View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017695 | Stars Beyond Reach | Balance Issue | Oct 5, 2015 9:36 am | Oct 6, 2015 9:15 pm | |
| Reporter | Rythe | Assigned To | |||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 0.916 (Money-Grubbing Citizens) | ||||
| Summary | 0017695: Progressive Citizen Tax - All The Problems | ||||
| Description | My first problem with the Progressive Citizen Tax you implemented with Money-Grubbing Citizens is one of principle in that this system goes a great way to defining SBR as a pure econ min-max game. Players who want to go at it as a military conquest game or cover the world with hospitals game or 'just seeing the sights' game get sidelined by it and are basically told 'You are playing SBR wrong' by this system. The second problem is this is going to be a nightmare to balance. A Progressive Citizen Tax means something different in a Zenith game than it does in a Skylaxian game than it does in an Evucks game than it does in a Peltians game - Zenith may barely notice it. It might hit the sweet spot for Skylaxians. Evucks could be crippled by it. To do this well, you will need to implement a unique tax scheme for every economic/citizen growth racial profile, or it won't be doing what you want this system to do for most of them, and it's a tax scheme that will probably change for somebody every time you do econ balance adjustments. The third problem is it requires Arcane Knowledge - Players suddenly need to know all the citizen break points for the tax and what each econ building's crowns per worker efficiency is. Otherwise, players will suddenly find their economy tanking and not really know why. Fourth problem is it destroys tech progression to some extent. Teching up should feel good and rewarding, but a progressive citizen tax cuts into that by requiring more efficient buildings just to break even and/or continue to grow at a decent pace after certain population points. Half the game suddenly becomes a requirement to rebuild your economy because you now have 20K citizens. And then again at 45K citizens. And it doubles down on some techs amounting to nothing because the associated building isn't efficient enough for a race. Fifth problem is that it gives me a reason to get on my soap box - I realize that efficiency penalties for larger civ sizes are suppose to reflect bureaucratic and command inefficiencies creeping in - in theory. In practice, those efficiency penalties tell me you need some arbitrary and semi-artificial difficulty mod to slow a player's roll because the core game systems aren't good enough to provide adequate challenge on their own after a point. It's a bit of a balancing cheat, and mostly boring and tedious for anyone who isn't an efficiency min-max wonk. Mind, I'm saying this knowing that so, so many strategy games use it as a balance tool. Slowing a player's/faction's roll is basically a problem that most of these games never really solve. Still, I could wish for better. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Oh, right. I keep forgetting that pop is limited by jobs available. So Evucks and Peltians would be crippled because their economies are weaker in general. And by Zenith, I meant the one with the Greed faction mod. |
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A little over the top perhaps, but I'm also jaded and taciturn. Regardless the sentiment I agree with. Didn't everyone seen both of those sentences other reports where I said it was bad? One lesser form of implementing some reins on the economy is to increase the number of workers a building uses as it levels. I've mentioned it before and no one liked the idea, but it will work to keep the buildings from becoming too much more efficient. |
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there's the density vs efficiency consideration. More jobs per plot or more income per citizen? An act 5 building should do both effectively obsoleting all previous buildings. The only drawback could be that those buildings would have a huge building complexity and cost along with the fact that they would be prime targets. After some pop levels are reached early buildings are just useless and in the extreme they can create deficit. But yes: Do we realy want this design? |
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I don't think it's as bad as it's being made out to be. I have a Krolin save up on here that has a stable 17k pop and brings in over 100k crowns per turn. And as far as races having different economic strengths, as long as each race is broken down by difficulty then it is very much ok for some to be harder (or easier) than others. |
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Well yes, I did hype it up a bit. But then, you are playing Krolin. If it's the Bomix faction, you have roughly the best economy in the game, it should be nothing to you. If it's the Gol faction, you have an economic bonus to industry, so it won't effect you as much. If you are the Strot faction, then your economy is average. You are having the baseline experience. For races with economic penalties, they won't be doing nearly as well, and that will get worse for them as the population ramps up to higher tax tiers. |
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It really depends on how large of a pop you need to complete the objectives reasonably. 60K pop will cost you 434K crowns per turn. That's 60K people employed. |
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I did peltian non-greed and other then having to tweak my starting build order a bit it's still possible to get a pretty rocking economy with them. Too bad I ran into an impossible act1 transition condition in the process. |
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do you remember the times when we used to tax our citizens and they would pay us for using our services. Ah good old times! |
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I missed the first phase of testing (I got in during v2). I just ran Peltials up to 22K pop and sit very stable being able to work my way around. It's a bit slower and I have to watch my income more closely, but it is a harder race to play. I'm inclined to take this game to 100K pop, but I'm not feeling much like playing for hours on end right now ;) |
