barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

Large Empire Penalty and other game ideas

Generally I like the direction the game development is going but one of the changes early on might still need to be modified again unless I am missing something.

In Beta 6 patch the Large Empire Penalty was changed from a flat penalty per planet to a percentage. Since that happened I tend to focus on playing races with the Patriotic race ability to avoid having to deal with it. It is a fairly common theme in 4X games to insist on some kind of penalty like this. I read some of the posts about how to deal with this like this one:

https://forums.galciv3.com/465192/page/1/#3548856

I know admits the need to tweak a bunch of other things with the game - this is hardly a major problem - switch to patriotic and ignore. But I wanted to get additional feedback and ideas on ways to tweak this change to get a more reasonable large empire penalty - say one that grows beyond a certain limit based on map size or requiring additional buildings (regional Capitals, etc) or Techs to deal with.

Another thing that I like to change by modifying the game XML files is to allow economic star bases to also mine by eliminating the restrictions to where you can place mining rings (maybe this makes sense only for economic - planet star bases). Similarly maybe it be nice to have a military ring on the same star base you use for planets.

I know there been some discussion about changing the six hex distance requirement between starbases but this can be changed easily by changing the XML files on individual basis - currently I normally don't spam star bases around planets except mid game around planet clusters.

One of the things I would like to change is the ability to upgrade shipyards - maybe only add one level of defense or offensive weapons or add hitpoints. I see in Opt-in 1.02 the pirate star bases now start with 300 hit points making them much more difficult to take out initially.

Keep up the good work Stardock - Galactic Civilizations 3 is great game only getting better.

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Lucky_Jack

Join Date 01/2002

+62

When playing any of the larger galaxy sizes I find it imperative to play a faction that has the Patriotic ability. IMO the LEP is overwhelming on larger maps. The Patriotic attribute eliminates the LEP entirely, but this feels overwhelming as well. Large empires always should have some exposure to graft and/or corruption, but to this extreme?

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I am convinced that the AI cheats and is not affected by things that the player suffers, like discontent. The AI also seems to play like an AI programmed for the task of "making the player lose" rather than being programmed to act like a space-faring civilization. I also question how the AI's even on Beginner can churn out tons of builders, colonizers, etc... yet still do other things. I'm playing now and I can only really do one thing at a time because the mechanics don't allow me to do more than one thing. For example, I can colonize planets but am not allowed to have space stations, I can build Entertainment Centers to keep the population happy but then I won't be allowed to have shipyards, etc...

I find that using high number of opponents doesn't work because the game does not have the resources(planets, systems, etc...) to support them. I'm playing with 40 factions with Insane Galaxy Size, Abundant Systems, Habitable Planets, etc... and there just isn't enough space and resources to go around, everyone has a couple of systems and spends so much time competing for things that you can only have one but lose all the others. For example, you want to secure systems for habitation so you have to rush colonization, but then everyone claims all the resources and artefacts and plops stations in-between all your worlds creating a heinous patchwork of territories. This also results in not enough Ideology Points early game. And all of this was on BEGINNER.

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WRT the LEP, I reduced it from -0.2 to -0.07. I might increase it to -0.1.

I tend to play insane maps with lots of planets - -0.2 was ridiculous, the AI and the player will almost never meet, because you need to have a shit ton of approval relics or research to deal with the LEP. -0.07 is much better, but makes approval too easy to deal with. No LEP means the AIs run super rampant when they have the growth bonuses and other cheats.

The best solution would be an LEP that scales with map size, starting at 0.1 for Insane maps and going up from there in not ridiculous quantities.

As far as the pirate bases, they have 150 HP in 1.02, I'm playing it now.

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Quoting kenright,

reply 3

WRT the LEP, I reduced it from -0.2 to -0.07. I might increase it to -0.1.

I tend to play insane maps with lots of planets - -0.2 was ridiculous, the AI and the player will almost never meet, because you need to have a shit ton of approval relics or research to deal with the LEP. -0.07 is much better, but makes approval too easy to deal with. No LEP means the AIs run super rampant when they have the growth bonuses and other cheats.

The best solution would be an LEP that scales with map size, starting at 0.1 for Insane maps and going up from there in not ridiculous quantities.

As far as the pirate bases, they have 150 HP in 1.02, I'm playing it now.

So is it possible to edit a file somewhere which alters things like Empire Approval, Number of Systems and Planets on a map, etc...? Because I'd prefer more planets in an Insane Galaxy, enough for the many factions to have a reasonable amount of territory.

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The LEP is a balance issue, no question about that, and may need to be adjusted.

That said, I have over the years seen many issues like this labelled as game breaking or impossible, only to find that it just took some time to figure out how to succeed in spite of it. So suppose I just say on reasonably dense insane map that a conquest win is impossible. OK, does that mean I cannot maneuver an alliance or a research win, for example? The fact that less than 1% of people playing Galciv3 use that size is a problem here because it means very few people are trying to meet the challenge. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the sheer size of a galaxy-wide empire of this size ought to make total occupation impossible? Last I checked nobody ever conquered the entire civilized Earth, despite the Red Scare and Ghengis Khan, and "the sun never sets on the British Empire".

Oh well, I suppose I should stifle until I actually do manage a win on a moderately dense insane map. But all I am saying is that all we know (likely) is that the tactics that allow one to steamroll on large or huge won't work on insane. Personally I would like to see something qualitatively different about big galaxies, not just a quantitative difference.

The OP is probably right, and I would guess that the LEP will be adjusted. Just trying to give it a chance to percolate a bit first.

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most of the editable game setting XML files are located in your game folder under ..\data\data subdirectory

You can change the number of planets generated per galaxy size in MapSetupDefs.xml

for references see:

https://forums.galciv3.com/466009/page/1/

There is a initial planet setup file PlanetDef.xml that allows you to change the initial size of various starting planets

Improvementx.xls allows you to modify the abilities of the basic planetary improvements

Changing any of the XML files only affects future new games generally not the current or past same games.

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@Lord_Proteus Gal Civ and most other games nowadays use XML files for parameters and data. It's very easy to modify. Hell, if you had the desire to you could go through each of the XML files, look for the bad grammar and misspellings and fix all of them in your game. You can modify just about everything that isn't hard coded into the game.

You can modify the maximum number of systems/habitable planets (Insane or whatever it's called has a max of 600 habitable planets) and a few other parameters, and can even add new modifiers (like the person who changed the way sensor range worked by scaling it to universe size)

As far as conquest on the largest maps, it will only be possible if you can raze planets or abandon them. And sure, no one in history conquered the world (though Britain did control ~25% of the world's surface area - pretty impressive for such a tiny island) but no one's developed warp drives either.

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Yes, please address the large empire penalty. I feel compelled to play with Patriotic on all my races due in part to the LEP, but also because approval is so important. I don't want them to nerf Patriotic necessarily, but LEP needs to be changed.

It's not hard to get 20 colonies in any size map, which is -4 approval, which by itself would require a tech to overcome (+4 approval from content citizens). Of course some maps can get much higher than 20...which makes conquering new planets ridiculously hard to defend and grow without Patriotic.

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