Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and Gaia

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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labgnome
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#16 Post by labgnome »

Geoff the Medio wrote:In Civ 6, they are categorized, and there are a few ways to get more of each category of card, so you might have 3 economic, 2 diplomatic, 1 military, and 2 wildcard slots into which cards can be placed. Whether or how to do that is an open question.

This is different from SMAC social engineering, in that one could and must only pick one of the options for each category, but similar in that each choice could have benefits and penalties, but different in that most choices in SMAC would have multiple bonuses and penalties, whereas the Civ 6 cards are generally only a single effect each.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#17 Post by ExoMind »

L29Ah wrote:I don't feel like doing messy micro-management re planetary environments and terraforming when i have 100+ planets and busy with crucial battles against the remaining powerhouses. Not much an issue for a single player masturbator i guess tho.
One thing I would like would be somewhere to turn on, auto add to construction queue, of specific things like terraforming. It could add them to the bottom of the queue and I could move them up, or remove them, when I want but at least they would be in the queue and I wouldn't have to go to each planet to add them.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#18 Post by ovarwa »

Hi,

There are various technologies that seemingly ought to involve both industrial and research investment, yet sometimes involve only research and sometimes involve micromanagement of industry as well.

For terraforming, I find myself with the OP: I don't bother, since I could instead grab another colony or build ships to take someone else's.

Maybe have terraforming happen automatically, based on infrastructure, which seems rather unused? From this perspective, terraforming always happens on all planets in the background. The speed at which this happens is based on terrraforming technology and planetary infrastructure. Something similar could be done for all those other "build everywhere" projects. Specific projects that need to be fast-tracked could still be queued to be built using IP, as usual, but this will cost more and will involve MM. Then, if we begin to talk about government bonuses and penalties, industry vs infrastructure could be one of those tradeoffs, along with infrastructure priorities.

Anyway,

Ken

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Vezzra
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#19 Post by Vezzra »

ExoMind wrote:One thing I would like would be somewhere to turn on, auto add to construction queue, of specific things like terraforming. It could add them to the bottom of the queue and I could move them up, or remove them, when I want but at least they would be in the queue and I wouldn't have to go to each planet to add them.
The moment you come across something you want to build on so many colonies that you wish for a mechanic like you suggest here means we have done something wrong with the design of said building (or whatever it is).

According to our design philosophy, there must not be any such thing as a "build everywhere" building. I know we currently have several of these, but the solution can't be to add some automatism that enqueues certain things to ease micromanagement, but to redesign the respective building (or whatever game element) accordingly.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#20 Post by Dilvish »

And I'll note that Terraforming is intended to be priced high enough that it is not a good investment everywhere, so there is a real decision about where to spend on it. I am pretty sure it is successfully priced at that level, but if you think it a good bargain everywhere then please first research past forum discussions on it and then either add your analysis to one of them or make a new post contrasting your analysis to the discussions of the past.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#21 Post by Oberlus »

Dilvish wrote:And I'll note that Terraforming is intended to be priced high enough that it is not a good investment everywhere, so there is a real decision about where to spend on it. I am pretty sure it is successfully priced at that level, but if you think it a good bargain everywhere [...]
Currently Terraforming is not well priced at all when compared to the other options to rise up population (i.e. production and research). It is just pointless because you will be always better by just maxing out the growth techs and using your PPs from hostile environment planets to boost military production or just use better species for each environment. Either way is faster and more efficient, which renders Terraforming a planet a cosmetic/role-playing feature of the game.
However, if you are winning and decide to use some of such cosmetic, then there is nothing that makes you not to apply it to every planet, since the gain from every planet is similar (+2*size from hostile to poor, +2*size from poor to adequate, and +3*size from adequate to good). For the planets where you are already at the verge of poor there is no discussion: you get immediate benefits from each terraforming cycle, and the PPs spent in the terraforming pays off after some turns, and for the case where you have to do one extra terraforming cycle (hostile to hostile, no benefits in this cycle) you just need double time for it to pay off. But it pays off, just the slower of them all. So you order them accordingly (first the terraforming projects that will change adequate to good, etc., and all of them after anything else).

