This economy ruins all the fun and active part of the game

[AlanC9]

No you dont know how I play because I never told you how. I told you how much games I dropped because economy ruined fun. And I created topic about that, and explained why. There is no word that game is "hard", or I need help, or concept of economy itself must be set on fire. But u see what u want to see. And your words have no more sense, than boasting of a school boy. May be your friends in Fortnite appreciate that, but why bring it here i dunno.

I did not say that I knew how you were playing badly, just that I knew it was bad. You put your economy into a death spiral. A dozen times. Were you trying to do that? If not, then you were playing badly.

So only way to be effective in this economy is to constantly monitor any new pop and any new building which require resources, to immediately get rid of any shortage. Manually renew edicts, manually resettle pops, manually buy from market what you suddenly and urgently need.

This is mostly false. New pops can't tank an economy unless you're running it with no surpluses at all. A new building can't damage your economy if you have the stuff to run it before building it. Shortages are no immediate problem unless you're, again, running at a zero balance. Shortages aren't sudden unless you've done something to cause the shortage. And manual resettlement is never necessary; I mostly play egalitarians and can't do it.

Edicts do have to be renewed manually, yep. But really, you shouldn't rely on edicts until the midgame since the influence is more useful to grab territory, and by then you should have comfortable surpluses in the basic materials.

 

[Amyntas]

I actually think the economy changes themselves are really great. It’s just the accompanying horrific lag/pop priorities that make things difficult.

I was getting that good Vic2 feel from the pops and their jobs before the game slowed to a crawl by 2300.

 

[Challenge]

Yeah. I wanted to get rid of insane micro in the first place. First thing I tried is to colonise and pre-build maximum planets, to pay minimum attention to it later. But in this case energy upkeep goes to hell. Especially when you are robot. Especially if you try to use ships in the meantime (when they simple patrol against pirates they eat upkeep like combat fleet, which is a failure too). Also, population growth is a complete mess, and you can easily find your alloy factories populated, and your power plants not. Or planet dedicated to be science world full of useless rebelling slaves. And you must manually sort it all.

First approach:

1. You overbuilt the planets before you had the population to handle all the jobs, so there weren't enough people to produce the energy needed to support the buildings.
   
2. It only takes one or two corvettes to run patrols to keep pirates manageable so if the fleet you're using is eating to much in upkeep, use fewer ships.
   
3. Population wants to work at better jobs and working in an alloy factory is considered better than working in mineral or energy resource producing centers. Sell the alloys in the market to gain the energy credits you need to balance the building/fleet up keep costs.
4. Sadly, yes. You probably need to sort out the revolution of starving, unsupported workers (slaves or otherwise) since the conditions of little to no food is likely to cause them to be a bit cross.

Okay, then I tried to max out population growth, in order to later build a buildings for them. But in this case food, happiness and all the rest goes to hell, leading to doom spiral. So only way to be effective in this economy is to constantly monitor any new pop and any new building which require resources, to immediately get rid of any shortage. Manually renew edicts, manually resettle pops, manually buy from market what you suddenly and urgently need. Maybe its interesting with 1 or 2 planets, but with 10 of them it's clicking hell. Also you must never use multi-species, slaves, robots, gene modding, and never capture enemy planets to get things worse.

Second Approach:

1. Farms are buildings necessary for food. If your population outgrows food production they starve. Once that happens you're back to having to fix the revolution yourself. (See 4 above.)
2. You don't need to monitor every new pop. But it is helpful if you take the time to see what you need for both the pops and the buildings to be mutually supportive and keep an eye on possible shortages in the system. Since the resources are used empire-wide, just watching the info across the top of the screen will help with that.
3. If you keep an eye on the numbers, you will find you aren't having to panic buy from, or sell to, the market as your needs are foreseeable and therefore should rarely be that surprising.
4. It's only a "clicking hell" with multiple planets if you don't pay attention to the numbers across the top of your screen which show you what you have; what you are producing/spending; so you can see if you are running an increase or a deficit in each resource.
5. Many players use multi-species, slaves, robots, gene modding, and capture enemy planets. It does make it considerable more challenging, but not a game breaker if you have the economy under control before you have to face those issues.

Im very glad that someone is strong enough to push this ugly cadaver to glorious victory, but in terms of fun and quality of life it's a disaster.

I can understand that a detailed economy in a strategic game my not be to your liking. That manipulating all these factors to balance a complex economy may just be frustrating for you. For others it is what makes a Grand Strategy game as opposed to a standard 4X game.

