running empires is tough, looks like you have to adjust yopur gameplay strategies that you have grown accustomed to.

you dont exist in a bubble. 

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry



everything Mailanka says, makes total sense

both, you dont live in a bubble adapt or dont, the choice is yours, you can fight change, and die( or win), or embrace change and shape the future to your "statagy" (or loose)either way its up to you, i read the devs notes, and besides a few things(we cant all be happy i guess hgahaha) thats the game i want to play, if i wanted civ mechanics i would re-dowload that civ game that has not been touched since .....a long time


nobody is stopping you from being a dictator and ruling your worlds with a velvet glove over a iron fist

Lulz! wrote:

From the rationale of the Politics & Senate GDD, it's clear that the system is meant to put some pressure on the player to change they way they manage their empire: when it's functioning properly, politics should be a factor in the decision making of the player when it comes to determining what direction the empire might take and how to achieve it. Amplitude's trying to get away from the trend in most 4X games where the player is a 'god' and the empire his or her's 'obedient masses', which tends to lead to a single "best" strategy (with some variance mostly by faction) with little room for change.

Obviously, that's a balancing act; politics shouldn't be so strong that it kills player agency as you say, but neither should it be so weak as to be another 'random event' of little consequence. I agree that as it stands, the system doesn't have a whole lot of clarity which, notwithstanding the bugs that are associated with politics, is frustrating as a player (it's certainly why I'm choosing to wait for the next update to iron out some things before I start playing again); but, that being said, I think it is "working as intended" if politics is "getting in the way" of you trying to carry out what you want without some management of your empire's population.

To be honest, there's no "balancing" or "middle ground" as far as this issue is concerned. Politics would either serve to support your strategy in a meaningful way or it does not. Pressure should come from managing the consequences of your chosen strategy/laws, not by encouraging sub-optimal play just to achieve the laws you want. Granted that certain strategies work best for certain factions because of their highly unique nature. If all strategies work equally well for all factions, you'll have to be concerned if they are all nothing more than reskins of one another, which fortunately isn't the case here. 

If the player has full control over the laws he wants, certain laws may serve to magnify the strengths of his chosen strategy. Alternatively, he also has the freedom to decide to implement laws that may not seem "compatible" with his chosen faction for a greater challenge and replayability. That's the fundamental point of having laws working for your strategy, instead of encouraging sub-optimal play. If this principle isn't followed, there is no doubt that laws will be nothing more than random events as long as they are tied to affiliation changes instead of government type.

they are not " so be it"(obviously there is a litle random) i was playing vod, i would frequently favor science buildings, and events(1/2 the value for vod), because i was wary of the industrialists taking control of the senate(im not a dictator) anyway, along came a science hero....and a newly unlocked tech which ensured i could (even if i shouldn't) place science buildings on all my systems, well i did It, I shaped my peoples desires into something i could harness. i was granted broad powers because of the science party,
 and as my people were so pleased with me, i researched eara 3 tech.....first was carriers, second, wormholes, 3rd luxuries......my religious followers came back to the light, but then the damage was done.......for the other species anyway, vod don't really play nice, we want your essence, i made it vastly more accessible(even though my people did not want it)

plus im typing in italics....im not actually sure how to turn it off

sorry, i do not have time, or the superior command of language you obviously  have to make my point, that is life i guess, if i had my way i guess i would block the forum, and you could keep typing but i would never see it? sound strategy for sure.

Frogsquadron wrote:

I just feel the need to remind you to please remain civil towards one another. Abrasiveness towards one another rarely serves your point.

We've been following this thread and have been meaning to reply (but a week-end and a bank holiday surreptitiously got in the way, as they do), hopefully tomorrow you guys will hear Meedoc's thoughts on the subject.

My sincere apologies to one and all, being abrasive was never my intention and I was just annoyed at having to explain my points repeatedly when the other person is arguing on a different frequency and persisting on it. Also appreciate very much for following this and yes, I would love to hear what you guys have to say about this issue.

hibbidy_jibbidy wrote:

running empires is tough, looks like you have to adjust yopur gameplay strategies that you have grown accustomed to.

you dont exist in a bubble. 

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry



everything Mailanka says, makes total sense

Not sure if you read my reply to your steam post earlier, but I'll explain my points here again anyway. Before I do though, we both need to agree on two things for this discussion to be fruitful unlike the last. First, do you agree that laws should not be "so be it opportunities" that change fickly instead of playing a meaningful part in supporting your strategy? Second, do you agree that laws are supposed to work for your strategy, not vice versa? If not, then we'll agree to disagree and leave it there. But if you do, please read on.

