What's this all about with the upgrade of my social queue?

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Could this be due to the "planetary governor" option of auto-upgrading buildings?

On the planet screen click Details, then drill further to Governor, which will pop up a little window with two checkboxes.  You want to uncheck the top one, every time you colonise a planet and on all your existing colonies.

Auto upgrade sucks.

Auto upgrade ? 

Yes, that must be it. Let me just return to the game this evening and see if anything disturbing still happens. Anyway, thanks for the help guys, I don't think I would've looked there as at all as in DA usually I don't use that screen at all...

 

 

Unfortunately there are many reasons why you wouldn't want to upgrade to the next generation of planet improvements. For instance, when upgrading from a Manufacturing Center to an Industrial Sector, you get a gain of +2 industry +4 maintenance. The upgrade generation before that and many before that was +2 industry +1 maintenance, so Industrial Sectors are a relatively terrible deal.

Plus the construction costs for an Industrial Sector is 400 while a Manufacturing Center is 150, so the construction costs more than doubles. None of the previous generation manufacturing upgrades even double the construction costs over the previous. Plus a construction cost of 400 is a tough pill to swallow on a new world.

If it were possible, I would like to assign Manufacturing Centers as my top tier manufacturing planet improvement and have all Industrial Sectors "upgrade" to them. The only way I can see to avoid these bad deals is not to research the techs. Unfortunately these techs often have other benefits (the industrial sector tech has another mining module, morale techs give civ wide morale bonuses, etc) so there is the temptation to continue. Also sometimes your creativity bonuses will give you the next tech for free, so if you were aiming for Manufacturing Centers, you might Industrial Sectors for free.

If you don't care about metaverse, try making your own tech tree that re-arranges these, or alter the base tech tree that all of the race specific ones draw from and the GCII_Types.xml to fix the buildings.

GC2Types.xml is for the ship modules, not the planetary improvements.

It is also not necessary for him to do all the work himself. There are enough mods already, that address this issue. Take my own, for example. I changed the maintenance to remain the same at all times, and use a fixed increase for the buildcost. This means, that high-end improvements are not only much cheaper to build, but also much more efficient. The Industrial Sector, for example, only costs 95 to build and has a maintenance of 2bc in my mod.

Sorry, haven't needed to touch those files for months, starting to forget.

I actually believe that this is very good design, made to prevent a too fast "proliferation" (donno if that's the right word for it^^) 

high or endtier structures should come with an increased cost (and other downsides) because if such technology incorporates only advantages multifold then these will multiply itself with each other and a way too strong bonus will acumulate from this.

for example, in vanilla engines became cheaper and cheaper the more you researched - thus, once a new engine tech was researched it was superior to all previous engines (which then could be discarded or completely ignored) always making the newest engine to a no-brainer.

Right now most stuff in TOTA comes with advantage/disadvantage thus you can judge individualy, it's a trade off - cost & effectivety vs its opposites.

So firsttiertechs should always be very cheap and also easy to maintain, because you're building them when your economy is not yet sustained, quite the opposite, the colonial rush drags most financially into the minus. And this is a critical phase you need to get those Colony ships out and fast (which goes well because they are cheap)

In contrast the endgame situation is you're planets are filled up and economy is running, starports are building expensive warships who also come at quite some cost or maintance - thus, here a player needs to carefully balance and adjust his gameplay.

As I was playing that game as Yor who have alot of 1 per planet buildings the point was just to get those big industrial factories on planets where they are really needed to have some kind of average military output at least, for example low PQ planets. On high PQ planets with lots of free tiles tier 3 facs did suffice as I didn't want to "overcap" a certain amount of mp/turn, which is basically the build cost of your most expensive warship (otherwise you pay for the overflowing mp) 

Increased buildcost of latergame structures is also logical because by that time your planets will have sustained a middle or high social production already thus rendering the time to overbuild everything with newer tech considerably down.

One example, currently I have one planet where a tier1 fac takes 1 week to build, a tier3 fac 5 weeks, and a tier4 fac 10 weeks. And it doesn't matter if I build the tier4 directly, or first a tier1 which then will be overbuild with 3, then 4. The game shows in both cases 10 weeks total.  

However if I go second route I'll have an increased SP after the first turn which could hasten the process up a bit. And subsequently, the tier3 facs as well. Now let's say I'm going to populate 10 tiles with facs, I'd have a single tier4 factory after that time via first method, or 10 tier1 factories via the second one - which will produce 300%-400% more SP as the alternative. Subsequently the facs 3 upgrade will be narrowed down the a single turn per structure, too, and once they are finished, the tier4 facs as well.

And this will finally result in having the tier4 buildings 2 times faster than buildings these right from scatch - and that's exactly why these endtier structures should have an exponential cost. Otherwise, building facs early would take longer as in endgame^^

My greatest concerns or disbalances so far with TOTA are 2 things.

