the games economic system

If you could run everything at full efficiency, you'd beat all the AIs to a pulp within a few years of starting any game.  Or they'd do the same to you.

As long as you understand that the inefficiency exists and in order to get more production you need more buildings, it's not impossible to improve your civ.

I have to agree with the OP.

While government inefficiency does exist, the current set up is pretty ridiculous.  They should've set up the sliders as ratios rather than percentages, or had the spending sliders represent only how much of the budget you're spending, not how much your production outputs.

The issue of "stomping the AI" by being able to use your full factory and research output at once is pretty much a nonissue.  In a properly configured mechanic, this doesn't happen, and in one where the AIs are equally capable of doing the same thing, there's no difference between it and neither the player or the AI being capable, except that it makes more sense.

Unfortunately, the economic system isn't something one can change in a mod, so I'm still diligently planning a rebalance while I redo the techs and trees.

Griped about the sliders ages ago.  Nothing got done.  Safe bet that nothing will be done.

Also agreed, and likely the same will happen with Elemental in the near future.

  I use the sliders as a priority system:  military at a minimal 2% and social most of the remainder (so that planets building social improvements divert nearly all of their production to that;  if not,  their production is all on military).  You somtimes need some adjustments if your planets are on auto-terraform or auto-upgrade.

  The research rate is the usual balance between investment for the future and immediate production.

If it worked like that there'd be no problem.

However, the issue is as follows:
If you have 1 factory and 1 research lab you cannot, with any amount of money, convince them both to run at 100% of their capacity. You can make excuses for why that could be but the weird thing is that if you build another factory and another research lab you suddenly can get the same output as if you had them both at 100% before but you're paying twice the maintenance, for which there is no excuse.

Why do you need to have 2 factories do the work of 1 to make it possible for 2 research labs to do the work of 1? In the end, the cost per actual production point stays the same but there's the double maintenance cost.
This is so very inefficient it's just frustrating trying to deal with it.

It's much more natural to set a budget for factory production and one for research production separately. the factory one could have a sub slider setting priority for social or military production, but I don't see any reason why the 2 main ones need to add up to 100%.

It kinda seems like a weird leftover from MoO where you allocate workers to either production or research. You obviously can't have your total population working on both. Building improvements just made the workers more efficient at whatever they were doing. In this game however, population does nothing for your production and you're just paying money. There should therefore be no reason for you to not be able to just pay both factories and research labs whatever they need to function at 100%.

In any case, thanks guys. I thought I was going mad but the game really is just very weirdly designed.

You can maximize production by building either only labs or factories on each planet, and not both of them for any single planet, and then use the production focus options at the the top of the screen to allocate all of a planets production points to either military, social or research. You would only need to use the social production to speed up building rate, and putting factory on a research planet will speed up upgrades. Other than that specialize each production planet for either research or military production, and make sure you put a starport on any planet that is specialized for production. Combine this with a manufacturing capital on you largest factory planet, and a technological capital on your largest research planet, and you can achieve the highest possible research and military production rates.

the way focus production works is not entirely clear to me, but it definitely doesn't cause you to "allocate all of a planets production points to either military, social or research".

setting your slider to 100% social and setting focus on research does allow some research to be generated, but it's very inefficient.

For DL and DA, focus takes 25% of A and B and diverts it to C.  For instance, if I have military/social/research at 50/50/0 spending, 200 industrial infrastructure on the planet (ignoring any bonuses, racial or planetary, for simplicity's sake, as only the base value is diverted), I'd have 100 funded military and 100 funded social.  So when I focus on research, 25 comes from military, 25 comes from social, and they both go to research-giving me 50 before any bonuses.

In TA, focus's efficiency is reduced to 80% of its former self; that is, while 25% is still lost from what is being diverted, only 20% of the whole arrives-in the example above, giving us 2x20 or 40 research instead of 50.

Additionally, when focusing between social and military, or vice versa, 50% is diverted (rather than 25%)-and I believe that this is still 50% in TA, but to be honest I haven't looked at it in quite some time.

Finally, some important points:
-Only base production counts.  If I have a planet with 5 industrial sectors, a quantum power plant, a manufacturing capital, with a 100% military bonus (for instance) from customization points, techs, and Industrialist party, I'll get the same amount out of focusing on research as I would with a planet with only 5 industrial sectors, even without any racial bonuses.*
-However, production that arrives via focus does in fact get the bonus of the type that it arrives at-so our 50 research above gets multiplied by the research bonus (which is itself multiplied by difficulty in a way-that is, difficulties higher than Tough give an artificial, hidden bonus to the player's research-topping out at 2.64x as much from a research bonus on Suicidal-that is, a normal player with 100 research x 50% would have base+50=150, whereas you would have base+100 x (50*2.64) = 232.
-Last but certainly not least, as like virtually everything else in this game, these values are all truncated.  So if I have 3.9 funded (which will only net you 3 total), none of it will be transferred via focus-but some will still be lost.  In particular, this means it's rather useless without much infrastructure present-especially so in TA, where the transferred points are further reduced.

