Slitherine

OK, I've tried a couple of starts with version 0.20. To be quite honest, I really hate it. The growth is quite fast as you had indicated in a previous post, but too fast. And then the cities just keep on growing. I cannot keep my cities growing constantly as I run out of food and then go through a process of death from 10 or 12 population down to 5 or 6 and then the process repeats. I find myself having to spend almost all my time micro-managing my cities and that is not why I want to play the game. I want to explore and conquer territory. In both my games, I have reached a point where all my colonists were assigned to food in order to try to keep the cities going. None assigned to production, research, or mineral production. Still my cities die back because of lack of food. And the cycle just keeps repeating and repeating. The AI factions, however, seem to be able to spam cities all over the place again with no problem. I am able to get 5 or 6 cities built and they have 12 to 15. You seem to have gone too far back the other way again.

I like that aircraft and naval units cannot take cities. More realistic. Just one thing, however, and that is that we need landing pods to be able to land in empty enemy cities now.

The Aspidoch seem more mobile now, too. They don't just sit still and let artillery naval units blast them. I think you should give them a movement rate of 2, however. Right now with a movement of 1 you can sit 2 hexes off with artillery and simply keep hitting them. If they move close you move back a hex and there is no threat.

I like that orbital bombardment has detrimental affects on cities and population. I think the same should be true about artillery as well. Currently I can bombard units in a city with artillery and there is no affect to city population or improvements.

The diplomacy dialogue is much better. Some of it quite funny actually. There is still the problem that diplomacy often still doesn't make any sense. Most games when you meet the Imperium and Divine factions the first turn they offer treaties and trading. The very next turn they declare war with no apparent reason. Should at least have some time from initial contact to war declaration to build up some bad diplomatic efforts or something.

I also like the increased production from fungus. This will help immensely in the late game when more mineral production is required to keep cities and units going.

I started a new game and paid particular attention to the growth of my cities. I found something interesting I had never noticed before. I have had several cities actually growing two points per turn for three or four turns in a row. That's massive growth for a city to be able to keep it fed. No wonder I am running out of food.

I just built a new city. It had an initial growth rate of +248. It was growing at 4 per turn for 3 turns and then grew at 3 per turn for the next 4 turns.

The total growth rate of your empire is equal to your total empire population, then spread across cities, with a bias towards cities with higher habitat and higher morale. That means you should only make new cities when you run out of habitat or want to acquire new resource locations.

Could you please provide the safe game for +248 growth? That sounds as if you had ~250 population packed so heavily into your existing cities that your entire new population per turn instantly travelled towards this newly found city.

void wrote:Could you please provide the safe game for +248 growth? That sounds as if you had ~250 population packed so heavily into your existing cities that your entire new population per turn instantly travelled towards this newly found city.

I don't have a save game file for that city, but I emailed you a save game file with a new city in which the starting growth rate is +276. I played the game out a few turns after I saved it and the first turn the city grew by 4. The second turn it also grew by 4. The third turn it grew by 3. The 4th turn it only grew by 1.

That sounds crazy, haha.

Alright just checked the save, I'll throttle the growth rate, this is too much. The AI's have like 4 times your total score on moderate difficulty with a few cities already approaching 50 colonists.

At around which turn did you feel to get overwhelmed by growth? Also please don't forget you're playing Solar Dynasty, which have +25% growth and and a big pollution malus.

I also suggest you play around a bit with the tax rate: for your save game, just lowering taxes to 15% lets your food per turn go from +0 to +68, while still having positive (+62) income.

void wrote:At around which turn did you feel to get overwhelmed by growth? Also please don't forget you're playing Solar Dynasty, which have +25% growth and and a big pollution malus.

I also suggest you play around a bit with the tax rate: for your save game, just lowering taxes to 15% lets your food per turn go from +0 to +68, while still having positive (+62) income.

I just started a new game as the Noxium. I had the same problem as with the Dynasty. I'd say around turn 60 or so I began running out of food in both games, and that is with only my headquarters city. I'd really like to see some form of limiting growth. As it is currently in the game you really can't control growth in your city. You're either growing or dying, you can't set the city in neutral. By the time I reached a population of 12 I was already unable to produce enough food and the city would die back to about 9 and then build back up to 14 and then the process repeats.

With the Noxium I still have a big problem with pollution. Not quite as bad as with the Dynasty, but still quite significant. I used to be able to grow forest to reduce pollution, but with the current system, I have to build as much farm as possible or I run out of food even faster.

Taxes. I tried lowering them in the early part of the game, but I couldn't keep a positive income. I forgot to check it later in the game. I'll try to remember that in my next game.