I don't presume you are a bad player I do, however, think you are trying to use your style from the previous versions. From my viewpoint the game isn't broken, and certainly isn't a cadaver. It needs some fine tuning and some reworking, but more than that it needs a rethinking of the way you would play it compared to the 1.x versions.

 

[Col. W. T. Philmore]

I did not say that I knew how you were playing badly, just that I knew it was bad. You put your economy into a death spiral. A dozen times. Were you trying to do that? If not, then you were playing badly.

I was trying to reduce micro in any way. And I failed. So probably I am too stupid for that, or devs intentively wanted me to not be able to do that, and ruined their game. I personally prefer 2nd option.

First approach:
Second Approach:

All of this I know. The problem is, that these approaches were perfectly playable in previous version. Like, all planets had tiles with some basic resources, +2 food or energy or something, and new pops spawned or them. So any captured or colonized planet had some basic life support until big daddy will pay attention to it and build proper buildings. Now pops are absolutely helpless. Big daddy must babysit any of newborn, or predict a baby boom and make a giant storage.
Also, it was much better when pops were leaving overpopulated capital for empty colonies, so I could build up newly colonized planet and rest assured that guys will arrive there soon and take the jobs. Now I must grab a dude with my hands and poke his nose into empty factory. Not really a emperor's job.
Sectors and their ability to automatically keep positive income unless I come and try to make something special there are not worth mentioning, there is already whine about that all around the forum.

 

[DeadEyeTucker]

I was trying to reduce micro in any way. And I failed. So probably I am too stupid for that, or devs intentively wanted me to not be able to do that, and ruined their game. I personally prefer 2nd option.


All of this I know. The problem is, that these approaches were perfectly playable in previous version. Like, all planets had tiles with some basic resources, +2 food or energy or something, and new pops spawned or them. So any captured or colonized planet had some basic life support until big daddy will pay attention to it and build proper buildings. Now pops are absolutely helpless. Big daddy must babysit any of newborn, or predict a baby boom and make a giant storage.
Also, it was much better when pops were leaving overpopulated capital for empty colonies, so I could build up newly colonized planet and rest assured that guys will arrive there soon and take the jobs. Now I must grab a dude with my hands and poke his nose into empty factory. Not really a emperor's job.
Sectors and their ability to automatically keep positive income unless I come and try to make something special there are not worth mentioning, there is already whine about that all around the forum.

You don't have to babysit pops now either. Unless you're running at 0 food with +0 production. A pop grows and he sits there just fine. Build extra basic districts then. Or wait until you have an unemployed pop and then build a shiny new alloy or consumer good factory. Your economy won't death spiral because you built too many farms/mines/generators.

 

[Dëzaël]

I always build 1 district for each resource on new colonies, right away, plus the clinic if CG allow. Upon capital upgrade, that nets you 10 pops for 11 jobs. Second building for 12 and 13. Third building for 14 and 15. Unless it goes rural with districts.

Then I plan for each next building the unemployment I would have to reach to unlock the slot, and build according number of districts according to current needs to suck up future unemployment. When I build a specialist building, it never sucks more than one pop from its job. Two only if I can and/or need it. Growth does the rest. Specialist planets see their district number diminish over time.

Not much micro. Problems arise if I get greedy with specialists, either new building or upgrading.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I really, really do not want to devolve back into the pre-2.2 economy of +0 energy, +0 food, +99999 minerals.

I never understood the players who did not use the pop growth bonus from surplus food. +200% pop growth was great and even the 25th pop on a planet grew faster than a robot if you stacked the proper bonuses.

 

[Onkel_Bums]

I'm with you on the feeling that conquest gives very little incentive where either I amalgamate an additional 500 pops and work through trying to get them all where they are best suited from an egalitarian perspective or dealing with 10planets being purged for 10 years and having to manually remove all buildings and districts to reduce the upkeep and sprawl. Unless there is a leviathan or really nice planet in their borders, I find I am very disinclined to mess with my neighbours. I remember a long time ago with one of the many reiterations of strategic resources that Paradox said they wanted to make them worth going to war over, and yet here we are with version 22 of these resources being broken and rebuilt from the ground up, that only 3 of them actually matter and the really rare ones give a single edict with a single use(if you even go for megastructures or late game tech). The trader enclaves, a paid feature, are now just a fixed cost version of the market that you have to go out of your way to find the right one depending on your needs.

