Minerals/Production not necessary for victory.

[whaleberg]

I've been feeling like there is something out of whack with mineral production, money, and moral. It feels like moral isn't a strong enough effect, and that rush building with money is a very larger portion of my production. So I decided to play a game without mining or using production at all, and producing everything through cash. I played as the economic bonus faction, so this is a best case scenario. All the AI's were medium, so not a huge challenge either. It's impossible to avoid the +2 minerals/production from the headquarters, so I used that for growth.

I played as usual, but with the tax rate all the way and completely avoiding mining anything. The initial start was a little slower than usual, because 1 base doesn't produce that much cash, but after I had a few cities I took off. Several factions declared war on me, and were promptly crushed by my superior weapons. Since I usually devote at least half of total workers to mining/production, I effectively tripled my research staff this way. Completely carpeting the map in cities was highly effective since it let me boost my population fastest.

I won accidentally by economic victory. I was trying to win by conquest, but my purchasing didn't keep up with my income. (I imagine it's hard to for human vs human players to counteract a rush to economic victory, because there is no good way of determining how close an enemy is. You get a warning, but it's only a turn or two away from the victory.)

Since I assume this isn't an intended play style, here are a few thoughts on how to fix it. Changing any one of these would probably invalidate the all cash strategy. It threatens to make cash useless though, except for paying buildings and armies. (Which maybe is the primary purpose.)

1. The moral modifier from taxation isn't big enough. It's at most 25% I believe, which is a large penalty, but not a crippling penalty. Doubling or tripling the penalty would give it more teeth and drive down the amount of cash available in the game. The moral modification buildings should probably also be given a major boost, they're currently almost completely useless (and with very high upkeep costs) although it might be better for them only to counteract moral penalties, rather than be a flat moral (and therefore efficiency) boost.

2. The per mineral cost for rush building could be increased. Doubling it would make this strategy MUCH less effective. Or some portion of the rush building could be more expensive. In AC I believe the first 10 minerals cost WAY more to rush build than the subsequent ones, so it was prohibitively expensive to purchase a lot of things from scratch, but speeding up completion part way through was more reasonable.

3. Since each unit of production requires population to be spent mining AND producing, it effectively costs more resources to produce things than it seems like it might. Making mining or production more effective per population unit could change this.

4. Minerals could still be required to rush build something, basically you would be purchasing the production half rather than both the minerals and the production. This removes most of the utility of rush building something though. Or, minerals could be optionally spent as part of the rush, drastically reducing the cost in money. This would let you purchase some minerals in a pinch, but prefer to have them on hand.

[SephiRok]

Ah, nice. I wanted to test that. I only tried with the research faction a month or two ago and it didn't work out at the time.

I was thinking about adding minerals to purchasing, so all you would effictively pay for is production, it would maybe make a little bit more sense too. But it would probably make credits too meh and put too much pressure on minerals.

I think the taxes are unbalanced though. At highest taxes you get +100 % credits and -20 morale (1 morale = 1 %). Morale also affects credits though. So with max taxes if a guy is giving 2 resources and 2 credits, you'll be getting 1.6 resources and 3.2 credits. Another way to look at it is that we're losing 0.4 resources for 1.2 credits. That sounds like an incredibe trade, we just gained 0.8 overall. What I think it should be is +100 % credits but -33.33... morale. So you'd be getting 1.33 and 2.67, meaning we lose 0.67 for 0.67 -- we gained nothing overall, it's just a trade. Pretty damn ugly numbers though, one step would need to be 6 + 2/3.

After taxes are fixed, we could increase purchase costs if needed, but the purchase costs felt okay to me. The economic faction is probably just too strong then. You'll also likely always want to max taxes with them since you get another + 50 %, I'm not sure there's a good way around that, for the research faction on the other hand, you'd want the lowest taxes possible, so you get more from your + research.

[whaleberg]

I think that adjusting the moral modifier for taxes will go a long way to fixing the problem. Currently it is an incredible trade. I wouldn't worry about moral numbers being ugly. I'd say give the 33% modifier a shot. I'm not sure it will be enough to fix the whole money issue, but it would definitely be a good start.

The other component of the money vs minerals issue is that you're nearly tripling your research because of the extra labor that would have otherwise been going into mineral/ production. So even with a big hit out of it from moral, you're still significantly boosting your total research.

The economic faction IS pretty strong. Faction balance is definitely off at the moment in general, but I think it's worth nailing down most of the mechanics better before doing a lot of balancing work. I do think it's a little bit strange that the economic faction has a monetary penalty as it's drawback though.

