Research "Roulette" just plain sucks

from GalCiv4 Forums

Title says it all.  This is my 3rd game in a row where all of my opponents had medium and large+ hulled ships and despite multiple attempts to "spin the wheel" Im stuck on small hulls and get wiped off the map when (and this is Oh so fun..) 5 factions in the same turn out of absolutely nowhere for absolutely no reason all declare war on me at the exact same time. 

Im not a threat, cause im at the bottom, or near the bottom, I dont have any fleets that can match even ONE of their ships.. but for some reason.. Im apparently Osama Bin Spanking of the Universe. 

At one point I saw all of the factions besides mine had RIDICULOUS amounts of money too.. Im over here BARELY scraping 1k (getting 23 credits a month.. woohoo!)  and thinking im doing well.. and then I see dudes with over 60,000 Credits and MASSIVE fleets with hyper advanced ships.

Are we even playing the same GAME at this point?

I cant even TRADE for the tech because NONE of the factions will trade the research.  They just wont do it unless Im super friendly with them, and even then I gotta give up 100 to 1 value just to get 40%.. its just not worth it.

The funny part is, I kinda get the whole "random" research thing.. emulates a guy getting an idea and you agreeing to pursue it.  I really do, and I like it.. but this needs SOMETHING to let me go "Yeah, I get it, a Xeno Entertainer is the bestest thing ever.. but I dont think a Twilek Dance is gonna stop the Drengin Battleship EXPLODING THE ENTIRE #()$*@##) PLANET YOU IDIOT!"

I cant even compete militarily because despite having planets with 6-10 manufacturing tiles.. all of my ships take like 20 turns, and they'e cranking out a battleship every 3 turns. 

Im not even playing on hard or anything like that.  Just Normal default difficulty.

Im all for "git gud", but exactly what part of me getting "gud" helps get the research I ACTUALLY need to stay relevant in the game?

Let people PICK, add a penalty, make us sacrifice a goat, something, ANYTHING.  This is a 4x Game, not a friggen Las Vegas Casino.

Thank you.


PS - The UI is garbage too, but thats a common complaint so I wont get into it..  do better. 

galactic civilizations iv
19,142 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

This sounds like more than just tech selection is your problem. Your economy stinks, your manufacturing has some fundamental problem going on- idk what it is, and you diplomacied your way somehow into being hated...

 

You said it yourself, but git gud might really apply here.

Reply #2 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Did you know that you can force the research roulette wheel to reset and give you picks in the category of your choice?  Click on circle in top right corner and select category to focus on. There's still some luck involved, and you might not have prerecs for the tech you want, and it'll cost you a 10% increase in research cost, but it's worth a try in times of need.

 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Thats a negative my man.  All the factions were positive with me.  Ive seen this exact problem posted on the forums before.  just random war declarations for no reason.





as for the other post... dude.. I literally addressed this in the OP.. I mean like.. its IN the topic itself.  yes, Im VERY aware of the stupid random roulette wheel.  Ive also made it abundantly clear how awful of a design decision it is. 

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I think the OP said that they "spun the wheel" a few times without luck. So they probably knows what to do with it.

I have money frustrations myself. I barely make ends meet until late in the game. Though sometimes the AI has insane money. My last game had one of the factions offer me 2700 bc to attack another civ, and this was around turn 40. How did they get that much money?

I strongly recommend you learn some diplomacy. Even a simple "open borders" treaty will improve you relations (the navigators can't form treaties, which might be a surprise) a little bit. Its not a pleasant experience if 2 or more civs attacks you at the same time. Open boarders treaties not only adds a + sign in your relations, but also negates ships and starbase in their zoc - signs.

A good manufacturing world needs good morale, not just labs and factories. The game divides manufacturing and research by 100, then multiplies it by your world's average morale. So if morale is 50%, you are only going to get 50% of your manufacturing and research. As such, I would argue that morale is more important than labs and factories. The cap is 96% for some reason (that might be fixed later).

Things that affect morale is the loyalty of the governor, whether or not you have enough food for your people, some executive edicts (print money is a large -10%), taxes, morale districts, and so on.

I also don't like the research roulette either. It doesn't make it easy to have a focused research strategy. My techs are all over the place as I don't like adding an additional 10% cost penalty every time I spin the wheel.

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Reply #5 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting DivineWrath, reply 4


A good manufacturing world needs good morale, not just labs and factories. The game divides manufacturing and research by 100, then multiplies it by your world's average morale. So if morale is 50%, you are only going to get 50% of your manufacturing and research. As such, I would argue that morale is more important than labs and factories. The cap is 96% for some reason (that might be fixed later).


and this leads me right back to "The UI is garbage."  I literally had absolutely NO idea this was even a thing.  I saw the Unhappy faces etc.. and I was building entertainment districts.. but I have NO IDEA why they're actually unhappy.  Turns out you need to put your mouse pointer over the TINY LITTLE FACE on EACH individual citizen on the planet to find out why they're unhappy.  The game *never* tells you that, it never even talks about it.

I sincerely hope that the "full" release has an ACTUAL tutorial/UI walkthrough.  Cause that stupid robot that pops up once every 20 turns aint cutting it. 


THANK YOU for that information man.  Seriously.  That at least may help my 5th play attempt.

Reply #6 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Having attempted a few games now, I have to agree with you regarding the hated roulette wheel of science. It drives me insane. That's not how science works. Sure, sometimes people have a "Eureka!" moment but mostly we go - "Oh, the world has a pandemic, better start some vaccine research then", or "We want a picture of the beginning of the universe, let's build a big space telescope."

