I suppose that explanation changes things.

Unfortunately, if you explain your system as such, there becomes a balance problem. Point-for-point, technologists are already the best government available (or second-best maybe) when compared to the cost of getting what they offer via picks. Giving everybody a morale penalty for tech (an idea that will probably never happen, but could be kind of interesting), but giving the technologists a boost.... That just makes them the clear winner (assuming you don't consider that government to already be so).

I guess to explain it your way and make technologists happier with more tech spending, maybe they'd need to be nerfed to +10% instead of +20%, or given a morale penalty for all industrial spending, especially when tech spending is diverted to industry through planetary focus.

Well, I don't think this will unbalance the technologists if you take this line of thinking to the logicial conclusion. Why would only the technologists get a boost? Why can't some of the other parties get boosts in their respective specialties? Shouldn't Industrialists get morale boosts for having more factories? Shouldn't federalists get a morale boost for having more stock markets? Etc, etc.


But back to the root of the problem: I can't really agree that there'd be a negative morale for research. There's negative morale for the taxes involved in research, but that's already taken into account. If you're going to put a morale penalty on research based on the idea that people don't see the need, you would have to apply that to ANY AND ALL spending that isn't directly used to buy the people nice shiny objects.

Most of my typing above is just digressive commentary spawned because I agree with Insanetitan here but wanted to be constructive about my opposition to the suggested change.

As another half-aside, I'm about 250 turns (*love* that new option) into a 1.95 game, gigantic map, 9 opponents, with tech trading off. I really like the fact that the map is mostly populated but some civs still don't have all the enviro techs, the heaviest ships aren't even over a 30 attack rating, and AFAIK no one has large hulls yet. It does indeed feel "more galactic" to me now. If the last setting was "eleven" and this is one or two, I might be comfy with three or four.

Plus, I'm playing Thalans again and it's really interesting to see how few structures make it across the new tech boundary when I flip a world. The Future Bugs are so weird they pretty much throw out everything the primitives built when they take over.

What new option are you talking about? What have I missed?



I totally dig the scrapping of unusable tiles. It makes war a lot less "clean" IMO, which is a good thing. I also enjoy tech trading being off now that tech stealing is so much more useful. Invading a planet is so much more interesting than it used to be, knowing you might nab yourself a tech that is otherwise totally unattainable. I actually try to target the arceans in the hopes I'll get lucky and steal a free engine tech that the rest of the universe can never have

The scrapping of tech also makes balance issues interesting. Thalans are considered overpowered by a few threads I've read, but they have to rebuild almost every structure when they conquer a planet! That can slow you down a lot compared to being Terran and getting to keep at least 50% of the structures on most worlds you take over. Not saying they're perfectly balance, I have no idea (still slowly working my way to the weirder races - Drath really rock at the moment). But it's much harder to claim balance issues without a lot of examination. Which means most people will spend less time worrying about such issues and more time enjoying the diversity.

You can click the date display at the top of the main window and change from the game calendar to the number of turns. It isn't sticky (yet), so you have to change it every time you start the game, and the change there doesn't affect the History chart, but it's still a great improvment, IMO.

Ah, interesting. I'll have to try that out - I never felt like the game was "epic" enough when the entire universe went from unexplored to conquered in 5-10 years. Hiding the timeline might help me forget