Folks, there are still 2 pretty obvious balance bugs that exist in Crusade-derived versions. These are long-standing, and really annyong that they're still there.
1. Market Center and Shopping Center economic improvements STILL don't provide a +1 wealth adjacency. These are the basic Wealth buildings, and the equivalent Research and Production buildings all have this adjacency. These should have the same kind of adjacency setup; otherwise, Wealth buildings are the only ones which don't benefit from arranging them well, and tend to be scattered around willy-nilly. It's a simple, quick, fix (and I have to re-mod it in XML each release to get it back).
Just add the +1 Wealth Adjacency to each, and dial back the base wealth bonus (from +25%/+30% to +10%/+20%).
2. In the Mercenaries DLC, the RG-278 has a bonus of "+5 to Raw Production". This is LUDICROUSLY over-powered, especially for a tier-1 mercenary, and is completely out-of-balance with all the other mercenaries. Raw Production provides bonuses to Manufacturing, Wealth, AND Research. +5 is waaaaaaay to much.
Either dial this back to +2 to Raw Production, or, better yet (and fitting in better with all the other merc bonuses), change this to +5 to Manufacturing
Guys, really, these should have been fixed ages ago. In Crusade.
so this is what you have to complain about? I appreciate the difficulty of placing market centers to maximize both wealth and pleasure boni.
+5 raw is not that big, if you are good at making a planet rock. Just a nice boost to the early development of that planet.
in other words, move that ship around, make a planet rock, and when all planets rock, park it at your best.
My complaint is that it is a BUG - the behavior of the Wealth improvements is not the same as the other Production & Research improvements, for no discernable purpose. All the basic improvements provide their own type of adjacency bonus, which is the whole point of encouraging people to plan their planet layouts, and one of the Big Selling Points of GC3 (over GC2). Whether or not the wealth improvements should also provide an Approval and possibly a Population adjacency is another discussion, but they absolutely should be providing their own type of improvement adjacency bonus.
Right now, there's little benefit to bothering to plan where to place your Wealth improvements, as they don't cross-reinforce. You can just scatter them willy-nilly. Which goes against the entire point of adjacencies.
As to the RG-278: +5 to raw production provides the equivalent of +5 population, WITHOUT having to worry about morale or anything like that. It's completely unbalanced for a Tier 1 mercenary, and far, far too powerful for the civilization that acquires it. It's literally a cheat.
For comparison, RG-278 provides MORE bonus than The Txlrp, The Starlab, AND Friendly Mike's combined. The latter cost 2700 + 3 different resources, while RG-278 only requires 900 and a single resource type. That's the very definition of an unbalanced ship - massive bonus for very little cost, giving whichever civ that gets it major (unfair) advantage. At a time pretty much all races are limited to a maximum of 6 worlds, RG-278 gives the functional equivalent of 2 fully populated worlds, with ZERO down side.
When the adjacency bonus was first removed, I felt as you do. Now, I have learned that by using some advanced buildings (think Colonial Banks, et al), you can create an economy-boosting powerhouse.
Love how everyone literally misses the point and probably the reason why said things never get fixed.
I have one question:
What does the Market/Shopping Center's building description say it does? Does that match it's function? If Yes, you can't identify that as a bug. If No, it's a bug.
Then regardless you can call it an oversight/miscarriage of justice/whack/dumb/etc.etc.etc.
It's irrelevant for actual wording in the description (since we all know they're not authoritative in the least, and certainly not anything approaching complete). For instance, where does the +1 influence bonus on the Market Centre come from? It's not hinted at anywhere in the description.
It's a design bug - everything else operates this way, and this particular instance doesn't for no reason. It's a bug because it fails to work as expected, given the rest of the game design. Bugs are things that don't work as expected, and the expectation here is that all basic buildings behave the same way: provide a base percent bonus to their type stat, provide a percent bonus to their stat for each level they get, AND provide an adjacency bonus of their stat type.
All other basic buildings do this: manufacturing, research, ship building, morale, and influence. Yet wealth doesn't?
That's an absolute design bug.
Horemvore is correct - you're all failing to address the actual issue raised, and instead talking about completely orthogonal things.
