i can play donkey too.

Your suggestions make no sense for me, they would make the current system worse.

it is just something wrong with you. It will make it better. I win.



Gruul has made so many mistakes in our conversion his opinion to me is close to zero.



but it is up to dev. our discussion is meaningless.

Gameplay>lore in the end.

The tech-tree is designed around expansion-disapproval and dealing with that with improving tech.



If it weren't there you could easily have your worlds all at max-approval later on with a few of the approval-boosting-buildings and a bit of terra-forming.



So while it does not make a whole lot of sense lorewise, it seems to better fit the game-mechanics like it is.

If you don't manage your taxes well, the FIDS Penalty can be painful.



But over all its not meant to stop you, only slow you down.

Some guys keep saying that new black is old white.



The maintenance restriction model PERFECTLY works in another games. Why it shouldn't work in this one?



The expansion disapproval doesn't exist in games of mine. It strucks too late to be the limiting factor. By that point i steam rolling everyone and all my planets on strike but i just dont care my fleets are unstoppable or other players steam rolling me and i dont care as well.



So i am saying that currently EXPANSION DISAPPROVAL DOESN'T WORK i just ignore it.

There are technology's that reduce over-expansion unhappiness that are easy to get, you just need to keep up the tempo between phases of expansion, where it may be cheaper and easier to research and build new approval buildings then research new over-expansion boosts.



But you do need to learn when not to colonize, crappy systems with desert, arctic or below should be avoided in the early game till you get at least the first approval building (Or the planet has good approval bonuses).



The AI over expands too much as well, and don't get me started on the Sower AI who can quickly grind himself to a halt.

I feel like its easier to counter the unhappiness than the increased maintenance. But then again, you can control maintenance by not building as many buildings.

Alamandorious wrote:




Colonialist or Expansionist: Picking this trait negates a percentage, say 25%, of the morale penalty for expanding...maybe even include a 2nd tier for those ultra-expansionist races, giving the trait a 50% reduction.



Just my thoughts!

I like this idea. From a mechanical standpoint expansion disapproval makes sense, but with some races it seems odd. Adding in a trait that reduced the expansion disapproval penalty would be a good way to allow expansionist races to maintain that "COLONIZE ALL THE THINGS!" feel to them. However, I am not entirely sure how this would effect game balance.

Alamandorious wrote:
Hmmm. I've always been curious about this, since the Civ games have much the same...the more cities you have, the angrier you're people get.



There's no real logic to a race being angry over expanding its influence, especially if the race is an expansionist race to begin with. However, despite this, one could argue that there would be malcontents who saw the further expansion of their civ as a reduction on focus on the already established worlds, as in use of resources elsewhere that could be 'better' used at home. I have a suggestion for this, and it involves racial generation:



Colonialist or Expansionist: Picking this trait negates a percentage, say 25%, of the morale penalty for expanding...maybe even include a 2nd tier for those ultra-expansionist races, giving the trait a 50% reduction.



I had toyed with the idea of putting in a negative trait suggestion along with this, but considering there's already a built-in negative factor I deemed that it was rather moot point. This would be a satisfactory solution; it shows that, like real life, you can't please everyone (there would always be a portion of a civilization opposed to expanding into the frontier, as it were), while also making it possible to have a larger portion of the population 'in favor' of expanding, reducing the morale problem.



Also, there should be a dust cost for outposts during their initial stages (I saw this in this thread already, and I think the idea has merit), as the empire is spending vast resources recruiting people to go to the new colony. Nothing major, just something to curb rapid expansion just a touch (except for the 'locust' race, who gets a boon for each new world...their rapid expansion would add more validity to the 'flavor' of the race)...it would render things to a more realistic level. In exchange, these outposts don't have the negative morale penalty associated with expanding...since the people establishing the colony no doubt want to be there. Once an outposts converts to a full colony, however, it is then a 'core world', and while it loses the negative dust value for being an outpost, it then suffers the same morale penalty as other 'core worlds'.



Just my thoughts!

Actually I assumed that the expansion unhappiness would be a model of different factors.



