In playing, I have found that an effective strategy is to focus each planet on a one resource. This has allowed me to easily outstrip the AIs. By building only buildings for a single resource and setting the planet's governance to that resource once it is done the initial buildup, it becomes extremely productive to the point that I don't see any benefit to splitting it's focus.
Am I missing something? Is there some strategy or fluke that I am overlooking? I am now forcing myself not to touch the resource focus chart to make it more challenging, but with multiplayer I can't keep others from exploiting it.
From my experience, I feel that this makes colony management overly simple and I would like some limit placed on it. Ether restriction's or penalties associated with specializing colonies, a line of techs to promote mixed colonies, or maybe some sort of change to how colonies produce resources.
What are your thoughts here? Is this an area you think could use an update? What strategies do you use to manage your economy?
**Update**
After playing tonight, I think a solution could be that the government branch they are adding to the tech tree could be used to restrict the degree of governance refocusing.
I'm thinking that researching each tech in this branch would allow you to move your civilization wide focus a little farther from 33-33-33, and would give an upgrade to the colony capital that would allow you to move that colony's focus a bit farther from your civ's.
I sort of do and don't specialize.
I always specialize low quality planets in a multiple planet system, based on any bonuses available.
I usually can't resist diversifying planets over PQ13 if there are multiple bonus tiles. Most of my diversified planets will produce close to 100 mgg. and 100 research, by T200, just to give you something to compare. I don't build any wealth improvements until late in the game and they are just to add insult to injury.
The problem is that if you can have a planet churn out 200 production and 200 tech points then two such planets would produce 400 of each together. The problem is that if you focus one planet on just production and one on just science you get maybe 600 to 800 of each from those two same planets, that is the issue.
The ONLY reason to diversify a planet is to avoid over production... I find that I need a few really giant industry planets to build really large ships but other only need to supply enough production to produce certain stuff in one or two turn. Then it is nice to have one other of either research or money to revert back to on those planets.
It truly become a matter of balancing flexibility with efficiency.
But overall you want to specialize planets on nothing but one type such as Industry, Science or Money... but I have found out that it is not always that simple. I do however think it is too easy to move the focus slider around. I think there could be some rules tied in with government in how they can be manipulated. This would make this part of the game more fun.
Proof (to a first order approximation) :
Let's assume we have a planet with 20 free tiles, and each building produces either 1 money, 1 production, or 1 research (yes, they don't, but changing that doesn't change the validity of the proof, just final values).
If you choose to build only production buildings, for instance, and set the slider to 100% industry, you'll get 20 production
If you choose to build 50/50 production/money, and set the slider to 100% either, you get only 10 production or 10 money. A net loss of 50% of the planet's potential
If you choose to build 50/50 production/money and set the slider to 50% production/money, you get 5 production, 5 money, "10 units" total, a net loss of 50% of the planet's potential
And if you choose to build 33/33/33, you'll lose at least 2 thirds of the planet's potential.
I've simplified the model a bit (hence the aforementioned "first order approximation" - adjacency bonuses tend to push towards MORE specialization anyway, not less) but the general principle holds true : basically, either you set the slider to 100% for one focus and all the other buildings are just dead weight, or you don't and all buildings are running at partial capacity.
In other words : just spam the same type of building on each planet, because everything else is inefficient.
The way planetary management is right now is a mix of two great tastes that taste awful together.
My estimation is : just remove the damn thing. If it becomes more interesting, it increases micro anyway since it'll push us to make minute, ad-hoc adjustments on every planet. On an big map, it'll be a nightmare.
We already HAVE a mechanic for interesting planetary management : the tiles and adjacency bonuses. Removing the slider will give THESE a much more interesting role and force us to make difficult choices when placing building, instead of spaming one type.
I am impressed and I know that I will at least do some experimentation with the specialization strategy.
I have not, to my recollection ever had a planet produce over 400 in mfg or research. I usually set the slider to the bottom of income and depend on anomaly bonuses until mid game. I don't really move it much until after T100. After I get Tourist income I am never in the red for credits and I seldom build econ improvements.