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So I think I have an idea that'll solve enough of these problems. Tie the population tax increases to Act progression. When a player completes an objective, have a little popup that gives them some sort of progress update and also tells them of the tax increase - 'We have developed to a bigger, better civilization. To celebrate, our citizens demand a higher standard of living and 60" plasma TVs' This means that we know what tech players have available when they hit a new tax tier, the player is told about it and can begin to predict it's going to happen once they complete a new objective so plan accordingly, and there's fewer tiers to balance (and easier balance vs pop objectives). Tying it to progress also means that players can't game the system by keeping their population to the strict minimum to achieve their goals, or have a reason to dump excess population once they progress to a new Act. I do like the idea of the econ model becoming more difficult as an aspect of game Act progression, so an explicit way the game can say 'You've hit the next level, let's ramp things up!' Simply basing it on population increase doesn't really achieve that. As further balance, I suppose the obvious answer is to have a brave Evucks/ilPasc player go through all the Acts and ask themselves 'Does this suck enough?' in regards to the tax and call whatever they settle on good. PS: I previously stuck Peltians beside Evucks because I mind-blanked the worker pop limit mechanic meaning that 3x pop density types won't suddenly have another 100K citizens because they built 8 condos once upon a time when they only needed 2. So it's just Evucks that this system needs to be careful of. |
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I ran Peltians to 31k pop with no issues in income. I was even able to grab a ton of territories at the beginning of the game (on what little income small shops give, none-the-less). |
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Peltians have the advantage of growing their worker population fast, which other than the first couple of turns is actually a huge advantage. The only reason the first couple of turns are negated is because peltians also take a penalty to commerce buildings. Once you tech into non-commerce income generation they pickup fairly well. I personally wouldn't classify them as very hard based on just the first two acts, but they might suffer from weak ground/vehicle combat in the later two acts. |
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I personally play peltians a lot and I feel that I can pretty much make the income I need to build at a fast rate.(not metric shit tons of course but who needs shit ton honestly at the moment any way) |
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The progressive citizen cost is a band-aid solution that acknowledges the fact that the player will select and spam the most profitable building in each act. Thus we end up with predetermined income bands/growth for each act, while also forcing all the players to spam income buildings because you can't effectively play in any other way. |
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I've detailed my concerns in various places already. I'd like to see how people are handling 50k populations without abusing economic flaws (e.g., stacking a lumber camp with 6 lumber mills or the same with factories). With 50k population you need 6.68 crowns per citizen (334k total). |
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I wonder if my 15k pop Evuck game qualifies as proof enough that the econ doesn't just implode. I'm not getting the obsession here with constantly needing to maximize crowns generation. You only need enough crowns to complete your objectives. And to that effect, somewhere around 100K crowns per turn seems to be more than enough to do anything you want. @ ptarth: I haven't pushed 50k pop with any race yet. Outside the 40k pop Act 1 objective, I'm not sure we'll need that high a pop. |
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No, the problem is that the economy model is too trivial and that regardless of your target crowns per turn you always do it by spamming the same building i.e. there is no diversity. |
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The economy should be in such a way that for a large income you would need both a large pop and a balanced set of buildings. Not just a horde of factories. Who buys all of those products? where do the money come from? If it's that trivial I might as well play a facebook game. |
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If you want to min max sure. Office buildings are the only thing you need outside of specific needs. |
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I've been advocating a need-based economy for a while. Chris stated that he was coding it but thought the player would find it too confusing and wanted to see how far he could get with variants on the current model. I still think he is wrong, but evidence has to be collected and other testers need to come to the same conclusion. It seems the consensus is shifting this way, so that's good. The per citizen tax problem is a problem. If you have 50% of your citizens working at 20 crowns per worker jobs, then you can only support a population of 155k. Adding more citizens at this point will only help IF you can make more than 10 crowns per worker, including all of the support costs required for that citizen (police, fire, entertainment, food, water, etc, etc). With the current status of high level economic buildings, you can abuse them too easily, which means I can't make useful projections. Example: A lumber camp makes 9 crowns per worker. But if you abuse mills you can make a camp produce 576 crowns per worker. That's not what's intended. Likewise Fishing and mines are also broken with multipliers that actually reduce crown production. The other problem is that no one else is trying to see how large of a population they can make, which means I'm the only one complaining about it. Most people are sitting with less than 10k population (I hear 17k and 30k population games are also around, but I'm also guessing they have the Greedy trait. Peltian poor commerce + greed effectively balances out leaving them at default economies). |
