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.

Interesting idea. If I may add, perhaps the influence cost of not supporting any particular affinity, if implemented, should scale according to the proportion of your empire occupied by that affinity. And influence cost should also scale according to your era and power, though I'm not sure how to go about that in a way that won't unbalance or drastically affect gameplay.

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.

Eji1700 wrote:

Not getting access to military laws as you build more military would basically be awful right now since a lot of the military laws are great for when you're in a war, and not so great when you are not.  There needs to be clearer reasons WHY certain sides are winning, and the campaigns need to actually do something (i'd swear they've never done anything), but I'm mostly fine with the system as is otherwise.  

If actually influencing elections works, I can go ahead and make the scientists win even though i'm currently building a fleet, or let the miltarists win if i'm actually in a real war and think I need their policies.  The biggest issue with the system is that's currently not at all possilbe even though it's supposed to be (and I don't think you should always have control over who wins unless you decide to dedicate time, resources, and tech to it).

It's not as clear cut as that. Other non-militarist laws can also support an aggressive expansion strategy through say income or approval bonuses. That's the thing I like about Endless games in general. Improvements/laws do not necessaily need to be directly related to the affinity to support any particular strategy. I mean which war doesn't require money or support from the people? 

Not getting access to military laws as you build more military would basically be awful right now since a lot of the military laws are great for when you're in a war, and not so great when you are not.  There needs to be clearer reasons WHY certain sides are winning, and the campaigns need to actually do something (i'd swear they've never done anything), but I'm mostly fine with the system as is otherwise.  

If actually influencing elections works, I can go ahead and make the scientists win even though i'm currently building a fleet, or let the miltarists win if i'm actually in a real war and think I need their policies.  The biggest issue with the system is that's currently not at all possilbe even though it's supposed to be (and I don't think you should always have control over who wins unless you decide to dedicate time, resources, and tech to it).

I agree that how actions affect the political parties needs to be much more clear.  However the political mechanic evolves, it just needs to be clear to players how it is working.

Mailanka wrote:

Right, I think I see where you're coming from.  If I may use an RPG equivalent, a civilization's political affinity should be like a character's alignment.  The equipment you wear or the feats you choose or your class (ie, your strategy) shouldn't dictate your alignment, but instead, your moral choices should determine your alignment.  Strategy and morality are two separate things (that is, you can be a good knight, or an evil knight, being knightly doesn't determine your alignment).  Choices in one shouldn't impact choices in the other.

But I don't agree with you.  First of all, political affinity isn't much like alignment in that the very nature of organizing a society to do things necessarily requires a particular affinity.  You cannot demand that a society through away all their previous preconceptions and study science while also expecting them to remain religious.  But more importantly, I think good gameplay puts you in a situation with interesting choices, and I find the choice of how my strategy will necessarily impact my political stance to create a new set of interesting choices.  That's subjective, so I can see where you might not agree, but what I see is that it means that if I want to maintain a particular party, or achieve a particular kind of success, I need to carefully rework my strategy to allow me both to succeed and to support that political stance.

With some groups, this is easy: A sophons, you want to be scientists, so you do science stuff, and you get more science.  But what if you want to colonize lots of worlds?  Then you need to be an ecologist.  What's the best strategy to gaining sufficient ecology to start getting some ecological laws, which shapes everything you do.   In particular, I need to stop building industrial buildings... but how do I maintain my industrial output then?

The current versions makes politics ripple across everything you do.  All choices you make interconnect with all other choices you make.  You'd rather separate them out, so the politics and, say, improvement-design strategy become two separate, independent concerns.  I definitely prefer the former to the latter.

I don't think in terms of strategy vs alignment, but in terms of whether it makes sense and gives the player a clear understanding of how to make it work for his chosen strategy. Like I said, clarity and how the politics system is implemented is just as important. Without clarity, interconnectedness makes no sense and is nothing more than an arbitrary mechanic. Again, the current system does not address the point I mentioned earlier about all buildings/fleets having essential roles to play in one way or another. Tying them to affinity is like putting a cap on the necessary choices a player needs to take to adapt to his settings.

idlih10 wrote:

I've been thinking about an alternative implementation and feel that affinities should not be tied to building or ship types because it's too arbitrary and unnecessarily interferes with player strategy without allowing the player some control over how he wants the political direction to go. Why do I say this? Because even without the current politics mechanic, player strategy may still change significantly from game to game due to say different settings/resource distribution/nature of AI factions that spawn near you etc, even when you play the same faction twice. Granted certain factions have optimal paths to take, but that's a result of their traits. You can't for example say that Cravers need to be militaristic because their trait demands it, yet support a politics system that challenges the faction's militarist power.

