AI Kills Me in GDP - GDP Screenshots Incl.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: 2guncohen

Wow thats a huge dipp in the red ...
Good luck to reform this [X(]

The tax issue can't be fixed. I can generate positive income again by scrapping ships, troops, or sacrificing my reputation by switching to Way of Darkness. All of those are ludicrous steps. My Empire should be experiencing diminishing returns from growth.

Instead, I'm being PENALIZED FOR GROWING/EXPANDING! This basic fact should be the only point I have to make on this issue. But its not. People have other ideas.

[2guncohen]

Could a revolution reset corruption ?

[jscott991]

Last post, then I'm done.

The beat goes on . . .

Tax revenue of 384k. Corruption on the homeworld at 78%. Not a single new colony founded. It just keeps growing and growing and growing. Notice also the collapse in colony revenue under the private sector. Once safely well over 1000k, now its falling towards 900k.

My unit totals are the same. No wars. Nothing. This game's economic model is all about corruption. Over time, it becomes a bigger and bigger part of the game. Eventually it will cripple tax revenue collection. Can good players compensate? Maybe. But who cares? What is the justification for an economic model that punishes an empire from growing. We're not even talking about expansion at this point. This is just growth.

[Bartje]

Trantor.. Isn't that from a Sci-Fi novel?
 
Eitherway; I concur that growth should be diminished not penalized.
 
This would definetly mean corruption is bugged; given that everything else checks out.
 
 
I think this is not working as intended; given yours and Erik's description of the proces and envisioned results
 
[:)]
 

Looks like we're getting a fix soon!
 

[jscott991]

Trantor is the capital planet of Asimov's Galactic Empire in the Empire and Foundation series.

Here is the savegame if anyone cares.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dqdyzoqdvzm

One other thing is the population growth during this test period. Despite a significant increase in population (281 billion to 296 billion), tax revenue fell substantially.

Growth is being penalized by corruption. Growth does not keep pace with corruption in the late game. It doesn't even matter if you are adding new colonies (but that will accelerate the process). Corruption grows much, much faster.

[Cindar]

ORIGINAL: jscott991

You aren't looking at tax revenue then. Overall income (in the upper right) is meaningless. Resort income and spaceport income aren't important to this issue.

Or we're playing very different games. I want your version.

Plus, you've already shown you're micromanaging and min/maxing in a way that we were told wasn't necessary. That's fine, but it also isn't relevant to corruption.

I am thrilled though that you are showing corruption percentages in the 90s. That seems definitely proven now. So at least its a step.

I'm most certainly looking at tax revenue, because in my empire there are exactly 0 resort bases and space ports bring in almost nothing. The only income other then taxes is some trading which is under 100k. I don't see corruption percentages in the 90s, its a hard cap at 90, nothing goes beyond that.

I'll try to upload a save demonstrating this, unfortunately I'm running into some problems where the game is crashing semi-regularly and I'm trying to pin down what's causing this.

ORIGINAL: jscott991

Trantor is the capital planet of Asimov's Galactic Empire in the Empire and Foundation series.

Here is the savegame if anyone cares.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dqdyzoqdvzm

One other thing is the population growth during this test period. Despite a significant increase in population (281 billion to 296 billion), tax revenue fell substantially.

Growth is being penalized by corruption. Growth does not keep pace with corruption in the late game. It doesn't even matter if you are adding new colonies (but that will accelerate the process). Corruption grows much, much faster.

It sounds like the problem is that the algorithm is simply a bit bumpy. As you mentioned, obviously your income drops down a bit when you go from 80% to 81% corruption, but then no more corruption occurs until your tax revenue has climbed back high enough again. I mean, you are complaining about a 20k drop in taxes. Thats nothing, completely unnoticeable. Continue playing and it will simply bounce around that 400kish mark. Taken as a whole, your income will not change much, but there are some shallow hills and troughs as you expand. Its not a big deal.

Again, keep in mind that your growth in this situation consists of taking people out of a 50% tax rate colony and plopping them down on a 5-10% tax rate colony. Colonization efforts never themselves back in the short term.

Besides, being almost choked to death by corruption is a fate befitting Trantor.[:D]

[jscott991]

I appreciate your feedback, but you aren't following what I'm saying very well. For one thing, its nearly a 100k drop in tax revenue over a long period (the tests started at an income level of 471k and ended at 384k.) That's a 20% drop in revenue, caused exclusively by corruption.

