The Amkivaïs

Backstory

     Amkivaïs are often portrayed by those who do not know them enough as charismatic, competent and determined. All of this is true but a very important detail is lacking: they are not reliable. Profiteer and ill-intentioned, Amkivaïs traditionally raise deception as a real science. Their society is based on deceit, the most cunning gain everything, having a sense of justice is a weakness.

     Nevertheless if cunning is raised to the rank of art, physical violence and war are considered a lack of intelligence and humanity, expected only from animals. The only exception being self defense of course, but even revenge has to be tricky and intelligent.

     Now that they began contacting other space factions, new opportunities are offered to them. Their intellect and abilities at using others’ resources for themselves are their greatest skills. Discussing with Amkivaïs assure you to be at peace, but not the most profitable one for you.

Gameplay

• Influence zones : This faction can craft specifics buildings in their systems creating an influence zone around the systems. The influence zone can expand beyond Amkivar border and into other factions’ territories (major and minor) unless you are at war with them (cold war isn’t considered as war) . The influence zone grow each turn depending the system’s influence point production. Influence zone produce dust and diplomatic point proportionally to the number of other faction’s population in the “influence zone”.

• Forced peace : This faction can spend influence points to force another faction to be at peace with them.

• Lucrative peace : This faction gain a small amount of dust per turn for each faction their are at peace with, and a great amount of dust and diplomatic point for each faction they are allied with.

• Wonderful empire : This faction’s systems generate more influence points.

• Violence is for animals : This faction cannot declare war.

• Poorly trained army : This faction’s ships (excepted civilian and corvette) have great maluses in speed and military power outside the influence zone and little maluses inside the influence zone but outside the Amkivar border.

• Inefficace manual labor : Every system produces less industry and food.

     Basically, when playing Amkivar, you are forced to be at Peace. Your army would be inefficient outside your territory and the industry malus is going to make the crafting of ships expensive, so expanding would be tricky without the influence zone. This zone is your specificity, the core of your game. Put it in a wrong place or fail to expend it at a good rate and you are going to have a bad time. Since other faction tend to dislike having its territory in your zone, they may try to attack you but some influence point or a decent defensive army can allow you to overcome the situation.

     But be careful, influence points are your most precious consumables. Your industry and food production are poor but influence can buy you alliances, peace and indirectly dust. Obviously the Amkivaïs are made for a diplomatic victory. But they can also try and aim for a scientific or a wonder one. 

I like the theme this race has, how being pacifistic doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with being good natured. Very unique. However, it's not obvious to me how their faction trait of "influence zones" fits their lore. What is this zone?

A concern is when playing with them, if you ever lose a system early on you are permanently crippled because you can't declare war to get it back. Is there a way to fix this? For instance, maybe by allowing them to declare war, but with some penalty so it is not encouraged? I try a similar thing in my submission, but I feel you have great potential with the different backstory you've established.

TeddyTi wrote:

If they lose a planet early, well you can try to retrieve it in the same war maybe (it would be hard though). Or you can try to buy it later with influence point. I don't know how being able to buy systems would be unbalanced (but that's not my job ) but in civ you can buy cities, and I don't remember but maybe in Endless Legend too. It was your system so it can be cheaper I think. Or the system could be in the influence zone by default, like "Legacy of Amkivar : Every system who was part of the Amkivaïs are considered in the influence zone.", It could work (even with the RP, amkivaïs having some connections and habits on the place) but idk. What do you think would work the best ?

I like the "Legacy of Amkivar" trait idea. In fact, it could flat out replace the influence zone, by making it attached to population instead of a system. That way, if another faction steals some of your population with propaganda, they are effectively giving you free money. This in fact incentivizes the player to have their race sprinkled across as many systems as possible, and those citizens are sending money back home to you. That's a unique mechanic I haven't seen yet and could be expanded upon to be more synergistic with other faction traits. But yeah, I'm just babbling. Good stuff.

It could be interesting to use izkandaïs population and stranger propaganda, but can we actually act on it? It seems that propaganda only can attract stranger population in your systems and not the opposite. A faction that works that way (putting your population in other factions) is a great idea. I have to check exactly how population's relocation work, but yeah having the influence zone created around iskandaïs population instead of iskandaïs systems could work well. And yeah in this case losing a system early isn't going to be disastrous, but still a possibility for the opponent.

Friendly bump for another great submission.  

I had an idea that was really close to this gamewise (not the same story, mine was funnier but yours is more serious) and mine was about Alliance not simply peace but close enought that I will upvote this and not post mine. Hope you win. The "Can't declare war" is awesome, you would really have to be extra carefull when playing!