In GalCiv 1, planetary management was a bit limited.
Production was essentially the planet class X population X spending % X planetary improvements.
What this meant is that essentially he that conquered good planets early had a huge advantage. Very little thought or strategy was involved. It was this that led some peopel to feel that GalCIv lacked a "soul" in places or lacked depth.
GalCiv II has a totally new way of doing it. A much more sophisticated planet management system that we think is really fun. It's also being coded by one of the lead developers of Simcity 3000 (formerly of Maxis now here at Stardock).
Here is the design document on this:
Galactic Civilizations II: Dreadlords
Planet Management Screen
Executive Summary
In Galactic Civilizations, planets play the same role as cities in other strategy games. It is on planets players build up the infrastructure to their empires.
Globally, the player decides how much of their overall budget is spent on construction of new starships, planetary improvements, and planetary research. The planet then takes the money sent to them and converts it to production in those 3 areas based on what is built on the planet.
Basic Concept
When a player enters the planet screen they are greeted with a 6 x 6 grid that represents the number of tiles on the planet. The number of useable tiles is based on the planet class (1 through 36).
Players select a tile which displays in the tile context area information about that tile. Some tiles have special attributes such as being fertile which provides extra food if a farm is built on it or precursor ruins which provide extra research bonuses if a research center is built on it.
Once the tile is selected, players then choose through a list of things they can build on that tile from a list box. As items are selected, they are displayed in the improvement context area which displays what it is they would be building, its effect, how many people it employs, the time to construct, and its maintenance cost.
A farm, for instance, might employ 1 citizen and produce 5 food and cost $1 to maintain and take 4 weeks to build.
A factory might employ 5 citizens and have a capacity to product 5 industrial units and cost $1 to maintain and take 8 weeks to build.
The player can then press the “build” button and the improvement is added to the queue. Players can optionally queue up as many improvements as they would like to make.
They can also press the “Automate” button which takes them to the governor’s screen where they can “zone” the entire planet at once as either “Agriculture”, “Industry”, “Social”, “Construction”, or “Research”. The computer AI will then build the “best” available items it has available at the time it starts to try to build.
Players can also assign governors with particular specialties to the planet who will provide a suggested zoning layout for the particular planet so that the player doesn’t need to zone out the land themselves if they choose not to.
The screen also displays what is currently being built on the orbiting shipyard (if there is one) as well as what ships are in orbit of the planet.
Players must build a star port on the planet in order to build ships. When a star port is built, a shipyard is placed in an adjacent tile around the planet. Players interact with the shipyard to actually choose what ships to build. Shipyards are very difficult to destroy (but can be). The loss of a shipyard also destroys the star port on the planet which then has to be rebuilt. That is because the reason shipyards are so tough to kill is that they are protected by an energy shield from the star port which becomes overloaded before the shipyard is destroyed.
General Goals
We want this screen to be very fun to work with but not be a micro-management issue. That is why there are only 36 potential tiles on a screen. A typical planet might be a class 13 planet with only 13 useable tiles. Players can use soil enhancement or terraforming to turn an unusable tile into a useable tile. But generally speaking, players will only be dealing with a dozen to dozen and a half tiles.
Later in the game when managing fleets of ships and other things becomes a more significant focus, it is expected that players who colonize or conquer planets late in the game will use the governors to build up the planets for them. Governors aren’t as competent as the player (otherwise they’d be the ones running the empire and not the player) but they’re pretty good.
The point being that we don’t want the planet screen to be a game unto itself. It is part of the overall game of having each planet be truly unique and putting some strategy in how the planet is handled.
The Variables
The primary variables on a planet are:
- Approval (sometimes called morale, we should always call it approval). It is based on the tax rate, unemployment rate, and modified by entertainment based buildings. Approval rating determines what % of the planet’s influence is exerted and gives bonuses in “free” production on the planet.
- Population. Population on a planet is the based on the food supply and housing capacity. It is the lower number of the two. As the two numbers grow, so does the population (gradually).
- Food. This is based on the number of tiles that are dedicated to farming. A farm may product 5 units of food which can feed 5 citizens.
- Housing. This is based on the number of housing units available. Most buildings provide some housing automatically. But as food becomes more abundant, specific housing facilities may be needed.
- Unemployment. This is the % of your population that has nothing to do. Unemployment lowers approval ratings.
- Income. This is the amount of money the planet generates.
