View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017653 | Stars Beyond Reach | Note To Test | Oct 3, 2015 12:48 am | Oct 3, 2015 5:24 pm | |
| Reporter | Peons | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Severity | tweak | ||||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.915 (Happy Air, Happy Wallet) | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 0.916 (Money-Grubbing Citizens) | ||||
| Summary | 0017653: Economy breaking with 0.915 worker mode | ||||
| Description | Can hit 50k/turn eco by turn 100 and can easily skyrocket exponentially from there while still in act one. Will try to get it higher, this is technically with a greed race and I didn't try to claim territory (besides one adjacent) as part of this strategy. Definitely takes some micromanagement and there are some lulls but you can still skyrocket your economy if done right. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Really just for other testers to reference, I'd like to see other saves with biggest economy by turn 100 as well for balancing purposes of the new employment system. |
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You are making about $10 per person, which is in line with the current thinking. The real turning point is the first cloning center. After that you have sufficient population growth to really start growing as a city. |
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Hmm. I'm starting to think that we're going to need some maintenance costs based on some sort of factors. Basically it seems like early income might be at a good state, but basically you can get off to the races and then just keep going indefinitely without any real issues. That bit strikes me as problematic. However, this can't be something where specific buildings cause crown losses per-turn, or you get into situations where players want to fiddle with buildings being turned on and off repeatedly. That's no good. So it would need to be something based on the amount of citizens actually existing, or the amount of citizens using specific kinds of services or something. You can't just shut off citizens without killing them. That in fact would help ease the blow of losing citizens, come to that: you'd at least get a tax break off it, as it were. ;) |
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I've seen "corruption" style loss in other games, that may work to some extent. Though, players like me will just wait out and end turn until I get the funds I need to basically build whatever. |
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Well, even if your income was $1k per turn, technically you could do that if there is nothing causing turn pressure. In the early two acts there really isn't much in the way of turn pressure, which is by design. One thing that I have considered in general, but this would make it even more relevant, is to introduce a fairly low crown storage cap as the baseline. Say, maybe even as low as $50k, and certainly not more than $100k. But then by building some buildings later on, you can increase that cap up into the tens of millions if you really feel like it. BUT, the catch with that is, you can't get much in the way of those buildings until somewhat later acts, so you can't just camp out in acts 1 and 2 where there is no time pressure and make yourself super rich. Then by the time act 3 rolls around and time pressure starts to be a thing, you can increase your cap to have more flexibility, but the ability to just hit end turn a hundred times with no consequences has gone away. That relatively safe early period where you can get your sea legs under you is important, I feel, and I don't want to introduce time pressure there. But at the same time, not having a reason for players to dawdle there and game that system is also a big goal. The other thing is that simply a lot of the various international events will cost money, and attacking costs money, too. Maybe those will simply need to cost more money than they presently do, I don't know. I'll have to think on that. But that could make direct fighting cost-unfeasible in act 1 to some extent. |
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Perhaps use income and/or stored wealth as a requirement for leaving Act1/2? |
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Caps that low would require some work in the military and building costs though. There are several buildings that require over 50k crowns and I can easily burn 100k just trying to take a territory (that just has the control building in it). I'm not comfortable unless I'm sitting on at least 50k so I can respond to stuff that pops up relatively quickly. Act 2 caps would have to be at least 250k (that's just a bit more than 2 missile silos) as it is now. |
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True, a higher cap would be needed. So maybe 250k. In terms of that being a requirement to get out of the early acts, I could see that as a goal in terms of a specific act 1 setup, but not as a generalized requirement. |
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You could do A1 - 100k, A2 200k with banks being able to increase your cap by 10-25k per building. Banks being limited to one per territory puts your treasury size in direct correlation to how much land you control. That idea can be expanded in later acts with the other financial buildings and general increased cap from advancing acts. |
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I don't agree on a crowns cap. I suggest that there should be both external events from the planet and the other races as well as internal city events with a % chance the more you stay in an act. Remember that the whole act thing is an artificial way to seperate a 4x game into sections. Instead of adding extra artificial mechanics and messing with the game and the player, just add events using the existing events system. Perhaps even add a counter. If you think about it an act is a period of history. Moving on requires a paradigm shift more or less and staying too long in a single state would have historical consequences, both before and after the switch. |
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I don't think I favor an arbitrary crown cap so to speak, but maybe adding additional crown sinks such as buildings requiring crown upkeep to function. You gotta pay your workers to keep those parks tidy, etc. I wouldn't put crown upkeeps on buildings that generate them, the current balance iteration means that if they don't have workers they just waste space anyway. It would just be an extra line of information that would have little point on a staffed building and would require the player to do extra math in their head to get to the point of "well this building is making me Inc-Maint crowns per town". |
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To add to my reply even a mechanic like number of turns = AI progress from AI wars would be better and perhaps should be tied to a difficulty setting that would represent the urgency of the passage of time. |
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@gnosis: Heh, I already deal with that while going on the offensive. If it were to be more severe than that, it would practically impose a losing state on the game if it ever got to that point. You can stack planetary retaliatory events to the point it decimates your city. Granted, it isn't a game over at that point, but it could be just as irrecoverable if it got more severe. AI War style ramping up? That setting gets turned to zero for a reason ;) @Peons: can't do that since it encourages micromanaging buildings to maximize crown generation (enable/disable). |
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There are different player stress leves in realtime games and in turn-based games. If you stay on act 1 for 300 turns be prepared for an AI with considerable more bonuses due to your delay. But the point is to not mess up the city building mechanics to facilitate act deadlines. |
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I can legitimately sit in Act 1 for 300 turns though (some objectives might take that long to complete, or longer). Everyone already gains XP to buildings based on time passing, so the AI is always getting stronger to some extent. |
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The number is purely made up 600? 1000? 3000? If the player can generate exponential income increase, perhaps the AI should also do so. Unless that increase is a bug or a balancing issue. Another way to deal with this is to provide the AIs with benefits and extra stuff when switching acts that are based on the player's economy numbers like crowns, pop, number of buildings, services etc. |
