Clarste wrote:

Let me start by saying that Forced Laws are a very interesting system. Simply by having a certain party in control of your Senate, you get access to huge boosts, nearly on the level of a Faction Affinity, that cannot be gained in any other way (as in, despite requiring low support, you can never actually vote on them). That said, I think that power also makes them difficult to balance properly, since unlike actual Faction Affinities they can be gained or lost. Too weak, and you'll never want that party in control of your Senate if at all possible, and too strong and they become nearly mandatory for the Faction using them. So with that in mind, I'd like to share my thoughts on each of them, along with a review of their balance.

Gamebreaking:

• Scientist Force Law: Can research 1 tier ahead.
  • This one is just ridiculous, and frankly might even overshadow the Sophon Affinity as "why you'd want to play a Sophon". Being able to get Tier 2 tech right at the beginning of the game for cheap changes things so much, especially unlocking Development Plans which can add +50 of a resource to any system for incredibly cheap. +50 of, well, pretty much anything within the first 20 turns will change the outcome of the entire game, no question. Maybe this much power is fine, for the Sophons, but that just means they get penalized for not having it, which is relevant because they almost always lose the Senate to Pacifists early on. Not to mention the incredible power another Faction could get if they somehow become Scientists. And this will only get more powerful as we get further into Early Access, because there will be more technological tiers to use it on. Personally I think it would be reasonable to switch this with the Sophon Affinity (bonus to research when researching tech less people already know).

Game Changing:

• Ecologist Forced Law: Can colonize any type of world except gas giant (with FIDSI penalty w/o the proper tech).
  • Population is king in this game, and this expands your population considerably. The penalties are almost irrelevant, because not only does this give you the extra population, it also spares you from having to research 4 separate techs per era, effectively giving you a huge research boost that you can spend on other technologies. Like, maybe ones that give you extra FIDSI to make up for the penalties? The only reason this isn't listed as gamebreaking is because none of the current Factions start with it, but that's subject to change, depending on the details of the Ecologist faction. That said, honestly I feel like this is the ideal power level at the moment. Being able to switch to Ecologist in the midgame provides a huge boost to your empire and rewards you for playing the Senate. In theory anyway.
• Religious Forced Law: Can attack or invade during Cold War (ie: do not need to declare war).
  • I listed this here because it changes the rules of the game entirely, and I find that sort of thing compelling, but honestly I don't see how it's especially powerful. Declaring war doesn't cost all that much, and I'd imagine that attacking another player's colony is a pretty good way to get them to declare war on you, so in that sense it hardly does anything. On the other hand, I haven't played the Vodyani all that much, and the devs ave said that Forced Truce (and therefore war itself) is getting some changes in the pipeline, so maybe I'm misjudging this. I certainly can't imagine any other Faction appreciating this all that much, if at all.

Powerful:

• Militarist Forced Law: Receive empire approval bonus for each war currently active.
  • Simple enough. Presumably it's meant to be a way for the Cravers to keep their happiness up while on the warpath, but honestly at this point it has a number of major flaws. First of all is that Cravers literally cannot be at constant war, because of the Force Truce mechanic, and second of all because they receive innate approval penalties simply from having a Dictatorship, which essentially cancels this out entirely. It's less of a perk and more like something they deperately cling to to be barely functional. To add insult to injury, one of the Religious laws that forces the Content status is practically a better version of this, encouraging Cravers to ditch Militarism. Which is... weird. While admittedly this is more of a balancing issue for the Cravers specifically, I would honestly prefer that we just switch this effect with the Religious law. Forcing a particular happiness status feels more "game changing" than a mere boost, which I think is a good goal for these Forced Laws. Not to mention the fact that any Militarist empire, not just Cravers, would benefit greatly from being able to counterattack the Over-Colonization penalties that are inherent in conquering large swaths of the galaxy. Maybe it could be kept as while at war only, I dunno.
• Industrialist Forced Law: Whenever system improvement completes, receive 25% of its Industry cost as Dust.
  • Again, it's hard to judge this without know what faction will start with it (*cough*United Empire*cough*), it doesn't strike me as game changing. It's basically just "you get more dust" except in kind of a weird way that doesn't make it clear what your actual dust income is. As in it doesn't show up on your global dust per turn income, since it only happens when a building completes. That said, more dust is a fairly good thing that nearly every empire will always want, so it's not like this is bad. Oh wait, I just realized that you also get the bonus for buying things out, making this essentially a 25% refund for buying things with dust. That's actually pretty cool, but I still wouldn't call it game changing. Maybe it will be when it interacts with the associated Faction.