If it works as intended, it is not a bug. You don't have to like it.
The fact that the market center has synergy with entertainment buildings, which are tied directly to taxes (so yes, money) makes the adjacency make sense to me. It is designed with a bit more subtlety than a straight-up percentage bonus.
(edit) in fact, when they took the wealth adjacency off the market center, they changed the Colonial Bank from 1/civ to 1/planet. This more than makes up for it.
There is no point to miss. I disagree that the Market Center adjacency is a bug at all, as it was clearly changed during an update. It makes sense to me, and others.
As far as the Mercenaries, yes. They should be rebalanced. However, I don't see the +5 raw to be all that overpowered. It is a very nice one to have early game, but I can get +5 raw via other means.
It's not working as intended, as that would require an indication thereof. There's no indication whatsoever that this is some kind of intent, and it makes little sense when - as indicated above - literally EVERY OTHER of the 5 don't work this way.
The tooltip text is: "Increases a world's gross Income." For both MarketCenter and ShoppingCenter.
And again this is NOT indicated anywhere. It's just what you infer based on the adjacencies they've given it. Which is why the current setup is a BUG.
No, it doesn't. Colonial Banks are decidedly inferior to what the prior Wealth Adjacency Market Center was. A nice little 3-triangle of Market Centers (with +1 Adjacency) has +6 Adjacency. The same triangle with a Colonial Bank has but +4 Adjacency as it stands now. And the Colonial Bank itself is the same power as a Market Center, and inferior to a Shopping Center. It gets much worse with 4 or more adjacencies. Not to mention that the Colonial Bank is the 5th Wealth tech, and obtainable about the time planets are full built out, so counting on the CB as some sort of compensation for the brokenness that is the MC/SC is just incorrect.
So why the super-special "it's not a bug" treatment for the two introductory Wealth Buildings? When everything else doesn't do that. Why not use (again, like EVERYTHING ELSE) auxiliary wealth buildings for differentiation? Wealth is one of the 4 core stats in the game (Manufacturing, Research, and Morale being the others). It's not anymore different or important or special than those other 3. So why on earth treat it differently.
That people can play around it or adapt their playstyle does not in any way diminish that IT IS A BUG.
As to the +5 Raw.
Name me any way to get +5 raw production, with ZERO moral effects, on any world that isn't incredibly fortunate enough to be surrounded by a massive asteroid field, or which is either your homeworld or a Precursor Factory World that you've built several Approval buildings on. Now, name me any way to do this within the first 50 turns. Now name me a way which you can instant-buy that, for barely more than the cost of 1 introductory building.
A +5 raw boost is massively overpowered, even in late-game, but especially when you can literally buy it right about turn 30, and easily triple the entire output of a planet at that point.
It's even worse on smaller maps, where, due to limits on the total number of planets, you're not going to get more than a half-dozen all game, and won't have more than 3 total when RG-278 is a viable purchase.
In Crusade-based games, with very limited ability to gain raw production through ANY means, +5 is a massive bonus.
And again, it's something that is completely out-of-balance with all other Mercenaries.
These bugs are worthless and weak.Notice some bigger bugs.
Great to know you all love the game so much that you are arguing about what you think is a bug or what you think is by design
I refer you here: https://forums.galciv3.com/488245/galactic-civilization-iii-v30
Just do a search on that page for "Market Center" and it will show you the line where it is clearly intended that way.
It does increase a world's gross income, by 25% + 5% per wealth adjacency coming in.
(EDIT: some of us not only enjoy the game, but have a pretty good knowledge of the design history and when things were changed intentionally)
@Trims2u
Not to pile on, but if only you had a way to change the game play to suit your ideas of it should be. Oh wait, you do. Just create a mod that overrides the behavior. It's so easy for simple improvement changes (Sorry @heromvore) that even I have done it.
It's listed as an explicit change in the change logs, so yes, that's what they intended. It's about, oh, say #30 in importance of the policies and rules that have changed since GCIII 1.0 came out.