The whole point of the above was to show what is happening in the game when I'm not founding any colonies. Tax revenue isn't supposed to be falling at all. Corruption is supposed to produce diminishing returns, not outright losses. Though, as I've said repeatedly, the explanations we've been fed don't match the data at all, suggesting many things.

Corruption chews up income faster than growth creates it, regardless of whether I am founding new colonies or not.

It's busted. Pure and simple. It's busted because people found other ways to make money, and the designers didn't bother to attack those areas. They just plopped down a global cash sink that has no granularity, subtlety, or gameplay solutions.

Boot that savegame up and play it out. Tax revenue isn't going to recover. That Empire is dead.

[Cindar]

http://www.mediafire.com/?mzdjujgnytw

Here's what happened when I loaded your empire. Tax revenue up to 700k. Trantor sits at 81% corruption.

What I did: Changed government to Way of Darkness. Shouldn't affect the colony income or corruption, but it brought me out of the red. This caused me to lose about 20ish colonies but it wasn't a big deal. I then completely scrapped every ship of your fleet and rebuilt my own. My fleet is composed of a much smaller number of much more powerful ships. I also retooled almost all of your star bases and refitted them, then built star bases on most of the other planets that had none. Then I just started conquering things until I was brought back to about what you were at.

Now, in theory none of the above things should really change the colony income or corruption much if at all. My guess is that something in there is included in the corruption formula and it really shouldn't be. I'm guessing its the absolute fleet size, it sees that you have hundreds of ships and gives you much more corruption, while my similarly powerful fleet that has only about 30 ships gives a much lower amount of corruption. If that's not it, I would guess its simply because I have a better infrastructure, with better developed colonies and happier citizens.

[VarekRaith]

jscott991, uploading your saves now. Doesn't hurt to have a dev look at them.
[:)]
Files uploaded as
jscott991Corruption 5-9-2010
and
jscott991Corruption Test 5-9-2010

Edit,
Upload complete.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the saves, we've confirmed that the intended cap on corruption is not working. This can create real issues, as reported, for huge empires that do not have race/government combos that reduce corruption. We'll be addressing this in the next update. In the meantime, picking races and governments that reduce corruption or playing on maps that don't tend to get into hundreds of systems should mean that you are not affected by this.

Regards,

- Erik

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hi guys,

Thanks for the saves, we've confirmed that the intended cap on corruption is not working. This can create real issues, as reported, for huge empires that do not have race/government combos that reduce corruption. We'll be addressing this in the next update. In the meantime, picking races and governments that reduce corruption or playing on maps that don't tend to get into hundreds of systems should mean that you are not affected by this.

Regards,

- Erik

In other words, simply not playing.

Thanks for at least acknowledging a problem.

Wait, are there races that affect corruption?

Are the government types mod-able at the moment?

Both of those questions seem to have "no" answers.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Cindar



http://www.mediafire.com/?mzdjujgnytw

Here's what happened when I loaded your empire. Tax revenue up to 700k. Trantor sits at 81% corruption.

What I did: Changed government to Way of Darkness. Shouldn't affect the colony income or corruption, but it brought me out of the red. This caused me to lose about 20ish colonies but it wasn't a big deal. I then completely scrapped every ship of your fleet and rebuilt my own. My fleet is composed of a much smaller number of much more powerful ships. I also retooled almost all of your star bases and refitted them, then built star bases on most of the other planets that had none. Then I just started conquering things until I was brought back to about what you were at.

Now, in theory none of the above things should really change the colony income or corruption much if at all. My guess is that something in there is included in the corruption formula and it really shouldn't be. I'm guessing its the absolute fleet size, it sees that you have hundreds of ships and gives you much more corruption, while my similarly powerful fleet that has only about 30 ships gives a much lower amount of corruption. If that's not it, I would guess its simply because I have a better infrastructure, with better developed colonies and happier citizens.

You did all the things I refused to do, invalidating the test completely.

I never claimed that you can't micromanage your way out of the situation by making gamey government changes or scrapping the fleet. My point was that corruption shouldn't be the driving force in the game, but that the current corruption cap made it so.

You did prove something very interesting though.

Your tax revenue with 531 billion people is only 687k. That's paltry.

Also, your civilian sector is still in the red. You've proven everything I was trying to show, despite messing with the constants.

[Rustyallan]

You did all the things I refused to do, invalidating the test completely.

Exactly.

Thanks for the the saves, jscott. Now they can get it fixed. I've been able to get my corruption up to 75-93% so far in my game, but my tax revenue is still increasing.