Weak:

• Pacifist Forced Law: 25% less influence/dust cost for interacting with Minor Factions.
  • Yeah, I went there. I called it weak. This is essentially the dud of all Forced Laws, and makes Pacifist something of a dud party that you get by accident. Now, saving 25% isn't useless, especially the way it interacts with the relations loss per turn of the Minor Factions, but simply put the Minor Factions aren't important enough in the game as it is for you to want this. You're not spending that much time courting them, and by midgame they're all eaten up anyway and this effect becomes useless. On the other hand, if you made it too much stronger, you'd just eat up all the Minor Faction immediately, which might be useful but also feel kind of weird for the game as a whole. I'm not entirely sure what to do with this, but I feel like it should be at least expanded in scope. As in, lower influence cost for all diplomatic interactions, not just Minor Factions. That said, diplomacy's not fully implemented yet either, but at least this ability would theoretically stay useful all game.

So anyway, thoughts? Criticisms?

Science law:

it's certainly interesting, but i'm wondering if it's actually gamebreaking or not.  one thing I want to test (and maybe can't yet as i've ignored diplomacy in most games) is if you can rush the "rig elections" era 2 tech to ensure you KEEP your scientist faction coming out of the first election so you can have the law for more thna just the start.  Beyond that though while development plans are super super good early on, I sorta found myself not really wanting much else.  If it doesn't offer a passive bonus (planet colonization as well) I felt you were often better getting the era 1 version of stuff first simply because your infrastructure is too weak to build a lot of the ERA 2 stuff in a good time frame.

Science is by far the hardest faction i've found to get in power right now (although i have not really explored the election system), and I do think the "it's not worth it right now" issue might extend even with era 3 techs during era 2.  I'll have to look closer at that.

Further the more time you spend in era 2 the longer you go without some generally essential era 1 stuff, which means you'll get a less of a bonus when you do eventually have to reasearch it because everyone else will have gotten it.  This said sophons are by far my worst race so far.

Ecologist Law:

Its weird because this was part of the "stock" sowers kit in ES 1 and was basically considered trash the entire time I was playing.  Argument being that the happiness hit from expanding was vastly worse than the advantage of having higher pop that produced less unless the planet had something EXTREMELY good on it or served a very strategic purpose.  Granted you also had to give up other stuff for it rather than having it be a free law you could grab and then later ditch.

Religion:

The most important thing I see about this is that you don't need to declare war on say, race A, to attack race B, if race B is in race A's territory (which happens a lot when system's change hands in the mid game.).  I see major potential with this in combination with the hero skill that makes declaring offensive diplo actions cost 50%, because I suspect that means that there will be techs and other actions that could make diplo actions cost more.  Imagine a race than can wage war on your planets, but you can't afford to declare war back and when they do they truce you out (sorta a roving clans from hell scenario).

Military:

I think you focus too much on this in craver light, because with basically everyone else its awesome if you go the "murder everyone path", especially the vodyani, and it may only get better as you get larger galaxies and can basically declare war on enemies too far away to do much just for approval.

Industrial:

Think that's a pretty good assessment.  It's a very general "yes this is good" but I think it's good that it is because industrial is basically by design going to be one of the most common factions to see being pushed because industry is so important in these games so it should be a little weaker.  Further it means that once your industry is really going you're basically doing the "convert industry to dust" action WHILE still building your infrastructure/army, and that's really really strong.  I have a voydani game where I can churn out 1000+ production a turn on one system, and it's very powerful there.

Pacifist:

I think the only reason this is currently a "dud" is because diplomacy basically isn't a thing yet.  There's already a tech in era 3 that lets you take over planets that are within your influence range but aren't in your empire, and I feel that's potentially insanely strong ( need to test a few things with it).  The amount of influence this law saves you when praising a faction is actually a ton, and minor faction planets and effects are very good and this should ensure you get basically every one you want in an influence build.  Combo with a lot of explorers and you may be able to snap them all up early (only to lose them because you can't defend, but still).

