I feel like tech is researched way too quickly, making various sensors, weapons and defenses obsolete/replaced too quickly to really enjoy the boost from getting that new technogadget.
Anyone else feel like even on the slowest settings the game progresses too quickly?
Yes.
I put game pace on slow and all I noticed was an additive -25% production bonus. I face palmed and took it off. Maybe they changed it in 1.1?
Me, too! My solution was to mod the *TechDefs.xml files by multiplying all ResearchCost values by 4. That resulted in a suitably slow tech pace.
Wait what? That's it? I thought they scaled the tech and manufacturing costs as well? If not, that explains a lot.... (Guess that's what I get from starting on the slowest speed right off the boat)
They might have. I only have a half dozen games on my belt. All i noticed was that 25% manufacturing malus. I thought it was strange that i could still easily producing anything in a single turn by mid game.
Looking at the PacingDefs.xml there is definitely a bug. You are correct, and they are using something that can be "countered" with a basic factory almost.
<EffectType>MaxManufacturing</EffectType> should be targeted on raw resources, not the additive bonuses. But targeting the raw resources will slow down both research and manufacturing, so not sure how to fix it so you can mix and match between the two. Guess SD needs to implement a tech cost slider or something. Seems odd they've missed this for so long.
There is no turn limit increase either. The whole thing just seems unfinished.
So by my math the game pacing just gives harder AIs an advantage since their bonuses will easily overshadow that 25% malus, while it'll hurt the player's starting colonies a bit.
Don't think it really matters that much. AI difficulty isn't just about the bonuses.
If you want to test a bit with Raw Production reduced (both Manufacturing and Research should be slowed by tweaking Production Pace) here is a "fixed" file:
https://db.tt/gXoR7v6O (right click save as, and put in mod/game folder)
Hmm after testing, that thing does not work very well either, at least with Thalan tech. (Hives and Gaia Vortex affects the slider) Guess the pacing stuff is just broken until SD patches a scaling slider on techs and manu costs.
Slow is -25% and very slow is -50%. However since they are additive as you have discovered, all they really serve to do is make you need 1 or 2 extra buildings at the start to get the planet up to speed. All that needs to happen is for them to adjust where the speed setting is factored in to the production/research calculations. It's getting lumped in with all the other bonus/malus when it should be the very last thing and should be calculated separately.
I think there currently isn't any other way to implement a straight proportional increase to research times than to modify directly the research costs of the techs themselves. This is, of course, manually cumbersome to do to all the techs in all the *TechDefs.xml files so you need to get an XML patch tool that allows you to do math operations to XMLvalues. ResearchCost=ResearchCost*4 worked for me but individual tastes differ.
BTW Are the tech cost inflation parameters exposed in any of the XML files? That might be another alternative for modification, although it wouldn't be a proportional change as the formula behind it quite probably is exponential in nature. I know that each tech you discover increases the cost of the next ones "downstream" (and other techs by a smaller amount)
EDIT: Found them. Obvious in hindsight:
GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml
<TechInflationExponent_All>1.2</TechInflationExponent_All> <TechInflationMultiplier_All>0.12</TechInflationMultiplier_All> <TechInflationExponent_Tree>1.1</TechInflationExponent_Tree> <TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>0.12</TechInflationMultiplier_Tree> <TechInflationExponent_Specialization>1.1</TechInflationExponent_Specialization> <TechInflationMultiplier_Specialization>0.10</TechInflationMultiplier_Specialization>
...but use with caution. You might end up with the later techs costing insane amounts of research...
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