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Post by essence on Apr 24, 2013 23:39:33 GMT -5
Can I ask why? It's not like the industry settings are particularly complicated, and Green is already simpler than LF or Neutral.
To summarize: Green: dissipation, caps, +1 GM/green neighbor. Neutral: dissipation, caps, +1 GM/green neighbor, -1 GM/LF neighbor. LF: dissipation, caps, ignore pollution, +1 PM/power.
Green has three items to keep track of, both of the other means have four. (Only LF actually requires any degree of attention, however, because only LF has a bonus that you can manipulate yourself and see any success with.)
Adding a single bonus to Green that was no more complex than either of LF's attention-requiring bonuses (still pimping +1 GM/tree!) would actually bring it in line with the others and accomplish the goals of making it balanced and worthy of playing around (as opposed to just 'with'.)
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Post by iuewen on Apr 25, 2013 0:06:17 GMT -5
Pre-launch, I successfully ran a Green tile for 3 months. Perhaps I am the only one who has accomplished this thusfar? I sat in a Bauxite tile hovering between Facism and Syndicalism, using a Reactor to ignore coal with (it is more worthwhile to trade Food:URO once every day or two and max it out. I was hovering somewhere around 25 GM on average, and had between 4-6 greenhouses, two Solar Panels, and a huge number of windmills to have an extrordinary amount of food/day.
It was an amazing balance. If anyone stuck an outpost on me, I'd let Synd expire for the cycle (I would fail to feed my people) and then blow the shit out of whoever stuck the outpost down. This did double duty of providing me with huge bounties due to Facist bonus, and keeping my PM near or at the cap, due to +10 PM bonus with zero outposts hosted. After combat, I would abuse Rushing if I had a factory up, or some other reason to.
I had zero mines, a refrigerator, the aforementioned setup, an office tower, and a fuckload of cannons. I also had ZERO power. I found that if you went green enough, and made sure you touched every building, including your academy, to a solar panel, you could get rid of the +1 Green Power.
It worked fucking amazingly. I was World Leader forever. If someone next to me went Neutral, my GM went even higher.
Don't get so worked up about it - there are other strategies than build mines, refine, trade.
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Post by iuewen on Apr 25, 2013 0:10:34 GMT -5
I forgot to mention: You don't even need to worry about the 4 vassal thing with Synd. Until Seats of Power or some other reason to stick on one government type are implemented, there is really no reason not to just blow 2 food on it every 6 hours. With the amount of windmills I had, I was getting the Windmill Conversion to Synd event about once a day also, so that saved on food.
I feel strange giving away my secrets here, but this was a silly flame war.
When you're pulling 6-8 food per Greenhouse cycle, per Greenhouse, you end up with a stupid amount of food per day. If my GM were at cap, I could rush and net-gain on food (-2 food to swap to Facism, -5 food/greenhouse to rush 20 hours down to 2 minutes, -2 food to swap back). Before we had a discussion about how stupidly overpowered my strategy was, Greenhouses made 3 food per cycle. Now you have to be almost at cap to do it, but it is still worthwhile.
Keep in mind also that this meant that I had nigh-infinite access to Ramuling. I grew a massive amount of trees per day, so I would nuke a few if I needed to shoot someone with coal (after swapping to Anarchy to get double scrap, of course).
I think that this Green strategy is the most powerful yet.
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Post by essence on Apr 25, 2013 1:08:04 GMT -5
This is exactly what I meant when I asked if there was any defense of Green Industry.
That said, is there anything that keeps you from doing the exact same thing with Neutral industry? In other words, was your GM ever above 22 for enough of a length of time that it mattered?
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Post by iuewen on Apr 25, 2013 2:25:07 GMT -5
Yes, it was often above 20. Depending on how others played, this would waver a bit, but I tried to bump people away that were LF and keep those around me that were Green. I was able to hold a pretty good balance of this, due to being able to freely trade for EUR for bumps.
This would be due to something like the following:
Power: 0 Green Industry: 0 (offset by solar panels) Wheat Farming: 5 Undeveloped City: 7-8 Syndicalism: 5 Lighthouses/Green Neighbors: +1-3 or so.
This would put me at GM cap (4x food) whenever it would rain or shine, and otherwise be at 3x food production with a small chance for 4x.
This came with the benefits of not having my GM reduced by LF neighbors, and a huge pollution drain to offset idlers/storms/etc. Both of these lend to a much higher GM bonus than Neutral could achieve. The +10 PM cap didn't bother me overly, as 95% of my "income" was from food anyway, and I never built a single mine.
