The Growth Problem (Balance)

from GalCiv4 Forums

 

Currently, the game has 3 primary layers to develop your yields and infrastructure.

  • The main planet screen, using manu to develop buildings.
  • Your stardock, providing supply ships and projects using military.
  • Your population, providing yields through specialists.

The first two work well together, and both can support each other (supply ships providing extra manu for buildings, buildings providing more military yields for faster ships). They also both tend to escalate as the game goes, turn 1 it might take 8 turns to build a manu district, as the planet fills up, maybe only 2-3.

Growth works mostly the opposite. The more people I have, the slower it becomes to get more. Take this screenshot as an example, this is about as good as it gets. I have an insanely good medical facility (+90% growth) and a number of other growth bonuses. Yet its still taking me over 30 turns to get more pop, at a time when I can build buildings in 1-2 turns.

Now if specialists were really powerful, this could be justified. But most of the time, specialists grant yields in the 5-9% range, which when you factor in adjacencies is about what the various buildings provide (buildings in clusters can often provide even more).

Further, if pop didn't require anything, than the slow times could also be understood. But pop requires tile utilization in the form of hospitals (to have any workable growth), housing districts, and the need for food.

 

Long story short, I think growth requires at higher pops needs to be adjusted. It shouldn't take significantly longer to get pop 15 than it takes pop 10... or if that needs to be curbed, perhaps increase the food requirements or something. But if I am willing to put in the work to have a high pop planet, I should be able to get there. Otherwise, a pop 15ish world is just untenable using normal methods, which leads me to my next point.

There is a subversive way you can ratchet up the growth on a planet. Have other worlds with low population send colony ships. This is where the growth rates get really weird. My little pop 3 planet with high manu can churn out pop like its going out of style, and grow a world 20x faster than it can do through just normal growth. That alone should suggest that growth has a bit of a problem.

 

 

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Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I currently like the growth rate on planets as is.  I haven't had a problem and when the new techs come into play - such as medical center, they help.  Just my experience.

Reply #2 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Another note on growth. So every 2 people = 1 victory point for the end game. Because of the way growth works, this is yet another area where massive expansion beats out tall play handidly. It is far far easier to grow 6 pop on 3 worlds than it is 18 pop on 1 world....even if the 18 pop world is using massive growth boosters.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

For context, here is one example of some of the highest growth numbers I can manage. And still it takes 17 turns to get a pop. This is the point in the game where I can build most districts in a single turn.

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Thank you for the feedback provided, I will pass it along to the team.

Reply #5 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Another good example that I think helps explain the weakness of growth:

 

In this example, playing the Altarians I have very high social for my people, and so this +2 pop could translate into a +18% income bonus for my galactic bank planet....very nice.

However, just plopping down a single financial district would grant me a +15% bonus...and I would have it much sooner. How much does that matter? Well quite a lot actually.

In this specific case, lets say I go grow a pop in 10 turns (and the second pop for this house in another 10 turns). Now that is actually VERY generous, you can see my growth is much slower than that, and of course the second pop should take a lot longer to grow than the first. But for the sake of argument lets go with it to make the math easier.

A little excel work later.... it would take 84 turns before the housing module starting generating more income than the financial district, 84 turns! And that is with a highly social race like the Altarians that I can assume will get double 9's in social...if its lower than that (which is random), my payout is even worse.

And just to hammer the point one more time, what if the growth time was 15 turns? It would take 129 turns to pay for itself. And of course I'm not even including the food cost of the pop. Also note I haven't included the fact that districts can level, and at that point, the district would actually equal those two pop.

 

Growth is too slow, and population not powerful enough. Growth strategies simply take too long to pay off versus just slapping down more districts.