I'd just like to clarify that really I don't wanna press the FIDS bonus for each quarter - although I do think it does fit very nicely within the concepts given on the two (four) axes.



What I want is to make the field count. Make use of the two dimensional system capable of creating those fields, rather than having four sliders with one common starting point, for no reason at all. So any ideas are very valid and appreciated.



The placement of the "secondary axes" where the nodes are placed is also just to present the idea. They could easily be more of them, or less, they could not be placed using the same degree each time - I mean they could be closer to the main axes, or further away, depending on how it would work with the field (in fact while I was working on this I already thought that the closest secondary axes should be a little closer to their main axis, not all in the same distance, as it is presented). For example, it started out as "shapes" that if they are fully within the field/shadow, are unlocked. I made it the way with the dots on the fields, because I thought it's gonna be way more intuitive - and its closer to the original idea of the fields providing bonuses, instead of sliders directly.



(What I'm giving out is just a concept. Go ahead and paint over the images that I provided in the blog post, if you like.)

Nice idea. Actually what the nodes in between "should" give is sort of hinted by the fids in the background. An alternative for such synergies could perhaps be the capital producing certain luxuries or buffing the overall production of certain luxuries, so a luxury that gives military and economic buffs is offered as a node in the northwest between military and population. More free militia is another obvious one in the same area.



The change I personally would like though is a slightly different empire plan system. It goes like this, you pay upkeep for the policies you choose, but the initial cost is slightly reduced and the ability to change is much more frequent say every 5 turns on normal speed and less mandatory. Also you only pay initial cost for aquiring new policies but not for keeping the same configuration another round. If you run out of influence points it automatically scales back the highest developed policy, if it still turns out you are running out of influence the next turn the game again drops the most expensive policy and so on until you are in the black again with influence. The point being that you get much more flexible while also reducing the incentive to remember to not expand too much until the next empire plan, the upkeep cost will increase automatically with new cities and burroughs anyway. Or you can simply not worry about the empire plan at all unless you need to change it which is always around the corner instead of 15 turns away.

I still am in favor of this idea as a concept. With the shadows expansion coming out, it would stand to reason that the game is going to be changed up in a few ways mechanically already, so while the idea is really good, the specific bonus would probably need to be re-thought.

Oush's circle set up would probably make an ideal base concept... and with improvements to the AI coming out soon, a mechanics change like this may be more feasible....



If I may throw my own 2 cents in on the concept, I would suggest that the second tier synergies have interactions with the dlcs that amplitude has made thus far, mechanics oriented dlcs of the future included.

With that in mind, something like this is a more conceivable change to make once Amplitude feels that they are done adding new mechanics to Endless Legend.

Hoping to get an empire plan rework in Shadows expansion. Thread is dead for a long time and it seems unlikely, but it's frustrating to see there has been no change tbh, even though Oush suggested a really nice and detailed solution based on the foundation provided. I'm sure it would work great after some tweaking.



It's kinda sad to see that new mechanics are being implemented, while something that is just a plain waste of great potential is being left untouched.



EDIT: I mean, the main thing that came up here was that it's a neat idea overall and people would like to see that implemented, but we need bug fixing and more polish first - which was true back then, but is kinda irrelevant now.

While the idea is interesting I currently feel there are other aspects of the game that needs polishing before starting to rework concepts.

There is nothing really wrong with the empire plan, except as you pointed out that the chosen graphical representation of it is misguiding, but mechanically it's good and interesting.

That would be a really great improvement to the empire plan.

Oush wrote:
Offering synergy bonuses between adjacent focuses would lend a greater sense of specialization, and would encourage some new options. Good idea.



However, the number of points you have suggested is too many. The innermost circle would give synergy bonuses without investment in adjacent focuses. The advantages provided by emphasis in any one focus are well-enough represented already outside the Empire Plan (e.g. investing heavily in Science already lets you tech up more quickly to more powerful armies and better food production). More importantly, the synergy bonuses on the innermost circle would be so easy to get - a tier-1 investment in each focus would land you all 12 points on this innermost circle (80 influence at the first plan stage) - that these bonuses would have to be negligible, and not compelling.The second circle from the center has many of the same problems of the first - all 12 points can be collected with relatively little investment, so the bonuses they provide would need to be very small.



The outermost circle you've suggested is the spot where meaningful bonuses could begin to be offered. However, I believe that too little investment required to obtain these bonuses. When a player has enough influence to implement a tier 4 focus in the Empire Plan, picking up the adjacent tier 2 focuses is not very expensive. The points in this circle are still fairly easy to obtain; offering bland bonuses like +5% unit XP, +5% city ownership gain, etc. might be appropriate. But small, generic bonuses are not very compelling.



