Make Infrastructure tune down exponential growth

[Oberlus]

Within the my framework to overhaul the tech tree and try to solve or alleviate some of the root causes of relevant gameplay issues (steam-rolling, unballance), I'm reviewing all the meters and Infrastructure is a clear candidate for love, as well as Population.

Reasoning:

In the expansion phase basically doubling the number of planets in your empire leads to doubling the resources, which leads to you doubling the number of planets again in half the time. This stops if expansion cost increases (e.g. because you need to take out an enemy).

That is, IMO, the deepest root of the problem: the exponential growth of everything implicit in a 4x game.

That is, the bigger you are, the faster you can grow. Therefore, if you are bigger than someone else, that someone else will have very little chances to win you in the growth race. This means game is decided in the beginning (and by alliances): the one that manages to get ahead on espansion and do not neglect military will win most of the time (we are not comparing AI vs human here). Also, this means wide vs tall is not very funny (if you go tall).

In late game (where more balance problems can happen), total population is the most crucial meter to define victory, very close to industry boost from species. Because together, they define your PPs/turn and hence how fast you can produce warships.
So affecting population growth could be the best way to alleviate the 4x exponential growth.

Making population grow slower than currently (already suggested by other players in the past) seems like the right way.
The idea is for you to need many turns to reach maximum potential of a colony from the time you got it via invasion or newly colonisation, even if you adquired it when you already had all the techs to boost everything (this last part not to be overlooked).

But, if a colony is pacefully depopulated and then repopulated with another species, following an ordered plan, backed up by the resources and technologies of a prosperous Empire, it should be able to get the colony into full thrust in way less time (or repopulation would be pointless except in very specific situations)

Therefore, affecting directly the population meter won't work well for all cases, unless we add new mechanics to how battles affect population (not only bombard weapons) and to take into account if the colony is recently colonised/devastated or not to calculate growth rate. But I think that is not necessary if we turn ourselves to the lonely Infrastructure, that currently has very little effects in gameplay.

Infrastructure: refers to technical structures that support a colonized planet: energy, transportation, telecommunication and social services for the citizens.

Here, "technical" means something made by the intelligent species living in the planet (it can refer to any kind of structure, mechanical, biological, immaterial...), and "energy" (if not other word) includes food.

Colonies with high infrastructure will be very "futuristic" planets (whatever that word means for the species in the planet, because the cutting-edge technology of zergs might not seem like something from the future to humans of any time), in which everything is built and tailored in the most effective and efficient ways possible. On the other hand, colonies with low infrastructure (recently colonised or devastated) will have little structures of any kind to support any kind of activity (industrial, scientific, political, anything). You can see infrastructure meter as sinonym to "material civilisation".

So, if low infrastructure means low food (low population?), low energy (low industrial productivity?), low basic services and equipments (low research and influence?), then it makes sense to use this meter to help with the exponential growth.

It not only "makes sense", the meter also seems well suited for the task, because it not something that you produce every turn, faster and faster, and can swap it between colonies, you won't get "more" of it from expanding faster.

The suggestion (in progress, need discussion):

Make infrastructure be a cap for target current meters of population, industry and research, with last_priority, affecting everything else: flat boni, pop-based boni, traits, buildings, everything.

I suggest affecting the current meter instead of target to save myself from dealing with how current meters increase/decrease currently (i.e. very slowly). Because I want a quick effect of a big infrastructure change (e.g. the bombing of the colony).

Growth mechanics of infrastructure meter should be revised for this to work, including the possibility to add new infrastructure effects to the game, via techs, specials, species traits, etc.
In short, it should grow very slowly (faster with better techs, certain policies, specials, etc.).
Also, how fast it goes down via warships shooting at it should probably be re-balanced (for example, if we decide that infrastructure should be able to require N turns to be completely knocked down regardless of how strong is the bombing fleet, the effects of bombing should have some kind of cap, e.g. not being able to take out more than 50% of remaining infrastructure, or a value based on total fleet damage instead of a fixed cap of 50%; also, techs could affect this mechanic, e.g. subterranean habitation could worsen the cap, so that more turns are required).

Expected effects in gameplay:

• Expansion (militar and pacific) is slowed down and the exponential growth alleviated, so a good expansion at start does not so strongly determine victory.
• Tall empire strategy becomes more of a choice, since focusing on more/faster colonies is not so rewarding and focusing on better infrastructure (which should require many PPs) could allow faster growth and productivity on "taller" colonies. But this would require the mentioned new effects (via techs, etc.).
• Population, Production, Research and Influence on colonies with infrastructure knocked down after a battle will go down their ideal values pretty fast, and require a lot of turns to be brought back to full capacity.
• Scorched earth tactics become easier (will require balance) and more effective (you don't need to conquer systems to damage enemies production, just some pew pew).
• Conquering an enemies homeworld early on doesn't gives you a huge boost.
• Pacific conquest (something that Influence would bring into the game) would be more interesting, since it won't damage infrastructure.
• Depopulation and repopulation remains a viable (rewarding) strategy.

Do you like the idea?
What won't work?
How can it be improved or completed?

[Ophiuchus]

I think I will have to reread your post, i did not get the infrastructure idea. Some impressions: decoupling growth rate and maximum population should be a good thing (e.g. good environment -> good population growth; big planet -> good population max), making the empire more dependent on the universe layout. With long times to reach maximum this would give an incentive to research tech which increases good environment max population (tall strategy) or tech which increases bad environment population growth rate (wide strategy).

[Krikkitone]

I definitely like it.

Infrastructure becomes a "time investment" in a planet (with some techs/environment helping with the "tall" portion)

It also makes bioweapons much nicer (kill population, not infrastructure)

I would suggest
-infrastructure rate of increase (and possibly maximum) is worse on poor habitat worlds

-infrastructure rate of increase should probably depend on population (maybe population/infrastructure)

-some method of investing in maximum infrastructure besides colonizing. (investments in boosting the MAX infrastructure of a planet rather than its rate of growth..possibly even as a trade off..increased max for decreased rate of growth)

-possibly have infrastructure growth be exponential but slow (you can restore a minimum on a planet with a 'colonize' action, and the palace would generate a fixed amount, but otherwise it grows in an s shaped curve to the planetary max)

[Oberlus]

I'm thinking on the feedback (thanks!) and the different relation between what is being discussed here and the other game mechanics, and especially the incoming influence.

Some extra idea just to not forget it:

Infrastructure could grow faster with more influence cost when under supply (because it is consuming resources and manpower from other colonies). Or could grow slower with no influence input from other colonies. Policies could affect this (e.g. Default (no policy): colonies with growing infrastructure consume some influece from more developed colonies, if available; Autarchy: no "exported" influence will be spend on infrastructure, developing colonies will have to manage with their own resources; Fast developing: extra influence consumption allowed on underdeveloped infrastructures, ¿over other types of influence expenditures?, to boost infrastructure growth)

This raises many questions about how will influence points work. I think it is stockpilable, I don't know if it will be tied to supply like industry or be ubiquitous like research. I have to read many posts and probably make some questions.

[Ophiuchus]

From the prototype you can see influence points are stockable. But currently the only source is the imperial palace (+1IP/turn).

It would be interesting to know in which way influence points should increase with the number of planets (kind of linear?) or maybe more or less constant?