At the very least there could be an autoresettle excess pops to X destination setting. But nope.
This a thousand times! And a button to scoop up all unemployed pops to a destination.
Micro management is astronomical now
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This a thousand times! And a button to scoop up all unemployed pops to a destination.
I don't want to be mean or snarky but this really stands out to me. What do you imagine to be the distinction between "a plan" and "a plan you keep in your head"?
For me economic planning in Le Guin is like a mental flowchart where I consider, in sequence: my long-term goal -> my short-term goal -> my potentially available resources -> my currently available resources -> my pathway to using current resources to access available resources to achieve goals
I have this stuff in my head all the time when playing any PDX game since they're real-time (with pause). So e.g. I want to conquer my neighbour -> I need a bigger fleet ideally supported by a secure, dedicated shipyard system -> I need alloys -> this world is large and will make a great forge world, but I need more minerals -> that world has minerals and will be a mining world -> I need to feed these people -> this other world will be an agri-world
When developing any of these worlds I don't just spam buildings immediately, I get them "started" with the necessary basic districts and then check maybe every year to make adjustments or expand the infrastructure as necessary.
I never just randomly build stuff, every planet is "for" something. Doesn't have to be a single resource (e.g. I have trade/unity/research worlds and large high-infrastructure housing-district-heavy industrial worlds and sometimes fortress worlds), but every planet's economy is intended to do something specific.
I rarely suffer shortfalls btw but occasionally war or neglected pirates or a poorly-planned expansion (yep I also make mistakes lol) will force me to react to production/consumption imbalances, which is bad, but that's good because imo the economy suffering when you make mistakes is good gameplay.
My first few games were a disaster in 2.2 and I also felt like I had to micro manage my planets non stop because I was running into shortages of consumer goods and energy mostly. But with a little planning early game and making decisions on what it is you want each individual planet to produce you will find the micro managing less of a chore. Now late game when your planets are filling up and you cant resettle, then I can understand the frustration but hey you have all the time in the world to micro your planets because the slow down is shockingly bad and it takes like 30 seconds per month.
I dont find the new economy system that micro heavy at all with planning but the game performance in 2.2 is unacceptable considering the fact they stated that removing the tile system was going to mean less calculations for the AI to carry out which would equal better performance.
I dont find the new economy system that micro heavy at all with planning but the game performance in 2.2 is unacceptable considering the fact they stated that removing the tile system was going to mean less calculations for the AI to carry out which would equal better performance.
But it is much more micro-intensive than before. The more planets you have, the more you have to manage and click-click-click, because now we can't even rely on sectors to be self-sufficient.
I imagine the game isn't that much worse for people who play tall empires and people who never used the game's automation, but for everyone else it's pretty clear the game now requires much more busywork. It's not even a matter of it being hard, it's just that the bigger you grow, the more unfun the game becomes when your focus is war/diplomacy or anything that doesn't involve managing your pops and directly playing with supply chains.
I'm sure you guys don't mean it this way, but it's a bit condescending to suggest the people concerned about micro are just playing it wrong.
You don't *have* to micromanage your pops... As soon as the colony is built, no, even before you build the colony ship, you should have an idea based on the planet size what this planet is going to do. Just build enough city districts that you will ever need on the planet, and whenever you see the unemployment icon just go in there and put down a few buildings. Better yet, let the sector AI do the work for you so you don't have to! The only reason that you are micromanaging your pops is because you WANT to micromanage your pops, and if it's not fun to do so then just stop doing it.
The same sector AI that manages AI planets? The one that fails to build buildings and districts, allows rampant uneployment, overcrowding, and whose economy works only because the AI cheats with the market making the entire economy pointless in the first place? That AI?
What I mean is the boring repetitive loop I have to do around every planet to see if X planet needs Y thing and if its time to build Y thing yet. This loop gets worse and worse the more planets I have. The loop often goes like this:
Planet A -> maintenance depot, housing, energy energy
Planet B -> maintenance depot, housing, farm
Planet C -> maintenance depot, housing, farm
Planet D -> maintenance depot, housing, farm
Planet E -> maintenance depot, housing, farm oh wait no no these were all mineral worlds... cancel the farms on the previous planets, build mines
This gets boring as hell after a while.
If I have a mineral planet I want to set it up to be a mineral planet from the start. I don't want to have to constantly go back to it and add one building at a time as new pops appear.
Honestly the whole thing directly relates to how they destroyed sectors in this patch. Working sectors would solve a lot of the issues. Everything im complaining about specifically here can be solved with sectors. I can monitor a few planets myself but 20+? Gtfo. Far too much micro and its not fun.
Absolutely this. Im a wide player but I have never derided the people who like to play tall, its cool that tall is an option. Its a shame some people deride those who don't like what IMO is ridiculous amounts of micro.
Oh, I'll agree that sectors are nonfunctional while the AI is broken. Shameful. Sectors will be useful again when the team (+modders...) actually fix it.
