Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

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Lonck
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Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by Lonck »

Colonies need to be harder to establish. Make establishing colonies more time consuming and expensive. In order to have a thriving and tax paying colony have the player/AI build a series of expensive facilities to simulate supplies being given to colonists. Also, divide colonies into two types. Either a tax paying colony that extracts resources at much slower rate, or a less tax paying colony that extracts resources at faster.
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adecoy95
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by adecoy95 »

i have mentioned colonies could use some sort of method of being dependent on your developed worlds, like a negative income, for since before there were even any expansions.

at this point its probably safe to say they have a different colonization system in mind.
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ASHBERY76
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by ASHBERY76 »

It takes far too long to make new colonies make money as it stands.I would agree with a maintenance cost for new planets ala sotss to cut into the crazy homeworld tax which is the main tax making planet for most of the game.
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feelotraveller
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by feelotraveller »

The establishment of new colonies is already very slow.  Unfortunately this means that expansion takes place by invasion which is quick and cheap.
 
There already is a maintenance cost of 1k for each colony.
 
The money problems are with the tax amounts the homeworld produces, especially beyond the early game.
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jscott991
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by jscott991 »

The thing I liked best about this game was that the homeworld remains the most important world for a long time. That's realistic and it makes the game immersive as a kind of galactic empire simulator.

I can't stand GalCiv where a colony can be the equal of the starting planet in just a few dozen turns. If we settled Alpha Centauri today, do you really think in 20 years or so there would 6 billion people on it?

This is one thing that DW got right.

Now if only it could emulate Paradox and have playable speed settings.
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ASHBERY76
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by ASHBERY76 »

ORIGINAL: jscott991

The thing I liked best about this game was that the homeworld remains the most important world for a long time. That's realistic and it makes the game immersive as a kind of galactic empire simulator.

I can't stand GalCiv where a colony can be the equal of the starting planet in just a few dozen turns. If we settled Alpha Centauri today, do you really think in 20 years or so there would 6 billion people on it?

This is one thing that DW got right.

Now if only it could emulate Paradox and have playable speed settings.

Disagree.The A.I desperately needs less reliance on a single planet economy for most of the game.I have artificially hold myself back on taking out their homeworlds because it makes it more or less end game for an empire.
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Velihopea
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by Velihopea »

ORIGINAL: jscott991
The thing I liked best about this game was that the homeworld remains the most important world for a long time. That's realistic and it makes the game immersive as a kind of galactic empire simulator.

I can't stand GalCiv where a colony can be the equal of the starting planet in just a few dozen turns. If we settled Alpha Centauri today, do you really think in 20 years or so there would 6 billion people on it?

This is one thing that DW got right.

Now if only it could emulate Paradox and have playable speed settings.

I completely agree. DW stands out currently as the most realistic scifi 4x games out there (never mind the slugs). Colony building should be slow and even more costly especially at the beginning.

Please do not move towards ES, GalCiv, MoO, (inser other indie title here) in this regard.

I play DW as sandbox anyways, so the imbalances this causes in terms of gameplay don't bother me that much.
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adecoy95
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by adecoy95 »

i don't think the 1k maintenance is actually a cost for a developing world, i think its coming from somewhere else and i am not sure it even ever goes away.
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WoodMan
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by WoodMan »

ORIGINAL: jscott991

The thing I liked best about this game was that the homeworld remains the most important world for a long time. That's realistic and it makes the game immersive as a kind of galactic empire simulator.

I can't stand GalCiv where a colony can be the equal of the starting planet in just a few dozen turns. If we settled Alpha Centauri today, do you really think in 20 years or so there would 6 billion people on it?

This is one thing that DW got right.

Now if only it could emulate Paradox and have playable speed settings.

I totally agree with you jscott, that is one of many things I love about DW, the alternative feels so artificial. Now if they could make it harder to take them over for players like ASH it would be even better. Doesn't bother me as it is, I'm not good enough at the game to find it easy to take over homeworlds anyway. I think I only got the victory conditions completed twice and in both games I didn't take a single homeworld [:D]
"My body may be confined to this chair, but my mind is free to explore the universe" - Stephen Hawking
Bingeling
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by Bingeling »

Starting with a somewhat crap home world, it becomes a decent, but not great colony after a while (as long as you colonize quite a bit). I have a gut feeling it sits around in 4th to 6th in revenue or something. I don't think there is any other magic to them than having good starting populations and decent qualities.

I think one problem of the AI is that the human is better at colonization and tax (population growth) management. This means that the AI lags behind in populations, which makes it take far longer to get decent secondary worlds.

As for victory conditions, I have won without ever getting as far as fighting a war. It is not the trophy shelf that counts, it is the journey [:-]
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feelotraveller
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by feelotraveller »

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

i don't think the 1k maintenance is actually a cost for a developing world, i think its coming from somewhere else and i am not sure it even ever goes away.

Yep. It's a administrative charge which is applied to every colony, as far as I can tell.

Making a new colony requires an expensive colony ship whereas invading is basically free (well you do need a transport and a couple of troops but they are endlessly reusable...).

Of course just about any independent you invade can easily support a 1k charge (although growth is preferable if you have the economy for it), whereas new colonies will take ages to break even. Later in the game it's a 'so what' factor but if it's early and you've got a harsh/poor quality homeworld you may already be doing -20 to -30k and a couple of extra -k do matter, (at least psychologically [:D]). If you're playing on normal settings you are already rolling in money and couldn't care less. [;)]
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adecoy95
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RE: Colony acquisition needs to be slower.

Post by adecoy95 »

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Starting with a somewhat crap home world, it becomes a decent, but not great colony after a while (as long as you colonize quite a bit). I have a gut feeling it sits around in 4th to 6th in revenue or something. I don't think there is any other magic to them than having good starting populations and decent qualities.

I think one problem of the AI is that the human is better at colonization and tax (population growth) management. This means that the AI lags behind in populations, which makes it take far longer to get decent secondary worlds.

As for victory conditions, I have won without ever getting as far as fighting a war. It is not the trophy shelf that counts, it is the journey [:-]

yea, automated tax rates is pretty much economic suicide, if you can tolerate the handicap, you could just turn it on and pretend its just how it is, but you will get a situation were all your planets are just big mining stations for the whole game
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