My empire earns too much money

[WiZz]

So, I played a few matches in Legends and found interesting thing - it's impossible to destroy empire economy. For now cash is not a limitation factor, which prevent spamming ships/troops or colonizators. And I think, it's very sad, because game becomes easier.

My reply:

For now it's impossible to destroy your economy. I remember my old game where I found debris field and began to repair ships in it. Then I got a huge shortage of cash and as result lose my game. Other example. I wanted to begin a preventive war with other empire. Began training troops. But I ordered them too many and my economy went to hell. Remember this situation with nostalgia.

So, what do you think, gamers? Agree/disagree with me?

[Theluin]

I like that nothings limits the number of ships you can field (That was the best feature of Star Ruler imho) However I think that colonies should consume all types of resources (strategic and luxuries) and at a greater pace than now. Such a soft cap would imho (again, turns out I'm a humble person [:D]) be much better than just turning down the income rates of colonies. But all in all I agree that right now you can steamroll the game with little to no thought because economy, strategy in battles, etc. don't play any role at all in DW.

[onomastikon]

I also agree. I would like to see not only more scaling for mid- and late-game $$-usage, but resource usage as well. Often in mid-, and so far in every game in late-game, I have no resource shortages whatsoever, and that is a de-incentive to start wars or otherwise do something.

[ASHBERY76]

I think the issue is buying costs are tiny and do not scale with economy.This mid to late game economy ruins the gameplay in my view.Buildings,pirates,wonders,diplomacy bribes all become meaningless and have no consequence to gameplay when you have 7 trillion moneys.

If I had access to the code I would increase all buying,building,bribes,pirates by x1000.The game is hardcoded so we are stuck with it.

[Mozo]

What about the corruption slider? Did anyone try to use this to offset the mega-funds (which I agree happens - something must have changed because I was always struggling in previous versions).

[Raap]

Yeah, this really needs to be taken out of the code and into a modifiable text file somewhere so modders and experienced players can find the sweet-spot between income/expenses for the player and the AI's ability to cope with those same changes.

[Harry2]

Agree completely

Maintence costs need to be much higher for everything, especially big ships.

Should be some limited and strategically important resources.

[Hetulik]

I agree with everything i've seen in this thread. I'd like to see some combination of less money, more ship upkeep costs, and significantly more resource consumption by colonies.

I think Distant worlds would become and even more interesting game if there were the ability to have more scarcity of resources, money, and higher resource consumption. More scarcity would lead to more strategy because tradeoffs would need to be made.

[currierm]

Are the people saying this starting with a harsh homeworld? When I played that way, the first 10 years were very challenging. You had to constantly make tough choices- another constructor, a few more destroyers, build a colony? Haven't played that way since RTS (recently I've been giving the computer players big advantages and stick with normal homeworlds), so maybe something changed.

There are some archived threads about "creating a challenging game".

[WiZz]

Setting a harsh homeworld isn't a decision. Get a few colonies or independent worlds and you earn a lot of money again. Even with better homeworld game was more challenging in older versions. I saw that since Legends release.

[jpwrunyan]

I have bankrupted my private economy in legends. Turn up your difficulty and set your homeworld to harsh. Also I put colony availability and independents at lowest level. Be a man.

[J HG T]

Some things I've found to keep the economy in sensible levels and the games challenging even late games:
- Use automated taxes. I've always done this as I hate microing colony taxes in 4Xs. Also, automated taxes won't allow you to abuse the taxing system and thus making shitloads of credits.
- Tone down independents or switch them off completely.
- Play on hard or hardest. This gives AIs economy a boost and keeps them comptetive with human players.
- Reduce colony prevelance. This prevents colony rush/spam.
- Play games with lesser star systems. Combo this with lower colony prevelance for maximum effect.
I personally have always played 400 or 700 system games. This way the expansion and size of the empires stays at reasonable levels. Even with my new rig I've decided not to play bigger games 'cause they can get quite chaotic steamrollerfests with no real strategy.
Still, I have to say that my games with normal colony prevelance have stayed surprisingly manageable and "balanced".