In remote colonies, I picture it to be Boston tea party style disruption, local groups wanting self determination and decentralization. (or in the case of hives, a renegade queen hoarding local resources in preparation of splitting off from the hive?) The less integrated a remote colony is, the more it will use it's resources on it's local economy and the less tithe that will be payed to the empire. Lowering taxation on colonies should mean there's less anger at having to pay taxes to the empire / might mean there is more self determination or decentralization allowed.



However alternately, the core/home systems might be angry in large empires because a large amount of their resources is spent on patrolling / pacifying / setting up colonies far away which serve them absolutely no purpose in the near future. (populists will always just look at short term, where colonization would be a decidedly long term goal). so there too would be dissatisfaction to some degree.

whether it is the same amount of dissatisfaction or there would be multiple types of unhappiness is a design decision I reckon. The current system is fairly simple as it distributes unhappiness evenly. This makes it more a game and less a simulation, which I think is good since this is a game



anyways just my 2 cents.. I do think expansionists should have less malus to expanding. might actually be interesting if they instead receive unhappiness once they grind to a halt, expansion wise.



I reckon colonies should definitely have a startup cost while the outpost is being built or when an enemy planet has been invaded. Each empire would have their own security infrastructure it would have to set up / put in place. This could slow down the early game but will make balancing quite difficult. Right now the game is pretty nicely balanced, most planets are colonized by the time 2/3 of the techtree is researched and at this stage the more serious territory wars start to break out.

It seems to me, that you misunderstand why Expansion dissaproval as an element might work better than simple mainenance costs. Colonies already cost you time, money and effort and so it does your ingame government and as such your people. Colonies in outer space are oe hell of an expensive thing to keep, if you read the tech descriptions right the lore even says that up until mid-game you do have travel time of days or weeks, communication lags etc. All this makes for a very unnerving population. Not to mention that you idea, while it would bring the game closer to the civ4-mechanism of expansion curbing would simply not work because the mechanism is flawed as it was flawed back then. The system would have to be deactivated for the AI to work completely because most AIs are not able to work with it, or even around it and on higher difficulty levels it would be a pointless system anyway, only there to kick the player. The current system does that well enough already, so while your idea might be nice, it would not work in the larger context.

This was really a two part suggestion. But to answer: I've never had any trouble, personally, with dust production. Don't know what I do differently than some, but dust has never been an issue, even with super-rapid expansion that totally kills my morale.



But no problems seen with adding an 'expansionist' or 'colonialist' perk to reduce the 'we hate expansion' morale issue?

Your suggestions would make allot of things worse, where would the dust to supply all this come from? Some playstyles juggle their dust on a very low amount already and this would just make that impossible.

Hmmm. I've always been curious about this, since the Civ games have much the same...the more cities you have, the angrier you're people get.



There's no real logic to a race being angry over expanding its influence, especially if the race is an expansionist race to begin with. However, despite this, one could argue that there would be malcontents who saw the further expansion of their civ as a reduction on focus on the already established worlds, as in use of resources elsewhere that could be 'better' used at home. I have a suggestion for this, and it involves racial generation:



Colonialist or Expansionist: Picking this trait negates a percentage, say 25%, of the morale penalty for expanding...maybe even include a 2nd tier for those ultra-expansionist races, giving the trait a 50% reduction.



I had toyed with the idea of putting in a negative trait suggestion along with this, but considering there's already a built-in negative factor I deemed that it was rather moot point. This would be a satisfactory solution; it shows that, like real life, you can't please everyone (there would always be a portion of a civilization opposed to expanding into the frontier, as it were), while also making it possible to have a larger portion of the population 'in favor' of expanding, reducing the morale problem.



Also, there should be a dust cost for outposts during their initial stages (I saw this in this thread already, and I think the idea has merit), as the empire is spending vast resources recruiting people to go to the new colony. Nothing major, just something to curb rapid expansion just a touch (except for the 'locust' race, who gets a boon for each new world...their rapid expansion would add more validity to the 'flavor' of the race)...it would render things to a more realistic level. In exchange, these outposts don't have the negative morale penalty associated with expanding...since the people establishing the colony no doubt want to be there. Once an outposts converts to a full colony, however, it is then a 'core world', and while it loses the negative dust value for being an outpost, it then suffers the same morale penalty as other 'core worlds'.



Just my thoughts!

