectModifier> <EffectType>GoodsAndServices</EffectType> <Target> <TargetType>Colony</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType> <Value>0.25</Value> </EffectModifier> </PlanetTrait>
<GameEvent> <InternalName>RuthlessVisionEvent</InternalName> <DisplayName>RuthlessVisionEvent_Name</DisplayName> <Description>RuthlessVisionEvent_Dec</Description> <ArtDefine>Galaxtic_Event_World2.png</ArtDefine> <Type>GalacticEvent</Type> <Weight>50</Weight> <Choice> <Type>Benevolent</Type> <Description>RuthlessVisionEvent_Benevolent_Bonus_Name</Description> <BonusDescription>RuthlessVisionEvent_Benevolent_Bonus_Dec</BonusDescription> <Trigger> <OnEvent>OnEventChoice</OnEvent> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime> <Modifier> <EffectType>CultureBenevolent</EffectType> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Flat</BonusType> <Value>30</Value> </Modifier> </Trigger> <Trigger> <OnEvent>OnEventChoice</OnEvent> <Target> <TargetType>Planet</TargetType> </Target> <Lifetime>Target</Lifetime> <Modifier> <EffectType>Research</EffectType> <Scope>Global</Scope> <Target> <TargetType>Colony</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType> <Value>0.1</Value> </Modifier> </Trigger> </Choice> <Choice> <Type>Neutral</Type> <Description>RuthlessVisionEvent_Neutral_Bonus_Name</Description> <BonusDescription>RuthlessVisionEvent_Neutral_Bonus_Dec</BonusDescription> <Trigger> <OnEvent>OnEventChoice</OnEvent> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime> <Modifier> <EffectType>CultureNeutral</EffectType> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Flat</BonusType> <Value>20</Value> </Modifier> </Trigger> <Trigger> <OnEvent>OnEventChoice</OnEvent> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <Lifetime>Target</Lifetime> <Modifier> <EffectType>Accuracy</EffectType> <Scope>Global</Scope> <Target> <TargetType>Starbase</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType> <Value>0.1</Value> </Modifier> </Trigger> </Choice> <Choice> <Type>Merciless</Type> <Description>RuthlessVisionEvent_Merciless_Bonus_Name</Description> <BonusDescription>RuthlessVisionEvent_Merciless_Bonus_Dec</BonusDescription> <Trigger> <OnEvent>OnEventChoice</OnEvent> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime> <Modifier> <EffectType>CultureMerciless</EffectType> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Flat</BonusType> <Value>30</Value> </Modifier> </Trigger> <Trigger> <OnEvent>OnEventChoice</OnEvent> <Target> <TargetType>Faction</TargetType> </Target> <Lifetime>Target</Lifetime> <Modifier> <EffectType>GoodsAndServices</EffectType> <Scope>Global</Scope> <Target> <TargetType>Colony</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType> <Value>-0.05</Value> </Modifier> <Modifier> <EffectType>Accuracy</EffectType> <Scope>Global</Scope> <Target> <TargetType>Starbase</TargetType> </Target> <BonusType>Flat</BonusType> <Value>0.25</Value> </Modifier> </Trigger> </Choice> </GameEvent>
everything else that modifies morale targets goods and services except for approval relics that target approval if they are working (which they shouldnt be( you made 2 mistakes that cancel out kind of thing)) its not as intended
Might be worth it to send that xml finding along to the devs, androshalforc, so they can see if something unintended is going on. Or, as you suspect, it's being applied in a legacy fashion and therefore unstable.
One thing I do know is that Approval Relics weren't working at all in Beta Four. Submitted a ticket on it and everything. So it's possible that it was fixed in a partial manner.
As I mentioned in previous posts, I've finally had the chance to really sink my teeth into Beta Five on an Insane Map (having to start over after every patch set me back a bit ). Well, I've found some more oddness with Approval Relics. Almost certainly because of the XML stuff mentioned by androhalforc.
I was merrily puttering along, keeping my approval at 100% thanks to several Approval Relics I had found. Once I hit 100 planets, however, my approval started to dip. Once I hit 105 planets, it absolutely tanked. Calculating everything, I should have been receiving a bonus of 210% from all of my installed relic modules. Throw in an extra 10% thanks to a Mega Event, and I should have no troubles whatsoever.
But drop it did once I hit 100:
Here are a few screenshots showing the massive drop in Approval. A 6% change in Empire Size Penalty really shouldn't be causing that huge amount of a drop.
The first one shows all of my planets at 100% with 99 planets:
The second one shows that two dropped when I hit 100 planets:
The third one shows the carnage that has been visited upon my empire at 105 planets:
Now I haven't tested how many Approval Relic modules it will take for to get back to 100% (even another 40% only puts a small dent in it). Still, at a theoretical 220% bonus, I shouldn't have to worry yet. Obviously I'm getting nowhere near the amount I "should" be getting.
I'll be sending in a ticket on this tonight, along with the observation about the XML from androhalforc.
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