Balancing Polulation Max

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jadwin
Space Floater
Posts: 32
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:35 am
Location: Heidelberg, Germany

Balancing Polulation Max

#1 Post by jadwin »

I think the effects of specials are too low. In the Beginning, Special are very useful, but in the mid game there are so much technologies increasing the population max, so that the growing specials are nearly useless.

You need to use the growth focus. The bonus effect is constant for the hole game (ok, you increase in number of planets), but the opportunity costs grows in increasing population max of the special planet. There should be a tech doubling the effect in the mid game.

The cyborg tech sounds very nice, increasing massive the max. population of hostile planets. But tell me, in the mid game, when you can achieve this tech, how many specie do you have under controll? Will you really use a specie in an hostile environment, when you have other species that can use this planet at least as poor?

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MatGB
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Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Balancing Polulation Max

#2 Post by MatGB »

I definitely agree that the balance of the various techs and growth specials is currently not ideal, however
jadwin wrote:I think the effects of specials are too low. In the Beginning, Special are very useful, but in the mid game there are so much technologies increasing the population max, so that the growing specials are nearly useless.
I definitely disagree that as they currently are they're nearly useless, the difference of +12 population on an imperial homeworld is absolutely massive in terms of production output and similar. In the mid to late game I tend to put effort in to make sure I've got all the specials applied to my most productive worlds.

The problem, however, isn't with the specials, it's with the other bonuses, the specials may be slightly over the top, but the other population boosting techs, when combined, can be excessive. Hopefully we'll soon be in a position to work on Influence, and when that's ready to go we'll spend time going through and reassessing all the population boosting and population based effects to tone them all down. The exact numbers will need discussion, testing and feedback but the current paradigm is going to be radically altered by Influence regardless so tweaking the current numbers is a less optimal approach.
The cyborg tech sounds very nice, increasing massive the max. population of hostile planets. But tell me, in the mid game, when you can achieve this tech, how many specie do you have under controll? Will you really use a specie in an hostile environment, when you have other species that can use this planet at least as poor?
Well, it depends on strategy, if you're playing, say, Trith, and trying to wipe out everyone else, then it can be a very useful tech to have, but I basically agree that currently, in most games, by the time you've got it it's a less optimal boost.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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