The whole exploitation changes make me unnerved, they seem to be making the system engagement a lot more complicated then it really should be.

1. The exploitation bonuses should be bigger.

The seem to be fine at the moment, and with there usually being many planets in a system this is quite a boost if you focus already.

2. The exploitation should has negative costs (flat dust and % others).

This as a part of the first suggestion i can kinda get, but i still don't see the point, it requires far too much planning to be fun when you have lots of planets.

3. The maintenance cost of buildings should be higher and should depend on what type exploitation planet has. Science building on Revenue planet = maintenance skyrocket. The initial colony building should have maintenance cost as well.

Well you don't build on planets, you build across entire star systems, so this would be a pain in the ass for diverse systems.

The expansion disapproval was introduced as a limit to over expansion. It is against the spirit of any 4X game and against the lore of this game. The lore of every race actually encourages expansion. So lets limit expansion via other ways. The most logical and real life way - the more systems you have the more expansive is to support them.



One of the way to implement that - planets specialization. actually it is already implemented via exploitation. So lets go deeper:

1. Research planets provide close to 0 revenue or even negative, very small production and huge research.

2. Industrial planets provide close to 0 research, very small revenue and huge production.

3. Revenue planets provide close to 0 production, very small research and huge revenue.

4. Non spec planets provide everything but average output ( *FIDS=(I+D+S)/3 ) is %25-50 lower than from any spec planet .

*I don't count food here because food doesnt provide any benefit except pop growth rate. This type of planet should play a breeding center role where from you can transport pop to any of your spec planets since the growth rate there should be close to nothing.



Suggestions:

1. The exploitation bonuses should be bigger.

2. The exploitation should has negative costs (flat dust and % others).

3. The maintenance cost of buildings should be higher and should depend on what type exploitation planet has. Science building on Revenue planet = maintenance skyrocket. The initial colony building should have maintenance cost as well.

4. Ships maintenance cost should be higher. Remove 0 maintenance cost while in hunger. 50% in hangar, 100% while deployed.

5. Ships maintenance cost should depend on MP. Higher MP - more expensive to maintain.

6. Outposts should have % FIDS penalty.

7. Limit range ships can travel by the most distant colony player has. For example no more than 3 lines.

8. New traits need to be introduced to support races that use quick expansion strategy. Like now you can have race that expand quick and build low cost high quality military and get a huge research just from expansion. I don't accept this. You want expand quickly fine, but you have weak or expensive ships or you have no science. Choose. Now you can have everything.

9. New techs should be introduced to reduce penalties and buff bonuses in the late stages of the game.

Gruul already said everything about this topic.



Your suggestions make no sense for me, they would make the current system worse.

I want people to comment on my ideas. I just find your comments very questionable because you don't know game very well. I feel like you understand your weak position but just want to continue argue because of stubbornes. I can be wrong here. Just the way i feel. So i kinda okey i take challenge, bro.

1.What is morale in this context?

Approval system. The topic called lets replace expansion disapproval not lets remove approval.

2. Check what? You can always make use of excess approval by increasing taxes. Approval at 0 already has some very nasty side effects in the game.

You can't starve to death your planets. Well maybe in early game but not in mid. But there is no exp. dis. in early game except one on your homeworld nobody cares about. Go check if you don't believe me. Furthermore taxes can be on max and you still have high approval.

3. Fleets simply don't cost enough for it to even matter remotely. You'll never really have too pay much fleet upkeep.

Mmm.. They cost. Especially in the beginning when you have 4 planets and 20 ships. Later they cost again of course when you have 15 planet and 200 ships.

4. But you said that there is no approval penalty before turn 30.

Yes, except homeworld. I think it is obvious. Dont be a troll.

5. If your outposts are within your influence they still get hit by expansion disapproval

i dont understand that. there is no expansion disapproval on outposts.

All expansion disapproval does is to introduce a global modifier that forces you to pay dust (Improvements, lowering tax rates and using Heros) in order to negate it.

Nope. Expansion disapproval does exactly what it says: disapproval early game over expansion and mid game over conquest via penalty on your systems TOTAL output but there is no exp. diss. before turn 30 and other things i wrote above. The purpose is right but realization is wrong.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
Well, come at me bro.



