This was a topic in today's dev stream. Some devs want to remove the per-planet production wheel, others want to make improvements. I think we can all agree that in the current game you must manage the production wheel on a per-planet basis to get the maximum production and benefit from specializing. I think everyone can also agree that micromanaging the per-planet wheel gets unwieldy after a dozen or so planets, and ridiculously time consuming, repetitive, and annoying as you get into the mid and late game. As a person who likes to specialize, I would not like to see this feature go away. I won't throw a fit if it does, but I will be a little bummed out because I consider it a great new feature for this third installment in the series. But I also don't want it to stay in its micromanagement-intensive state.
If you're going to take it away, be sure to have some way to convert between production types on a per-planet basis. This probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway for the benefit of those just walking into this discussion with no prior experience in the series. In GalCiv2 you could select a focus (social, military, or research) which did conversions with a penalty. In GalCiv3 we have projects that convert from social manufacturing to research or wealth. It's a similar function, but not quite the same. There is no military project that allows you to tell a planet to put more of its manufacturing into ships, just the slider. And there is no way to convert research or wealth into increased manufacturing (to be fair, I'm not sure this happend in GalCiv2 either). If you do go the projects route, please be sure to revisit how they work. A percentage increase based upon the amount of social manufacturing you have may not be the right answer. In GalCiv2 it was a flat percentage of manufacturing points that got converted, similar to how it worked in earlier betas.
If you do keep per-planet production settings, some in the community have already come up with some ideas that may guide you. My own ideas are here and here. Osbot essentially suggested the same concept here. Xsifilid introduced the terrific idea of "triggers" here. Our ideas basically allow the user to create production wheel templates or profiles to which he can set multiple similarly specialized planets. With some governors and/or triggers to manage automatic profile switching, it could be a very powerful tool for specializing planet production, reducing micromanagement, still requires users to make the planet management decisions, and it could also make the AI more clever with its production management.
I wish the best of luck to the devs. This is not going to be an easy battle to win, but something needs to change one way or the other.
I'm. Confused about micromanagement it's. Not a problem it's. Easier to manage than two. Now that being said I like the per planet slider. Improve it don't. Get rid of it.
If that is really the case, some devs should be looking for new jobs, like management positions in EA. You want to dumb this game down? Make it more mainstream? EA is the studio for you. Go make bad games with them. I will not be paying for an expansion with EA like quality.
If the production wheel is a problem for most people, tweak the AI to compensate, and make normal beatable with a default wheel. No need to touch that stuff at all really for the main game. Then we can balance the rest, or Frogboy sometime in the future hopefully
I vote to stay. One can just not use the planet one or the main one.
i somewhat agree to it but i think changing it woulde be best.
And for that i suggests maybe split the sliders into 4 parts, not one big circle but rather 4 lists, so you can scroll down and see what the planets produce most of.
(three lists splited up for economy,manufactory,research one for each.)
Depending on what it produces at the moment and what type of production building has been made on it (economy,manufactory,research building, this also apply to taken/ conquered planets).
As for the fourth one, it will be used to define category type (planets with special traits like a homeworld or extremeplanet including an add list button (for a more desirable customization options for micromanagement) for specific type in more detailed form.
I think it would be absurd to remove the wheel - it's one of the real pleasures of the game that you can specialise.
But in certain circumstances you do want to override the local settings - for instance if you're getting short of cash; and indeed if you go to negative gold then it forces you to go to 100% gold on all planets till you're positive again and then restores everything.
It would be nice if you could click to override but then later click (either toggle the same button or a different one) to stop overriding and restore the values of all the individual planets as they last were. As far as I can see if you do do a global override then you have later to reset all planets by hand - a total pain.
It would be even better if you could select a subset of all the planets and override on those. As long as the previous individual settings are stored as I presume they must be then you could also select any subset and "re-localise".
We need the per planet and the global wheels and they need to be the same as each other. That being said, they can be improved with almost any random change that anyone can think of.
