nope.

Seems better to me. As population grows and tech improves, productivity should improve exponentially.

Actually, while over-all productivity does grow in something like an exponential fashion (as long as you are increasing both number/quality of buildings and population, neither of which is guaranteed), Bonuses scale linearly with population. 250% research means 1 production = 2.5 research, and 2 production = 5 research. If you were to graph it it would be a straight line, meaning the scaling is linear. Now, obviously I know what you mean, because you have 2 linear growth models that mutually scale; but it is important make sure you say what you mean, especially when your capital letters are yelling so loud in my eyedrums.

sorry but by their very nature, linear systems when combined , no mater how many, REMAIN a linear system. It may feel exponential to you but it is not.  Your on the right track though, if the human player survives long enough, and builds his LINEAR empire correctly he will reach a tipping point  and mop the floor with the AI, baring any non-causal events to the contrary

Marigoldran, it's not exponential. Do you actually understand what an exponential equation is..? It's not just anything that gets big quickly, which your (numerous) posts about this suggest you believe it is.

Saying it's exponential 'because it sounds cooler than quadratic' is pretty much going to make the Devs (or, indeed, anyone over the age of about 15 who paid attention in maths) think you're an idiot, particularly when it's combined with posts where you say they don't understand maths. Seriously, if you're casting doubt on someone else's math skills, get your terminology right, or they're going to read what you said, point out the extraordinarily obvious flaw in your logic (i.e., the fact you don't appear to understand the words your using), and then ignore anything further you say on the subject.

There ARE exponential increases at play in the game - tech costs increase exponentially (though by a very small exponent), and colonization is exponential. The game would probably also benefit from population growth being handled exponentially, so a planet with 50 population produces people faster than one with 0.5 population. But no matter how high your population grows, it doesn't effect the size of the multiplier from industry - the values of the multipliers are not proportional to the base. 

There's genuine issues with the output equations - the multipliers at play are far too high, adjacency bonuses are excessive (on a per level basis - reducing the number of levels, as SD are presently attempting, doesn't work as well for fixing this as reducing the amount per level would), and we could do with some kind of limit to total population (perhaps a food modifier based on planet size would be a good move). Almost none of these have any exponential operations involved at all, and in the one that does have (adjacency) the problem isn't in the exponential component (which caps out at 3 anyway).

Either 5% per level is too high (I think it is, which is why I reduced it to 1% per level), or the number of levels you're getting is too high (which SD seem to be plumping for), because some buildings can hit level 20 with careful placement. Hitting level 20 is fine if the bonus per level is low; having 5% per level is fine if the number of levels is constrained to 4-5. But both together is not fine, and results in adjacency bonuses worth multiple extra factories.

In other words: 

The major difference between Gal Civ II and III is that in II factories did NOT increase the productivity of a planet.  What factories did instead was they CONVERTED economic productivity from population into other forms like starships.

In contrast, in Gal Civ III factories and starbases directly INCREASE the productivity of a planet, leading to exponential feedback loops.  Building a factory on a planet increases the economic productivity of a planet, thereby increasing the rate at which you can build another factory.  In Gal Civ II you couldn't do this because you'd go bankrupt if your population wasn't large enough to support the production from the factories.  

As others have pointed out, it's not exponential. However, I also agree with others that the system allows for too much compounding.  This is one of the reasons I requested from Paul (the designer) to eliminate the civilization wide level bonus technologies.  It's a small but important step.

Similarly, I think that there should be diminishing reruns on leveling up (5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, 1%...) But that will come in time.

However, none of that has much to do with the AI.  I am generally against gimping the enjoyment of players (the adjacency system IS extremely fun and rewarding) so that the AI is more competitive against min/maxers. 

The adjacency system wasn't even the biggest issue we've encountered. It was the ongoing projects and their compounding that was an issue. 

When we do replace the per planet production wheel, we're not going to just take it out and not put something 3else there. Instead, you'll have a system that will allow you to emphasize a particular focus for the planet. It won't command your citizens to all go work in factories. Rather, it'll be more like providing subsidies to citizens who choose to work in factories or labs or what have you.

Also, further duplicate posts on this topic will be removed. Please don't make the same topic over and over again. There's a lot of interesting economic, political, technogical and AI discussions we can have and we'll have them over the next several years as the game continues to evolve based on player feedback.

Yes, reading this from marigoldran..he needs some more math lessons about exponential grow..to learn a more precise definition
x is be a increase with the same amount , while y is indeed accelerate with not a equal amount  

y= b x g^t  , example  y = e^x (b=1) and the e function has always positive values for y

x= 0 => y= 1
x=1 => y = e
x=2 => y = e^2 ..in general , there is no accelaration in x , but only in y value

What would be nice a feature that would allow us to control this focus on a global scale, ie. set or unset focus on all planets to research/... with a single click. And perhaps, in a sensitive intelligent way eg. if I take away all focus from researchfocus planets it won't affect or screw up my other focused planets. Because, usually when one plays around with the global slider one has to adjust the planets as well.

***

Without wanting to sound rude, but

Wrong. Misleadingly imprecise. See full explanation below.

