Economy Tip/Rant: Military / Social wasted allocation handled differently
Why does it have to be so obscure...? :(
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GalCiv2 Forums
GalCiv2 Forums
I am really enjoying GC2 and I'm thrilled to see that it is getting the recognition it deserves. My hope is that it will shame some of the larger development/publishing houses into not acting like sleazebags and actually making better games.
Disclaimer aside, my biggest gripe with GC2 is about the economy. For those of you interested in my "book", see post here:
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=346&AID=101763#813913
I'll sum up that rant here though, I'm disappointed at how unnecessarily difficult managing the economy is. The difficulty comes mainly from 2 things:
- Lack of transparency or explanation as to what the economy is doing and how various production values are calculated
- Poor methods of management offered to the player, that is, the way that the player actually controls the economy. Note that this does NOT refer to changing the rules of the game, i.e. setting different research% on every planet, I am talking about how the economy could be better controlled without changing the rules of the game. (i.e., today the player says "I want to use 50% of the total industrial capacity" instead of "I want to spend 300 credits on all industries")
My classic example is that in MOO2 you could click on the number of hammers to see how the computer arrives at that number. In GC2 there is no such luxury and we are forced to try to deconstruct the game in order to figure out what the economy is doing. For example, the 'spending' value on the planet screen appears to equal the production values for all 3 categories, plus the 'maintenance' value for that colony, I just noticed that. But the game never actually comes out and says it in the style of: Mil(100) + Soc(50) + Res(50) + Maint(50) = Spending(250)
I just found an interesting quirk - if your planet has no military project, the military spending value is displayed in parentheses and no money is spent. However, if you have no social project, the money seems to vanish. Whether it gets used for anything, I have no idea. So until anyone discovers where the money goes, beware moving up the social slider to 100%, make sure all your colonies are using the money!
I think the most important thing to realize about the economy is that unlike other games, i.e. Civ4, building factories/labs doesn't get you production or research, what they do is increase your capacity to CONVERT money into production or research. So when you find that precursor mine or artifact and start building/researching to the tune of 400beakers/turn, keep in mind that unlike some 'artifact' bonus in Moo2 which gave your bonus research for free, you are actually paying the same amount of money for each research point, and that precursor mine/artifact just made that one planet ten times more expensive than all the others (assuming you utilized it).
Disclaimer aside, my biggest gripe with GC2 is about the economy. For those of you interested in my "book", see post here:
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=346&AID=101763#813913
I'll sum up that rant here though, I'm disappointed at how unnecessarily difficult managing the economy is. The difficulty comes mainly from 2 things:
- Lack of transparency or explanation as to what the economy is doing and how various production values are calculated
- Poor methods of management offered to the player, that is, the way that the player actually controls the economy. Note that this does NOT refer to changing the rules of the game, i.e. setting different research% on every planet, I am talking about how the economy could be better controlled without changing the rules of the game. (i.e., today the player says "I want to use 50% of the total industrial capacity" instead of "I want to spend 300 credits on all industries")
My classic example is that in MOO2 you could click on the number of hammers to see how the computer arrives at that number. In GC2 there is no such luxury and we are forced to try to deconstruct the game in order to figure out what the economy is doing. For example, the 'spending' value on the planet screen appears to equal the production values for all 3 categories, plus the 'maintenance' value for that colony, I just noticed that. But the game never actually comes out and says it in the style of: Mil(100) + Soc(50) + Res(50) + Maint(50) = Spending(250)
I just found an interesting quirk - if your planet has no military project, the military spending value is displayed in parentheses and no money is spent. However, if you have no social project, the money seems to vanish. Whether it gets used for anything, I have no idea. So until anyone discovers where the money goes, beware moving up the social slider to 100%, make sure all your colonies are using the money!
I think the most important thing to realize about the economy is that unlike other games, i.e. Civ4, building factories/labs doesn't get you production or research, what they do is increase your capacity to CONVERT money into production or research. So when you find that precursor mine or artifact and start building/researching to the tune of 400beakers/turn, keep in mind that unlike some 'artifact' bonus in Moo2 which gave your bonus research for free, you are actually paying the same amount of money for each research point, and that precursor mine/artifact just made that one planet ten times more expensive than all the others (assuming you utilized it).
trade
.
What I was trying to do was not complain that the waste was there (in other words, complain about the rules of the game). What I was looking for was a way that the game allows the player to track it, and I think I found it in my last game. In the Civilization Management screen there is a table that lists all your colonies. I love this screen. So if you see a colony with high social production that is not building anything, go fix the problem 
