Version .52 really does turn racial growth rates into an abstraction?

[Spidey]

If races don't actually grow at the rate specified in their race files then what's the damn point of calling it a growth rate? If I can't get a growth rate 14% race to actually grow at 14% without using wonders then how does that race actually have growth rate of 14%? How does that even begin to make any damn sense?

Seriously, how is this change fixing anything in the game? The issue was that the AI stops growing colonies at 3 bil population, which means players get an advantage since we don't have to stop at 3 bil. And so you fix that by turning growth rates into theoretical numbers that can't actually be attained in the game? What's the reasoning here, Elliot and Erik?

Never mind that if I want money, I can simply order the private sector to retrofit some mining stations to something expensive and presto, sea of money. It's been that way since Universe was released but no, that's not a problem at all. Totally balanced.

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm slightly annoyed by this change. I don't see the purpose it serves, particularly not when players who don't want to zero tax can simply not do it, but I do see my number of early game options going down. And the Ugnari are hit ridiculously hard by this. They're not getting to the growth wonder anytime soon so have fun with 10% growth until you run out of cash (or exploit tech trade / civ retrofit) and get stuck with 4% growth.

[Antiscamp]

I never zero-tax. I've never even once used that strategy. I don't think it needed to be addressed at all in the patch. It would indeed be interesting to hear the reasoning behind the changes.

[Tcby]

I'd be interested to see how the figures compare on planets other than the home world. There's no question that this greatly slows down growth (because as you say, you cannot actually attain your default reproduction rate anymore) on the starting planet, but whether it also results in slower growth on later planets depends on how much 0% tax boosts the migration rate.

Obviously the benefit will be tied to how quickly you can get your home planet to a good population.

[ldog]

Not just your homeworld, but if the AI still taxes like it always has then you should (in theory) see more migrants from other empires & independents as well. Being as I typically play like the Americans in Spaaaace (sorry, that's Tim's fault ) and am happy to have a diverse racial mix (or at least the ones that bring me bonuses) it might suit me, but I still don't care for this change. Of course when I see things that have been longstanding bugs still not addressed and unnecessary changes made that doesn't thrill me.

[deathnoise]

I'd also like to see these changes to be reverted to the previous state

[Locarnus]

The whole wonder concept is massively skewed towards the player.

I asked for the option to mod the current wonders to national wonders.
That way the supertech races wont be able to make themselves into hypertech races forever.

Havent gotten a reply yet, so I dont know if it is considered.


@growthrates:
I m not sure if the races are eg 14% growth races or +14% growth races.

[Jim D Burns]

The entire notion that low taxes leads to higher birth rates is ridiculous and should be taken out of the game. Taxes should affect colony happiness, but not growth rates. High taxes should always lead to an eventual rebellion on planet if not scaled back after time. Said rebellions will work to depopulate the world, so taxes will have some effect on populations if not handled properly, but birth rates should never change unless a plague or something affects the colony.

Jim

[Buio]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
The entire notion that low taxes leads to higher birth rates is ridiculous and should be taken out of the game. Taxes should affect colony happiness, but not growth rates. High taxes should always lead to an eventual rebellion on planet if not scaled back after time.

That high taxes affects colony happiness is also ridiculous, and based on capitalist thinking. But I guess, because it is an feature in almost every 4x game it is accepted as a truth.

The initial maximum rate of taxes would probably be set by cultural origins. I would rather argue that it is quick and high change in tax rate that affects happiness inside a certain timespan. An sudden increase in tax would make people irritated but over time it would lessen.

Revolution is extremely unlikely in a democratic country, even with sudden change in taxes. You would have to anchor the change with the people, or be replaced in next election. But here there are different types of government of course.

[Omena]

In terms of game mechanics, you really need to have some kind of feedback between taking resources from the planet and using the resources for the planet. That is the strategic choice the player makes and if it's not possible, then planetary development is effectively trivial.

Yes, taxes don't seem to really affect population growth. Nor are taxes strongly tied to actual happiness (it's more about how those taxes are used). Nevertheless, the tax-growth-feedback is one way of implementing a choice situation and it roughly works. If you want to remove it, then you need to replace it with something that performs the same function or you have just cut away a huge strategic part of the game.

As for the change for adjusting growth for low tax values: it's a balance issue. The resources (cash) your get from a colony by taxes increases roughly linearly (compliance rate decreases as taxes increase), but the growth rate functions as an exponent. This makes it hard to balance, but there are many cases where you can get "exponential" benefit from collected cash too. (Like when you use it to build an early explorer, build a wonder or protect yourself from pirates etc..) The problem is, however, that the choice of taxes-vs-growth can easily become a no-choice, if one extreme is always strongly favoured. (One choice is so strongly favoured that there really is only one choice.) This seems to be the case for having zero taxes vs having low taxes.

I think that a good balance could be achieved by making it so that on the global scale you would get the same overall growth rate ragardless of where the taxes are being collected. So having two planets with 10% taxes gets you the same total growth as having those planets with 0% and roughly 20%. This way the choice of taxes would be about local resource allocation and the total cash you need.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Locarnus

The whole wonder concept is massively skewed towards the player.

I asked for the option to mod the current wonders to national wonders.
That way the supertech races wont be able to make themselves into hypertech races forever.

Havent gotten a reply yet, so I dont know if it is considered.


@growthrates:
I m not sure if the races are eg 14% growth races or +14% growth races.

You can mod away the effects of wonders, can't you? I have never tried, though. Maybe it is possible with a facility that you can only build one of? A really good one? I don't know that either.

For me, wonders and characters are the only two good reasons to load up a "RoTS" game. But characters at least can be forgotten about, wonders are just too significant. But as long as I don't aim for them, it is an AI buff, and I guess that is kind of OK or something. Too bad if I conquer a colony with a wonder, though.

