i started a idea that i think would mitigate a little this problem:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/129-broad-suport-laws

idlih10 wrote:

Romeo wrote:

idlih10 wrote:

"Blah blah blah"

You might have an actual discussion with people if you aren't so abrasive and presumptuous. Try showing a modicum of respect to the rest of the community.

I didn't say what you quoted.

Yes, I figured rather than quoting a novel, I'd shorten it down a touch.

idlih10 wrote:

No, I never argued against limitations per se. Let me give you an analogy.

A: "Look! There are 2 bicycles we can race with."

B: "Yes, but 1 of them lacks a wheel and the other lacks gears, so we need to fix it."

A: "No, you don't know how the bicycle works and this is a matter of subjective preference. But here's an alternative. I'll let you have the other wheel but you need to remove your gears because having both is OPed."

B: "Why not give the missing parts to both bicycles?"

A: "You're asking for pressure to be removed from this race. You should adapt your strategy with these limitations."

B: "What strategy?"

A better analogy would be complaining that you're not allowed to kick during a boxing match.  There's nothing wrong with kickboxing, but we're not kickboxing, we're boxing, and kicking is not allowed.  You need to build your strategy around punching, rather than demanding that the referee change the game to kickboxing because you happen to like it better or because you think it "gives you more options" or "is best for optimally kicking the other guys ass", which is highly arbitrary anyway (Okay, why kicking but not wrestling too?)

This is what the dictionary says of optimization: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/optimization

"The act of making something as good as possible"

Make what as good as possible? Your empire?  In what context?  The largest numbers you can get?  How about the optimal control of your population?  How is that not a valid goal?  To defeat all enemies as quickly as possible?  Given what constraints?  For example, we have happiness constraints about how many planets we can colonize, so our empires have a maximum practical size, which "reduces optimal play," or we have to make choices based on technological limitations ("I want to build this ship, but I lack that resource, hmmm"). I think a serious player would define "optimal play" as "trying to play as well as he can given the constraints of the game."  However, political affinities are one of the constraints of the game.  To say that you cannot play the game "optimally" because one of the constraints of the game prevents you from doing so is complete nonsense.  That's like saying you cannot play chess "optimally" because the other guy keeps moving his pieces around.

There's a risk of losing if you play optimally in the sense that not all the moves you make, or your strategy, may be ideal and adequate to beat the game's challenges. That I can live with.

Making only decisions/buildings that please one affinity type in order to set the laws you want guarantees failure aka not "making something as good as possible".

There's a huge difference between strategizing to increase your chances of success and playing to fail without realizing it.

Yes, that's true.  It's terrible to fall into a player trap, or to have random events screw you over for reasons that are not your fault.  The ideal game wouldn't have that.  But politics in ES2 is not utterly unpredictable like that.  It is, in fact, predictable and directly under your influence, therefore you can account for it.

That's what playing sub-optimally is and therefore not a subjective definition.

If that's what "sub-optimal play" is, then I agree that players who fail to account for politics are "playing sub-optimally" as they're not playing in the best possible way.  I don't see how that makes ES2 inherently a "suboptimal game," and I don't see how anything you've said proves otherwise.

There is no "strategy" in responding to fickle laws if you need specialized laws to support a specialized strategy. I think you're arguing for laws to work like random/disaster events (due to the elections mechanic) and your "strategy" would be to react to these changes, which is what the game currently does. That in effect means that laws are not part of your strategy but opportunity events as I already mentioned. They may or may not support your strategy, but you are simply reacting to what's given to you after each election.

If you need a specialized law to support a specialized strategy and you do not take into account how to maintain control of your populace, then you are not playing optimally.  The whole point of that system is to place pressures to nuance  your decisions.  "Hmmm,  I need to build more ecological stuff to maintain my ecology affinity, but I really need build some warships to defend myself, which might mean militarism might take over.  Hmmm, how can I navigate this tricky situation?"  An interesting choice and one a master strategist can do, via a variety of methods ("Well, it's a good thing I acquired new ways of influencing my politics directly via clever technological choices" or "Not that it matters, as I'm a dictatorship, but I'll need to build more happiness buildings" or "I'll game the elections by carefully picking certain systems with smaller populations in which to build my ships.").