Rarer, more significant bonuses are more compelling. And your instinct to give purpose to the 2-dimensional depiction of the empire plan is a good one. With the problems described above in mind here's how I would like to see your idea implemented:



Offer two rings of bonuses, with 12 bonuses available total. This is depicted by the red points in my slipshod MS Paint edit of one of the images you provided:





The 4 bonuses of the inner ring are in the same spots as the center point in your 2nd ring. These points activate with any adjacency of 3-2 or greater (e.g. Science 3, Military 2). This would be a good spot for staple, empire-wide bonuses to FIDS, and the arrangement of FIDS in each field you suggested makes sense. So say, +10% Science in the Military/Science field, +10% Industry in the Science/Empire field, +10% Food in the Empire/Economy Field, and +10% Dust in the Economy/Military field. These bonuses are simple, general supplements to the bonuses already offered by the focuses themselves, and are available relatively early in the game.



The 8 bonuses of the outer ring would lie just past the points you initially placed in your third ring. Their placement a little farther from the center means that they would only activate on a 4-3 adjacency bonus. A 4-4 adjacency bonus would activate both outer bonuses within that field. These synergy bonuses, requiring a significant expenditure to activate, would be powerful but specialized. They should be compelling enough to tempt players to spend influence on synergy bonuses, urging players to shake up their strategies late game. A few examples I've thought up while typing this up:



-Conscription (4 Economy/Population - 3 Military): -20% to the Industry cost of producing new major faction units.

-Contracted Specialists (4 Military - 3 Economy/Population): -20% to the Dust cost of recruiting new heroes from the market.

-Military-Industrial Complex (4 Military - 3 Science/Industry): -20% to the Dust cost of retrofitting units.

-Process Engineering (4 Science/Industry - 3 Military): -20% to the Strategic Resource cost of new equipment.

-Prefab Mining Ops (4 Science/Industry - 3 Empire/Expansion): -20% to the Industry cost of new resource-exploiting tile improvements.

-Agricultural Innovation (4 Empire/Expansion - 3 Science/Industry): -10% to the Food cost of population growth.

-Crowdsourcing (4 Empire/Expansion - 3 Economy/Population): -20% to the industry cost of producing new Borough Streets.

-Indulgence (4 Economy/Population - 3 Empire/Expansion): -20% to the Dust cost of Luxury Resources on the market.



These bonuses could use tweaking, but I've got to get going. The big takeaway, though: giving purpose to the 2-d depiction is a great idea, but fewer points with more specific bonuses lends itself to greater customization and more compelling decision-making for the player. I hope to read your response!

Offering synergy bonuses between adjacent focuses would lend a greater sense of specialization, and would encourage some new options. Good idea.



However, the number of points you have suggested is too many. The innermost circle would give synergy bonuses without investment in adjacent focuses. The advantages provided by emphasis in any one focus are well-enough represented already outside the Empire Plan (e.g. investing heavily in Science already lets you tech up more quickly to more powerful armies and better food production). More importantly, the synergy bonuses on the innermost circle would be so easy to get - a tier-1 investment in each focus would land you all 12 points on this innermost circle (80 influence at the first plan stage) - that these bonuses would have to be negligible, and not compelling.The second circle from the center has many of the same problems of the first - all 12 points can be collected with relatively little investment, so the bonuses they provide would need to be very small.



The outermost circle you've suggested is the spot where meaningful bonuses could begin to be offered. However, I believe that too little investment required to obtain these bonuses. When a player has enough influence to implement a tier 4 focus in the Empire Plan, picking up the adjacent tier 2 focuses is not very expensive. The points in this circle are still fairly easy to obtain; offering bland bonuses like +5% unit XP, +5% city ownership gain, etc. might be appropriate. But small, generic bonuses are not very compelling.



Rarer, more significant bonuses are more compelling. And your instinct to give purpose to the 2-dimensional depiction of the empire plan is a good one. With the problems described above in mind here's how I would like to see your idea implemented:



Offer two rings of bonuses, with 12 bonuses available total. This is depicted by the red points in my slipshod MS Paint edit of one of the images you provided:





The 4 bonuses of the inner ring are in the same spots as the center point in your 2nd ring. These points activate with any adjacency of 3-2 or greater (e.g. Science 3, Military 2). This would be a good spot for staple, empire-wide bonuses to FIDS, and the arrangement of FIDS in each field you suggested makes sense. So say, +10% Science in the Military/Science field, +10% Industry in the Science/Empire field, +10% Food in the Empire/Economy Field, and +10% Dust in the Economy/Military field. These bonuses are simple, general supplements to the bonuses already offered by the focuses themselves, and are available relatively early in the game.



