Economic Warfare is a beautiful thing, but in my opinion it doesn't need a whole lot of new features- mostly forced diplomacy and for the Marketplace to provide a larger supply without player input, especially since AI never sell. (Unless it's the Discount Potatoes, which I tried and failed to use as Lumeris as inflation still kept on rising) I don't know about the rest of you, but to me economic warfare is really just military blocking of trade (which can be achieved with blockades right now, and to some extent privateers), and more subtle market manipulation, which we have the systems for if not for the lack of independent economic actors on the marketplace resulting in low supply for pretty much everything. For the former though, some capacity for creating Merchant raiders would be awesome, but I'll settle for better Mercenaries and moving Privateers to the Micro-Dust Loans tech. It'd be nice if Pirates could buy ships from the market too, so those old ships we sell off sometimes actually get put to use.

Also I'd like to note that I've played a few test games on Normal speed now, and Economic victory has still been the first victory in each game. I'm not sure what to make of that as I often don't know exactly what's going on on the AI's end, but at one point the Riftborn won an economic victory despite being completely isolated.

WeaponizedCaffeine wrote: Okay first of all credit where credit is due, even though it's a long post, the level of thought and detail put into it is impressive! Wow :D

Thanks , I do like to take my time making posts like these and I'm glad that it shows. 

Now, we've been reading your trade Power system proposal and while it's slightly more complex that we would like such a system to be it remains very interesting, especially in regard to the interconnectivity between the Trading System and the Marketplace. The system itself works (or at least seems to work on paper) even though I think it's debatable whether taking a part of player agency and control away (by automatically supplying the Marketplace with Trading yields) is a good thing.

Player agency is not really taken away, since 75% of the trade yields (or whatever percent is chosen) still goes back to the Trade companies (thus the player), 

what it does give is an explanation as to how the market place gets stuff and where trade companies money comes from, 

I'd argue it gives more player agency as it gives you the ability to manipulate the market (as you could before) to now screw over your opponent’s Trade companies.

But you said it yourself, it's a big, ambitious change which brings a new layer of strategy to the game and that would require an in-depth rework of the all system. This is unfortunately not a change we currently have time or resource for. Changes of this scale simply cannot be undertaken on their own, especially if they bring a new layers to the game in which case we'd rather make them part of a themed expansion to capitalize on the new layers gameplay-wise.

Now before anybody jumps to conclusions, I'm in no way saying there will be (or that there will not be) an economic warfare expansion. I'm simply explaining that expansions are the only way for us to schedule massive reworks such as the one in CyRob's suggestion!

I did kind of expect this which is why I wrote that bit in the first place, But It's something I would like to see so I thought might as well present the idea,

Even though it’s not going to be implemented (for now at least) it has been considered and will now be something that might be added in some semblance later on in an expansion. (hopefully that happens anyway)

Also while economic warfare would be a bit small of an area for its own expansion it could work well do be done in an espionage expansion (which I assume is planned, as 4X loves espionage) as the features could be intertwined in quite a few ways and has the similar theme of in-direct warfare.

Now, there's also an interesting alternative proposal: diminishing returns on Trade Route Length Modifiers. We've actually looked into it :)

However, since this cannot be made in XML data alone and requires changes in code, we cannot push it as part of the G2G Balance Mod.

I believe that you are mistaken, it is possible to do in the XML.  

(unless there is something weird with the Route length modifier code in particular, As I've made sure to only use the .Net Methods used elsewhere in the XML files)

So to make the formula work like my earlier example; 1 at start +0.2 per level till 10 then +0.15 per level till 20 +0.1 per level till 30 & +0.05 till 40 its:

1+X*(0.2-(0.05*F((X-1)/10)))+M(F((X-1)/10),0)*0.5+M(F((X-11)/10),0)*0.5+M(F((X-21)/10),0)*0.5

Where X = $(PathLength), M = Max & F = Floor

So in XML form it is:

<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>1 + $(PathLength) * (0.2 - (0.05 * Floor(($(PathLength)-1)/10)))+Max(Floor(($(PathLength)-1)/10),0) * 0.5 + Max(Floor(($(PathLength)-11)/10),0) * 0.5 + Max(Floor(($(PathLength)-21)/10),0) * 0.5</TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>

While I admit it is not the most efficient Formula it would work well to test out this change without code changes.

Now If you want something more natural looking you could do something like:

=0.25*x-0.0025*x^2 (Equation Graphed) where x = $(PathLength)

Which in XML would be:

<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>0.25 * $(PathLength) - Pow(0.0025*$(PathLength),2)</TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>

Hope that helps

Schell wrote:

From what you are saying, it seems the AI is able to trigger the trespassing behavior under the incorrect conditions, so definitely look for a reproduction of that.  As for the type of fleets you should look for, the AI will react to any kind that is seen as a threat, i.e. any fleet with an offensive military power equivalent to 20% or more of the offensive Millitary power of the AI fleet template.  This is a bit hard to find as data in game (you would have to use the AI debugger) so as a rule of thumbs, just consider that any fleet (no matter what kind of ship) with a non-negligable attack should trigger the trespassing behavior.

