How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

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Re: How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

#16 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 5:04 pmMy thinking is that this way the player will have to choose between the three main foci when deciding bonuses.
I don't understand. The player already has to choose between the main three foci (Production, Research and soon to be Influence), since you can have only one focus set on a planet. And what do you mean by "deciding bonuses"? Deciding policies?
I would say that if we are going to need to balance the number of policies against the number of slots
It's the other way round, you balance number of slots against available policies. Find out available policies first, balance against that number of slots.
an idea of how many slots we want the player to have access to in the end game
We want the player to have enough slots to get diverse strategies but not so many that you can activate at once all the policies you would need at a certain point. How many policies would you need at a certain point? Depends on what are the policies.
A wild guess: 5.
I also don't know that policies even need any mutual exclusivity if we limit policy slots correctly.
We don't need to hardcode mutual exclusivities, but some policies will have the opposite effect of others. For example: policy A +10% industry -10% research, policy B +10% reseach -10% industry. You don't want both of them simultaneously, for obvious reasons.
See I would structure the policies so that offered disadvantages at a lower tier than policies that didn't offer a disadvantage.
I think that is a bad idea, for the reasons explained above. Quoting Geoff:
Geoff the Medio wrote: Sun Jun 30, 2019 7:45 pmMany policies should be contextually but not always very helpful, or sometimes detrimental, depending on a player's game strategy.
I also think that not having a disadvantage would be a motivation to switch over.
Having a bigger advantage alongside a bigger disadvantage also motivates switching, as with the example in my previous post.

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Re: How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

#17 Post by Geoff the Medio »

labgnome wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 12:49 am As far as policy slots go, I suppose I should ask how many policy slots you ultimately want the player to have. This is a balance concern as the number of slots will determine how valuable policies actually are and how they are balanced against each other.
3-6 per category. "ultimately" implies endgame, or at most / peak, though. They will be gotten progressively through a game.
For balancing I am thinking that maybe policies should have an influence upkeep cost as well in addition to an adoption cost.
No. That would require having them on the influence queue, and/or for the player to give input about which to unadopt if the upkeep can't be payed during turn processing.
when you say can have negative effects, do you mean that they can sometimes include negative effects of that they should always include negative effects
Can meant can, not must. It's a balance issue.
So maybe it should take multiple turns to change policies. I could see it being implimented as an influence project...
No. I specifically avoided implementing adoption as a queue project. It would require a bunch of unnecessary queue manipulation and UI clutter. It would be yet more content and decisions the player has to wait for rather than getting an immediate result to compare with, eg. for changes in meter effects. There would be issues about partial adoptions left on the queue and what ro do with them.
I'd split your centralization policy into an "Industrial Centralization" and an "Academic Centralization" policy. I might also include a "Media Centralization" policy for influence as well.
Seens overly nitpicky and simulationist... policies should generally try to be a bit interesting and conceptually or philosophically unique.

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Re: How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

#18 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 5:30 pm
labgnome wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 5:04 pmMy thinking is that this way the player will have to choose between the three main foci when deciding bonuses.
I don't understand. The player already has to choose between the main three foci (Production, Research and soon to be Influence), since you can have only one focus set on a planet. And what do you mean by "deciding bonuses"? Deciding policies?
Yes, and I am proposing that policies be classified primarily by what they give bonuses to. To clarify, I am proposing that players would be made to choose between the bonuses that they get from policies in addition to what the planetary focus is set to.
I also don't know that policies even need any mutual exclusivity if we limit policy slots correctly.
We don't need to hardcode mutual exclusivities, but some policies will have the opposite effect of others. For example: policy A +10% industry -10% research, policy B +10% reseach -10% industry. You don't want both of them simultaneously, for obvious reasons.
Okay I can see that.
I also think that not having a disadvantage would be a motivation to switch over.
Having a bigger advantage alongside a bigger disadvantage also motivates switching, as with the example in my previous post.
I am just saying I would probably be motivated the other way around.
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Re: How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