I think entering numbers, rather than playing with the mouse would be vastly superior. There are examples of the idea in photo editing software. You could type a number into an anchored variable and type numbers or slide a value with a ratioed variable until the desired mix is obtained. Easy-peesy.
Perhaps instead of having to choose between empire-wide control and individual planet specialization, you could create your own limited production wheels. By default, there would be the empire-wide wheel, a 100% research wheel, and a 100% wealth wheel - you could create and adjust your own in the govern screen.
When managing a planet, you could set it to use one of your custom wheels (i.e. you could set it to use the all-research wheel, or a custom wheel with 100% manufacturing and 75% of that going to military). You could then adjust the settings of the selected wheel (unless it's the all-research or all-wealth one), and all other worlds using that wheel would be adjusted too.
That would definitely reduce the micro needed while still supporting specialization.
Currently the planetary wheel is a must-have because it's the way we specialize our planets. You can't just remove it without crippling the game. However, the key word here is "currently". The important issue is to be able to specialize your planets and to extract the benefits from that specialization. The tool for this doesn't have to be the planetary wheel. It could be something else, too.
The main point is: If you don't provide an alternative to do the same job, don't remove it.
Which also means that, yes, if you can come up with a better solution for specialization strategies that includes less micro-management, then do it. But only if it really does the same job and if it is better. What I don't want is a replacement that offers a "dumbed down" version making poor optimizations.
A good place to start thinking about a possible replacement would be to list the things how we currently use the planetary wheel and why we are doing them. I'm not a hard-core optimizer and a bit lazy, too, so am not trying to squeeze every last drop out of the system. Basically, I switch between these alternatives for the different planets:
Economy planets are set to
a) "100% eco" : Nothing to build or I don't want it to build anything
b ) "50% eco + 50% man" : I want it to build something but my empire has not yet reached the overflowing cash coffer phase
c) "100% man" : I want it to build something and I have reached the "more cash than I can spend" phase.
Research planets are set to:
a) "100% res" : Not building anything.
b ) "50% res + 50% man" : Building something else than the very first research enhancing improvements.
c) "100% man" : Building research improvements when the planet is not yet putting out very much research.
Manufacturing planets are set to:
"100% man" always
The slider settings are:
Economy and Research planets: Not supporting a yard so doesn't matter.
Manufacturing planets:
a) "100% military" : Not building anything or I want to prioritize ship building
b ) "50% military + 50% social" : Building something
(No need for "100% social" setting because you get that by simply shutting down the yard. "100% social" in manufacturing planets implies that you don't want ships just now. Many times I simply leave the setting "100% military" and alternate between improvements and ships by simply opening and closing the yard which is quicker.)
Looking at the above it's quite clear that you could automate or make easier a lot of what I'm currently doing manually. The desired functionality can be broken down to:
1) There's a planet classification system that divides them into manufacturing planets, research planets, and economy planets. Let's label this as "Focus". (Yes, yes, there's culture, too, but I tend to usually go for the more militaristic victory types in my games... )
2) There are three production options: "Prioritize Focus", "Half/Half", and "Prioritize Manufacturing". If the focus is manufacturing then this option would be rather meaningless but we could also interpret it as the ship building slider and have a nice generic three option system for them all.
3) There are situational triggers that make me always pick the same standard choice for the planetary settings.
4) There are unseen and unexpected cases where I want to pick some other choice than what the "standard" choice would have been by 3).
The above four requirements could be fulfilled, for example, with a straight-forward specialization+governor type solution:
- Add the possibility to set a planetary Focus: Manufacturing, Research, or Economy.
- Add the possibility to set a shipyard to a war footing (or constructor/colony spam or whatever for you need ships...) by setting it to "mobilize".
- Add the possibility to turn on a "planetary governor" that would automatically switch between:
Economy/Research Planets:
a) Focus = "100% specialization" if there's nothing to build.
b ) Focus = "50% specialization + 50% manufacturing" if the improvement to build is a non-Focus improvement OR specialization amount is greater than manufacturing amount.
c) Focus = "100% manufacturing" if the improvement to build is a Focus improvement AND specialization amount is less than manufacturing amount.
