In their current state, and by "current state" I mean as of the Stadia OpenDev, Independent People were found a bit lacking by many of the people who engaged in interacting with them. While some of this I chalk up to it being still in development and the fact the IP were likely programmed for the OpenDev to not build anything beyond scout armies, there is still some room for improvement. The following are ideas talked about with others in the Discord, so if you see some familiarity, hello, it's me, RobotDoctorRobot.

Differentiating Independent Peoples

I should be able to tell at a glance who the units of IP belong to. The similar grey background with a simple peace sign or lightning bolt is nice to determine if they are aggressive or no, but causes all the neighboring armies of angry scouts running through my territory to feel pretty much the same. On numerous occasions I accidentally ended up paying off the wrong IP to get them off my back only to realize it was a completely different IP scouring my lands.

My first idea would be to either give the city states a bevy of unique borders around their icons and the like. If not possible, then an expansion on the number of "aggressive" and "peaceful" IP symbols could possibly be done instead? Something like a Skull, Crossed Swords, or a Blazing Torch and the like for aggressive ones, and maybe a Flower, Dove with Olive Branch, Shaking Hands, and so on for the peaceful types. Not to give every IP a unique one, but to increase the chance to differentiate the numerous peoples that'll spring up and that I can maybe differentiate between which of my Minoan and Akkadian neighbors are currently pillaging my lands.

Give Independent Peoples Affinities

A radical idea I'm sure, but hear me out.

Assign each IP their own affinity or randomly generate them, they're just IP so it shouldn't matter as much, and this will change it's color to the affinity's color. So the scientist Akkadians have a light blue background and the militarist Minoans have a gray one, and the Merchant Noks have a light yellow. Helps differentiate them like mentioned before as well.

To display the affinity off, they'd likely build a quarter of that specific make if available, if at all.

Make Assimilating More Worthwhile

To assimilate an IP, one needs to dump loads upon loads of money into them for top patron spot, and then afterwards have your culture be influentially dominant in the territory and pay another boatload of money to bring the IP into the fold. What does this net you? A new city and control of the territory. One can do the same thing for cheaper by rolling in an army and just taking the territory by force, your army gets some experience, and hey! You make money if you ransack the IP before conquering them! Both seem to generate grievances with the AI if they had any money in the IP prior to your peaceful/hostile takeover.

One of these is clearly better than the other, presuming you don't get your ass kicked Maltese style, somehow.

Ergo, Assimilating should be made more worthwhile to the player. Simply lowering the cost makes sense, since it's a huge monetary effort after all, but instead, I suggest instead giving the IP a bonus based on whatever affinity they happen to be, as mentioned prior. Perhaps something as simple as a 1 or 2 percent increase to the relevant FIMSI to the capital or whole civilization or something like a reduction to the cost of unit construction if militarist or a decrease to the amount of influence/money needed to attach a territory if expansionist. The top donor gets the bonus, and whoever assimilates the culture gains the bonus as long as the city remains in their civilization.

If one were to conquer the IP before it could be assimilated, they simply wouldn't get the bonus, as they didn't put the staggering amount of money into the relationship with the IP as other cultures, simply rolled up, invaded, and took them over.

This could also open up a civic later on, one that either "Doubles the bonuses granted by Assimilated Independent Peoples" or "Grants the Assimilation Bonus on Conquered Independent Peoples" or somesuch.

TL:DR

Independent Peoples could be differentiated and better identified by addition of a bevy of differing borders or an expanded collection of icons to show their aggressiveness or peacefulness.

Independent Peoples could be differentiated and better identified further by the addition of an affinity that colors their normally gray background to a light version of the relevant color.

Independent Peoples could be made more worthwhile to assimilate by granting the assimilator some form of small bonus that one who conquers a city would not receive.