My strategy is more immersive, I believe, but it obviously sucks compared to the math above.
My next consideration is, at this point, I have no interest in beating the AI on godlike, and my current strategy wins the game on normal most of the time. I enjoy playing around with strategy and I will try this one, but long term habits are hard to break if they are successful
I made a class 20 planet into manufacturing-only. It was 2 or 3 thousand manufacturing. If only I could have sponsered multiple shipyards with it
Yes, mathematically it is more or less double as efficient to only build one type of resource.
The thing is though that you want to avoid wasting resources as well as SOME diversification on some locations can be useful but you NEVER want to mix Money and Research on the same planet. Production on the other hand is useful in some mixes.
There can be a reason for why you want to keep a few extra Industry on a research or money planet such as if you have a shipyard nearby that you might sponsor in times of war when you need more production than science or money. But I would never make these worlds into a 50/50 thing... rather a 30/60 with heavy focus on either Money or Since as their main thing and industry for those times I want to build an armada quickly.
On a large forge world you might want to add a single science or money building if there is a particular good spot and it is a large planet. Often you might not want all production to go into ship building or upgrading infrastructure and you can earn some extra cash/science that way.
You also need to make a healthy balance on approval and population expansion. max approval do give you a +25% increase in Raw Productive capital which is a big deal and worth noting on all worlds.
But I otherwise agree... the best thing would be to AX the focusing tool... it really just confuse mathematically unsavy people into thinking it actually is a good tool... ...I'm pretty surprised the developers have not understood this themselves.
And one more thing... the focus slider almost make the Science and Money production project 99% useless since it is almost always more useful to move population that producing with those projects.
Is this not just a remnant of GC2, one which no longer really serves a good purpose?
Here is a simple test from my current game on an Insane map with -50% production and -75% technology and 20 opponents.
I have eight developed planets and I'm about 70 turns into my game.
When the sliders are set they way I want them to for my current efficiency i have...
Wealth: 72
Science: 181
Production: 125
If I set the empire wide sliders to 33/33/33 i get...
Science: 71
Production: 92
And I have NOT abused this way of using the focusing slider too much when building my worlds.. I could do it much more.
The biggest problem is after checking the AI planets that the AI mostly use the empire wide setting for their planets which make using the individual planet focusing too an exploit and cheap trick for the player... a tool we don't need to gain an unfair advantage over the AI. I think I will stop using the individual focusing tool and only use the empire wide tool. That way I will play on the same level as the AI and planetary development will become more interresting as a result.
What you guys are forgetting (unless they changed it AFAIK they havent) is that the projects take manufacturing and convert it to research / wealth at a 4:1 ratio
and this research / wealth gets added as raw
what this means is that as soon as you get over 300% manufacturing bonus it becomes more effecient tu run your specialized planets as close to a 50/50 split in buildings as possible ( some of the building bonus's are a little skewed for that) and then focus your planet on 100% manufacturing and use the appropriate project
this will then take your ((production X manufacturing) /4) X research this means that planet that was doing 800 with al one buildig will do 3200 with mixed buildings
Yes... I'm fully aware of this... but how many people understand this at all...?!?
Why complicate things and have two different tools that practically does the same thing just efficient in different stages of the game?
In my opinion... just keep the empire wide tool and loose the individual tool or at least tie it into some other fundamental game mechanic to limit how they can be used in some way.
Personally the ability to work colonies independently was a big step forward for GC3 over 2. Please don't go back.
What moderates the "all specialization" idea is increasing the need for approval buildings(especially as one's empire grows), for influence buildings (def and off), and for farms (pop). Perhaps these need to be tweaked a bit more (such as base pop being more critical), but not at the price of hamstringing one's control over individual planets. One could also suggest that particular production have a slightly diminishing return as the total of that production increases. A planet covered with smokestacks ought to have some inherent brakes on efficiency perhaps.