My current stance on the politics system is that it relies too much on player actions. Hence issues with militarists being in control of the senate even if your entire population is pacifist. Just because you build warships to defend against the cravers, does not make you into a warmonger bent on galactic domination. 

I think the special laws are that strong because it is not really expected that you can keep any one party in control over prolonged periods of time. 

I do still think the Scientist one has to be changed... it is just too strong. It is okay that you can research ahead... but it should be expensive. So you have it like a gamble instead of a "duh.. ofc." kind of thing. 

My current stance on the politics system is that it relies too much on player actions. Hence issues with militarists being in control of the senate even if your entire population is pacifist. Just because you build warships to defend against the cravers, does not make you into a warmonger bent on galactic domination. 

I think the militaristic impact on building ships hits a bit too much the political switch for militaristics. It makes sence in terms of population's affinity but I feel a little stuck in searching for law combos that would suit my galaxy config or specialization's choices.

Clarste wrote:

Gamebreaking:

• Scientist Force Law: Can research 1 tier ahead.
  • This one is just ridiculous, and frankly might even overshadow the Sophon Affinity as "why you'd want to play a Sophon". Being able to get Tier 2 tech right at the beginning of the game for cheap changes things so much, especially unlocking Development Plans which can add +50 of a resource to any system for incredibly cheap. +50 of, well, pretty much anything within the first 20 turns will change the outcome of the entire game, no question. Maybe this much power is fine, for the Sophons, but that just means they get penalized for not having it, which is relevant because they almost always lose the Senate to Pacifists early on. Not to mention the incredible power another Faction could get if they somehow become Scientists. And this will only get more powerful as we get further into Early Access, because there will be more technological tiers to use it on. Personally I think it would be reasonable to switch this with the Sophon Affinity (bonus to research when researching tech less people already know).

I don't think so. This is a pretty good law, when combined with Sophons affinity, as nobody else is in Era II, and effectively you got the 50% bonus for all Era II techs from start. But without the bonus, I'm not sure if you could research all that good stuff without leaving aside Era I tech that in long run may be more beneficial for you. It's like you rush the top of the building without having a good basement.

Actually the problem with sophons is that they become pacifists in firs elections. I think that the elections system has a lot of balance to do. for me is very hard to keep scientists leading sophons, and almost impossible to get science laws with Lumeris (the only other faction I played for a long game, had a try with Vodyani, but prefer to go with them later).

Bit of a thread necro here, but I believe this is a quite important topic.

For the most part, I agree with the assessment of the laws. I might not use the word "game breaking" for the scientist law, but it is definitely a game changer, and I think it would have been a much better fit for the Sophon Affinity than the current one.

The religious law, on the other hand, is very close to the militarist law, in my opinion. In theory, it changes the game, but in practice the cost of declaring war just doesn't seem high enough to make circumventing the declaration of war useful. And the Pacifist law is incredibly disappointing mostly because the interaction with minor factions is so disappointing at the moment. I hope they'll improve that law along with the minor faction gameplay.

Sotnik wrote:

Eji1700 wrote:

Military:

I think you focus too much on this in craver light, because with basically everyone else its awesome if you go the "murder everyone path", especially the vodyani, and it may only get better as you get larger galaxies and can basically declare war on enemies too far away to do much just for approval.

1) Declare war vs Empire A.

2) Conquer all its systems but one.

3) Voila! You've got a subject to phony wars and your population is literally happy to see its humiliation!

4) Don't forget to defend it. It's your satellite after all.

Honestly i'm kinda hoping we can eventually get interactions like this as part of an expanded diplomatic system.  There's obvious incentive for me to actually do it (other than sometimes their economy collapses and they just pop and i sorta miss out), so why not have the game let me handle it.  

Partial surrenders, sattelites, and so forth could be an interesting way to add depth to war mechanics.  For example they agree to pay tribute but you agree to protect them, if they lose a planet the tribute is cancelled sort of thing.