It didn't always, esp. not during the colony rush. And looking at the sliders of any given game there certainly was no linearity whatsoever.

False. Your conclusion is based on a not-right conclusion in the first place but even without that it would still be wrong because economy in GC2 was much more complex than what you present here.

It wasn't. And certainly not for the AI. In the unmodded game all AIs are unable to maintain a working economy even full gifted during the startup of the game. Most stay at 20% global spending throughout the first year, because their broken economy forces them to do so. Some do even never recover. 

OF COURSE they did. Did you actually play that game at all? I wonder how you can post the complete opposite of what actually is true??? Factories DID increase planetary production, that you had to pay for maintenance + the raised production doesn't do away with that very fact.

So what... Initially population is so low that you cannot run your empire via taxes anyway. Finding solutions to this problem is exactly what a player had to do and is something where the AI was really bad in, like:

- Getting bcs from surveying anomalies. In DreadLords there were even +5000 bcs ones, with multiple speedy ships one could even reach a point where there was so much income one had to quickbuy stuff in order to not end a turn above 20k bcs (which triggered a penalty).

- Trade/freighters.

- Techtrade.

These were all viable methods to keep expanding + continuously colonizing at 100% prod spending even while your pop was in its starting terms +8.1b ppl. Every new planet requires ~25bcs initially to cover for, a sum that did rise naturally while you keep adding buildings. And as the game was designed, the combined costs from maint + production did overrun the growth of population, because:

- LowPop planets did acquire new inhabitants very slowly, hence from 1b to ~1200b pop the growth was exponential, then it became linear to ~0.2b per turn -  although before PopGrowthAbility - which could be used to boost this to a cap of max ~1.2b per turn, so it wasn't a real linearity either (but usually only practically relevant when playing Breeder + using Fert Clinics)

Generally, the economy in GC2 was based on your INCOME. Which was based on {early} anomalies, techtrade, freighterincome and {midgame} TAXES.

First off, taxes are based on your general tax sliders which caused a moral penalty so amount of moral ability either from racial, techs, buildings or resources mattered alot.

Second, the income would be boosted by your economics ability where the exact same could be said from - racial, techs, buildings or resources will increase it, as you can see up to this point it's still unrelated to population, but all of these factors do actually SCALE or MULTIPLY with one another (which is something that you claim resulting in exponentiality...).

As a matter of fact there are even more factors present which can positively influence this like planet quality (more tiles, more buildings, more bonuses), terraforming (<--), high PQ planet (+10 moral) etc pp

And only then we come to your population. The first thing that the formulae which calculates taxes does it puts the number from each planets population to its square root, which mathematically kills all your straw arguments of "GC2 pop/econ was linear". To make an example, if I were to have 8b pp on my starting planet that formulae will return a ~2,8 population value, if I double that pop to 16b it'll return 4 (which is NOT double of 2,8 so no linearity here).

And if I go and distribute that pop over 2 planets instead of 1 it'll return 2 + 2 = 4 for 8b ppl, and 2,8 + 2,8 = 5,6 for 16b ppl. So as you can see the number of planets do also matter not just the sheer amount of pop.

To sum it up, you have an obscene amount of stats, factors or influenceing things that build your economy in GC2, and most scale multiplicative with one another. As a result, most games (if played successful, ie. player is able to conquer AI worlds once no more free worlds are there to colonize) the population graph will look like this:

As you can see, pop did rise very very slowly during the first half year although I was colonizing right from start. This is because new planets w/ just 0.25b pop do not gain much pop per turn. You also see that this rapidly increases once certain thresholds have been overcome + more growth bonuses have been gained, resulting in linear increase because of the former mentioned cap of 1.2p pop/turn, and you already witness a certain stagnation towards the end as lowPQ planets cap at maxpop.

Well as much as it pains me to say, you have actually made a good coherent & Long story short point here (just kidding about the pains me part).  

I agree  but still have faith SD will get III tuned in eventually

Well maybe if you had started with this instead of all the wrong snarky stuff about exponential growth we would not have missed your point

Judging from your others threads the only thing you really found interesting is finding exploits, then exhibiting them to the forums and egocentrically patting yourself on the back for being a super-duper player for beating the AI on max diff with exploiting! And back then you also never played out ANY of your games because of repetitive boredom (you basically aborted all games at the beginning of midgame) so how is that different now?

And if you start to formulate your mainpoint in post#14 instead of the OP it's not my problem, and I'm surely not going to repeat the various valid points others have already made against it. I'm simply correcting a few wrong allegations made on your side, (allegations you use to jump to general conclusions...) just like this one:

Wrong. The most essential stat (+ its gain) is free - population. Set your slider to 0% production and taxes at a reasonable setting you'll see you'll gain surplus income + population growth. Sure, you could overtax your pop until approval drops to below 20% and you'll loose population (bluntly speaking the game is telling you you've been too greedy) but shortly after your planet will find its equilibrium @ +~20% because loss of pop also reduces the planetary approval penalty.

