Balancing your economy is... a terrible idea?

[AlanC9]

Ah, I see. Thanks. That playstyle's so different from standard that it doesn't really map very well onto anything I'm doing.

 

[Belhedler]

Other than a few consumer goods crashes after taking over large swarm planets and then genetically engineering them to be friends

Hmm what do you mean by that?

 

[AlanC9]

I will say that in my opinion, civilian industries are not worth building. I wrote a long mathy post about topic a while ago. Basically they convert mats into goods worth less than the mats, while requiring that you give up the valuable +15% bonus from militarized economy. Maybe devs should give the civilian industries a bit of a buff to make mixed economy viable.

Less than the mats? What's the tl;dr on that? Last time I checked it's typical to get something like 7 CG/ 6 minerals via manufacturing, while the market prices are something like 2/1, which is a profit. (Not sure if this makes factories worth the building slot, though.)

 

[Belhedler]

In my game (2.2.3) they produce 5.6 CG and consume 0.5 CG meaning a net of 5.1. Let's say that instead of a civilan industry I build a forge. I'm producing 4.02 alloys for the same upkeep. So we are basically comparing the worth of 5 CG vs 4 alloys. Unless you want to stock up on alloy, which is quite valuable, there's a way to keep a good balance since AI is literaly plundering the market for alloy and its price reaches sky high quickly. If you happen to use robots too then you could reduce the need for CG more and gain more profit from that I guess.

Current situation at the market:
alloy B: 13.62 ; S: 7.33
CG B: 3.71 ; S: 2.00

btw this alloy price is cheap. That's because I deadlocked my game in a forced peace situation.

Buying 5 CG : 3.71 * 5 = 18.55
How many alloy to sell for this price? 18.55 / 7.33 ~= 2.53

Obviously the market price are going to change after that trade. But alloy keeps being an expensive resource the entire game.

 

[Bob_Herzog]

In addition you often end up with stuff your species, goverment and so on is just good at. Fanatic egaleterians will benefit from buying raw materials and invest in more refining. Authoreterian Xenophobes with Syncretic Evoloution will have a slave class that is only good at producing raw materials but they will be incredible good at doing just that. Add the specialised World bonus and balancing your economy becomes less important than just stacking those boni.

 

[Belhedler]

That said I have a fun situation on my hands here: buying 2500 CG : 10884 ec, 5000 CG... 25017 ec! Just why? Ah ok I get it: they added a discouraging factor on the highest amount for all resources. Same goes when selling. Crap that's somewhat an issue itself.

Authoreterian Xenophobes with Syncretic Evoloution will have a slave class that is only good at producing raw materials but they will be incredible good at doing just that. Add the specialised World bonus and balancing your economy becomes less important than just stacking those boni.

btw my values are coming from a syncretic evolution authoritarian fan. materialist empire.

 

[Zenopath]

Less than the mats? What's the tl;dr on that? Last time I checked it's typical to get something like 7 CG/ 6 minerals via manufacturing, while the market prices are something like 2/1, which is a profit. (Not sure if this makes factories worth the building slot, though.)

Well i can copy paste the post if youd like:

Consumer benefits is an option in policies under trade policy, it converts trade which normally gives 1 energy, into 0.5 energy and .25 consumer good per unit of trade.

To understand why this is so powerful, consider the scenario where you also take the Thrifty trait (+25% trade production from jobs like clerks or merchants), or use some of the new megacorp perks to maximize trade. If you can sustain enough trade to fill your consumer goods need, and eliminate all civilian industries from your world, you can also take advantage of "militarized economy¨ which gives you +15% alloy production at cost of -25% consumer goods production. This -25% penalty doesnt actually apply to consumer goods produced from trade though, so it is just a free +15% bonus to your alloy factories.

So how does a commercial zone compare to a civilian industry?
Not bad actually, it becomes easier to see if we translate power, food, materials and amenities to be worth 1 "value" each so...

As a thrifty fanatic authoritarian, my 5 clerks get +35% bonus to trade +10% to amenities production, so make 13.5 trade and 11 amenities. Then they need 5 food and 5 amenity and 0.5 consumer goods to keep happy. Also, they spend 2 power for the building. The total trade production is 13.5, so 6.75 energy and 3.375 consumer goods produced.

