MegaCorp ... i am tired and sad

[SpectralShade]

The decisions are there to be made, but they require some thought and planning. If you're just constantly reacting to deficits in your economy rather than making a plan then I guess it could feel the way it does to you. You definitely can specialise planets without having them fall apart, but it again, it requires planning. The old system only ever felt like it was giving you freedom because it was simplistic and boring. Just get as much stuff as you can, and once you have lots do whatever you like. Making an entire science planet because you feel like it is not strategy. Figuring out which planet is going to be suitable to be a research planet, then figuring out how to make it be one, and also whether it's actually a good idea in the first place - that involves strategy, planning, and thoughtfulness. The freedom is there as are the decisions (and those decisions are actually meaningful now) but you have to make the effort and think through what you're doing rather than just build mines everywhere.

I'd argue that he is in fact correct about his "falling apart" comment when you stop looking at the economy in a vacum (even though it is a space game, ho ho), but look at the broader picture where you are playing a game where planets can shift ownership by conquest.

I know the AI sucks at the moment and thus it is harder to get a 'feel' for it, but the old wording about putting eggs in a basket still stands. If the economy is interdependent on specific planets being in your empire, then each of those planets became a point of failure for your entire empire.

Not to mention that taking/occupying a planet during war from an opponent empire can also have a huge effect on your economy if it drains resources you are already stretched on.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I'd argue that he is in fact correct about his "falling apart" comment when you stop looking at the economy in a vacum (even though it is a space game, ho ho), but look at the broader picture where you are playing a game where planets can shift ownership by conquest.

I know the AI sucks at the moment and thus it is harder to get a 'feel' for it, but the old wording about putting eggs in a basket still stands. If the economy is interdependent on specific planets being in your empire, then each of those planets became a point of failure for your entire empire.

Not to mention that taking/occupying a planet during war from an opponent empire can also have a huge effect on your economy if it drains resources you are already stretched on.

It could reasonably be argued however that seeing what a planet is making and how that would affect yours / their economy is a nice strategic choice to take now.

More 'let's take the forge world of Thula XII and cut their factories to size' rather than 'let's take Thula XII because it's the closest planet' decision making.

Though the fact that the AI hasn't been worked on to respond to these changes is not great development...

 

[Ornlu Wolfjarl]

While i do like more complex systems what i seen here is just over-complicated, with a bad design and interface representation witch is TAKING YOUR CONTROL AWAY.

The old tile systems was too simple this is just boringly hard to deal with.

From an empire builder i have become a constant problem manger ...one with basically indirect control over things.

I get what you feel, because this is what I felt like BEFORE this expansion. Granted, it's not perfect now, it's riddled with bugs, and some things could be designed better. But most of your troubles stem from the devs overlooking some things in the new system that can be easily fixed.

Your trouble with incomes fluctuating so much stems from lowly workers changing jobs when you build new districts. Paradox should make workers less inclined to change jobs so easily.

Also the way the UI is built is just plain silly. I have to click so much all over the screen when I'm trying to clear out blockers across all my planets.

But the old tile system was cancer. FIrstly, it caused the AI all sorts of issues, making it waste millions of resources on demolishing and rebuilding things, resettling pops and just doing plain stupid stuff. The sector AI was also extremely dysfunctional.

In the old system I had to micromanage every little bit of my empire all the time, leaving me very little time to deal with diplomacy, war or expansion. Now, all I need to do is periodically glance at my planets and make sure they have living space, jobs and amenities.

 

[SpectralShade]

But the old tile system was cancer. FIrstly, it caused the AI all sorts of issues, making it waste millions of resources on demolishing and rebuilding things, resettling pops and just doing plain stupid stuff. The sector AI was also extremely dysfunctional.

In the old system I had to micromanage every little bit of my empire all the time, leaving me very little time to deal with diplomacy, war or expansion. Now, all I need to do is periodically glance at my planets and make sure they have living space, jobs and amenities.

that was nothing to do with the old system, but everything to do with a crap AI which is even more crap to handle the new system. take a look at any planet the AI is handling and it should be clear that the AI is litterally unable to handle the new system without crashing its own economy if it hadn't been for cheating by generating income from the market for free.

And I don't get your micromanage comment. All you had to do was decide which level 1 buildings you wanted in which tile, then you handed it over to a sector AI with orders not to redevelop any tiles. Problem solved.

Compare this 'single pass' to now where you have to keep clicking through the interface to keep tabs on each colony so you are sure to look at it at the right time so you can build a new building/district. ALOT more micromanaging and "timepadding" by artificially making you do things you hcould have assigned to a sector AI previously.

 

[AlphaAsh]

But the old tile system was cancer. FIrstly, it caused the AI all sorts of issues, making it waste millions of resources on demolishing and rebuilding things, resettling pops and just doing plain stupid stuff. The sector AI was also extremely dysfunctional.

Erm... yeah. Because that's all working so much better now?

 

[maxp779]

Yeah I kind of agree with the OP here. I think a better UI would alleviate a lot of the difficulty that was added with 2.2. More automation options as well.

Extra resources can take some time to figure out but it's not too tough. Energy can buy anything. Minerals can be turned into the rare resources (all of them? not sure). Anything can be sold for energy. Boom.

But managing pops is a royal PITA. I added a bunch of mining districts but the workers do not split themselves evenly between food and minerals and energy districts, for some reason they all dogpiled the new mineral districts and abandon the food so they slowly starve. I have to manually intervene. Then later when I have more pops to work all districts manually undo what I did previously otherwise they will never work the mineral districts. I almost don't ever want to touch the job priority thing because I know later when I have more pop's i'll have to go back and undo it all.

 

[TheAzureLiger]

One example of the terrible UI is the button to make certain jobs unavailable. We have the option to have close jobs but we can't assign jobs? Doesn't really make sense why one is doable and the other isn't.

What if I want people to be clerks and miners with a focus on clerks? Game prioritizes clerks last. I can close all other jobs on the planet to maximize clerks, the moment I open some miner slots all the clerks go over to become miners.

 

[AlphaAsh]

Shift-click - on all jobs.
Shift-click + on the job you want to have priority.
Then shift-click + the next you want. And so on.
Pops should not shuffle around as you re-open vacancies.

 

[Agamemnic]

I've sunk well over 40hrs into this new update. It needs a lot more work.

Good direction but they went overboard with the complexity. It's fundamentally changed the game from 4x grand strategy to planet micro manager. I just cannot fathom playing this with +20 planets and the eye-gouging clickfest required.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

As I've played more and more I'm finding that I'm spending much less time looking at planets and jobs. At first I did and I sort if agreed with the folks complaining about micro. But now I don't really find it that intensive. I still suspect people are overbuilding and trying to play 2.1 style. They are also expecting the game to play itself so they can spend more time playing doomstack simulator. I for one am glad there's something to do other than collide fleets. There is strategy now to the economy and once you get used to it, it's not actually that much work.