By making planets the be-all end-all of both basic, advanced, and strategic resource production there is no real reason to be anything but isolationist and turtle on a few worlds. No reason to step outside your borders until the very end game when you are looking for FEs to steal from or leviathans to kill. You just get one mineral world, one farm world, an ecumenopolis/forge world, a research world, and wait for megastructures. Anything more will just be overkill. All the other empires are speedbumps on the way to a late game that barely runs and has 2/3 of the crises not functioning at all in the current release, and with how they use the current economy in vanilla they aren't even that if you don't gimp yourself with an RP built empire.

Maybe a balance patch will solve some of these issues but 2.2.x has added so many problems and broken a lot of things that worked in the old system there are bound to be a lot of things that slip through the next few patches unaddressed. I like what the new system could be, but that's how I felt at 1.0 launch and here we are with a new load of potentially good features that only time will tell if they fulfill it before being axed in favour of more potentially nice things.

Amen brother.

 

[SpectralShade]

I never understood the players who did not use the pop growth bonus from surplus food. +200% pop growth was great and even the 25th pop on a planet grew faster than a robot if you stacked the proper bonuses.

not to mention, that if you had lots of food, you could trade it to the AI every now and then for a favourable price.

 

[Skydrake]

I couldn't disagree more with the OP's sentiment - the economy (and thusly peaceful gameplay in general) finally is fun. Yes, the amount of micro has gone up (and I can see how that might not appeal to someone in itself, but that's a separate issue entirely) - but the difference is that the micro now is actually meaningful. Each district you build, each building you construct, each decision you make - all of those have very real, very impactful and often times very immediate impact on your overall economy. That's what makes it fun - what you do actually matters, and if you do it well you are rewarded with tangible results.

Pre-megacorp? The economy "management" was a 100% brainless tilespam (where you even ignored the tile resource bonuses late enough in the game because who gives a crap), with zero thought required and zero feeling of reward for doing it "right" (aka building whatever, so long as you built anything at all). It was an annoying, tedious, zero-reward slog that you did in-between wars when you finally got something that felt meaningful to do. Yes, it was less micro - but contrary to 2.2, 90% of it was useless, meaningless micro. It required less attention in the sense that it barely mattered what you were spamming on your planets, so long as you did so in any manner that wasn't deliberately designed to shoot yourself into foot.

Now? The economy is more tight, individual buildings and actions have a much bigger impact on it and getting it running smoothly is its own reward for a job well done.

And it's not like it's some arcane science to get things right either. Don't build buildings "in advance" so as to avoid uselessly paying for upkeep and poaching workers from districts. Seriously - wait until a planet gets a red icon that it's missing a job slot, THEN order a building, or an upgrade to a building, or whatever. Any resources going into red? Build the corresponding district/building to address it. Just one, don't overcompensate unless you have the actual free workers lining up to work there. Which you won't most of the time, unless you just got a refugee influx or something. Use the market to ride out the shortages - that's what it's there for. People not starving on the streets and have a steady inflyx of the newest iphones to keep them happy? Congratulations, now you can build your researches or whatever.

I mean, none of this is rocket science. I haven't managed to crash my economy even once with those basic steps (except that one time I tried Machine Empire and realized too late how much of a borked state they are in, but that's neither here or there). It's not hard ... you just have to pay attention, unlike the pre 2.2 autopilot economy.

I have plenty of other issues with the game - the AI is seriously borked, lategame crisis are bugged and don't work properly, performance issues make the game nigh unplayable going into late midgame. The game is a sorry mess overall with zero quality control that Paradox should be ashamed of.

But not because of the economy. It's the best thing to happen to Stellaris since its inception and just about the only thing making it still playable despite all the other issues it has right now.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I think the economy in its current state ruins a lot of the fun. It needs a lot more optional automation like we had in all the previous patches aka sectors. They essentially don't work anymore as of 2.2.

Aiming to reduce micromanagement by removing automation sounds like a great idea indeed. I really wish to know if they were sober when they came up with this.

 

[Col. W. T. Philmore]

I couldn't disagree more with the OP's sentiment - the economy (and thusly peaceful gameplay in general) finally is fun. Yes, the amount of micro has gone up (and I can see how that might not appeal to someone in itself, but that's a separate issue entirely) - but the difference is that the micro now is actually meaningful. Each district you build, each building you construct, each decision you make - all of those have very real, very impactful and often times very immediate impact on your overall economy. That's what makes it fun - what you do actually matters, and if you do it well you are rewarded with tangible results.

