economic bonuses do not pay

Anecdotally, I chose Federalists + 10% more econ during my current game and I have so much money I can't spend it all. So it does appear to do something.. I didn't actually get out my calculator and track the number though.

BTW: I know this is the setting that Brad typically plays with. I doubt it is broken.

You may be right.

But I think that getting no bonus at start is harder evidence than your suggestions. So I'll stubbornly consider it broken until proven the opposite.

This reminds me of the complaints that the bonuses to military and social prodcution do not do anything. Last I heard Stardock was insisting that they did work, but I never did hear an explanation of why they appeared to be doing nothing. If such an explanation exists then perhaps it applies here as well... Anyone know?

Bonku the % bonus is truncated or rounded I believe. Thus at 10, a 40% bonus (in total) is still 10. It did that to me the first turn too. Then once it got going, I actually saw the bonus. Either A: It's an early game bug only, that self corrects later or b: there's rounding or truncating going on.

This has confused me from time to time as well. But surely 40% of 10 is 4, so you'd expect to get 14 right?

Mostly I just ignore the stats screen, I assume that everything I collecy matters, and that changing governemnts helps the income as well, though I never really check it very carefully.

I think the problem is the production cap and taxes cap. The bonus is applied before the cap, so if you're at the cap you get no bonus. Really, the bonuses for race, resources, social projects, and wonders should be applied AFTER the cap. Only the starbase bonuses are abusable, and need to be capped.

"and that changing governemnts helps the income as well,"

Actually, it reduces income but raises production. I finally noticed that today after a month of playing

This has confused me from time to time as well. But surely 40% of 10 is 4, so you'd expect to get 14 right?

Yup but somehow mine doesn't ever seem change till it hits 20 although I haven't payed that close attention to it.

I quite definitely notice an increase in income when I switch govt. types, and I have checked from one turn to the next in the early game. And as stated, morale is harder to maintain. This I have noticed because I keep my morale at a certain level, and have to make tax rate adjustments following govt. changes to keep a certain morale level.

~SDC~

Vern what version you playing? Ive noticed it much easier to keep up morale on the latest vs what came earlier. I think there was a tweak in there somewhere.

I used to have awful trouble with it when I went to the "higher forms of govt" Now not much at all.

I for one would like to see them tweak it back so that govt choice becomes that (a choice) rather than hurrying through the progression.

Here's some data I gathered with 1.035 a couple of days back. Test planets were 19 in size, both had soil enhancement and habitat improvement along with entertainment network, then were allowed to max their population. Tax rate was set at 40%. The goal of the test was to see how a pure economic bonus set of racial traits compared with +production/+research bonuses. I was curious because with a better economy you can set your sliders higher, would that compensate for having less +bonus to those areas?

(The 'turns to build' in the following is with the Spending slider set to as close to 0 net profit as possible without going negative, and with the sliders for each individual area set to 33%)

First setup: +50% economy, +20% military and research. Turns to build constructor is 22, turns to research improved enviromental controls is 41.

Second setup: +40% social, +40% military, and +20% research. Turns to build constructor is 25, turns to research improved enviromental controls is 65.

So clearly economic bonus are working, I believe the reason you aren't seeing it at first is what Pontius said, the values are too small to show up when truncated to integers.

I didn't post this before because the test is incomplete, never tested the social build times, but figured I'd post what I had because it was relevant to this discussion. Interesting to note though that the +50% economy plus +20% military beats +40% military (12% faster), and also interesting to see how much faster +50% economy combined with +20% research is than the +20% research bonus alone (37% faster).

Pontius,

In my latest game, playing with the latest version, it seems a bit harder than 1.03. I'm playing on Painful difficulty level, large galaxy, occasional scattered stars. This being my first game on 1.04, that makes it a limited sample as far as morale goes. But the income increase I have notice over the last few versions. Of course, I don't have great PQ's in this one, my top being 22 so far, and the others around 17-19 after soil and hab. Not great pickings this time around. Pop. growth is making it such that most of my morales keep staying in hi 50's to low 60's while trying to keep a decent income. On top of that, only one computer player will do any business with me, and the others are wary or worst. I could be suffering from some destab. efforts. Then again, maybe I just suck at the game hehe.

~SDC~

Vorlin,
It would perhaps be valuable to also record the "income" and "expense" values for the planet at those times, so we could see just where the bonuses are going.
Great job on the testing; I just don't have a patience to do that...I'm too busy actually playing

I play Federalists and +20% bonus, and by mid game, I'm floating in money, even when spending 100%. Of course my +20% morale means I can tax higher too. Alos my early research is often to improve my trading...

That's not proof that it works, but when I try other combinations I don't have this "problem".

A quick and easy way to test things is to use a small or medium size galaxy, set the abundance to 'rare', and make sure you start with a fairly common planet size (so that when you make new games for comparison you can ctrl-N to the same size again fairly quickly). The tricky part is being patient enough to take the time to make sure you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison. It's easy for a bonus to sneak its way into the mix and mess everything up. I had to restart one of my tests, for instance, because some goofy AI just had to run a freighter to my colony about 10 turns before the test was done. *growl*

I've found it's valuable to test not everything, but instead to test your own assumptions. For instance, if you always take +XXX for whatever reason it's good to test that against alternatives to see if that is really doing as much as you think it is. Sometimes you can be surprised by the results.

It seems that Apolytoners are not really interested (i wanted to do it for our clan), so i can give a link here.
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85148
If i'll see some interest, then i'll complete this.
Note - most of this are just how i understand Economy in this game.

~SDC~

Vorlin,
It would perhaps be valuable to also record the "income" and "expense" values for the planet at those times, so we could see just where the bonuses are going.
Great job on the testing; I just don't have a patience to do that...I'm too busy actually playing

Ack...sorry for the double post. My computer did some really odd stuff there...

To Nibor
I see you don't followed a link? Too bad. There you can see where bonuses are going.

~SDC~

Ellestar,
That's some really good information you've gathered; I'm still reading over it.
I noticed you've asked a few times for assistance in adding detailed English explanations; I'd be more than happy to help. I think you've done a great job already, but I have a strong mathematical background, and the tables and formulas make sense to me.
Thanks for the work!

I think that economy bonuses only apply to income from population (ie taxes), not the income from the planet itself - at the start of the game, nearly all the income is from the PQ... This, plus rounding, explains why you don't see much benefit from economy bonuses at the start.

~SDC~

Ellestar:

My turn to say this now... don't be so sure LOL

http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GS&id=58614

To Nibor

I am glad that you are interested. But for now i think it's will be better to wait for 1.04 patch - there may be some changes.

~SDC~