ENDLESS™ Space 2 is turn-based 4X space-strategy that launches players into the space colonization age of different civilizations within the ENDLESS™ Universe. Your Vision. Their Future.
The idea is in the title, but essentially the goal is to hopefully create a little more senate stability in a way that is predictable and controllable by the player.
Science
If you have a series of cold worlds in a system full of science improvements, it makes sense that a high % of the people living in this system would tend to gravitate towards the sciences.
Religion
This one is a little trickier since it doesn't have a "production" per se, but I think it's not unreasonable to say it's in opposition to science. So if you have a system with very little science, it will give rise to religious tendencies.
So if a system's science production is over a certain % of it's total FIDS, it would tend to gravitate towards science representatives. And if it's under that %, it would gravitate towards religion.
Now lets see if we can apply that logic to ecologists and industrialists:
Industry and Food
If a planet is a hard-core industry producer, it should tend to create pressure for the industrialist party.
If it's more orientated towards food, preserving the ecology would be the general conern of the local voters.
Military and Pacifism
Now here things get a little more complicated. While there is definitely exists a Military-Industrial complex in real life, which creates pressure to create war, I think when you look at what makes voters pacifist or militarist things are a little different. So I'm going to say we remove +militarist bonuses from creating ships, and make this voter paradigm based more on threat/overpopulation rather than production.
If you have hostile neighbors, a militarist pressure should be applied relative to their military strength. Ie: the stronger their military compared to yours, the more miliarist pressure would result. Ships being destroyed, vessels of non-allied races entering your systems, and general "threat" should be the main causes here. Also, if you have overpopulation and nowhere to migrate to, that would create a yearn for expansion (+militarist).
The inverse of this would be: if you have room for pops to grow, alliances with strong military partners, and good dust production: pacifism should benefit.
Influence
Since influence is the representation of diplomatic power, I think we should use this resource as a multiplier on a system's senate representation. So a high science system that ALSO has high influence, would get extra science representatives in your senate. This would allow you to place your influence improvements/heroes strategically on systems that you want to shape your overall policies.
A note on laws
It's important to realize that government does not CREATE resources. It can only move them around. When you raise taxes, you don't CREATE money, you move it from one segment of your population to another. The laws should reflect this and should always have drawbacks. They should give rise to opposition from the people you are taking resources from. This should hopefully help create a bit of dynamism in the system.
For example:
Military Funding (militarist law): Bonus to ship building, but a malus on dust. Creates pacifist pressure.
Safety in the Workplace (Pacifist): Bonus to happiness, reduction to industry. Creates industrialist pressure.
Child subsidies (Ecology): Bonus to population growth, dust penalty. Creates industrialist pressure.
VA bill (militarist): Bonus to manpower. Dust penalty. Creates pacifist pressure.
Military R&D (military): Bonus to weapon damage, malus on science. Creates science pressure.
Raising taxes (pacifist): Bonus to dust, reduction on happiness and industry. Creates industrial pressure.
The idea with religion is a bit out of theme for the endless universe I think. (Empires fighting for the scraps of a very visible older species) Just consider the vodyani... they do not strike me as some who would be opposed to science at all. They probably use it as a means to fuel their religion... IE if you are special etc. etc. you will be uplifted, via science.
Also with the heavy focus on industry and science being a requirement to actually win the game, I feel that most of the other parties will kinda be left a bit out in the cold. There would have to be some rather big changes to core mechanics if food somehow started to become a major factor. And again with a theme... I kinda fail to see why a massive food production should be ecologists, if you have a massive food output it is most likely industrial...
Ecologists is in my mind more akin to keeping the planets as close to pristine as possible, ie reducing the industry food etc. footprint. But how that would fit in with this idea I will have to think a bit more about.
I do agree with your idea for laws.. there should be a positive and negative modifier instead of just a flat.. +25% more dust! I guess it is feasible that it appears like magic.. but it does not really make for interesting gameplay then!
Aiyen wrote: The idea with religion is a bit out of theme for the endless universe I think. (Empires fighting for the scraps of a very visible older species) Just consider the vodyani... they do not strike me as some who would be opposed to science at all. They probably use it as a means to fuel their religion... IE if you are special etc. etc. you will be uplifted, via science.
I see your point, but I had difficulty finding anything to tie religion to. Even in the current build, it seems there's a dearth of options for creating religion. Other than the Vodyani, who start religious, I've seen almost no religion in any of my other games.
One thought I just had would be tying it to happiness. Maybe the less happy your population is, the more religious they would become which would then give rise to laws which increase happiness. It would give a way out of the current unhappiness death-spiral that currently exists.
Looking online, there seems to be a negative correlation between money and religion. Ie: the more weathy a population, the less likely it is to be religious. So having it relate to dust is also an option I suppose. Science just seemed like the most obvious candidate for me but having multiple contributing factors would probably be a good thing.
Even all three. If you are poor, unhappy, or uneducated, you turn to religion. (I realize this doesn't paint a super-positive view of relgion, not trying to offend anyone!)
Also note that my original suggestion was about a % of FIDS. So even if you have science-heavy systems, which is required to tech up, presumably not every system is a science powerhouse. So the backwater systems with less science would give rise to religious tendencies.
In special cases like the Vodyani pops, there is already a system in place where science pressure can also produce equivalent religious pressure (or be transmuted entirely) since they have a very sciency religion.
Aiyen wrote:
Also with the heavy focus on industry and science being a requirement to actually win the game, I feel that most of the other parties will kinda be left a bit out in the cold. There would have to be some rather big changes to core mechanics if food somehow started to become a major factor. And again with a theme... I kinda fail to see why a massive food production should be ecologists, if you have a massive food output it is most likely industrial...
Well if your livelihood depends on the growth of plants and animals, keeping the world healthy seems like an important priority. Compared to paving it over and creating factories everywhere (industrialist). I do see your point, but I don't think our modern standards of industrial food production are really all that sustainable/healthy. The ecologist-food connection is something that they've already put into the game, so I figured I would use it.
I 100% agree that food is the red-headed stepchild of the FIDSI currently. You really don't need any help creating food, but I have to assume that will be addressed with balance changes at some point. Once migration is a thing, having food-systems makes more sense for creating and exporting population.
I do agree with your idea for laws.. there should be a positive and negative modifier instead of just a flat.. +25% more dust! I guess it is feasible that it appears like magic.. but it does not really make for interesting gameplay then!
Thanks. If nothing else I hope they do some balancing here. It seems there's already some in the industrialist and science policy trees, but the military and pacifist ones are all pure benefits.
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