jhell wrote:

Do you still feel Militarists and Religious are out of balance after the latest changes?

Definitely. I only played one game before the patch, but it does not seem like the change is of the magnitude it would need to be. I didn't have a problems with the Sophons, but they had their own rebellion and period of religious rule that makes it harder to assess. In an Unfallen game, I had a Military party come out of nowhere and topple the primacy of the pacifists by margins. It was a shock, but perhaps made sense since I was dragged into two on-and-off-again wars across a couple of election cycles, built up at least 48 CP in fleets along with a few military buildings. But we got right with Guardians and pulled back on that. During the next cycle I focused on Pacifist and other buildings (except for a handful of patriot pills), and the only ships I really build were 6-8 carriers. The Militarists grew to over 80% hold, with the Pacifists around 10% or less.

It seems the main way to avoid Miliarists is by micro-managing minor races. This is not fun.

Maybe it's a commentary about late-stage empires willing to employ violence in conflice resolution, because there seems no way to avoid them unless you have a faction trait that funnels military growth into another party. But there seem to be some core game systems that make it impossible.

Problem 1: Infinite ships. Nearly every other party boosting method is finite. Buildings. Research. Exploration. Whatever Religion and Ecology do. You will run out of them all. Maybe you can game the system by scrapping and rebuilding buildings, that still feels like cheating. But not ships. Sure, you might eventually go bankrupt, but you'll have a dominating military party long before that happens. There is no infinite option to promote any other party - unless you are the Cravers with propaganda. It's strange that infinite research and dust production don't boost any parties. The biggest problem: ships are fun! Even if there's an infinite task akin to propaganda for other government types, it's going to feel like a bandage. Having a planet work on science or ecology until you say otherwise is not as satisfying as pumping out little game pieces to fling across the map.

Problem 2: Actions are meaningless. Militarists are helped when you build ships. Doesn't matter if your goal is to sell them on the marketplace, defend an ally, or defend your own systems. Actions should dictate party growth over construction. Militarists get a boost when you invade, or attack Cold War enemies in neutral space, or attack anyone in their own region of space. Pacificists should get a boost when you're defending your own systems. Religious perhaps if you attack in neutral space (during War only?) or defending in the same. Industry gets a boost when you attack pirates, perhaps shared with Religious when you destroy a lair.

Problem 3: Every ship is a military ship (actually, not sure this is true for explorers and colonizers, but it's close enough). Ships could be balanced by what they're composed of. If I load up a ship with weapons, sure that makes Militarists happy. But what if I go for armor, engines, or some other support module instead? Scientists might like speed, while Pacifists prefer armor, and Ecologists would rather ships be build without using up limited (strategic) resources.  Maybe this means each module has a political alignment. This is the most straight forward, but probably is also balanced well with actions having political weight. This might open the door for new kinds of modules that would appeal to under-represented parties. Terraformers than can alter planets without a colony (and loved by Ecologists), flying "temples" that can attract alien populations without invading or leeching or spread influence regions without colonies (and loved by Religious), etc.

My impression that the main way to avoid Military take-overs is to not build ships. And the way to get Religious support, is either let your empire fall into Anarchy and see what comes up, or play the Vodyani.

In my opinion militarists currently are in a pretty perfect spot, being strong in war but weak in peace. Religious, and to a lesser degree ecologist, could IMO still use some boost. As an example, in my current UE game I went heavy on influence and hero generation with early academy embassy, SPIN projects, second hero religious, one wonder, later museums and culture center, first minor civ kalgeros (religious bias), choosing all religious event choices-- basically as much as you can reasonably do. Still, I believe the religious party never was even second strongest party without a boost, and currently (turn 110) polls at 5%, below ecologist and scientist at 9%, even though UE is anti-ecologist. 

It would IMO be nice in general if  hero parties had a  bigger influence on politics in your empire, since that would allow for a higher degree of choice in the political direction of your empire regardless of context. But otherwise religious buildings and events are still so rare and situtational in a normal game -- wonders are unique, influence generation is pointless beyond a limited scope for anyone but UE --that each should have a big impact.

Hi,

Do you still feel Militarists and Religious are out of balance after the latest changes?

Best,

If there is an intended faction for some of the political parties, then why make them available as a separate mechanic at all?

Because difficult doesn't mean there are never niche cases (Religious Cravers...) where there's a viable strategy. And Amplitude caters to a large number of players, many of whom enjoy the role-play and thematic aspects of the political system as much as the strategic choices.

hp2 wrote:

Population mini-game.  You basically have to go hunting for minor/major faction units that are compatible with your political goals.  