First, you can trade pretty much everything via Influence Points, esp. all his money, and if it doesnt work then with money + IP combined, just trade back all your money with IP   all treaties, money, scouts, defenders, unused freighters/miners, all outdated warships, even whole fleets! (must not have declare war prior to this)

basically you can keep your MMR pretty high and the AI always low as you take 90% of his ships... without ever having to research weapons....

 

Next thing is using spies prior to invasion on moral buildings and invading with a full fleet of transports using Information warfare or whats it called... you'll barely loose troops, I had cases where after the fight I had more tropps then prior invasion! And just one transport is missing thus you can jump from planet to planet. Quite hilarious.

Trading influence points is basically a no-no if you want to get some sort of challenge from the game.  I mean, they're worthless really, the issues voted on at the UP are random and usually harmless, so it doesn't matter which way the voting goes.

While I understand your reasoning, and even agree in general, I have to disagree in this case. I don't think it's fun when a game wants you to do something (e.g., using high-tier improvements), sometimes even forces you to do it (auto-upgrade), and then punishes you for doing it (high buildcost and maintenance). It's also not good when such an important decision is only available to the player. The AI will always use the most advanced planetary improvements, because of the auto-upgrade. It doesn't even have a choice in this. If the AI's economy isn't yet ready to handle such expenses, it will get broke, and have a tough time to recover. If it manages to do this at all. Unless you play on difficulty-settings where the AI is getting bonuses to it's economy, this will make the game much easier than it should be.


This has been the case since GalCiv 1.


This is also possible in DA.

welll I wouldn't describe it as "punishing" cause you definitely gain an advantage, however at an increased cost. just see it like that researching the tech is only part of the cost. though you are right on the AI part, but that's more a problem with the AI's programming.

there are many many examples where a real person can actually utilize the game way better than the AI even to the point you can actually fool around with him, esp. when it comes to spacebattles etc the AI most of the time locks on to a target ignoring everything else to the sides. unguarded troop transports aiming towards unguarded planets where a fleet just waits for it to arrive etc 

I'm pretty confident this is not the case I've just finished a DL 1.53 game. The AI is generally uninterested in IP though you might get some bc, but no ships at all or the other stuff I mentioned. In TA, with a good diplomacy, you can get up to 1bc for 2 IP. You can't trade them in big deals as their value seems to decrease then, but going in pieces like 100 IP for 40bc or 300 IP for 120bc will work until the AI is at 0 bc and that's just broken IMO.  

Researching more advanced technologies is a main staple in the 4X genre. However, when the question changes from "when are you going to research it?" to "if you are going to research it at all", then there is something wrong, in my opinion. More advanced techs should always be better, not make you question whether it is worth it to get them or not. I have nothing against an opportunity cost in form of increased buildcost and maintenance, but the jump in both for high-end improvements is quite jarring. Why are they suddenly going from an 1bc per 2mp/rp increase to an 2bc or higher per 1mp/rp increase? Not to mention the huge increase in buildcost.

Take a look at the Collectives and the Schools, for example. They are the most efficient first tier factories and labs respectively.

For the Yor, it's not that bad once you reach Enhanced Collectives. While 3bc maintenance for 9mp production isn't great, it is much better compared to the 5bc for 8mp of the Xeno Factory. The buildcost of 150 is also reasonable. Just a little more than double the original cost. Considering that this is the second improvement to the basic Collective it is still okay. Once you research Superior Collectives, however, things change dramatically. Both buildcost and maintenance double in size for just 2mp more. How is that "superior"? Granted, it is comparable to the Manufacturing Center (6bc for 10mp, buildcost 150), but who would use it? Staying at the Enhanced Collective is much better, not to mention more efficient. For a race that is all about efficiency that is pretty bad. The Ultimate Collective doesn't make it better either. For the last two mp, the buildcost increases by another 200 (roughly 166%) and you have to pay 2bc more maintenance. Again, it is still better than the Industrial Sector (10bc for 10mp), but that isn't the point. Why does going from 5mp to 9mp increase the buildcost by 80 and the maintenance by 2bc, while going from 9mp to 13mp increases them by 350 and 5bc respectively? It just makes no sense.

The Torians have it even worse. Going from Schools to University increase the buildcost from 25 to 100 and the maintenance from 1bc to 4bc, while the research only increases by 4rp. Going to City of Learning then triples the buildcost (100 -> 300) and doubles the maintenance (4bc -> 8bc) for only 2rp more output. How does that make any sense? Granted, the Torians are supposed to be bad at research, but this is just rubbing it in. Also, who in his/her right mind would use them? You're better off building three Schools instead. The buildcost is less than a third and the maintenance is not even half of that of the City of Learning, while producing 2rp more. Sure, it will take up more space, but that shouldn't be a problem, because you have more time and money to spend on expanding your empire.

