Farming
I'm not liking the farming mechanic. It seemed like a good idea on paper but in practice, it's just tedious and exploitive. Here's how I'd like to see it work:
Some planets would have a Arable land tile including all starting planets. Building on these tiles produces food.
The tech tree would have a path for players who want to get the most out of those resources to get a lot of food. The arable land resource be destructable -- you can destroy it (like you can any resource btw) to put something else there. This would make food take its rightful place as an important strategic resource rather than one that is simply produced by min/maxing.
What are your thoughts?
Far better than making the system even more awkward.
That's to simple! The food management is one part of the tactical range and depth of this and the tactical possibilities are the reason why we love this game. If you cancel those parts of strategy possibilities you don't have to play a strategy game like this. A mobile app would than enough!
Just got this idea:
Food production could come with Terraforming ?
This would be easier for the AI.
Abandon tiles on the planet for food. Pay a fee to increase farming output without graphical representation on the planet's surface.
Can we see the code you are working with for the AI as concerns farms and cities. Perhaps someone in the community could help with a solution.
Ok, as someone else said, even in todays tech we can pretty much grow food anywhere.
A planets base population should be based on it's class, this is a logical factor. Things like type of planet may alter this base.
So...
This would allow those who want to focus on a food planet to be able to increase easily, while AI will naturally increase things by just placing improvements.
Non-carbon based life forms would get more food/pop from things like factories.
Planet types may also give base bonuses to tiles, so a water planet would likely produce more food than a dersert planet.
Easy math example:
If we take an average planet class/size of 8 and say it's base population is 4. Then each tile basically gives .5 food. I can place a farm which then either adds to (or even multiplies) the amount of food, thus increasing the population. I then build a park (moral increase), which has gardens and such and that may give a .6 food per tile. I add a factory and that give 0.0 food(for carbon based life). I then improve the factory which gives the tile another -.1 food (bigger more polution, etc). So when I'm done improving a factory, the base tile may be not producing any food bonus.
If you want to make the AI smarter, you have to make the game dumber.
This is truth, because most of the AI today requires scripting. And scripting for dumb tasks is much easier than scripting for complex ones.
If you actually want smart AI that can handle complex features you need neural networks and back-propagation (i.e. guess and check).
Okay, so if you're wanting a Food System that both AI and Humans can use equally well, then it seems to me that Food needs to be 100% predictable ie an If Population = X Than Food Production = X * 1 type thing. Remove the basic level of "must make food or my people will starve". Your folks will not starve to death if you don't build Farms. But if you do choose to build Farms, you make more Food for less money. So your population growth remains the same but your Treasury goes down by a smaller amount. Any excess food you get from your Farms becomes a resource that you can either Keep as a guard for Droughts, Disease etc (I'm sure there's a few Mega Events/random events that talk about Droughts and Disease but they could be improved to have a direct impact on Population, Morale and Food Production) or Sell it to another civilization/the Galactic Market.
Max Pop = Food x 1 Billion basically.
If it still works this way in GC3, then changing how food is produced would be a VERY BAD IDEA as it would make it difficult to control a planet's population limit. This, itself wouldn't be a problem, except that it effects approval.
So I'm wondering what size map and planet density everyone plays at and your opinion on food systems.
Cuz for me I try to play with fewer planets available so I won't have to manage too many colonies. Ideally like ten. Now I'm fine with the food system, but others have found it tedious. I suspect the difference might be because with fewer planets they can all be important and I still need to make decisions on where farms should be, while someone with more planets likely either has a planet with a food bonus, or planets with so little value they can cover several in farms and forget about them.
So am I right about this?
You'd be right inasmuch as "the more planets you have, the more things you have to think about." It's just as much micromanaging to decide not to put the farm on Planet 47 as it is to put the farm on Planet 47. Which implies that the current system lends itself better to not having too many colonies so there's not much choice to make (seems something someone following a tall strategy would do) than having as many colonies as you can colonize before everyone else does (wide strategy like).
All this talk about food etc and I haven't seen much discussion about the powers of Citizens versus upgrading Buildings in this or any thread. I haven't really done any testing of Citizen v Building myself (and this is probably a much wider and deeper discussion than frogboy and co want on this thread, sorry in advance if it veers madly off course!), but which is a bigger driver ultimately of whatever area - military, research etc? If Farmers - to use this thread's subject - actually have a bigger impact on food production when they're maxed out than buildings and it's shown that the AI looks at it's pretty Citizens and does a lot of ummming and ahhhing and not much actual proper using of them, that might be what needs looking at.
Or are they both pretty even?
Anyone else concerned that we are this far in the game and seriously discussing changing one of the fundamentals of gameplay?
This feels like a GCIV discussion, not an "update" to GC3
Now that I'm aware of it, I'm liking the farming mechanic. I wouldn't change it (at least for carbons and aquatics. Haven't tried the other two yet).
I've personally not had any real issues with the food system as it stands. I like to play Aquatic a good portion of the time, and the long road to awesome farms is a nice part of the challenge.
