From the thread below I understand it's rather soon:

https://forums.galciv3.com/492793/page/1/#replies

I like the slow down to colony rush because, as Frogboy said well, the rush is generally mindless and about getting the most planets--who cares if they are good or not. I like to play wide empires sometimes--but I would love for it to be possible to play tall. And this seems to be a step in that direction, as does the introduction of artifacts.

Are there other changes that will help with creating a tall empire? For example, are there tech tree changes you can elaborate on that will influence a civ's direction (tall or wide)?

Also, with the changes to population growth, will there be changes to some of the population-related mercenaries (and for that matter, are mercenaries ever going to be rebalanced?) or ideology choices? I could see a free 5 population colony ship as a major advantage early game--or +2 population per colony as likewise a huge--perhaps overpowered--boon.

Just some thoughts.

Looking forward to the expansion!

This approach ignores the other variables at play; spatial/geographic considerations, borders, influence, resources, position on the map. Colonization isn't just about raw production for an empire; that's an overly simplistic view. There's a strategy involved - at least for some of us who have put 1600+ hours into your game Frog.  

Where am I on the galactic map? Which direction do I want to focus colonization efforts toward? Am I near a wall or the center? Is a hostile faction close by (thus shared borders will become an issue)? Does it make more sense to focus survey and colony ships in one direction or another? It usually does, especially to put some distance between you and any hostile factions (which is one reason Eyes of the Universe is so valuable). Geography often matters and this is something that, until now, has given the game a lot of replay value. Never having the same map twice, and having the map matter, has been a fun factor. 

Planet quality was already important when it came to prioritizing colonization efforts; you want the Precursor worlds before anything else; food takes priority for a biological race; certain resources (Epimethius Pollen, Armor Spice) can make one planet more favorable than another. 

But at the end of all of this, it's still basic math. Real estate is finite and you don't want to give away worlds to other factions. And you especially don't want to give away worlds inside your "borders" to other factions. That's where the geography comes into play. Leaving those worlds to other factions, because now the population has been nerfed, and now you end up with worlds mixed together, borders smashed all over the place, a lot more anger, influence is a total P.I.T.A.... it's messy and frustrating (not fun, just to be clear). 

There's absolutely NOTHING fun about staring at an uncolonized world in your "borders" that you cannot colonize because of what really amount to artificial restraints. Nothing fun about any way you slice that. 

The idea that it should be a superior strategy to ignore worlds and not colonize them and thus allow other factions to colonize them flies in the face of math, logic and reason. 

You can play with elements that make one planet more desirable than another, but you can't escape the math or geography of the real estate.

In the end - colonization is a zero-sum game. You can make some planets more desirable than others, but it's still a zero-sum game, and any person with a modicum of thinking skills is intuitively going to understand that and want to colonize as many planets as possible. 

To not do that flies in the face of reason.  

If that is the sole reason for nerfing the colony rush the way you have, why on earth would you not reduce the RP?

        <GlobalTriggers>
            <OnEvent>OnColonisePlanet</OnEvent>
            <Target>
                <TargetType>Planet</TargetType>
            </Target>
            <RandomDurationMin>15</RandomDurationMin>
            <RandomDurationMax>25</RandomDurationMax>
            <Modifier>
                <EffectType>ProductionPoints</EffectType>
                <Target>
                    <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
                </Target>
                <BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
                <Value>-0.75</Value>
            </Modifier>
        </GlobalTriggers>

So simple. Yes I hate the idea of the way the game seems to be going for the next expansion in regards to explore and expand. I am a simple guy, simple solutions usually work the best.

There are three ways to solve the "mindless colony rush":

1) Make most planets uninhabitable without improved colonization technology. This makes the initial colony rush short and sweet, then empires pivot to researching colonization techs to get otherwise uninhabitable worlds. This can spread the colonization phase well into the late game. It also makes the mid game more interesting because you have to balance continued colonization efforts with not getting blown up.

2) Racial Preference. If planet environment was a spectrum instead of distinct "good" or "bad", then each race could have it's own preferred environmental niche. This makes colonization a non-zero-sum game.

3) Danger. GC3 splits colonization and warfare into two more or less distinct phases. That's bad. Unbridled colonization has no consequences. If there were bad guys with lasers in the early game, blindly sending out colony ships everywhere would get you into big trouble. I thought the original Master of Orion did a good job of this, where colonization was more toothy and dangerous.

#1 is mostly changing some ratios, yes, but also requires making those late-game colonizations more meaningful. They need to be worth your time.

#3 is not about more pirates. It's about making military options meaningful in the first few turns. Maybe i can't colonize Tau Ceti just yet, but i can shoot you full of holes if you try to settle it first. Or space monsters guard a planet. Or whatever, just... more pew pew. Right now the game is all about turtling until Just The Right Time. I wish it was more of a knife fight from the get-go.

