Overflow cap thoughts...

Because we totally need another thread on this

from GalCiv3 Forums

So there is a huge discussion on the amount of Micromanagement having Overflow caps creates.

 

And man some folks have OCD, but hey thats all good as this is a TBSG and not a RTS or other so taking your time and doing it right is the big payoff.


A few things that everyone needs to think about.

 

1.  Economy is not the finished economy.   Production values are all at 100% now.   In the finished game there is going to be waste and slowdowns generated by the size of your empire and the number of people.  you will never see 100% production again.

 

2.  I suspect that people who focus too much on pure production are going to be shocked at how much loss they have when the devs actually put in the corruption/waste/lost to production inefficiency.

 

3.   I would like to see excess production automatically be converted into wealth.   I would suggest this rate be less than the economy project, but still allow the excess production to be used.

 

4.  I also think changing the production slider should be gradual.   no economy changes on a dime.   you go from 100% research to 100% production it should take a few turns (I'd say 5-10) to actually happen.   This will lower the micromanagement because it will give players incentive to make longer term choices.  "do I build x now and have wasted production, or do I build y?

 

 

 

 

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


So there is a huge discussion on the amount of Micromanagement having Overflow caps creates.

And man some folks have OCD, but hey thats all good as this is a TBSG and not a RTS or other so taking your time and doing it right is the big payoff.

A few things that everyone needs to think about.

1.  Economy is not the finished economy.   Production values are all at 100% now.   In the finished game there is going to be waste and slowdowns generated by the size of your empire and the number of people.  you will never see 100% production again.

2.  I suspect that people who focus too much on pure production are going to be shocked at how much loss they have when the devs actually put in the corruption/waste/lost to production inefficiency.

3.   I would like to see excess production automatically be converted into wealth.   I would suggest this rate be less than the economy project, but still allow the excess production to be used.

4.  I also think changing the production slider should be gradual.   no economy changes on a dime.   you go from 100% research to 100% production it should take a few turns (I'd say 5-10) to actually happen.   This will lower the micromanagement because it will give players incentive to make longer term choices.  "do I build x now and have wasted production, or do I build y?

 

1. We don't know yet.

2. If it's unavoidable and by design, it's ok. If it can be prevented and make your empire more powerful by messing with the sliders and the queues each turn as it is right now then we have a problem, cause small gains in the early stages of any 4x snowball into huge benefits by the end game. I want that gain but I hate the micro.

3. It's not that simple. The only true solution would be to allow the completion of multiple projects each turn. They are not doing that. If they turn overflow into wealth I would still need to micro and come out ahead of the empire that just accepts converting the overflow.

4. While your comment is true, By forcing the player into waste by changing the behaviour of the slider and making the economy extremely rigid, I would just keep managing the build queues each turn in adding projects that don't produce waste. You just remove 1 control from the equation and building more than one projects per turn would seem far more essential.

 

I believe that them not implementing the completion of multiple projects per turn has them scared at the prospect of developing a complex AI that can also create schedules of projects each turn per queue. Right now the AI has to just select a single thing to build. The ramifications of building 30 tiny ships in a turn or 6 improvements on a planet are big.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

IIRC, overflow completion was also not implemented until the very late stages of the Betas for GC1 and GC2. There are still at least two betas coming for them to implement it in GC3.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well I guess nobody would say that he/she wants more micromanagement but people should think about this. This is indeed turn based strategy and one well thought carefully executed with loving hand micromanaged turn should reward you compared to people that just make 5 clicks and hit "turn"

Also welcome to OCD club! :D I will rather go through my 50 planets than click "turn" with thought of something not running optimal :D

3) Excess production shouldn't be fixed on one resources type. You can have excess of credits and be in real need of research/social production/influence... more money wont help you at all.

4) Your starting political government type is some autocracy so you should be able to change sliders as you like. With change government type you could have this slider restrictions but it would need some benefit to compensate.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 3

Well I guess nobody would say that he/she wants more micromanagement but people should think about this. This is indeed turn based strategy and one well thought carefully executed with loving hand micromanaged turn should reward you compared to people that just make 5 clicks and hit "turn"

This is an excellent point, and one of the reasons Paul has said that the governors won't be super robust. It is important that the game not play itself. Eliminating micro is a balancing act, eliminate too much and you are eliminating game play.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Turned based doesn't mean micromanaged based.  And if your playing on large maps then you definitely won't spend only 5 clicks.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well, as far as the overflow is concerned, apparently it is what it is.

The only way this means more micromanaging is if you are determined to make use of every production point. Personally, I will just take the hit, and concede that I will not be in the upper echelon of GCIII players.

It will provide me with a good excuse 'cause I would never have been there anyway. "Yeah, I would probably be the number 1 player in the world, but I refuse to do all that micromanaging overflow thing" :) 

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

All this about overflow. To be completely honest, it really does not bother me at all either. If the overflow is not working for both me or the AI than both of us are on the same rules. 

 

It does not make a bit of difference. The AI is not micromanaging and neither am I. In fact i had not even noticed anything till I watched the Utube explaining it. 

 

I don't understand why everyone is making a big deal out of it. I really don't.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting peregrine23, reply 4
This is an excellent point, and one of the reasons Paul has said that the governors won't be super robust. It is important that the game not play itself. Eliminating micro is a balancing act, eliminate too much and you are eliminating game play.

Than they shouldn't eliminate the micromanagement and just eliminate the clickfest. The key word here ist ergonomics. Unfortunately GC tends to have very bad ergonomics when it comes to apply commands to more than 10 things. 

It is fun and wonderful to have the ability to control every last detail! But it is tedious and annoying when applying that control means you have to make 10.000 clicks. So the secret is to keep the control in and the clicks out. This can be done by smart interface designs and tools for macromanagement - and they don't have to be automatic! It can be something as simple as the ability to be able to click and drag a rectangle over the map screen followed by a shortcut to build a fleet from the marked ships. Or being able to filter a list of planets and apply one slider to all marked planets.

Just put some brain into ergonomics and many of the micromanagement issues would go away, because players would be able to micromanage without spending endless minutes of repetitive clicking.

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