The 8 bonuses of the outer ring would lie just past the points you initially placed in your third ring. Their placement a little farther from the center means that they would only activate on a 4-3 adjacency bonus. A 4-4 adjacency bonus would activate both outer bonuses within that field. These synergy bonuses, requiring a significant expenditure to activate, would be powerful but specialized. They should be compelling enough to tempt players to spend influence on synergy bonuses, urging players to shake up their strategies late game. A few examples I've thought up while typing this up:



-Conscription (4 Economy/Population - 3 Military): -20% to the Industry cost of producing new major faction units.

-Contracted Specialists (4 Military - 3 Economy/Population): -20% to the Dust cost of recruiting new heroes from the market.

-Military-Industrial Complex (4 Military - 3 Science/Industry): -20% to the Dust cost of retrofitting units.

-Process Engineering (4 Science/Industry - 3 Military): -20% to the Strategic Resource cost of new equipment.

-Prefab Mining Ops (4 Science/Industry - 3 Empire/Expansion): -20% to the Industry cost of new resource-exploiting tile improvements.

-Agricultural Innovation (4 Empire/Expansion - 3 Science/Industry): -10% to the Food cost of population growth.

-Crowdsourcing (4 Empire/Expansion - 3 Economy/Population): -20% to the industry cost of producing new Borough Streets.

-Indulgence (4 Economy/Population - 3 Empire/Expansion): -20% to the Dust cost of Luxury Resources on the market.



These bonuses could use tweaking, but I've got to get going. The big takeaway, though: giving purpose to the 2-d depiction is a great idea, but fewer points with more specific bonuses lends itself to greater customization and more compelling decision-making for the player. I hope to read your response!

I think this is a step in the right direction to improving the Empire Plan, but I don't think that flat out FIDS/I bonuses are the way to go. Would definitely like to see Amplitude give some consideration to the possibilities of this design, though.

JoeTheLoser wrote:
Interesting ideas --- of course I find it hard to judge how good/bad the current empire system is as it is broken anyway



The +20% bonus for units and +33% bonuses for buildings are actually -10%/=16.67% penalties, respectively.



At least for some people; not sure if this bug is universal or "spotty". My guess is the bug isn't universal or else this thread would have already pointed it out?!

I'm glad you mentioned this



At first I thought it was only me, but now you have confirmed my suspicions.

I would totally support your decision to report this to the Bugs section... I would do it myself but, I am a bit lazy nowadays

Interesting ideas --- of course I find it hard to judge how good/bad the current empire system is as it is broken anyway



The +20% bonus for units and +33% bonuses for buildings are actually -10%/=16.67% penalties, respectively.



At least for some people; not sure if this bug is universal or "spotty". My guess is the bug isn't universal or else this thread would have already pointed it out?!

Phalnax811 wrote:
I kinda wanted to vote this "Gtfo Razis. GTFO" because it is silly.

I wanted to make something like that to make sure voting lame-ass "yes please, do this!" will actually be incentive enough to overweight something "cool". This way we know if community actually wants it, or we only kinda want it, but not that much really.



I think it looks pretty good so far.

I kinda wanted to vote this "Gtfo Razis. GTFO" because it is silly.

Mansen wrote:
That's kind of what I mean by "involved" - There's too much to a system that doesn't deserve to be so complex.

Ok, now I understand better what you were trying to say - but now I disagree even more.



I think Empire Plan is a big part of the game, moreover it's something very specific to Endless Legend. It should be fully fleshed out, and surely "deserves" it.

Razis wrote:
It looks complex, but really it's not at all - in fact it's very intuitive, when you think about it. Field is what generates the bonus. More field in one particular quarter - more bonuses. The factor that determines if it's complex or not for the player is only what sort of bonuses this unlocks - it it were to be simple, flat bonus to one FIDS resource, for example, it's even more intuitive than what we have now.

That's kind of what I mean by "involved" - There's too much to a system that doesn't deserve to be so complex.

To keep it short: I think game does not make use of the field you create from the two-dimensional empire plan system, it's disappointing in it's mechanics, and I have and idea how to make it really interesting and way more intuitive.



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/entry.php?780-Empire-Plan-is-wasted-potential.-An-idea.



Have a look at the above blog entry (it's mostly a couple of self-explanatory images, not a long read at all).







Created this poll here to gather some response. So, what do you think?

Mansen wrote:
Too involved and complex for my tastes to be honest. I like it just the way it is.