No. Rewards come on strategic level. It is fun to play with pops and districts when u have 1-2 planets. But the more you develop your empire, the more you expand and conquer, the less matters every single pop, or building, or planet. This is the reward. You become a powerhouse and may distance from routine and dedicate yourself to more global tasks, politics, saving galaxy from crisis and such stuff. Bit instead of that, the more development you have the more things you need to watch for and control manually and the more chance something will go bad. So the most rewarding strategy is dont colonize, dont conquer, dont expand, dont play...

 

[Chthon]

Also, it was much better when pops were leaving overpopulated capital for empty colonies, so I could build up newly colonized planet and rest assured that guys will arrive there soon and take the jobs. Now I must grab a dude with my hands and poke his nose into empty factory. Not really a emperor's job.

The only problem in the game here is that the game doesn't relate the situation properly to the player.

If you have a minor housing shortage, this simply means that Uncle Bill lives in his mother's basement, and she wants him to move out. He's not homeless, he's just an unwanted guest who needs to go out and find his own place to live. The problem is there isn't any place left.

If you have enough consumer goods, you can smooth this over with your population just fine. In fact the colony gets a population attraction malus, meaning that now people are more likely to move to planets where there is extra housing.

In short, being a little over on crowding, or unemployment, is not the end of the world if your population is happy with you. It also helps prompt your population to move to places where they are more needed. The only races where this can be a problem are hive minds or robot races, as they don't have immigration, or races that implement population controls. If you play one of these, you will have to understand that you take full control of your population.

 

[Skydrake]

No. Rewards come on strategic level. It is fun to play with pops and districts when u have 1-2 planets. But the more you develop your empire, the more you expand and conquer, the less matters every single pop, or building, or planet. This is the reward. You become a powerhouse and may distance from routine and dedicate yourself to more global tasks, politics, saving galaxy from crisis and such stuff. Bit instead of that, the more development you have the more things you need to watch for and control manually and the more chance something will go bad. So the most rewarding strategy is dont colonize, dont conquer, dont expand, dont play...

No. I certainly don't see it as a reward to reach a stage where things cease to matter and your actions no longer have consequences - especially if it's easy to reach. That is exactly the problem with pre Megacorp Stellaris - you hit such a point so quickly and easily that the economic play turned into irrelevant tedium. What you describe is the opposite of what I see as rewarding gameplay - playing to reach a stage where it ceases to matter how or why you are playing. Why would I want to hit a point where, essentially, paying attention to the game is no longer needed? Supposedly I play the game because I like it and thus paying attention to it. And thus I like feeling when it's evident that my paying attention actually matters

This is especially good because there really isn't much to do on the strategic level, outside of an endgame crisis. Politics are of little importance and easily manipulated or ignored if one feels inclined to do so (we really need that diplomacy overhaul ... assuming the AI can handle it), the AI can't fight its way out of a paper bag so wars quickly cease to be meaningful past the early game. So all that's left are the crisis events (ignoring the fact that the current ones are bugged and don't work properly).

So we essentially have the old Stellaris where the rest of the game doesn't really matter outside of the endgame crisis, and the new one where the economic play actually matters, so the endgame crisis isn't the only thing worth playing for. Peaceful play and what you do during the downtime (aka 90% of the game) is actually meaningful now and has a tangible effect on your capacity to approach the crisis. That's infinitely better in my eyes. Bugs and performance aside, I applaud the devs for making it so.

And if one is so inclined, it's still possible to reach the stage where paying very close attention to the economy stops being necessary and you can focus solely on other things, whatever those might be. It just takes a lot longer and more effort to get there. I have had several games where all my resource productions eventually reach in to triple to quadruple digits (energy mostly for the later). One or two missed or misplaced buildings won't ruin anything for you at that point. Misplacing whole planets won't. It just takes time and effort to get to that point, and when/if you do that feels like a real accomplishment, something to be proud of - that you could build an empoire and economy that robust, rather than being an effortless, foregone conclusion the way it was pre-megacorp.

 

[Vanhal]

It's true, however, that "two-tier" economies, where you don't merely produce stuff by things you harvest, you have to transform the things you harvest first into semi-fabricates, and only then produce things with it, can be confusing to beginners. That's probably why games that strive to be accessible to newcomers avoid it (Civ5, in fact, got rid of raw commerce, a similar resource in all preceding Civs, and was more popular than these, even if "true civvers" criticized Civ5 for simplification).

