BoomFrog

Join Date 03/2006

Remove the Waste and you remove the micromanagment

I hate messing with sliders each turn

This game is very close to not need micro managment which is very impressive for a 4x game. The only thing that feels like micro managing is when I adjust the spending sliders to make my production perfectly minimize waste. By waste I mean overkilling a building or ship. When you have 50 BC left to build a factory and have 80 BC capacity you waste both the 30 BC and the capacity. You could have reduced social and raised research spending and still at the end of the turn had the same factory and accomplished more research.

Over spending on research is generally not wasted, it is applied to the next tech in line, however if its the end of the line then it is wasted.

Over spending on a building should be applied to the next building in the Que. Over spending on a ship should be applied to another of the same ship (or a ship que could be added). Over spending on research at the end of a line should get saved and automatically spent the next turn on whatever was picked to be researched.

If these (I think simple) changes were made then there would be almost no micromanagment in the game. This would also help the players who don't mess with the sliders to have a more productive empire. Some people dont realize their super factory world is spending HUGE extra BC's overbuilding ships every turn. And also it'd be cool to be able to build a swarm of fighters in one turn theres no reason for a planat to be limited to one ship a turn. Making wasted social go to military was a great change, lets take it all the way.

btw, I find the ship build govorners and way points to be excellent at saving me hassle thank you so much for that feature

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yep

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Hi!

Remove the Waste and you remove the micromanagment

So true... I (again) vote for.

BR, Iztok

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I also hate to see the time & credits going to waste. I wish it weren't that way.

However, knowing a little bit about how the U.S. Federal Government operates in the real world; about how its various departments bicker and withold information from each other; and about how contracts are awarded, enforced, managed, and rewarded... I have to say that I find this aspect of the game very realistic. The GCII system, imo, is actually much more efficient than what we have now.

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Pardon my ignorance, but...

I have noticed that research already gets rolled into the next tech in the reseach line. Note that is different than what you asked, that it go into the next tech chosen instead, but I find this way to be more realistic and quite acceptable to me.

As for the production, that does not get rolled over, but I thought the game banked (or did not spend the credits for more correctly) "excess" military production. Social excess automatically goes to the military as it is...

The Schu

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on research we need additional levels like MOO where once you finish the line you research smaller and smaller sizes...

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@ TheSchu, The OP's main issue is with the last turn of production used to build an improvement and the last turn of research used to finish a new tech. That last turn often costs far less than the previous turns spent on that object.

For instance, an improvement costs 101 bcr and the planet is cranking out 10 bcr of production per turn. During the first ten turns of production, 10 bcr is being spent and the object is that much nearer completion. On the eleventh turn, however, you are taking the entire turn to pay off the one final bcr of production to build the improvement. Take a look at the build cost of the last production turn on the Buy Now list next time you build a building or spaceship.

As of v 1.1, we are no longer losing the remaining 9 bcr, but we are still losing the use of that 9 bcr worth of production because it takes an entire turn to finish that 1 bcr of production on the current improvement.

That's the waste that was being discussed. I used to rationalize it as graft and contract revisions in the original version. Now that we're not losing the money, I just chalk it up to design modifications and supply problems. For research, it represents the dead ends and incorrect theories that precede the real breakthroughs.

Remember that everything you build via production (as opposed to buying something outright), and all of your research projects, represent a government-sponsored endeavor. There is absolutely no way that even the best possible human (or alien) government could complete projects of this scope with no slippage and waste.

When I look at it this way, I consider myself lucky that the level of waste is so small. Like I said above, it just adds a touch of realism for me.

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MarshallONeil,

A very clear explaination of hte situation, my thanks. And I agree that the production does not roll into a new ship.

Although I thought that the social queue did do that. (If someone could confirm or deny this that would be great.)

Research does roll over, but as I noted, it goes into the next tech in that line (a problem if there is no next tech in the line) and not into the next tech the player chooses. (Hence the fact that you can get several techs in a turn if they are cheap enough)

The Schu

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Research does roll over, but as I noted, it goes into the next tech in that line

That's right, I forgot about that. Even though I took advantage of it just last night. It seems to only roll over, though, if you have enough left over points to grab the whole tech. If you've just finished researching Banks, for instance, and don't have enough points left to finish off Stock Exchanges (next tech in the same line), you don't get any credit toward Stock Exchanges, do you? Or do you, and I have just been oblivious to this all along?

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Supposedly the AI can and does adjust the sliders each turn, that's one of their advantages. Not that it helps them much against us genius human players who don't do that every turn ha ha ha ha

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Hi!

As of v 1.1, we are no longer losing the remaining 9 bcr,

That's completely new to me. I had to check with the game if that's true.

