Backwards resources sometimes?

what's your treasury?

Brad,

I, too, think I am not getting any benefits from the morale resources. I see morale increases from space junk, morale social projects, and morale techs, just not from the resources. Am I looking for results that aren't intended? With a class 15 planet with a population of 100 million with a morale of 50%, what should the morale of that planet be after building a star base on a morale resource (5% increase)? What should it be for the same planet at the same morale after building the mining baracks upgrade (10%)?

My treasury when it started to drop was in the mid-hundreds (I try to adjust spending up regularly to avoid letting the treasury get too big). I did have an event that dropped me into negative territory but I had come back out of that.

I did exit the program at one point and later started from the saved game and noticed that my treasury was losing money instead of gaining. After it fell into negative, it went back and forth as I adjusted spending down, taxes up, but it finally fell to the around -500 mark, where it's been hovering around -500, sometimes as low as -900, sometimes as high as -300. Constructors on their way to the second and third morale resources (after the initial constructors secured them) may not have arrived until after I noticed morale dropping, but the added mining seemed to have little or no positive effect.

I may have certainly made some other fatal mistake (I had a *lot* of planets--my first gigantic galaxy and planets everywhere, all average aliens, two evil, two good, one neutral) and everybody who hadn't built a couple of defenders and something heavier was busy building constructors, but most planets were in the 90s and 100s (still building defenders) before I found the first morale resource and it stayed that way for a while. I also always stop military construction when planets drop below 70 after completing a ship, but that didn't seem to stem the tide.

Restoring from saved games have often seemed to precede big changes, but that could be as much imagined as real.

Still to this point my economy in the annual reports is 78, I have the biggest military, the most influence (and no influence resources until the last year or so) and until the real bottom fell out of the economy, I had the best economy, the best production and was further ahead technologically. I waited longer than usual to get to the first habitat improvement, but there were always morale builders in between the productivity builders in the social queue.

By the way, in my previous game, there were never any elections no matter what kind of government I had. Unfortunately, there have been elections in this game...

-Robert

Whoops, almost forgot: my morale now ranges from 0-16.

-Robert

Wow, Jotun,

I too have seen problems where games were not saved or restored properly, and have reported the symptoms I have seen. It also looks to me that these save/reload errors occur more in the larger maps than in the smaller ones, probably because the larger maps tend towards more complex games. It looks like SD has to take a very close look at the save/reload game routines and make sure everything is being handled correctly.

Even though the game save/reload problems look like they are contributing to your economy problems, perhaps there is some way to avoid your treasury going into the red - which ultimately is why your planets' morale is going to pot and driving you to distraction trying to recover.

1). Be careful of how much you buy on time and watch your maintenance costs. Make sure you can still earn enough per month to pay off those leases, repair bills and payrolls.

2). Try a few games where you keep your tax rate at a specific value at all times. Start with 50% and see how it goes. If you run into these problems at that level start a new game and try a couple of percentage points lower. Do this until you get to a point that you find you have it under control.

3). Keep adjusting your spending rate to keep your treasury above 0, just as you are now. Also, increase your minimum desired treasury amount as the game progresses. Try to keep it at a level that is at least twice the amount you spend each month, giving yourself a buffer to avoid a sudden change throwing you below the disasterous -500 point. (At the start of a game I keep mine above $100bc. At the end of a game my minimum has been as high as $10,000bc.)

4). If your treasury goes negative, move your spending rate to 0% immediately. Do not change your tax rate - especially do not more your tax rate up as this just compounds any morale problems that start developing due to your deficit spending. Then check how much you are spending against your revenue and if you still don't have something left over to put into your treasury start selling high maintenance ships and social improvements, but keep the morale improvements until you have nothing else left. If you still can't generate a monthly surplus to add to your treasury, then give the game up as lost (call it a learning experience) and try a new game.

5). When you feel you have figured out how to get the best benefit out of the above guidlines, then start bending them to develop your own set of guidelines as best fits your own personal strategy.

I have found that, in spite of the problems in the the beta builds we have had, I can win the game regularly by adapting my gameplay to fit.

Wow, Jotun,

I too have seen problems where games were not saved or restored properly, and have reported the symptoms I have seen. It also looks to me that these save/reload errors occur more in the larger maps than in the smaller ones, probably because the larger maps tend towards more complex games. It looks like SD has to take a very close look at the save/reload game routines and make sure everything is being handled correctly.

Even though the game save/reload problems look like they are contributing to your economy problems, perhaps there is some way to avoid your treasury going into the red - which ultimately is why your planets' morale is going to pot and driving you to distraction trying to recover.

1). Be careful of how much you buy on time and watch your maintenance costs. Make sure you can still earn enough per month to pay off those leases, repair bills and payrolls.

2). Try a few games where you keep your tax rate at a specific value at all times. Start with 50% and see how it goes. If you run into these problems at that level start a new game and try a couple of percentage points lower. Do this until you get to a point that you find you have it under control.