1. You are wrong here. Morale still exists in the game but expansion disapproval. You have high taxes, you pay maintance, but your output struggle because low morale. Feel the difference.

What is morale in this context?

2. Wrong bro. It is impossible. Go check yourself.

Check what? You can always make use of excess approval by increasing taxes. Approval at 0 already has some very nasty side effects in the game.

3. Again bro. It is the most common situation with warmonger race when you go for a quick domination. Believe me fleets cost. Even now i have to change my some production worlds to dust generation. Actually i wrote that maintenance cost for fleets should be higher and depends on MP.

Fleets simply don't cost enough for it to even matter remotely. You'll never really have too pay much fleet upkeep.

4. Nobody cares about home colony. The bonus of quick expansion much more superior to a small penalty on your homeworld.

But you said that there is no approval penalty before turn 30, which is simply not always true. If your outposts are within your influence they still get hit by expansion disapproval even if you're only an outpost and your home world will always get the penalty from expansion disapproval.



Also I'm not your "bro" and I find such things extremely silly, but to each their own I guess . If you don't want people to comment on your ideas, don't submit them. All I'm saying is that there is no huge difference mathematically between flat maintenance costs and having a apporval system that guides tax rates. All expansion disapproval does is to introduce a global modifier that forces you to pay dust (Improvements, lowering tax rates and using Heros) in order to negate it.

Well, come at me bro.



1. You are wrong here. Morale still exists in the game but expansion disapproval. You have high taxes to pay big maintenance but your output struggle because of low morale. Feel the difference. You are talking about some other mechanic i didn't suggest.

2. Wrong bro. It is impossible. Go check yourself.

3. Again bro. It is the most common situation with warmonger race when you go for a quick domination that implies quick expansion. Believe me fleets cost. Even now i have to change my some big production worlds to dust generation. Actually i wrote that maintenance cost for fleets should be higher and depends on MP. All your planets on strike because of expansion disapproval not because of rebellion. You capture worlds too fast.

4. Nobody cares about home colony. The bonus of quick expansion much more superior to a small penalty on your homeworld and often it is the worst world you have. In 30 turns you can get 10 worlds easily all ecstatic with 25% taxes. The penalty from exp.diss. non existent in 1st 30 turns. And i think that very cripples races which designed to be useful in late mid game and very overpowers quick domination races.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
1. The difference between maintenance and approval that you cant use excess of approval but you can use excess of dust. That is huge difference.

2. Approval can not go below 0 but maintenance(i mean dust income linked to maintenance) can. As a result you lose your fleets.

3. Approval doesnt matter when you are winning. Who cares when all your planets on strike when you steam roll your opponents with your massive fleets. In case of maintenance the second turn you cant pay cost all your fleets gone.

4. There is no approval penalty before turn 30. Maintenance will work since turn 1.

1. You can indirectly use excess approval by increasing taxes, which results in more income. Again, that's where both system look nearly identical.

2. Approval does not need to go below 0, because it simply negates disapproval. At such low values the penalties (specifically to food) are high enough to starve some systems. You can loose money because of too low tax rates and you can fail because you need too much dust for improvements/fleets, but that is usually quite hard to achieve .

3. This is a very specific issue and does not really have much impact on the game. All invaded systems start in rebellion anyway, but unless you already know you've won, why should you lower your fids on any of your planets via tax rate? If you know that you might still produce ships or improvements, you still have to care. Fleets barely cost anything at all, so this would most likely not change anything.

4. Expansion disapproval always hits your colonies, so your home planet will always be affected by expansion disapproval, even in the early game. The values are very low however and it takes time before you even have to increase approval by a hero or improvement.

GruulTapul wrote:
Disapproval in its current form is already nearly identical to maintenance. What you usually do is lower your tax rate in order to keep approval high enough so it does not damage the industry/food/science output of any given system. You basically trade dust for "normal" levels of productivity, so what you're suggesting is already present. In the end, the source of the maintenance does not really matter; you could design a system where the improvements would basicially simulate the disapproval we have now, with no advanatage/disadvanatage compared to it.



Besides, expansion disapproval is reduced so much by tehcnologies such that it doesn't matter in the end anymore. It is very easy to maintain a good tax rate and expand like crazy.