Instead of tying affinity to building/ship types, I prefer a quest system that allows the player to decide which affinity he wants to support most to influence the senate majority. For example, all the affinity types in your empire will give you quests that support their cause. The more of such quests you complete for particular affinities before the next election, the greater will be their senate influence. If you stop supporting an affinity's quests, their senate influence would then degrade over time until the next election. These affinity quests are compulsory, meaning you have to choose one of them (that supports a specific affinity), but obviously not more than one each time they pop up. This way, the player has some control over his strategy with respect to politics, and the internal pressure remains because you only have a fixed number of turns to fulfil affinity quests until the next election. The time between elections could also be doubled for example to allow adequate time to fulfill the affinity quests. So you can either decide to fulfill all of a specific affinity's quests or a mix of different affinity ones before the next election, which would then affect the senate composition depending on your quest decisions and performance.

Right, I think I see where you're coming from.  If I may use an RPG equivalent, a civilization's political affinity should be like a character's alignment.  The equipment you wear or the feats you choose or your class (ie, your strategy) shouldn't dictate your alignment, but instead, your moral choices should determine your alignment.  Strategy and morality are two separate things (that is, you can be a good knight, or an evil knight, being knightly doesn't determine your alignment).  Choices in one shouldn't impact choices in the other.

But I don't agree with you.  First of all, political affinity isn't much like alignment in that the very nature of organizing a society to do things necessarily requires a particular affinity.  You cannot demand that a society through away all their previous preconceptions and study science while also expecting them to remain religious.  But more importantly, I think good gameplay puts you in a situation with interesting choices, and I find the choice of how my strategy will necessarily impact my political stance to create a new set of interesting choices.  That's subjective, so I can see where you might not agree, but what I see is that it means that if I want to maintain a particular party, or achieve a particular kind of success, I need to carefully rework my strategy to allow me both to succeed and to support that political stance.

With some groups, this is easy: A sophons, you want to be scientists, so you do science stuff, and you get more science.  But what if you want to colonize lots of worlds?  Then you need to be an ecologist.  What's the best strategy to gaining sufficient ecology to start getting some ecological laws, which shapes everything you do.   In particular, I need to stop building industrial buildings... but how do I maintain my industrial output then?

The current versions makes politics ripple across everything you do.  All choices you make interconnect with all other choices you make.  You'd rather separate them out, so the politics and, say, improvement-design strategy become two separate, independent concerns.  I definitely prefer the former to the latter.

Eji1700 wrote:

I think it's hard to judge the system until the influence options work/are implimented. For example there's an era 2 tech that seems to do nothing right now.  It claims it gives you ways to influence the election, but it doesn't actually add any options you didn't already have access too.

I just finished a Sophon's game, and I had two extra political options during elections that I didn't have for any other race.  I don't remember if I explicitly researched that option, but probably (it also gives more law slots, and I definitely wanted those). By contrast, I always saw interesting options on my Politics screen for my Cravers, but they were never offered those options during an election, and I definitely didn't gain that tech,  so it seems that it does work. Maybe.  I find it unclear.

It's also unclear what those options do.  The Vodyani cleansed one of my systems ("Never forget!") and destroyed several of my ships, so I suddenly ramped up military production and, unsurprisingly, Military came on strong in the next election, which I actually saw as a boon.  Suddenly, I had all the support I needed to do stuff.   They showed that they would definitely take the lead, so I chose the 7000 influence option of "Buy out votes" in support of Science.  The bar showed no change in that screen, but when the actual election ran, the Science party maintained its majority.  Weirdly, the Militarism party continued to do very well in all following elections, despite the fact that the Vodyani were dead and I hadn't build military vessels at all and built a ton of industrial stuff.

So not everything in the political system is particularly clear and I'm not sure it works as intended... but I'm not entirely sure how it works, or what's intended.

I think it's hard to judge the system until the influence options work/are implimented. For example there's an era 2 tech that seems to do nothing right now.  It claims it gives you ways to influence the election, but it doesn't actually add any options you didn't already have access too.

mezmorki wrote:

Yes!  That sounds like it's working as intended.  If you "play normally" and do a little of a this and a little of that, you'll end up with a more balanced political situation  And this leaves you without any strong majorities that might empower your empire with strong laws or effects.  This is great!  The game is forcing one to a make choice of direction and growth and how you appeal to your population or not.  Staying strong down one political avenue certainly has it's strong-points, but it requires making some trade-off decisions along the way.  Very few other games do this at all - so I'm glad to see ES2 trying to accomplish it.

