For the record my current settings are scarce resources, medium amount of difficult minor factions,  Spiral 8 with one of each major race, and few constellations.

Each FIDSI brings it's own advantages.  For example dust not only lets you purchase out junk, but also gives heavy incentive to screw with the marketplace and setup trade routes, while trying to only dip in to the lhe other tech quadrants as needed.  However I'm finding it hard to play/justify influence focused races.

Obviously they have a win condition in letting you assimilate enemy systems in your territory, and the ability to quickly set up trade agreements.  Further the huge advantage you get with minor factions and the ability to grab most of the blackholes and the like is huge.  

This leads me to my confusion with senate meddling.  As far as I can tell by going down the left quadrant you get not only ship tech (which for the record is VASTLY superior in use and necessity in my experience) you also get all the stuff that lets you change governments on the fly, get extra law slots, and influence elections.  My issue stems from not really feeling this is all worth the effort and tech though.  

The laws are obviously powerful, but I don't feel the system is opaque/powerful enough to justify the time and tech to swap junk around compared to literally just ignoring it.  If you play any other playstyle you still get access to very powerful laws as you play (and generally the ones you need) so I don't see what the advantage is of being the "master of the senate" as opposed to "the guy making 3000 dust a turn" or "that dude who can pump out two fleets every turn".

Any suggestions on laws I should be looking for or reasons I should be switching my government (especially as horatio).

The second confusion is the political demands ability.

I don't get how they build, I don't get what makes them build faster, I don't see why there's 3 tiers, and given my testing with them, regardless of relations with the target, its generally just a free way to declare war.  The only time I've seen it work I had a massive fleet advantage, demanded all their manpower (since my fleet had no troops), they gave it to me, then I invaded them...so that was neat.  

Diplomatic Pressure is dependent on your Influence vs. their influence. If yours is higher, it shifts in your favor, if it's lower, it shifts in their favor. I think it's total influence, but it might just be the per-turn income. As for what the three levels are, they represent what you can demand; I believe first tier is dust and luxury resources, second is strategic resources, third is technologies. And yeah, if you don't have a military edge on them, the AI's going to laugh it off... Though one of the things your suppose to get for bowing to a pressure demand (at least, based on the flavor text) is immunity to getting planets flipped via their influence for at least a few turns...

But really, the real joy/benefit of influence-based empires isn't passing a bunch of laws (which is actually pretty easy to afford once you can build pretty much any of the influence buildings) but flipping other faction's territory to yours as your borders envelop theirs. There is a religious law that makes it easier and automatic (ironically, the main religious major faction, the Vodyani, are exempt from most of this because of their nomadic gameplay, so said law is kinda useless to them) but it should be something you can start to do some time after you border covers more than 50% of the system. In fact, it's kinda broken if you're not ready for it, since their is no cap or diminishing returns to just how far those borders can go.

As for Political Strategies as Horatio, the Ecologist forced law is pretty powerful, especially for being able to snag that one critical strategic resource you just *know* is going to only spawn on a planet in your constellation that you won't be able to colonize normally until sometime after turn 80. Personally I'm also not a fan of dictatorships, as it means only one hero in the senate, one law beyond the forced law, and pops that can start becoming rebellious if they're no longer true believers in whatever ideology you have ruling the empire, so I'd swap to Federation or Republic (depending on if you have spare influence or spare dust, respectively) to give you more options to improve your empire.

Cool.  Thanks for the breakdown.

I'm not aruging against any of it, but it seems a little silly that there's all these techs/skills that let you swap government easier or rig elections when I've yet to ever feel the need for it .  Is there any advantage to all that or should I just go with the flow, flip once to federation/republic, and then just official support whoever the hell I want?

The point being that admist all my gameplay questions (which you answered perfectly) it seems they've built a very complicated political system, that just doesn't feel worth the effort to understand?  I could be looking at my population reactions and pushing propaganda and all that junk, but I've yet to ever feel the need to, and I'm wondering if the returns are worth the time and tech?  I certainly don't feel any downside now that the dictatorship mess is fixed.

