I am going to answer your opinions with my own.... if that makes me a fanboy, so be it but I can't agree with half of what you have posted.

First of all I would say that you have described it as if you know nothing about how the game works and that there is nothing to tell you how it works. While I might agree that there could be *better* documentation, it is hardly completely lacking. In game there are various mouse overs and screens that give you the information you need to make strategic choices. The manual tells you where to find them, so de facto, the manual does have its uses in describing how the game works. The core problem for most people coming to this game is the understanding of how taxes, spending and the sliders work and the fact that they bring useless baggage along from other games who work to a universal mold. Ok, so if a lot of people have trouble understanding it then yes, the documentation isn't fantastic.... but it is not particularly complex and doesn't take a specialist to work most of it out. Working out most of it will allow you to implement your strategies. It really depends on just how much you want to know.... some people could argue that if you knew everything about the game it would be bogged down in micromanagement. Some people want a pretty spreadsheet.... but not everyone! A game simply cannot appeal to everyone in a given market.

On the AI I think you are *way* off bat. The reviewers you talked about are not amateurs.... they play every game that is released. They certainly aren't going to queue up to give an independant company good reviews. The AI is solid..... compare it to other games. In 95% of games the only way the AI can challenge the player is through horrendous bonuses to its economy and production. I am not saying that the AI is legendarily intelligent but it certainly has more capacity than most, if not all, strategy games that I have played. They attack me if I am weak, they kiss my rear if I am strong.... they have an understanding of what I am trying to do (e.g. if I mass transports in their territory or start knocking out influence bases all round their planets) and they will do something to counter it. That "something" may not be enough, but it is a step towards understanding players tactics that other strategy games simply lack.

On upgrades. If you read through the developers journals you will see that a significant proportion of time goes into developing the AI. It's not like they are going to release changes that the AI can't take into account. In fact, most of the work goes into the AI if the content of the journals are anything to go by. The actual upgrades you are going to see are directly to the AI.

Given that strategy games are predominantly PC based.... and that making games where the AI has to adapt to a situation is far more complex than making aliens run at you and shoot.... it is not surprising that the PC industry has more problems with release than consoles. Consoles have the massive benefit of being totally the same for each user while PC's are ALL different. The massive amount of show-stopping bugs would be cut down to practically nothing if everyone's systems were the same. Half the time these bugs are user related anyway. Patching isn't a problem.... far from it, it's a benefit of PC gaming because not only do you get an increasingly polished product but you get more content as you go along. That doesn't happen on consoles where the content is static. I dont play console games because it seems to me that all their efforts go into making shiny spangly graphics with very little core game underneath it. PC gaming is a fantastic industry where innovation is possible and greater complexity is assured.

Documentation. In a game that is patched, where content is not static, the manual will become dated. That's pretty much an accepted fact. I am not going to argue that the manual is perfect - it really isn't.... but it's nowhere near as bad as you are making out. Also, the game was functioning properly as probably countless people here will attest (you can easily pass them all off as fanboys if that strengthens your argument)..... it may have not been functioning perfectly... but surprise, the moment you had the game you also had a patch to deal with some issues. The developers went out of their way to deal with problems that were really not their concern. The graphics throttling for example is something that the hardware manufacturers drivers should deal with, not a software company.

You say you are returning the game based upon, from what it seems, incomplete documentation and disappointment because your expectations were too hyped by reviewers. You also seem to think that the game is still incomplete/not working as intended yet the vast majority of people have very little trouble. Yes there are bugs, but they aren't show-stopping - far from it. There are work-arounds and the next patch will address players issues with things like the transparency of the economic system. If you are returning the game for those reasons, then I can't see how you could ever really be satisfied with any game.... you must return a lot of games! Or you could instead keep hold of the game, wait to see what's released and whether that fixes your issues then develop your suggestions for the developers to work on for further patches.

First of all I would say that you have described it as if you know nothing about how the game works and that there is nothing to tell you how it works. While I might agree that there could be *better* documentation, it is hardly completely lacking. In game there are various mouse overs and screens that give you the information you need to make strategic choices. The manual tells you where to find them, so de facto, the manual does have its uses in describing how the game works. The core problem for most people coming to this game is the understanding of how taxes, spending and the sliders work and the fact that they bring useless baggage along from other games who work to a universal mold. Ok, so if a lot of people have trouble understanding it then yes, the documentation isn't fantastic.... but it is not particularly complex and doesn't take a specialist to work most of it out. Working out most of it will allow you to implement your strategies. It really depends on just how much you want to know.... some people could argue that if you knew everything about the game it would be bogged down in micromanagement. Some people want a pretty spreadsheet.... but not everyone! A game simply cannot appeal to everyone in a given market.