Like I said before, I understand where you are coming from, and I even agree. However, the values in the vanilla game are completely imbalanced. The advantage you get from more advanced improvements stands in no relation to the cost you pay for them.


It's been a while since I played DL, so it might have been changed since then. However, I know for sure that it was possible, because I used this tactic when I first began playing.

Yes it's true, the progression from enhanced to superior collectives is a big step, and it's something you don't want to do always. It depends on a lot of factors, and this will also differ from game to game. For example if you are amidst a war and your MMR is kinda dropping then no, don't do it, production of ships is more important.

But let's say you've just conquered  someone, your planets population should regrow again, there's no wars going on or hostile empires nearby - then why produce military ships that cost alot of maint for no real purpose? Maybe producing constructors and filling up your space with starbases - but that will come to an end, too, esp. that SB become excessively expensive to built once you got around 20 or 30.

So just upgrading your coreworld to the next tier while the new planets desperately need the SP to fill their tiles. (although one could go all-lab and build everything with focus from research or buy all structures but that's a whole different story... in my games I just reach that point where my planets are in a complete different state of evolution and thus, I always enjoy having something in the queue)

Another thing is that you're comparing only the base output of these buildings.I think it's safe to assume the farer a game advances the more empire-wide bonuses you'll got on these through Crystals, Starbases, Techs, other buildings etc.    Sometimes base production will bring twice or trice the output - and you just pay half for that.

As well as in later stages of the game, where the economy is going good, I don't think that the maintance of planetary buildings is actually a big factor.

Then there are also bonus tiles, these are very suitable for highend buildings. Or maybe you got a few specialized planets with ManuCap or similar percentagebased production-enhancing buildings - most of them are also only viable on special planets, on most not.

Maybe a planet where a special event happened during colonization giving increased ships HP - further add the Orbital Command Center, and this is your planet where you're going to build extra-strong and longliving warships. You want to have as much as MP as you can on that planet, irrelevant of the costs.

To be honest, I think there should be even more traps esp. later in the game (although it would require that the AI is aware of them). Because most of the time, once you've conquered or anexed the first or maybe 2 empires, the game is usually won. The problem is that by that time, once you gained an edge over the others this edge will grow stronger and stronger, and that growth will be faster than that of your enemies.

Once you're having more production, and you're using that to gain even more production, if there is not some overlying mechanism involved which is stiffling that (like increased cost/maint) then the whole apparat would kinda explode once it is set in motion.

Although there actually is something governing over that, and that is the economy, you gotta pay your stuff. And the economy is actually something that will be very low in the first year, and probably even preventing you from keeping the slider at 100% all the time. But between y1-y2 usually, if the game is going well, you should have a steady and fair income and that's giving you even the option to buy some stuff every turn.

What does happen when this is not in place? I just could see that with stockmarkets in the DL game. I would colonize a planet with 1000 colonists, and immediately lease-buy a stockmarket on the longest-term lease. At that population that investment would already net more bcs per turn than I would have to pay (23bcs vs 19bcs if my memory is correct) and that would even increase each turn as the population is even growing stronger cause without economic problems you can lower taxes to gain 100% approval! I then lease-bought as much as stockmarkets as were affordable and after 5 turns could leasebuy a stock on all planets, and subsequently after 4-5 turns could leasebuy one hull on all planets additionally - the economy shooting from 15k/turn to over 100k/turn.

And this is bad design in my eyes, one should not be able to exponentially grow an advantage over the other, rinse and repeat, and game is won. Nobody can keep up with that. Once you've reached that threshold it's game over, and it's boring from that point on.

You can see it in the respective curves - these were exploding. Curves should rise linearily *at best* problably even less. So even that lesser strong empires should be able to keep up, this would in fact promote longer games. But the question in charge is - how would you do that?

Because, everything that you're usually doing is giving you an advantage and that'll invested each turn to gain even more advantage. Although advantage is probably an inappropriate term for that as it is relative to what the others are doing. However, you will gain a return for whta you're doing each turn, and if you're doing it right, that will become bigger and bigger and bigger, and the only thing that could cross that pattern is an enemy empire growing nearby.

Well it really depends on what you're aiming for. If fast lowmaint research is everything you want, then fine.

However, you could overbuild these 3 schools with one economic structure and 2 higher tier res buildings. That way you'd have exactly the same research output, but a better economy. Ofc, there are the increased buildcosts, but I'm pretty confident that, in the long-run, an economic building will return way more than these costs.

