I wanted to share a few reflections on ideological proximity.

First off, I remain confused on how this is calculated. I attach an example from my relationship and an independent people which simplifies things with just two axes. I imagine much the same mechanics apply for ideological proximity calculations with major factions.

Humankind - ideology 1.jpg

Humankind - ideology 2.jpg

On the economy axis I am on position 4 out of 21, while the Nok are on position 21 out of 21. That should give a 21 - 4 = 17 points difference, or 81% if expressed in percentage terms

On the liberty axis I am on position 5 out of 21, while the Nok are on position 1 out of 21. That should give a 5 - 1 = 4 point difference, or 19% difference.

The logical thing then would be to average the two and calculate alignment from there. (81% + 19%) / 2 = 50% difference. 100% - 50% difference = 50% alignment. And that would make sense. Quite far apart on one axis but pretty close on another. So, tolerance of sorts.

Instead, the game calculates an proximity of 11%. That seems odd. How much lower can it then go if we are on opposite ends for both axes?

The second point I wanted to place was that it would be nice to see a similar overview of these differences for major factions. We sort-of get this now with the doctrines screen once the congress is unlocked but that's a bit late and can be harder to track if there are many factions. Would be nice to have that info directly in the diplomacy screen of each player. Provided the axes are the only thing determining proximity with major factions (civic choices could be another candidate but it's not fully clear whether they count or not).

The third point was whether ideological proximity could play more of a role in diplomacy. For instance, it could give a +1 patronage towards IPs for tolerance and +2 for alignment (or even -1, 0, +1 for the three proximity categories). Similar to the faction archetypes in Endless Space 2. Another option could be that proximity influences the cost of bribe and praise or the rewards you get from it, to make it less of an automatic bonus. That would be an implicit bonus for aesthete cultures but I'm sure that could be compensated otherwise, if needed.

Another small addition - I think it would be nice if Independent People's ideological position would influence the kind of rewards we can get from them. For instance, a collectivist IP might lean towards industry bonuses, a homeland IP might offer some form of military bonus (a few % off unit production? +1 CS would seem too strong). The simplest way would be to vary the bonuses from making them a client state, rather than have every IP give basically the same. 

One could vary what the constituent treaties bring but I think that would introduce more headache because they are usually alternatives with other treaties. Might railroad decisions too much. Of course, the luxury variant of this proposal is to have altogether different treaties based on ideology but that sounds like a lot more work and may not be feasible with dev attention likely now moving elsewhere.

I like all of these ideas.

Shadowhal wrote:

Another small addition - I think it would be nice if Independent People's ideological position would influence the kind of rewards we can get from them. For instance, a collectivist IP might lean towards industry bonuses, a homeland IP might offer some form of military bonus (a few % off unit production? +1 CS would seem too strong). The simplest way would be to vary the bonuses from making them a client state, rather than have every IP give basically the same. 

One could vary what the constituent treaties bring but I think that would introduce more headache because they are usually alternatives with other treaties. Might railroad decisions too much. Of course, the luxury variant of this proposal is to have altogether different treaties based on ideology but that sounds like a lot more work and may not be feasible with dev attention likely now moving elsewhere.

Maybe a the units a player buys from a militaristic IP have higher CS (+2?), scientific/economic IPs would give the player (a little bit) more Science/Money... [etc, etc]