Manufacturing Planets:
a) Obviously always keep 100% manufacturing.
b ) If there's nothing to build and supported shipyard is open then route 100% to the shipyard.
c) If the supported shipyard is open and set to "mobilize" then route 100% to the shipyard even if there's something in the build queue.
d) If there's something to build and supported shipyard is open but not set to "mobilize" then route 50% to building the improvement and 50% to the shipyard.
e) If the supported shipyard is closed then route 100% to planetary improvements (like it does now).
- The governor can, of course, be turned off allowing you to handle it manually. This is for those unforeseen cases where you need to do something different. Or just want to do it yourself.
Now, the above is just me, but I'm sure it could be modified to support other ideas or generalized to cover more strategical options in the specializing game. A really nice solution would allow you to configure the governor to have different values for the settings and different parameter values for the triggering situations. Or even configure whole new planetary categories and what their specialization Focus means.
Honestly the per planet setting could go and be replaced by proper planetary governors provided these governors have reasonable splits setup. Most of the time I set the global to a 60/40 or 70/30 production/research split with 100% social manufacturing. I only use a custom setting for economy worlds, worlds sponsoring a shipyard, and worlds I designate as a specific capital will get a custom setting but even that is starting to get into micro from hell when your planet count starts to get high.
I usually set my production wheel so i finish a building in 1 Turn,
so if i build a basic factory i set it to 30.1 Manufacturing, rest will go to research
and if needed a little bit to wealth.
Later i will put the wheel so that i finish a ship in 1 turn,
rest is the same as above.
I think we still need a way to focus planets or else getting a new colony going will take forever. There should also be some value in specialising a planets buildings. Prehaps hide the wheel and add a production/research/money focus option that would set the wheel to 60/20/20.
I do like the idea of keeping us from 100% focusing planets though, it would give new purpose to smaller hull sizes since they would be an ideal way to spend the production of your non production planets. It would also make building upgrades better imo, right now I mostly ignore the later ones but if the planets had production that would otherwise go to waste those upgrades would have more value.
We need the per planet management screen and I would prefer it be another prod wheel and slider for UI consistency. The system has to work for tiny empires, too. I see individual planet settings as the only way to effectively do that.
I think some of the governors-based ideas are great, but I am not going to choose. I do have high expectations for Stardock on this subject. I am not playing immense maps yet because I am waiting for empire management to become a much better experience. Dev stream said tools are coming in 1.3. We will see. I try not to be a complainer on these boards, but this is a subject I am ready to be picky about.
not seeing the micromanagement issue. In galactic civilizations 2 the civilization sliders were one of the best parts. Giving citizens gifts to help them breed. The approval taxation is missing in three. If anything micro is easier here. I'm. For keeping the per planet wheel.
city planet moot point. The best thing I've seen for this civilization done away with is citizen management. Where you could have your citizens work plots of land, or specialize them for certain jobs. Civilization gets a minus for removing this, and removing my spending sliders. Call to power was a little better in this than civilization in letting you put citizens in buildings to multiply bonuses. Actually I never liked automating my governors, but this would Eliminate wining about micromanagement which isn't. There. Civilization gets a minus for removing spending allocation.
I want it to stay: https://youtu.be/JF8BRvqGCNs
Then you are playing the game vastly differently than I am. Specializing most or all planets and trying to approach max production means you need to change your allocations any time you research a building upgrade, then back after the upgrades complete, which happens on different turns for different planets. Same when you want to rush ships, research, or wealth. Task one is to identify which planets need allocation changes, as not all do. That takes some time since the planet list is long and not sortable by production allocation. Each time you change an allocation for a planet it takes about 20 seconds, first to identify what the allocation should be for the given planet, then the 5 to 10 clicks to get the settings right. When you have dozens of planets, that is a time-consuming and repetitive task that could be alleviated with clever UI additions. Fortunately the devs recognize the micromanagement issue, and are hoping to resolve it.