#19 Post by labgnome »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Tue Jul 02, 2019 5:01 pm
labgnome wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 12:49 am As far as policy slots go, I suppose I should ask how many policy slots you ultimately want the player to have. This is a balance concern as the number of slots will determine how valuable policies actually are and how they are balanced against each other.
3-6 per category. "ultimately" implies endgame, or at most / peak, though. They will be gotten progressively through a game.
How about each starting species gives you 1 policy slot. Then there are 3 buildings that each give a different policy slot. Then there are 3 techs (early, mid and late game) that give economic policy slots, 3 techs (early, mid and late game) that give military slots, and 3 techs (early, mid and late game) that give social policy slots.

How do you feel about the idea of wildcard slots that any policy can go in?
I'd split your centralization policy into an "Industrial Centralization" and an "Academic Centralization" policy. I might also include a "Media Centralization" policy for influence as well.
Seens overly nitpicky and simulationist... policies should generally try to be a bit interesting and conceptually or philosophically unique.
I wasn't trying to be nitpciky. I'm also not sure what you mean be saying it's simulationist, and it very well might be. Mostly I was thinking that I might want to centralize one aspect of my empire and not others, and that splitting the policy was a way to get more policies, which you are looking for. I will also say that I don't know that we should try to make every policy conceptually or philosophically unique, as that sounds to me like a creative roadblock to getting more policies into the game, which we are in desperate need of. I like the idea of groups of policies built around a conceptual or philosophical "themes" that can be used in a modular fashion by the player to pick and choose what kind of empire they want to have. Kind of like how IRL many countries are not completely capitalist or socialist but have mixed economies. Maybe we could also have "Decentralization" policies, so that say I could have Industrial Centralization and Academic Decentralization.
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Re: How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

#20 Post by Geoff the Medio »

labgnome wrote: Tue Jul 02, 2019 8:25 pmHow about each starting species gives you 1 policy slot. Then there are 3 buildings that each give a different policy slot. Then there are 3 techs (early, mid and late game) that give economic policy slots, 3 techs (early, mid and late game) that give military slots, and 3 techs (early, mid and late game) that give social policy slots.
There can be various techs and buildings that give slots, sure. More interesting and important is making them dependent on some condition being met, eg. have at least 10 species on empire controlled planets, destroy 100 enemy ships in combat, send a ship to visit every star type, control another empire's capitol building, adopt X policy for at least 50 turns (but don't nees to keep it adopted after that to keep the slot).
How do you feel about the idea of wildcard slots that any policy can go in?
Doesn't seem necessary.
I don't know that we should try to make every policy conceptually or philosophically unique, as that sounds to me like a creative roadblock to getting more policies into the game, which we are in desperate need of.
I / we want interesting and unique policies, not a lot of similar tweaks and variations on the same baasic idea. A better strategy is probably moving useful and interesting or at least strategically important effects from techs to policies.
Kind of like how IRL many countries are not completely capitalist or socialist but have mixed economies.
Standard aspects of how to structure an economy like those, along with others like hive mind dictatorship or parliamentary democracy or divine hereditary dictatorship or consensus direct democracy or analytical meritocracy or fascism or similar are reasonable policy names, which can be mixed with other similar ideas for how society or the economy are structured or what ideals the empire holds in highest regard and priority.

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Re: How to help on the Influence&Government development for non coders?

#21 Post by labgnome »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Wed Jul 03, 2019 8:38 amThere can be various techs and buildings that give slots, sure. More interesting and important is making them dependent on some condition being met, eg. have at least 10 species on empire controlled planets, destroy 100 enemy ships in combat, send a ship to visit every star type, control another empire's capitol building, adopt X policy for at least 50 turns (but don't nees to keep it adopted after that to keep the slot).
Maybe have a policy slot get unlocked with acquiring species of a different metabolism type. Say a Social Policy for your 2nd metabolism type, and Economic Policy for your 3rd metabolism type and a Military Policy for your 4th metabolism type.