Although I agree with your last point, when you're expanding, you shouldn't focus too much on SP anyway. Although that may differ from individual playstyle

Yes, because that is the only way to make a fair assessment. You don't have the bonuses from resources at the start, and you're not even guaranteed to have them later. Also, we're talking about labs and factories here. Stuff you want to use all the time, not just under specific circumstances. If more advanced versions of them are not good enough to use without any bonuses, then what is the point of having them at all? You shouldn't need to use spreadsheets in order to figure out when to use a standard improvement, and that is coming from a big number-cruncher.


Here is where we absolutely differ. I want meaningful choices in my games, not traps.

For example, I want better labs to increase my research speed, but my enemy has better weapons than me, and is soon going to attack, so I need to do something about that immediately. In order to fight this, I research better defenses, but the ships using those take too long to build, and are quite expensive. So, I research better factories, to build them faster, and markets, in order to afford them. I could have researched better labs first, which may or may not have helped me, but that is what is fun to me, because whatever I chose, either would have a meaningful impact on the game.
If I research better factories, only to find out, that I need a better economy, just to be able to pay the maintenance for them, instead of the new ships, then that isn't meaningful or fun to me. It is just frustrating. All the improvements are tools, meant to help you achieve your goals. However, if they don't do their job right, or at all, then they should be either scrapped or changed.

Agreed, except on the last point: I generally don't need to use a spreadsheet to determine when to use a higher level or lower level factory: it's a matter of being able to afford them and I can eyeball that immediately from my net income and the construction time.

I don't think that "traps" are the way to go. However, not every successive incarnation of basic structures needs to be a no-brainer upgrade-wise (I'll go into why below).

This really depends on how you view income in GalCiv and what you call "better". The Torian university is definitely better in raw output than the Torian School. The Torian School definitely has a better maintenance/buildcost bc to tp ratio. But the tile to tp ratio of the University is better! If you're short on tiles, but have enough bc, the University is clearly the superior choice, while if you're short on bc but have an abundance of tiles, the old tech may be better.

And here it becomes important what stage in the game you're in: early in the game, empty tiles are very common, you have plenty of space and are strapped for cash. The Torian School is great for this! (And so is the Yor first level collective.) At this stage of the game, there is no point in building Ultimate Collectives or Universities etc, because the resources you're short of (bc and sp) are exactly those resources that they consume.The University may be listed as an Upgrade, but it doesn't suit your needs!

However, if you're in a later stage of the game, the bc's normally start pouring in and you also generally have a firm enough SP base (or enough cash for outright purchase). Tile-space, on the other hand, may be diminishing rapidly, especially on key planets. At this point in the game the University starts to become the better choice. Now note the placement of the techs on the tech tree: the building that you get early (School) arrives just at the time when it is most useful. The building that you get later is only unlocked through research and can therefore arrive when its usefulness starts to increase (namely, lateron when you have a much stronger economy). It is still very much an upgrade, eventhough it isn't providing as much tp per bc spent. Think of inflation: you have many more bc's pouring in and out of your coffers, so every single bc is actually worth less to you than earlier in the game. Throwing a few more into a more bc expensive project to get more overall tp... Sounds good to me...

Let me illustrate this through a "real world" example:

Suppose you have two means of transportation. One is a large cart, capable of transporting one person (or a quantity of goods), through the energy of a person pulling the cart at a certain (low) speed. The other is a big, modern Humvee or other large car, powered by fossil fuel. Would you not agree that the fundamental advantage the Humvee provides is more speed? (Let's call this "tp", for fun.) But if you look at energy efficiency it really, really sucks (really). If you had to power a humvee by using the energy that is output by people, you'd need a ridiculous amount of people! (Let's call energy "bc".) The only reason we can afford to use the modern upgrade of the cart that is the humvee, is because we have an abundance of energy (bc) and we want to increase our speed of transportation!

If you still don't buy this, look at it this way: if you could transport a Humvee back in time to the Stone Age, when conception of mining and modifying fossile fuels in the quality required for a humvee did not exist, would it then replace the backwards technology that is the cart? No, it simply cannot! Although it is a more advanced version of the same rudimentary tool (a transport cart), the technology is completely useless in the Stone Age when none of the other requirements have been met. The Torian research and Yor production buildings follow this curve (diminishing returns), rather than what is usually the standard in games (each upgrade is better in every way, or at least just as good, exponential growth), and I find that refreshing and more realistic.

That particularly the Torians and Yor suffer from this seems explainable lore-wise: the Torians are pretty dulwitted, putting more of them in the same room working on the same subject won't make them more efficient: they probably need inspiration from the environment. They should be spread out and the Torian superability is great for this: their tech ánd their superability are geared to spreading far and wide through the galaxy and then surviving on sheer numbers.

The Yor are machines pre-occupied with efficiency, but they are also a collective where each unit relies on other unit. The larger a collective, the more vulnerable it is to breakdown and congestion. In order to prevent this, redundancy must be increased exponentially with linear growth --> reduced efficiency "per unit" to establish increased total output.