Indeed! I totally agree with you. Judging from StediaOpenDev scenarios, assimilation via patronage and influence had little incentive over forced assimilation via military might. Why waste several thousand golds in early stage of history, when we can simply take it with units, which would cost far less than a few thousand gold? At least there should be some advantages in peaceful assimilation, like you mentioned above and maybe such as

1. minor empire modifiers
   -an additional independent people's legacy trait, which lasts throughout the entire game.
   -or a simple empire-wide modifier or to the specific city.
2. an emblematic unit of Independent People
3. an emblematic quarter of Independent People
4. changes to the values

We need more incentives other than the fact that peaceful assimilation requires no military action.

I think to keep everything uniform, the boons granted by assimilating IPs shouldn't be something quite as dramatic as EUs or LTs, hence my suggestion of just the small percentage buff, as it's not something that could be inherently game breaking or something that you'll feel bad about missing out on because that IP happened to spawn on the wrong end of the continent so there was no way you'd get to assimilate it in time.

Those are all interesting suggestions indeed.

Judging by the last 2 OpenDev, it seems that Devs aren’t going with the same pattern with Independent Peoples as for Minor Factions in Endless Legend or Endless Space. They were all different peoples (all having different names, and based on different cultures, some of them related with the main surrounding culture), only differentiated by their peaceful or warmongering icon/affinity.

I think, at the very least, having the IP’s name when clicking on their units would make things much easier to identify each of them, thus avoiding fighting units from the IP city you’re trying to assimilate (which happened to me as well several times !).

[update :] Ah ! I didn't paid enough attention it seems, when clicking on the unit, there's actually the IP's name on the right panel :

I agree too that there should be a greater incentive to assimilate them, such as FIMSI bonuses, military related bonuses (attack/defense modifiers), or access to strategic/luxury resources for instance.

I can’t really imagine that they’ll be in the final version just there for our units to gain veterancy’s stars !

I guess we’ll have to wait more infos/clues in the coming months, and hopefully, having the opportunity to see more interesting assimilation mechanics if there is another OpenDev before release.

RobotDoctorRobot wrote:
Differentiating Independent Peoples
...

I agree than all grey can be hard in term of readability, ... mainly on armies imo. Find out who owns each army is a bit complicated.

I like the idea of borders and icons. I mean, give them different colors will affect readability on the different players, and I think I will not like it.

But I can't imagine how efficient will be these borders and icons. Maybe having different shades of grey ? hum. I'm divided, I don't have clear idea about this point.

RobotDoctorRobot wrote:
Give Independent Peoples Affinities
...

Well, Like I said before, colors will obviously increase the readability on IPs, BUT decrease readability on players. So it's a hard choice. Impossible for me to say than one way is better than the other one. Could be a settings ? A game with 3 players is not the same than with 8 ?

I don't know the plan for the future of IPs. But obviously, adding larger features to IP sounds appealing. I am nonetheless more attracted by exclusive affinities to IPs, than the same ones as players like you suggested.

Even if I can totally imagine your idea working, something like : Patronize a Builder IP make them participate to your shared projects, Assihimilate them give a bonus of production, etc ...

Depending how really work the IPs iirc, how doable it is, so when we will know more about them.

RobotDoctorRobot wrote:

In their current state, and by "current state" I mean as of the Stadia OpenDev, Independent People were found a bit lacking by many of the people who engaged in interacting with them. While some of this I chalk up to it being still in development and the fact the IP were likely programmed for the OpenDev to not build anything beyond scout armies, there is still some room for improvement. The following are ideas talked about with others in the Discord, so if you see some familiarity, hello, it's me, RobotDoctorRobot.

Make Assimilating More Worthwhile
...

I have no doubts than the Assihimilation system we saw in OpenDev Stadia is in work in progress. I mean, there was no rewards for assihimilating an IP in this build.

You only got the territory ... something rather easy to have by conquering them.

I like your ideas of rewards obviously

I think than IPs have a lot of potential, like we can see with all the ideas we can find together; but we will need to know more about them, and see how it will evolve !

Because for me, it's hard to know at the moment, if all these ideas will always match in the future ^^

Still, I can say than I 100% agree with your first part, about visual identification of the different IPs.