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gnosis brings us back to the "what is the economy based on" question. This is an issue that has been dodged for a long time. Last time it came up I got told off for using rhetorical questions. That was annoying. I'm not sure if it really does need an answer. |
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Woah, let's hold up with talks about a new economy. SBR is a 4X/City Sim hybrid. The City Sim side is keeping needs met Or Else. The 4X side is pumping out crowns so you can overcome your opposition. SBR's opposition is somewhere between crippled and gated off in Acts 3 & 4. The reason the economy seems trivial is because there's nothing to do with it at the moment except build more factories. That should change in future game Acts based on Chris's design notes. Our overblown, trivial economies are rumored to not be enough against what Act 4 will do to it. So we're at a wait and see stage in testing with this, which is why I haven't gone into certain things in great detail. I've also managed to blow 10 Million Crowns attacking the AI over about 10-20 turns. At which point, an income of 300K a turn seems mediocre to say the least. |
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Hence why I said to postpone this discussion until the rest of the acts were out. But this is a tbs not a rts so a trivial economy like starcraft or AI wars would not do the trick. Think more along the lines of Europa Universalis trading or Victoria 2. Cause we do have the time to think it out while playing. |
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That's also why I play 10-15k pop games. No act 3-4 |
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Well, it appears that SBR's econ complexity is suppose to arise from its web of building dependencies, adjacency bonuses, and map-based opportunities. And then applying pressure on the system in various ways. The balance is in allowing the various building options to be useful in their situational niches. There may always be a 'best' option that changes on the terrain, but other things should be 'close enough' to add flavor to the experience for those that want it. So working in significant pollution and dependency drawbacks to the factories so spamming them becomes increasingly problematic. Making sure the mines shine where you can use them for a bit. Have lumber play a role with some energy and crown production (but not be overwhelmingly good). Keep fisheries interesting hybrids of food/crowns that also happen to be somewhat vulnerable. Etc. Etc. The groundwork is in the game for all of this. It just needs that balance, polish, and applicable sources of pressure. |
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well the adjacency bonuses were removed with the exceptions of fisheries and lumbermills. And the building dependencies don't have any effect on crowns production or efficiency once you set them up. I'm all in to get more mechanics of that sort, but they were removed for a reason. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 5, 2015 9:36 am | Rythe | New Issue | |
| Oct 5, 2015 9:43 am | Rythe | Description Updated | |
| Oct 5, 2015 9:55 am | Rythe | Note Added: 0043388 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 10:15 am | ptarth | Note Added: 0043389 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 10:17 am | ptarth | Note Edited: 0043389 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 10:37 am | gnosis | Note Added: 0043392 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 10:37 am | gnosis | Note Edited: 0043392 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 1:11 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043414 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 1:32 pm | Rythe | Note Added: 0043416 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 2:16 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043419 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 2:29 pm | Peons | Note Added: 0043421 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 4:40 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043427 | |
| Oct 5, 2015 7:03 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043437 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 9:47 am | Rythe | Note Added: 0043448 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 9:53 am | Cinth | Note Added: 0043451 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 3:02 pm | Peons | Note Added: 0043463 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 4:27 pm | crazyroosterman | Note Added: 0043467 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 4:34 pm | Rythe | Description Updated | |
| Oct 6, 2015 5:42 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043472 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:09 pm | ptarth | Note Added: 0043473 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:13 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043474 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:15 pm | Cinth | Note Edited: 0043474 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:17 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043475 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:21 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043476 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:21 pm | Cinth | Note Added: 0043477 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:24 pm | ptarth | Note Added: 0043478 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:35 pm | ptarth | Note Edited: 0043478 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 6:38 pm | ptarth | Note Added: 0043479 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 7:05 pm | Rythe | Note Added: 0043482 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 8:19 pm | gnosis | Note Edited: 0043472 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 8:26 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043485 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 8:28 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043486 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 9:01 pm | Rythe | Note Added: 0043488 | |
| Oct 6, 2015 9:15 pm | gnosis | Note Added: 0043489 |