This is a valid question.

Introducing the new political features was a bold move, but ultimately it needs to have a place in the game by having a need for interacting with it, otherwise it is a wasted DEV effort that could have gone into other more usefull places, as the player will not learn or sacrifice in-game resources to use it.

Thus, if the new political system cannot fail an empire when left alone, or help it overcome odds that would not be managable ootherwise, it is a redundant mechanic

The solution seems logical:

1. Empire-wide Crisis bound to the new system and only resolvable there

2. Restriction of the possibilities and effectiveness of the political parties (even more then now), and only allow very potent laws to be passed, if the system is managed well.

It would also be an option to have a general negative effect when the system is not managed properly in form of corruption (wasting resources), or migration to neighbouring empires

In case of United Empire, I was very excided to read abouth the various houses forming their own little empires, but have not seen it so far.

Still playing the game, so there iss still a chance this may pop up as a story driven event but seems not to be integrated into the political system which I was expecting from the text and questions the existence of it.

This political meaningless issue is deeply tied to influence issue.

I feel the dev wanted them to work in tandem and so they would influence the game enought that player should play attention to it.

But right now it fails miserably as the militaristic approach is far more powerfull.

Built battleships and troop transportships and bang bang faceroll any of the other playstyles.

There are other issues as some race should absolutely not be influenced by....influence and politics like the Cravers which only interest is...food.

Also on the other hand influence is far too powerfull in the sense if you reduce a civilization to a planet only with no fleet it can still influence the world around it even with military presence on them.

A empire on the brink of total failure should not influence anything seriously as its stop to be considered something viable.

IMHO i feel the negletec part of this puzzle if the population presence on each planet.

Inflence, politics and religion, are as good as their populations are willing to engage on it.

As a simple example: (and i am sorry for the religious/politic (there is here no judgement of valour) speach but i am unable to design a clearer example)

You won t see Finland turning itself toward any religion as people generally dont give a damn to it, as much as you won t see South Arabia turning jewish or democratic as population don t give a rat ass to it and are driven to the status quo by coertion also.

But on the other hand you ll probably see a switch in europe toward Islamic religion as the government are housing more and more people of this religion and "islamic" people give much more attention to religion than european give attention to it.

All theis to say that populations should have traits (translated into numeric values):

- Racial traits: (each race will feel better when driven, or at least having heroes of their species governing system, by an empire of their own race)

- Political traits; (Craver dictatorship, Voydany Teocracy, and so on)

- Hapiness traits:  (food for cravers, reshearch for Sophons and so on)

- and so on...Too much so on...

Probably layers and hierarchy of traits should be implemented, primary and secondary, and have a (small ?) RNG.

All this would combine into a mosaic that influence the system population and these systems combined tendencies influences the empire politic feeling leading, why not, in system willing to bail out to join another empire or becoming independent.

Maybe governamental propaganda should be inserted by using the influence points you build so you can control a bit whats happening, but make a false or several false moves and see issues rise and maybe threaten to reap your empire.

All in all population would have a meaning beyond populating new colonized worlds. Managing them, and by consequence politics, would have the importance it have not today. 

(Now errr balancing this to make sense and be enjoyable trought math formulaes...Sorry devs, or maybe someone will see this as an interesting challenge.)

Foefaller wrote:

Diplomatic Pressure is dependent on your Influence vs. their influence. If yours is higher, it shifts in your favor, if it's lower, it shifts in their favor. I think it's total influence, but it might just be the per-turn income. As for what the three levels are, they represent what you can demand; I believe first tier is dust and luxury resources, second is strategic resources, third is technologies. And yeah, if you don't have a military edge on them, the AI's going to laugh it off... Though one of the things your suppose to get for bowing to a pressure demand (at least, based on the flavor text) is immunity to getting planets flipped via their influence for at least a few turns...