If you cannot do that, then you cannot use your specialized strategy. You'll need to play in a more general way, rather than clinging to a pet strategy that clearly isn't working.

The alternative to that would be to play sub-optimally to try and retain a one party majority.

If by "sub-optimally" in this context you mean game the system to keep your preferred party in power, yes, that's the correct choice to make.

I also don't see why the player cannot have control to specialize laws over the long term especially since they already cost influence and "higher value" laws may cost much more than less powerful ones. More advanced specialized laws may be locked until certain techs are researched or as currently the case, law slots are initially limited already. That's where the limitations come into play, not preventing law specialization in the first place and giving an alternative to play sub-optimally. 

It's a design choice.  It's not that it's unreasonable for you to want that, it's that they've chosen to go in a particular direction.  I don't see why you have to have overcolonization happiness penalties, or why you you need five resources (FIDSI) or why we have to change to this new technological tree.  And the answer is "You don't have to have these things."  They're choices the team made. It changes how the game plays, and Amplitude wants to explore this style of play.

Granted you may not want to specialize your laws and prefer access to diverse law types, which is fine also as long as the election mechanic's effect on laws is removed. Do you realize that elections have rendered laws into opportunity events? Elections should play a part only as far as affecting approval is concerned, not by preventing the player from choosing specialized or diverse laws as long as he has enough influence and meet any tech/other criteria to afford them.

Opportunity events?  Yes, quite.  Personally, I think a better strategy is to adapt to what is going on at the moment.  Lots of laws have associated bonuses AND penalties, which often means its worth abolishing one law and replacing it with another when situations change.  When I play as a democracy, I usually focus on keeping some influence on hand to I can change laws depending on affinity and circumstances, which are often tied together.  If there's a sudden spike in militarism, you're probably fighting a war.  If there's a spike in industrialism, you might be building up your civilization, and so on.  Spending influence (which is just accumulating otherwise) on associated laws helps your current situation anyway.

Of course, this depends on the faction you're playing, which makes things interesting.  This strategy works well with the Sophons (and especially well for the Lumeris), but is not ideal for the UE, as they have other ways they can spend influence, like speeding up construction.  Thus, if you can retain tight control of your populace (and you're not a dictatorship at the start, making it a challenge), you can use your influence buy buildings and ships, rather than shift laws as necessary.

Different factions, different strategies.

However, the crux of my argument is this. Whether you want a specialized or non-specialized strategy, the player should have control over the laws needed to support his strategy as long as he can afford it and meet any criteria required. Laws that are nothing more than opoportunity events after every election do not play a meaningful part of your long term strategy even if some happen to support it by chance. If you want to retain such a system, then the way to get the laws you need should not force sub-optimal play as it currently does.  

Right, they're short-term strategy things, which is why they cost 50-250, instead of 10,000.

Romeo wrote:

idlih10 wrote:

"Blah blah blah"

You might have an actual discussion with people if you aren't so abrasive and presumptuous. Try showing a modicum of respect to the rest of the community.

I didn't say what you quoted.

Heh.

no keyboard so ill keep this brief.

Since the patch politics feels much much better.  My only issue is that races focused on influence dont have enough to spend it on.

Diplomacy being added will help since its barely there but i also think buying minor factions needs work 

Mailanka wrote:

idlih10 wrote:

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.

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?

I've tried not to make assumptions, but I believe I've understood your point from the beginning: You believe that you should be allowed to make any choice you want without the game foisting some arbitrary consequence on you.  For example, you might want to play chess where you take all the pieces in as few moves as you can.  If you had something arbitrarily moving the pieces around, like another player, that would be problematic for you.  However, that's how chess is played, and it's also how Endless Space 2 is played.

Endless Space 1 forced you to adapt your strategy based on the choices of the AI that played civilizations external to your own. You might want to build all science buildings, say, but if you never build ships, someone will come in and start taking your systems. You are forced, by AI choices, to adapt your strategy.  Let's call this "pressure."  A lot of strategic gameplay comes from how you manage pressures placed upon you.  ES 2 adds an additional "pressure,"  but this one comes from your own people, though these are far more under your control than external factions are.  That's how the game works.  You object, and say this is "suboptimal" but "suboptimal" compared to what?  What a hypothetical game would be?  That doesn't make any sense.  I mean, sure, if we removed all of those rules your "numbers" would be bigger than without the current political system, but they'd also be bigger if you didn't have to waste industry on building ships to defend your colonies from external foes.  It'd be even bigger if the game didn't foist arbitrary technological limitations on what building you're allowed to build win, and so on.  Your definition of "optimal" is an illusion based on some personal vision of how the game should be vs how it is.  "Playing optimally" is about playing the game you were given, not the game you wish you could play.

