Rework Tier 2+ Building upkeep - making Strategic resources a decision.

[Pancakelord]

This is one of the root causes of the AI failing post midgame, it fundamentally cannot handle buildings - and as Strat Resources come from buildings, it also cant handle getting the gasses needed to maintain science labs. (It handles science districts fine, though, funnily enough).

This leads to the AI falling over at midgame AND it falling behind on science - which makes it fail even harder. This is in part because it never seems to re-develop it's buildings, once something's there, it is stuck with it until someone comes along and ruins it with a bomb, so it's hard for the AI to balance its Strategic resource income. And fast science is quite reliant on the number of scientists (and thus number of advanced labs) you have. There are other economic problems too, but this is the biggest factor in it specifically failing to develop scientifically at a decent pace.

Right now you essentially pay a premium for extra jobs in a single building slot (2/5/8 -> 2/4/6 in nemesis). This means that tall empires

I think there is a way to get around this problem:

1. Remove StratResource [Gas / Motes & Crystals] upkeep from all Tier 2 / 3 buildings
2. Add StratResource as a upfront cost to all T2/3 buildings (so a T2 lab might cost 400 Gasses and a T3 might cost 800 Gasses - but no gasses in monthly running costs)
3. Add Planetary decisions (and an empire wide toggle for when you have many worlds) to "Supercharge" each type of Tier 2+ buildings Which adds back the strategic resource cost but boosts that job types output by X%.
   • For example
   • You build and upgrade to a T2 lab - it costs you 400 Gas and you get 4 scientists.
   • They each work at their usual pace
   • Now you click on the decisions tab and press "Distribute Advanced Science Equipment"
     • adding 0.5 Gas upkeep to each scientist job
     • increasing the scientist's output by X% (e.g. 25%)
   • Alternatively you could have an empire policy/edict for this "Distribute Advanced Science Equipment" which sets it to ON / OFF for all worlds by default, with the planetary decision being a way to turn off (or turn on) the upkeep/bonus on worlds that matter - depending on your current Gas income.

In this way you can still upgrade your empire's building slots as and when you can afford to, but you no longer have to play space accountant with balancing your rare resources.
And the AI will be able to fill-out its worlds - even if they don't run quite as optimally with a job bonus from the gasses if it cant afford the decision's upkeep - it'll be a lot better than running on T1 labs in 2400.

• AIs are able to enable and disable decisions very effectively (watch them use the crimelord decision or the ban population growth one, for example) so this would be the same.
• The moment it sees it's going negative on science it can be taught to either shut down a gas-supercharge decision on a planet (evaluating it's upkeep) or evaluate it's EC balance/income + set up a market purchase - whichever is workable. This can all be set up through logic operators and approximated via count-functions, easily enough.

You could have a "Supercharge" policy/decision option for each job type (e.g. for bureaucrats & soldiers too). Though it'd have the largest impact on the science job, given that science has huge knock on effects with getting + modifiers & the industrial changes coming in 2.9 will mean the AI should do much better with Alloys/CGs from districts & Gasses tend to be in higher demand than the other two resource types.

 

[HFY]

If you remove strategic resource upkeep from the building, it might make sense to put the option into an Edict.

Something like...

Researcher gains +0.2 exogas upkeep, gains +1/+1/+1 science output.​

The UI would need an easy way to tell you how many Researchers you have, but that's something needful already.

 

[Tamwin5]

This just makes it so that you always want to upgrade buildings no matter what. Let's be real, the strategic resources aren't much of a cost. You'd have to completely overhaul he way Strat Resources work so there isn't an infinite amount on the market.

 

[Pancakelord]

This just makes it so that you always want to upgrade buildings no matter what.

You say that like you already dont? lol I'll run my economy into the shitter if it means more science. Its easy to dig yourself out of a hole by trading crap for EC and waiting till the modifiers pile up. So I don't think this changes that.

It just means less "mental strain" for the (probably newer) players struggling with balancing their economies - and the AI, which plays worst than the greenest of greenhorns.

 

[Tamwin5]

You say that like you already dont? lol I'll run my economy into the shitter if it means more science. Its easy to dig yourself out of a hole by trading crap for EC and waiting till the modifiers pile up. So I don't think this changes that.

