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:
Ideal | Opposite | Strategy | Bonus | Malus | Policy Slot |
Centralization | Decentralization & Secrecy | Tall | Infrastructure @ Capitol | Stealth & Supply | Economic |
Decentralization | Centralization & Secrecy | Wide | Supply | Stealth & Infrastructure | Social |
Secrecy | Centralization & Decentralization | Stealthy | Stealth | Supply & Infrastructure | Military |
Authoritarian | Egalitarian & Meritocracy | Conquest | Production | Influence & Research | Military |
Egalitarian | Authoritarian & Meritocracy | Diplomacy | Influence | Production & Research | Social |
Meritocratic | Authoritarian & Egalitarian | Technology | Research | Production & Influence | Economic |
Capitalist | Socialist | Fast/Connected | Supply | Stockpile | Economic |
Socialist | Capitalist | Slow/Distributed | Stockpile | Supply | Economic |
Federated | Imperialist | Peaceful/Defensive | Stability/Happiness | various | Military |
Imperialist | Federated | Aggressive/Offensive | various | Stability/Happiness | Military |
Gestalt | Individualist | Generalist | various (Telepathic) | various | Social |
Individualist | Gestalt | Specialist | various (non-Telepathic) | various | Social |
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.