This is getting annoying. You seem to like arguing for the sake of arguing and have yet to propose a better solution up to this point. You also don't seem to understand the points I raised so far and appear defensive over the current system.

Read my post carefully again please. Step 1: Pay the costs of changing government type if desired. Step 2: Anarchy period with penalties. Step 3: Anarchy and its penalties over and new government type formed. Step 4: Choose laws made available through that government type. Step 5: Repeat if desired

If it isn't so already, fundamental buildings that affect FIDSI and approval should be available in the game for all factions regardless of government type. More advanced ones may be unlocked through research. But certain government types may also provide bonuses that magnify the positive effects of certain buildings or provide benefits of their own that support a particular strategy e.g.militaristic or scientific etc. Affinities exist for nothing more than to affect approval and may offer quests for the player to manage their happiness. 

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"?

You are still defining all the government types as exactly according to real life instead of in the context of gameplay. Mistake me not. I am not arguing semantics here but gameplay mechanics. Nowhere did I say throw out the other politics systems, only remove the elections mechanic from them all.

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?

 The entire point of having different government types is to support a specific strategy. Otherwise, they would just provide an arbitrary mix of benefits that fails to support the chosen strategy adequately. If this is constantly disrupted by elections, how do you pursue that strategy? This is aggravated by the fact that affinity composition changes at the whim of many buildings you construct, most of which are essential in one way or another. Another aggravating factor is tying affinity types to the ship type. All these go against the principle of allowing the player full control over his chosen strategy through his choice of government and laws. 

Gameplay means the player is given full flexibility to pursue his chosen strategy and accept the consequences of it. He does not have control over the consequences, but he has full control over the strategy he decides on. If you even disagree with this, I have nothing more to discuss with you unless you have a better solution.

 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"

Mailanka wrote:

I don't think I have.

 Laws should be tied directly to the chosen government type, not dynamic changes in affinities. 

So, for example, if I want to be Ecologist, I choose to be Ecologost, and pass ecologist laws, because that's what I chose, right?

The happiness penalty is a separate issue where different affinities may like/dislike certain government types/laws and you can manage their approval independently of the government type/law. 

So, I choose for Ecologist laws, and my militarist populace doesn't like it, thus I gain happinesss penalties.

To add, there's a need to stop defining the in-game politics system exactly according to real life where a democracy must necessarily have elections.

Which means you'd rather there was no elections at all, or to not use terms like "dictatorship" to describe the sort of government you describe.

However, in the game, there is a form of government where you choose whatever affinity you like, and gain a happiness penalty  if you choose a set of laws that the populace dislikes.  There are "elections" but they don't really change anything, except a minor +/- on the current state of unhappiness. The game calls this "dictatorship."  This is different from other forms of more volatile governments, like federation and democracy, which are progressively more volatile and more influenced by elections.  My question is this: How does your proposal substantiall differentiate itself from "give everyone dictatorship" in the context of a system wherein you choose whatever affinity you like and the populace can suck it, and I'll add an additional question: What would you do with the other political systems?  Would you just throw them out?  Is there no difference between the "democratic" Sophons and the "dictatorial" Cravers when it comes to how laws are chosen?

EDIT: One last question

This is a case where gameplay takes precedence over the desire for pedantic realism.

How does the system you propose promote gameplay?  How do you define gameplay?  Do you define it as "The player is allowed to do what he wants?"

This is getting annoying. You seem to like arguing for the sake of arguing and have yet to propose a better solution up to this point. You also don't seem to understand the points I raised so far and appear defensive over the current system.

Read my post carefully again please. Step 1: Pay the costs of changing government type if desired. Step 2: Anarchy period with penalties. Step 3: Anarchy and its penalties over and new government type formed. Step 4: Choose laws made available through that government type. Step 5: Repeat if desired

If it isn't so already, fundamental buildings that affect FIDSI and approval should be available in the game for all factions regardless of government type. More advanced ones may be unlocked through research. But certain government types may also provide bonuses that magnify the positive effects of certain buildings or provide benefits of their own that support a particular strategy e.g.militaristic or scientific etc. Affinities exist for nothing more than to affect approval and may offer quests for the player to manage their happiness. 