The other factor that could have an impact is the fragility of specialized planets. If you have one planet churning out Titans and it gets nailed, you are in big trouble. But that depends on the AI getting smarter and being able to make the appropriate raids/attacks.
One more aspect is the inherent flexibility of factories. In a pinch manufacturing can be diverted to science or money, but not vice-versa. Sp you are encouraged to have factories on research and wealth planets to maintain some freedom of action in a crisis.
And of course there is the issue that eventually research or wealth planets will need additional buildings, suggesting keeping 2-3 factories going regardless.
In summary what I am trying to say is that it isn't quite as clear cut as the posts above might suggest, and that some fine tuning of existing functions and of the AI might be all that is needed.
EDIT: Doh, forgot a big point. Must be getting old.
The fact that one generally wants to try to specialize colonies (even as cities in Civ) doesn't mean that the choice or nature of the specialization or the numbers of each type is particularly easy, especially early in the game. Sometimes it seems I just have to force a colony one way or the other despite the attractive looking tile bonuses or even the planetary bonuses. A key strategic problem which disappears if you throw away individual colony control.
Two fundamental problems are that the AI seem to be quite oblivious how to build efficient worlds and focusing on either Production, Science or Money generation. The second that most players don't understand the mechanic and will suffer for it quite immensely, unaware most of the time though.
I would say it still is a healthy reason to keep your worlds in the green for approval since it increase your raw productivity of up to +25%. It is even so important that you should consider a high approval over more population most of the time if you can.
There is also a reason to keep a healthy industrial base on any planet, even for just upgrading the infrastructure alone you need a couple of well placed industries.
What you never want is to have both Money and Science building on the same planet.
As long as the AI keep dividing their planets into producing all three resources 99% of the time then this tool just become an I win button in the hands of a player who knows just a small part of what they are doing. I personally hate serious exploits that the AI can't exploit as well, it just give a too big an advantage to the player which really is not needed.
The economy is by far the worst core feature of this game.
I realize that the more hardcore 4x audience isn't the avg customer, but in its current state, the lack of strategic decision making(mainly due to the economy) is going to really hurt this game on release.
I've posted a thread here on the 15:1 Manufacturing v Credit Ratio that is in large part to blame: https://forums.galciv3.com/463887
Changing the ratio won't fix everything, but it could at least make the advantages offered to Income production during wartime be taken into account. Right now its Manufacturing, Manufacturing...little more manufacturing. Side of manufacturing with that.
So yes...playing optimally, every planet is either 100% Manufacturing or 100% Science(or some combination of the two late game). Very cut n dry, which equals boring in my book.
The absolute only reason for building Income buildings currently is to keep your Treasury above 0, or to just mess around for fun once your Manufacturing is so ludicrously high you're having a hard time knowing what else to build. Not exactly a strategic decision.
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Potential Fixes:
Your governance suggestion isn't a bad one, though you don't want to push too many options into the future or the early game becomes stagnant.
Gated or turned based limitations on economy focus seems fine, though I doubt these sort of realistic real life limitations goes over very well with avg audience. It's the optimal solution from a strategic standpoint.
Aside from that, maybe maintenance system could be tuned up a little bit(or maybe a lot of bit over time). Currently, maintenance is pretty low. Though I did see they lowered trade and tourism income in 6.0, so maybe that's a step in the right direction. SHould make maintenance cost more relevant. However, AI already cuts its own head off late game by not being able to keep up with the low maintenance the game has now, so it needs some work before you can raise maintenance to force the player into better decisions.
If you wanted to go a different direction, Trade could be expanded greatly. Not to go into specifics, but there's plenty of things that could be taken from other games in the genre.
In conclusion, the economy is the games biggest weak point.
All the other changes coming to 6.0 look pretty amazing, and I'm truly looking forward too it. But I don't want the game to be held back by an overly simplified economic system.
Overall there are balancing issues with the economic model, that is for sure... money is mainly needed for maintenance and trading with other civilizations. Aside from that things are just too expensive to invest the energy into money producing planets. More science and not to mention more production is way more important overall.