Exactly!

I love how the political system makes you question your build orders, quest choices etc. 

I do think that it needs some sort of a numerical system implemented though. Right now I'm sort of winging it.

For example: hoping that certain building offer more influence for the pacifist party I want than those ships i built for my defense against the Craver invasion. If there was a way of telling just how much influence my actions have I feel like it would help a lot in my decision making. 

I'm all for maintaining higher levels of political volatility for the time being until we see how it all balances out late game further in the EA process.

Here's the thing:  I've been wanting a LONG time for a 4X game to have an interesting internal pressure mechanic - something that makes you think twice before executing your optimal build order strategy over and over.  The internal political system makes you question things like an optimal build order because those little decisions now connect to a broader set of empire-wide effects like elections and laws and shape your strategic opportunities.

Seems like just playing normally and building the stuff I've researched, I eventually end up with a bunch of parties all at 20% support each, with no good laws, and no direction. It's like Italian politics... in Space!

Yes!  That sounds like it's working as intended.  If you "play normally" and do a little of a this and a little of that, you'll end up with a more balanced political situation  And this leaves you without any strong majorities that might empower your empire with strong laws or effects.  This is great!  The game is forcing one to a make choice of direction and growth and how you appeal to your population or not.  Staying strong down one political avenue certainly has it's strong-points, but it requires making some trade-off decisions along the way.  Very few other games do this at all - so I'm glad to see ES2 trying to accomplish it.

idlih10 wrote:

Mailanka wrote:

Cravers never actually grant senate representation, thanks to the fact that they're a dictatorship, so instead you get happiness penalties.  I actually found this really interesting.  I had to regularly declare wars and build ridiculous numbers of military ships I didn't need just to feed into the perspective of constant militarism.  If you need to maintain a certain ideology, you become enslaved to it.  By contrast, when I play as the sophons, their flexible democracy means that my senate changes based on what's going on (someone attacked me and took one of my worlds, and then suddenly I have enough military support that I can pass a bunch of laws that make my ships better and cheaper and go fight the good fight!  After the war is done, I'm sure the mercurial Sophons will refocus elsewhere).  The net effect  here is that I need to spend Influence every 20 turns or so rebuilding my laws, but that's what Influence is for, right?

You can overstate how much change a single building will make, but if you suddenly go crazy with something, then yes, your civilization will be shaped by it.  Thus, it becomes another set of decisions.  If you need more industry, but less industrialism, how do you do it?  How do you balance your effort to quell the rise of the Industrialist regime with your need to get some improvements built?  An interesting choice, and one I think gameplay is built on.

I think it's a big improvement, and it's one of the things I enjoy the most about ES2.

I'm not asking for the politics system to be removed completely, just made more stable. And like I said, the different affinity laws can exist side by side as long as there are enough law slots available and they do not contradict each other. How is that not feasible? 

I'm also not overstating the effect of a single building. Almost every building is essential in some way. There's no such thing as "going crazy" over a building/ship type. If you're the Cravers with a military majority, why would you not want to build production buildings frequently to speed up ship construction? Or regardless of your senate majority, whu would you not want to build farms to increase population growth rate? It just doesn't make sense to tie buildings/fleets to affinities.

I've been able to maintain a pretty solid majority.  I did it by understanding the politics of the Cravers.  Pacifistic elements and Militaristic elements both result in a boost to militarism, and I balanced any industrial buildings I built with either commercial or military, or just mass produced ships and declared lots of war.  It kept me pretty stable (politically, anyway).

Like a lot of 4xers, I often have a standard template I apply to systems.  First, build a drone network, then use that to boostrap a better industrial building, then build some science and approval buildings, etc.  The first time I played the cravers, I had a political disaster on my hands, mainly for a sudden surge from Industrialists that kept sapping my happiness.  You can't do that.  Instead, you need to navigate your choices carefully.  The second time around I built specialist worlds.  That is, when I found a hot dry system, that became my ship-foundry.  I left a lot of worlds relatively empty (being craver, I often had to conquer just to conquer, which caused its own problems in the end).  If your goal is decent industrial output, there are many ways to achieve that.  The cravers, as a dictatorship, excel at dust production, and as xenophobes, gain militarism from pacifist (ie Dust producing buildings).  You could focus on dust production and just mass buy ships (also works well for upgrades).  If you're more technological, consider System upgrades.  You can define what resources you use and, I believe, Jadonyx gives you +50 industry when applied to a system upgrade.  That's pretty substantial.

