wheals wrote:How would your allegiance and happiness interact to form revolutions? One one hand, you could say that it would be based purely on happiness, and the planet would go to the empire that had the highest allegiance for that species. That might be strange if the empire with the best one was the one it was rebelling from. One the other hand, if it were based on only allegiance, it might seem counterintuitive that perfectly happy planets can rebel, although, IMO, that would seem like the best way to make allegiance really matter.
I would base rebellion mostly on Approval - in particular, a planet should never rebel against a popular ruler, regardless of their material conditions. (That's kind of the definition of popular.) The mechanic would work something like:
- Approval directly affects troop regeneration. Below a certain Approval threshold, troops no longer regenerate at all (the Empire's popularity is so low that recruitment is impossible).
- We could use the Rebels meter, but in a different way than how it currently works. The Rebels meter rises whenever Approval is below a threshold; the further below, the faster it rises!
- The rate of increase also depends on the population. Low Happiness results in more Rebels (recruitment is easier among people who see little hope for the future).
- The Rebels meter does not directly impact the Troops mete, but...
- If the Rebels meter rises above the Troops meter, the planet rebels and declares independence.
The Player should be able to intervene at various parts in this process.
- Firstly he can make a species happy so that Approval has no reason to fall in the first place.
- If that fails, there should be some methods (like Propaganda) which can prop up the Approval rating, for a cost.
- If Approval is so low that troop regeneration ceases, then troops can be brought in from other planets. If troop ships are too micromanagy, then perhaps a new Focus would do the trick? (You put the Focus on a loyal planet and it automatically exports troops to other planets.)
- Of course there's a limit to how many troops you can support anyway, and the Rebels meter will just keep rising. So finally you would have an option to try to "Purge" the rebels - probably with the side effects of more Unhappiness and more Disapproval. And you'll have to do it again, sooner or later. This could involve things like Espionage and Governments, when they are added.
EDIT: Of course, the growth of Rebels shouldn't be the only consequence of low Approval. Other possibilities include species-wide Strikes, whereby Production and Research from all planets of that species are nullified. You could also have a Martial Law option which prevents/cancels the strikes, at the cost of even more Unhappiness and/or Disapproval. In general I like the idea of having lots of possible consequences for negative Approval, each of which occurs with relatively low probability. It makes the outcome less predictable and imo improves the narrative potential.
Any patch contained in this post is released under the GPL 2.0 or later.