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So the AI gets to cheat (lol). |
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i.e you can stay in act 1 to gather 5 million, but on act 2 the AI will also get 5 million X difficulty multiplier X act multiplier. |
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When the AI has buildings with 3000 attack strength on turn 1 it already cheats and is making you a favor of leting you live. Relax, it's a single player game. |
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There's not really a concept of the AI cheating, because they don't function like you do, first of all. Secondly, doing simple upkeep on buildings sounds good, but then you get players switching off buildings in order to save upkeep. Anything that can be disabled without disastrous consequences (on the level of murdering citizens) needs to not be something the players would want to toggle. Lastly, I'm really not in favor of penalizing the player for staying in act 1 or act 2 for however long they want. 10,000 turns? Okay dude, I guess so, why not. You'll have some super duper high level buildings, but the AIs will as well, of course. So yeah there are some consequences, but also some benefits. Probably you are gradually losing ground over time just because the AIs inherently control more of the map (there are more of them than you). The acts here are less about there being distinct points in time, and more about it being different kinds of game to some extent. Early on it's meant to be a bit more sandboxy and citybuilder-like, but with some objectives still in there. Still, you hit a limit of what you CAN do in acts 1 and 2, so there's a definite incentive to move on "just to get on with it." But then you hit act 3 and it's suddenly a bit more tense. Act 4 and 5 things really start hitting the fan. You still control the temp a little bit in act 3, though you can't just take 1000 turns or something anymore. In acts 4 and 5, the longer time you take, the more certain your death becomes. So there's this big climax of events crashing together. |
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That much fits with the established story though. You land on an inhabited planet. The races there have been there for some time. They should have some initial strength. If the player sits around for a long time then the AI should be doing something worthwhile for itself. It shouldn't need artificial boosts after the fact. As in you all had 2 weeks to write that essay for English Lit, but someone always needs an extension on the deadline. AAAnd then the boss comes in and spoils everything :P |
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So player eco skyrocketing exponentialy is a balance bug? or will the AI also skyrocket exponentialy? The way I see it, if the AI can't follow the players eco, by act 3-4 it will be in a sorry state, unless it receives strength through pre-programmed act/story events. Beyond that nothing really matters. We/I need to understand more about how the AI plays. Perhaps the ppl who played the early betas to the finish line could contribute. |
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Okay, for this version I'm calling this resolved, because it's going to need a whole other round of discussion with the new balance changes in place. I kind of like to break that up by version or it becomes very difficult to follow what is going on. Here are the changes: * There is now a "cost per citizen" that goes up progressively as you gain more citizens. ** The first 1k citizens cost you 1 crown per citizen. ** The next 1.5k are 2 per. ** The next 2.5k are 3 per. ** The next 2.5k are 4 per. ** The next 2.5k are 5 per. ** Next 10k are 6 per. ** Next 10k are 7 per. ** Next 10k are 8 per. ** Next 10k are 9 per. ** Next 10k are 10 per. ** Next 20k are 11 per. ** Next 25k are 12 per. ** Next 50k are 13 per. ** Next 75k are 14 per. ** Next 75k are 16 per. ** Next 250k are 20 per. ** Next 250k are 26 per. ** Next 250k are 34 per. ** Anything above a million is 44 per. ** Does this rate eventually get pretty extortionate? Sure. But presumably by the time you have citizenry that large, you have some majorly upgraded buildings, and you're thus pumping out a lot more than the baseline crowns. The balance on this in the very late game may or may not be good, but thus far loading up existing savegames in the early to early-middle game it looks a bit lightweight in terms of cost. Which is probably for the best, all told, but we'll see. ** This is likely not to be the only shift needed, but it's a good start to this. Thanks! @gnosis: The way the AI economy works is pretty irrelevant for the purposes of this particular discussion. I'm not worried about anyone steamrolling the AI; that's not likely to happen. However, if everything is so incredibly cheap on the player side that money loses all meaning, that gets rid of all the meaningful decisions from a citybuilding standpoint, and makes it so that players go into a "just slap things wherever" mode. So really the way to approach the particular issue is from a citybuilding and internal-focused standpoint. The external side of things will take care of itself, don't worry, heh. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 3, 2015 12:48 am | Peons | New Issue | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:48 am | Peons | File Added: economy test 1.save | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:49 am | Peons | Note Added: 0043254 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 1:44 am | ptarth | Note Added: 0043255 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 11:31 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0043269 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 11:43 am | Cinth | Note Added: 0043276 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 11:49 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0043279 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 11:58 am | ptarth | Note Added: 0043281 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:00 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043282 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:02 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0043283 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:09 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043285 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:24 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043287 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:26 pm | Peons | Note Added: 0043288 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:28 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043289 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:30 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043290 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:32 pm | Cinth | Note Edited: 0043290 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:33 pm | Cinth | Note Edited: 0043290 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:38 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043293 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:43 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043295 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:48 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043296 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:49 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043298 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:49 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043299 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:52 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043301 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0043303 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 12:58 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043304 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 1:00 pm | Cinth | Note Edited: 0043304 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 1:12 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043308 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 5:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0043326 | |
| Oct 3, 2015 5:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Oct 3, 2015 5:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 0.916 (Money-Grubbing Citizens) |
| Oct 3, 2015 5:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Oct 3, 2015 5:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
