Goatmeal

Reply to GC II changed my life. This game is a low-quality mess. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Out of your 4 points I'm not sure I find any compelling. How can you take 4 items, ignore all the other core items that did translate over, and declare the game as bad based on their ommission. Espionage was never core game play and will be added shortly. <span style="font-size: small

Reply to Optimization choices - strategy? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

That's a big problem I have with the tech tree. The concept of making you choose between mutually exclusive options is great. I like being forced to make strategic choices....but the problem is they aren't strategic choices. As people have mentioned in almost all cases there is a clearly superior choice. In many instances you can even prove it mathematically. It's not a choice it's just a trap for those who don't know what is best. And i

Reply to What's the Difference between an Exploit and a Strategy? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

An exploit is whatever strategy the other player uses that you didn't think of and are angry because you lost to. A strategy is anything the game code allows you to do whether the developers intended it or not.

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I'll admit...when I play the game to win it has always been Thalan tech, with +2 ship capacity and ship speed, using the malevolent line that starts with the intimidation center. Everything else feels weak and slow...which does make for a more fun experience though...

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I really like that 40k production world post. Brilliant! In case it wasn't mentioned as an aside, you could always pull your hair out switching production between 40 shipyards every turn and build 40 giant ships at the same time! In general I think the easiest fix for the hive and motherhive is to make their adjacency bonus (for themselves) be regular manufacturing like Karl originally calculated. Then they are just a "fast start"

Reply to Stuck with total manufacturing calculation in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Thank you very much. That was very informative and exactly what we needed to finish the puzzle!

Reply to Stuck with total manufacturing calculation in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

That would explain the random 0.5 I can't account for actually. A brand new start with 50% approval and 10 pop yields 20.5 total. Is this from shifted morale bonus points? Can anyone provide a little more detail on how we can calculate the morale boost/penalty or is this something that isn't visible. Before we could at least use the resistance tooltip to get the %bonus.

Reply to Stuck with total manufacturing calculation in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

As mentioned the durantium refinery only adds 2 to total production, not four. Additionally, for some reason population isn't exactly 1 to 1. I believe there's a flat boost of 0.5 for some reason. If you just start any new game with no bonusses you'll notice your pop is contributing 10.5 not sure why. (17.5+5+5+2)×1.55 = 45.725

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I'll post this screenshot of a game that took me 5 minutes to set up and test. This is a race with no abilities other than patriotic (so that starting morale is exactly 50%) and intuitive so that hives are available immediately. The planet has exactly 10 pop, is the capital of the empire, and has no bonuses of any type. A capital building is worth 5 raw production. A civilization capital is worth 5 raw production.

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

The adjacency benefit for the hive building itself (the effect of others on it, not its effect on others) applies to the raw production of a world before other manufacturing bonusses. It is, in fact, multiplicative and not additive. It is one of the few bonusses that work in this fashion. In fact when you look at the tool tip for manufacturing of a planet the hive will not even appear listed. You will see "X% from factories" and whatever else is on the planet but see n

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Thank you for sharing your excel sheet. I'm not trying to be obnoxious I was just curious about the difference in results. The math you did seems right but I think your assumption on the way the buildings work isn't completely correct. In your setup you are using a 70% difference for the next factory as opposed to a hive. From my understanding this is due to a factory surrounded by 6 others giving 100% base + 6 bonus to other + 6 bonus to itself. From

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I mean the equation I listed is pretty straight forward and if I do the various derivatives I see what changes with respect to which variables. I just don't see how the effect lines up with what you say. If you don't mind go ahead and post your spreadsheet as I'd like to see it.