Gameplay is built out of pressures and rules, creating a dynamic and fluid set of conditions that you need to adapt your strategy to.  Your complaint suggests that you want a rigid strategy, to build your buildings on the schedule you want to build, based on how you believe the game should be played.  In fact, you should be adapting to circumstances, whether those are pressures from external factions, or pressures from elections.  You're arguing that somehow, having that pressure from elections makes ES2 inferior (by making the case that it "doesn't allow optimal play", even though your definition of "optimal play" is deeply subjective), but you don't really make the case why this pressure is somehow objectively worse than other pressures that already exist in the game.

My argument is that by removing those pressures, you don't improve the game, you just change the game.  You might personally like it better, but that's a matter of taste, not a matter of superior game design.

No, I never argued against limitations per se. Let me give you an analogy.

A: "Look! There are 2 bicycles we can race with."

B: "Yes, but 1 of them lacks a wheel and the other lacks gears, so we need to fix it."

A: "No, you don't know how the bicycle works and this is a matter of subjective preference. But here's an alternative. I'll let you have the other wheel but you need to remove your gears because having both is OPed."

B: "Why not give the missing parts to both bicycles?"

A: "You're asking for pressure to be removed from this race. You should adapt your strategy with these limitations."

B: "What strategy?"

This is what the dictionary says of optimization: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/optimization

"The act of making something as good as possible"

There's a risk of losing if you play optimally in the sense that not all the moves you make, or your strategy, may be ideal and adequate to beat the game's challenges. That I can live with.

Making only decisions/buildings that please one affinity type in order to set the laws you want guarantees failure aka not "making something as good as possible".

There's a huge difference between strategizing to increase your chances of success and playing to fail without realizing it.

That's what playing sub-optimally is and therefore not a subjective definition.

There is no "strategy" in responding to fickle laws if you need specialized laws to support a specialized strategy. I think you're arguing for laws to work like random/disaster events (due to the elections mechanic) and your "strategy" would be to react to these changes, which is what the game currently does. That in effect means that laws are not part of your strategy but opportunity events as I already mentioned. They may or may not support your strategy, but you are simply reacting to what's given to you after each election.

The alternative to that would be to play sub-optimally to try and retain a one party majority.

I also don't see why the player cannot have control to specialize laws over the long term especially since they already cost influence and "higher value" laws may cost much more than less powerful ones. More advanced specialized laws may be locked until certain techs are researched or as currently the case, law slots are initially limited already. That's where the limitations come into play, not preventing law specialization in the first place and giving an alternative to play sub-optimally. 

Granted you may not want to specialize your laws and prefer access to diverse law types, which is fine also as long as the election mechanic's effect on laws is removed. Do you realize that elections have rendered laws into opportunity events? Elections should play a part only as far as affecting approval is concerned, not by preventing the player from choosing specialized or diverse laws as long as he has enough influence and meet any tech/other criteria to afford them.

Alternatively, I also mentioned tying law types to government types instead of affinities. This would obviously rule out a choice of diverse law types because the intention is to have each government type support specialized strategies. I can see why some players may hesitate at this suggestion if they want diverse law types for a non-specialized strategy, so I won't push for it.

However, the crux of my argument is this. Whether you want a specialized or non-specialized strategy, the player should have control over the laws needed to support his strategy as long as he can afford it and meet any criteria required. Laws that are nothing more than opoportunity events after every election do not play a meaningful part of your long term strategy even if some happen to support it by chance. If you want to retain such a system, then the way to get the laws you need should not force sub-optimal play as it currently does.  

Romeo wrote:

idlih10 wrote:

"Blah blah blah"

You might have an actual discussion with people if you aren't so abrasive and presumptuous. Try showing a modicum of respect to the rest of the community.

