Hello,



I've read some thread on culture and influence but none seems really convincing. So I give here some of my ideas.





what culture should do :

- leaving alliance harder

- going to war harder

- modifying your zone of influence (aka zoi)

what influence should do :

- preventing other nation to colonize system under your zoi, and thus creating disputed territory.

- making population (not systems and not whole populations) from other players' systems in your zoi migrate to yours



Since all this points are purely non military (ie without the use of warship, battle and invasion), they should be exploited in diplomacy. Of course, specific sciences and building must be needed to do/improve them, and they may belong to the military branch.



For example, it should be possible to use your culture to change the attitude of the other player (from neutral to friendly, or fervent to friendly), and this without allowing the other player to refuse the deal (or even see that one has been made). Also, depending on their attitude, players cannot switch to war without having huge disapproval on their planets with effect lessening the farther the system is from the zoi (hence the use of culture to degrade relation between people without malus). This will allow players with few contact to easily break alliance as opposed to players with a lot of common borders.



Another way may be to virtualize population under a zoi, with virtual population kind of remplacing the people having migrated to the dominant player. Those virtual people will still count for Fids count on the planet except they will give more bonus, until the dominated player goes to war, in which case they just disapear. This represent the attraction of the dominant culture and the benefice that the dominated player can gain at its contact.



I think this can be implemented without great difficulties since it still just a matter of who has the more point.

Nice idea, the culture stuff reminds me of Armada 2526

never played it, unfortunately. I just post this because I found rather disapointing the fact that the zoi has no interest. You're far better without : you gain more dust from commercial road, your relations with other players doesn't degrade...I don't see the point of the specifics ameliorations to improve its radius : if it's for the scan, then just construct a spaceship with the vision, it will cost the same and will have none of the disadvantage.

This is a great idea, and I hope this is carried out seriously by the developers. It would greatly improve the gameplay by adding more effects to the influence zones, that currently only causes problems and very simple effects, which are not verified in REAL international relations.

I've just put the same post under game design proposal, as it should have been since the beginning...

Right now i would like to have a "timer" in systems to see when they will expand their borders. I managed to count that about after 30 turns the borders expand but after some turns and more colonized systems i lost count



On topic culture and influence would be nice. It would promote more peaceful games since some races seems to be designed (at least lore-wise) around it, like Amoeba.

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Nomas wrote:
Right now i would like to have a "timer" in systems to see when they will expand their borders. I managed to count that about after 30 turns the borders expand but after some turns and more colonized systems i lost count



On topic culture and influence would be nice. It would promote more peaceful games since some races seems to be designed (at least lore-wise) around it, like Amoeba.

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For the first part, that will be more like a cheat code to me...I see the extension of influence like another kind of war, and you don't know when or where the ennemy will strike. I can imagine something like popups telling you that one of the other player has found a new philosphy/wonder/technology that will impact greatly your nation in approximately X turn (since we don't use year it seems but nothing more. Those popups may be caused by tech (like spying communication devices) or heroes from the other races, which still has some contact with it (ie has gain the skill for it).

If I have to implement the zoi growth, I would use a logarithmic growth, with each new discovery/building reseting the growth to earlier value. This may represent the banalisation of culture after time and new discoveries will stir people anew, hence a new growth. Of course this growth will be by system. If I'd like to complexify some more, I would put some malus to the growth depending if a player has already the culture tech and you have common border with him, and malus will decrease the farther your system is from the border (I don't see how I can be amazed by a nation that just found the TV for example, however it will be harder for me to impress them with similar technologies).



For the second part, I don't think the game will be more peaceful , but yes, this will agree more with some species. I can perfectly imagine the sower impressing the other species with their eden world full of little ponies for example (because otherwise, I think the sower has a huge disadvantage in this game : too slow, too stupid, too poor...).

zilf wrote:
... I can perfectly imagine the sower impressing the other species with their eden world full of little ponies for example ...

Now this would be a nice feature, faction-specific monuments/sight-seeings

Maybe influence over an enemy system can be used to:

- Apply a negative "bonus" (malus?) on the fids generated by that system

- Lower the happyness of the system.

- Absorb an enemy system (only if your influence is much greater than that of the system owner)



These effects made battle of influences a way of "fighting" against other races without having to declare war, thus helping "pacific" players