It isn't about not willing to adapt to new mechanics but the need to focus and optimize your strategy with the support of stable long term laws, which the current politics system does not allow. Taking effort to manage the consequences of your strategy is one thing. Wasting time managing a flawed mechanic that prevents strategy optimization/focus and renders laws into opportunity events instead of allowing them to play a meaningful part of your strategy is another.

Even if you feel laws don't change frequently in your particular game, it's because the conditions happen to have one ruling majority affinity. Once that changes (Which it will because affinities are tied to almost any building/ship), you'll face a very different situation. If you adjust your fleets/buildings just for the sake of getting laws you want, that's sub-optimal and there's still no guarantee that your laws won't change because all opposing affinities need to do is get just enough support for senate representation. If you do NOT, then laws will just be "so be it opportunities" that come and go with little/no part to play in your strategy as I mentioned. My question to you is do you want to decide between laws that don't play a meaningful part of your strategy or sub-optimal play, both of which are equally undesirable?

to be fair, i think some people would benifit greatly from a more in depth tutorial about politics, and those cleverly hidden politics info screens like the spacebar trick(with all that juciy info on system trends), in the senate screen with that nice real-time graph in the corner, and the population affects tab right beside it

idlih10 wrote:

I don't understand what you mean by not answering the rest. You have been arguing in circles and still do not understand my point.

It's clear to me that you do not understand my intent.  I am not "arguing" anything, I am asking you questions and I am asking you questions precisely because I don't understand your point.

Allow me to clarify something.  "Arguing" with you is pointless, but "asking you questions" might not be.  You are not a developer, nor am I.  Even if you convince me that you are right, or I convince you that you are wrong, absolutely zero will change in the game.  We'd have to convince the developers one way or the other to make a meaningful impact.  Furthermore, you're largely arguing that they should jettison the entire system that they've worked so hard to create, and also one of the prime departure points from previous series.  This is clearly, from their perspective, one of the major innovations of ES2, and it's pretty central to how other elements, like lesser races, interface with your empire. I think you have about as much chance of talking them into jettisoning it as you do of talking the Civ V team of jettisoning hexes in favor of squares.

The developers, however, also clearly believe that the community is very important, and you can see this both in the votes they offer, and in the fact that they allow modding.  This last is the most important part to why I'm asking you questions, because if you wish, you can simply create a mod that will implement the changes that you want.  That is, you can have ES2 your way.  This isn't a fact yet, but it's a promise offered by Amplitude, as you can see from their roadmap: They want to allow modding (and ES1 certainly allowed modding).  You've also clearly put some thought into your idea, but your idea definitely lacks clarity, at least from my perspective.  It could be because you're explaining it poorly (You're explaining it from a perspective of "This is why I hate the current system"  as opposed to "This is a neat mod idea I have"), or it could be that your idea itself hasn't fully formed.  By asking you questions, I goad you into fully forming it.  That is my goal: you have a problem and you can solve it either by better understanding the current system, or better understanding what you want, or both, and in such a discussion, I often find ideas pop out that are interesting to everyone, whether to you, or me, or some other mod-happy fan.  "Arguing" is useless.  Neither of us have anything to gain.  Discussing is useful.  It could result in an interesting mod (likely not to me, but certainly to you).

 For one, BOTH democracy and dictatorship (and for that matter all government types) are poorly implemented in ES2 as long as elections exist in the game. Do you see the contradiction in a dictatorship system where you can choose your laws and affinity that you want irregardless of the will of the people, yet having less law slots and suffering a happiness hit if your will doesn't match the will of your people? You should not even suffer an approval or any penalty for that! The same goes for a democracy. You do not get an approval penalty but in return, your laws change at the whim of changes in affinities, which are tied to almost every building/ship type you construct (and as I mentioned, these are essential in one way or another). How do you fully optimize your strategy in both cases?

For the dictatorship, I either focus on things that make happiness irrelevant, or I build lots of happiness buildings, or I accept that my people are not happy.  The -20 to -30 happiness isn't really that crippling (Cravers face much worse problems, mainly from overcolonization).  If I'm really worried about it, I focus on building things and performing actions that bring the will of the people in line with mine and kill off the populations that don't agree with me.