You are still defining all the government types as exactly according to real life instead of in the context of gameplay. Mistake me not. I am not arguing semantics here but gameplay mechanics. Nowhere did I say throw out the other politics systems, only remove the elections mechanic from them all. The entire point of having different government types is to support a specific strategy. Otherwise, they would just provide an arbitrary mix of benefits that fails to support the chosen strategy adequately. If this is constantly disrupted by elections, how do you pursue that strategy? This is aggravated by the fact that affinity composition changes at the whim of many buildings you construct, most of which are essential in one way or another. Another aggravating factor is tying affinity types to the ship type. All these go against the principle of allowing the player full control over his chosen strategy through his choice of government and laws. 

Gameplay means the player is given full flexibility to pursue his chosen strategy and accept the consequences of it. He does not have control over the consequences, but he has full control over the strategy he decides on. If you even disagree with this, I have nothing more to discuss with you unless you have a better solution.

idlih10 wrote:

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Today the game moralizes and teaches that dictatorship or anything is way better than anarchy. Some philosophers would discuss for years and years about that and I think this is arbitrary and super mainstream.

Anarchy is supposed to be penalizing to discourage frivolous changes in government type, whether dictatorship or not. I wouldn't consider it a "government type" because it's anti-government and does not support any particular strategy by definition, unlike the other government types. By forcing elections (or "opinion polls" in the case of a dictatorship) every 20 turns, the game has unknowingly forced a "democratic" process on every government type. Even for those that are neither dictatorships or democracies, there are supposed to be election differences. If I remember correctly from Civ (or was it Total War?), any government type in the middle of the spectrum between a dictatorship and democracy would have less frequent elections than a democracy. However, the player should not be forced to choose between political stability and none because such a mechanic takes away the player's flexibility to choose any government type he wants to support his chosen strategy at any given time. This means as mentioned, no elections for all government types, and the type of laws passed should be determined directly by the player's chosen government type, not by affinities.

The next question would then be what to do with the different affinity types? I think they could still serve to provide different FIDSI bonuses and if deployed in the right systems (assuming the ability to transfer pops between different systems is patched in later), would allow for more focused system specialization. In terms of approval, if the affinity type hates the player's chosen government type, there could be an approval penalty, but this penalty should be localised to each system where the affinity is present and only scale according to the population proportion of that affinity type in that system. If local disapproval is significant enough, that system's FIDSI would suffer greatly. But the affinity responsible for this could also offer the player optional quests, where completing them would negate the penalty for a fixed number of turns and provide some reward as an additional incentive. More quests may be offered to keep the affinity happy, but if the player ignores them later, the approval earned from the previous quest could start degrading after the fixed period is over until the appropriate penalty is restored. So the player has the option to manage the approval of unhappy affinities and this will have no bearing whatsoever on the player's chosen government type.

So, if I read you right, you'd prefer that no government type have elections, but that if you choose a political party that isn't one a population would choose, they provide a happiness penalty?

How does your model substantially differ from enforcing Dictatorship on all civilizations?

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Today the game moralizes and teaches that dictatorship or anything is way better than anarchy. Some philosophers would discuss for years and years about that and I think this is arbitrary and super mainstream.

Anarchy is supposed to be penalizing to discourage frivolous changes in government type, whether dictatorship or not. I wouldn't consider it a "government type" because it's anti-government and does not support any particular strategy by definition, unlike the other government types. By forcing elections (or "opinion polls" in the case of a dictatorship) every 20 turns, the game has unknowingly forced a "democratic" process on every government type. Even for those that are neither dictatorships or democracies, there are supposed to be election differences. If I remember correctly from Civ (or was it Total War?), any government type in the middle of the spectrum between a dictatorship and democracy would have less frequent elections than a democracy. However, the player should not be forced to choose between political stability and none because such a mechanic takes away the player's flexibility to choose any government type he wants to support his chosen strategy at any given time. This means as mentioned, no elections for all government types, and the type of laws passed should be determined directly by the player's chosen government type, not by affinities.

The next question would then be what to do with the different affinity types? I think they could still serve to provide different FIDSI bonuses and if deployed in the right systems (assuming the ability to transfer pops between different systems is patched in later), would allow for more focused system specialization. In terms of approval, if the affinity type hates the player's chosen government type, there could be an approval penalty, but this penalty should be localised to each system where the affinity is present and only scale according to the population proportion of that affinity type in that system. If local disapproval is significant enough, that system's FIDSI would suffer greatly. But the affinity responsible for this could also offer the player optional quests, where completing them would negate the penalty for a fixed number of turns and provide some reward as an additional incentive. More quests may be offered to keep the affinity happy, but if the player ignores them later, the approval earned from the previous quest could start degrading after the fixed period is over until the appropriate penalty is restored. So the player has the option to manage the approval of unhappy affinities and this will have no bearing whatsoever on the player's chosen government type.