The one thing I will comment on in absolute support of your "Hmmm, politics seem messed up" position is that there doesn't seem much of an obvious way to influence the elections.  I know we have options to do so, but they don't seem to do much, or anything, or it's more random than I think it is.  It's not really clear what's going on when I Intimidate Opponents or Finance Campaign.  I think if that were more obvious, I might get a better sense of what was going on.

idlih10 wrote:

I'm also not overstating the effect of a single building. Almost every building is essential in some way. There's no such thing as "going crazy" over a building/ship type.

Seems like just playing normally and building the stuff I've researched, I eventually end up with a bunch of parties all at 20% support each, with no good laws, and no direction. It's like Italian politics... in Space!

I would like a way of bringing some clarity to the chaos. The election actions either don't work or have some surprising and usually opposite effect, no doubt it's highly good and complex and just looks like a bug.

What I would like is the ability to sponsor or proscribe parties, so that I get only two or three in the running. And opinion polls that aren't totally wrong might help too.

Mailanka wrote:

Cravers never actually grant senate representation, thanks to the fact that they're a dictatorship, so instead you get happiness penalties.  I actually found this really interesting.  I had to regularly declare wars and build ridiculous numbers of military ships I didn't need just to feed into the perspective of constant militarism.  If you need to maintain a certain ideology, you become enslaved to it.  By contrast, when I play as the sophons, their flexible democracy means that my senate changes based on what's going on (someone attacked me and took one of my worlds, and then suddenly I have enough military support that I can pass a bunch of laws that make my ships better and cheaper and go fight the good fight!  After the war is done, I'm sure the mercurial Sophons will refocus elsewhere).  The net effect  here is that I need to spend Influence every 20 turns or so rebuilding my laws, but that's what Influence is for, right?

You can overstate how much change a single building will make, but if you suddenly go crazy with something, then yes, your civilization will be shaped by it.  Thus, it becomes another set of decisions.  If you need more industry, but less industrialism, how do you do it?  How do you balance your effort to quell the rise of the Industrialist regime with your need to get some improvements built?  An interesting choice, and one I think gameplay is built on.

I think it's a big improvement, and it's one of the things I enjoy the most about ES2.

I'm not asking for the politics system to be removed completely, just made more stable. And like I said, the different affinity laws can exist side by side as long as there are enough law slots available and they do not contradict each other. How is that not feasible? 

I'm also not overstating the effect of a single building. Almost every building is essential in some way. There's no such thing as "going crazy" over a building/ship type. If you're the Cravers with a military majority, why would you not want to build production buildings frequently to speed up ship construction? Or regardless of your senate majority, whu would you not want to build farms to increase population growth rate? It just doesn't make sense to tie buildings/fleets to affinities.

Cravers never actually grant senate representation, thanks to the fact that they're a dictatorship, so instead you get happiness penalties.  I actually found this really interesting.  I had to regularly declare wars and build ridiculous numbers of military ships I didn't need just to feed into the perspective of constant militarism.  If you need to maintain a certain ideology, you become enslaved to it.  By contrast, when I play as the sophons, their flexible democracy means that my senate changes based on what's going on (someone attacked me and took one of my worlds, and then suddenly I have enough military support that I can pass a bunch of laws that make my ships better and cheaper and go fight the good fight!  After the war is done, I'm sure the mercurial Sophons will refocus elsewhere).  The net effect  here is that I need to spend Influence every 20 turns or so rebuilding my laws, but that's what Influence is for, right?

You can overstate how much change a single building will make, but if you suddenly go crazy with something, then yes, your civilization will be shaped by it.  Thus, it becomes another set of decisions.  If you need more industry, but less industrialism, how do you do it?  How do you balance your effort to quell the rise of the Industrialist regime with your need to get some improvements built?  An interesting choice, and one I think gameplay is built on.

I think it's a big improvement, and it's one of the things I enjoy the most about ES2.

*throwing in my thoughts*

I didn't read every post nor have I played the game enough to understand all the mechanics, so first I'm sorry if this has been suggested.

If I read correctly, depending on the types of planetary improvements/buildings one builds a specific political party may be influenced more than others.  I kind of agree with some that certain buildings seem appropriate for advancing one's race no matter what political party and shouldn't affect any political party.  Would one solution be to make certain buildings have no political affiliation?  Such as basic defense structures or basic building-improvement structures, or basic science development structures (etc).  I'm not talking about the advance structures but just some of the primary ones that can help continue a civilization's growth.

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