I always play wide and I never have problems - I guess I just don't play like you do. My planets are not homogeneous - most won't have farms or whatever, that's saved for a handful of super-fertile agri-worlds. Most of my energy comes from the trade generated off my massive city-worlds, which also do research or are industrial hubs. Occasionally a planet will encourage me into a weird build if it has unique deposits (generator planet etc.) but none of my worlds are built to be self-sufficient, they all depend on each other - my economy is built around the idea that I need to balance galactic numbers, not planetary ones. The only "generalist" world is my homeworld and that gets quickly reformed into an Ecumenopolis candidate once I have an economy going.
Imo this cuts down on both repetition and micro - also, like I said earlier, I don't mind a bit of unemployment or non-perfect efficiency. Once I have more than a handful of worlds I only check them every six months, then yearly. So less of my gametime is spent scrolling through lists I guess.
I always play wide and I never have problems - I guess I just don't play like you do. My planets are not homogeneous - most won't have farms or whatever, that's saved for a handful of super-fertile agri-worlds. Most of my energy comes from the trade generated off my massive city-worlds, which also do research or are industrial hubs. Occasionally a planet will encourage me into a weird build if it has unique deposits (generator planet etc.) but none of my worlds are built to be self-sufficient, they all depend on each other - my economy is built around the idea that I need to balance galactic numbers, not planetary ones. The only "generalist" world is my homeworld and that gets quickly reformed into an Ecumenopolis candidate once I have an economy going.
Imo this cuts down on both repetition and micro - also, like I said earlier, I don't mind a bit of unemployment or non-perfect efficiency. Once I have more than a handful of worlds I only check them every six months, then yearly. So less of my gametime is spent scrolling through lists I guess.
Another issue is that in pre 2.2 "leaving things as they are" mostly result in you just loosing some resources for not-upgrading\not building, not shuffle POPs around, checking Sectors seldom, etc., now, instead, you start to accumulate penalties along with missing out resources. And those penalties can accumulate, turning a decent planet into much less functional. And while you can pre-build it's limited by population and you have to pay full cost for you don't use.
Yeah, and energy, and CGs, and amenities and housing. And POPs to build those buildings. And if, f.e., you can calculate the amount of CGs you'll need in next 10-20 years without over-production just in your head i'm applauding you.
Visiting a planet every year, it's quite often.
How many planets you're talking about? At thta moment of the part? Early game, mid-game? Your GC-producing planet don't have enough POPs to support next factory while you need it now, you're going for resettle?
Do yo have he luxury of playing for long stretches of time? I don't. I play 2-3 times a day for about 30 minutes a stretch. So I have to keep that plan in my head for 8 hours between sessions. Doesn't happen.
So I plan, play 30 minutes, do other things, spend 5 minutes reopening the game, 10 minutes figuring out what my plan was and where I was on accomplishing it, start the clock and play 15-20 minutes.
I think the fact that almost everyone from novice to 1000 hour vet killed their economy the first couple times playing indicates there is an issue. In my opinion there are just too many basic resources balancing against one another and it's making the economy just too prone to cascading failures. The game would play a lot better if they just got rid of consumer goods and split its responsibilities into the other basic resources.
To me, it indicates the right amount of complexity and I applaud it that it is even possible to fail. Not a lot of games are able to do this and give you also the tools to correct your wrong doings in the same playthrough, in my opinion.
The whole thing feels like a wobbly jenga tower and I'm extremely skeptical that new players will have the patience to figure out how to balance it before just giving up. Also the fact that the AI's economy will always death spiral after just a few short decades worries me that the system is just too complex.
Considering the current state of sectors, you and I both know this is not true. Even if the AI was able to reliably make use of the new systems(it isn't) and even if the sectors options were varied enough for intelligent play(they aren't), we still have the issue of generated sectors forcing us to manually give resources to each and every one of them.
And then there is the issue that even people who admit to playing "non-optimally" say they are checking their planets every couple of years or so. Guess what that means? That means that the more planets you have, the more you will click per year in an almost linear increase in order to avoid the game's new cumulative penalties. That's no good for a 4x game, and is pretty much the definition of micromanagement.
Like I previously said, playing tall or even liking to micromanage is not an issue, but let's try not to pretend the game hasn't bogged in options for players who aren't into that. Trying to teach us how to play the game isn't going to change what is fundamentally wrong with it now.
There are some things that only paradox is going to be able to fix in order to make the new system enjoyable for everyone.
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I wasn't talking about AI economy, at least I haven't had them in mind. My response was about the claim that there is an issue if newbies and vets fail in their first few tries.
AI empires could be helped with boni since I just need the illusion that they are competitive.
Has this been changed? I have been told it is the same but that was before this patch.
Thats why I never used an AI mod for a more than a test game before 2.2 because sectors always started doing their own thing.
There are some individuals, a certain game designer among them, who would argue that such clicks are meaningful and thus are gameplay.