Restricting economical growth

[lolada]

Yes rainy farm with nutrient resource - i usually place condensers on nutrient resources. Well Condenser has a strong effect player can reason about it and place it on good spots. This might screw AI a bit. AI does grow scary big cities - thats part of why it is hard to defeat - so this is likely a nerf to thinker AI.

I don't really like condensers not on resources - so that +1 nutrient sounds good. Soil enrichers are also nerfed so it could be ok.

It would be a good idea to observe how AI places condensers - and does this harm them.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Yes rainy farm with nutrient resource - i usually place condensers on nutrient resources. Well Condenser has a strong effect player can reason about it and place it on good spots. This might screw AI a bit. AI does grow scary big cities - thats part of why it is hard to defeat - so this is likely a nerf to thinker AI.

I don't really like condensers not on resources - so that +1 nutrient sounds good. Soil enrichers are also nerfed so it could be ok.

It would be a good idea to observe how AI places condensers - and does this harm them.

Yea. I like condenser to do its main job of moisturizing surrounding instead of magically multiplying amount of food. How does it do it???
🤣

The change to enricher actually enhanced it. Previously it never used its potential because the best it could do is to add 50% to rainy farm, which is still +1. However, it added nothing on arid farm. Now it does.

[bvanevery]

Reducing minerals or boreholes slows everything down: units, facilities and secret projects.

In my mod, as a player I don't use boreholes at all.  That's as reduced as it gets.  Generally speaking I'm scared of the eco-damage they're going to do.

Thinker Mod is borehole obsessed.  The AI doesn't pay any global warming consequence on them.  A human player who used boreholes at the level the AI does, would put Planet 4000 meters underwater.  Thinker Mod just nerfs global warming.  It doesn't implement anything "smart" about building infrastructure vs. eco-damage done.

Not sure how much TWTP inherits from Thinker Mod in this regard.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I didn't change any Thinker logic.

Global warming is actually a pretty soft stopping. What do you do with others polluting?

[bvanevery]

Recently in my own mod, I am likely to win the game before AI factions start to do serious eco-damage.  So my choice not to pollute anything, not to build any more than a Genejack Factory, does have its payoff.

Since I recently actually won a game where I deliberately triggered a chemical weapons global warming apocalypse, I'm starting to toy with being bolder in my chosen tactics.  However I have not played enough test games since then to really get ecological abuse going.  Factories, boreholes, and condensers all come late in my mod.  Although I could build Mines earlier than I usually do, they are not beneficial in the absence of abundant food.  Typically I don't bother with them until I've built Hybrid Forests, my big source of food.  That's late midgame.  I've also recently pushed the Aquafarm to the same time, on the justification that they're the oceanic game mechanical equivalent of Soil Enrichers.

I think to really do the damage, I'd have to also be Capitalist.  -2 PLANET.

AI factions in my mod do manage to do eco-damage, typically by being Capitalist, if the game goes on long enough.  But lately I'm good at trouncing them.  I leave it to other playtesters, who are not familiar with my mod, to be trounced.  It can happen.  I've been occasionally surprised by player reports of big late game battles, things that I'd clearly never allow to get underway to begin with.

In my version 1.43, I'm changing Cybernetic to have -1 JUSTICE and -1 PLANET penalties.  In principle, AI factions could get back to -3 PLANET penalty.  In practice, my new Thought Control with the +1 INDUSTRY bonus is proving rather popular.  I don't know if I'm going to be able to convince the AI to choose Cybernetic.  It's still under test.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

You also have a display bug - this should be fixed i rely on those tooltips for example.

Here
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg125383#msg125383

Save your full directory before update. I did a lot of patching.

[Nexii]

With ecodamage it's that AI only pollutes as if on citizen difficulty in a transcend game (1/5th). Probably should be at librarian level to mirror the drone mechanics (3/5th).

Although ecodamage climbs up fast late game. Exceeding clean minerals is always really big ecodamage. Green cuts it down by 1/6th compared to Free Market which is someting but not a lot. My wishlist would have been for this I think in hindsight:
1) Clean minerals to be visible in game (this might be difficult)
2) PLANET to modify clean minerals instead of ecodamage
As I thought about it more TECHS multiplying ecodamage isn't so bad, even if it is extreme. Planet becoming more sentient/stronger at the end is well represented by that.