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#22 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:Currently Terraforming is not well priced at all when compared to the other options to rise up population (i.e. production and research). It is just pointless because you will be always better by just maxing out the growth techs and using your PPs from hostile environment planets to boost military production or just use better species for each environment. Either way is faster and more efficient, which renders Terraforming a planet a cosmetic/role-playing feature of the game.
I am pretty sure it is more valuable than that. My recollection is that it is generally worthwhile on Large and Huge planets, especially if they are already at Adequate (then the terraforming unlocks Gaia) or if the species is a particularly productive one (and then it may sometimes be worthwhile on medium planets). And saying "just use better species" is not very convincing to me-- if you had the better species to begin with you would have used it, and if you get a better species later one, depopulating a planet can take a fair while and may be costly in lost resources.

But if we want it to be not just worthwhile in certain situations, but be broadly a reasonable alternative to the growth techs, then yes it would need to be less expensive. If/when we get around to implementing the policy cards Geoff has talked about, it seems like some of the advanced pop-growth-techs vs. terraforming would make a good policy dichotomy (or we could just build the exclusion into the tech tree, but that would be less clear to newcomers).
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#23 Post by Oberlus »

Dilvish wrote:I am pretty sure it is more valuable than that.
As I already said, it is worth always in regards that it improves your population and hence your PPs and RPs. The point is doing it will delay your progress when compared to other alternative strategies and be detrimental for your victory if doing it when you need military strength. At least that is the general impression also among other players. It's true that for large/huge adequate planets it gives the best outcome (+12 or +15 population), but it is as good as for tiny planets in terms of outcome/investment, since the cost of the building is proportional to the size of the planet (terraforming a tiny originally-adequate planet costs 100*1*2 and gives you +3 pop, so 67 PPs per extra pop; a huge one costs 100*5*2 and gives +15, so 67 PPs per extra pop).
So I'd recommend any player to not consider planets' size when deciding where to terraform, and only consider the distance from the original environment (from poor to adequate you need 150 PPs per extra pop, from hostile to poor 200 or 450).
For an average species this extra pop will produce in the order of 1 PP or RP per turn (obviously, depending on your other techs this can be a +0.5 or +2), and you will need around 60 turns to amortise the investment for the best possible terraforming scenario, and be way worse for any other case. Investing those PPs into more troopers and combat ships will be better unless you have no enemies on sight (absolutely out of normal galaxy settings to have terraforming, mid game, and no enemies) AND you have no other planets to colonise (that is even more rare, if even possible).
Dilvish wrote:And saying "just use better species" is not very convincing to me-- if you had the better species to begin with you would have used it, and if you get a better species later one, depopulating a planet can take a fair while and may be costly in lost resources.
Well, maybe you forgot about Camps? That really boosts production and wipes out the population in a few turns, effectively paying for the cost of the next species' building.

Anyway, I agree with you on the rest: policy cards would be great for this.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#24 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:
Dilvish wrote:And saying "just use better species" is not very convincing to me-- if you had the better species to begin with you would have used it, and if you get a better species later one, depopulating a planet can take a fair while and may be costly in lost resources.
Well, maybe you forgot about Camps? That really boosts production and wipes out the population in a few turns, effectively paying for the cost of the next species' building.
No, I didn't forget about camps, that's why I said "may", not "is", and "resources" not "PP". There are some situations (computronium moon, or a research only species to name a couple), where the the camp PP effect is not so valuable.

And in the main analysis, although you mention higher productivity numbers you do your analysis at only 1 PP per pop, which only means that terraforming is not so useful at that productivity level.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#25 Post by Oberlus »

Dilvish wrote:There are some situations (computronium moon, or a research only species to name a couple), where the the camp PP effect is not so valuable.
True, but I'm sure we are not talking about things that happens in 1 out of 50 of your colonies but about the general cases, right?
Dilvish wrote:And in the main analysis, although you mention higher productivity numbers you do your analysis at only 1 PP per pop, which only means that terraforming is not so useful at that productivity level.
Exactly, it means it is not useful from early to late game, only when you already have most of the research/production boost techs and you are already winning.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#26 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:True, but I'm sure we are not talking about things that happens in 1 out of 50 of your colonies but about the general cases, right?
I was responding to your original extremely broad/strong comment that terraforming is "pointless ... a cosmetic/role-playing feature of the game". I still disagree, but I'll cease trying to influence your thinking on it.
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