micromanagement hell? (repost)

Considering you can build/learn max 1 per turn, it is clearly impossible for points to always carry over, so you have to micromanage anything that takes a turn or less. However, I'm also curious about whether resources ever carry over. I'm assuming workers take a long weekend whenever they finish early

Research definitely carry over. And it is easily spotted: after having completed a tech, you will see that some research was put onto the next tech down the line. Just check after all turns events has been displayed.

so basically when you run 20+ planets, you are doomed to fiddle with the planetary focus so to not loose too much points? I would hate that.

Saber, are you the Saber Cherry of the Dominions forum? I used to be there for quite a long time, and I'm waiting eagerly for Dom3.

Is this post located in the general forum? I cant see it except with my watch list.

Yep, it's me. Hi Pocus

so basically when you run 20+ planets, you are doomed to fiddle with the planetary focus so to not loose too much points? I would hate that.

It depends how you see things and how you planets are developped.

I'm sure can only see the Grand Scheme (tm) and forget about this kind of optimization. But I will have to play at a lower difficulty level then...

This bothers me as well. Research carries over sometimes, but it does it in a haphazard fashion. Rarely I've gained two techs in one turn, by just researching the first, and the points carrying over enough for the second. Mostly, however, all new techs, even in the same line, seem to start from zero.

Military and social production get utterly wasted, in my experience. This is a matter that needs to be fixed.

Especially since you cannot even micromanage them properly, since the 'turns till completion' doesn't hold true at all. It says 1 turn, a turn passes, and the thing still is not complete. It's all annoying, since I bet the AI players micromanage their stuff better.

the 'turns till completion' doesn't hold true at all. It says 1 turn, a turn passes, and the thing still is not complete.

Yes, that especially annoys me. Progress is listed as "turns to completion" - which is often wrong, to the tune of 3 consecutive turns listing "1 week to completion" - and cost is listed in "weeks". Why are the real cost and work until completion hidden? I mean, even if the planet management screen was fixed to display the correct time until completion, you still couldn't play effectively without a printout of "TechTree.xml" and "GC2Types.xml", since the costs of buildings and technologies are hidden from the user... unless I'm missing something. But in my one game, I always felt like choosing a building or a new technology was a matter of spinning a wheel or rolling some dice, since you rarely or never know:

1) How much a building costs (and thus, whether it is a good investment);
2) How much a tech costs (which is again the amount of BC you pay to research it, or its opportunity value when trading);
3) What effect a tech will have (since no description is provided for any of its benefits);
4) How a building will affect your planet (no known equation relates the final numbers to the stats of a building; the game doesn't tell you what the effect will be of a building before building it; and the game's list of which bonuses come from where is pretty vague AFTER building it. For example, what does +45% morale do? It doesn't raise morale to 45%, by 45%, or plus 45%... Will building a farm increase the growth rate? Is the population being capped by unhappiness, planet quality, or food... and will +4 food raise the pop limit by 4, or will the planet hit some other hard limit first? Etc.)

In other words, the lack of information prevents me from playing as an informed player, and forces me to choose between picking things that "sound cool" or alt-tabbing to the XML files every 2 minutes just to be able to estimate the numbers (which constantly change in unknown ways, as with technology, for example - the printed numbers are valid on turn one, and subsequently there is no way to tell how many BC you will spend to get a certain tech).

It is TRUE that in the planet management screen (so called "colony management") the weeks left are incorrect by 2-4 turns depending on your spending and % , but if you look at the bottom of the main screen there are 6 buttons, Planet/Ship List,Research Screen, Domestic Stats, Foreign Stats, Civilization Manager, and the Shipyard. Go to the civilization Maganer and then click on the Colony tab on top, there you will see a list of the planets with the buildings and ship in production. in this screen all the turns left are shown properly. It is also true that the real value of "points" each research costs is not shown, BUT, you can see how many weeks are left based on the spending your doing, so if your telling me that you cant choose a tech because you dont know the cost is just wrong, since you can see how many weeks are left for all the next technologies in the tech tree.


Hope this helps a little...


Monc34

Thanks, I didn't notice the Civilization Manager before, since I only had 2 planets On the other hand, "Weeks Left" - even when accurate - don't let the player make rational decisions, since two items with the same number of weeks can vary greatly in their cost. Bear in mind that at a 100 research rate, a 101 BC tech and a 199 BC tech will each appear to be 2 weeks, but you spend twice as much on the second one.