On the other hand, if there are to be limited tiles which produce food from the start, and only these can become farms, it seems that food will become a lot more strategic, and that is not a bad thing.
(Fellow Aquatic! Hello there brother!)
Actually, I don't think it becomes a lot more strategic. A layer of strategy already exists, in that you have to choose what planets are focusing on food, and what % of that planet is going to be put to food use. And should non-food planets toss some farms down until the primary food planets take off?
Adding agricultural tiles (or whatever they would be called) removes all of those choices, and just says: plant a farm here. The only strategy added is 'do I need to/should I go to war to gain some agri tiles?
Personally, I wouldn't decide to go to war over some agri tiles. I'm too much a roleplayer. But I expect there would be plenty of folks who do a restart if they didn't have enough agri tiles in their first cluster. And that is a negative. So Froglad would probably auto-give a couple of agri tiles to every capital city. Which then removes a layer of strategy in planning out your capital city - less free tiles to choose from.
No, I'm just not seeing the upside to this. I think Frogboy just had a late night smoking some weed and pondering. For me, as is, the current food mechanic makes this version of GC the most fun version yet. I'd rather he put his energy into something else. I just don't know what at the moment. I'm really liking the game right now. I'm afraid something new will break it (of course, I was thinking the same thing prior to Crusade, too).
(indeed I am fellow aquatic, my favorite race is aquatic slavers, so first contact is often delicious)
Regardless, I trust Frogboy to make any new mechanics both fun and strategic. If it were not Frog and Stardock, I'd maybe be worried. I'm prepared to wait for several patches until it is balanced correctly.
I still say the more important point is that food 'magically' appears on different planets. I feel you should be able to blockade a planet and prevent food from getting there. You don't have to have "food ships" as someone suggested, just something like "if there isn't a route from the main supply grid to a planet, it gets no food." Of course, that requires a supply grid, but if you want to have the "private sector" model for moving stuff about, you kind of need that anyway.
My apologies if this has already been covered. I've spent several months in a cranial-rectal inversion.
cranial-rectal inversion.
Will this be a new invasion technique, frogboy?
The "food ship" thing was my idea but, of course, there's simpler ways of achieving the same thing. Be interesting to see if any if our blockade/starve the enemy ideas end up being used.
Been playing v3.0 beta. I really like the mechanic for food in this version.
There is something that bugs me with it though. I am guessing the devs are using the same system they use to spawn other resources on a planet which makes Arable Land completely random, this is where it bugs me. Traits are not taken into account for the Arable Land. I have seen Desert Worlds (Food Penalty) with a 1/5 to 1/4 of thier tiles taken up by Arable Land, this in its self says the planet is not a Desert planet. Then you get Bread Basket (Food Bonus) worlds where there is no Arable Land whatsoever. The same goes for Precursor Worlds, alot of these are large planets and therefore usualy have Arable Land on them yet suffer a Food penalty.
Its a nice system, just needs tweaking so it does not clash with the other mechanic, Planet Traits.
I was actually surprised to find the Version 3.0 Beta actually fairly enjoyable to play (of course I did "Mod" out a few things on the fly that I wanted changed) but the game has come a long ways since Crusade !!! I have already gone ahead and pre-ordered the Intrigue DLC.
Revisiting my version 3.0 Beta play through today (while some Mods get updated for the Stellaris version 2.02 Beta Update 2), I still have concerns for morale on high population planets with cities but I don't see as much for the 25% population bonus per neighing adjacent Population Bonus Point from adjacent building (Hospitals or Farms). I still concerned for ability to get to high morale levels with needing multiple Morale Buildings and techs (supportive population +1 and Easy to Please +4) plus other factors (Celebrities and Race Traits). Personally I might "MOD" back in recreation starbase modules although there never enough Citizens to have starbases associated with many planets on large and above galaxies.
Since Arable land is just randomly placed farms on the useable tiles on a planet and without regard to planet type, as Horemvore mentions, I like to see the current assignment of arable land tweaked (I still like to place my farms manually but maybe others don't - it could be a galaxy generation option). Maybe limiting how many, if any farms, you can have based on planet type. Or designate certain tiles as suitable for farming but don't force you to build farms on them if you don't want. But I found in my play through with all the tech bonuses I had far more food available than I need if I built Cities on almost every planet, which I hadn't gotten to yet. Every planet doesn't need enough food to have a City. It might be interesting to split cities into Settlement/Town/City/Metroplex progression series to limit food useage and hence population (also addresses morale problem with high population planets)
Yeah Bread Basket planet should be guaranteed to come with Arable land tiles imo.
It may need some modifying but https://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/113 should do the job.
Yeh I was around a lot more when Crusade was first out and knew about the various mods that added increased planetary population buildings. I was hoping Stardock might officially include these buildings in version 3.0 game release. This City progression series also limit population till you have the various morale techs and buildings to properly support very large populations on planets. I am sure Gauntlet will include this feature when he updates his mod for Intrigue DLC.
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