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[mainiac]

It's a shame because the game we are in is simultaneously drawing to a close and feeling like it's just starting.  I wonder how you guys would feel about some economic changes if we were to play again, which I think would reduce the micromanagement hell:

1) Engineers are a palace only unit, buildable in 2 turns with hover movement
2) Farms, agoras, wells and mines are given a 4 hex radius so they are 4 times as productive but need fewer resources
3) These harvesting cities will harvest each others resources to a limited extent, simplifying economic affairs
4) Theurgy tech is deleted but relics count as scepters
5) Relics also serve as a needed input for dreadnaughts, meaning that they have combat use if you take that tradeoff
6) Freighters can be built without inputs or technology but have a high upkeep to simulate league rentals
7) Units can't be built at economic cities anymore, just military and political ones
8) We allow and indeed encourage for resources to be moved to starports by the start production and cancel exploit and create "dummy" units called "stack of <resource name>" to be used in just this fashion
9) An immobile, untransportable "builders" unit is made that can be built anywhere for the cost of an engineer in one turn which can be used to raze a city and replace it, but not to build a city on a different hex.

The goal of this is to still allow for the 4X elements, but hopefully make them less about resource micro and luck of the ruins.  Thoughts?

[Kebooo]

Here are my thoughts...

1) It feels like this makes random galaxies harder to balance, since some planets have no palace while others are rebel controlled. What about factory/fort built? Where you decide between military and expansion at any given time.

2/3) I have no current opinion on this.

4/5) Is this a better solution? Imagine the 6 vs 5 scepter situation, it seems just as overpowered. At least with battle relics they can be destroyed, if they acted as a scepter they would simply be guarded at a home world. I wonder if just toning down the relics considerably would be effective.

6) I like this. Freighters need to be introduced into the game earlier. It feels like you play 30 turns before anything really interesting begins.

7) I like this

I like this

9) I like this

I believe there still needs to be something not luck based (like relics) that can precipitate the end of the game rapidly toward 70ish turns. Maybe some kind of jump capable mega death star that takes an incredible amount of resources and tech to get out your first one. If Palazzo doesn't win this election, I really don't think anyone will anytime soon. The 20 ship stack limit makes it incredibly difficult for one house to overcome four without the relics. Palazzo would have zero chance whatsoever if he didn't have the relics. It's almost a requirement to contend for the throne militarily.

[mainiac]

I feel like offensive space combat needs a huge wack with the nerf bat if there was a way to do that.  It's a game that is clearly meant to be fought on the ground but wars are won in space.  It would be nice if we could somehow balance things so that a "doomstack" became a group of like 10 ships or something like that so you are no longer just running up against the stack limits.  But I don't know.  I think if the game can be made to resolve faster then space armadas become less decisive.

[Kebooo]

I do agree space domination is probably too powerful right now. I wonder if there could be an equivalent unit to marauders except they disband into transports that aren't jump capable (space type), assuming that's possible. That might prevent the impenetrable space blockades. How can the game resolve faster though, without military dominance? The whole voting rules makes it tough. Our game was pretty unique because Aqizzar declared himself emperor. If that hadn't happened, I'm not sure anyone would be in a position to make a move for the throne.

[mainiac]

We could try experimenting with giving space warships very, very high maintenance costs, like 25k a turn for a cruiser, but letting them be put in an inactive ground form like marauders to lessen the costs.

[Kebooo]

Turn sent.

[Aqizzar]

Turn sent.

Suddenly realizing that I don't actually have to plan farther than nine turns out really frees me up in some ways, but also brings into focus just how badly managed some of my planets are.  I've got a world cranking out resources to build starships but I never got around to making more than one starport or a single cyclotron, because I've got a backlog of like thirty singularities scattered around (because stacks of ten free singularities is the only fucking thing I've gotten from every Ruins I've dug up the entire game).

[Kebooo]

Yeah, I don't know what's up with the singularities. I've received five or six stacks of 10 singularities. I used to fret over the loss of Cadavus because of gem markers, yet my limiting resources are food and monopols, not singularities. I'm kind of curious about what everyone's industrial production and resources are toward the end of this game. Though I know I just gained some at Absolution, Mainiac lost some, and Aqizzar lost with Palazzo gaining at Vril-ya. Margrave has been a big question mark for me. I have no idea what's going on down there.