Thank you for your cooperation, we'll keep looking into this behavior on our side as well :)

Ok, so I just had the Sophons send a message about intruding in their space around Primus at the top of this map.  It is from a single scout with weapons, but only 75 offensive power.  It is turn 94 and some other enemy fleets are over 1000 offensive power.  I hope this helps.

Primus incursion.sav

So unfortunately I've been finding that Trade Routes still cause some issues, as either myself or one of the AI will always get an Economic victory around turn 120 or so, when Normal speed is supposed to go for a bit under 300 turns according to its description. For whatever reason the winner is almost always, without fail, the Cravers, meaning that the AI isn't needing to max out its Companies in order to achieve an Economic victory, or else the Lumeris (all other things being equal) should win in an AI vs. Ai economic competition. Naturally I expect this is down to the Cravers getting so much early Dust to invest, which on top of any AI Dust cheats is probably pushing them over the edge in how quickly they can snowball to economic victory.

I don't know what the current Trade Route systems underlying math is, unfortunately, so I'm not sure of a fix. I assume that Trade Routes take all of their gains from the systems they pass by, and produce none themselves, essentially providing a growing multiplier to those systems; if that is not the system in place, maybe that would be prudent to add, so that we know Trade Routes can never more than, say, quadruple overall Empire income of Dust, adding 100% for each max level, max Freighters company passing through them. Quintuple if they're Lumeris, of course, and possibly even higher with heavy investment in Trade Value.

Something like 1% per Freighter (max 25 Freighters/Company), and another 1% per Freighter level (max 25 as well). At 100% Trade Value on a 500 Dust system with four max level, max freighter Companies passing through, the system would provide 6000 Dust due to the Trade Routes passing through it. Admittedly that's something like 12 times the Dust, but that's with all maxed out Trading Companies. If the companies were level 8 with 8 Freighters and the planet only had +50% Trade Value and only three Companies, it'd be about 2610, a little over five times.

Point is, maybe we could get a simplified version where these companies can max out in levels and freighters, cause things are somehow still getting a little out of control on my files.

As to my earlier stuff about Influence for Heroes, I've been keeping an eye on my Influence production, and a 1:1 or 1:1.5 rate for instantly completing the Point meter for earning our next Hero would make an excellent sink for extra Influence that would make people choose between saving for Heroes and spending Influence on laws and Diplomacy and such, as that would usually be pretty in line with my stocked influence on any given turn as an Influential faction. As a balancing factor, this could increase the Academy level more quickly, so the Hero someone just bought out might not be as high level at first as the next Hero other players earn without a buyout.

Well i really wanted to play ES2 today so there is the game :

Few big things contredict totally what i said before. I finished my game turn 163 via economic victory. The cravers was surprisingly weak this time. This is acutally new.  The IAs managed to get their first company siege before me. This is also new for me. Maybe it's because I enabled the economic victory. I need to add that i know i didnt took only good decision to fulfill my objective, or sometime took my good decisions too late. I roughly estimate that i could get this victory 10~20 turn before if I played better.

• In the first part of the game, i wanted to set up a strong and solid industrial, military, and scientific fundation for my empire, in order to make my dust production snowball peacefully later. I was the last at economic victory for a very long time, and in the end game, the first few moment before win. So, it looks like it's possible to overcome the endless IA "cheat" dust bonus even if you don't play the dust all along the game.

• I got the victory around turn 160, that is around 40 turn earlier than all other victory i usually get. But i was not braked by any war or hostility. I had a lot of influence and things to barter in order to constantly be at peace and with trade agreements with a lot of people. Two question : How many time war and other difficulty slow down economic victory ? Do IAs are really slow down by this kind of event for economic victory ? If they are not because of their natural bonus, it explain a lot why it's so hard to get this victory in normal conditions. 

• Looks like the IAs have a lot of problem for managing subsidiaries. They put them in strange place, take sometime an incredible long time to build it even if it's easy and important to build it. When a subsidiary is destroyed during a war, sometime they simply never build it again ! 

• Also, they are really easy to corrupt and kept peacefull. Another thing is it's very easy to trade science with them, but they very very rarely trade science with each other. Human players can really abuse of this in a pacific way of playing. IAs need to take more initative in their own trade and/or to be harder bargainers (do this word exist ?). 