For a democracy, I can do much the same, but if I'm honest, my preferred strategy for a democracy is to let the will of the people reign. It's not random: It's typically "in response" to things, and not just to buildings.  For example, militarism rises after territory losses.  If I'm losing territory and I need to build a ton of ships, a sudden shift to militarism is not unwelcome at all!  It's advantageous!  Eventually, I'll need to calm the people down once the war is over, but they'll slowly lose interesting in millitarism anyway.

In terms of ES2 gameplay (not pedantic realism), it's also a fallacy to think that a government type without elections is an advantage over one with elections because the current elections mechanic prevents the player from fully optimizing his strategy anyway. It's the fault of this elections mechanic, but rather than taking away this flawed mechanic, a dictatorship is penalized instead for what it natuarally is, which so happens to allow the player to choose any laws he likes to support his chosen strategy.

LImitations serve as the foundation of good gameplay.  That's why we have rules.  Chess doesn't allow you to move a pawn wherever you like, and that's not "limiting your chosen strategy," it's the basis for how the game plays.  Technology "limits your strategy" by putting some vital pieces temporarily out of your reach, and strategic resources also "limits your strategy."  What if you want a particular component but you lack the resources to do it?  You have to adapt.  LImitations to your strategy are not bad, they're one of the core elements of gameplay!  The question is not whether you should limits someone's strategies, but HOW you should limit them.  The answer to that is largely subjective.  You don't like this limit, and I do like this limit.  You've been trying to argue that my subjective opinion on this is wrong, which is nonsense.  I can like what I like, for whatever reasons I like. There's no arguing with taste.  What's more useful is highlighting what you like and dislike about the current system.

For example, if we implement your version, what does it look like?  You can pick your preferred affinity and choose laws for it.  And then what? You've built up 10k influence?  What are you going to do with it?  The answer in the current model is "Spend it influencing elections, or buying new laws as circumstances change."  Your model sounds fairly static, though, so you accumulate all of that influence and... do what with it?

Perhaps your model would look more like the CIv social model, where as you accumulate more and more influence, you can buy more and more "advanced" laws?

Also, drop the discussion of "pedantic realism."  Nobody is arguing that dictatorship "realistically" has less benefits.  "Elections" in a dictatorship aren't even realistic.  They're an arbitrary polling mechanism that measures how  you've shifted the opinions of your people and apply the penalties/bonuses at a demarcated point, rather than fluctuating the happiness penalty of your people in a dictatorship from turn to turn, or changing who's in charge of your senate in a democracy from turn to turn.  For that matter, a "Federation" isn't traditionally a series of dictatorial governors.  They're abstract game ideas that do track on some real-world concepts, but are not slavish depictions of them.

 This principle in bold applies to ALL government types and because elections go against this principle, there should be no elections for all government types although each type should have access to any law available to it without interferance from affinity changes. This is not equivalent to making all government types into a dictatorship. It's not an issue of definition based on realism, but of the ability to optimize strategy fully for all government types by taking away the elections mechanic.

"Dictatorship" as the game defines it: You choose your affinity and you suffer a happiness penalty if you choose one the people don't like, which is exactly as you describe.  If you modded the game so that all civilizations were dictatorships with lots of law slots open, you'd largely have what you want.

You still haven't explained what other government types do.  There are two dimensions to government in ES2: The type of government and the affinity of the government.  Type of government determines how the "will of the people" are expressed and how many law slots you have and how expensive swaying elections are.  Affinity determines what laws you have open, and is determined by the "Will of the people" except in the case of Dictatorships, in which case you determine it.  If you remove elections and law-slot limitations, then you've effectively dismissed all other government types, because whether you're in a democracy or dictatorship becomes irrelevant to gameplay: neither is influenced by the "will of the people" mechanic (which you have removed), and thus don't need any "election influence mechanics" as elections no longer exist.  In that case, just jettison the concept of "democracy" vs "dictatorship" and focus on affinity: You have "Religious governments" or "Science governments" etc.  Your "anarchy" comes from switching between Affinities.

The fundamental problem of the elections mechanic is that laws are tied to constant affinity changes instead of the government type, which prevents the player from fully optimizing his strategy. In ES2, most buildings/ships are tied to different affinity types, despite the fact that you will need to build most of them anyway to optimize your strategy. This is a huge flaw because you can't tie an irregular mechanic (affinity changes) with a regular one (regular buildings/ships needed in most or all situations). The consequence of this is making regular decisions to follow specific strategies results in political instability once elections arrive because you have almost no control over the affinity composition of your senate when it changes at the whim of any building/ship you construct, which means laws are subject to change against your will and strategy. In other words, you can't fully optimize your strategy because of this mechanic.