That said... when you play in a game with a -50% production penalty money actually is worth double the amount and become more important than before... you also can't use the Money and Science projects as efficient as in a regular game since production is much smaller to begin with.
It is also important to teach the AI how to use all the functionality, it currently don't focus its economy and thus are wasting lot's of resources.
Interesting question that occurred to me: I wonder how many people who played Civ IV knew how critical it was to build specialist cities, production cities, science cities, etc. Well, I can be sure that a lot more knew about it than knew how to do it. A specialist economy was tough for me.
Don't get me wrong, I think the OP is not far off, the current is system in GC3 is overloaded. I know why I have been routinely crushing the AI in my games.
Two points have been raised that are very important (imo, and not that other adjustments aren't important as well):
1) the AI should know how to specialize too.
2) how aggressive and opportunistic the AI is militarily will have an important if indirect effect.
Figuring out the right balance depends on lot on the state of the AI.
As for influence/approval, they were included in the "few extras" I was talking about, since they're not affected by the slider.
Spark is right, though : there aren't actually 3 valid specializations for planets, just 2. But even if it wasn't the case - even if the game wasn't so strongly tilted in favor of production -, there would still be the probleme that the slider doesn't play well with the tile system, because there would still be the "it's better to overspecialize" planets.
androshalforc doesn't actually negate this point - what he's saying is just that the optimal 100% economy planet isn't something straightforward to build, but that's due to this strong unbalance of production vs. money. Still, I rest my case : optimally, only 3 (2 if you take Spark's comments into account) types of planets are interesting. If that's the intended design, then it the way it's achieved is needlessly complex and we don't need all these tiles and adjacency bonuses. But I think it'd be better if that WASN'T the intended design, and that overspecialization wasn't necessarily so "optimal".
But the way specialization worked in Civ is already emulated by the tile bonuses and adjacency. In Civ 4 (and 5) though, there were cities that could do two of these things, have two specializations, if the resources allowed for that. Here, the slider prevents such a choice.
I agree that the buy cost ratio is way too high and would prefer that they lower it and lower the starting money to mach. At this point there is no real reason to focus on money except to stay out of the red or if you want to use advanced invasions.
The main reason I proposed tying the focus sliders to the governance techs is that it it is a simpler solution to the problem for the player. I considered penalties that increase as you get farther from balanced, but that requires way to much math and micromanagement to use optimally.
Simply removing the focus slider for individual planets is another viable solution, however I think that the mechanic does have a place. There just needs to be some penalty, cost, or limit to doing it.
I didn't notice this, but it doesn't really fix the problem. It just makes manufacturing even more dominant and makes it so that you may split a planet between 2 resources in some situations. Planetary management still remains overly simple, with it usually being best to ignore bonus tiles if they don't line up with the planet's focus.
With the current system, entirely based on population (raw production), the way to go is effectively the hyper specialization of planets (as the improvements are only % bonuses to the raw production).When I play the game (I stopped for now, due to too much crashes), I let the default settings (33%, 33%, 33%) for the Production Wheels (global and planets).First, the Production Wheel is a real pain to use, you need to adjust the cursor on a pixel basis to have the values you want; it's awful.Second, it becomes rapidly too much micromanagement to do it.So, for me, it's the way to go to have fun with the different types of improvement. If the goal is to have maximal efficiency (and with the current "over 300% manufacturing bonus"), in the long run, and with as little micromanagement as possible, just build factories on the planet and enough farms to have between 40-50B pop, maximize all the bonuses outside the planet (passive bonuses (from techs) for research, wealth, morale, etc., bonuses from starbases (economy and mining), bonuses from planet resources (trade), etc., set the Production Wheel to 100% Manufacturing, and play with the Research Project, the Economic Stimulus, etc., and the Planet/Shipyard slider.Full factories is more flexible, as it can be transformed in research and wealth points and the converse is not possible (so, the factories are always used at full potential).By doing this, and to have a little variety in the game, you can also "buy everything", set the Production Wheel to 100% Manufacturing, select the Economic Stimulus, and rush buy improvements and ships, buy techs (trade), etc.It's not as efficient, but it can be fun. A solution to remedy this, would be to give more "power" to the improvements, allowing them to generate some raw production, so even if the Production Wheel is set to 100%, the different improvement bonuses are not completely wasted (and the raw production generated by the population acts more like a "focus").
androshalforc is completely right, and unknown touches on the problem.
