Ultra-Terraformer nerfed in 1.1

from GalCiv3 Forums

Been playing exclusively with the latest build of 1.1 and I noticed something, well I'll say "interesting" and leave it at that for now.  

As of the current release of 1.1, the Ultra-Terraformer has been nerfed. It used to be that the Ultra-Terraformer (called UT in the rest of this post) would handle all of the upgradable tiles that both Planetary Soil Upgrade (called PSU in the rest of the post) and Soil Engineering (called SE in the rest of the post) would be able to upgrade.  Over time these colloquially became known as "tier one (tile)" upgrades.  Well this is no longer the case.  As of 1.1, PSU and SE now affect different levels of tiles (more on this in a moment).  More importantly, UT affects a group of tiles one set "lower" than PSU does.  While this isn't a huge deal for most players, the upshot of this is, if people don't want to have the possibility of "losing" tiles, they can no longer use PSU and SE when they first become available.

The reason for this is simple.  When PSU, SE, and UT all affected the same quality of tile (once again, more on this in a moment), it really didn't matter what order one did them in, it was all the same.  So players could build the PSU and SE without worrying about losing a set level of tiles.  However, now that they are split into three different levels, there is the possibility of "wasting" a PSU and/or SE on a "tier 0" tile that should be reserved for the UT exclusively. 

Now, for the math to back this observation up.

It used to be that the PSU, SE, and UT all affected tiles that were at .3 LandPercentageMin (the lower the percentage, the higher the tech needed to put a tile on it).  Now, it is:

UT: .4

PSU: .35

SE. .3

Presumably this means there needs to be approx 40%/35%/30% of the tile covered by land to upgrade it.  So right off the bat, yes the UT does indeed affect less tiles than it does before (as has been observed by a couple of players).  The problem, and I use that word advisedly, is this: There is no way to tell the difference between a .4 tile (UT), .35 tile (PSU), and .3 tile (SE).  Thus if a player upgrades a .4 tile with PSU or SE instead of a .35 or .3 tile, they have "wasted" a tile they could have gotten later.  This is because all .4 tiles should be covered by the UT and the UT alone, allowing players to use a PSU tile on .35 and above tiles and SE on .3 and above tiles if they want to get the maximum number of tiles possible for a planet.

Perhaps not a big deal to the non-power gamers out there.  But this is a huge change from how the game has been working for quite a long time, so I thought I would shine a flashlight on it and draw some attention to what is currently going on.

 

 

Just means I better get cracking on my home "fix" where one can use all terraforming improvements multiple times (with cost played with to account for it being used more often, natch) so I don't have to worry about this silliness anymore. :p

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Great find and if that is intentional, it is kinda badly designed.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

There is no way to tell the difference between a .4 tile (UT), .35 tile (PSU), and .3 tile (SE).
End of quote

This is what bugs me the most. Why couldn't this terrain value be simply shown as a "tooltip" data when in terraforming placement mode and hovering the mouse pointer over tiles? Surely it has no game-enjoyment value keeping it a secret...

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yeah I noticed this one also when 1.1 was still in "opt-in" status.  This change annoys me.  I don't like waiting until I unlock the last tier of terraforming before I can start utilizing terraforming without "wasting" tiles.  As somebody else suggested, it would be nice if there was a tooltip that tells what "level" a tile is, so we can make use of terraforming before we hit the "endgame" level of techs.

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It seems to me that it would be most intuitive for the terrafomer options be unlocked in order of decreasing land requirement. It makes sense that more knowledge would be required to convert increasingly useless tiles. And this way, people can build them as soon as they unlock with less worry about making an inefficient choice.

 

Which, now that I think about it, is more or less how it has always been, except for the repeating nature of the Ultra-Terraformer.  So I've added nothing to this conversation.  Go me!

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nice breakdown. I noticed this, but I guess I just instinctively worked around it. I start from the highest tier terraformers and work backwards, from mid-game on; to maximise the amount of usable space you can generate, even if they aren't tiles that will benefit from adjacency bonuses. In general, I go for adjacent tiles but only when I'm sure I'm not denying myself another one elsewhere, even if it's on it's own little island.

 

The problem is, essentially, an overlap in terraformable tiles leading to missed opportunities later. This can easily be fixed by having the targeted hex display its value when you hover over it with a terraformer selected, then you can target the appropriate tiles with the right level of terraformer.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I had a think about this overnight/this morning, and I figured out a variation of what I used to do that provides a way around this mess (most of the time), allowing people to use Soil Enhancement (and the others after it) while leaving Planetary Soil Enhancement "in reserve" until Ultra Terraformer is researched, but it's kinda micromanagy and not readily apparent.

The way tile upgrades work, some tiles will only be unlockable as higher techs are researched.  Perfectly understandable and logical. What this also means is if one clicks on Planetary Soil Enhancement, X number of tiles will appear that can be upgraded while if Soil Enhancement is clicked X+Y titles will be highlighted (with Y possibly being 0).

The trick is to flick back and forth and only click on the Y tiles.

The reason this works is because the "Y" tiles will be the ones in the .3 level of advancement while the "X" tiles will be the ones in the .4/.35 level.  If one never upgrades a .4/.35 tile on a planet, it can't be "wasted".  Pure math tells us so.

Then when Terraforming Plant is unlocked, rinse and repeat.  Click back and forth between Planetary Soil Upgrade and Terraforming Plant and only upgrade the "+Y" tiles (if there are any).  Same for Habitat Improvement and Resequencing Station. 

In essence, by not using PSU, one is able to figure out which are the .35 tiles (and potential .4 ones) and which aren't and plan accordingly.

There are a couple of downsides, however.  Sometimes there isn't a difference between PSU and SE on a world, simply due to random chance (there are, say, three .35 tiles bu no .3 ones).  Slightly annoying, but once higher level improvements are unlocked, still managable.

The worse problem is the adjacency game.  Because one won't always know what tiles will unlock at future points, one might end up upgrading a tile in the "wrong" spot.  Yes, it is often possible to "guess" what tiles will appear eventually.  But it's a chancy thing.

Now, all of this still applies only to the power gamers that are THAT concerned with wringing every last ounce of potential out of their planets.  But it still can be a consideration nonetheless.

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tl;dr: Yes it is possible not to upgrade .4 tiles if one never upgrades the .35 ones.  If PSU is never ever used on a planet until UT is unlocked, it can be used as a marker of sorts to upgrade other non-potential UT tiles.

Still a bit of a pain though (especially when taking over conquered planets where the AI has used a PSU). ;)  That idea of a tooltip that can be hovered over a tile saying it's Land Percentage (when trying to upgrade it, perhaps?) is a great one, IMO, as it would lessen the need to "dance" between improvements to see what is "optimal" to upgrade.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree that a better terriformer should unlock better tiles not worse. I would like the last option to eventually let me terriform all the land tiles. Since when we can't. Build islands, put cities on, or under water.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

may I recommend the option with best terriforming, and aquatic extreme world to be able to use water tiles with Terran planets to.