The consequence is that you need to adjust your strategy to take into account the will of the people, in the same way that you need to adjust your strategy based on the sudden invasion of your systems by a ton of bad guys.  You might have WANTED a pacifistic game, but you found yourself in a war for your survival, so you end up needing to build a ton of ships.  Externalities can and should force a change in your strategy.  Once you account for this, you can optimize your strategy: If you want ecology, build ecological buildings, embrace ecological races, make ecological choices, recruit ecological heroes, avoid industrial options.  You create a feedback loop.  Arguing that you can't optimize your strategy in this case is like arguing that you should be allowed to build whatever building you want without the game "limiting" your FIDSI bonus.  A science building gives you science and science affinity.  That's what it does.

The problem here isn't that one can't optimize his strategy, because I can and do, so that's obviously a false statement.  The problem here is that you don't like how this gameplay element necessarily shapes your strategy.  You'd rather it was shaped in a different way.

This can go a step further to give the player even more customization options to support his strategy. Civ 5's social policy system is a good example. There are no elections and you can choose from a variety of bonuses granted by different "government types" or branches as long as you can afford the culture cost that scales up as you adopt more policies. You can decide for yourself the trade off between benefiting from diverse branches (jack of all trades but master of none) or from specializing in a specific branch (only specialized benefits but these put you in a much more powerful position to pursue a specific strategy). This is the kind of system that offers great replayability and flexibility for the player to support his chosen strategy.

Yeah, it sounded like you wanted something like a Civ V social model.  You should design a tree of laws, then, and use ever-increasing influence to "buy" increasingly expensive laws.  For example, the religious "Everyone is content" might be a high level law costing 10k influence.  I would also discard some of the "clearly meant to be temporary" laws, like conscription, in favor of genuine, civilization-wide bonuses, so that "Everyone is content" becomes "Everyone is content at a minimum," and is more powerful (and thus should be "more expensive").  You could, if you wished, even keep the building-affinity system and ditch the anarchy system: You have six law trees and certain populations increase their specific affinity every turn (Sophons add +1 per population to science affinity, Cravers add +1 per population to military affinity) and once you have enough points, you can select a new law from that particular tree.  Buildings can generate their own affinity (Want a science law quickly?  Build more science-buildings!), while generic influence can be spent anywhere.

Then you still have the building-affinity strategies, but without the "limitations" you dislike.

To sum up my points, all I'm asking is for elections to be removed for all government types and that government types, not affinity changes, should influence the types of laws you can pass. Affinities can still exist, but as mentioned, they can serve the role of affecting approval and the player can manage them through quests granted by different affinities.

I think you should get rid of the idea of alternate governments in the way the game currently uses them.  They're not relevant to your model anymore, unless democracy and dictatorship has some fundamental difference, but I'm not sure what those would be, and nothing you've described hints at what it would be.  Also, don't ask, do.  Once modding is available, you have the power to make this yourself.  If you ask, you'll be powerless and frustrated when you are ignored.  If you do, then you'll have what you want, others who agree with you might be able to enjoy it, and you'll have gained some modding experience.

Mailanka wrote:

Okay, but what do you mean by "government type."  I presume you mean affinity (Ecologist, Scientist, etc) not Dictatorship or Democracy. Yes?

You won't answer the rest, so I'm just going to assume that you mean, in effect, "Everyone is a dictatorship."  That makes sense: You don't like volatility.  I don't know what you mean by "More advanced government types."  What would an example of that be?  Is "Ecologist" more advanced than "Militarism"?

Okay, then I don't understand you.  You're saying I can choose between a Democracy or a Dictatorship, just as now, and a Democracy offers different laws than a Dictatorship?  What sorts of laws?  If you don't have "elections" what, fundamentally, is the difference between the Democracy and Dictatorship in your proposed system?

How does the current system not offer a chosen strategy and accepting the consequences of it?  For example, if I choose a Dictatorship, I gain the advantage of being able to choose my laws and affinity that I want irregardless of the will of the people!  But I suffer in that I have less law slots and I suffer a happiness hit if my will doesn't match the will of my people.  I can overcome this by bringing the will of the people in line with mine, or I can just build a lot of happiness boosting buildings, or I can just ignore it.  That's one strategy and consequences.  If I choose democracy, I get lets of law slots, but my legal choices become constrained by my people.  I can influence it, but it's super-expensive, and or I can just go with the flow.  A different strategy, but different consequences.