It looks complex, but really it's not at all - in fact it's very intuitive, when you think about it. Field is what generates the bonus. More field in one particular quarter - more bonuses. The factor that determines if it's complex or not for the player is only what sort of bonuses this unlocks - it it were to be simple, flat bonus to one FIDS resource, for example, it's even more intuitive than what we have now.

KrimsonVagus wrote:
So let me see if I understand...

Briefly speaking, if the shadow of the policy triangle overlaps one of the "intermediate nodes", that intermediate node will be activated and give you an extra bonus that is a combination of characteristics from the 2 nearby main branches. If that is the idea, then I think it's great!

Yes, that is the basic principle. Ideally it would calculate the area in one of the quarters, and determine the bonus using the field itself. The idea I presented is a simplification of that - I'm not a programmer, but from what I understand coding is pretty much logic; and I can easily imagine this as very doable in that sense, while "teaching" program to understand what is "field" and "area" or "shadow" would be way more problematic. Like I said in the blog post, there are only 14 combinations with the thresholds that we have now - all you need to do is program those 14 combinations, and then just mirror once to give you entire quarter, and then 4 times to give you the entire circle.

TheWhetherMan wrote:
Empire plans shouldn't give influence. (...) There's plenty of room for 4 more description boxes, nice and clean. More to chew on:

Mansen wrote:
You're spending Influence...to get influence. It doesn't flow well.

About influence - Agreed. That's exactly the first thing I thought when I considered what sort of bonus should be on the quarters, and thought about FIDS...I. Influence is what you use to generate the plan, so it doesn't have a spot there.

Note that there is currently no bonus to influence in the plan as it is now, too. So Amplitude figured this out already.

In the version presented, FIDS is clean, and takes one quarter each.



About room for descriptions - What I did now was just put 4 FIDS logos, (which I do realise are barely visible, for a reason - I didnt wan't people to think it was about that.) Yeah, there is easily room to place 4 aditional boxes of info OR tooltips hovering over the nodes - but what I would personally would like to see best, is the nodes bonuses are simple enough that they can be just contained within small node icons. I mean something like +1 Food/pop could be easily contained within a single, small icon placed directly on the circle, given that the symbols game uses are pretty well established and make sense.

That is exactly why it shouldn't give you Influence - You're spending Influence...to get influence. It doesn't flow well.

KrimsonVagus wrote:
Speaking of "complicated", have you seen Distant Worlds? Now THAT game is hardcore

They/You wish - Distant Worlds is incredibly simple once you sit down with it. The game isn't particular complex, just bogged down by an unintuitive interface and game mechanics that you usually don't see in 4X but in RTS games.

TheWhetherMan wrote:
Empire plans shouldn't give influence.

Um.. why not? I'm pretty sure there are other ways to use Influence other than empire plans. Influence is a dynamic resource much like Dust... especially if you're playing Cultists >> More influence is nice to have



Any specific reasons why "Empire plans shouldn't give influence"?

I'm not sure this is a problem, at least not a problem you can fix without making an already complicated system much more complicated

Speaking of "complicated", have you seen Distant Worlds? Now THAT game is hardcore



Other than that, great ideas so far

I like it the way it is.

KrimsonVagus wrote:


EPEE: Selling resources, units and heroes to the Marketplae gives you Influence points as percentage of Dust profits (or just more Dust?)... There is one small problem with this proposal from the OP: What if I decided to take the Military plan level 2 and Expansion plan Level 2? Since the shadow of triangle will be smaller, does that mean I will get less bonuses than if I took 2 adjacent branches? If so, opposite branches become underpowered when taken together. We need to modify the positions of intermediate nodes to compensate OR we could add implicit bonuses from opposing branches.

Empire plans shouldn't give influence. I'm not sure this is a problem, at least not a problem you can fix without making an already complicated system much more complicated. There's plenty of room for 4 more description boxes, nice and clean. More to chew on:



MEP

1: Reduced retrofit dust cost

2: Reduced cost of buying and reviving heroes

3: Buying a mercenary in a city stops rebellion (can you buy mercs in a rebellious city?)

4: Recieve dust equal to HP of units you kill



EPEE

1. Dust rushed buildings give temporary happiness

2: Trade routes give extra food

3: Watchtowers improve trade routes sent from the region they're in

4: Full vision of each region you're sending a trade route to or through



EESI

1. Stockpiles from exploring ruins

2. New cities start with a mill foundry and library

3. All heroes get XP whenever you research a tech

4. Science and industry buildings cost less production in fervent cities



MSI

1. Science and industry buidlings give garrison XP per turn.

2. Garrison gives bonus population

3. Units get bonus morale when your empire is fervent

4. Free tech when you kill an enemy hero (doesn't count if last stand activated)