[SephiRok]

Well, the only reason you can afford going full research is because you have enough money to buy everything you want. If you wouldn't be able to, you would have to go for minerals and production to compensate. I'll probably make the economic guys only +25 % credits.

[void]

2. [...] In AC I believe the first 10 minerals cost WAY more to rush build than the subsequent ones, so it was prohibitively expensive to purchase a lot of things from scratch, but speeding up completion part way through was more reasonable.

Good catch, totally forgot that one (and we'll add it for sure). Not only does it pretty much kill the buy-everything strat, it also makes the buy decision more interesting and less trivial. Just have to pick a good cost-increase function.

[SephiRok]

I'm not big a fan of that approach. Emphasizing purchasing a few turns before it's finished is not fun gameplay imo. It also doesn't really solve the issue unless you make it absurd enough that you will never buy much from scratch with other factions. It would also slightly nerf city specialization, you would want to switch in workers temporarily rather than just purchasing the building you want, which is also more annoying.

Credits bonuses are just godly at the moment. They bypass two resources, all the associated buildings and their upkeeps, give you less pollution (less negative morale and required formers) and provide an easier play. The economic guys with highest taxes can fully abuse that.

I was experimenting and thinking about it and I'm starting to like that purchasing requires minerals more and more.

[whaleberg]

Has there been any thought about including an actual market system where you could buy and sell resources? I know that would be another whole large system to balance, but it could create interesting diplomatic interactions. I think Sins of a Solar empire has something along those lines, every faction can set buy and sell orders with their resources to trade with other factions. That way, you can purchase minerals/food, but you know that it is directly benefiting another faction which forces you to think about it more. Other games have gone with a civilian economy, that lets you purchase from the greater economy around you, so it still acts as a money sink, but there is some supply / demand built into it. If lots of factions are purchasing minerals, the price goes up, and if lots are selling minerals, it goes down. This could be an easy way to add automatic balancing of stock piles too. You tell the game what level of stock you want to maintain, and it either buys or sells up to that point every turn.

This would be a bigger change than might be necessary, and adds a whole new system to balance. It could definitely add interesting strategic options, and fixes the weirdness inherent in magically appearing minerals.

[SephiRok]

We've thought about it a bit, it's definitely interesting but there are more important things currently.

It's another mechanic that needs its own interface and interacts with the other systems. What I would like to have first is trading with other factions directly -- including bribing and demanding -- so you have means of affecting your relationship with them. The market could complement that. The diplomacy and trading are void's area though, I'm not sure how he plans to do it, especially since the AI basically always stick to a pool of 0 food and 0 minerals to play optimally.

[void]

Alright, after some more discussion and evaluation these are the conclusions:

Before, the credits to production ratio was 4:1. Assuming equal colonist distribution this actually ment that due to mineral requirements it was more efficient to buy things rather than producing them -- which was of course not intended. So starting from a 4:1 ratio (if there were no minerals then production and credits would be of equal value) we double it once to 8 due to the necessity of having the same amount of guys in minerals and than another time to 16 so that it's twice as efficient to produce rather than to buy.

While I'm personally a fan of an above-linear cost decay coupled with increasing production progress, in the end we decided to stick to our current system. All production entries have a fast purchase option next to them, so punishing a purchase from zero would be counterintuitive.

[whaleberg]

That will definitely tamp down on purchasing. It might be making costs now so high that purchasing is never worth it. I suspect we might see larger standing armies consuming those credits instead.

[SephiRok]

You'll definitely still be purchasing, you don't have any other way to spend your money. Just that you'll actually think about it now.

[whaleberg]

I'm going to have to play around with it for bit and see how it changes my playing, I suspect the answer is "a lot."

[SephiRok]

We also doubled morale gain from 1% to 2%! That affects taxes in a big way as you can imagine.

Lots of other changes too, hope to release later today!

[whaleberg]

Was there a boost to the moral buildings too? As they stand they're less than useful.

[SephiRok]

Every morale point will give 2 %, so yeah morale buildings will be twice as good.

[whaleberg]

Ah, you're doubling the value of each moral point, not the number of moral points you get per tax %.

[Okim]

I find that getting 4 credits for one production is a bit too much. I managed to set up a small empire with just 3 cities that generated so much money per turn that i really had no problems with overwhelming my enemies by endless forces. One city produced food and only it, the second just only minerals (and some extra food) and the third had its population assigned to production and research. I find that accumulating credits for buying a unit is much faster than building it using the same production, especially with economics-oriented guys.