Booyahzman wrote:

*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.

Certain buildings have no affiliation.  You can see the action that will occur if you build a particular building (for example, a Science building has a visible "+ science" icon on it).  Things like Drone Networks make no impact on your politics.

idlih10 wrote:

Mailanka wrote: They don't have free elections. Their election mechanic mostly measures the opinions of the people and determines how pissed off they are at being ignored.

It's not about whether the elections are free or not. As long as there are "elections", opposing affinity's opinions are taken into account, which in turn affects approval. It's rediculous that this doesn't happen in a democracy where there are no less affinity types, yet happens in a dictatorship where any opposition to the ruling party is stamped out? If this is applied to a dictatorship, then it should also be applied to all government types.

I don't really follow.  If you're in a Democracy in Endless Space, and you vote for a Pacifist Representative, you get a Pacifist Representative.  He's right there.  That's what you're voting for, and that's what you get.  Your voice is heard.  This is true of all the political systems... except Dictatorship, where you "vote" for a Pacifist Representative, and then get told to suck it.

Mailanka wrote: They evidently offer a lot more than just +50% dust.  Dictatorships give you iron clad control over which party is in power (Want the Ecologists in power?  Boom, they're in power) and dirt cheap election influence, while democracy gets more law slots, but ridiculously expensive election manipulation and far more representatives. If you want less "political volatility," the point of this thread, it seems a more oppressive system would appeal to you.  That is, the advantage of a dictatorship over a democracy is less political volatility. However, this could be much better explained IMO.

From the dictatorship's post-election approval penalty, I get the feeling that it is singled out to be penalized here as if the devs are saying: "Hey, a dictatorship is OPed because it's the only government type that allows you to keep the ruling party in power regardless of affinity changes in your empire, therefore we must penalize it in any way we can." By that same logic, one can also argue that "Hey, a federation is OPed because it's the only government type that further reduces the overcolonization penalty, therefore it must be penalized more as well."

Well, yes: the advantage of a dictatorship is they get to throw political volatility out the window.  This is unique among the political systems.  The cost of this control is you take a happiness hit.  This is also unique among political systems ("singled out.")  You state it in very harsh terms, but your view is largely correct: They get an advantage and pay a cost for it.  If you choose this system, you get both an advantage and a disadvantage, sort of like how Democracy gets lots of extra law slots, but the cost is extremely high political volatility (and little control over elections).  You could argue that they're "singled out" too.  It's not enough to point out that dictatorship has drawbacks, but that its drawbacks outweigh its benefits, and I find that a hard case to make, as you're here arguing there should be less political instability (which means you clearly don't like the flaws of Democracy either, suggesting that dictatorship isn't worse than democracy)

That's the wrong way to balance government types imo. In a game, all government types should be viewed as equally acceptable and viable. A dictatorship by its very nature should not have any elections/opinion polls/whatever you call it. It should not be penalized simply for this reason but rather from the wider perspective of balancing gameplay and attractiveness of different government types (including dictatorships). So for example, support for a dictatorship tends to come from those in power who wish to keep it that way. This would mean any other affinity types that do not agree with the ruling affinity's practices should not be tolerated. This means no elections and the downside of this would be an inability to pass laws from other affinity types. Should you change support to another affinity type, there could be an approval penalty from the previous ruling affinity (and this penalty's effects must recover over time, say 10 turns), but there will be no approval penalty if you keep the ruling affinity in power. This would be a much more balanced approach than having a mechanic that penalizes approval if you support the ruling affinity and penalizes it if you don't, because let's face it, there will always be approval penalties as long as there are different affinities in the empire and dissention effects are allowed in a dictatorship. It's not about what government type appeals to me but what makes sense. You don't balance government types by handicapping fundamental assets like FIDSI (due to "post election" unhappiness from non-ruling affinities) in dictatorships but not others. That's unbalancing gameplay. You balance government types by granting exclusive benefits for each. If any specific benefit is considered more powerful than others, government types that lack this benefit may be given more benefits in other areas to balance up. This is the root of my discussion as far as dictatorships are concerned.

Yes, of course all the governments should be "equally viable."  When you get the option to change government, you should find Dictatorship appealing, and you evidently don't find it appealing, but I'm not sure why, given that you complained about political volatility.  Given that Democracy gives you huge volatility, you might prefer to switch to Dictatorship to avoid said volatility, but if you do, of course, you have other problems to deal with.  That's what makes them balanced.  You don't want dictatorship to be superior to democracy, right?  You want both to be equally attractive to different play styles.

