Spidey
Posts: 411
Joined: 12/8/2013
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@ Jim
I agree in general principle but of course "tax rates" really is an abstraction, as there are many ways to implement taxes aside from raw income taxes, and some of those ways can certainly affect birth rates. What would be better than a simplistic relationship between taxes and population growth is a colony investment factor. A reproduction incentive factor, if you will. The question then becomes whether this is all too much complication at very little gain, but it would make more sense, IMO.
@ Buio
Quite right. But if you think about it, a great many things in this game are fundamentally based on human capitalist values. I'm not sure why a Dhayut would think exactly the same way and I'm pretty sure a hive minded Ghizurean cluster should be more like worker ants than average Americans. But hopefully we'll get there in DW2.
@ Ozone
If you check, say, Humans, you'll notice that they have a specified growth rate of 18%. This is mentioned in the galactopedia and if you check their race files, you'll also see that they're supposed to have a growth rate of 18%. The thing that makes me grumpy here is that there's no way you can ever make humans actually grow at the rate their race file says they should be growing at. So if those 18% that both the race file and the galactopedia claims as a Human growth rate are not in fact achievable, then how can we really call those 18% the Human growth rate? How does a race that can't grow with maybe 12% have a growth rate of 18%? It doesn't, does it? So now those 18% mentioned in the galactopedia and in the race file are still used to calculate the growth rate, but it isn't the growth rate.
So the end result here is that we have a completely abstracted number in the race files that really isn't a growth rate anymore but rather is an abstracted relative growth indicator, and we have a galactopedia that is now giving us outright wrong information. And the growth rates are universally slowed down, of course. Because it sure was imbalanced against all those single players out there that they could growth rush the AI, or something.
Now, you're calling this the best fix in the patch and claiming that maintaining your actual racial growth race was in fact an exploit. I'll be polite and refrain from stating in detail what I think about that comment, but let me ask you this: How can it be an exploit that I'm having a 14% growth rate with a race that is by all accounts supposed to have a 14% growth rate? What's the exploit in that?
And by the way, as I also specified initially, this really isn't the biggest exploit in the game at all. Try ordering a manual retrofit of your 50 civilian mining stations and see what happens. THAT is an exploit. Try selling a tech the AI doesn't have much use of for every last dime the AI opponent has. THAT is an exploit. Zero taxing is simply an informed decision about when to reduce growth and increase income that the AI got wrong every single time. And instead of making the AI smarter, Erik and Elliot decided to nerf the players for no particularly obvious reason.
@ Pasty
Currently the racial growth rate is not actually attainable. It's a theoretical abstract that you won't ever see in the game. I don't know what Erik and Elliot have planned, because they sure haven't told me anything about it, so all I do know is what is currently in the game. And that's what I'm reacting to.
There used to be a relationship between taxation and population growth. You can argue that it was silly but that's what was and it's still there. Now, that relationship used to be that 0% tax meant not having a growth penalty and 50% tax easily resulted in population decreases due to people moving away.
After the patch, 0% tax gives a growth rate penalty, albeit a smaller one than higher tax percentages. A race that used to be able to grow at 18%, as specified in its race file that it should, can now not in any possible, imaginable way, outside the use of wonders, reach a growth rate of 18%. The Quameno used to grow at 14%. Now they're stuck at 11% under the best of circumstances. So the race file says 14%, the galactopedia says 14%, but actually the Quameno are now an 11% race, though you won't now unless you've tested it. And once you start taxing, the rate drops to 4% or so. Maybe 5%.
What I'm trying to say here is that the problem isn't fixed. The system isn't more sensible now. The AI hasn't become any smarter or any less at a disadvantage. The system is simply nerfed. Instead of fixing the AI issue that a few people mentioned, they made the advantage of zero taxing smaller. And the system is now arguably even more senseless, because there's still a fairly amusing relationship between growth and tax rates, but now there's even a growth penalty at zero taxes, and the very thing they're calling a "growth rate" in the files is now no longer the actual growth rate said race can potentially achieve, which is a nice way to make things even less comprehensible than they were previously.
@ Tehlongone
That's a fair view to have but then why is there still a penalty to growth at 0% tax rates? Why are all growth rates universally slowed down? Why do the growth rates seen in the game no longer match the growth rates in the race files?
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Version .52 really does turn racial growth rates into a... - 
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