1. The difference between maintenance and approval that you cant use excess of approval but you can use excess of dust. That is huge difference.

2. Approval can not go below 0 but maintenance(i mean dust income linked to maintenance) can. As a result you lose your fleets.

3. Approval doesnt matter when you are winning. Who cares when all your planets on strike when you steam roll your opponents with your massive fleets. In case of maintenance the second turn you cant pay cost all your fleets gone.

4. There is no approval penalty before turn 30. Maintenance will work since turn 1.

Hence, as implied, this suggestion was a bit unnecessary and doesn't necessarily make it fun if you decide to lop on more taxes without taking a look at how it interacts with the other systems of the game.

Renamed to become a discussion.



By the way I have to fully agree with Gruul on this matter.

Disapproval in its current form is already nearly identical to maintenance. What you usually do is lower your tax rate in order to keep approval high enough so it does not damage the industry/food/science output of any given system. You basically trade dust for "normal" levels of productivity, so what you're suggesting is already present. In the end, the source of the maintenance does not really matter; you could design a system where the improvements would basicially simulate the disapproval we have now, with no advanatage/disadvanatage compared to it.



Besides, expansion disapproval is reduced so much by tehcnologies such that it doesn't matter in the end anymore. It is very easy to maintain a good tax rate and expand like crazy.

I always thought that outposts should cost money, decreasing overtime of course.

I think something could be done on this.



Not sure about all the suggestions.

Negative bonuses on exploitations is a little limiting, potentially highly difficult to balance (it'll shift with context, i.e. which and how many planets you have available).

Negative multiplier to outposts is a possibility, but you already start out with very low FIDS so not sure how to fix that (unless you got +3 food and industry to start with instead of +2)





Expansion disapproval I can sort of get, though, in general. What I find perhaps odd is that explicitly expansionist races - I'm thinking Sowers and Cravers, especially the latter - suffer just as much (if not more if they actually expand to the extent to which they are capable and are expected to early-mid game) as all the others.

There's no race-specific tech to allow a locust-like species to act like locusts (why are Cravers so unhappy about expansion when they, y'know, basically crave expansion?). This is one of the areas I really agree with you - certain species' lore really implies that they favour expansion and yet their gameplay doesn't reflect that.

Sowers could benefit from something that made them unhappy with a poorly developed planet, but otherwise happy with expansion - they're expansionist, but for the reason that they want to prepare worlds for the Endless and so will be biased towards taking several worlds, getting them started towards development, and then moving one.

{I can't find a discussion on this - for either the Cravers or the Sowers - so if anyone can direct me to one I'd be grateful.}





Here's some suggestions that don't require replacing the expansion disapproval with additional costs, but modify it for certain races - namely the two named above since I've not really experienced other colonialist/expansionist factions like the UE or Horatio:





-- Maybe a morale modifier to new outposts, until they become proper colonies? Lower general expansion disapproval and insert this for new outposts - it limits new colonies's outputs, although not expansion per se.



-- {For Cravers} Early- to mid-game tech that lowers expansion disapproval. Maybe in the slots where other races get stuff to improve their trade since this is somewhat redundant with Cravers. (In the late-game techs governing trade the Cravers could possibly ameliorate the malus for over-exploitation - just a %age point perhaps, to avoid ruining balance, but that's for another discussion.)



-- {Sowers (and perhaps something similar for Horatio?)} An Early-game tech that gives you a new morale improvement. This improvement gives you a per-planet bonus (+5 or something perhaps) for each planet that has filled it's population.

I think this is quite characterful, since it's not massively easy to achieve early game, but once done allows developed planets to overlook the negative effects of expansion - the key being that they're well-developed, and have thus achieved one of the primary aims of the Sower faction.

is this even necessary

it is not necessary

while retaining depth

Define depth. for me the current approval system is like The Salar de Uyuni.

isn't there a more simple way to do it

each next colony cost more maintenance.

Is what you're suggesting at all fun?

Do you think you a fun person? And who cares what do you think? There are things that actually exist and things we are imagine. This question has no sense. I think it is fun. Well?

I am going to keep it short, but is this even necessary and if so isn't there a more simple way to do it while retaining depth? Is what you're suggesting at all fun?