I would to have disagree with this. A game in some sense has to replicate, to a certain degree, to real life. In real life, I can choose to whom I want to give my money to. If I have $100 and I have 2 kids, I can give 1 kid $80 and another one $20, since the kid whos receiving $80 is older, hence need more money. It is so illogical that each time I have to split and give each of them $50. Another example is I have 2 factories in 2 different countries producing bagels. If for some reason the demand of bagels for country X has become 0, then I can choose not to operate that factory, sure I have to pay for like fixed cost (maintenance, etc), but I dont have to spend money on production.

A game mechanic and economics should at least mimic a real life situation in order to make sense.

They attack me if I am weak, they kiss my rear if I am strong.... they have an understanding of what I am trying to do (e.g. if I mass transports in their territory or start knocking out influence bases all round their planets) and they will do something to counter it. That "something" may not be enough, but it is a step towards understanding players tactics that other strategy games simply lack.

start code:

define military = no of ships
if player(military)> AI1(military) = be nice
or else hostile

my apologise to the dev by no means I want to ridicule the AI programming, but for me it seems to be the case

I would to have disagree with this. A game in some sense has to replicate, to a certain degree, to real life. In real life, I can choose to whom I want to give my money to. If I have $100 and I have 2 kids, I can give 1 kid $80 and another one $20, since the kid whos receiving $80 is older, hence need more money. It is so illogical that each time I have to split and give each of them $50. Another example is I have 2 factories in 2 different countries producing bagels. If for some reason the demand of bagels for country X has become 0, then I can choose not to operate that factory, sure I have to pay for like fixed cost (maintenance, etc), but I dont have to spend money on production.

Let's look at your example here:

Let's make that 3 kids (as this more directly resembles the game)

You can choose to give each kid $33. (equal distribution on the sliders)
You can choose to give 1 kid $99, another 1$ and the last nothing. (user selected balance on the sliders)
You can choose to take that $100, put 50% in a pot and then share the rest out as a factor. (industrial capacity slider)

This is all in game. You can further micro manage a planet to focus it on what you want it to do. You aren't obliged to give each kid $50... that's just not true!

What makes this confusing is that you have (to continue your example) 3 children in multiple families (planets) that you are giving $100 to each family and setting an overall distribution method. Let's say you have 20 families - you could give that $100 to each family and tell each family how much money each of them would get.... i.e. a lot of work! Or you could set an equal distribution spend across all the families based upon the age of the children - i.e. Prioritise which kid (social/military/research) you want to receive more.


With the factories.

If the second country's demand goes to nothing but you choose to maintain that factory, there will still be a lot of overhead costs that are beyond the remit of maintenance. What about all the staff? What about property tax? Industrial tax? What you would probably want to do is to close down that factory (i.e. Decommission factory in planet screen)

First of all.... it is not a perfect system but it does cut down a lot on micromanagement. You can still go into planet screens and micro manage them a little if you want to. This is mostly, I feel, because the game is about galactic or empire management.... I set overall policies, not individual ones. Individual ones are emulated by the focus button on each colony.

However, it *is* clear that you don't understand the system. There's nothing wrong with that and it does come back to the OP's first point about documentation. If you were given a clearer documentation you would have understood that your examples are already there within the game context. However, I am not privvy to secret knowledge... no one sent me hidden files to understand the game, I achieved the knowledge through a) using the manual looking at the mouse overs and screens in the game c) experience from playing. There is a learning curve (thank god because I hate simplistic games) but it is far from surmountable. Not only am I not privvy to special information, I am also not particularly endowed with vast technical understanding. I play from a very abstract perspective on an I Dont Need To Know basis. Even with my flaws, I can enact fiscal and production policies that match the strategy I am employing... it really isn't rocket science!

I personally vote for the OP to play some more before returning it.... play it, look at all the governer screens, look at the details and summary screens on planets.... look at what happens when you drop a factory on a 700% manu bonus tile. I am pretty sure it will be self evident over time what is happening and you will learn to tailor it to your goals. Hopefully, you will also have some fun along the way!

It is not about fantasy future, it is about logic, since ancient times in earth to present day, you can choose who you want to give your fish, cattle or money to. I would have to believe that would be the case in the future.

That's just not true. We havent had a universal trade system for very long. Kinship systems, fame systems, debt systems all LONG predate any economical system.