As a player since GC1, and with over 3k hours in GCIII, I can't say that I've always agreed with the new changes to game play, but I've been patient and after playing with them for a bit, have seen what the intent was. For the few things I felt didn't fit my play style, I've been willing to make small mods to cover them.
At this point, I'd much rather the company spent their time resources on GCIV or GCIII5.0.
If you need help in creating a module to make those changes, just let me know
Why sorry at me? I missed a patch note for market center is all, and thought it was a bug, I prefered it the old way and have always had it the old way. Everyone misses information now and again.
EDIT:
Yeah really confused as to why that is directed at myself.
Your response never bothered me personally, but it did prompt me to find supporting evidence.
Hopefully Trims2u will admit that he also missed the patch note, and let this go. As said above, it is easy enough to mod the behavior.
Not at you, but in sympathy for your advanced modding efforts. Simple modding changes are easy, harder ones are more painful.
That is was an intentional change does not make it NOT a bug. OK, then, call it a misfeature. Either way, it's something that breaks the overall design of the game, in a way that's neither intuitive nor consistent with the rest of the game.
Notice that nothing was said about the other wealth improvements, and nothing was said about WHY the change was made. That's a big change in design for a single line with ZERO supporting rational. Heck, it's not even in the Balance section, where they talked about how Tourism had been radically redone, and one would expect that major changes to the Economics buildings (and fundamental economics of the game) work would, at minimum, be similarly discussed in Balance. Instead, it's buried at the end of the Change Log. With nothing more than a "we changed it from X to Y."
Notice that none of my other concerns have been addressed: you've all been reduced to arguing that "well, StarDock did it, that makes it fine." @Horemvore is correct: you're all wrapped up in defending that SD did this, without addressing anything about what the change did or why.
So, No, that's not fine. It might have been changed in 3.0 (which, I might add was TWO YEARS AGO), but that doesn't make it OK, because it's a fundamental alteration of the previous design, with no reasoning or balance at all. I've also searched all the archives, and I don't see any discussion of this HUGE change in design anywhere.
On a related note, notice that there was, at one time, a limitation of the Market Center to "one per planet" and the Shopping Center completely deleted. (that happened right around 3.0 as well). Those were "intentional" changes, and plainly were bugs. Just because someone altered a file intentionally, doesn't mean that intention was wrong or mistaken. Thus, it's a bug, and should be fixed.
And that fact that I can mod around it (which I already do) doesn't invalidate the fact it is a bug. If the Disruptor Beam damage was suddenly increased to 10 via a patch in 4.02 with a single 8 word sentence in the ChangeLog, I sincerely doubt that anyone would call this just something to adapt to, or that I should mod my way around the issue. Problems with the fundamental design of the game should never be addressed by "well, you fix it for you" attitudes.
Thankfully, SD doesn't have this attitude.
Your focus on the "bug" semantic is getting ridiculous. Let's move on, shall we...
Agreed. Just because you don't like a change that was made purposefully (along with many other changes in Crusade which changed what came before) doesn't make it a bug. At this point, you are just whining.
Didnt see this before. The change came from players, and ai making a million credits per turn.
I do agree that I would like to see another solution than having adjancencies that are different than the building type.
meh, the synergy between econ and approval works out. +0.25 up to +1.0 (depending on approval building) per approval adjacency means one can have both happiness and cash improved. It did take me a minute to work out the benefits of the new system, back in the "crusade just released" days, but it actually works out pretty well. YMMV, of course, but this is by no means inadequate. Note as well, that both the standard approval buildings, and the Hot Springs line, will both improve Econ as well.
Just to note, I am not happy with all of the adjacency on all of the buildings. My pet peeve is the "social construction only" .. for which there is pretty much only one standard building (barring Slavers) which can take it. I wouldn't care if they had kept Market Centers the same, and I don't mind that it was changed.
It is just ... shoot. How long since dude keeps calling it a bug? And randomly comes back on to cry to the forums again? Dude, you have the mod. Just be happy playing the game, or don't play it, just stop whining.
For that matter, and FAR more important than the MC adjacencies, I'd love for synthetics to have at least one minor building that used population boni
I think you would have social buildings for that, and get social bonuses.
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