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BlueTemplar -> RE: Version .52 really does turn racial growth rates into an abstraction? (6/15/2014 12:36:31 PM)
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And so you fix that by turning growth rates into theoretical numbers that can't actually be attained in the game? What's the reasoning here, Elliot and Erik?
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Why are all growth rates universally slowed down?
- IMHO it's because of this : as you said :
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And instead of making the AI smarter, Erik and Elliot decided to nerf the players for no particularly obvious reason.
The reason is obvious, actually. It's much harder to make the AI play the game better than to nerf the strategies that the AI doesn't know how to use.
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Why do the growth rates seen in the game no longer match the growth rates in the race files?
Another simple explanation I can think of : it's much easier for the dev(s) to program in a hidden scaling factor, and then to tweak it when game balance needs to be changed, than to scale every single instance of growth rate in racial files (and galactopedia).
You can see examples of this everywhere in the game : construction rates, manufacturing rates, extraction rates (and hidden extraction caps), collector potential energy, ship costs...
BTW, haven't slowed growth rates made the strategy of invading planets for population much stronger?
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The whole wonder concept is massively skewed towards the player.
Probably only because the AI doesn't really know how to play the game.
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I asked for the option to mod the current wonders to national wonders.
That way the supertech races wont be able to make themselves into hypertech races forever.
I'm not sure that's a good idea. If you nerf all the powerful strategies, you will make the game boring.
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The entire notion that low taxes leads to higher birth rates is ridiculous and should be taken out of the game.
Not more ridiculous that population*development somehow generating money out of thin air.
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High taxes should always lead to an eventual rebellion on planet if not scaled back after time.
IRL rebellions are usually caused by food scarcity, though very high taxes can certainly lead to that. However, if I'm not mistaken 50% tax is still quite low historically.
A thing I don't get about tax is this :
Why if my colony GDP is 20K, and tax is 10% (100% compliance), I only get 1K in taxes, and not 2K?
Why if my colony GDP is 20K, and tax is 25% (90% compliance), I only get 3.5K in taxes, and not 4.5K?
Why if my colony GDP is 19K, and tax is 50% (65% compliance), I only get 3K in taxes, and not 6K?
Looks like there are hidden factors here too...
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I think that a good balance could be achieved by making it so that on the global scale you would get the same overall growth rate ragardless of where the taxes are being collected. So having two planets with 10% taxes gets you the same total growth as having those planets with 0% and roughly 20%. This way the choice of taxes would be about local resource allocation and the total cash you need.
I'm not sure that's a good idea, and it probably wouldn't work anyway, considering that growth rate is exponential (it is, right?).
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Just to be clear, I'd like the AI to set a world's tax rate to zero to maximise the growth rate until the world's population capacity is achieved. Then to set the tax rate to the highest level which achieves a positive happiness. The issue with hardcoded population bands for setting tax level is that a world's population capacity varies depending on a number of factors. Better to have the tax band adjusted by how full a world is.
For example,
[Population/Maximum population] [tax level]
0-50% zero tax
50%-95% low tax
95%-100% high tax
I'll go further : why not just having it to be a continuous function, with the growth rate being too a continuous function depending on planet "fill rate"?
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Its not logical AT ALL that low tax rate should maximise growth rate, if the game has had that relationship in the past and it has been changed that is entirely positive. If now there is no way to achieve maximum growth rate, then that means there must be progressive moves going forward to implement systems that logically relate to growth rate, not demands to a return to a completely illogical and broken system.
It hasn't been changed. It just has been rebalanced. That's one of the core game mechanics. I don't see why it would be changed to something else completely different.
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I manage to play with automation, but...
- Can't manual tax, too much benefit
- Can't trade, too easy to exploit
- Can't beam for wonders, too powerful
- Can't explore manually, boo much benefit
- Can't optimize ship designs, too powerful
- Can't research manually, must take the AI detours for a level playing field.
- Better not aim for the enemy good colones early, too good.
- Better not abuse strong troop transport beneath space defenses, too cheap.
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pasty, I play most games without Exploits, but it's become a very, very long list.
Disallowing Tech Trading is not a fix because it involves removing a feature from the game.