I wonder how many people here played the good old simple The Settlers.

 

[Col. W. T. Philmore]

No. I certainly don't see it as a reward to reach a stage where things cease to matter and your actions no longer have consequences - especially if it's easy to reach. That is exactly the problem with pre Megacorp Stellaris - you hit such a point so quickly and easily that the economic play turned into irrelevant tedium. What you describe is the opposite of what I see as rewarding gameplay - playing to reach a stage where it ceases to matter how or why you are playing. Why would I want to hit a point where, essentially, paying attention to the game is no longer needed? Supposedly I play the game because I like it and thus paying attention to it. And thus I like feeling when it's evident that my paying attention actually matters

Your actions always have consequences. It's just different level of actions. Assuming this is a game about ruling an empire. When your "empire" consists of one planet, it is very interesting decision with epic consequences - how to get some minerals and build a house for a couple of bums. But when you rule a dozen planets, it's time for another level of things - control armadas, build megastructures, decide galactic fate in politics and fight great evil from another galaxy... EU4 has a tool for this like a omni-menu to manage all provinces from single window. CK2 has a tool for this like vassals to which u give provinces. Stellaris had sectors for this but they died. (

This is especially good because there really isn't much to do on the strategic level, outside of an endgame crisis. Politics are of little importance and easily manipulated or ignored if one feels inclined to do so (we really need that diplomacy overhaul ... assuming the AI can handle it), the AI can't fight its way out of a paper bag so wars quickly cease to be meaningful past the early game. So all that's left are the crisis events (ignoring the fact that the current ones are bugged and don't work properly).

Why it is not interesing in this particular game it's because AI is bad both as enemy and ally. But to fill this gap by ridiculous micromanagement instead of fixing conceptual problems, literally forcing players to fight ugly mechanics instead of enemies and thinking abuses and lifehacks instead of strategy, is a bad game design. Player even have no time to raise his head and look at the stars. In a space game heh.

I wonder how many people here played the good old simple The Settlers.

Settlers initially were a tycoon game with rudimentary combat system and no politics. When its fans will fill this forum and 4x fans will go away, there will be no more such threads like this. But not today.

 

[AlanC9]

No. Rewards come on strategic level. It is fun to play with pops and districts when u have 1-2 planets. But the more you develop your empire, the more you expand and conquer, the less matters every single pop, or building, or planet. This is the reward. You become a powerhouse and may distance from routine and dedicate yourself to more global tasks, politics, saving galaxy from crisis and such stuff. Bit instead of that, the more development you have the more things you need to watch for and control manually and the more chance something will go bad. So the most rewarding strategy is dont colonize, dont conquer, dont expand, dont play...

I still don't understand how you can manage to get big without ever getting comfortable surpluses in everything.

 

[Vanhal]

Settlers initially were a tycoon game with rudimentary combat system and no politics. When its fans will fill this forum and 4x fans will go away, there will be no more such threads like this. But not today.

So, multi tiered economy in Settlers was ok because no politics and rudimentary combat systems? That means you think combat and politics in Stellaris are not rudimentary? That they are so complicated they are causing you to have stack overflow error when combined with economy way simpler than in almost 30 year old game?

 

[TheAtreides84]

So, multi tiered economy in Settlers was ok because no politics and rudimentary combat systems? That means you think combat and politics in Stellaris are not rudimentary? That they are so complicated they are causing you to have stack overflow error when combined with economy way simpler than in almost 30 year old game?

It doesn't really make sense as a comparison. I could then talk about Capitalism, a similarly old game having even more complex economy, with multiple tiered resource transformation, price setting, logistics, brand loyalty, a stock market, staff management and so on. It was a game about managing a corporation. And The Settlers was a game about managing a small colony. The more focused a game is, the less abstraction it requires, that much is obvious. But in Stellaris we're talking about managing an empire.

 

[Col. W. T. Philmore]

So, multi tiered economy in Settlers was ok because no politics and rudimentary combat systems? That means you think combat and politics in Stellaris are not rudimentary? That they are so complicated they are causing you to have stack overflow error when combined with economy way simpler than in almost 30 year old game?

It was ok because it was in its place. Stellaris intended to be mainly about politics and warfare. It is rudimentary because it is underworked. Devs must focus on these stuff, not on adding boring and fussy stuff from 30 yrs old game to keep player busy at least with something. They could add a card game in it with same success lol.