I'm not a specialist on technical things, but I am an anthropologist, so I can assure you that this is simply not true. What we deem to be universally correct nowadays has only been around for a limited period of time in the human experience.

I can supply you pages of examples if you wish.

You said it yourself, the AI doesnt know whether you have destroyed countless of their ships, and therefore are able to have ships with massive amount of HP. Or they dont know to protect those transport with some escort.

I said no such thing myself. In fact, I implied that they did appreciate that they weren't getting anywhere with Plan A so they decided on Plan B. As they still had a vastly superior military to me, why would an AI that's a stupid and scripted as you are making out offer to go to peace with me? It was at least as strong militarily at the end of our first war compared to me - why didnt it just keep sending in the waves of ships?

With the factories. If the second country's demand goes to nothing but you choose to maintain that factory, there will still be a lot of overhead costs that are beyond the remit of maintenance. What about all the staff? What about property tax? Industrial tax? What you would probably want to do is to close down that factory (i.e. Decommission factory in planet screen)

Or you could build something else i.e. military?

As you said before this is about empire strategy. In many empires or nations on earth (I do not have other example ), certain area is better suited to farming, industry or simply living. Certain area is design for military use, for example a castle or fortification. And all of them has different policy set by the goverment or king. For example a farming community will get assistance in term of subsidies, industry area will be taxed more than a farming district and etc. The point is there are a lot of control and policies that can be set by an empire (or nation) to certain area without setting it to the whole country.

I can tell from my experience the AI will offer a peace after a few months, in fact you can always ask for a peace after let say a few weeks, assuming that the AI didnt take some of your planets during the war and you still have a reasonable military.

In my example above, I didn't have a reasonable military.... not compared to the Drath anyway.... they had more than 50% of the planets in the galaxy (medium map), they had taken over 3 or 4 minor civs and had good planets, they had some serious manufacturing going on with their best planet having 1100% bonus tiles. Compared to their line on the graph (at the top) you could barely see any other races military line on the graph.... they were monsters!

The only flaw of the AI that comes from that... and I have been saying it for a while.... is that they didn't build any faster ships - they were all bog standard 3 moves which meant I always got the attack and therefore was always able to win. If they had faster ships I would have lost and lost horribly. But still, the point was about the AI's capacity to switch tactics according to the situation and in this case a non apparent situation relative to the simple "look at military graph" script.

1. Money is spent on social production wether or not you have anything to produce (and the same amount of money either way). This makes so little sense they are changing it. Well, I wonder what you would have said on GC1: you were spending money on military and social even with empty build queues.

That would have been twice as bad, one can see the situation here has improved halfway, and the other half will get fixed in the next patch (but it is unclear when science production will be unlinked from social and military production).

2. Taxes seem to make no sense at all when I tried to analyze them. That is your point of view. The basic idea is that if you tax too much, some people will start to not pay taxes.

That doesn't make sense. People don't have a choice in paying taxes; it isn't something you can opt out of. Besides, generally isn't the effect of higher taxes best represented by greater unhappiness in the population? In any case, higher taxes might bring with it higher costs for the tax collecting agency, but doubling the tax rate from 30% to 60% should still be someone close to doubling the revenue....and it simply isn't. Also the percentage increase from economic buildings isn't a straightforward percentage increase; it isn't clear how these buildings work at all (and the same is true of ALL the capital buildings).

Problem is, the tax revenue of a planet ISN'T proportional to either the population size nor the tax rate Why should everything be proportionnal ? (I know, playing devil's advocate here).

Clearly even you realize the silliness of not making it proportional without some dang good reasons (and you can't think of any yourself). The difference isn't small either, but can be as higher than getting 2bcs per billion people on a smaller population world to getting less than 1bc per billion people on a world with more people (but a much, much higher quality rating)--even if the econ bonus of the larger planet is 3 times larger than the smaller!

3. Moral on a planet and % bonus is also non-intuitive, and despite the overlay the diminshing return aspect and how that works isn't explained to any decent degree. Well, it isn't explained in GC2. And Frogboy has stated that they did some fine tuning on moral calculations based on feedback

I just hope the mouse-over will end up displaying the calculations better in the future too (and we need more of them, a lot more). I hope taxes and such get an overhaul so that they make more sense as well.