But really, the real joy/benefit of influence-based empires isn't passing a bunch of laws (which is actually pretty easy to afford once you can build pretty much any of the influence buildings) but flipping other faction's territory to yours as your borders envelop theirs. There is a religious law that makes it easier and automatic (ironically, the main religious major faction, the Vodyani, are exempt from most of this because of their nomadic gameplay, so said law is kinda useless to them) but it should be something you can start to do some time after you border covers more than 50% of the system. In fact, it's kinda broken if you're not ready for it, since their is no cap or diminishing returns to just how far those borders can go.

As for Political Strategies as Horatio, the Ecologist forced law is pretty powerful, especially for being able to snag that one critical strategic resource you just *know* is going to only spawn on a planet in your constellation that you won't be able to colonize normally until sometime after turn 80. Personally I'm also not a fan of dictatorships, as it means only one hero in the senate, one law beyond the forced law, and pops that can start becoming rebellious if they're no longer true believers in whatever ideology you have ruling the empire, so I'd swap to Federation or Republic (depending on if you have spare influence or spare dust, respectively) to give you more options to improve your empire.

I think the influence is pretty unbalanced at the moment.   I've had more than one game where I'm up against the Empire and even taking there Capital and multiple systems from them hardly puts a dent in the pressure emanating from their territory.   My last game I had literally every planet in my empire with a spin center and I couldn't even touch what the empire was putting out, again I went to war with them, took their capital and half their systems and it hardly made a dent in their pressure.

Belhoriann wrote:
It is a common thing to feel and say that Amplitude games 'play themselves'.
While this was more a design issue in the case of Endless Space 1, I think that the main problem of ES2 is its current balance.
Player drowns under FIDSI, strat and luxury ressources, without doing anything special besides upgrading star systems normally. Laws and political actions have therefore no significant impact on the Empire wealthiness.
We do not have the impression to rule an Empire, hence your question: why bother research this influence tech or unlock new gov types?

While it is a balance issue, i've found that playing on scarce resources with few constellations leads to lots of games with me being forced into the marketplace for my luxury/strategic resource needs, because otherwise I won't be seeing them for a long damn time (and i then am more interested in trade routes not just for the dust but more for the luxuries).  I do however think it would help if they just told you what luxury would boost which pop, and things like that, so my first step once getting the market wasn't just buying 1 of every available resource to quickly identify what I do and don't need.

I think the bigger issue does sorta break down into what you can use influence for, and how you get it.

Getting it just requires building the influence buildings. There's no marketplace trading, no finding specific planets, etc.  it has a few laws, but so does everything else.

Using it for minor races currently feels good, but that's also a luxury resource thing as well.  I still feel the balance between a minor races unique ability and just owning them isn't quite rite, as if I had the resources to get them high enough to like me, then I probably will just buy them or finish the assist quest, but that's numbers tweaking (an earlier assist quest/method for boosts to give you more ways to boost them without influence would help a lot, and then let them move the others to higher up and make getting minors more difficult).  Either way i'm probably not spending luxury resources on it.

Diplomacy is sorta the same thing as it's always been?  Trading tech is potentially very powerful, but you don't get much else.  Trade deals only matter if the AI is building trade tech (might be an AI issue as well), and if you're going that route as well (likely, but not always reasonable for a good route either).  Research is good...who knew.  Alliances are alliances.  Theres...not much else though?  I love the vision stuff because I don't scout enough, but that's also sorta standard affair?  Maybe if we could spend influence to influence other races politics (basically a subterfuge/spy system), and failing that at least being able to interact a bit more on the diplomacy screen would help a lot (ships could be something?  maybe you could let races lease them so influence heavy players don't just build their own super fleets every time?)

Politics is odd because there's no doubt laws are amazingly powerful, but at the same time I don't feel enough pressure to really micromanage them?  Maybe it's because we're all still learning in a weridly balanced environment, but I rarely feel the need to suddenly push hard to get a specific political party so I can use their advantages. Even with crazy strong stuff like ecologists (Which..maybe i should try more in the early game with rough starts?).