- Spending. This is the amount of money being sent to this planet by the central government to build ships, research technologies, and improve the planet.
- Maint. This is the cost of paying the salaries of your workers.
Inputs into planet:
The only input into the planet is money. The amount of money sent in is based on the planet’s percentage of the empire’s total population. However there are ways to increase the priority of a given planet for receiving federal funds (see making a planet a high priority).
This money is split up into 3 areas: Military, Social, and Research. Military and Social money is money that goes in to pay for industrial production. Research money goes to pay for research centers.
Outputs
This is based on money per person taxed. Money per person is based on the tax rate (set globally) as well as planetary improvements that increase the money per person generated. Only employed workers are taxed.
In the event that the planet cannot use the money sent to the planet (for instance, a planet that focuses on banking instead of manufacturing) it is sent back to the treasury.
Industrial output comes in the form of ships being built. If no ship is being built, that money goes back to the treasury.
Factories and other manufacturing improvements built on the planet generate various amounts of base industrial output. $1 in generates 1 IU of production out until their capacity is met.
In times of need, where the player increases their military spending, factories can do up to 2X their capacity. However, that requires overtime which is billed at $2 for each 1 IU generated up until 2X its capacity.
Example:
Let’s say we have a planet with a factory whose capacity is 5 IUs of production.
If we send the planet $4 to produce star ships we will get 4 IUs out of the factory.
If we send it $10 to produce star ships we will get 7 IUs out of the factory: 5 IUs at $1 per unit and then another 2 at $2 per IU ($5 + $4) with the remainder being sent back as surplus.
If we sent it $100 to produce star ships we would get 10 IUs out of the planet: 5 IUs at $1 per unit and another 5 IUs at $2 per unit (15 spent total) with the other 85 sent back as surplus.
There is also “free” production. This comes from the approval rating on the planet. If the player’s approval on the planet is at 50% then production remains at 100% of its output. At 100% approval the player’s production is increased by 50%. And at 0% approval the player’s production is decreased by 50%.
This factor should be multiplied at the very end. It is also important that when someone clicks on the morale graph that it pops up a little dialog explaining morale and its specific effects.
This is money spent to build buildings, farms, and other non-starship related things. It determines the amount of time it takes to build something on the planet tiles.
It works the same as military production except rather than it making use of factories and such it uses construction yards, public works centers, and other buildings to increase the base capacity.
Much like the social and military production, research production works in the same way except it makes use of research centers, libraries, labs, and other buildings to increase the amount of research units (RUs) that leave the planet that increase the rate in which new technology is discovered.
Even if you’re not building things or researching things, people need to be paid or they become unemployed.
Buildings typically cost 1 maint for every 5 units of production that they do. So a factory that produces 5 IUs is likely to have 1 maint. All buildings cost at least $1 for maint. Buildings can be disabled to get rid of this maint. But that can turn those people into the unemployed which will lower your income as well (though not as fast).
Issue to consider: Limited Population
Where people work is not directly under the player’s control.
If a planet has a population of 10 and has buildings that can employ 15 people, the question is, where do those 10 people work then? The answer is that they work based on the ratio of spending.
The algorithms will need to deal with that issue.
Example:
My planet’s population is 10.
I have 4 Buildings:
1 Factory that employees 5 people.
1 Lab that employees 5 people
1 Construction Yard that employees 5 people
1 Farm that employs 1 person
The farm always gets top priority to feed the population. Only if the amount of farm production exceeds the amount of available housing do workers get sent to other places.
In our example 50% of spending is on military, 30% on research and 20% on social.
Therefore:
5 of your people are working in the factory. The lab has 3 people in it and the construction yard has 2 people in it.
Production in those facilities is based on the % of the employment filled (so the construction yard is only operating at 40% -- 2 out of 5 – of its capacity).
So if that production facility has a capacity of generating 5 social units then it can now only produce 2 without overtime (where it takes $2 to produce 1 unit of production).
Details Screen
At the bottom right of the main planet screen is the Done button and the Details button.
The details button takes the player to the details screen.
On this screen the player can see how this planet ranks amongst all planets in the galaxy in all kinds of areas. It can also get detailed information on population trends, and other “detail” oriented things.
It also includes the “Priority” checkbox. When that checkbox is clicked, this planet becomes a priority world for funding. Its population is treated as twice as important as planets that do not have the priority checkbox. So planets that are key to the industrial output of the planet can make use of this feature.