I've made a quick testbed, and checked the amount of money in treasury and the money spent on social and military production. Findings:
1) the excess money, that would be spent for completing a building on a planet IS RETURNED TO THE TREASURY (THANK YOU STARDOCK!!!!!

)
2) the excess money for finishing a ship is still wasted.

(why so, Stardock?)

Anyway, more than a half of my usual MM is no longer needed. Excellent!

As of v 1.1, we are no longer losing the remaining 9 bcr,

Where did you find that? I'm quite regular on those forums, but never noticed this important fact anounced.

BR, Iztok

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Here's the problem with realism: it's not as much fun as idealism.

If you want to play GC2 seriously, and apply every possible effort to achieving victory, you must micromanage the hell out of those sliders to prevent waste. The sheer amount of cash that can be lost to excess military spending is more than enough to swing the balance of victory. As it currently stands, whoever micromanages best will greatly improve their chances of winning.

Getting rid of waste would certainly be less realistic and more idealistic. No question. I admit, I did enjoy the process of figuring out how to win through micromanagement, but now that I've got the process down pat, the thrill is wearing off. Coasting to victory by grinding through the numbers doesn't hold the same appeal it once did. I'd like to try it without that element.

For a more detailed analysis of just how big a difference waste can make, see this thread:
Link

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@ Iztoc, it was in the gigantic list of fixes being made for 1.1. I don't remember the wording now, but it ws tied in with excess social production no longer being wasted. That is, in addition to social production not being wasted when you're not building anything. I missed plenty of things in that list myself, don't feel badly.

@ Jonathan Moriarty, I actually don't micromanage the military production all that heavily. From time to time I will when I've been forced into war before I was ready to hit the warpath, but for me it's the exception. I find that once my population and economy really take off, I just don't need to worry about leftover military spending on every planet, every turn. Yes, I lose a few bcr that way, but for me the alternative would be to lose my mind... I must admit, though, that I get the same fatifue with numbers, which for me means that I can rarely be bothered to conquer everything. It just takes too darn long.

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Hi!

@ Iztoc, it was in the gigantic list of fixes being made for 1.1. I don't remember the wording now,

Thanks. However I have to correct you here. Before 1.1 if the planet was not building any installation, that social production was lost (wasted). In 1.1 that production was redirected to military queue, so no more lost, and if the planet wasn't building ships, returned to treasury.

The ellimination of "waste" of the money for the last turn social production is new. Anybody knows, when it was introduced?

BR, Iztok

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whismerhill

Join Date 03/2006

+19

I just had to say that I'm for huge micromanagement

am I crazy ? perhaps ...

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I'd like to add a few things:

1) I noted that research is not wasted except when its the end of a tech path like nano ripper. I don't want the research mecanic changed except for a few unusual situations. It's fairly rare to finish a tech line.

2) I'm glad to hear we dont lose BC on social anymore but wasted capacity is still waste. Capacity is just as much of a resource in this game as BCs, you build factories instead of markets because you want more capacity. If you waste capacity you ARE losing out. Also, we still lose a lot of BCs and capacity on Military.

3) Realism is nice but I agree with Jonathan Moriarity idealism is more fun. Even if you don't micromanage right now, wouldn't you rather lose to the computer because it beat you, not because you weren't paitient enough to do some mind numbing task every turn?

4) MarshallONeil explained things well, its that last turn spent on a project thats got the most waste. This is most terrible on super factory worlds that are finishing everything in one turn.

I don't like waste but thats not my problem. I don't like micromanagment. If this waste was unavoidable then I could ignore it and not care. But because I can reduce it I "have" to spend time reducing it to play my best game.

I different solution would be to not let me adjust sliders willy nilly but instead set them to change and they would slowly move to the new position. This would also take out the micro managment because I could not fix the waste. thus no need to change the sliders every turn because I can't. However this would take a much bigger change to the AI then my previous Ideas.

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MarshallONeil sez:

I actually don't micromanage the military production all that heavily.

You'd win more often at the highest difficulty levels if you did.

You're quite correct in that it's possible to win without grinding through the accounting process to avoid wasted military spending. I won a few games at "tough" even before I learned about how much of a difference the waste can make. But once I knew, I just had to use that knowledge to optimize my play.

I don't know if this is weird or normal, but I always feel compelled to try to play the best game I can. If I know of any edge I can use to defeat my opponents (short of cheating), I feel like I need to use it. If it makes the game too easy, that means it's time to raise the difficulty level. Right now, in order to play my best game of GC2, I have to spend most of my time optimizing military waste. It's not as much fun as it was before I knew about it, but now I can win at higher difficulty levels than I could before. I know I could reduce the difficulty and try not to think about it, but I don't want to play anything less than my best. It just seems wrong somehow.