But if you want all the detailed aspect, you should go the the wiki site. BTW, the morale calculations are explained here https://www.galciv.wikicities.com/wiki/Morale Link

The moral calc figures on the wiki site are wrong. If you pay to upgrade a morale building, then the morale on a planet WILL improve, but the wiki site says all morale buildings are broken and are equally effective. Also, morale buildings clearly have diminishing returns (or at least a +25% bonus to morale does not actually mean a straight +25% bonus to the morale on the planet, but rather something less), and the wiki site does not indicate this. Of course the wiki site doesn't even touch taxes, though if it did I doubt it would be that helpful.

For anyone who have is a fan of turn based strategy games it is absolutely vital for players to plan tactics and strategy based on the rules of the game and the information provided by the game. This is not some big secret, it is just the dynamics of a strategy game.

I'm sorry, that's rubbish. If you're a fan of turn based strategy you should learn to play intuitively. YOU WILL NOT WIN AT FIRST. I don't think anyone does. This game is designed to be hard and beat you in every way. When yuo get used to economy, you realise it becomes about market centers to add a planet wide % bonus to income, starbases to add other bonuses, farms to raise population cap. In the 1.1 patch (Sunday at latest according to frogboy) They are changing production, economy etc to be less intuitive and easier to grasp. Don't trade the game in for the AI problems either, because this AI, and if you think it's bad enough to trade in, stop playing TBS. Just stop. The AI is intellegent, it very often takes time to realise what it's doing. (IE stabbing you in the back) If it's being seemingly stupid/suicidal, odds are someone else paid them off.

start code: define military = no of ships if player(military)> AI1(military) = be nice or else hostile

Yeah, maybe on cakewalk. But other than that, it's horryfyingly wrong. They take into account how many years you've been friends, trade (namely how much of their economy is from you), diplomacy skill, technological skill. A rich, diplomatic, superior race can keep the AI in check without building ships, especially if you have the infrastructure to build a big army quickly (AFAIK they do spy on you, and they do know your infrastructure. They know perfectly well what I'm capable of)
They check your borders, your influence, a lot of things. If the code was as you say, then the AI would be gone in about 5 game months, because it would attack you whilst you were superior in everything but ships. If it says (intelligent or above) it could crush you like a bug, the declares war on you that turn, odds are he'll have a point. Don't oversimplify things.

And no, this is a game. In real life the other people wouldn't sit there waiting for your turn. You want a proper real life game? go play the sims, or wait for society. I'm not going to say this game is perfect: it's not. I don't understand the economy properly either, but I can make it work. "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die" and all that. I have had CTD's, but that's because I don't like the graphics in windowed and still expect my system to alt-tab out nearly once every 2 minutes sometimes. It's a very good game, and the people at stardock with a brilliant job with all aspects of it.

Then, I don't understand the following sentence on the wiki page: Planetary improvements such as Entertainment Centers are added up and then multiplied against the base morale.

Ahh, my mistake, I must of missed that when I first read through it (probably because I'm having a horrible time getting a decent night's sleep this week since I am sick)--hough the formula would do a lot better to be in the form of:

morale=base_morale*(stuff)+other_stuff

This would clearly indicate what parts of the morale system are directly affected by the base morale and what parts are not.

That said, upgrading a morale building does improve the morale of a planet and the wiki clearly says it shouldn't.

I'll grant the morale part of the wiki is helpful, but not as helpful as it could be, and I'd rather have these things more intuitively explained in the game interface--such as actually having the base_morale of a planet listed as part of the planet's statistics, and then listing how entertainment improvements work as "Increases planet morale by 25% of the base morale" or something like that. Right now the buildings don't really give you much of an idea of how they work, other than what area they improve and that bigger numbers are better--except for farms, factories, and research buildings, of course.

Though, if I were to redesign the morale system from the ground up, then it might end up something like this:

Morale=100%-100*(population_in_billions / PQ)^X+%modifiers

Or something like that, where X is some number (probably an integer, perhaps 1 or 2). Though don't take the above formula too seriously as I am really tired (the basic idea is that the PQ represents habitable land area, in my mind, so pop/PQ represents how crowded things are).

Anyhoo, I am going to go try to get some sleep--the morale system honestly doesn't bother me too much, as there are plenty of ways of messing with that and it usually isn't ever a problem in the game. The tax system on the other hand is directly tied to income which often is a major issue, so when it has bizarre mechanics that are hard to grasp then it is much more annoying.

And this has gone way off-topic

You know it is quite insulting to even suggest that people doesnt know how to play this game

Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone. Looks like I phrased it all rather badly
What I mean is the economy isnt (yet) an exact thing. HOWEVER, getting a planet with farms, high morale, and lots of stock markets definately does increase your income, so it works if not in a very orderly fashion.

