Economic Readibility

[ncarr99]

Just started playing this yesterday, really good game and I like it a lot. Even so, a little bit of feedback never hurt anyone.

One thing I’d like to see change is something to make the economy a little more clear. Obviously this game isn’t exactly about any sort of in depth economic management, but I’d still love to be able to have a better idea of how strong my economy is, how valuable a given city or territory is, how much advantage I’m getting from the research/production boosting techs, etc.

I think it’d be a pretty easy change as well, you just need to have some sort of displayed stats about your economy, like what your total amount of funding is, how much funding you get per city, how many “production points” and “research points” you’re generating per second taking into account the research/production percentage slider, and how many of the relevant points are required in order to get each unit/tech.

It’s not a particularly huge or game changing thing, but I do think it’d be a nice addition.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

It's already there.

Your economy is broken into three categories that are all scored in percentages. (Its percentage because the map can be customized, and the percentage weighted to keep the game balanced.)

The categories are:
1: Production (Denoted by a factory icon.)
2: Research (Denoted by an Atom icon)
3: Espionage (Denoted by a 'shady guy in a hat' icon)

You can view these values several ways. First, by hovering your mouse over the faction names on the score card. A tooltip pops up showing you the GDP values.

Second, you can view them by going to the diplomacy screen (handshake button) and viewing them on the faction tabs on the left.


Next, you can in fact review the GDP of cities and regions by clicking on the name of a city in that region. I don't know how the GDP mathematically divides out to the three main fields, but I follow a few basic principles:

- 100% is baseline. Higher is good (for me), lower is bad. As you take buffs, this can be seen going up. As you get nuked, it can be seen getting cut down.

- The Research/Production slider is a diverter. Sliding one way or the other pushes the resources of one into the other. But not at a fully 1:1. But rather with diminishing returns. The previous game had the ideal one-side-focus split being 80:20.

- Espionage doesn't divert, but it does get distributed between espionage types. Think of it as 100 points being scattered across five or six fields in which it is constantly rolling weighted dice. The less fields you have active, the more rolls you get in other fields. This could also mean your Counter-Intel field can be kept nearly godlike just by turning everything off.

[ncarr99]

I'm aware of the percentages, but that doesn't really address what I meant.

So for example if I'm wanting to annex an enemy territory, I want to be able to know exactly how much production cities in a given region will offer me, not just what percentage of his economy it is. So like "Region A has 4 cities and when I add them up they represent 200 funding points per second and region B has 3 cities but they're bigger ones and are collectively worth 230 funding points, so I know which region would be worth more for me to conquer or destroy first." Unless all cities just offer identical production in which case I guess this is moot, but the vibe I've gotten is that different cities offer different amounts.

I also want to get a little better idea of how much the research and production techs (as well as the research center) actually help you. Like they obviously speed things up, but by how much? If there was some form of better readability then you would know that, say, the first production tech gives you +50 production points a second or whatever. And then if we know that the average city produces 10 per second then that extra 50 is a lot, or alternatively if the average city produces 40 then the extra 50 is nice but not worth prioritizing since it's only the equivalent of one extra city. Or if the techs are also percentage based as opposed to a flat rate, then A) I'd like to see that explicitly laid out in it's description because I don't think it's actually said in-game anywhere, and B) it'd still be good to have an idea of how much funding you produce at any given moment so you know how much that extra 10% or whatever boost from the tech will actually impact you if you get it right now.

None of this stuff is strictly speaking necessary of course, the game is not designed around min-maxing a complex economy or anything like that, this is more of a "nice to have" over an essential addition. But in certain niche situations it might impact some decision making here and there, and beyond that I'd just love to be able to see exactly how much my economy has benefited after a long and grueling conquest against a neighbor just for that extra sense of satisfaction.