I have to agree about larger ships maintenance costs though; They definetly need to be bigger.

[Harry2]

- Reduce colony prevelance. This prevents colony rush/spam.

The problem with this is that it only seems to work with worlds that match your homeworld.

Example: right now I'm playing Humans from Continental worlds and set "reduced colonies". Result was very few Continental worlds but as soon as I researched Ocean and Marshy the map light up like a Christmas tree with available worlds.

Have been spamming colony ships and now have about half the 700 star galaxy. Other 7 empires have the rest so basically I've won this game without even getting into a war. And yes, setting was on "hardest".

"Reduced colonies" should mean all types of worlds should have a greater proportion set below 50%, not just the player's type. But the AI may find this even harder than the player to cope with and make the game even easier.

[tjhkkr]

But I think you can control a lot of these features at the beginning of the game... the correct combination of colony scarcity, racial attributes and so on, I think you can really control all of this...

If Elliot changes this, I want a slider... I do not mind having a tight economy, but I also do not want this to become so difficult that I cannot field a fleet.

[WiZz]

ORIGINAL: J HG T

Some things I've found to keep the economy in sensible levels and the games challenging even late games:
- Use automated taxes. I've always done this as I hate microing colony taxes in 4Xs. Also, automated taxes won't allow you to abuse the taxing system and thus making shitloads of credits.
- Tone down independents or switch them off completely.
- Play on hard or hardest. This gives AIs economy a boost and keeps them comptetive with human players.
- Reduce colony prevelance. This prevents colony rush/spam.
- Play games with lesser star systems. Combo this with lower colony prevelance for maximum effect.
I personally have always played 400 or 700 system games. This way the expansion and size of the empires stays at reasonable levels. Even with my new rig I've decided not to play bigger games 'cause they can get quite chaotic steamrollerfests with no real strategy.
Still, I have to say that my games with normal colony prevelance have stayed surprisingly manageable and "balanced".

I have to agree about larger ships maintenance costs though; They definetly need to be bigger.

I had already tried all this things. Rushing and spamming troops and ships are still too easy. In original and ROTS I can't do this and this is a fact.
Very hard AIs are still feckless like normal AI.

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

I have bankrupted my private economy in legends. Turn up your difficulty and set your homeworld to harsh. Also I put colony availability and independents at lowest level. Be a man.

That does not make any difference to the issue at hand.It only makes the starting game less fun.No starting conditions change the mid to late game issues.People want to play on large galaxys but have the economy scale with it.It is like playing EU3 and then adding a money cheat £10000000.It ruins the strategic choices.

This is my only remaiing big issue beef with the game now that the sphere and colony distance has been solved with a slider.

[J HG T]

Sounds like late game economy seriously needs some cash-suckers. In my opinion, this should be the next important mechanic to fix after the design fixes.
One thing I've noticed recently: In most games the corruption doesn't have any real effect on your economy, no matter how large your empire is. Corruption was nerfed quite heavily at some point in the past.
I remember you had to be much more careful while expanding, 'cause distant worlds (yeah, cheap pun) could ruin your economy due to their high corruption levels.
Not sure if boosting corruption would fix late game large empires economic superiority, just remembered that corruption had much more noticeably effect in original DW and RotS.

[Theluin]

ORIGINAL: WiZz
[...]
Very hard AIs are still feckless like normal AI.

The difficulty setting doesn't change AI. It just gives the AI higher income.

[WiZz]

I meant, that AI can't dispose a big cash correctly.

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: WiZz

I meant, that AI can't dispose a big cash correctly.

Indeed during war the human can mega mobilise some of those trillions and risk making a loss for a long,long time but I think the A.I only builds when making a profit so it does not overbuild build ships during war even if it has huge amounts of money in the bank.I think this adds to the mid game issues because you outmobilize the A.I because of those huge cash reserves and they do not do the same.