What super-low? You only need to be above 39% approval to still gain pop which is generally achieved by a middle to heavy set taxes. (Which is BTW also a very good setting initially to not go broke during the colony rush - except when playing Breeder). Why do you always need to over-exaggerate to illustrate your points? Perhaps there're folks here who don't GC2 and take it for real.... -.- 

Sure, but in the long run they pay off immensely. You're right in that the game actually presents you some initial economic problems that have to be overcome, and that there are multiple solutions which may vary from mapsetup to mapsetup, but once you've got the hang of it the "challenging and fun" became mandatory routine as well. 

- Don't build facs/labs on new planets, starport... leave social empty if necessary, queue low maint econ/moral building or better: fert clinic, after some time followed by some facs then overbuild to reach final specialised design. Always the same procedure...

The production costs of a Freighter is around 100 to 200 bcs. Once established, a trade route nets from +10bcs to 200bcs (medium map+trade bonuses) per turn to obviously MUCH MORE on even larger galaxies - to do this is a NO-BRAINER (and that's why trade routes need to be limited). Sure, you have a small onetime investment but if used right, you can gain alot of profit from it. It's one thing you want to do ASAP at all times and one other method to dwarth off going broke during the first parts of any game.

So you say Freighters are useless on larger maps? lmao. In reality it's the opposite. Start a gigantic but all-rare galaxy with any race, see for yourself. Ofc, I seem to remember you only play insane-all abundant maps (in GC3), then yes, the tax-income from the total habitable planet count will far outweigh trade. But such a setup is played only by a very minority of players, it would be idiotic to use this as a frame of reference for a general balancing act. You whine about repetetiveness yet start the most repetetive games thinkably, you get exactly what you're asking for! 

And it did cripple the AI game. Example:

Turn1: Colonize seconary planet + rushbuy startport + rushbuy colony ship at home planet

Turn2: Rushbuy colony ship at secondary planet

Turn3: Rushbuy 2 scouts

Starting 3000bcs are gone. Colony upkeep outweighs general income, AI balance goes negative --> reduce prod slider to 20%. (doesn't really recover because maintenance is still fully applied!) --> cripples game.

If lucky and found bc anomaly burn it by rushing whatever is on whatever queue --> doesn't come out of 20% spending because increases are always very reluctantly by +2 - +4 %.

I don't see these kinds of problems in GC3 (at least, not that heavy) so there is a real evolution in design today. In GC2 esp. new players faced alot of problems establishing a working economy and the forums shows evidence of games that were in stasis and completely unplayably. (for example, start heavy colonization, build alot of fac/labs, then wait for your economy to crumble under colony maint alone --> reduce slider to 0% spending and still make minus cash... click 100 empty turns to hopeto come out of debt all the while witnessing how the AI rounds you up...)

As of now, I haven't seen a single thread describing such a scenario in GC3.

I think you had to research trade to get freighters, right? There were better things to research as I recall.  

Also, if you aren't producing anything the AI is going to seriously out-expand you on the larger maps.  If you do produce things, you need a higher tax rate, which means your income growth drops off a cliff because your population won't budge much. The optimum strategy is Super-Breeder with phases between 0% tax rate and 60% tax rate- periods of pop growth followed by periods of expansion.  

But it doesn't change the fact that the PRIMARY source of economic growth comes from population growth.  There was no good alternative in the long run.  You had to expand to increase pop.  Building factories simply doesn't help.  

In contrast, in Gal Civ III there are THREE ways of increasing production.  

1.  Pop growth.

2.  %multipliers from planet buildings.

3.  Raw %multipliers from economic starbases and Interstellar governance techs.  

And the %multipliers can increase planet production by multiples of 6 or 7 or more.  

This is why you're seeing the obscene production numbers that humans can pump out.  It's exponential growth, and exponential growth is almost impossible to balance.  

Gal Civ III has the opposite of Gal Civ II.  The economy in Gal Civ III GIVES TOO MANY BONUSES, just as Gal Civ II was too demanding.  That's my point.  

It's beating most of the other threads out there! You may not like it but the interest towards this thread is above average if you look at the numbers!  

Once again, to summarize the major points:

1.  Gal Civ III provides too many economic bonuses.

2.  Gal Civ III lacks economic maluses.

3.  The AI is unable to take advantage of either.  But the human certainly can. 

4.  The exponentially growing power curves that a human can create means balancing it is extremely difficult.  Either the AI gets too many bonuses and the human never catches up or the AI gets too little and because of the exponential curve those bonuses become inconsequential.  

Net result? Game is unbalanced and too easy even on suicidal.  

That's boring.  

If you guys think my post style is childish and immature, so what? I don't know who you are, and you don't know who am I .  Why should I care what you think of me personally? Do we know each other in real life? Consequently, your opinions of my posting style are unimportant.  Consequently I will do as I wish.  As long as I do not insult you personally (which I have not done), and keep my statements grounded in fact, all is good.  

YOUR STATEMENT DOES NOT MAKE LOGICAL SENSE.  

The economic system for Gal Civ III needs an overhaul.  The game simply provides too many economic bonuses.  

Hopefully I have explained my position in a clear and succinct sentence.