Net output = (3.375-0.5) 2.875 consumer goods, (6.75-2) 4.75 power, -5 food, and (11-5) 6 amenities.
adjusted output = 2.875 consumer goods and +5.75 "value" (4.75-5+6)

To be fair, i will give my artisans a 10% bonus from egalitarian. Their building employs two of them and takes 4 power, also, they consume 12 materials in addition to 2 food, 2 amenity and 1 consumer goods to keep happy.

Net output = (13.2-1) 12.2 consumer goods, -4 power, -12 materials, -2 food and -2 amenities.
adjusted output = 12.2 consumer goods and -20 "value" (-4-12-2-2)

Considering the base price of consumer goods is 2 energy base at market, you basically lose most of what the consumer goods are worth to pay for their value to to produce. Also, being able to freely use militarized economy for the +15% alloy production with no drawback is huge.

Of course, maybe amenities shouldnt count as 1 energy, but, if you are using culture workers or entertainers to produce amenities, they do cost a lot of "value" to maintain, so sustaining your population on amenities produced by clerks is cheaper than some of the alternatives.

(edit) note that the above value is for with a 10% bonus from egalitarian on a 100% hability world. without that bonus, on a 80% hability world, it gets much worse.

Net output = (12-1.2) 10.8 consumer goods, -4 power, -12 materials, -2.4 food and -2 amenities.
adjusted output = 10.8 consumer goods and -20.4 "value" (-4.8-12-2.4-2).

Add in a -25% penalty from militarized economy and you are at
7.8 consumer goods produced at a cost of -20.4 value

 

[ArmChairAttila]

Zenopath you nailed it. The first thing I do before I unpause a new game is set the trades to consumer goods, military economy and nutritional plentitude. My trade gets so high in the late game I will only need a few CG buildings and trading on the market for what I need becomes a non issue.

 

[Zenopath]

Zenopath you nailed it. The first thing I do before I unpause a new game is set the trades to consumer goods, military economy and nutritional plentitude. My trade gets so high in the late game I will only need a few CG buildings and trading on the market for what I need becomes a non issue.

Yeah, in addition to setting trade to consumer goods, i actually go ahead and replace the starting civilian industry on my homeworld pretty much as soon as i finish building first mining stations. What you do is start building something that needs specialist (in my case, a temple) and right before it finishes, demolish the civilian industry. that makes 2 unemployed specialists appear, but they immediately get sucked up by the temple when it done.

 

[meiam89.]

Surprised no one mentioned it so maybe it changed since then, but doesn't scaling setting mean the AI start with no bonus and then slowly ramp up it's bonus over time? So out researching an AI on scaling by 2300 is nothing impressive and not at all a good indication that the strategy is even a good one.

Also one planet challenge is very different based on the size of the galaxy, having 1 planet when the widest AI has just 5-6 is very different than when they have 40+.

I just played a wide game (admiral, huge) where I pretty much dominated the economy and had no problem whatsoever, I finished with over 40 planet (and could have had far more but didn't cause the micro become really tedious). I just used the market to dumb overproduction to buy rare resource so that I could sell them back for alloy when I'd need them for megastructure or large scale naval buildup. The only two problem I had was that upgrading fleet takes decades cause apparently only one shipyard is used to upgrades ships (pretty sure but the end of the game it would have been faster to scrap the fleet and make a new one) and that research is really imbalanced, with society being too high and engineering far too low.

By the end of the game I was producing over 1K of energy and mineral (no dyson sphere or matter decompressor), had close to 800 alloys and consumer good and I think close to 10K research (with a nexus). End game research took maybe 30-40 months and I finish tradition maybe 2370 or something.

Wide is still much better than tall, no question about it.

 

[AlanC9]

Well, you can build multiple shipyards, of course, and split a fleet up while upgrading it.

 

[Secret Master]

I find that trying to perfectly balance your economy is a waste of time.

Due to how resources end up being assigned in terms of districts and systems, you can't be sure you will end up owning an empire that can even run a perfectly balanced economy.

So, I find that focusing on a few key things tends to work better. Not a single-product economy, but one that has multiple things going on, while having a planned and understood deficit in one category or so.