I have an idea on policy combinations but I don't know if you and I are on the same page. It's presented below...
I / we want interesting and unique policies, not a lot of similar tweaks and variations on the same baasic idea. A better strategy is probably moving useful and interesting or at least strategically important effects from techs to policies.
I think there is room for a little bit of both. Especially in the name of modularity and fine-tuned control. I'm not thinking of "lots" of similar tweaks and variations on a few ideas, but more several tweaks and variations on a number of "ideas" as categories of policies that can help organize them according to things like what kind of strategy they work best with.

As far as strategically important goes I have been thinking that maybe things like the Concentration Camp, Bioterror Projector and the Planetary Stealth specials should be tied to polices.
Standard aspects of how to structure an economy like those, along with others like hive mind dictatorship or parliamentary democracy or divine hereditary dictatorship or consensus direct democracy or analytical meritocracy or fascism or similar are reasonable policy names, which can be mixed with other similar ideas for how society or the economy are structured or what ideals the empire holds in highest regard and priority.
Something we could do is call the "Academic Centralization" policy the "Capital Research University" and the "Academic Decentralization" policy "Galactic Educational System" while calling the "Industrial Centralization" policy "Economic Central Planning" and the "Industrial Decentralization" policy "Interstellar Economic Union" or something of the like if that helps. I still think modularity and specific control are important things to include in a government system to allow players to customize their experience.

I think that we could organize policies along the lines of different "ideas" or "ideals" that followed a particular theme. Each ideal will have one or more opposites, with the specific policies that cover bonuses in those areas being mutually exclusive in their maluses. Each ideal would have common bonuses and malueses, that would not be universal rules but would be general guidelines for what additional bonuses or maluses players could expect to find. Finally having enough policies active of each ideal would unlock a policy slot of a specific type.

Policy Ideals:
IdealOppositeStrategyBonusMalusPolicy Slot
CentralizationDecentralization & SecrecyTallInfrastructure @ CapitolStealth & SupplyEconomic
DecentralizationCentralization & SecrecyWideSupplyStealth & InfrastructureSocial
SecrecyCentralization & DecentralizationStealthyStealthSupply & InfrastructureMilitary
AuthoritarianEgalitarian & MeritocracyConquestProductionInfluence & ResearchMilitary
EgalitarianAuthoritarian & MeritocracyDiplomacyInfluenceProduction & ResearchSocial
MeritocraticAuthoritarian & EgalitarianTechnologyResearchProduction & InfluenceEconomic
CapitalistSocialistFast/ConnectedSupplyStockpileEconomic
SocialistCapitalistSlow/DistributedStockpileSupplyEconomic
FederatedImperialistPeaceful/DefensiveStability/HappinessvariousMilitary
ImperialistFederatedAggressive/OffensivevariousStability/HappinessMilitary
GestaltIndividualistGeneralistvarious (Telepathic)variousSocial
IndividualistGestaltSpecialistvarious (non-Telepathic)variousSocial
Keep in mind this is meant as a suggestion. I have them currently organized into two triads based on tall/wide/stealthy growth strategies and the conquest/diplomacy/technology victory strategies with each member of the triad giving a different policy slot; and three pairs with each opposite pair giving the same policy slot for a total of 12 Ideals. I am thinking of there being at least 5 policies per Ideal for at least 60 policies. I am thinking that adopting 3 or 4 policies of a particular idea for 50 turns should be necessary to unlock the extra policy slot. I am also thinking that policies from "opposite" ideals should not stack giving 5 total policy slots with a maximum of 2 for any one type from collecting the policies of an idea.

In addition to what's directly listed here I would also give both Centralization and Decentralization detection-boosting and/or stealth reducing polices. I would give the Capitalist Ideal policies that give bonuses to colonizing outposts and the Socialist Ideal bonuses to colony ships. I would give Federated Ideal policies that boost ship hulls and shields and the Imperialist Ideal policies that boost weapons damage. More specifically I would give the Gestalt Ideal policies that gave focus-independent boosts to colonies, and Individualist Ideal focus-dependent boosts to infrastructure and stability/happiness.
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