Hyperspecialisation (building all labs/banks) is literally the worst thing you can do in the current game setup. It really should be the best, but right now it isnt. Its a huge design flaw in the economy.
Currently, the best way to specialise a planet in research is NOT to build 100% research. Which makes no sense.
The "best" option* is to build about half factories, half labs, swing production slider to full manufacturing, and then build research project. After about turn 80 this will equal the research of a fully specialised planet. After turn 130 or so, it will be 5x better. I've had planets pumping in excess of 6k research/turn doing this, with only 30-40 pop.
This is true for making money too.
Whats even better about going 50/50 is that you will get your colony up and running faster, provided you build the factories first. Since every improvement will be 1 turn, rather than a world with 100% labs that will take many many turns to get up and running and upgrade itself.
*actually, you want the +% research to equal the +% manufactoring, after all tech etc has been taken into account. So you might need a few more factories then labs or visa versa. And keep building farms as required.
I only would like to add...
Do not disregard population and approval ratings since they can add up some serious raw productivity to the planet with some very few buildings.
A content world with 5 pop give you 11 raw productivity while a 20 pop world that is very happy has a raw productivity of nearly 35. Each station now also add a further 10% so if you have say three stations in the vicinity of that planet that is a raw productivity of around 40-45. With high tech and some good placement of the tiles you only need three to five tiles to make this happen... obviously depending on the planet.
There is a good difference between 10-15 raw productivity and 40-45.
My main gripe is as has been reiterated through this thread. The AI inability to use the system and the transparency of it to the more casual player and that production become too much of a focus on most planets.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be incentives towards specialization, but they're already there : adjacency bonuses.
The problem is that what you're describing IS hyperspecialization anyway - except instead of just spamming reasearch building, you have to take a weird path with half industry buildings. It's just hidden behind a puzzle, and while strategy should require thinking, obfuscating it behind a weird maths puzzle is an awful idea.
It has been described over and over that the AI development is in full progress and is expected to continue well past release. Any of the points related to AI fit into every other discussion that says "...and the AI needs to know how to do this, too!" I am not sure why so many people somehow believe the devs are totally unaware of the importance of AI awareness, of this and many other things. They are actively working on it. You are, in effect, shooting at a moving target. They are working on it in internal builds that we don't have. You are shooting at where a moving target was last reported.
As for casual gamers, that seems to be the category I fall into. Maybe I ought to speak up for my compatriots. I am having a great time following my intuitive interpretation of the adjacency bonuses and specialization. By no means am I suffering. Why do you feel such a need to protect me from the great time I am having? If I were being as emphatically passionate as I should be, I would tell you to knock it off and speak for yourselves. If you don't like the mechanics say that and only that. Let others speak for themselves. Meanwhile, I am listening to your points as best I can.
I can learn from your extreme techniques, but I am so uninterested in min-max hyperspecialization as my normal play it is almost humorous. The things you list as throwaways take more of my improvement list and I would be uncomfortable omitting them. I don't understand how you can rely on the projects so much when there is always a new building to build. Or, it seems to be a late game technique by the description, then people talk about doing it by turn X. Many of your production examples would have to be shown to me ingame and explained how you got there without getting killed in the process, especially as the AI gets any smarter at all. I can follow your logic, mostly, but I cannot believe the numbers.
As the mechanics settle, I am going to very interested in Let's Play videos showing me these techniques. It is my final expectation that the game will allow a very wide variety of play styles and options, many of which will be considered over-powered by many people. That will make me very happy. According to what I hear Paul say, that is one of the big goals of the game. And if Brad learns your tricks by reading these forums, I would definitely look for them to be used against you in the near future. Go, Brad!
