I'm playing on Insane/Abundant with Nassie's mod that changes LEP to -0.2 Money/Planet. Currently on about 120 colonies, running a deficit of -700 credits/turn despite dozens of marketplace worlds. Still expanding.
To finance my deficit, I've been taking full advantage of comparative advantage: I'm better at specializing my worlds (especially my research worlds) whereas the AI gets massive economic bonuses due to being on God-like difficulty. Consequently for the last 30 turns or so I've been trading my research and resources to the AI for money to stave off bankruptcy and to finance further expansion. In other words, even with the unrefined tools currently like the trading screen, I'm mimicking a modern day economy with debt financing.
Is there a way to extend this economic concept with interstellar stock markets, interest rates, and bonds? Is it possible to expand the economic aspects of the game where it's possible to create complex economical systems BETWEEN multiple nations? To make Gal Civ III sort of like Eve Online (where war is a big part, but secondary to economic growth?).
Stardock already has things like Offworld Trading Company. They already have games that model economics. So why not extend it to Gal Civ III and make its economic system more complex and similar to Eve Online or real-world economies?
The fun part about Gal Civ III is economic growth and management. The whole "war" part is sort of boring. War should be of secondary importance compared to economics. Violence is the first resort of losers.
I agree with your point of view. I personally always play GalCiv as an "empire builder." I seldom go to war. I prefer economics, research and world building. I'd love for the economic suggestions you've made to come to fruition.
Running the Galaxy like the US of A
If they shift Strategic Resources from the schema to an XML list, so that we can mod it, then I already have detailed plans for how to mod in an advanced industrial economy, complete with mutli-stage goods conversion - so it takes raw durantium, combines it with other raw materials to form 'Durasteel', then uses the durasteel to make hulls or to use as raw material for converting into still more complex stuff. There's no real reason why GC3 couldn't make an advanced industrial economics sim as complex as, say, Victoria 2, if we wanted it to, provided they just shift the resource list from the Schema to an XML list file.
No idea how to make the AI understand it, though. As noted elsewhere, the economic AI is presently very weak. Making the economic game more complex would basically murder it presently. The main reason I removed the durantium cost of hulls in IAB was because the AI simply didn't understand it.
re the cost, I've seen you post how sometimes it was able to ignore it. in a mod I made for gc2, I multiplied hp/damage/defenses by 10 to allow for more gradiance (yes there was the decimal point option I know) & had to modify every one of the race names from say "Terran" to "-Terran-" so they would stop building old model ships with useless hp/defense/offense pulled from umm... a umm... stored/saved design(?), it's been a few years. it might be something similar. Like you mentioned, I don't think the ai will "understand" that it needs x to get y for z & would need to be led that way regardless of need similar to how the drengin are led in the tech tree.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