Also, whenI say "technologically advanced", thats also bad phrasing. I mean that say you have Doom Rays, and the AI have phasors 4. If they know you have Doom Rays, and they have enough spies to see that you have the maufacturing and economic infrastructure to push out a few powerful fleets in the space of year, and support them with no problems, then they will respect your "potential" military might, rather like in the beginning you have no ships and they leav you alone because you could mobilise faster than they could. It's also more noticeable how they react on huge maps, I've had the AI invent an entire new generation of ships, new armour and defences bought from another of my enemies (paid for with ships by the look of it), so that they go from Mass drivers and armour to missile and shields, allowing their medium frigates to really hurt one of my large hulled ships. But I agree that they don't look at experience properly, the aren't going to defeat a lv 23 ships with any old bunch of fighters

V1.1 is adjusting mainly the AI and economy, so give it one more chance before you return it.

The other 2 had been locked by Moderators, we are keeping an eye on these type of situations. Please do not post the same topic 3 times.

Well, hykin generally posted ad-hoc bunk justifications on the tax thing. And anyhow, this is a game afterall, and supposedly that means the mechanics should be easier than real life. (I'd also note in a largely unrelated point that economists all generall agree on the important and basic elements of the field, it is just the far more theoretical stuff that they have trouble reaching consensus on).

As for Peace Pheonix, the Wiki doesn't have a very good moral formula, as
fMorale = fCivABilityFactor + fBaseMorale + fImprovementFactor + fPlanetMoraleBonusFactor - fNegativeTreasuryFactor + fPlanetQualityBonus - fTaxModifier

Being the formula for morale looks simple, until you realize fCivABilityFactor and fImprovementFactor are needlessly complicated beasts which would be be more simplified by:

fMorale = fBaseMorale * (1 + fCivABilityFact + fImprovementFact) + fPlanetMoraleBonusFactor - fNegativeTreasuryFactor + fPlanetQualityBonus - fTaxModifier

Where fCivABilityFact and fImprovementFact are the plane civ ability bonus and bonus from improvements merely summed up nicely and straightforwardly (right off the screen!) BEFORE they are multipled by the base morale. I believe the "other stuff" there is not multiplied in this manner and could be left out of those parentheses.

And I'll repeat that the buildings ARE NOT giving you a good idea on how they work IN THE GAME when you have to go to a third site which informs you to add up all the percentages from the buildings then multiply that number by another number you have to LOOK UP OFF A TABLE and then you'll see one of the numbers that appears in the game. Whereas instead IN THE GAME the buildings could say they increase morale by a percentage of the base morale, nad the base morale of a planet could simply be displayed, making how those buildings work much more transparent (even if one didn't have the direct formula for how the base morale is calculated in the game). That would be better and change nothing with how things are calculated in the game. Such a change would simply give the game a better interface for the player. Or do you people here really think you should HAVE to go to the Wiki or game code for these things?

Lastly, my frustrations with the economy, and I'll have to run more tests when I am less sick, do not make it clear that more populated is EVER a good idea for more income. It is possible that simply increasing the number of +econ buildings is a far better idea, and the only reason to have a higher population is for when you want to make a bunch of transports from the same world in a short amount of time. Because when you more than double the +econ bonus and increase the planet population by a factor of more than 7, it is a fact that your income will increase by much less than a factor of 7. In fact, the +econ seems to be more powerful on less populated planets, so perhaps it would be better to eschew farms and entertainment centers and just go with stock markets. As I said, the system is far from straightforward or intuitive, nor does it seem to try to even hint to the gamer that it is this way until the gamer tries to figure out what is going on.


Now make no mistake, I do enjoy the game and I also know how to play (I just won a game on masochistic the other night), but I do wish more of these elements were a bit more sensible and straightforward. If the justification for these systems is some real-world economics I am not familiar with (which I doubt since the designers seem to understand that it is a GAME), then it should say so somewhere and give the principles. All I want is a fairly clear explanation of the forces at work and an interface that gives me an intuitive and straightforward control of such forces (so that doubling the tax rate should always at least almost double my revenue--whereas now this varies depending on the econ bonus per planet and so forth, which appears to counteract something that results in situations where the revene doesn't come close to doubling). I don't think this is asking for too much.

Now maybe this could have been written more politely or something, but all I am really talking about are ways the game can be improved. Not because the game is bad as-is (I disagree with the poster on that), but because there are some very simple things, and in some cases UI-only related things, that need some brushing up. I don't think 1.1 is going to do much of this, as I got the impression it is just a few tweaks to how things work, not how they are presented, but we'll see.