I believe it's likely that an option or patch will eventually become available at some point to carry shields over to the next project. Until then, I think I'll take a little sojurn from GC2. Heroes V should keep me busy in the meanwhile. I'm really looking forward to coming back, though.

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Remove the Waste and you remove the micromanagment

Yeah. Unless you're like the rest of us who don't micromanage that stuff.

I'm sorry, but micro-ing to get a few paltry BCs back every turn? No; there's no need for developers to spend any time making it unnecessary for you to do that. If it provides you with some advantage in the game, fine, but you willfully choose to make a sacrifice for it.

If you want to play GC2 seriously, and apply every possible effort to achieving victory, you must micromanage the hell out of those sliders to prevent waste. The sheer amount of cash that can be lost to excess military spending is more than enough to swing the balance of victory.

No, you don't.

The principle strategy (or, at least, mine) towards victory is to convince the galaxy to leave you alone until you become unstoppable. This requires perhaps 200 turns of relative peace. Diplomacy, Trade, Xeno Ethics: Neutral, and Manufacturing Centers are all vital components of such a plan. Once these are in place, and econ starbases are near worlds to maximize production, and a few money planets are around, that wasted quantity of BCs is meaningless. The fact remains that you're still producing a Huge-hull ship fulled with guns and defenses every 2 turns.

It just seems wrong somehow.

This sounds like a personal problem, rather than a problem with the game.

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The principle strategy (or, at least, mine) towards victory is to convince the galaxy to leave you alone until you become unstoppable. This requires perhaps 200 turns of relative peace. Diplomacy, Trade, Xeno Ethics: Neutral, and Manufacturing Centers are all vital components of such a plan. Once these are in place, and econ starbases are near worlds to maximize production, and a few money planets are around, that wasted quantity of BCs is meaningless. The fact remains that you're still producing a Huge-hull ship fulled with guns and defenses every 2 turns.

This is exactly the stratagy I use. and I can beat the game in 1.1 on masochistic without using Ctrl-N to get a good start on a medium map with no clusters (the settings the devs said the AI can deal with easiest) (also no tech trading btw)

You are right once the BC's start rolling in you have an almost limitless supply, but your still limited. Now your limited by your capacity. Capacity is a resource and if you dont micro manage it your wasting it.

you can only maintain peace if you can afford bribes and reasearch high diplomacy and/or afford a large military. If you grow too slowly the computer will eat you up. If you take 200 turns to get rolling and I take 150 turns then I can win on a harder difficulty then you. The waste is not a "few BCs" its adds up to a lot of saved turns. Your basic resource you spend to get things is turns, and saving turns is how you win.

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I'm with you BoomFrog, waste is bad. If you're building a ship that costs 900 and your planet is producing 890, you're wasting a lot of money there. It doesn't matter if your smaller planets waste 20 bc for every constructor they build, but once i get to building mode (i play in very slow technology, so i don't build ships all the time) i always adjust the sliders and the focus of planets to waste the minimum in my high production planets, and that's sometimes a lot of work. Once I have researched a bunch of military technologies, I design a new fleet, and i make a list with the cost of every ship i want to build, so i can assign ships planets in way i minimize waste.

I don't care about winning, i don't ever finish a game, but still, I hate wasting my resources. The last part of the game, once you're the most powerfull civ is boring. It's like, o yeah, i still have to conquer all those 54 planets to win the game, or, o yeah I still have to build influence bases until i fill the remaining 27 sectors of empty space with my colour... When i see that i just start a new game. Sometimes i don't even play to become powerfull, i just have fun defending my initial 5-10 planets for the whole game, while i help weak civs to survive, or i recover their lost planets for them... but i hate waste!

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Agree with the suggestion at the top

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Firaxis with its Civ4 made great progress in removing micromanaging elemets like this.
I guess Galciv2 crew could learn from thier example.

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I totally TOTALLY agree with the OP.

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marigoldran

Join Date 06/2013

+41

Sorry for the necro, but is this thread still valid for Ultimate Edition?

Most importantly: let's say you build a colony ship with 200 bcs of spending when it only costs 150. Is the 50 bcs returned to your treasury or wasted?

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I've never been interested enough in this "under the hood" part of the game engine to test it, but it could be done.

Start a game, get to the spot. Save. Do it one way and check numbers. Reload and do it another (sliders, buy an extra factory or three first, whatever) and check the numbers again.

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

Quoting marigoldran,

reply 23

Sorry for the necro, but is this thread still valid for Ultimate Edition?

Most importantly: let's say you build a colony ship with 200 bcs of spending when it only costs 150. Is the 50 bcs returned to your treasury or wasted?

As far as I know, the bc are still wasted.

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