Hey everyone,
The update is a few days away, so this is a good time to start showing you some of the more salient points of Galactic Statecraft, our new free update! Today, we're showcasing several more features that we are introducing or changing to offer a more satisfying experience in leading your empire to the stars.
Pressure retake
Pressure as a game mechanic was often misunderstood and as a result, underutilized. It was designed as a way of measuring an empire's relative power, not only in military, but also in economic terms. This would help players and AIs make their decisions, as a relatively benign neighbor making drastic demands would get laughed off the room, but you'd want to know who you're saying no to when your galactic local superpower comes with a list of requests.
We have reworked what impacts pressure between empires, with its main sources being:
- Score comparison (as a general catch-all measurement of an Empire's power)
- Influence-related sources:
- Border friction: when two influence areas are overlapping, the one expanding the fastest will generate pressure on the other empire
- System under influence: if an influence area covers another player's system completely, it will generate pressure on its owner
- A new term in the diplomacy: you can pay a cost in influence to generate pressure against another empire
Just like now, diplomatic status and certain treaties act as pressure multipliers, which we're now displaying more directly.
We are also reworking diplomatic demands. Refusing a diplomatic demand is currently too easy: declare war and take on the problem head-on. It somewhat discourages pacifist but economically powerful empire from making demands, because war is always a possibility. The changes we made are the following:
- Simplify making demands by reducing the number of demand tiers down to 2, with:
- Tier I: resources or technologies
- Tier II: demands such as migrating population towards your empire, or taking a hero "hostage"
- Associating refusals with a strong economic penalty on the recipient, this making war harder to sustain should they refuse a demand
Constellation control
We're giving players a new incentive to explore and acquire real estate in their surroundings, with bonuses stemming from controlling the biggest share of a constellation. This also aims to challenge players to control clusters of star systems, and creates strategic values for colonization, as well as increasing tension over colonization. Starting once players control three systems in the same constellation, and provided they control the highest numbers, they will benefit from a bonus (randomly generated at galaxy creation):
- +15% Food on constellation
- +15% Industry on constellation
- +15% Dust on constellation
- +15% Science on constellation
- +15% Influence on constellation
This is it for today's changes! Tomorrow, we'll show some more of the changes coming to Endless Space 2 with the Galactic Statecraft update. We hope you're excited!
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