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Your math on the hive is incorrect. There are 4 factors that matter. 1.) Pop of planet = P 2.) Base bonus per factory (tech level) = F% 3.) Average adjacency bonus per factory and hive =A% 4.) Number of factories on the planet = F# The difference in absolute production hive - extra factory is: (P+5+4)×(1+A%)×(1+(F%+A%)×F#) - (P+5)×(1+(F%+A%)×(F#+1) You can

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

The Thalan tech tree sucked the power out of the altarian tech tree, that's what happened! In truth, aside from various bugs I think they just conceptually differentiated the tech trees but did not modify them based on competitive balance. That wasn't the priority during beta and since it's a sandbox game, the imbalance is permissible. But yea, it's basically another difficulty slider with Thalan tech being easy mode, iconian/yor being medium

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

You need to read the posts carefully. It's not 4 production it's 4 raw production. So it gets multiplied by all the 400% factory bonusses you stacked. And it's own adjecency bonus is a percentage increase to raw production. Consider it this way. When surrounded by factories the hive is equal to 4 population with another 30% population added on top. Do the math...it's not just a factory.

Reply to GalCiv III AI: The challenges in GalCiv III AI Talk GalCiv3 Forums

My one comment in this regard is that perhaps the weight on "opportunistic weak target killing" is too high. I know the AI can amass a fleet and attack a fleet. I also know it can amass a fleet to assault a heavily defended planet or starbase. But I'm pretty sure large numbers of its ships get tied up in trying to attack "weak" targets. Basically they see a constructor or single ship flying through my space and dispatch a single ship to score the e

Reply to Very hard (probably expansion) request, but necessary for the AI to reach 8/10: Dynamic blueprints. in GalCiv III Future Ideas GalCiv3 Forums

I'm not saying any of these improvements are bad ideas. All I'm saying is that the AI has a rather long ways to go and sometimes fails at the most basic tasks. On suicidal the only time I ever lose anything meaningful to the AI is when they sneak a small invasion fleet to one of my border worlds. And this only happens if I choose to play with the handicap of no sensor boats. Other than that there are a few slow death fleets, as you mention, but far far more sin

Reply to Home world Strategy in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I balance my homeworld by filling it with factories. Then I balance my technology by rushing weapons and invasion modules. Then I balance my galaxy by plowing over all the aliens. Jokes aside, manufacturing home world is the way to go. You only need a few key techs at the beginning and if you just put your new worlds on all research for a few turns (they make like 7 or so) you'll be able to pick them up fast enough. In the meantime you can bu

Reply to 1.1 - changes in population effect on raw production have made Projects a bit OP IMO in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I'm not sure the effects of large pop need to be balanced. Even with birthing subsidies through the roof it will take a long time to fill a planet with 60 plus billion people (unless you are synthetic....). The game will already be virtually decided by that time. Plus, the game has multiple mechanics that break down as they approach the extremes. It's not new to the franchise...I mean look at the precursor ship components etc. I still thi

Reply to My last approval thread, EVER - bug confirmed by lead dev Paul in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

Currently when you calculate morale it goes: (positive flat value - negative flat value) * percent modifiers This means that if you have even 300% improved morale bonusses from various sources it doesn't have a big effect because it is multiplied against a small number. It should be: (positive flat value * percent modifiers) - negative flat value This means that the percent modifiers are alwa

Reply to All I want are ships with frikin lasers in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

I guess in a general sense that argument could be valid but generalities aren't always helpful in game design. If every game is 30 durantium and 3 elyrium did we really improve game play by having the imbalance? Or did we really just make 2/3 of the special weapon options less viable...

Reply to All I want are ships with frikin lasers in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

This really boils down to resource frequency. I guarantee if elyrium wasn't impossible to get, you'd see a ton of beam weapons. The elyrium laser is no joke.

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I think they all have some cool value to them it's just the balance isn't quite there. The only tech I find completely lacking is the iridium because money isn't worth anything.

Reply to When I Play With Anything Else Other than Thalan Tech I feel Bad About Myself in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

To make simple changes that would help balance things out the adjacency bonusses for special buildings should be tweaked. For Thalan, nothing should give % bonus to raw mfg. Period. If the hive adjacency was changed to regular mfg like any old factory it would be fine. Plus 4 flat raw mfg is like 4 population so that is more manageable. The abuse comes from stacking plus 50% raw mfg bonusses onto it. For other trees, in ge

Reply to Virtual World and Entertainment Capital (or, NOT ANOTHER FOCKING APPROVAL THREAD!!) in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Wait it's not another approval thread?