-HP

That's only half the battle, unfortunately.  Yes this can *increase* the political effect of a particular influence, but unfortunately it is not a *cause* of political influence to begin with.  You still need religious actions to create religious influence at all.  It won't matter if you have double religion and half military if the actions are so far out of balance.

But I do like the mini-game.  I think it's well done and adds to the game.  The underlying system that relies upon it needs some tweaks to really make it shine, though.

hp2 wrote:

Religious: I believe that this party is designed specifically for the Vodyani.  Without the ability to cross closed borders, the leech playstyle of the Vodyani would not be feasible.  I hypothesize that it was designed to be difficult for other empires to exploit without significant population management and electoral actions.

If there is an intended faction for some of the political parties, then why make them available as a separate mechanic at all?  I can understand setting a default stance, and perhaps some of the factions being more hardwired than others (Cravers), but otherwise having some parties that are only tied to one faction is a shame.  Here is all this opportunity for strategic choice that isn't actually available to the player.

Hello, all. I think the problem is more: there isn't enough actionables to impact Religion/Ecology and possibly even the others. The Military politics/rhythm is imo on point, but the others don't have much good flow/things to do.

A suggestion for the devs to consider is to add the ability for the player to add Satellites/Artificial colonies to systems that provide benefits w/ political implications. This gives a player a direct way to add a little punch behind their choices, to steer the ship if you will. Not to mention it could make it a bit easier to try combinations of parties.

I do not think Military is overpowered, and in fact they have a fundamental flaw with the way their War Happiness Bonus works. They get punished (lose happiness) for winning a war or any form of truce/forced truce by allies. I recommend adding a short duration of a 'win' happiness and/or bonus to go with it.

I do think Religion and Ecology are underwhelming compared to their counterparts. I do not believe nerfing the counterparts is the solution, because Religion and Ecology would still remain underwhelming. None of the laws have anything to do with Manpower. I think that is the resource that the devs could play with to spice up Religion and Ecology. My recommendation is to add static Manpower + small percentage as an addition to the Religion pinned law. For Ecology my recommendation is also with Manpower, but in this instance I would something like +10% Manpower refill rate & +5% health to ground troops (due to food hardiness) to the current pinned law. 

Just a couple light bumps can make a big difference and improve the QoL, not to mention reinforce the themes of the playstyle/politics. Thank you for your time, cheers

I'm on my laptop right now; I'd have to fire up my PC to check the population reaction chart (the icon on the system view that looks like a brain underneath the senators/faction chart).  I'll hypothesize about the intended method for each party.

Militarist: This one is very straightforward and easy to do.  Build military ships, do military things.  Doing military things covers your defense needs.

Pacifist: This one is moderately straightforward, but can be difficult to do.  Engage in diplomacy, do diplomatic things.  Diplomatic things kinda cover your defense needs (e.g., pacifying threatening empires with tributes, aligning with strong allies).  I hypothesize that the 'intended' way to play as a pacifist is to research pacific conversion *AND* utilize tactical surrender.  Recall that pacific conversion is a mid-tier tech that arrives roughly when influence zones of adjacent systems really start to overlap.  When an enemy does a ground invasion of your border systems, you whittle away their manpower during the ground battle, then before losing the system, do a tactical surrender.  When the system changes hands, its influence zone should drop (since it belongs to an enemy empire with low ownership and cumulated influence generation) and become enveloped by the influence of your adjacent system.  When you can finally arrange a truce and get back to a cold war (I don't think you can pacific convert during a truce), you can force peace and then work towards pacific conversion of the systems you lost.  The problem with all of the above?  It takes a lot of turns and I would claim that the majority of players are impatient and just build military ships to take back their systems and voila -- a militarist response that emboldens the militarist party.

Scientist: I believe that this party is designed specifically for the Sophons (and Mezari) and is associated with the scientific victory condition.  I hypothesize that it was designed to be difficult for other empires to exploit without significant population management and electoral actions.

Industrialist: I believe that this party is designed specifically for the Riftborn and is associated with the wonder victory condition.  I hypothesize that it was designed to be difficult for other empires to exploit without significant population management and electoral actions.

Ecologist: I believe that this party is designed specifically for the Horatio.  Their gameplay style is defined by acquiring and growing populations for splicing.  By allowing Horatio to colonize planets without the associated tech (assuming you stick with the ecologist party) gives them the headroom for population growth on a limited number of systems.  I hypothesize that it was designed to be difficult for other empires to exploit without significant population management and electoral actions.