Now if you really want to make science a bit more of a lottery wouldn't it be better to bring money into it? That's far more realistic. We, as humanity, might be desperate for, say, more cancer research, but the big money is in defence, or (if you are a billionaire) space vacations. A lot of stuff that should happen simply doesn't because there is not enough money to support the research.

I am not sure how this could be integrated into GalCIV (too late now; I think the devs are too wedded to their initial, highly flawed idea) but money, political will, and emergency imperatives all play a big part in the "chances" of pursuing a particular tech direction and it has very little if nothing to do with cosmic dice.

Reply #7 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

yeah, the "bad luck" factor or research right now has been an issue for many people. there have been several suggestions to deal with this over the last several months... one of mine was to make it so that you can pick any research u want for a +20% increase, like spinning the wheel twice. but the devs have shown no interest in changing research, unless they get tons of pissed off people complaining about it, like they did with the original decision to not include a battle viewer. i think at this point the only way we'll get a change in the way research works is if there's a huge backlash against it after the game comes out, so we'll just have to wait and see...

Reply #8 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting nazgull2k12138, reply 5


Quoting DivineWrath,
reply 4


A good manufacturing world needs good morale, not just labs and factories. The game divides manufacturing and research by 100, then multiplies it by your world's average morale. So if morale is 50%, you are only going to get 50% of your manufacturing and research. As such, I would argue that morale is more important than labs and factories. The cap is 96% for some reason (that might be fixed later).



and this leads me right back to "The UI is garbage."  I literally had absolutely NO idea this was even a thing.  I saw the Unhappy faces etc.. and I was building entertainment districts.. but I have NO IDEA why they're actually unhappy.  Turns out you need to put your mouse pointer over the TINY LITTLE FACE on EACH individual citizen on the planet to find out why they're unhappy.  The game *never* tells you that, it never even talks about it.

I sincerely hope that the "full" release has an ACTUAL tutorial/UI walkthrough.  Cause that stupid robot that pops up once every 20 turns aint cutting it. 


THANK YOU for that information man.  Seriously.  That at least may help my 5th play attempt.

 

I'm not sure how this could be communicated better? Do you have any suggestions:

The very first line shows that it is X 75.20%  (in this example).

So if your morale is super low, then that's going to be a problem.

Reply #9 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

and this leads me right back to "The UI is garbage."  I literally had absolutely NO idea this was even a thing.  I saw the Unhappy faces etc.. and I was building entertainment districts.. but I have NO IDEA why they're actually unhappy.  Turns out you need to put your mouse pointer over the TINY LITTLE FACE on EACH individual citizen on the planet to find out why they're unhappy.  The game *never* tells you that, it never even talks about it.

Now THIS is a legitimate gripe. I agree, it's' not necessarily intuitive that you hae to mouse over the happy/frown face. 

Instead it should be over this:

What it should do here is show the happiness of each citizen. I think if it did that then you'd probably get the cue to mouse over the happy/sad face.

 

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Reply #10 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 8


Quoting nazgull2k12138,
reply 5






Quoting DivineWrath,

reply 4



A good manufacturing world needs good morale, not just labs and factories. The game divides manufacturing and research by 100, then multiplies it by your world's average morale. So if morale is 50%, you are only going to get 50% of your manufacturing and research. As such, I would argue that morale is more important than labs and factories. The cap is 96% for some reason (that might be fixed later).



and this leads me right back to "The UI is garbage."  I literally had absolutely NO idea this was even a thing.  I saw the Unhappy faces etc.. and I was building entertainment districts.. but I have NO IDEA why they're actually unhappy.  Turns out you need to put your mouse pointer over the TINY LITTLE FACE on EACH individual citizen on the planet to find out why they're unhappy.  The game *never* tells you that, it never even talks about it.

I sincerely hope that the "full" release has an ACTUAL tutorial/UI walkthrough.  Cause that stupid robot that pops up once every 20 turns aint cutting it. 


THANK YOU for that information man.  Seriously.  That at least may help my 5th play attempt.



 

I'm not sure how this could be communicated better? Do you have any suggestions:



The very first line shows that it is X 75.20%  (in this example).

So if your morale is super low, then that's going to be a problem.



The amusing part is, I have NO idea what you're showing me.  I cant find it in the game at all.  (Again, the UI is atrocious.)  However, that's not what we're talking about here.  We're talking about this right here...



See the "unhappy" faces?  Tell me, in fact, tell everyone... what part of the UI, tells you WHY they're unhappy?  Oh...  wait.. a user ACCIDENTALLY put his mouse pointer over it..  and gets this...



I found this ONLY after a user on this forum TOLD me it existed.  Your game Never EVER once even mentions it, references it, informs the user of it..  *nothing*.  On a 3440x1440 monitor, do you have *any* idea how SMALL those faces are?  TBH, I (and alot of others from what Im being told.) thought it meant they just needed more entertainment districts.. when in fact, all I have to do to get them neutral is drop the tax rate down and boom. 

The ONLY way to see this.. anywhere in the entire game.. is if your mouse pointer plops over that small little sadface, in the corner of a very small little portrait.  Thats IT.  There's no other way to see it, and your game deliberately hides it.. or makes it extremely difficult to locate without someone telling them, or by sheer dumb luck.  There's a bunch of other information the game deliberately hides from the player as well..  but this is by far the most ridiculous thing... its a VEEEEERRRRRRYYYY poorly designed UI.

As for a suggestion.. my suggestion is simple.  Re-do the ENTIRE user interface.  Stop hiding information the players would need, and put in a PROPER Tutorial and UI walkthrough.  If you need an example of what us 4x players were expecting.. just load up the 10ish year old Stellaris.