It just means less "mental strain" for the (probably newer) players struggling with balancing their economies - and the AI, which plays worst than the greenest of greenhorns.

No, I don't. A T2 building provides 5 jobs, which is the same amount you need to unlock a building slot. If you just only spam T3 labs then you'll have open researcher jobs and no workers to give you base resources. Depending on the rare resources I have access to and what techs I roll, I might try to concentrate my foundries with a bunch of T2 or T3, while having tons of T1 labs across my planets. Or vice versa or with administrative offices or factories.

Ideally rare resources would be made a limited commodity on the market so you can't just buy them willy-nilly. That's the part of the system that needs to be changed IMO, so that you are actually restricted by the resources you get, and need to worry about acquiring them through diplomacy or warfare.

 

[Saori]

I agree with Tamwin5.

While OPs suggestion surely 'solves' the issue as it is presented, it does so at the cost of the inherent design complexity.

Advanced buildings let you consolidate your high-pop worlds; but at a cost. If you can't afford/dont have access to those strategic resources you have to deal with this problem in another way. I.e. going 'wider' and settling more (maybe suboptimal) planets to get t1 science buildings going. Or building science habitats.
The cool thing here is that you have to make a decision, apply your knowledge and find a solution. Generally spoken that is what should be incouraged to happen more often in the game!

Granted - the way the market works in the game and the penalities for running a deficit make this initial cool dilemma trivial. But that is the problem at hand. That you have one solution available to you (just buy what you need at the market) that is so overwhelmingly powerful it makes the initial dilemma meaningless - that is the actual problem here. By streamlinging the upgrade process of buildings and making it 'braindead' in the sense that you upgrade whenever you can without having to consider (less of) an opportunity cost doesn't seem like a good way to handle this. At all.

Making gameplay-systems so easy the most simplistic AI could handle it is often a surefire way to boring, stagnant and repetetive gameplay. :c I think we can do better then that!

 

[mial42]

I agree with Tamwin5.

While OPs suggestion surely 'solves' the issue as it is presented, it does so at the cost of the inherent design complexity.

Advanced buildings let you consolidate your high-pop worlds; but at a cost. If you can't afford/dont have access to those strategic resources you have to deal with this problem in another way. I.e. going 'wider' and settling more (maybe suboptimal) planets to get t1 science buildings going.

No such thing as a suboptimal planet (or to be more precise: no such thing as a planet you wouldn't want to colonize no matter what).

 

[HFY]

No, I don't. A T2 building provides 5 jobs, which is the same amount you need to unlock a building slot.

I think this thread is intended to be read in the context of 2.9, where that will no longer be the case.

No such thing as a suboptimal planet (or to be more precise: no such thing as a planet you wouldn't want to colonize no matter what).

That's probably true, but in a better game you'd be making trade-off decisions rather than just blobbing madly.

 

[Tamwin5]

I think this thread is intended to be read in the context of 2.9, where that will no longer be the case.



That's probably true, but in a better game you'd be making trade-off decisions rather than just blobbing madly.

They were talking about what they are currently doing in game in regards to upgrading all their labs to T3 instantly. So current version. Next update yes, both of those details would be incorrect.

 

[Roboduck3000]

This is one of the root causes of the AI failing post midgame, it fundamentally cannot handle buildings - and as Strat Resources come from buildings, it also cant handle getting the gasses needed to maintain science labs. (It handles science districts fine, though, funnily enough).
View attachment 687502
This leads to the AI falling over at midgame AND it falling behind on science - which makes it fail even harder. This is in part because it never seems to re-develop it's buildings, once something's there, it is stuck with it until someone comes along and ruins it with a bomb, so it's hard for the AI to balance its Strategic resource income. And fast science is quite reliant on the number of scientists (and thus number of advanced labs) you have. There are other economic problems too, but this is the biggest factor in it specifically failing to develop scientifically at a decent pace.