The rest I'm afraid I can't really follow.  It looks like an overcomplicated restatement of the system that's already in place: You can only have one party in place at a time (check) and the party that isn't in power generates unhappiness (check) but in your case it's the party that's being left, sort of like creating a new form of anarchy.  Also, dictatorships don't penalize FIDSI, they penalize unhappiness, which penalizes FIDSI.  If your problem is you find it too hard to manage happiness, and that happiness penalizes FIDSI, say that and suggest a fix to how happiness impacts your empire, or how it's managed.  Finally, your suggestion sidelines one of the major elements of the games: Minorities.  If I'm playing as Sophons who love Science, and I assimilate a race (the Mavros) that loves Industrialism, but I keep sidelining their opinion by refusing to allow Industrialist representation, in the current model this makes the Mavros-settled worlds unhappy, but in your version, they don't care.  I'm not sure that "makes sense."

1. Anarchy periods are too long and prohibitive. If I understand it correctly, this means FIDSI take a hit during its entire duration, which can often lead to unbalanced gameplay because ALL FIDSI stats are affected. At most, they should last no longer than 10 turns.

I was playing on Sandbox and Quick, so take this with a grain of salt, but my change times started at 20 when I first got the technology (which was turn 2 or 3.  It came really fast.  By the time I had all the pieces in place to make the change (approval, influence, etc), it had dropped to 5.  So something shifts that anarchy time, I just don't know what.

2. A dictatorship should not have any elections whatsoever! By all means, handicap them in say science and/or food, but give them a huge boost in production and ship building time. Dissenters against the ruling party will be killed or thrown into concentration camps as slave labor. If the slaves do not meet production requirements, they will not eat their next meal. All these will make the disapproval penalty after elections irrelevant (wait, didn't I say there should be no elections?) 

They don't have free elections. Their election mechanic mostly measures the opinions of the people and determines how pissed off they are at being ignored.

3. Your support for a particular affinity helps improve their chances of being elected and this can be increased by spending dust or influence to fund your campaign. However, this is no guarantee that they will always win as I've seen from many election results, at least in democracies which I presume have the weakest campaign action impact on outcome. 

Have you run an election, quick, reloaded an autosave and supported someone else and seen what the outcome looks like?  I did with a dictatorship, and it's substantial!  I don't know what it looks like with a democracy (I expect less)

4. I don't understand why different government types would have different extents of impact on election results when using the same dust/influence actions to fund your campaign. This introduces unnecessary complexity and without greater clarity on the success chance as mentioned above, is quite meaningless tbh. When you spend dust/influence to finance your campaign, this is meant to be a general mechanic to increase the election success chance of your desired affinity. Meddling with its effectiveness just by virtue of your government type goes against this principle.

It makes sense to me that some political systems are more easily influenced than others.  What isn't clear to me is that while dictatorships are so cheap as to be effectively free and democracies are so expensive as to be prohibitive, do they make the same impact?  I would expect "small"  is "small" no matter which system.  It may have to do with how many reps you you have too.  Dictatorships and Federations have less reps than Republics and Democracies.

5. The benefits of each government type need to be carefully weighed against the cons of choosing them. For example, looking at the stats above, it seems that the approval requirement for a dictatorship is the highest among the government types. Yet, a mere +50% dust on systems does not justify the effort imo and they still have elections when they shouldn't!

They evidently offer a lot more than just +50% dust.  Dictatorships give you iron clad control over which party is in power (Want the Ecologists in power?  Boom, they're in power) and dirt cheap election influence, while democracy gets more law slots, but ridiculously expensive election manipulation and far more representatives. If you want less "political volatility," the point of this thread, it seems a more oppressive system would appeal to you.  That is, the advantage of a dictatorship over a democracy is less political volatility. However, this could be much better explained IMO.

Mailanka wrote:

I've been doing some experiments with politics as the Sophons on the sandbox difficulty.

It seems that if you shift to a dictatorship, you're profoundly influential as to what party gets enthroned as standard.  So if you have the ecology party unlocked and you throw your weight behind them, they'll probably end up as your party of choice, and stay as such.

Federation claims that representatives are based on system level.  Therefore, if you choose for that government, you can note the leanings of each populace in each system, and then adjust system level accordingly. That is, if you have an ecological species in a system and you ramp them up to max system level, they'll have excessive representation in your senate compared to everyone else.

