Prerelease Balance Feedback

from GalCiv3 Forums

Congratulations Stardock,You did a great job!

The large empire penalty is -0.2 per planet, which seems too severe. On larger maps, any race without Patriotic is at a massive disadvantage.  I think lowering the penalty to -0.1 per planet would improve balance greatly.

Planetary projects are counterproductive and completely useless. 10 Manufacturing for +10% Research/Wealth is an insanely bad deal. There is no point in using projects when you can just set production to 100% Research or Wealth.

Strategic resource improvements are just bad. Durantium Refinery and Thulium Data Archive could have some niche value on large specialized planets, but are generally not worth the 150 manufacturing or strategic resource cost. I really think that these improvements should give a +5% civ-wide bonus.

I'm surprised Antimatter Containment was completely removed. Now there are even less techs.

 

Each tech tree has its own tech paths and gains access to certain techs earlier than other tech trees and some tech trees have unique techs. The Altarians gain access to the Omega Research Center an Age earlier, almost guaranteeing that they get to build it first,  but Social Matrix is really underwhelming. The Drengin Slave Pit is amazing and the Iconian Molecular Fabricator is quite competitive as well, but everything pales in comparison to the Thalian Hive.The poor Terran don't even get anything unique. It feels really imbalanced.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The large empire penalty is -0.2 per planet, which seems too severe. On larger maps, any race without Patriotic is at a massive disadvantage.  I think lowering the penalty to -0.1 per planet would improve balance greatly.
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i agree with the problem, not with the proposed solution. stardock simply need to put scaling to their gameplay mechanics, mostly research/technology cost and approval (large empire penalty). regarding tech i made a suggestion that does not affect early game, but scales with map size here:

https://forums.galciv3.com/464893/page/1/#3546418


and the approval mechanic could simply be scaled as well, e.g. -x approval per world where x is dependent on map size (or habitable planets).


Planetary projects are counterproductive and completely useless. 10 Manufacturing for +10% Research/Wealth is an insanely bad deal. There is no point in using projects when you can just set production to 100% Research or Wealth.
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i tend to agree. the projects need work, but they are a vast improvement over their earlier incarnation imho.


can't commend on the rest, since i mostly play synthetic races.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting tesb, reply 1

i tend to agree. the projects need work, but they are a vast improvement over their earlier incarnation imho.
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I personally much prefer the previous incarnation of the planetary projects. In that form, projects were generally useful and gave me a reason to build mixed planets. Under the current system, there's more or less no incentive to build a mixed planet; the maximum output mulitplier a fully-improved world can have is roughly equal to the sum of the output multipliers it does have, whereas its actual overall output multiplier is less than or equal to the maximum of the output multipliers it currently has. A fully specialized world producing only the type of output it was built for is therefore going to produce roughly three times the total output of a world with even output multipliers. Three specialized worlds can therefore give you about as much output as nine generalized worlds, and the only failing specialized worlds have relative to their generalized counterparts is in build up time.

The old system had its issues, but at least it allowed generalized worlds to be competitive with and, under the right conditions, superior to highly specialized worlds. It also kept its optimization problem in what you build and had trivially easy optimal slider settings (100% to desired output type if manufacturing bonus was less than some value, 100% to manufacturing otherwise), whereas the optimization problem under the new system is entirely in the slider setting and has a race condition - the more production you sacrifice to manufacturing to increase the project bonus, the more you penalize the output multiplier you're trying to improve with the project.

Planetary projects are counterproductive and completely useless. 10 Manufacturing for +10% Research/Wealth is an insanely bad deal. There is no point in using projects when you can just set production to 100% Research or Wealth.
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For the most part, I agree. However, the way the projects currently work, the project will grant at least 10% so long as your manufacturing output is positive (in the strict sense, not the non-negative sense). This means that for any world with a bonus to the desired output type of less than +890%, you will get marginally more output by setting 1% manufacturing, 99% desired output type and using a project than you will by setting 100% desired output type.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Congratulations Stardock,You did a great job!
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Sarcastic or no, I think they did a pretty decent job myself.

The large empire penalty is -0.2 per planet, which seems too severe. On larger maps, any race without Patriotic is at a massive disadvantage.  I think lowering the penalty to -0.1 per planet would improve balance greatly.
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I can't really speak to that since I always go Malevolent Warmonger, and my custom race has +2 Morale by default, so happiness is usually taken care of...

Planetary projects are counterproductive and completely useless. 10 Manufacturing for +10% Research/Wealth is an insanely bad deal. There is no point in using projects when you can just set production to 100% Research or Wealth.
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Yyyep. They're working on it, though. I heard frogboy say in another thread they're throwing around the idea of having it based off of population count, rather than production.

Strategic resource improvements are just bad. Durantium Refinery and Thulium Data Archive could have some niche value on large specialized planets, but are generally not worth the 150 manufacturing or strategic resource cost. I really think that these improvements should give a +5% civ-wide bonus.
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Actually, Durantium Refinery is pretty decent now, under certain circumstances, because Raw Production adds to Research and Wealth as well as Manufacturing, and that +3 can really boost a Death Furnace to unreal levels. Still, it's not something you should spam. Thulium Data Archive, though... yeah, still sucks. +3 adjacency is not gonna save it.

I'm surprised Antimatter Containment was completely removed. Now there are even less techs.
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I'm glad they got rid of it. It literally did nothing at all.

Each tech tree has its own tech paths and gains access to certain techs earlier than other tech trees and some tech trees have unique techs. The Altarians gain access to the Omega Research Center an Age earlier, almost guaranteeing that they get to build it first,  but Social Matrix is really underwhelming. The Drengin Slave Pit is amazing and the Iconian Molecular Fabricator is quite competitive as well, but everything pales in comparison to the Thalian Hive.The poor Terran don't even get anything unique. It feels really imbalanced.
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Terrans may get nothing unique, but they also have no weaknesses, and have a lot of good and versatile strengths. Thalans, meanwhile, spend an entire Ability slot on knowing the locations of the other homeworlds (useless), and they're terrible at growing a population, which means it's harder for them to get going, and harder for them to stay going in long wars, which is especially painful for them, because most of their bonuses only help during war.