Energy is much more powerful than minerals most of the time. Energy doesn't pollute, you get commerce, and earlier facilities to boost it. And it drives tech. Minerals faciltiies all come very late. M is more efficient for like SPs, and required to support armies. But it has less going for it.

[Hagen0]

Would it be a good idea to add +1 energy per foest square to the tree farm?

One way to fix industry abuses would be to hold all mineral costs constant and make industry a multiplier on the minerals produced in a base. So +2 industry would multiply minerals incurred per base by 1.2 but all costs stay constant. There would be issues with rounding and it may not be feasable to implement.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

One way to fix industry abuses would be to hold all mineral costs constant and make industry a multiplier on the minerals produced in a base. So +2 industry would multiply minerals incurred per base by 1.2 but all costs stay constant. There would be issues with rounding and it may not be feasable to implement.

That is an obvious idea that was brought up uncounted number of times. That is how game should be designed from the beginning.

Unfortunately, this is all whole number game. How do you plan to increase 1 mineral surplus by 20%?
Moreover, this feature is so deeply programmed all over the code that it would be impossible to switch between these two methods. Like if you see at prototype costs they account for current INDUSTRY rating, etc. It's everywhere. I suggest to forget about changing this.

I introduced lesser evil fix just today. Number of accumulated nutrients and minerals is adjusted on GROWTH/INDUSTRY change so the accumulated completion percentage stays the same. This eliminates SP exploit with switching INDUSTRY just before the completion.

[lolada]

Would it be a good idea to add +1 energy per forest square to the tree farm?

I was thinking about this, but I wouldn't do it. I would make Tree Farm maybe slightly cheaper, Hybrid Forest as well (since its obviously they are not strong as they were with 1-2-1). Not much, just slightly.. Farm/solars and borehole are good energy as well - +2 Eco is tons of energy. In WTP Fungus is producing tons of food/energy (Most factions can use fungus tiles  and its free there is no terraforming needed). Minerals come from forests/mines/boreholes so its a must to have them.

Now forests actually do have +1 energy as soon as you adopt +2 Economics so there's that. Aquifers/rivers also work there for +energy. Fungus ignore rivers and bonus resources - and i am pretty sure +1 energy per tile from 2 ECO does not work on fungus.
Someone like Morgan have Tree forests at 2-2-1 and it will be 3-2-2 with Hybrid and base usually produces tons of energy (as you go over +2 in ECO) and these are all multipliers and he gets very rich. Looks like its good idea to rely on fungus until you can build Tree/Hybrid forests and Adv. terraforming and then terraform everything.

Its really unusual how it all plays out - i suggest playtesting - its quite different (and fun) gameplay compared to vanilla.

Energy is much more powerful than minerals most of the time. Energy doesn't pollute, you get commerce, and earlier facilities to boost it.

Yeah i tend to agree with this. As the game goes on minerals are just too slow - i tend to rush ton of facilities - especially in newer bases. You can wait 10+ turns to build Childrens Creche or rush it  for 80 credits or so - i know what i choose. Late game one can rush units all the time even when they are double cost compared to facilities.

So there's too much energy in general in game - which speeds up tech a lot. Thats why its ok for me to nerf forests and borehole and for example %energy facilities. One can read that T-Hawk AARs for example - he always gets to research each tech at 1 turn only.

[Hagen0]

Should have guessed the idea is hardly novel.

Making the tree facilities a bit cheaper without increasing their resource bonus does sound like a good.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Would it be a good idea to add +1 energy per forest square to the tree farm?

I was thinking about this, but I wouldn't do it. I would make Tree Farm maybe slightly cheaper, Hybrid Forest as well (since its obviously they are not strong as they were with 1-2-1). Not much, just slightly..

Like that?

* Tree Farm cost/maint is 10/2
* Hybrid Forest cost/maint is 20/3

Energy is much more powerful than minerals most of the time. Energy doesn't pollute, you get commerce, and earlier facilities to boost it.