I tallied up my total consumption and production, as well as my stockpiles. I (think) I have the largest economy. I wish I had had a couple relics, Cadavus, Tethys and Sutek. Mainiac was right to take those from me. My goal was to focus on industry and get to a point that I could attack on two fronts, down at Cadiz, and at Vera Cruz and get enough momentum to gain a few more planets and have an economy that couldn't be stopped. Never got to see it come to fruition though.

Food - consuming 5400, producing 6600
Energy - consuming 3100, producing 2500
Metal - producing 2500
Trace - consuming 1050, producing 1050
Exotica - consuming 120, producing 400
Chemicals - consuming 200, producing 450
Biochems - consuming 50, producing 115
Electronics - consuming 420, producing 1150
Ceramsteel - producing 270
Wetware - producing 100
Monopols - consuming 70, producing 330
Gems - consuming 70, producing 40

Stockpiles:
Food: 5,600
Energy: 20,000
Metal: 12,500
Trace: 14,800
Exotica: 11,500
Chemicals: 1,700
Biochems: 600
Electronics: 1,700
Ceramsteel: 1,100
Wetware: 320
Monopols: 350
Gems: 400
Singularities: 61

One thing I realized in this game is that stockpiling so much energy/trace doesn't make all that much sense. I figured I'd eventually get to use it all when I began to focus on industry, but I'm actually having a hard time using my raw resources because I'm only able to get an extra ten or so engineers out per turn, some of which are still building new resource cities, or forts, factories and starports.

Something else I've wonder about, in terms of min maxing, is building industry on a world without the resources to support it, letting the cities grow to 100% loyalty, then shipping in the raw resources. Typically one builds an industrial city and takes those several turns of penalty in terms of production. Of course sustaining this kind of strategy probably becomes a micromanagement nightmare.

[Il Palazzo]

I've got between 1/3rd to 2/3rds your outputs.
Vril-Ya is still under Aqizzar's rule as far as resource production goes, though.

I didn't count the stockpiles, but I'm running a pretty efficient economy with little leftovers. The only real surplus is food and metal, since I've stopped building engineers a while ago, and energy due to my compulsive offshore well building. The rest tends to dissapear as soon as it's produced.

[Kebooo]

How about uh, all my resources for you to forsake your claim to the throne?

[Il Palazzo]

Can we talk about it in ten years' time?

[Kebooo]

Ok, I'll wait until May/June 2023 to play my next turn. I'll send you a PM before I do.

[mainiac]

My production figures arere:
4700 food
1600 energy
1700 metal
470 trace
120 exotica
240 chemicals
110 biochems
550 electronics
170 ceramsteel
45 wetware
200 monopols
40 gems
4 singularities

But these numbers are a bit depressed because 1) I had lost control of absolution and 2) I haven't been able to freely move ships around for more then 30 turns now 3) Goddamn plague.  During the war with Keboo the goddamn church was harrassing my shipping the whole time but I couldn't afford to send the ships to wipe them out.  I suspect that if I were able to develop all my worlds fully my economy would be even bigger then Keboos but I've never had the chance.  What I really wanted was a little breathing space to do that.  If I had a 10 turn respite I could crank out the engineers and send them to where they are needed but pretty much all my worlds are forced to be self sufficient which hurt things a lot.

[Kebooo]

Yeah, assuming you have two symbiot worlds, you'd have two more worlds than I have, two of which would be trace, so you'd have the strongest economy. I've been trying get an intuitive understanding of a world's role in resource gathering. For example, desert worlds are great for energy but also trace. I began to focus mostly on mines for my trace world, thinking I'd gather energy everywhere else, but I have a larger energy deficit than I do trace.

Also, my proximity to Leagueheim, which I was excited about, was ultimately useless. They restocked my world once and then never again. What the heck happened? Did other people experience this? Now that I think about it, I don't think they even went through Aylon or Shaprut after that.

[mainiac]

Actually I got stuck on a symbiot world that was absolute bollocks.  I just finished surveying it and there isnt a scrap of trace on the whole damn world.  Tough luck, neh?