The traditional 4X solution to lack of AI smarts is either giving huge bonuses to the AI or to play multiplayer. Sadly, the second option isn't present for DW.
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Growth rate being linked to tax was never really logical.It's the poor masses with less money that breed like rabbits.
Less tax making the planet good for migration is logical.
What I find logical (within the game paradigm), is if taxes and overpopulation affected happiness and happiness affected growth rate and emigration rate. Though if I'm not mistaken it already works that way?
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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.
Those aren't exploits either, nor bugs. They're, like the "0% tax "exploit"", game mechanics that the AI doesn't know how to use properly. Building (instead of retrofitting) mining stations has the same effect, by the way.
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And you can do it over and over, milking money out of the private sector, which was harder before when it wasn't something that happened instantly.
You can achieve a similar effect by scrapping civilian ships. If I'm not mistaken, the private sector will happily start rebuilding ships. Obviously, in this case you lose all the resources that were used to make those ships, as well as their cargo and fuel storage contents.
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In some ways i think what it does is remove a layer of inconvenience. Those mining stations don't have plants to construct the parts they utilize in the retrofit. To prevent distribution of parts (ie freighters picking up built parts from spaceports and taking then to the stations) taking forever, the stations build immediately and the spaceport still gets paid.
Mining stations not having plants and yards is meaningless to the discussion, since if I'm not mistaken the private sector transfers you the money as soon as you order the mining station retrofit, regardless of whether it has the parts to retrofit or not. And freighters DO pick up resources and distribute them to station cargo (625 per station it would seem), and I'm pretty sure the stations then need those resources for retrofits.
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I don't see why zero taxing should have a much better effect than say 10%
Well, from what I understood, there was the issue that going from 1% taxes to 0% taxes gave a MUCH higher population growth boost than going from 2% to 1% or 3% to 2%. Is that right?
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Human's growth rate, in reality, is between 1% and 2%.
18% wow... I don't know when human turned into rabbits, but it's quite an amazing orgy down there! :D
Are you sure that 18% is an annual growth rate? (Any kind of exponential growth that doesn't end up as logistic growth is unsustainable by the way.)
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And it really doesn't sit well with me when the state can simply order civilians to fess up with an "upgrade payment" whenever the state damn well wants, and as often as the state wants.
Well, why not? Considering the civilian AI is not that smart either, this seems like a good solution to me.
Honestly, what I would like to see in this game is if everything you chose to be automated became private sector. And you would have the choice of 0% state, 100% state, and everything in-between. Then your race and government might perhaps influence the effectiveness of the state and private sectors.
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The way I see it, the simple abuse remover is to have the state lose money instead of gain money when manually retrofitting. Just multiply by -1 when it's a forced retrofit.
That doesn't make sense within the current game mechanics if the mining station is privately owned.
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Thing is right now the private sector is completely automatic and independent. They spin money out of nowhere yet have zero need for it other than expanding the civvy fleet. That doesnt cost much, so they have tons of capital that the player can tax or otherwise try to get. It seems legitimate idea to tax or get money out of civilians so actually it isnt particularly immersion breaking.
Whats questionable is how civvies get their revenues. It just seems to generate cash on its own without very much player intervention. The player just builds mines and ports and thats it.
They get the money out of population*development. You don't tax their capital (stock), but that money generation (flow).
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The better solution is to have the player actively help the private sector make money instead of it acting completely on its own. In this way the empire economy model follows that of real life economies that take actice roles in supporting private development, and naturally how well you can develop that economy the more money you can tax out of it
This is pretty much already how the game works.
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Being able to raise the tax from 0 to 50% regularly is unrealistic anyway. This has removed much of the need to do so.
It's how the game works. Happiness depends on the tax rate, not tax rate change.
By the way, I don't see why there's an arbitrary cap of 50% tax.
P.S.: What IS bugging me is some ways how the economic system is implemented :
When civilians build ships, they pay their cost of resources*scaling_factor to the state. But (if I'm not mistaken) when state builds ships it just destroys the amount of money of resources*scaling_factor? So neither the state nor the private sector actually "owns" the resources? And why is there that scaling_factor?
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