You can always try to start a game with a Warlike race then switch to a Diplomatic strategy. The viability of this will be decreased if there happen to be no Diplomatic races in the galaxy. In terms of actually trying a particular strategy, well, you can do it no matter what. But in terms of what's available around you, the strategic options that are opened up by your environment will always be based on luck. As far as game pacing goes, I don't really see what could be done by adding civics to the tech tree that couldn't be done by just having actual techs and buildings that permit various strategies.Krikkitone wrote:"Luck" should determine the Viability of strategic options. The Availability of strategic options should be determined by the game rules and as a key part of pacing.
What interesting strategies are possible with civics that can't be made possible without them, in a more natural way (essentially the core of the issue, right here)?Krikkitone wrote:Let me clarify
There is "overarching strategy" which includes strategic shifts within it. (the overarching strategy may change as well)
Shifting your population would involve an Incredibly massive change in strategy because it is not really easy to reverse.
Shifting the economic focus of your worlds is not as large a shift in strategy since it is fairly easy to reverse.
"Civics" would be between those scales, much harder to change than the focus of a world, but much easier than changing your entire population.
Technically, you can also "take it" with espionage, which requires Trade. At any rate, I don't think we need all twelve, and obviously some of them are just contradictory. Is there a really good combination aside from the five (the six on the wiki page, with Warlord and Conquerer rolled into one) that would allow a cohesive, non-self-contradictory strategy (examples of contradictions would be bloodthirsty egalitarian - trying to keep a high species-empire alignment from most species is extremely difficult when you're actively waging war against their former empires, so you can't afford to keep them all at the same rank).Bigjoe5 wrote:I agree, at least as a 'bare bones', the system can be expanded later
With Those 3 you have 12 ethoi
A few points on them
there are 3 ways to "get" things
Build it (Peace and/or Iso Ethos)
Take it (War Ethos)
Beg it (Diplo Ethos)
I suppose that would mean that all species would automatically start out as "subjects" (1 rank below citizen), including the starting species, so that the elitism - egalitarian alignment would start out neutral. Special rules for a "group mind" pick is a good idea, but should be dealt with after status itself is sorted out.Krikkitone wrote:As for the Freedom v. Security, it can be merged into Equality v. Elite...
IF you can have variation of Elite v. Equality with a single species empire (the idea is that you can have only one species and lower it below citizen and become more elite)
An Elite single species empire (with that one species as slave or worse) would like be a dictatorship with high security effects. (like the rebel supression you get for slaves)
An Equal single species empire (with that one species as a citizen..as high as it goes) would be like a democracy with high 'freedom' effects. (like the additional Allegiance for citizens
and IF there was some special mechanism for Group minds (the main reason I thought it should be separated)... ie a Group Mind doesn't have the freedom<->equality relationship at all. So "Enslaving" a group mind species wouldn't do anything, unless there is a different species higher than them.
I don't think so at all. A joint victory isn't a real victory. A diplomatic victory should just be using diplomacy to reach the sole-survivor victory, the same way an espionage victory should just be using espionage to get the sole-survivor victory, and a tech victory should be using technology to get a sole-survivor victory, and a military victory is using your military to get a sole-survivor victory. Having special rules for different victories implies that the systems in question aren't adequately important to be able to get the empire a real victory - that is to say that they haven’t been adequately integrated with the game to allow the player to use them to eliminate his opponents. In this case, I've described on the wiki how diplomacy in particular can be sufficiently integrated into the game (with the ethos system) to allow a player to legitimately get a sole survivor victory through primarily diplomatic means. I think it should also be possible to get the sole-survivor victory with spies, without ever even making diplomatic contact with a single empire.Krikkitone wrote:Side note: as for "shared wins" there should be some way for two players to merge their empires so that they do get a shared win (it should cut seriously into their victory points and require significant diplomatic/political investment on both sides to get their populations to accepti it... but That should be the way to achieve the 'sole-survivor' win purely diplomatically ie fuse all empires into one)
Status needs some attention now, I think.
I believe eleazar had a list that went from +3 to -4. That seems like too many to me. I think we’re fine with just
Overlord
Aristocrat
Citizen
Subject
Slave
Vermin isn’t necessary, because if the player wants to exterminate a planet, he can do so. He should also have the macro-tools necessary to exterminate all planets of an entire species in his empire with a single command.
Now, exactly what these statuses should do is still a big question. First of all, what we’ve agreed upon:
- Planets containing races with lower status are less likely to riot and rebel somehow, or else riots and rebellions are just much less effective. Exactly how to implement this is to be determined.
- Races with lower statuses get a penalty to species-empire alignment (immediate one-time penalty to current when the change is made, and permanent penalty to growth), and which will correspond to lowered allegiance and happiness. An additional happiness penalty might be appropriate, depending on how we want to balance long-term effects of slavery vs. short-term immediate effects.
- Races with higher statuses get a bonus to species-empire alignment, which will correspond to increased allegiance and happiness. Again, an additional happiness bonus might be appropriate.
In addition to this, there could be bonuses and penalties to resource production for different ranks.
Some ideas: races with higher ranks get a ground combat bonus, and races with lower ranks get a ground combat penalty (these probably shouldn’t be symmetrical; the lower ranks should have a bigger penalty than the higher rank gets a bonus). Advantages to this include:
- integrated method of making the slave planets’ riots and rebellions less effective - Overlord troops will easily be able to keep Slave rebels at bay.
- enhances the elitist strategy - ground combat bonuses for high ranking troops will allow a Warlord to conquer planets more easily.
Disadvantages of this are:
- Not as simple as just decreasing the riot and rebellion thresholds (since a mechanism for altering these thresholds will presumably need to be present for espionage purposes)
- Ground combat bonus might be superfluous to increased allegiance, depending on whether or not allegiance will alter the effectiveness of ground combat troops (though ground combat penalty for slaves wouldn’t, because they would be fighting for the rebel’s side)
Some further points on rank bonuses:
* Bonuses for high ranks don’t need to have corresponding penalties for low ranks, and vice versa, but higher ranks should never have the same bonuses and penalties as lower ranks (either aristocrats or slaves can get a production penalty; if one of them does, the other can't, but doesn’t necessarily have to get a production bonus)
* Additional factors can be added in as rank gets further from 0, but the factors for more extreme ranks should always include the same factors that less extreme ranks did (Overlords might get a ground combat bonus even if Aristocrats don’t, but Aristocrats cannot get a ground combat bonus if Overlords don’t)
* If the player is able to put his starting race as a status lower than citizen from the start of the game, there must be potential strategic reasons for him to do so.