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Post by essence on Apr 25, 2013 17:42:52 GMT -5
Well, GM can't get you more then 3 food now. IDK if it was different before, but your chance for getting food now is literally 10% per point of positive GM, so even a 20 GM only gets you two food per four hours. If that HAS changed, it completely puts the kibosh on your entire plan and puts Green Industry right back into the territory I think it's in now.
Also, as a side note, this is a pretty edge case: you've already gotten your Tech high enough to have Solar Panels, which means you've played through a minimum of 7 levels of the upper tech tree. That puts about 75% of the tech tree at pre-able-to-use-Green Industry status. It also means that this plan of yours didn't work under two-thirds of the weather conditions (since rainy gets rolled twice as often as the rest.)
Oh, and you have a refrigerator, too, so that's really at Power Sinks, which means you've very nearly topped off the tech charts.
Again, that's not good game design. Having an option that's available at the beginning and can't really be used until the endgame except as a trap to n00bs is just plain bad game design, straight up. Having an option that's only good under conditions that the player can't control is bad game design, straight up.
In a game full of otherwise absolutely beautiful design, this one ugly flaw sticks out like a sore thumb. The fact that it's the only thing anyone is complaining about should say a lot.
[edit] Also, your numbers only add up to 20. That means your other 10 points were weather-dependent, so if you played Neutral, the only difference you'd see is half the time, you'd get 50% less food. That's effectively only 25% less food overall. Would that have kept you from pursuing the same playstyle?[/edit]
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Post by iuewen on Apr 25, 2013 18:43:46 GMT -5
It must be different now, then. It used be a +10% chance per GM point to double output. After 100%, you'd be going on another %chance to triple, and up to quadruple at 30.
Does it take a long time to get up to power sinks, in your opinion? I have been completely ignoring tech and I am at Solar Panels right now. Tech prices were just reduced, again, also. Many strategies and governments don't work without upper level tech, so that is a moot argument.
Rainy and Sunny both give +10 GM. Half of the time you will be at +10, and half of the time you will be at 0. Average that to five. I was able to keep my base at or above 20, depending on how successful the game was at screwing up my lighthouse contact. That would be at least 5, on average, that I'd be missing out on if I were Neutral. And I still haven't heard a convincing argument why I would go Neutral over Green.
I can't speak as to how it works now, but if the Greenhouses only produce 1 extra food per 10 GM (or percentage thereof), then that seems like a semi-weak point. I had no problem with Green being powerful under certain circumstances, as long as the machinery that makes it function works properly with it. I'd have to agree that if Greenhouses don't double/triple/quad the crop output based on GM, then the nerfing was taken too far.
Neutral caps out at 20. Neutral is great for a hybrid strategy of production and GM abuse, but you are going to have your GM tanked by anyone that chooses LF around you, so you'll never be as high as Green is, even without the cap. I can't come up with any reason I'd rather go neutral over green, honestly, as I never once remember having an issue with keeping my PM above -10. Generally, it was positive, and often at cap. This was due to either the Facist bonus, or the Syndicalist bonus, plus some Diamond Drills.
If you were doing a hybrid strategy that involves buildings that are going to play with your PM, then I can certainly see why you'd want to use Neutral over Green. I rarely threw up a Factory, Borehole, or any Mines. This would let you keep your numbers around 10ish, I'd estimate, while having some fallback or protections in place (the -20 minimum cap) in the event that you were hit by a cloud of fallout or pollution.
But, if I were to play the strategy that I'd outlined before, why would I ever want to go non-Green?
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Post by amonx on Apr 25, 2013 21:09:13 GMT -5
Because of this thread I switched from neutral to lazziez-faire. My pm went up to cap, my gm increased to the cap and my pollution went up by 1 thus far.
Green is nice during the pale horseman if you are worried about hull. It feels like it does need a tweak but I believe there are more important issues to worry about.
I was green when I was new until I realized the pros were outweighed by the cons. Not everything in a game needs to be balanced. It would be nice but I am having fun either way.
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Post by inanimatej on Apr 26, 2013 1:02:58 GMT -5
Industry choices are for suckers. Real men are true Neutral. (I apologize for not being constructive but I have not seen a reason to choose an industry setting in over a year of playing this.)
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Post by essence on Apr 26, 2013 14:46:17 GMT -5
Amonx, you do realize that you just basically said "I fell into the Green Industry trap, too, but then I stopped falling for it so now I don't care," right?