I had a bunch of other issues with my game and I just couldn't make myself leave it alone like you did so my economy eventually bounced back.

[Cindar]

ORIGINAL: jscott991

You did all the things I refused to do, invalidating the test completely.

I never claimed that you can't micromanage your way out of the situation by making gamey government changes or scrapping the fleet. My point was that corruption shouldn't be the driving force in the game, but that the current corruption cap made it so.

You did prove something very interesting though.

Your tax revenue with 531 billion people is only 687k. That's paltry.

Also, your civilian sector is still in the red. You've proven everything I was trying to show, despite messing with the constants.

You said that no matter what, you couldn't increase the tax revenue by expanding. That corruption inevitably means that the larger you get the less taxes you receive. I disproved that.

My changes weren't gamey at all, merely fitting the save to my playing style. I assume that if you loaded one of my saves, you would end up scrapping a lot of the stuff I was doing and making what you liked. You may have spent an extra 100k or so on maintenance the way you were playing, but that changes nothing about the fact that I managed to have my tax revenue increase about 200k despite the increase in corruption from something around 65% to 80%.

In theory, nothing I did should have changed the tax revenue or corruption rate from what you were seeing, my changes only affect the rate of expenditure. The Way of Darkness doesn't give any income benefits, nor does it give any corruption benefits. Scrapping ships doesn't affect income, and it shouldn't affect corruption. Adding a few ports with medical and recreational facilities will affect the tax revenue, but it certainly shouldn't have boosted it by 50% when it was mostly small outlier colonies that received them. What we need to find out is exactly which of my changes is affecting corruption or tax revenue so grossly, because they SHOULDN'T be affecting it much if at all. If you want to test this, load my save and go back to your regular playstyle, see exactly what changes triggers your tax revenue to plummet.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: jscott991
In other words, simply not playing.

That would be called a gross exaggeration. I realize this is a major problem for your playstyle. All you would have to change in your case is one thing, either reducing the galaxy size or using a government that reduces corruption or increases income until the next update while keeping the rest the same.

Thanks for at least acknowledging a problem.

I've acknowledged that this probably wasn't working as intended from the start, based on your report, but we needed a save file to confirm this.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Cindar

ORIGINAL: jscott991

You did all the things I refused to do, invalidating the test completely.

I never claimed that you can't micromanage your way out of the situation by making gamey government changes or scrapping the fleet. My point was that corruption shouldn't be the driving force in the game, but that the current corruption cap made it so.

You did prove something very interesting though.

Your tax revenue with 531 billion people is only 687k. That's paltry.

Also, your civilian sector is still in the red. You've proven everything I was trying to show, despite messing with the constants.

You said that no matter what, you couldn't increase the tax revenue by expanding. That corruption inevitably means that the larger you get the less taxes you recieve. I disproved that.

My changes weren't gamey at all, merely fitting the save to my playing style. I assume that if you loaded one of my saves, you would end up scrapping a lot of the stuff I was doing and making what you liked. You may spend an extra 100k or so on maintenance, but that changes nothing about the fact that I managed to have my tax revenue increase about 200k despite the increase in corruption from something around 65% to 80%.

Your changes were gamey. You scrapped every patrol ship. If you can get away with that, its only because something isn't working.

You changed to an evil government type simply to reap maintenance benefits. Forced revolution to the Way of Darkness to solve economic problems is borderline ludicrous.

You gutted the troops, taking advantage of the fact that for some reason the game seems to think you can administer any kind of interstellar state without any ground forces.

And your "growth" was next to nothing, despite almost doubling the population of the empire.

In fact, this particular empire was earning about 550k in tax revenue with about 100 colonies and far less people. "Growing" to nearly 200 colonies and 600 billion people resulted in tax revenue increases of only about 25%? That's ridiculous. Considering Way of Darkness boosted your growth by 20%, I'm surprised you'd even claim any growth at all. You messed with all the constants and still couldn't do anything but play at the margins.

You are only maintaining an economy, because you aren't spending anything on maintenance. If the game is designed to be played with about 20 ships, then it is worse than GalCiv and loses a great deal of its appeal. You proved my basic premise completely, despite trying to cover it up.

[Shark7]

I have a question or two:

Does the speed of expansion affect the corruption in any way? In other words, would a person who colonizes just as fast as he can notice it more than someone who is slow and methodical (like me)?