In the original MoO, colonizing in the first few turns is dicey because: 1) Fleets are armed right from the beginning, 2) You can invade planets immediately. Together that means that colony ships get shot down and fledgling colonies are easily swiped if you don't provide air and ground defense. In GC3, you have to research Invasion technology first which means players can colonize with impunity.

#2 would indeed require retooling the system, albeit not a huge change. Basically, each planet exists on a spectrum of adaptation and each race has a preferred spot on the spectrum at which it performs best. That way, you're race's garbage planet is my race's goldmine. This instantly creates dynamism in the galaxy because we not all simply competing for the same resources.

If I play an aquatic race and you play a land-lubber, I know that we are not competing in the same space, so it's okay to relax and be good neighbors. Meanwhile the Torians next door live in the same niche i do, so i need to find a way to "take care of them".

mines- even more necessary with greater distance between planets

Huge aid for any strategy , Isolationists and Pacifists.. defend your territory without declaring war ! Make the mines formidable !

1. Deploy and Remove

**** the minelayer (constructor ship with mine units) would have to expend a unit to lay a mine in a hex and likewise to remove it the sweeper (constructor )would have to expend a removal unit it or sacrifice a ship or two to eliminate it... a special sensor (or SPIDER citizen) is  necessary to detect the mines would make the constructor so armed unique ***********

2. effects.. damage

A, B and C strength based on tech level researched with radial effect

a frontier that ships invading take damage depending on the strength of mines or type, chance of damaging certain ship systems like the warp drive etc.. other random effects

invisible to the unfriendly force and detectable with minesweepers , detonates on non-allied or non-friendly ships

mine once layed in a hex, represent a field affecting adjacent hexes as well , lay one every other hex to make your perimeter ,  with limitations on proximity and making enemies if placed too close to other races

3. purpose..defense...keep out trespassers

when it is not our turn - we dont want to be ravaged !!

prevent a wild transport from wreaking havoc.

used to Isolate a resource or planet until it can be colonized , setting up bases , influence , camping out in your space with attackers

stop ships flying right through your space without penalty. .

Defending your commonwealths and allies too !!

----------extra--------------------

The pirates could defend their bases too.

Just imagine putting a minelayer on auto to lay a minefield around your system !!!

How does that sound ?

JJ

deleted

JJ,

I can understand the in-game reasons for wanting separate Ages, but I also disagree with that kind of limitation, so I changed them... all better now. The parameters are set in TechAgeDefs.xml in the Game folder; mine are set to zero.

Also, taking credit for proposing stargates in GalCiv? Karma -1.  

Firstly... using "ALL CAPS" does not enhance your argument. It emphasizes, but does not clarify. Or rather, it clarifies your emotional state, not, your ideas. Since your emotional state is irrelevant as to whether your ideas have merit... it doesn't really assist you. I resort to all caps on occasion, many of us do, but I also recognize it for what it is... a vice, not a virtue. I highly recommend that people use said vice sparingly... at this point (JJ) your usage is so frequent, it is actually detracting from your points.

Secondly. Space mines are no different than say... orbital defense platforms, or any of a myriad possible ways of passively defending a planet or location. Space mines as a specific idea though... are generally not favored by people as a "Sensible" concept because space is truly vast and it is presumed that most mine fields would not be mobile. 

But JJ, your concept has some merit... it would be nice if we had a passive and powerful method for defending our colonies other than ships..... which in my opinion is what Starbases ought to be able to do. However, its largely irrelevant... a minefield... starbase... or a ship... they all get built by production... it just a matter of how much of that production got spent on an engine.

So you could easily build a spaceship with no engines, fill it with weapons, shove it in orbit... and there you go... you have your minefield.

Thirdly, I think Hypergates will be cool, and instantaneous travel for them would probably just be too good... maybe VERY late game? Also perhaps we will get lucky and the Hypergate speed will be scaled by map size. Personally I'd love to see Hypergates be a type of Starbase, complete with upgrades for them, including speed boosts, defenses, etc. If anything perhaps they should replace military Starbases because such an important piece of infrastructure is well worth building into a fortress... it is afterall the most likely place where friendly reinforcements can come from and therefore would be held at all costs.

Fourthly, I think the whole debate about "What players want" is hilarious because none of us has any data about that. I can remember players unloading a lot of hate about the tech tree and its different mutually exclusive technologies... there was a pretty successful and popular mod that got rid of those for quite some time. It doesn't make any sense for technology to be mutually exclusive ... learning how to make ships have more HP does not stop me from learning how to build those ships more efficiently. What could be mutually exclusive is execution... perhaps I cannot apply what I learned about making ships with more HP and keep them efficient to build... but once I've learned both I would have the choice to apply one or the other, as needed. This does not happen... for the most part "learning" and "applying" have been integrated making this choice difficult to realize in-game. Ship components can be an exception to this notably, as can structures.