I guess I am as far as palnets go I only have to change the wheel twice. Once to adjust with no spending twice to specialize. It's hard to get above 20. I prefer 48. Wether we are talking adjusting the planet wheel 40 or 96 times a game is. 1500 turns or something like that. Not even once per turn. As far as global that needs to change when you run out of money. Every time you get a lot of money from anolies, and when that runs out. Twice every time. Unless you don't. Spend your starting cash that never runs out.
I see your problem eviator, but really I don't see why you need to go to that extreme in eeking out every single point of manufacturing so each and every one isn't wasted.It's really not necessary, and although the game allows it, I don't think it should. A minimum number of turns between altering each planet would be good, maybe 5 or 10 turns to prevent 'exploiting' the wheel.
I do think the template idea is a good one though and there really aren't a lot of templates I'd use even with a large number of planets.A Large map is currently as large as I go with uncommon planets, so generally I only have less than 10 planets, which is manageable.
I'm. On insane abundant
Well I agree it's not necessary. There is a degree of challenge and fun in trying to be the ultimate civilization manager. The game allows one to do it, so as long as that is the case the devs should make that as painless as they can. The speed bump to being a great civ manager should not be tedium or UI, it should be knowlegde and skill.
Keep the slider and remove the micro by doing this:
Create "classes" of sliders.
Example: I would create:
I can then assign a new planet the New Colony class right away and forget about it. When it's "baked", i can then set it to some other class, say "Research Planet", and go on with life.
If something comes up, like war breaks out, i can globally change the sliders and thus change the output of the entire empire in just a few seconds.
Technnical bonus: this is really easy to implement, because GC3 already does this! Essentially the global slider is a "class", but it's currently the only option. You would just have to make more assignable options. A few small changes to the code and a some UI work and ba-da-bing you're done. You can even keep the option to have planets have a unique slider to keep micromanagers happy.
I enjoy your posts, admiralWillyWilber.
to all: the wheel is a must. I think a reasonable balance can be found, you just need to let go of some of your hangups about wastage... how long do you think you can keep caring anyway? You will either burn out on the entire game you are on, or just let it go. there ARE numerous potential improvements to management that can be made, that would cause this to be less of an issue, but I'm keeping it to myself until I'm ready to write my full review. (I guess it's revealed that it shall be a review-proposal rather than simply a review of the game)
The most obvious, and I think most elegant answer would be to have the client calculate planetary production wasteage, ie if you are paying for 3.9 turns where it's telling you "done in 3"... and it's simple to implement, like show a red flashing blob in your planet list next to "waste exceeds x" or optionally have a pre-filtered list pop up when next turn is clicked. algebra is trivial to implement, that's the beauty of it. of course it's not NEARLY as glee-inducing as hacking off a current feature, so no I'm not surprised a dev would bring it up.
There's no waste, the production is saved for the next thing in the queue.
As to the wheel... I'd like to see the ability to define such templates, combined with the ability to 'tag' planets into groups. Then I could change the group setting as required, so when I discover a new research building I can just set all research planets to 100% manu for 10 turns and then put them all back to 100% research.
Governors: War, Social, Research, Economy, Influence, Growth, and Balanced.
You build improvements, the governor manages those improvements in the most optimal way possible.
Probably don't need the growth and Influence governor. Just set to Social, and queue the right project when the building queue is finished.
The main thing is, the govs only run production. They don't build anything.
I can see an advantage to have a wheel for types of specialized planets.
I now can.see a problem with loading a pre que with adjancemcie bonuses
Personally I'm not sold on having a per-planet wheel. The reason being, that everyone wants it (seemingly) so they can specialize their planets. But specializing planets should be done by building the correct buildings.
The wheel per planet allows you to optimize planets on the fly with no loss. I find it removes choice. Factories are factories, labs are labs. If you put the wrong thing on your planets... well hopefully my bombardment will nicely flatten the area for new developments.
I'm all for something better, but I currently think removing this, and then putting their efforts into Diplomacy/AI and general bugs will yield a much more fun game faster.
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