Matrix Games Forums

SOLUTION!

ORIGINAL: Iceman

Build a lot of transports, load them up with the pop, and then scrap those transports. [;)]
Yep, a bit expensive, but the Bureaucracy decrease and happiness increase might be worth it.

Hmm, I thought it was pretty obvious ... [&:] [:D]

In my view bureaucracy is needed to maintain large empires. Without it your government has no way of collecting taxes, paying for domestic police forces, research and building up a military. Equating bureaucracy to unrest is wrong. Here's a real life example of why I believe this. When Genghis Khan first started conquering he realized very quickly that he had to setup a government and that included a bureaucracy. That's why he kept the bureaucracy in China and created new ones as he expanded west. Most large empires have fallen due to large social program spending and crippling debt. My suggestion for this game would be to eliminate the bureaucracy and population penalty and replace it with a social program slider(sps). This could be done for individual planets or empire wide or both. The sps and the tax rate would determine happiness. The higher the tax rate the unhappier people become, but you could offset this by raising the sps. You could even have overpopulation cause a little unhappiness that could be offset by the sps. Also if you set the sps to high then that may cause some unrest. After all, all those law abiding, tax paying citizens get tied of supporting all those deadbeats.[:D]

That's another aspect of why it's broken : Bureaucracy and its cost should be a *choice* to quell unrest and maintain empire integrity, it always worked like that IRL.
In the game we have unrest as soon as pop rises, and automatic uncontrollable bureaucracy costs, with 0 return and no positive effect, when number of planets increase. That's just wrong.

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

Whatever, this is totally nonsensicaland should be fixed ![:-]

Agreed! What Iceman and I have done is found gaming solutions to a problem. A realistic solution should be devised.

The easiest is to come up with things that require the use of population to construct. Suddenly, population becomes an asset not a liability. I would really like to see some of the large ships like fleet carriers require the use of population as part of the construction cost.

I've tried modding marines to consume population but it appears that just changing the Groundunits XML is not enough. The description says that it will cost 1 Population but it does not seem to actually consume one.

Grandpoopah
Your idea is fine, but currently I don't think the "pop cost" requirement you're wanting is possible, there's nothing in the units xml about it.
The only existing  req for ground units is to have a min pop - If it applies to ships also (not sure, it's not the same file) , that could be used to restrict big ships building to planets where pop is above 40 for example. So players would need to have high-pop planets to build the best ships.

LE:I restricted the construction of Battleships to Construction systems. Requiring larger pops to build larger ships might be a good thing; OR, only allow them to be built on Rich (large ships) and Very Rich (base ships and similar).
 
As for marines costing pop, haven't tried it yet, but check how the ark ships have their cost set up (the pop cost tag), and do the same for marines and tanks. Was that what you did Grandpoobah?

ORIGINAL: Iceman

LE:I restricted the construction of Battleships to Construction systems. Requiring larger pops to build larger ships might be a good thing; OR, only allow them to be built on Rich (large ships) and Very Rich (base ships and similar).

As for marines costing pop, haven't tried it yet, but check how the ark ships have their cost set up (the pop cost tag), and do the same for marines and tanks. Was that what you did Grandpoobah?

Yes, I looked at how they handled the building of ark ships and I added the pop cost tag to the ground units XML. In playing the modified game, the description now said that it would cost 1 Population but after building one, it did not reduce the population. Either there is something else that needs to modified or this is another XML that is not working and needs to be added to the list of those that need to be fixed.

Did you check if the pop was reduced BUT it was also increased by growth rate? Could happen. Try setting the cost to 5 or so.

I was wondering if the growth rate masked it. I will try your suggestion and set it a large number to make it more obvious.

Yep, I tried it again but with the population cost set to 10 so it would be very obvious. Ten population points were deducted when I built one. Your were right, the growth rate was masking it on my earlier attempt.

Thanks. [&o]

No prob. It's good to know for sure. I was going to do that too, so now I know it works  [;)]
 

A little relief for players who want to play on very large maps and are crippled by the effects of bureaucracy before they even meet other races:

tm.asp?m=2317808

Adds three population pacifying buildings in exchange for the old, overpriced population center.
Personally I'd only use that mod on really really large maps - starting at dense 250x250 maps or so.

These new buildings are outstanding. The first two alone give you +5 happiness for a combined 150/turn upkeep cost. Fantastically more efficient than the existing models. The last building is very pricey at 200/turn upkeep, but also gives you a whopping +4 benefit...and can be built multiple times.

These new buildings not only resolve the hash of the bureaucracy rules of the game, they probably also eliminate the need to constantly keep planets below pop cap. I'll be letting my worlds grow all the way to 100 now and tax them to the moon. No more stupid gulag worlds, either. My empires are gonna grow in style.

+9 happiness for 350 credits a turn is completely manageable as an expense and will alow us developing fanatics to really build up our colonies. They'll probably allow you to upgrade mines all the way to core, as well.

Edit: planning to try this out with the Teyes on a large map. (250 x 250.)

maybe they are a bit too good. time will tell...
btw, the buildings also cost one slot. maybe that balances out the somewhat excessive bonuses.

if you run in no problems building empires with teyes, then the happiness bonus is too good.
if you run in no problems building empires with the Unn, then I fucked up.