Also, isn't capping at 90% a bit excessive? Seems that a 50% cap would be in line.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: jscott991
In other words, simply not playing.

That would be called a gross exaggeration. I realize this is a major problem for your playstyle. All you would have to change in your case is one thing, either reducing the galaxy size or using a government that reduces corruption or increases income until the next update while keeping the rest the same.

Thanks for at least acknowledging a problem.

I've acknowledged that this probably wasn't working as intended from the start, based on your report, but we needed a save file to confirm this.

This is going to rapidly degenerate, so I'll cut it off after this. But you're being very disingenuous. Any empire with 100 or so colonies is susceptible to this problem; certainly any empire with 150+ is going to experience it. You're going to hit this problem in anything but the smallest, slowest games. You're ruling out at least half the galaxy sizes, but you say its a gross exaggeration to say that it's not possible to play the game?

How many government types influence corruption? You're pigeonholing people into 2 or 3 different governments (one of which isn't even selectable) out of a huge list, but that isn't a major limiting factor?

These are heavy restrictions. This isn't like simply telling people "don't bother with resupply ships until we fix them." You're ruling out about 80% of the government types and at least half of the galaxy start-up sizes.

And the only thing unique about my "playstyle" that causes this corruption problem is that I play the game for more than 50 years without pasting the AI and quitting. Anyone who plays long enough is going to be bitten by this corruption issue.

But I won't harp on it anymore. Please, please, please, release some kind of a beta patch soon that fixes this. And please, please, please, put the slider in the next patch so I can turn this silly, overbearing concept off when I play in the future.

Edit: Hear, hear for the poster above. A smaller cap is not only more logical, it would make the game much more fun.

[Cindar]

Yes, but what did I do that would affect the tax revenue or corruption? What I did affected maintenance, lowering it by about 200k. That doesn't explain how my tax revenue soared even as my corruption went up, does it? Now if you want to complain that 170 planets is only 25% stronger then 100 planets instead of 70% then that's going to be hard to fix, since thats the whole problem the corruption system is fixing. The point is that 170 planets surely isn't weaker then 100 planets, which is what you were claiming.

Also, if you look, I actually have a stronger defensive and military power then your original force did. I've hardly scrapped my entire defense and left my empire undefended.

As for gutting troops, my entire empire is quite happy and not inclined at all to revolt, thank you very much.

ORIGINAL: Shark7

I have a question or two:

Does the speed of expansion affect the corruption in any way? In other words, would a person who colonizes just as fast as he can notice it more than someone who is slow and methodical (like me)?

Also, isn't capping at 90% a bit excessive? Seems that a 50% cap would be in line.

As soon as you hit the corruption cap, your finances skyrocket and you have completely limitless money no matter what. If you lower the cap then you just make it so that empires hit it earlier, thereby making the game meaningless earlier. If the cap was at 50%, you would probably be hitting the limitless money stage at around 50-75 planets, which is just silly. What should happen is that the corruption system itself needs to be fine tuned a bit more so that it is smoother and gentler.

However, it shouldn't be removed or neutered until its meaningless just because some people *cough jscott cough* seem to think that they should be able to build whatever they like as much as they like and not have to face financial consequences. You shouldn't be required to be as much of a penny-pincher as I am, but having nearly 300 active ships and bases along with almost 400 troops on a 170 planet empire with no attempts to lower the maintenance cost or boost finances SHOULD be punishing.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Cindar

As soon as you hit the corruption cap, your finances skyrocket and you have completely limitless money no matter what. If you lower the cap then you just make it so that empires hit it earlier, thereby making the game meaningless earlier. If the cap was at 50%, you would probably be hitting the limitless money stage at around 50-75 planets, which is just silly. What should happen is that the corruption system itself needs to be fine tuned a bit more so that it is smoother and gentler.

However, it shouldn't be removed or neutered until its meaningless just because some people *cough jscott cough* seem to think that they should be able to build whatever they like as much as they like and not have to face financial consequences. You shouldn't be required to be as much of a penny-pincher as I am, but having nearly 300 active ships and bases along with almost 400 troops on a 170 planet empire with no attempts to lower the maintenance cost or boost finances SHOULD be punishing.

Right, I should be able to have about 300 ships/bases at 100 planets, but at 170 planets, they should bankrupt me. That's a logical system.

And your points about hitting unlimited money when you hit the corruption cap are just outlandish. Fortunately, your position is disproved by your own evidence, so hopefully it won't factor into any design decisions.