Right now you essentially pay a premium for extra jobs in a single building slot (2/5/8 -> 2/4/6 in nemesis). This means that tall empires

I think there is a way to get around this problem:

1. Remove StratResource [Gas / Motes & Crystals] upkeep from all Tier 2 / 3 buildings
2. Add StratResource as a upfront cost to all T2/3 buildings (so a T2 lab might cost 400 Gasses and a T3 might cost 800 Gasses - but no gasses in monthly running costs)
3. Add Planetary decisions (and an empire wide toggle for when you have many worlds) to "Supercharge" each type of Tier 2+ buildings Which adds back the strategic resource cost but boosts that job types output by X%.
   • For example
   • You build and upgrade to a T2 lab - it costs you 400 Gas and you get 4 scientists.
   • They each work at their usual pace
   • Now you click on the decisions tab and press "Distribute Advanced Science Equipment"
     • adding 0.5 Gas upkeep to each scientist job
     • increasing the scientist's output by X% (e.g. 25%)
   • Alternatively you could have an empire policy/edict for this "Distribute Advanced Science Equipment" which sets it to ON / OFF for all worlds by default, with the planetary decision being a way to turn off (or turn on) the upkeep/bonus on worlds that matter - depending on your current Gas income.

In this way you can still upgrade your empire's building slots as and when you can afford to, but you no longer have to play space accountant with balancing your rare resources.
And the AI will be able to fill-out its worlds - even if they don't run quite as optimally with a job bonus from the gasses if it cant afford the decision's upkeep - it'll be a lot better than running on T1 labs in 2400.

• AIs are able to enable and disable decisions very effectively (watch them use the crimelord decision or the ban population growth one, for example) so this would be the same.
• The moment it sees it's going negative on science it can be taught to either shut down a gas-supercharge decision on a planet (evaluating it's upkeep) or evaluate it's EC balance/income + set up a market purchase - whichever is workable. This can all be set up through logic operators and approximated via count-functions, easily enough.

You could have a "Supercharge" policy/decision option for each job type (e.g. for bureaucrats & soldiers too). Though it'd have the largest impact on the science job, given that science has huge knock on effects with getting + modifiers & the industrial changes coming in 2.9 will mean the AI should do much better with Alloys/CGs from districts & Gasses tend to be in higher demand than the other two resource types.

I like this. With how population and build slots now work, this makes even more sense too.
High tier buildings would need to lose their strategic resource cost for me to consider them.

 

[GOLANX]

I agree with Tamwin5.

While OPs suggestion surely 'solves' the issue as it is presented, it does so at the cost of the inherent design complexity.

Advanced buildings let you consolidate your high-pop worlds; but at a cost. If you can't afford/dont have access to those strategic resources you have to deal with this problem in another way. I.e. going 'wider' and settling more (maybe suboptimal) planets to get t1 science buildings going. Or building science habitats.
The cool thing here is that you have to make a decision, apply your knowledge and find a solution. Generally spoken that is what should be incouraged to happen more often in the game!

Granted - the way the market works in the game and the penalities for running a deficit make this initial cool dilemma trivial. But that is the problem at hand. That you have one solution available to you (just buy what you need at the market) that is so overwhelmingly powerful it makes the initial dilemma meaningless - that is the actual problem here. By streamlinging the upgrade process of buildings and making it 'braindead' in the sense that you upgrade whenever you can without having to consider (less of) an opportunity cost doesn't seem like a good way to handle this. At all.

Making gameplay-systems so easy the most simplistic AI could handle it is often a surefire way to boring, stagnant and repetetive gameplay. :c I think we can do better then that!

Going wide innately solves the problem of high tier buildings, you get access to more strategic resources and can have more refinery worlds, a tall player has a limited set of resources and worlds to use to create strategic resources to power the science they need to stay competitive the upkeep costs innately reward the wide empires that can get the strategic resources who don't neccesarily need them and punish Tall empires who need to squeeze the maximum value out of a small number of worlds.

The market is neccesary for tall empires to solve problems with strategic resource supply as they have less access to strategic resources and fewer refinery worlds, I'd also like to point out refinery buildings don't have upgrades so it takes several to maintain an empire's needs.

If anything I'd like to have empire sprawl reduce research speed and economic growth so that wide empires have to burn more strategic resources building up science to remain competitive with tall empires.