3). Keep adjusting your spending rate to keep your treasury above 0, just as you are now. Also, increase your minimum desired treasury amount as the game progresses. Try to keep it at a level that is at least twice the amount you spend each month, giving yourself a buffer to avoid a sudden change throwing you below the disasterous -500 point. (At the start of a game I keep mine above $100bc. At the end of a game my minimum has been as high as $10,000bc.)

4). If your treasury goes negative, move your spending rate to 0% immediately. Do not change your tax rate - especially do not more your tax rate up as this just compounds any morale problems that start developing due to your deficit spending. Then check how much you are spending against your revenue and if you still don't have something left over to put into your treasury start selling high maintenance ships and social improvements, but keep the morale improvements until you have nothing else left. If you still can't generate a monthly surplus to add to your treasury, then give the game up as lost (call it a learning experience) and try a new game.

5). When you feel you have figured out how to get the best benefit out of the above guidlines, then start bending them to develop your own set of guidelines as best fits your own personal strategy.

I have found that, in spite of the problems in the the beta builds we have had, I can win the game regularly by adapting my gameplay to fit.

Sorry about the double post. From this end it looks like the forum server kickuped between receiving my post and sending the tread back to me. I am sure many others have seen this happen.

Jack, thanks for the tips.

I thought I had pretty much mastered the economy thing and in fact had no problems with it until after I started again from the saved game.

As far as adjusting spending goes, if I I'm in a good groove and see the treasury growing too fast, I try reducing taxes, click the "economy" tab to see the actual effect, then try raising spending to see if I can get away with it.

As far as resources go, my priority list is something like 1. Morale, 2. Morale, 3. Morale, 4. Economy, 5. Morale, 6. Research, 7. Morale, etc.

After playing a while more, it really looks like the morale resources (or the morale percentage?) is being interpreted as influence. My influence is through the roof in spite of every other indicator having been dragged down. I only own one influence resource which I came upon very late into the game and have not been able to upgrade. My morale bonus is +166 and my influence bonus is only +15. In the meantime I am getting spates of defections *to me* and one race I barely had any dealings with and wasn't even bordered with surrendered to me for no apparent reason.

-Robert

Jotun,

This sounds like the influence bug I reported three days ago. If you check your influence rating in individual sectors, does it show up as several hundred million?

All my games now behave this way; usually starting after about 10 or 15 minutes of playing time. I'm usually credited with a diplomatic or cultural victory depending on whether any of the AI cultures that have declared themselves as allies (it usually happens before I can research Alliances) outlast the mass defections (although I once got credit for a military victory). I tried a game with no bonuses and all AI's set to Smart on a small map and still won an easy cultural victory. The summary screens don't tell you anything at this stage of the beta process, but when I go to the last screen (where you're asked whether you want to submit your score), I get fewer points than I would if Drew Carey were handing them out (that's right: the points don't mean anything!) and then GC sticks me with the 'Luke Cakewalker' label. (Hmm... maybe I should change my nickname.)

I was going to go back to playing NWN until Friday, but apparently GalCiv is Drengin slang for crack cocaine. I'm thinking of uninstalling and re-loading. I'm curious to know how your subsequent games play out.

End transmission.

It maxes about 600+ in the center of my territory to 60+ in the furthest sectors that are still blue.

-Robert

That sounds about right for resource priority though my morale has never gotten that low. Its usually about 50%, but I'm cranking out the morale boosting social projects.

Lucky Jack - 50% tax rate!!!! I start with it at about 35% and then as soon as I can, I drop it to gain any little bit of morale I can. But then again, when Sol usually starts out at ~50-60% I can never expect my people to be happy can I?

Dawn,

I have not had a game start where morale on Earth was so low until I cranked the tax rate up. Then if it is a class 17 planet it does go to 50% or so. I am still playing around with this strategy myself, but have had no reason to lower the tax rate yet. I expect I will be trying it anyway, just to get a feel for whether it is as well balanced as I want. For all I know the increased population growth may be useful enough in increased revenue early in the game to justify it.

But then, there is beta 4 to consider. I may find many reasons there to change my strategy.

Jotun,

I find that if I can build my treasury fast enough early in the game while still spending at 100% that it helps later in the game. My current game (gigantic map) has a treasury of over 40,000 and I am loosing the tribute I built up bit by bit (tribute from the sale of tradable goods to major and minor races and tech sold to minor races).

Aaarrrggg. I got distracted and hit the "submit" button.

Continuing to Jotun,

My treasury is now decreasing, but at the moment it is only at about 800 per month (it had been as much as 1500, which came on suddenly because I had lost a number of tribute agreements), and I am building more economy improvements and increasing my mining of economy resources to reduce the negative cash flow. It shouldn't take me long before I can start reducing my tax rate, run out of tribute, and still maintain 100% spending rate.