Environmentalism

[Oberlus]

Environmentalism problem is -5 PP per planet. Let's make it -25% industry (it's already mutually exclusive with Industrialism's +25% industry, it can use the same priority), maybe keep a flat -1 PP.
Or... disable industry focus on all planets, no other industry penalty.

[Grummel7]

Environmentalism problem is -5 PP per planet. Let's make it -25% industry (it's already mutually exclusive with Industrialism's +25% industry, it can use the same priority), maybe keep a flat -1 PP.
Or... disable industry focus on all planets, no other industry penalty.

Could you please split this off into another thread as well?

I my opinion, Environmentalism has two main problems:

1. It reduces industry on all planets, even eliminating the +2 from Adaptive Automation
Maybe set Industry to 0.0 as part of the good effect, but otherwise only have a moderate reduction on industry focused planet.

2. There are too many requirement to qualify for the bonuses.
Especially no buildings is a problem. No IRAs, no Translators, no Shipyards, you cannot play without all of them. Maybe we could reduce the bonuses by 20% for each building?

[LienRag]

Especially no buildings is a problem. No IRAs, no Translators, no Shipyards, you cannot play without all of them.

Also it's not in the documentation...
(or wasn't, very recently)

We at least need to have some buildings be eco-friendly and allowed for Environmentalism (like organic line shipyards).

[Oberlus]

What about making Environmentalism a different, passive, suboptimal, way of industry.
Nature, the environment, can be used to produce stuff, even automatically (with some help). With Gaia, that makes even more sense: the whole environment with all its (non-intelligent) species can be tuned to a paradise that provides not only food and a pleasant weather, but also useful materials and even constructions and ship parts (think of termites and bacteria with special skills working to your wishes). And that should be able to take full advantage of Adaptive Automation (gaia/organic style).

The implementation could be just changing Environmentalism:

- Keep the stability penalties from being terraformed as of now.
- Apply extra stability malus and -5 PP to industry-focused planets (or better IMO, apply -25% PP in second scaling priority; the stability maluses are already bad enough).
- The gaian industry effect: Give a pop-based PP bonus to non-industry focused planets with the GAIA special and original environment. Maybe +0.2*pop, plus another +0.1*pop if Sentient Automation is researched.
- The naturalisation effect: Change original type of planet to current type if the planet hasn't changed its environment for at least 20 turns and this policy has been adopted for at least 20 turns and this empire owned this planet since at least 20 turns.

[LienRag]

The idea is good, but I'm not convinced by your proposal of implementation.
Especially, Gaïa-induced production is certainly a good idea, but how to balance it since Gaïa is so expensive ?

[Oberlus]

It would be good to balance Environmentalism benefits to what you can get from Terraforming.

Bonuses with Terraforming policy:
- Terraforming buildings cost 50%.
- +1 stability per distance to original type, research-focused.
- +0.5 IP per distance to original type, influence-focused.
- +1 RP per distance to original type, research-focused.

For an empire of 30 planets, with average distance to original type of 2, one third focused to each meter, this means +20 RP and +10 IP (totals) and +2 stability per planet.
There are also the "hidden" benefits from greater populations.
Let's calculate how good is all that relative to not having it.

For our 30-planets empire, the RP per research-focused planet could be around 0.5*pop from techs and policies, similar for PP. Aside, +1 RP and +2PP per planet. Maybe another +1 PP on average from some GGGs.
And the empire has all the growth techs except N-Dim and Augmentation and one growth special (average pop per planet is: good 21, adeq. 18, poor 15, hostile 6),
The total pop is 60+150+180=390. So 130 pop set to IP, 130 set to RP and 130 set to PP gives us +36 IP, +65 PP, and +65 RP from focused population, +30 RP, and +90 PP from flat unfocused bonuses, for a total of 40 IP, 100 RP and 150 PP (rounding up from unique buildings).

If these terraformations switched 10 planets from hostile to good (3 jumps), 10 planets from poor to good (2 jumps), and 10 planets from adequate to good, the total pop increased to 150+180+210=540, +38.5%.
With the flat bonuses, totals of 45 IP, 125 RP, and 180 PP (+13% IP, +25% RP, +20% PP).

So those +20 RP and +10 IP from also having Terraforming policy, compared to total outputs, add another +25% IP (effectively tripling the extra IP from terraforming planets), and another +20% RP.

An average distance of 2 jumps from original type for 30 planets (or average size medium, with Terraforming policy) needs 60 terraformations, which costs maybe 10*(60*3*1)+10*(60*3*3)+10*(60*3*6) = 18000 PP ?!

Is that right?

So you pay the cost of 10 Titans with DR and Xentronium plus a shitload of troopers, to increase your IP output by +38%, your RP by 45% and your PP by +20%.


Well, I wanted to see how good Terraforming is, to compare it with what you can get from Environmentalism, and now I think Terraforming is an strategy only for empires that are already winning.

Maybe I am not seeing this from the right angle?

[Ophiuchus]

Maybe I am not seeing this from the right angle?

dunno. what happens with policy if you just terraform a single step?

i also assumed that the main advantage of terraforming policy is the cost savings when doing that. and the main reason of doing that is a) either make settlement possible or b) make it good to allow for gaia

[Grummel7]

Maybe I am not seeing this from the right angle?

I've played Terraforming a couple of times, but I don't think I'll ever had an average of 2 steps. Maybe you get it when playing a pure Trith empire. Normally, you when you expand, you place species that are good or average in there environment. Sometimes, when I needed more influence, I placed a "4-step-species" on a tiny planet, because tiny planets are cheaply transformed and best fitting for generating influence anyway. Apart from this, I never terraformed for the bonuses. Once a large planet is gaia, it adapts for free, but then evacuating a large planet means it will produce nothing for many turns and then it takes even more turns to fill it with the new species.

The big difference between Terraforming and Environmentalism is not what they give, but what they costs: Environmentalism costs a lot of PP and has a plenty of restrictions, Terraforming has no disadvantages at all.

[LienRag]

The big difference between Terraforming and Environmentalism is not what they give, but what they costs: Environmentalism costs a lot of PP and has a plenty of restrictions, Terraforming has no disadvantages at all.

Indeed.
And balancing the Policies is a good thing, making them similar ("one gives boni on terraformed, the other on non-terraformed") is not.

[Ophiuchus]

And balancing the Policies is a good thing, making them similar ("one gives boni on terraformed, the other on non-terraformed") is not.

making them similar is boring, but not necessarily bad.

For me the good thing about "one gives boni on terraformed, the other on non-terraformed" is that it shapes the empire. you go into one direction and a policy will amplify that. if you go both directions at once, the payoff from the policy will lower. and the further you go into one direction the "harder" (i.e. the less payoff) is switching to the other.

i think influencing empire shape is how i imagined policies to work in the best case.

[wobbly]

Especially no buildings is a problem. No IRAs, no Translators, no Shipyards, you cannot play without all of them. Maybe we could reduce the bonuses by 20% for each building?

My own experience is this isn't a major setback, outside of Translator spam which is a problem in itself. Most planets wont have buildings... unless you are spamming translators. It does hit scanning facilities, which have been near nerfed out of existance by species likes/dislikes. Realistically you are now better of building a scout and sitting it at the planet rather then building a scanning facility.

That's not to say that the suggestion wouldn't be an improvement. It's just for a human player, Translator spam is the only real barrier here. For the AI... AI likes to spam shipyards everywhere.

Edit: Note I think there is a general consensus that Environmentalism does need a rework. I don't like it in its current form either.