Finally, Dictatorship > Federation > Republic > Democracy when it comes to the cost and impact of your tools.  Or so the game claims.  At least, the last time I played with a dictatorship, I tried to influence the election one way, reloaded the save and influenced it the other way, and it completely turned things around.  The tools you have do make a difference.

Here's what the in-game government change screen tells me on the change government requirements:

Dictatorship

Required approval to implement: 90

Influence cost: 100

Anarchy period between change in government type: 60 turns

Benefit: +50% dust on systems

Federation

Required approval to implement: 80

Influence cost: 100

Anarchy period between change in government type: 50 turns

Benefit: +25% industry on systems, -10% overcolonization penalty

Republic

Required approval to implement: 60

Influence cost: 100

Anarchy period between change in government type: 30 turns

Benefit: +25% influence on systems, +25% food on systems

Democracy (not sure on all stats as I got the data from the Sophons)

Benefit: +25% science on systems, -25% diplomatic cost reduction with minor civs on empire

Here are my observations:

1. Anarchy periods are too long and prohibitive. If I understand it correctly, this means FIDSI take a hit during its entire duration, which can often lead to unbalanced gameplay because ALL FIDSI stats are affected. At most, they should last no longer than 10 turns.

2. A dictatorship should not have any elections whatsoever! By all means, handicap them in say science and/or food, but give them a huge boost in production and ship building time. Dissenters against the ruling party will be killed or thrown into concentration camps as slave labor. If the slaves do not meet production requirements, they will not eat their next meal. All these will make the disapproval penalty after elections irrelevant (wait, didn't I say there should be no elections?) 

3. Your support for a particular affinity helps improve their chances of being elected and this can be increased by spending dust or influence to fund your campaign. However, this is no guarantee that they will always win as I've seen from many election results, at least in democracies which I presume have the weakest campaign action impact on outcome. What's badly missing is an indicator of how your pre-election actions will influence the outcome. I know some may argue that it simulates election uncertainty, but this is a game and gameplay takes priority over realism if there's a conflict between the 2. Even in games that depend a lot on RNG like xcom, where you often do not have 100% certainty of hitting a target and it's normal to miss even 95% chance shots, you know the probability before you make the decision and the outcome accurately reflects this probability (a 1% miss chance is just as valid as a 99% hit chance). If you know the chance of success of spending dust/influence to finance your campaign, you can choose to spend or not to spend them instead of doing so and finding out later it was a wasted effort. Even if you took a chance and failed, you knew that it was a CALCULATED chance and not one based on some hidden algorithm that currently seems to be the case.

4. I don't understand why different government types would have different extents of impact on election results when using the same dust/influence actions to fund your campaign. This introduces unnecessary complexity and without greater clarity on the success chance as mentioned above, is quite meaningless tbh. When you spend dust/influence to finance your campaign, this is meant to be a general mechanic to increase the election success chance of your desired affinity. Meddling with its effectiveness just by virtue of your government type goes against this principle.

5. The benefits of each government type need to be carefully weighed against the cons of choosing them. For example, looking at the stats above, it seems that the approval requirement for a dictatorship is the highest among the government types. Yet, a mere +50% dust on systems does not justify the effort imo and they still have elections when they shouldn't!

I've been doing some experiments with politics as the Sophons on the sandbox difficulty.

It seems that if you shift to a dictatorship, you're profoundly influential as to what party gets enthroned as standard.  So if you have the ecology party unlocked and you throw your weight behind them, they'll probably end up as your party of choice, and stay as such.

Federation claims that representatives are based on system level.  Therefore, if you choose for that government, you can note the leanings of each populace in each system, and then adjust system level accordingly. That is, if you have an ecological species in a system and you ramp them up to max system level, they'll have excessive representation in your senate compared to everyone else.

Finally, Dictatorship > Federation > Republic > Democracy when it comes to the cost and impact of your tools.  Or so the game claims.  At least, the last time I played with a dictatorship, I tried to influence the election one way, reloaded the save and influenced it the other way, and it completely turned things around.  The tools you have do make a difference.

idlih10 wrote:

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? 

yes, which is why i'm saying the player should have more of an effect, and those tools exist, but don't seem to work.  I know it's flexible, but at the same time a lot of the ecologist laws for example do not seem great at handling a serious war scenario, so if for some reason they're about to win and I think i'm about to be attacked, i'd like to be able to influence that.

Especially if i'm spending research, tech, dust, and influence on it.