That's exactly the wrong attitude. Green should be worth playing -- and outside of some exotic setup that one player with maxed tech setup once managed to maintain for a few months without getting messed with.
[edit]Also, after pondering, it's occurred to me that ieuwen's process above with spending 2 food every 6 hours to maintain Syndicalism doesn't actually help at all, because Syndicalism only creates .5 food every 4 hours. It's actually a net loss to maintain it, which means that you actually can perform his plan under a Neutral 20-point GM cap with much greater efficiency that it appears.[/edit]
But I recognize at this point that I'm barking up the wrong tree hoping to get anything out of Rast. He's decided to shrug me off, and I'm done. So much for feedback or being cool and useful. I'm out.
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Post by iuewen on Apr 26, 2013 18:54:20 GMT -5
[edit]Also, after pondering, it's occurred to me that ieuwen's process above with spending 2 food every 6 hours to maintain Syndicalism doesn't actually help at all, because Syndicalism only creates .5 food every 4 hours. It's actually a net loss to maintain it, which means that you actually can perform his plan under a Neutral 20-point GM cap with much greater efficiency that it appears.[/edit] But I recognize at this point that I'm barking up the wrong tree hoping to get anything out of Rast. He's decided to shrug me off, and I'm done. So much for feedback or being cool and useful. I'm out. You're making two misconceptions here that need to be addressed. 1: Greenhouses used to work differently than they, apparantly, do now. My arguments are based off of how I understand them to work, not off of whatever changes have recently been made. I would throw my support, as I had previously mentioned, behind restoring them to doubling/tripling/quadrupling the crop output again, as I felt that was balanced, but that is up to Rast. 2: You are assuming that Syndicalism is only being used for the GM modifier. This is not the case. Synd is one of the most ( the most) powerful governments to choose, and I abused it gleefully for the +10% accuracy, extra trade, +5 PM/GM, etc. The whole package. It always ran as a nearly neutral cost when I was using it. It would be 8 food per day to maintain, and I generally ran with 6 Greenhouses. It would be +1 food/average per greenhouse with GM+5 being +50% chance to harvest 2 additional food per greenhouse every 20 hours. Sometimes this would result in breaking the 20 GM barrier and having a chance at quadruple crops instead of triple; sometimes it would not. It all came out in the wash on average, so we'll just call it a triple crop enabler. Every 5th day I'd receive an extra harvest. 36 food/5 days 7.2 food extra. I'd function as a net-loss of 0.8 food over a 5 day cycle, just using greenhouses. This would also increase the amount of crops that were grown, so it would really add to the overall growth. Again, though, why would I swap to Neutral over Green, if I am not in danger of hitting the lower PM cap? This needs to be answered, as you are ignoring this point. Green has the advantage over Neutral in this case - you will never be above +10 PM, but if you start spamming mines and boreholes and such to abuse PM modifier, you're going into strike anyway. Strictly running a Green/Food strategy, I don't see you providing any real support as to why I would want to use Neutral over Green for this. I think they all function well. LF for heavy production, limited/zero food economy. N for balanced approach. G for heavy food economy, limited/zero production. But, this is all dependant on Greenhouses functioning like I had previously discussed. I think, beyond any positives or negatives that the industry choice actually provides, Greenhouse behavior is the deciding factor as to whether or not it is balanced. Lets discuss this; Rast?
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Post by Rasteroid on Apr 30, 2013 12:42:50 GMT -5
Did you know that with the way windmills and solar panels stack, you can often get down to zero power, even with green/technocracy additions?
I found out the other day that these savings even stack with capitalism, ie. you have your factory, you make your savings with the energy buildings, and ON TOP OF THAT you get the -2 power for being capitalist. That definitely seems a bit dodgy, no plans to change it anytime soon though.
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Post by essence on May 1, 2013 20:28:06 GMT -5
What -2 Power for being Capitalist?
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Post by inanimatej on May 2, 2013 0:03:36 GMT -5
Every factory is free under Capitalism, sir. Since Factory is 2 power normally, -2 power for each Factory.
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Post by thekirkunited on May 2, 2013 0:53:21 GMT -5
The benefits of Capitalism are interesting and useful this is true, but I'm still wondering about that whole greenhouse thing. I could test it myself but that would take time and a good deal of in game resources.
A clarification on the whole 'multiplication of food as a product of Greenhouses with a high GM' would be nice.
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