Would it be easier for you if the sliders had 100% marked where 33% is now and 300% where 100% is? It's just an abstract model, a factory unit running at 33% doesn't mean that there is an actual factory where two thirds of workers are on strike or something.

To put it another way, the complaint is that if 33% of total spending (itself at 100%) happens to mean 500 bc, and is devoted to research, it is no different than having so much income that 33% means 500,000 bc instead.  The research generated is still the same even though there's 1,000 times as much actually being spent.  That's just ludicrous, period.  They should've set it up so that each point of production costs a certain amount of bc rather than the percentage of the slider determining how much of the possible output you get no matter how much is spent.  Even the American government and the corporations that own it haven't been THAT inefficient (though they do try their best).

I happen to agree that it seems like some strange holdover from MoO (which I wouldn't normally mind) that in this game is incredibly broken because the relationship between population and production is so radically different.  Unfortunately, that can't be changed, but it can be worked around with the right modding.

Ah well, life goes on.

I think you misunderstand the system. the total spending slider's "volume" is not you total income but your total industrial and research capacity (i think there is actually a description above or below it that say "industrial capacity" or something to that effect). so the number and capacity of all your factories and research centers and the setting of the distribution sliders determines the "volume" of the total spent slider. The income is not taken into account at all.

so in your example the factory needs 5,000 BC to run at full. let's assume this is the only building in the empire for simplicity. if you have the research slider at 0, the factory will set the "total spent" slider's 100% mark to 5,000 BC. doesn't matter if your empire generates 500 BC or 500.000 BC, running that factory at full capacity costs you 5,000 BC.

the real (or better, "perceived") problem is, as others already explained, the distribution of that common budget to research and manufacturing (you can never run both at full capacity at the same time etc., i guess this has been mentioned a few times already, no need to reiterate it )

  I agree.  I don't use what I see as a glitch,  that you can build labs to get workers in who then go to work in factories by using spending settings.  At least,  there should be some penalty for it (such as:  lab workers are less efficient or more unhappy in factories).   

It does explain a lot though, and will probably help both my gameplay and modding efforts.

I'm happy to see that most people agree with me about this system being very wonky. not so much "unrealistic" as it is "absurd".  at least I'm not going insane, as I was really doubting any developer could think this was a good idea.

to be fair, although it's a nonsensical model, it makes the game harder and more complex, forcing the player to really think about a strategy to cope with the system. though the result is difficult to describe as fun, having a more logical budget system would result in fairly straightforward cookie cutter builds that are the most efficient way to build and run your empire.

Maybe I should go play sins of a solar empire instead. also hoping they come up with a better idea for galciv 3, as the rest of the game is pretty decent. (esp. in 2nd exp.)

I've read through dozens of threads about the econ system in DL and came to the conclusion that I didn't need the headaches (and don't have a degree in econ and statistics) to try and understand how it works.

I spent the first several campaigns going broke and chucking the game to the recycle bin. But...determined to not let a game get the best of me, I kept trying. First, I became a trade baron. Maximized my # of routes, and built as many econ starbases along them as I could fit. Worked well until only several races are left and they all ally against you. Economy goes into the tank and the game to the recycle bin...again.

Last few attempts worked much better. Gave myself better % on the campaign set-up screen to assist production, maximized my population as far as I could safely control, went for as many of the morale boosting TG's as I could, boosted my popularity as high as I can, and....lookee here! My taxes and income from tourism cover my expenses. Trade becomes an extra over and above that, so even if I lose all my trade, I won't go broke.

I also stopped building expensive, large-hulled ships. Waaay to expensive for what they can actually do...although I do keep a select few around. Gunships on merchant hulls, enhanced by military starbases, and scads of cheap & quick-to-build small hulls are my mainstays. Keeping fleet maintenance as low as possible for the biggest bang was key, as well as the huge population base for taxes. Also key was the use of stock markets on my high pop planets...at least four and sometimes five or six.

I set my production rate at 100% from day 1, and it stays there the whole game. I set my mil/soc/res sliders as necessary depending on my focus at any given moment. I gave up trying to understand the math in how they work...I just know that a global focus on military speeds up ship-building, social focus does the same for planetary improvements, and likewise for research. I use a planet by planet focus as necessary to speed up whatever I'm doing. As long as my "bottom line" is in the green, I could care less how efficient or inefficient the system is. I can't change any of that anyways........ 