Yeah i tend to agree with this. As the game goes on minerals are just too slow - i tend to rush ton of facilities - especially in newer bases. You can wait 10+ turns to build Childrens Creche or rush it  for 80 credits or so - i know what i choose. Late game one can rush units all the time even when they are double cost compared to facilities.

It may feel so but hurrying is not something rare. It is intended feature of the game to get rid of excess reserves. Otherwise, they are for nothing. Mineral production happens automatically and does not feel like hard work. Whereas, hurrying is manual with every single time you need to authorize with two buttons. Thus it feels as if you are hurrying everything. If you accurately compare part of the production done by hurrying it'll be somewhere 20-40% which is completely normal. More or less depending on you cash flow. Interestingly, this contribution doesn't change much with game course. You are constantly hurrying production from very beginning with extra credits and it never got to 100% even to end game.

So energy is not **more** powerful than minerals. It could be close to mineral power (somewhere 50-70% of it) but no more than that.

Another argument to this is that people most often are in need of minerals and not energy. Meaning energy without minerals cannot make it alone.

So there's too much energy in general in game - which speeds up tech a lot. Thats why its ok for me to nerf forests and borehole and for example %energy facilities. One can read that T-Hawk AARs for example - he always gets to research each tech at 1 turn only.

You probably feel you have excess of it by micromanaging hurrying all the time. I agree it could be limited but just a little. Say 10-20%. No more.

At the same time it is possible to allow governors to hurry production! Try to set this feature and see if it clears that feeling of excessive energy.
😏

[bvanevery]

You are constantly hurrying production from very beginning with extra credits and it never got to 100% even to end game.

Not exactly my pattern.  I tend to build up big wads of cash so that I can mostly buy SPs all at once.  I'll have cities working to accumulate the "starter minerals" for a SP.  You don't need that many minerals for that, if you're not under severe competitive pressure from the AIs for the SPs.  By late midgame I'm probably pulling away and starting to be able to run the table with SPs more consistently.  That said, I'm doing yet more tech tree path differentiation for my upcoming mod version 1.43.  I haven't actually made it to playtesting that portion of the game yet.

I do tend to rush my early game facilities, especially Recycling Tanks.  I know that these early rushes have the biggest impact on my development.  Also nobody can start a SP until Tier 3 in my mod, so I may not have any SP to build anyways.

You make a good point that this "rushing" play mechanic, consumes 3X as many mouseclicks as it would take to buy stuff outright.  Depending on timescale represented, this might be just fine for some imagined different game.  Did you know that at the end of WW II, Boeing was producing 100 B-29 "superfortress" bombers per month?

At the end of the war Boeing-Wichita was producing 4.2 Superfortresses per working day for an average of 100 a month, which was the military's schedule. The plant had also reduced the number of manhours to produce a single B-29, from157,000 (the average required for the first 100 bombers), to less than 20,000.

Another argument to this is that people most often are in need of minerals and not energy. Meaning energy without minerals cannot make it alone.

When cash gets stupendous in the late game, I find the only thing that really matters, is if a city can consistently produce 10 minerals per turn.  To overcome the big penalty if you have less than 10 minerals into something.  This tends to mean that in practice, a city only needs to have 20 minerals production to be a useful late game city.  And that since you're using cash and only 10 minerals roll over into a new project, the big factory cities are often completely wasteful.  The economics in this game really are rather baroque, a bunch of kludge designs inserted on top of each other I think.

[Hagen0]

You can make a partial payment to avoid waste in high production bases.

[lolada]

You probably feel you have excess of it by micromanaging hurrying all the time. I agree it could be limited but just a little. Say 10-20%. No more.

The thing is not hurrying the production == bad play. So I feel like i often need to hurry production so early on and to midgame i tend to hurry everything i can. When i get to many bases then i sometimes start to skip it because its not as important... so i don't have to play as good as i could. Or i just go and hurry everything i can every 3rd turn or something like that.

What would be convenient is to have Hurry Button - just click and its done. No confirmation box, no numbers. You can set it to 100% (so waste some min) or as much as its needed + minerals (thats more complicated..) but nevertheless it would be quality of life. One can go through bases and just quickly click Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry  until there's no more money and be done with it.