"Stupid taxes" that affects reproduction is a problem even if I don't exploit them. It makes taxes into one thing that I really can't do much about, but something that could influence the overall game balance. If you can't do anything about taxes without "breaking" the game, why have adjustable taxes? If it has a significant effect on migration, it opens up some strategy in the "middle game". Keep 0 tax on your low populated 95% colony, keep high tax on your low pop 75% colonies. Guide people to the more profitable world. Put a 0 tax colony at the borders of the capital world of those guys that you don't really like. Hopefully to be able to watch the passenger transports incoming from the direction of the "enemy" capital.

[Icemania]

In the Distant Worlds AI thread, what I requested was for the AI to better utilise existing mechanics, not to change those mechanics.

That way, if you want to play your empire with manual tax rates, you'll find the AI is not left in the dust. While if you want to play your empire with auto tax rates it remains a level playing field i.e. the proposed solution works for both groups.

ORIGINAL: Spidey
What's the reasoning here, Elliot and Erik?

Good question.

[OzoneGrif_slith]

If races don't actually grow at the rate specified in their race files then what's the damn point of calling it a growth rate? ... And so you fix that by turning growth rates into theoretical numbers

Huh? What are you basing this statement on?

Growth rates before the fix was easily 18% with zero taxes. Now it's about 8%.
The growth rate is effectively lower.

Immigration is something else.

This fix is amazing, it removed one of the biggest incoherent exploit from the game, and turns it into a tool to fight other civilizations (by stealing their population). It's probably the best fix in the patch!

[Sithuk]

[Deleted post. As Ozone points out in the next post the zero tax rate policy setting is available to automatically control tax rates at zero.]

@Ozone: quite right, a zero tax rate can be set in the policy file. However, the population thresholds for the tax policies are hardcoded. I still find myself manually monitoring and checking tax rates until the population of a world is full. The tax policy isn't linked to how full a world is relative to its population capacity, only the following population bands.

0-200m
200m-2000m
>2000m

I would prefer the ability to adjust the tax thresholds based on how full a world is relative to it total population capacity. That would remove the need for the player to monitor the tax setting, world population, and world capacity frequently to optimise the grow rate and tax income trade-off.

Just to be clear, I'd like the AI to set a world's tax rate to zero to maximise the growth rate until the world's population capacity is achieved. Then to set the tax rate to the highest level which achieves a positive happiness. The issue with hardcoded population bands for setting tax level is that a world's population capacity varies depending on a number of factors. Better to have the tax band adjusted by how full a world is.

For example,
[Population/Maximum population] [tax level]
0-50% zero tax
50%-95% low tax
95%-100% high tax

[OzoneGrif_slith]

Did you notice that you can set "Zero" to the tax rate automation now?

[Sithuk]

Ozone: I've amended my post #12. The zero tax policy was a step in the right direction, but didn't remove the need for manual player intervention for the reasons I've made clearer in my amended post.

[pasty11]

I dont get the maximum growth rate is X% therefore tax 0% should maximise growth rate because how else are we going to get maximum at all.

Its not logical AT ALL that low tax rate should maximise growth rate, if the game has had that relationship in the past and it has been changed that is entirely positive. If now there is no way to achieve maximum growth rate, then that means there must be progressive moves going forward to implement systems that logically relate to growth rate, not demands to a return to a completely illogical and broken system.

Also if people dont like playing the mini/max tax game, just set it to auto, and beat the AI by out strategising it, not by out microing it.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: pasty11
Also if people dont like playing the mini/max tax game, just set it to auto, and beat the AI by out strategising it, not by out microing it.

I manage to play with automation, but...

- Can't manual tax, too much benefit
- Can't trade, too easy to exploit
- Can't beam for wonders, too powerful
- Can't explore manually, boo much benefit
- Can't optimize ship designs, too powerful
- Can't research manually, must take the AI detours for a level playing field.
- Better not aim for the enemy good colones early, too good.
- Better not abuse strong troop transport beneath space defenses, too cheap.

It is sad if implemented systems feel broken, so one ends up feeling they must be avoided. I don't mind automating tax, design, and exploration, though. Not every task is fun for everyone

The "nasty" micro management in tax is not having 0 tax, it is about reacting when war happens. The AI seems to try keep the happiness at +11, and pays attention when the war tiredness hits, and when some colony gets a bit negative modifier from war with own species.

[Tehlongone]

I kinda like the way population growth was changed in the patch. Makes more sense this way. Taxes should have a very marginal effect on pop growth, it should mostly be a happiness/migration attraction.

[Sithuk]

I think there are a number of different discussions going on here. Two of those discussions are summarised below.
a) Some players are questioning the game design decision to link tax, growth and happiness.
b) Some are questioning the tax AI's algorithm to manage the tax with the current game mechanic.

I've added the tax policy change I outlined in post #12 above to the master wishlist so it doesn't get lost. The recommendation deals with discussion b) above.

Might I suggest that at this point in the development cycle that Elliot will not be changing the game mechanics significantly. Perhaps we should constraint our suggestions to those which can optimise the current design mechanics as Icemania and Bingeling focus on.

I appreciate that new entrants to DW may feel frustrated at only finding the game now, but it is many years old, and DWU is the final iteration. Fundamental game mechanic changes are unlikely to be introduced and should perhaps be added to the wishlist for consideration by Erik and Elliot for DW2.

[Andy06r]

I'm new to DW - is it possible to have the Tax AI target a 100% compliance (+16) than +10?

And how does the migration work? Is it raw tax rates, or is it happiness? You can very easily make a Shandar colony with 90% taxes with the population still happy.