Large empire management

from GalCiv3 Forums

Been having a lot of hours of my life sucked out from playing crusader kings 2 and ran across a really neat mechanic that I'm really enjoying.  One of the things I find tedious about having large empires is managing every single colony/country/planet/etc when my empire gets very big.  But with CK2 (I believe Rome 2 does something similar too) you have counties that fall into a predefined duchy.  Once you control those counties you can get the duchy which then lumps them together and allows a degree of automation in the individual counties.  Once you get enough duchies, you have the opportunity to get a kingdom.  Once enough kingdoms, an empire.

Don't get me wrong, I love micromanaging.  What I find tedious is when I have to do this with sea of worlds I've conquered.  In the beginning of a GC2 game I would be very attached to the well being of my first few worlds.  But after that number began to grow and grow and grow, each new world just became more or less an extra number.  And then going through all worlds to establish build orders and queues just became a chore.

I just thought it would be neat if something like in CK2 carries over.  Like say you acquire a few systems which then become part of a sector.  If you want then you could still have the opportunity to individually tweak those worlds within that sector or you could just say I want this sector to focus on a general area like economy or ship building and it would make that it's focus. 

And then once you get enough sectors you can get <insert neat sci-fi sounding title here> and the cycle repeats.

So now instead of having 100 worlds which I really love having but don't love microing, you could have say 5 'realms' consisting of 4 'sectors' consisting of individual systems and worlds.

And if you like, still allow micromanagement to your heart's content.

Just thought this was a really nice approach to large empire handling.

Cheers!

34,060 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I see two problems here: 1) it is, as others would say, not GalCiv, 2) there could be copyright infringement involved. We hear a lot of our community friends asking for something from another game, but this is the first time I have thought of this. There could be legal reasons for not making GC3 look like another game. Of course, the ones that have to do the real worrying about this are at StarDock.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I really couldn't see any possibility of legal ramifications.  To me that would be like saying because GalCiv3 decided to use hexes, then Civ5's Firaxis has a case against Stardock.

Same argument would apply when using hexes to say it's not GalCiv.  I think if it makes the game better and still retains the heart of GalCiv then it will remain GalCiv.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

OP I love your idea for empire management in GC3.

GC3 could have:

planet systems -> sectors -> groups -> clusters -> super clusters

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

How would we deal with building planetary improvements on planets? We know that planets in Galactic Civilizations 3 have the "class" mechanic, so you can't just que up buildings on a sector-by-sector basis, you would still need to do it planet for planet. If there's a very simple solution to this, then I can't see it.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 4

How would we deal with building planetary improvements on planets? We know that planets in Galactic Civilizations 3 have the "class" mechanic, so you can't just que up buildings on a sector-by-sector basis, you would still need to do it planet for planet. If there's a very simple solution to this, then I can't see it.

It sounds like it would be more of an "delegate control to the AI" system. You still might have 3 class 7, a class 10, and 2 class 15 planet in the cluster, but instead of going through and setting up a build queue yourself, you designate it as a cluster and set the governor to "build money making planets". The AI then takes over and builds all 6 planets into money generating planets for you, putting together its own build queue for each planet and basically running that group as a micro-civ that is still part of your empire. You could reclaim the group or any individual planet and start running it manually at any time.

I'm not sure there's any benefit from doing this at a higher level, though. Unless planets are more general than they were in GC2, there only tends to be a few really good ship building planets, a lot of mediocre ship building planets, a few really good research planets, and a lot that are relegated to money planets since they are pretty meh at the other functions (on high planet count maps. Your map size may vary). If they were all grouped in the same location it might work, but having a few of each category clustered wouldn't be much of a time saver. Designating them non-geographically might be of interest.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting WIllythemailboy, reply 5

I imagine "Shift + Clicking" certain planets to group them, and attaching them to a function key? I'm still not convinced it wouldn't cause inefficiencies compared to manual control, and that's the main problem.

For instance; I always build a PQ improver, rushbuy a factory, then build a farm and morale building followed by the remainder being either research buildings, factories or markets as called for by the focus I want. If I can't do exactly this (or the equivalent) in GC3, I'll still be forced to commit to huge amounts of micro or be forced to sacrifice the primary advantage I have over the AI; smart management of my resources. 

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Distant Worlds also has automation and policy options to manage large empires.  As GalCiv 3 will allow larger empires this needs to be considered as an option.  Unfortunately in Distant Worlds the automation for colony management is focused on colony size with one approach for all planets.  As a result I always play manually even on the largest maps as the benefit is so great.

Rather than sectors I would prefer to be able to customise a suite of pre-defined focus types i.e. research, construction, economy, homeworld and so on.  You then select the focus for that planet and then leave it automated.  It should be possible to save/load these policy templates between games as you can in Distant Worlds.

The other aspect of this is the AI.  The AI needs to be competent with colony management ...

 

 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


Don't get me wrong, I love micromanaging.  What I find tedious is when I have to do this with sea of worlds I've conquered.  In the beginning of a GC2 game I would be very attached to the well being of my first few worlds.  But after that number began to grow and grow and grow, each new world just became more or less an extra number.  And then going through all worlds to establish build orders and queues just became a chore.
Like say you acquire a few systems which then become part of a sector.  If you want then you could still have the opportunity to individually tweak those worlds within that sector or you could just say I want this sector to focus on a general area like economy or ship building and it would make that it's focus. 

Research and population are also other good divisions .


And then once you get enough sectors you can get <insert neat sci-fi sounding title here> and the cycle repeats.

So now instead of having 100 worlds which I really love having but don't love microing, you could have say 5 'realms' consisting of 4 'sectors' consisting of individual systems and worlds.

We could also do this by class instead of geography.



And if you like, still allow micromanagement to your heart's content.

Just thought this was a really nice approach to large empire handling.

This is a good idea. I trust the programmers at Stardock know how to change enough things to make it work. That is something everyone is forgetting about suggesting games is that the only games that does not take something from previous games is pinball and packman. I'm sure we will be able to dictate how we devide this up or if we devide this up. All anyone really means by suggesting a game is to give the designers an idea of what they are talking about. Not intending to do exactly that. Stardock will probably take most things and filter it through their imaginations to make it work on their game anyways. It's never intended to be an exact copycat, but only a point of reference to help them out.

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Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting admiralWillyWilber, reply 8
Stardock will probably take most things and filter it through their imaginations to make it work on their game anyways. It's never intended to be an exact copycat, but only a point of reference to help them out.

 

Well said.  I've never been too much of a forum poster, but I've had so many good memories of GC2, and love discussing the possibilities of the next installment.  And that's what a forum is. An open discussion.  My thoughts/ideas/concerns.  Yours as well.  And then let Stardock read them, glean whatever they may find useful, filter it through their vision of this game, and use it.  And then tease us with a screenshot or two.  It's a great setup that allows previously unseen avenues to be explored.  Some are dead ends.  Some aren't.  And some are fantastic ideas that simply don't fit the vision these guys have for their game.  And a fantastic idea in the wrong setup = a bad idea.  Damn but it's fun coming up with ideas though!

 

Another fun one (to me) would be to have a bonus of some sort associated with a group of controlled planets.  Lets say that you own 2 of 5 systems required to own the sector.  Then once you have majority of those 5, you get a perk of some sort.