• Making an alliance is for my point of view, a sort of agressive act against everybody who is out of the new alliance. It's a way of declaring "Ok, this guy is my friend, we are strong togeither. We are big deal now, and you lonely guys, are now weaker than us". I think, facing an alliance declaration, needs a reaction. I think lonely IAs should try, in reaction, to build their own alliance as soon as possible, in order to balance the power in the galaxy. I have once made a multiplayer game, and my brother created a strong alliance with IAs. My reaction was to build a lot of influence asap, and ask for an alliance with every IA around of me, even those with i was in conflict. It was actually the right choice, because my brother would have crushed us if we wouldnt ally. In the end, the galaxy suffered a tremendous war that ended by my victory. We talked a lot about this game, and in fact, there was not any answer agaisnt an allaince, exept create an alliance, if I wanted to win. Most of the time, it's the case.

• Is that intended that lumeriis have 5 commercial company at max ? I tought it was 4.

Ok, if you needs, here are the save of the game. My objective was economic victory all allong the game. I mainy played industry and science in early game, then influence and dust the rest of the game. I probably invested too much in influence if you look how things turn, but it was fun. My allied constantly wanted to do cold war with my commercial partners, my huge influence was a good tool to keep in the galaxy the order i wanted to. I hope you will find some interesting data. I save every 20 turns, just after the elections. I will also put some screen and tell a bit of story here because i love to do that ;D

lumeriis corp 1.sav

Hello galaxy ! :D

lumeriis corp 2.sav

When scientist win the election in a non-scientist empire, it's always a incredibly good opportunity to push fast the limits of your empire forward.

lumeriis corp 3.sav

Things are going according the plan. I have a decent military potential, a good industry fundation; and i make friends with riftborns who hated me before.

lumeriis corp 4.sav

I am still working on my science income. i will soon look for my first trading company. Riftborns have already their what is truely a surpise for me.

lumeriis corp 5.sav

I found a lot of pats... partners ! My first company is on line, but still weak.

lumeriis corp 6.sav

I am in trouble to make profit from my companies. Also, Horatio declared war to me, but i am building my alliance. so he can't really do damage to my empire.

lumeriis corp 7.sav

Horatio is peacefull again. My trade routes finally paid off. I also FINALY got the strongest pacific law. The galaxy crumble under dust and gold !

lumeriis corp 8.sav

I am snowballing and my alliance is finally 1st at economy in the victory pannel.

lumeriis corp 9.sav

I am now a democraty. I can stack all the dust related laws. My alliance is about to win.

lumeriis corp 10 END.sav

The cookies won the game by peace and economy ! Woooohoo ! More seriously, there is a huge difference between dust curves, and trade curves. We can see that IAs don't really use properly trade routes, but have a decent access to economic victory by their natural dust income.

Happy to help ! If the format of this feedback is usefull,   to get a save after every election, i'll do some others. It's kinda   enjoyable to do. :)

AI indeed have some issues managing their economic growth in times of war.  The AI basically has two ways of working:
- when there is no conflict, it will focus on building system improvements that satisfy its resources' needs the best;
-    when there are conflicts, it will focus on the production of fleet  and   keep the rest on hold as long as ships must be produced.
The   problem  with this way of doing is that the AI can be involved in   multiple  conflicts for a long time and therefore stunned economically   for a  pretty good time.  We know about it and it's in our backlog, so   we'll  get to it at some point (military management and diplomacy are   our  priorities for now).

Ah ! That explain a lot of things for me ! I always wondered why they was so long to react to surpise war. I guess if you take them by surprise when they are in "peace mode", it's hard for them to react super fast. It also directly  explain why some of them are so easy to rush in very early. If they constantly "all-in" their economy development or their military investment, they are very vulnerable before they set-up a good  industry.

I am surprised because  looks like IA is playing conversely of what humans  do in most of the  strategics games i played. You probably know that better than me because you are game developers but maybe I will point something  intersting.

In RTS, mostly, the  principal goal of each player is to get a better economy than his opponent at a certain momentum, and use this momentum to make damage or destroy him. If a player decide to allin his economy, he is extremly vulnerable to any military attack. If a player decide to all-in his army production and send it to fight, he has to make a huge amount of damage or win, otherwise his opponent may have a way better economy after the  fight and be able to crush him the next battle. So, in those  games, the  first goal is to have a better balance between economy and army production than your opponent. IAs are not balacing things, they are in constant all-in, making them vulnerable from a lot of ways.

But there is more. ES2 have a main difference with thoses games. In the war RTS, the only goal is to destroy your oppopent, and you have to play only around economy and army. In ES2, The diplomacy aspect of the  game is enough strong and deep to be a third thing to play around, a main mechanic that is not possible to avoid. When in  Starcraft, dota, Warcraft, Supreme cookiemander, and some x4 like CIVs or even EL the main mechanics are economy/army. In ES2 you  need to  create a good balance between Army/Economy/Diplomacy. In the  current  state of the game, i think it's possible to skip the army  aspect of the  game exept if your neigbours have a lot of arms and are hungry. I don't  think it's possible to skip economy of course, but also diplomacy even  for cravers. 