You argue that this isn't "good gameplay" but by your own definition, it is.  What about the system makes it "not good gameplay"

I don't understand what you mean by not answering the rest. You have been arguing in circles and still do not understand my point. For one, BOTH democracy and dictatorship (and for that matter all government types) are poorly implemented in ES2 as long as elections exist in the game. Do you see the contradiction in a dictatorship system where you can choose your laws and affinity that you want irregardless of the will of the people, yet having less law slots and suffering a happiness hit if your will doesn't match the will of your people? You should not even suffer an approval or any penalty for that! The same goes for a democracy. You do not get an approval penalty but in return, your laws change at the whim of changes in affinities, which are tied to almost every building/ship type you construct (and as I mentioned, these are essential in one way or another). How do you fully optimize your strategy in both cases?

In terms of ES2 gameplay (not pedantic realism), it's also a fallacy to think that a government type without elections is an advantage over one with elections because the current elections mechanic prevents the player from fully optimizing his strategy anyway. It's the fault of this elections mechanic, but rather than taking away this flawed mechanic, a dictatorship is penalized instead for what it natuarally is, which so happens to allow the player to choose any laws he likes to support his chosen strategy. This principle in bold applies to ALL government types and because elections go against this principle, there should be no elections for all government types although each type should have access to any law available to it without interferance from affinity changes. This is not equivalent to making all government types into a dictatorship. It's not an issue of definition based on realism, but of the ability to optimize strategy fully for all government types by taking away the elections mechanic.

The fundamental problem of the elections mechanic is that laws are tied to constant affinity changes instead of the government type, which prevents the player from fully optimizing his strategy. In ES2, most buildings/ships are tied to different affinity types, despite the fact that you will need to build most of them anyway to optimize your strategy. This is a huge flaw because you can't tie an irregular mechanic (affinity changes) with a regular one (regular buildings/ships needed in most or all situations). The consequence of this is making regular decisions to follow specific strategies results in political instability once elections arrive because you have almost no control over the affinity composition of your senate when it changes at the whim of any building/ship you construct, which means laws are subject to change against your will and strategy. In other words, you can't fully optimize your strategy because of this mechanic.

The suggestions I gave so far are based on the assumption that all government types are mutually exclusive, meaning once you decide on a specific type, you are locked into specific bonuses and laws granted by that type until you change government (if laws are no longer tied to affinity changes but government types instead, and elections are removed for all government types).

This can go a step further to give the player even more customization options to support his strategy. Civ 5's social policy system is a good example. There are no elections and you can choose from a variety of bonuses granted by different "government types" or branches as long as you can afford the culture cost that scales up as you adopt more policies. You can decide for yourself the trade off between benefiting from diverse branches (jack of all trades but master of none) or from specializing in a specific branch (only specialized benefits but these put you in a much more powerful position to pursue a specific strategy). This is the kind of system that offers great replayability and flexibility for the player to support his chosen strategy.

To sum up my points, all I'm asking is for elections to be removed for all government types and that government types, not affinity changes, should influence the types of laws you can pass. Affinities can still exist, but as mentioned, they can serve the role of affecting approval and the player can manage them through quests granted by different affinities.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Frogsquadron wrote:

Think your quote got messed up. Mind re-adding what you had intended to put in there?

There's a problem qutoing multiquote posts (see next answer)

Problem 1:

The result of control C + V a quote or multiquote block is this in Firefox (smileys get oversize) :

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Frogsquadron wrote:

Think your quote got messed up. Mind re-adding what you had intended to put in there?

There's a problem qutoing multiquote posts (see next answer)

Problem 2 :

If I want to remove an inner quote (in case of multi-multi quotes for exemple), you have that no space box.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

There's a problem qutoing multiquote posts (see next answer)

Problem 3 :

If I want to remove the outer quote (to react to the same thing as another poster for exemple).

This can give this (I manually removed the oversized smiley for convenience)

Frogsquadron wrote:

Think your quote got messed up. Mind re-adding what you had intended to put in there? 

Or this:Frogsquadron wrote:

Think your quote got messed up. Mind re-adding what you had intended to put in there? 

Or lastly this (which is the ok behaviour), if you knew you had to Suppr right to the "wrote:"

Frogsquadron wrote:

Think your quote got messed up. Mind re-adding what you had intended to put in there? 

