LEP Should be Changed to -0.2 MONEY/Planet

Trying it out with Naselus's Insane/Abundant mod.  

IT WORKS.

This little change solves two problems at once:

1. How to limit colony spam and encourage people to build up their worlds.

2.  It makes economic buildings MUCH MORE VIABLE and adds a third dimension to world building.  Under current rules, the only types of worlds you should build are manufacturing or research worlds.  The entire economic line is worthless.  This change FORCES players to devote a certain percentage of their worlds to be "market worlds," so they can raise the money to maintain expansion.  

The developers should make this change official in a patch and also adopt the changes Naselus made to the AI to account for these changes.  It makes the game MORE FUN and REQUIRE MORE PLANNING.  If your economy can completely crash because you over expanded, you're going to pay a lot more attention to making sure you're bringing in enough money.  Under current rules the only things you should be doing in the early game is spamming out colony ships and building factories, which is sort of dumb and repetitive.  

26,960 views 4 replies
Reply #1 Top

i have to quite often worry about my economy.  The problem is IMO that tourism rewards too much for expansionist play.  No tourism malus for being at war?  Really?  Tourism is the full amount on a planet, which was just invaded, conquered, and lost 20 BILLION citizens?  Tourism mechanics literally PAY for your expansion.  Tourism really needs to be treated on a per planet basis as well, taking pop, distance from the front lines, and distance from the empire core to heart.  

 

Approval is a decent attempt to degrade efficiency with expansion, as it affects numerous important attributes.  But, it doesn't touch tourism.  How popular would cruise ships be, if all the staff were batshit angry and depressed, and the constant worry of DEATH?  Dream vacation, huh? 

 

And, if you want to make it harder and slower to expand, a simple solution is INCREASE the LEP malus and effects of 0% approval :)  That slows everything down.  And would certainly put a greater burden on managing your economy.

 

On Friday, Paul said they were looking to put a lot of effort into balance in 1.2/1.3.  But until then, once you get tourism with the current mechanics, the economy aspect becomes a joke.  

 

Paul - I hope you take this cruise ship analogy to heart, while vacationing the seemingly 'safe and happy' coastlines of Alaska next week.  :) :)

 

Reply #2 Top

Just raise maintenance costs for everything.  More constraints = more challenges.  

Also, instead of nerfing the Thalans, buff the other races and give them the equivalent of Hives or Gaia Vortex or Hyperion Matrix (like an Iridium Super Wonder that raises tourism and economic income by 30% on each world).  

In the meantime hard code AI strategies to take advantage of these traits.  Instead of nerfing one race, make EVERY race overpowered.  More fun that way. 

Reply #3 Top

Easier to nerf one or two, than to buff 7 or 8.

Reply #4 Top

Ya in Gal Civ 2 one of the biggest slowdowns at the start of the game was your economy.  When you first colonized a world it was a huge money sink until you got it built up some.  So if you expanded too fast at the start of the game you would find yourself bankrupt in a hurry.  So I can see how changing the LEP to a money hit would work better.  A money penalty seems to make more sense to me than a morale penalty also.  I have been struggling to figure out how being part of a larger more powerful empire would make people unhappy.  The security of being part of a juggernaut would make people more happy I would think, not less happy.  However as any government grows more massive, it grows more and more inefficient.  So a larger expanding beaurocracy covering more worlds, yeah it makes sense it would start costing more money.

 

I also agree with marigoldran on buffing up the other races, not nerfing the existing ones.  The other tech trees feel too generic and bland anyways, so they could use some improving.  Especially the Altarians, they are horribly bad.

 

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