I didn't say what you quoted.

idlih10 wrote:

"Blah blah blah"

You might have an actual discussion with people if you aren't so abrasive and presumptuous. Try showing a modicum of respect to the rest of the community.

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)

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?

Mailanka wrote:

idlih10 wrote:

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.

It does, so that's good!

You don't understand how to make it support your strategy, but that's your problem, not the game's problem.

 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. 

Right, a good player manages his strategy and his politics, and folds that into his optimal strategy.  You haven't figured out how to do that, and you blame the game and say that the game is flawed, but it isn't.  Your strategy is flawed, because it fails to take into account the new elements of play.

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.

Players have as much control of their laws as they want.  There are a variety of effective ways to control your laws, each with different trade offs.

I will concede the game you describe, where when you build "as you should" you are punished by random events that strip vital laws from you is very frustrating, but ES2 isn't actually that game.  That you see it that way suggests more about your personal take on the game than any objective description of how the game works.

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.

"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?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?

Mailanka wrote:

Do you really find it so expensive to implement a law?  I often find that I have huge amounts of influence to spare, especially if I've focused on politics as part of my core strategy.  If I had a complaint, it wouldn't be that they're so expensive, it's that when you're running around with 10k influence, there's not much to spend it on 

That's the thing, isn't it. I can have more influence in the magic influence bank than I could ever spend, my people and my colour blob are expanding across the galaxy, and yet when it comes to election time, I throw all the weight of that colossal influence behind my chosen party only for the almost-unknown underdog to mysteriously win. 

Mailanka wrote:

Stalker0 wrote:

laws do not stay long enough to support your strategy if you go for optimal play (in other words, you can't make laws work for your strategy under the current system and if you happen to retain desired laws, it's due to playing sub-optimally). 

Fundamentally this is my problem with the system currently. It costs a lot of influence to implement a law, and yet keeping the parties in place to maintain that law can be very tricky without truly cutting out some meeting aspects of either military or structure building. 

Do you really find it so expensive to implement a law?  I often find that I have huge amounts of influence to spare, especially if I've focused on politics as part of my core strategy.  If I had a complaint, it wouldn't be that they're so expensive, it's that when you're running around with 10k influence, there's not much to spend it on (As opposed to science or industry, of which you can never have enough.  Currently food has a similar problem, but that'll change when we can move populations around).

I think the political systems are still a work in progress. There's probably going to be ways to spend excess influence points in the late game.

laws do not stay long enough to support your strategy if you go for optimal play (in other words, you can't make laws work for your strategy under the current system and if you happen to retain desired laws, it's due to playing sub-optimally). 

Fundamentally this is my problem with the system currently. It costs a lot of influence to implement a law, and yet keeping the parties in place to maintain that law can be very tricky without truly cutting out some meeting aspects of either military or structure building. 

MidnightSun wrote:

It's just nothing like the real world. People don't change allegiance because the government starts building factories instead of warships. They change their attitudes because of propaganda, public information campaigns, media influence, etc.

Having one occasionally effective action every 20 turns is just bad. I would suggest an ongoing program that can be adjusted. For example sliders to set desired support, with a continual influence cost. If you spent enough over the 20 turns then maybe you get what you wanted.

Governments don't build things.  People do.  To get them to build things, you need to convince them that it's useful to invest in those skills and infrastructure. In the real world, the government doesn't say "Hey guys, go build an extensive banking system."  Instead, they pass laws that make it easier to do so and hope people do it.  Even when it comes to things like building military units, what you might expect to be thoroughly under the purview of the government, you can't make people be soldiers if they don't want to be.  If you try, the results are disastrous (see Vietnam).  So you need to shape the people to believe that being a soldier is a good idea, and then they'll volunteer.

In a sense, you're right, but the alternative would be to turn the current system around: You try to shape  your people's opinions by passing laws and promoting a message, and then that shapes how people see things, and then they invest in the skills and in infrastructure based on how they feel.  So, you'd pass laws and people would randomly build what they felt like.  That might be an interesting game (I believe there actually are some games out there like that), but I don't think it's what Amplitude is trying to do with ES2, or what we'd like to see.  Sometimes "realism," such as it is, needs to take a back seat to playability, and I find this much more interesting gameplay than using propaganda to persuade people as to what to build.