Religious: I believe that this party is designed specifically for the Vodyani.  Without the ability to cross closed borders, the leech playstyle of the Vodyani would not be feasible.  I hypothesize that it was designed to be difficult for other empires to exploit without significant population management and electoral actions.

Recall that you can't change your empire's starting party until the first election.  The six political factions are heavily tied to game balance because they strongly influence the first twenty turns (at normal game speed).  The Horatio get a leg up on expansion due to their starting ecologist party.  The Sophons get a leg up on research due to their starting scientific party.  Since the benefits of the parties themselves are fairly strong and unique, in the mid to late game, for empires that are not naturally aligned with those parties, I believe that it is intended for it to be extremely difficult to exploit any party other than militarist/pacifist.  This requires a player to forego democracy (unless you play the population mini-game) in order to get access to electoral actions.  Electoral actions constitute a dust tax or influence tax (for republics and federations).  They also constitute to some degree an approval tax (penalty for lack of representation in senate for populations) for which only a dictatorship has access to the propaganda response.

I understand that players want to be able to do more active things to influence the political parties in the game, but I would caution that making it too easy would trivialize or compromise other aspects of the game.  I do think that giving every type of government access to some type of propaganda in the system queue (except for democracy) would be meaningful.  In fact, I think that a portion of the electoral action tax should be placed into each specific propaganda type.  For example, if a player has a republic, then they get access to republic style propaganda which not only sits in the system queue blocking industry, but also consumes a variable amount of dust per turn as well.  In this manner, if a player is actively cycling republic propaganda in their various system queues skillfully, they could forego the electoral action and 'recoup' some of the dust spent in the system queues.   Similarly for a federation, federation style propaganda would block industry and consume a variable amount of influence per turn.  Skillfully manipulated federation can forego the electoral action and recoup some of the influence spent in the system queues.

-HP

Agreed OP. The main problem like you said is that's there's way too many actions tied to Militarist popularity while too few tied to Religious party. Apart from common stuff like buildings and recruiting party specific heroes the only unique actions tied to Religious party are pacifist conversion of enemy systems that's unlocked rather late, is of limited use and doesn't manage to keep religious popularity up on its own or leeching Essence which is a Vodyani specific game mechanic. Not that Vodyani ever needed more Religious popularity since they're one race faction who all have Religious focus and get Religious popularity from Militarist actions as well.

On the other end Militarists easily become the most popular party even if you have no Militarist pops in your empire and are only building ships for defense and fighting defensive wars. They really need their action weights toned down hard since they have so many gameplay triggers aside from buildings and heroes that increases their popularity, maybe the game should differentiate between offensive and defensive wars and battles fought in owned / neutral / enemy land.

hp2 wrote:

Population mini-game.  You basically have to go hunting for minor/major faction units that are compatible with your political goals.  Using the diagram on the population overview screen, you have to weed out factions that divert heavily into military and favor factions that divert out of military (e.g., Vodyani get equal religious gains from military gains.

Also note that the pacifist way to boost defenses is to enter alliances with other empires or appease your threatening neighbors with periodic gifts (the AI will periodically send you notifications that they're angry because they received no tribute).  Building up your military to defend yourself is the most straightforward approach, but it is a military approach.

-HP

Problem is that even if you have no Militarist pops you'll end up getting Militarist majority in the senate, that's how often their popularity increasing actions trigger. Even if you start spamming Pacifist actions (other relatively easy party to make popular if you have Influence to burn) you'll just end up with Pacifist / Militarist senate or vice versa. Only way to not have Militarists is to not engage in any kind of battles at all, offensive or defensive.

Population mini-game.  You basically have to go hunting for minor/major faction units that are compatible with your political goals.  Using the diagram on the population overview screen, you have to weed out factions that divert heavily into military and favor factions that divert out of military (e.g., Vodyani get equal religious gains from military gains.

Also note that the pacifist way to boost defenses is to enter alliances with other empires or appease your threatening neighbors with periodic gifts (the AI will periodically send you notifications that they're angry because they received no tribute).  Building up your military to defend yourself is the most straightforward approach, but it is a military approach.

-HP

Quick addition: I like the fact that politics can get away from you based on your choices.  Don't misunderstand that.  But I feel that 1) there should be some way to defend yourself, or boost your defenses that adds to different political parties and 2) I simply just don't know what choices I can reliably make in order to cater to a religious or ecologist game and keep it that way.