Ideas that don't make much sense automatically get a down-vote for me, and they need to be very fun, exciting, or thematic to make up for it. This feature is not particularly fun or thematic and so I look forward to it disappearing.

Fifthly, I find it funny how GalCiv treats population and production, and people have made some very good points about population and housing... but production... why does everyone assume more people = more production? It's not going to in real life for much longer (historically speaking) in my opinion. For example... the direct production of food could once be easily linked to the exact number of people farming... this isn't really the case any more, because tools, animal labor, automation, genetic engineering (better crops) continue to mess with this equation. Right now, you could consolidate every mass-farming institution in the mid-west United States into a single corporation, fund its automation, and drastically reduce the number of human beings involved in the process of making that food and I'd wager it'd be enough to feed the entire planet.

Military force too, has for most of human history been strongly linked to population scales... but again, technology weakens this link. Today we are the cusp of automating war to a degree not seen before, the United States is relying more and more on drones and less and less on pilots in a plane. One drone-pilot can manage multiple drones potentially, and very little stops us from fully automating such weapons. Perhaps unwisely to both our material and moral peril, but that hasn't ever really stopped us has it?

Population does not automatically = production anymore, or it won't in the future when far greater degrees of automation are available. Population can also be seen as a great liability... population's correlation with production is weakening, but its correlation with consumption is only increasing. Consumption leads to less reserves of important resources, greater strain on limited facilities, more people to police... China, both today and in its long history, has long had to spend an enormous amount of effort controlling and safeguarding its populace... historically speaking, it has been quite a rebellious place. The United States is eating/consuming far more than a fair allotment of the earth's resources and constantly fears upsets in global status quo as a result, making it vulnerable to relatively small events across the entire planet.

If people are not producers, but they are consumers... what purpose do they serve? Well don't worry, they still have some purpose and they still produce something, but I'd argue that they have limits to those things. A colony is likely weak if it only has a 1000 people, but it likely isn't gaining very much once it has a million or ten million people... or say a billion... at some point though, it's going to capsize from a boon to a burden. They don't perform much manual labor, intellectual labor is only so useful (how many "Einsteins per capita" do you realistically get, need, or can't simulate with AI?) and they eventually can start causing a significant drain on resources that could otherwise be spent on infrastructure, military strength, or important projects. Or they get so numerous they cause serious climate problems, political problems, or police problems.

The point is... not that I am perfectly "Right" or such, but that there is plenty of room to consider changing the formulas of population vs production based on these reasons. I'd make a case that colonies should have very low population, a certain flat rate of industrial development based on tech and what you send those people with. The population would still be the primary mover for generating wealth and research, so you still need them to grow.

This would then mean that we could have a very slow growing population (which arguably should be more vulnerable to bombardment, disease, random events, etc.)... still be able to create the level of industry we are used to as players, but suffer a research and economic penalty for going very wide very quickly. Super heavily populated planets should start suffering industrial decline as more and more resources go into keeping the consumers happy, and over-taxing the local resources should have climate/pollution impact. Mitigate these with racial traits and technologies as needed... but the real challenge isn't going to be "how do I get enough people" it is going to be "how do I control this many people... this far away, and how do I stop the locusts (people) from eating all the stuff I need to build to protect their sorry assess".

 I think taking a deeper look at population in this way, could lead to a much more sensible set of game features for building Wide and building Tall. Tall empires would focus on that automation, limiting population and consumption, giving them more resources per planet to work with for building orbital constructs, ships, drone armies, Dyson spheres, etc. Wide empires would focus on technologies that allow them to claim more planets, further away, and faster.

The wide empire can win, if it successfully claims more territory and then survives long enough to develop that territory "tall" similar to how the game plays currently. The Tall empire wins, by staying small until it has achieved an advantage in tech and resources and decides to strike out and attack the wide empires when they are still vulnerable.

Talls still become Wides in the long run. That is unavoidable unless you allow for win conditions like "I achieved ascendancy and don't care about material life! Wooo" or "I researched winning!" or "I magically made everyone love me to death, they committed suicide to honor my glory and I win".

Ok... and you can have those in your game they can be thematic, but lets be clear... there is always "I won because I had the military strength and industrial production, technology, and happiness to avoid rebellions and exterminate my opponents directly or indirectly." AKA ... not a super-narrow arbitrary win condition. Domination.

I support introducing Tall strategies, not because they stay tall, but because they give a great variety in play style for the early to mid game... and they can represent a fun challenge (if done right) to those of us who play wide empires early on. Colony rushing is still going to be a thing, its just going to leave your empire more vulnerable to tall empires for a period of time while you catch up. That sounds like a fun challenge that can and should be explored.

Finally... none of that matters if they don't fix Ship Roles or Carriers, or Commanders, and other stuff, because I can always defeat the enemy ships... always. Galactic Civilization means very little if we do not have a working/kinda-fair model of its antithesis:

WAR

I informed you, and did so as kindly as I know how to. 

PM Sent.