The Fundamental Balance Issue With this Game is Too Many Things Increase Economic Production. It Actually IS Exponential Growth (Before flattening out into Quadratic Growth, and Eventually Flattening into Linear Growth)

1.  Population.

2.  Increased raw production from economic starbases and interstellar governance techs.

3.  %bonuses from planetary buildings and other starbase modules.

Increase pop by 10%, increase raw production by 10%, and increase planetary bonuses by 25% (a factory) and you get 1.1*1.1*1.25 = 1.5 = 50% increase in production.

The 50% increase in production means that you can get the NEXT 50% increase in production even faster.  Because you've got more production, you can spam out factories and constructor ships EVEN FASTER THAN BEFORE .  AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Once you get to this level, you can now spam out constructor ships and factories SUPER DUPER FASTER compared to before, which will increase your rate of factory and starbase spam even more (game-time wise).

Once you've reached the SUPER DUPER LEVEL OF PRODUCTION, you can spam out CONSTRUCTOR SHIPS AND FACTORIES EVEN MORE SUPER SUPER DUPER FASTER than before, which will allow you to build factories and starbases EVEN FASTER.  

Once you've reached that new exalted level, this allows the SUPER EXTRACALIBER DUPER DUPER FASTNESS of constructor and constructor/starbase spam until pretty much all of those things can be built in 1 turn.  

At which point production acceleration levels off because you've filled all of your space with economic starbases and planetary tiles with factories and what not.  

Overall, the game is effectively an economic rat race to reach SUPER EXTRA CALIBER DUPER DUPER FASTNESS WITH AS MANY PLANETS AS YOU CAN GET.  The first one who can reach SUPER DUPER EXTRA CALIBER DUPER DUPER levels of economic production wins.  

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Reply #1 Top

Unfortunately during this whole process, the amount of REAL LIFE TIME required to accelerate IN-GAME PRODUCTION also increases exponentially.  

Late game turns can take 20 minutes or ore building starbases and putting buildings on planets and what not.  

At some point you give up because it's pretty obvious you've won.  I treat the game as the equivalent of taking showers repeatedly, with the benefit that this game DOES NOT INCREASE MY WATER BILLS.  Consequently spending my time to build factories and starbases SO THAT I CAN BUILD FACTORIES AND STARBASES EVEN FASTER (game time-wise: doing all of this SIGNIFICANTLY slows down real space time) is time relatively well spent.  

Reply #2 Top

Can't you like, oh I dunno, put all of the observations about the same topic in just one thread? :)

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Reply #3 Top

compound growth

Reply #4 Top

This post explains the "how" of exponential growth, but not the "so what?" If everyone can do it, how it that imbalanced?

Reply #5 Top

Um, the AI is not capable of doing it well at all.  

Reply #6 Top

The AI follows the same game rules as humans on normal. That it doesn't use them to the full extent possible isn't a problem with the economic system, it's a problem with the AI. You know this.

Reply #7 Top

Plus I'm pretty sure this thread's exact issue was addressed shortly before the massive AI post by the CEO.

 

Something something removing the planetary specialization wheel and forcing both the AI and the human to play on a level playing field since scripting the AI to specialize planets properly was either impossible or going to make it develop much faster than a player reasonably could.

 

There was also discussion of going back as far as GC2's economic model to fix this exact problem, rather than everything multiplying off of current population as a baseline.

Reply #8 Top

The production wheel rework will address some

 

Regarding star bases: What if the bases would be made considerably more expensive to maintain? As they are kinda like a planet with large benefits it would make sense for an empire to have a lot of funds to keep them running at all. It would cut back spamming also from the AI side

Reply #9 Top

Getting rid of the planetary wheel doesn't actually fix the problem. There are simply too many bonuses everywhere.  

Reply #10 Top

Quoting marigoldran, reply 9

Regarding star bases: What if the bases would be made considerably more expensive to maintain? As they are kinda like a planet with large benefits it would make sense for an empire to have a lot of funds to keep them running at all. It would cut back spamming also from the AI side

 

I think that would help, but honestly the individual bonuses, even fully built out, are not that good (except for moral and initial raw prod.).  The issue is stacking 3-6 star-bases around a planet