As a side note, if I set up my planets the way the AI does (nearly every planet I capture has a 2 : 1 ratio of research to factories with few if any money-making structures like stock markets) I'd be broke in a month or two. It's really annoying to have to tear down half the buildings on a newly captured planet, and restructure. 

sometimes the AI manages its economy pretty good, but i've seen a few of the AI civs do really dumb things, too they run out of cash, but instead of solving the problem long term (money buildings etc.) some of them just set the tax slider very high and try to counter the unhappiness by filling their planets with morale buildings. 

in my experience so far, a stable economy needs a large population and high morale scores so you can use a bit more than the default 30% tax and still keep approval high. usually morale, population growth and economy are my top priorities in the early game. once you have a stable economy you can start specializing some of your planets into research or ship building centers without going broke and from that point it's up to you if you use your financial and industrial power for military conquest, culture flipping or bribing AI civs to do the dirty work for you

picking a 30% economy bonus for your civ is usually a good idea as it greatly helps you get into the comfort zone earlier after the initial colony rush. and i like bonus research as my second bonus ability so i can get all those useful economy, growth an morale techs a bit faster and cheaper. 

if you play larger maps with many planets to colonize, it can be a good idea to just build a recruitment center (extra pop growth) and nothing else on your new planets initially. use the colony management screen to sort the colonies by population and see when your new colonies have enough population to fund their own infrastructure. in the early stages, i will often let then grow to 1-2 billion people before i return to the colony and make them build some factories, markets, starports etc.. this way you can usually keep up the colony rush for a long time without going totally broke after the first few months. later on when my economy is already booming and produces a lot of surplus cash, i skip the waiting phase and let new planets immediately start building their factories etc. and i usually even rush buy the first factory to get them started much faster.

Yeah.  That's why unless there's something I really want, I do Tidal Disruption and if I'm lucky most of them get washed away.

But the Delete key is a handy Demolish shortcut.

To clarify...having an economics or business degree of any kind would hurt rather than help.  Economists don't know anything about economics.  If you want to study economics, take a course related to ecology, then you'll get it right most likely.

I like the slider and I don't think it's a handicap or a false pretense like youre eluding to.

The slider allows you to squeeze out those tough advantages you need in different times of war or peace. You have a budget that you have to distribute between all 3 facets of production.  You pay for each and every point of research or production so it really doesn't matter if building 1 building at 100% vs 5 at 20% doesn't seem like the perfect way to express what is going on.  A better way to look at it is, buildings increase your maximum production in that area, as well allowing you to do more while taking less from another facet.

Maybe this is an eye opener but, practically every facet of GalCiv is a balancing act.  Hell, of all the systems in the game to hate, I can think of half a dozen more that make far less sense.

But in the end, I think the slider is perfectly adequate, and allows for on the fly adjustment of what I need more in a time of calm or a time of crisis.

Wartime? Jail the researchers and put em to work in factories.

Peace time? Jail the researchers and put them to work in factories.

Just kidding. In peace time I Jail the researchers and give them books and stuff. They seem to like that.

Then we beat them about the head and neck. With books.

4X type games usually involve a zero-sum principle in production and a rock-paper-scissors in combat.  The deeper such games differentiate the players by racial traits, race-specific buildings, etc.

The GalCiv2 way is just a different implementation of the above, that's all.

The sliders are a remnant from GalCiv1 where they made much much more sense (the production and research both depended on population factories increased it by a percentage). That the sliders are still global is sad.

I wouldn't mind the system at all if I could set the sliders per planet!

The most unrealistic part of the whole system for me is the focus feature.

I'm sorry, but you simply cannot take research workers and throw them into a factory and get any kind of decent production out of them. I've worked in an automotive parts producing factory and it takes weeks to learn how to properly flip a part onto the alignment pins of a press, or maneuver a 1000 lb spot welder dangling from a cable to get the welding points into a tight space.

And what would a factory worker know about research???

The only sector that makes even remote sense is the social sector. But even there most of the work will be done by skilled trades (electrical, mechanical, structural, masons, etc) that take YEARS to perfect. There's only so many "helper" jobs that would need to be filled.....

And the AI abuses this feature to the max. Virtually every planet I capture during military campaigns, has a 2 to 1 ratio of Invention Matrix to Industrial Sectors. You should NOT be able to use those research facilities to build starships, which is what the AI does with Focus.

Sorry...but in the real-life world of fantasy, it simply shouldn't be possible. 

I'm not so sure.  I work in a factory of sorts and the upper management seems to think that our engineers can develop any technology that can be imagined.  It won't be long before we're tasked to build a time machine and death ray.  

I'm hoping to get the death ray project.