From my point of view, the diplomacy aspect of the game is vital, and is about to :

1) Having good relation with other empires in order to get fids/resources/technology/trade routes.

2) Having good relation with other empires in order to be protected against hostile empires.

3) Having a influence income enough good to fullfill those objectives and pressure/protect borders

It's actually a very good thing that finally I can feel the importance of this aspect in a x4. I never did before ES2 and this is probably a reason why i love this game so much.

If you all-in the army, your economy fall and you won't be able to get near of victory. If you all-in the economy, a player with a more balanced politic will simply be able to crush you with a well designed war campain. If you skip the diplomacy aspect of the game, you won't be able to benefit from the strong feature that are trade routes,  alliances,  technology trading, etc. If you all-in the diplomatic aspect of the game (let's say it about to have a weak economy, no army, but a lot of influence and potential friends, in a harsh galaxy), you will be so weak that you won't be a competitive ally and and an easy target.

For each main mechanics of the game, there is a tolerance's threshold that i cannot go under as a human player. There are some situations that ask for immediate reaction, because they expose me too much, or decrease way too much my chance of victory.

Economy :

I call economy the production of fids, but mostly science, industry, and secondarily dust. It's hard to give a clear tolerance's threshold. Globally, economy is the most important mechanic of the game, and the objective is to maintain it as powerfull as possible. So, the tolerance's threshold of my economy is directly linked to the threesholds of the other main  mechanics. All energy i don"t put into army and diplomacy, i put it into  economy. If i don't, i can say it's a direct mistake. 

• I always try to make my industry and my science progress. If this is not the case, it's not acceptable, even at war. I always want to find a solution to make them increase, like colonization, happiness, improvements, etc.
• I never let my dust income being negative.

Army   :

• I try to never have a weaker army than my neighbours. It's just not acceptable for me. If my neigbour decide to attack me, i am dead. So there is a natural armament escalation between me and the closest empires. If i want to focus on economy, i am ok with a equal or a little bit weaker   army, because I state it's enough to defend myself. Having a equal army is about having less ships with a better technology, or as much ship with the same technology. 
• About technology, It's extremly dangerous to have a too much weaker technology than other empires. When i see I have too much technology behing other empires, ifeel that i need to work on it immediatly. There is basicly two ways. First solution : I immediatly look for the next huge science system improvements that i can unlock via research, try to build it and increase asap my science income, and later get several military technologies in a few time. It's risky but if i am not in diplomatic trouble it's my favorite way because it benefit to economy and army at the same time. Second solution : I immediatly look for the military technology i need in order to get few military technology asap. It's kinda the panic solution, and hurt the economy if my science income is weak. 

Edit : i changed this part of my post. It's different than the first thing i wrote here that was not really relevant. Here is just the minimal "security" behavior i have about army. Also, it's hard to properly estimate other empire strength so of course I make almost always mistake to understand the balance of power between me and other empires. I try to scout other players technolgy with probes, and assume with their score and faction what industry and the potential size of their army. Also, sometime i simply get greedy, stop increase the technology power of my army for a long time and try to get an economic advantage from this, but's very risky and IAs was able to punish me several times (especially cravers). 

Diplomacy :

• I try to be at peace with players with a stronger army, anyway. 
• I try to never be in undernumber at conflict. I want as much or more allies than enemies. 
• I never let other borders push my borders, so i create an influence production escalation if needed. 
• If there is an alliance other than mine, i always try to have my alliance against it as much or more powerfull. 
• When i have trade routes, I always try to have commercial partners, even if that mean to give them the commercial structure technology. 
• I never let my trade routes blockaded. 
• I always want a positive influence income depending of how much diplomatic interraction I want to do (from 0 to 250 i would say).

So, i am not sure i talked about everything I do, but it's actually my first step of a balanced decision making. Maybe IAs need to do the same in a first place, or something on the same purpose, in order to rub out their main weaknesses, created by their allin behaviors.

I have posted something about this on this post : https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forums/65-general/threads/27782-target-locked-update-notes-preview?page=2#post-247162

Cravers are leading my current match half again as much as the next AI, I am just a little behind them by virtue of this war. They're now targeting me specifically while the others fight among themselves, so it is quite intense. I have seen them use more strategic weapons than before too which is nice, but my main concern remains how inexorable their economy appears to have become since this patch.

I have economy victory disabled but I will not be surprised to see that they'd have won already by the score screen. As for when the domestic victories should be accomplished, I'd be inclined more toward the 250 mark as a developer target given as players will find a way to do it faster.

I find the Cravers and their affinity to be an odd choice for a player empire, they're more akin to what I'd expect from an endgame crisis faction given the permanent damage they do to planets and their tendency to snowball. So already I think they call for fine tuning to avoid this kind of dominance.