I think it is just a problem of "users did not know". If the user just "suppr" right to next, you can do what you want. The Del key is problematic though.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

There's a problem qutoing multiquote posts (see next answer)

Frogsquadron wrote:

Think your quote got messed up. Mind re-adding what you had intended to put in there? 

Is there a forum part to post bugs about G2G forums ? I was seeking this the other day. (-edit- nvm, I found that. I will post there).

I also wanted to ask a confirm button to cancel a post because the cancel button is super big and due to the way the forum scrolls, you can type some text very very close from the button (so clicking in the middle of the last sentence you typed must be done very carefully).

Lastly, a way to have post numbers would be nice so we could link directly to a post. Or maybe a "copy the link of this post to the clipboard" button ?

Mailanka wrote:

idlih10 wrote:

Saying that I don't understand how the game works is a convenient attempt to defend a flawed mechanic without addressing the issues I raised.

Are you raising issues or expressing subjective opinion?  Is the game flawed or is it just not to your liking?

"Politics would either serve to support your strategy in a meaningful way or it does not."

Yeah, you completely took me out of context on the statement above. What I meant was there's no middle ground when incorporating politics into gameplay IN GENERAL. Politics either supports your strategy or it doesn't. I didn't say politics in ES2 supports your strategy in a meaningful way. Please read carefully before you jump to such conclusions.

Please just answer two questions. Yes or No, no sidestepping into irrelevant/meaningless arguments.

1. Do you really understand what playing sub-optimally means?

Yes

2. Do you really think that you can use laws under the elections system (based on fickle affinity changes) to support a specialized strategy when to do so requires you to play sub-optimally in the first place?

Yes

If yes to above, then you are in effect saying that it's ok to play sub-optimally.

Or you don't understand how to play optimally given a series of constraints.

Let's put this another way: Who would win in the current set-up, someone who "builds whatever they like" or someone who plays the political system to gain maximum advantage?  The latter player is "playing optimally."  What you want isn't to play optimally, but to make your preferred strategy optimal.

Your argument is untrue because having "as much control of the laws you want" means being able to implement AT ANY TIME ANY LAWS to specialize your strategy. But this isn't possible simply because laws are tied to affinity types that constantly change with almost every action you take. I understand that the laws made available under each affinity type are supposed to support a specialized strategy. But they can't serve this function adequately with fickle affinity changes.

That's true: You'd need some sort of tools to attain control of your legal system.  Fortunately, we have those!  Most of the upper-left tech-tree is focused on mastering your own legal system, high levels of influence will do the same, using the right government system to fit your strategy, and matching your build strategy to the legal strategy you have.

If you play optimally or "as you should", there is no way you can control changes in affinities and therefore fickle changes in laws. In other words, laws will act independently of your strategy and are simply come and go opportunistic events. You cannot deny this.

This is what I mean: you don't want to play optimally, you want your preferred strategy to be optimal.  You want to build what you want without the laws changing.  The fact that you can't doesn't mean the game is flawed, it means your strategy is flawed.

If you play sub-optimally just to get the laws you want (assuming it even guarantees such a situation when all opposing affinities need to do is get a senate foothold to rescind other affinity laws and implement their own), this in itself is a flaw which is self-explanatory.

If the laws I want offer superior benefit to your build strategy, my game play is superior to yours, thus optimal.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?

Yes.  Do you?

From your reply, it's clear you don't understand my points and what "playing optimally" is. Playing optimally means you are free to make any decisions that you think would be appropriate for your strategy. These may or may not be the perfect decisions but they are definitely more optimal than focusing only on specific buildings that please a specific affinity in order to get the laws you want. You would not be at liberty to risk building any other affinity type buildings to maintain a majority of your preferred affinity and the laws it provides.

Saying that you prefer laws that change fickly, period, is not the same as saying this allows the player to specialize his strategy.

The fact that a dictatorship is penalized is an implicit acknowledgement that fickle changes in laws due to an elections system is undesirable for the player. Yet, the issue goes beyond desirability because any player that chooses a non-dictatorship will never be able to get all the laws he wants to specialize his strategy by playing optimally.

And even if you choose a dictatorship, which only gives laws specializing in one area btw, and its penalty is lifted, that only gives players who want to play optimally and specialize their strategy one choice. They will not be choosing any other government types to specialize in other strategies because these will force them to choose between having laws that are nothing more than opportunity events and playing sub-optimally, both of which would be unacceptable to them.

Now do you understand?