This isn't entirely correct, even accounting for the footnote. First off, let's assume that we're building only labs and factories, and we'll assume that these structures are equally advanced and therefore offer the same per-building and per-level bonuses. Let's further assume that these structures are the only bonus sources we have. Let's call the total research bonus of a pure lab world BR, the research bonus of a mixed world Br, and the manufacturing bonus of a mixed world Bm. Under these assumptions, a lower bound for BR is BR = Br + Bm, as the average level of the structures on the planet will be at least as great on a pure-lab world as on a mixed lab and factory world and so we will assume that BR does in fact equal the sum of Br and Bm.
We know that the maximum effective research multiplier of the pure lab world is X = (1 + BR), and we know that the maximum effective research multiplier of the mixed world is Y = 0.25*(1 + Bm )*(1 + Br). We know that if X > Y, it's better to go with a pure lab world than with a mixed world if we're looking just for research. So, how big of a bonus do we need to be getting? Y maximizes at Br = Bm, so we'll assume that Br = Bm = B. We know that X >= 1 + Br + Bm, so X >= 1 + 2B. Now we need to find the value Z such that B > Z => (1 + 2*B ) < 0.25*(1 + B )^2. Solving this, we find that Z = 3 + sqrt(12), or about 6.46. This means that for a mixed world to be better than a pure world if building only factories and labs which isn't under the effect of any starbases, you must be able to achieve a 646% bonus to both research and manufacturing. This is a lower bound to the bonus you need to achieve to each due to the assumptions involved in the derivation; BR can be larger than the assumed value, but it cannot be smaller.
If you don't include the assumption that Br = Bm, then the solution for the minimum value of Z becomes a formula relating Bm to Br, but at any rate (1 + Br)*(1 + Bm) > 4*BR is the requirement for your proposed solution to be optimal. This works even if you don't include the assumption that you're building only labs and factories, if you don't exclude bonuses from starbases, or if you don't include the assumption that the labs and factories are equally advanced, but solving the problem without those assumptions makes things much more difficult. The simplest assumption to relax is the lack of starbases; if we relax the assumption about starbases so that the effect of the starbase is to increase the bonus to each output type by b (i.e. the starbase bonus is b*100% and this is additive with the bonuses from existing structures on the planet), then X = (1 + BR + b ) and Y = 0.25*(1 + Bm + b )*(1 + Br + b ), which under the assumptions that Br = Bm and BR = Bm + Br gives z = (3 - b + sqrt(12 - 4b )) as the lower bound for Z s.t. Y > X for all B > Z.
What if it became less efficient the further you moved from the center? Say at 100% manufacturing you get the current equivalent of 60-70%.
Specialized worlds would still produce more but the flexibility of balanced worlds might make them an option.
I just started a new campaign where I handicapped myself to using similar tactic as the AI, which basically is using the empire wide setting only and the most extreme are 60/20/20 setting.
To be honest I enjoy this campaign much more and each world now feel more individual. It is also more fun to strategize over how to develop the planets in a way it was not before. It is also much harder to stay ahead of the AI... even on normal setting.
Min/Max play is so boring... but in multiplayer this mechanic as it stands WILL matter. Fortunately I will never play this game in multiplayer so I'm good.
You are right, there is a minimum about of +% needed before this is true.
However:
1) Your assumption that there are no starbases really understates the problem. 5 economic starbases is easy to achieve. +res/manf techs add to it. And relics... etc. 600% is really easy to get.
2) Factories have all sorts of other bonuses - for example, at turn 30, you will have a much more developed world if you build 50% factories 50% labs, compared to if you went 100% labs from the start. I dont think this should be underestimated. It takes forever to build a 100% specialised world, and by the time you do, you are near the 600% point where it was all a waste of time anyways!
2) If those pesky Drengin decide you look tasty, being able to instantly convert your research specialised worlds instantly to ship-producers can be life-saving.
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