No intelligent production distribution in expansion?

I could be wrong but I never heard anyone from Stardock say either of these were going to be done. I've seen players suggest it, but no sign it was going to be put in, again I may just have missed it.

~SDC~

Ah. Maybe I just assumed because there was a raging topic about it at one point in time. I think it was even stickied for a time.

While I can't say I've ever seen the (I assume) C++ code that forms the basis of GalCiv's econ system, I really can't imagine such a thing would really be all that difficult to impliment. At least as an option. Of course, that's what anyone who isn't part of a project tends to think.

It's been discussed many times. I think the main issue is the it would be difficult to reprogram the AI to use a more complex economic system efficiently.

Hmmm... Well, maybe I'm just talking out of my arse here, but it doesn't seem like you would even have to reprogram the AI. The system could be totally transparent to it if you had a per-planet redistribution. Each planet would get income to be split as normal, but rather than blindly applying it to production types based on the global sliders the resources would get shifted to military and research if the planet had no social project to build.

I'm probably beating a dead horse, but the devs saying that it's too hard to adjust the AI to get around a weird artificial econ black hole they created seems, well, silly. I never played it, but I've heard tell that the original OS/2 GalCiv didn't even have this problem.

No insult intended. Stardock has done a *great* job, and I've never seen a company give so much support to the community.

Well, sure you wouldn't HAVE to reprogram the AI, but if you didn't you'd leave it at a severe disadvantage over a human who used the new system to full advantage. The optimal strategy would be to specialize: you'd have some planets that do science, and devote 100% to research after building all the research improvements. You'd have a planet or two devoted to wonders and trade goods, and therefore building 100% social, with all the production boosters and with no research improvements whatsoever. You'd have other planets in the midst of upgrades. You'd have military planets. And you'd have planets not doing anything, whose sole purpose was to produce income.

So the game becomes vastly more complex. Do you devote that PQ 19 world to research or to production? How do you allocate spending between planets--if I let my research worlds increase spending to 60%, that means my production worlds have to spend less--how should those tradeoffs be managed? It's not a trivial question at all.

I think the econ system was deliberately designed to be simple to avoid forcing the AI to deal with these issues (and also letting the player avoid these issues as well and focus on the really big picture).
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Yes, that does make sense, granted. It just seems so artificial, though. And it really bugs me.

I like to expand later in the game, too. After I get some techs that make it possible to bring lower quality planets up to livable. But those planets are impossible to build up without sacrificing all the money at your already developed worlds. I can't concentrate on having any fun when a big chunk of my cash goes down the drain. It's just counter-intuitive to me.

I suppose it's really pointless to argue the issue, though. If they've decided they're never going to change how this works, then so be it. Though I'd like to know one way or the other if it's ever going to happen. I'm glad I bought the game and I support Stardock, but I just don't find myself having fun like this.

The individual planet sliders do make sense from a micro-management point of view. But this game is an abstraction of a galactic empire.

Think of it this way: in a real galactic empire there would be tens of thousands of star systems. Would any one person really sit down and fiddle with each system? No, you would generalize: I want so much of my empire devoted to this, so much devoted to that, and so forth. That's what this game is all about, in my opinion; going for the big stratigic picture not the nitty gritty humdrum details of planetary administration.
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That may or may not be, but nor would a planet take 32 billion credits from the empire to run factories that have nothing to build. They would put the money elsewhere. Call it bribes, corruption, or embezelment if you want, but if that's what it is then it should be treated as such and you should have some way to control it to an extent.
Like in Civ3, for example.

We could probably banter back and forth all day, one person defending what I see as an annoying but simply rectified problem that wouldn't even require micromanagement with the proper programming, and me saying that same thing over and over.

Certainly I would agree that the current system is not realistic. Personally I would favor a system where each governor got its own set of sliders. But as you say, it's not our decision.

Agreed!

I like the idea of governer sliders. It would add a lot of flexability and realism without the micromanagement. I'd really like to see this in the possible "for pay" expansion pack.

I could think of a much easier solution without any more of micromanagement. Money that is devoted to Social projects on a planet that has nothing social to be built could simply put it into military. If there is no military to be built then into science and if you already have all tech then simply back into the treasury.

We would have no waste, no AI recoding and no more micromanagement!

Don't forget to vote on the poll on the left side.

Now that constructors have an upkeep of 1, what do you do with your surplus military production? Before it was automatic to use constructors, because you could always save them for later. They made the "wasted resources" problem worse, not better. Build sensor drones?

One problem was that humans were using starbases much more effectively than the AI. The solution is to raise the upkeep of starbases?

Yeah, that's what I was calling per-planet redistribution. Except I might have the unused social production money from your example be split between science and military on that planet based on the curent global sliders. Say the global sliders where currently set to 33% / 34% / 33%, then the unused social money allotment would be split half and half between the planet's military and research. Know what I mean?

Then there's the idea of per-governor sliders. Each governor could have their own set of distribution sliders and checkbox to enable or disable each governor's override. The global sliders would be used for planets with no governor set or for governors that have the override checkbox unchecked.

Honestly, the first idea seems so simple that you could probably impliment *both* methods. I can actualy see the usefulness of that.