Military/Social divide - what a waste (literally)!

from Stardock Forums
I have a serious problem with the military/social production.

Especially in the later stages of the game my military is strong and the only thing left to build is social projects. And many social projects are quite useless and just cost money, too, because my morale is at 100%. So I only research to be able to build in those stars.

So whenever I don't know what to build militarily (which is the case as soon as I have defences everywhere and every habitable star system is taken, for I never go for military victory), I only build constructors. Now you even want to take away that last escape route from not wasting production by making them cost shitloads (my greatest problem in GalCiv is always money, too!!!).

I think the military/social divide is just wrong. I mean, one production queue would have been great, because one would not need to waste military production when there's nothing military left to build in this system. You might say: decrease military spending. Wooaaa... great idea! Maybe this system is defended, but others are not! Somewhere I DO need to build, so I can't decrease it because it would take forever then.

So, with star bases now costing money I'll just have to waste half of my production half of the time. Frustrating!

Simple solutions (both taken from CIV): Either make ONE build queue, not two. Or create one military and one social project that is like the CIV "Wealth". It produces something that is not an object but maybe money, or research, or attack or defence bonus in this star system for as long as you build it! Heck, you could even create four of those "perpetual projects" that I just suggested, two each. How about that?
316 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes, there should be a generic object like "wealth" or "housing" or "infrastructure" that can always be built when there is money to be spent in a queue, but you aren´t interested in the available items. Excellent idea! :)
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Making the 'Nothing' project actually cost nothing would be the most obvious solution, and would address all of those issues.

There must be a reason why 'Nothing' costs production units though. It was probably a design decision at some point, but nobody seems willing to come forward with the reason.

Allow me to suggest one. Let's say a large empire with its large tax revenue base were allowed to use the 'Nothing' project on worlds that were already 'done'. Using the 'Nothing' project you could then leverage the large tax base of your core worlds to complete projects on newly-settled or newly-conquered worlds in record time, without paying the huge sums demanded by purchasing them. There would be no need to ever use the 'Purchase' option, because it would be a lot cheaper to simply set your core worlds to build 'Nothing', set your spending slider to 100% and allow your newer 'outer rim' colonies to build at 100% capacity.

However, the fault in that logic is that there already is a built-in limit to how much production you can get out of a planet. That limit is the 100% mark of your spending slider, and you can set your spending slider to 100% at any time you want in the game, as long as you have the cash to back it up.

So, once again we are back to the core issue, 'Why does the Nothing project cost me money?' Perhaps the designers wanted a way to introduce the 'waste and inefficiency' of a large empire but they didn't want to take the time modeling that as a separate dynamic in the game, or maybe because it would make GalCiv too much like Civ3, heh.

Still, I am all for allowing the 'Nothing' project to actually cost nothing. It sure would solve a lot of issues & complaints.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Since the powers that be are at E3, when this was raised in the past, it was suggested that if you build up a huge military complex and then cut funding to 0, you still have mortgages on factories, severance pay, tool die storage, etc. Perhaps a future version will permit capture of a percentage of Nothing. It is even possible that new technologies will permit an recapture of an increased percentage of Nothing.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Still, I think there really should be several different projects available:

Military:
- +1 defence in system
- +1 offence in system
- Wealth (+10% economy)
- Research (+10% research)
- Entertainment (+10% morale)
- Media (+5% culture)

Maybe there could be a minimum number of turns, so that their effectiveness would be decreased?
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree that something should be done, whether it's something like "wealth", splitting unused resources amongst areas that are producing something, etc. In the meantime, I'd recommend setting planets to build Anti-matter missiles. They take a relatively long time to build (more so than Constructors) so you're not bombarded with lots of new ships every turn, are dirt cheap to maintain, and can be very useful. Nothing like turning back an invasion, or destroying starbases without even using any of your conventional ships!
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Don't expect extreme efficiency from any part of a government, even when it's doing nothing. Even in the real world, an agency's more likely to use its funding (wastefully, if need be) than to accept a budget cut on the grounds that it didn't need that much money.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
"you still have mortgages on factories, severance pay, tool die storage, etc. "

I continue to take issue with this line of reasoning as a justification for nothing costing you something. I would respectfully point out that all of the factories, etc. that you build have this little thing called a MAINTENANCE COST associated with, which pretty much seems to cover the above items.

And if you want to take into account the above-mentioned costs, then for the sake of consistency when spending money on projects you should not get the 100% efficiency you do as those costs are again present. It's even more amazing to say that those costs aren't incurred when the work is actually done but are incurred when it isn't. We're giving them severance pay when there's no project but they work for free when there is one?

If it's just a balancing, AI or game-play issue, just state that, I can live with it just fine if changing it is more trouble than it's worth. But to come up with some silly excuse just bothers me no end (more than the issue itself, actually).