User:Bigjoe5/Alignments

Paired Alignments

Paired Alignments are scales measuring imperial action in which one direction on the scale is not defined as any better or worse than the other direction. Specifically, in FreeOrion, Ethical Compatibility Alignments are paired alignment scales measuring the ethical implications of an empire's actions. A particular strategy will be likely to cause the player’s alignment to shift towards one end of the scale or the other, or be neutral. In this way, each empire has a particular character, that defines how it is likely to act. A species’ allegiance towards an empire is based largely on how well that species’ ethos matches the empire’s alignment. In this way, the player is rewarded for choosing a strategy that allows him to consistently make characteristic decisions, because such decisions will give the player allegiance bonuses. Because the player is rewarded for role-playing to a certain degree, empires will frequently be observed to have particular personalities, which will hopefully add to the character of FreeOrion itself.

Species-empire alignments, which are referred to throughout this page, are unpaired alignment scales which measure imperial actions taken for or against a particular species. The values of these scales are combined with ethical compatibility to calculate a given species' allegiance to a given empire.

Pacifism vs. Bloodthirstiness

Factors which Increase Current Bloodthirstiness

• Declaring war
• Planetary bombardment
• Destroying ships in a combat which you instigated, or which you continued after the other side attempted to disengage
• Exterminating the citizens of a planet under your control

Factors which Increase Current Pacifism

• Ending a war

Factors which Increase Bloodthirstiness Growth

• Being in a war

Factors which Increase Pacifism Growth

• Natural decay

Strategic Tradeoff

Bloodthirstiness

+ Enhances a militaristic strategy and allows a player to gain higher allegiance by destroying planets and enemy ships

- The player must stay in a state of war or commit otherwise bloodthirsty actions, otherwise the Bloodthirstiness alignment will begin to drop, causing a decrease in allegiance

Pacifism

+ Increases allegiance as a result of inaction, so resources can be diverted to other areas while allegiance and happiness continue to increase.

- The player cannot declare war against an enemy empire without incurring a penalty, and even the enemy empire declares war on him first, thus absolving him of any bloodthirstiness caused by the war itself, the pacifistic empire will find it difficult to actively wage war against the enemy due to the effects on alignment of various warlike actions.

Egalitarianism vs. Elitism

Factors which Increase Current Elitism

• Moving a species further away on the status scale from the highest ranking species in the empire. This includes raising the status of the highest ranking species

Factors which Increase Current Egalitarianism

• Moving a species closer on the status scale to the highest ranking species. This includes lowering the status of the highest ranking species

Factors which Increase Elitism Growth

• Having species in the empire which are more than one level lower on the status scale than the highest ranking species

Factors which Increase Egalitarianism Growth

• Having multiple species sharing the highest which has been bestowed by the empire

Strategic Tradeoff

When enslaving an elitist species, the negative impact on allegiance due to decreased species-empire alignment would significantly outweigh the positive impact on allegiance due to increased elitism alignment.

Conversely, when promoting an egalitarian species, the negative impact on allegiance due to increased elitism would significantly outweigh the positive impact on allegiance due to increased species-empire alignment.

This is accomplished by having a large penalty to species-empire alignment for low ranking species, but only a small bonus to species-empire alignment for high ranking species. In other words, being elitist is only advantageous when the player has elitist species in his empire which he raises to a higher rank.

Elitism

+ Allows the player to have fairly productive multi-species empires, since slave races can be used for their bonuses without a significant amount of revolt occurring, and the planets containing the higher ranking species will be happier and more productive due to their higher rank; essentially, this allows the empire to have a very productive multi-species empire while only having to please one species.

- Unhappy slave worlds are prime candidates for espionage, which means that the elitist empire is an easy target for stealing resources, technology, ship designs, etc, and espionage could be used to cause rebellion in the otherwise very safe and stable slave worlds.

Egalitarianism

+ Allows an empire to have a fairly productive multi-species empire, without any worlds which are extremely vulnerable to espionage. There is less difficulty in maintaining high allegiance from newly acquired species due to the fact that they don’t need to be enslaved in order to keep the original species happy.

- It’s not as easy to incorporate Elitist races into an Egalitarian empire as it is to incorporate Egalitarian empires into an Elitist empire, meaning that the ethos of species you can incorporate into an Egalitarian empire is limited if they are all to be equal. Also, if an empire attempted to be elitist without having any elitist species, he would still get an empire with a variety of bonuses and low possibility of revolt, but he would have no loyal races to use in his military, which would make it more difficult to wage war, and possibly to prevent rebellions on the slave worlds. Also, more effort must be expended keeping multiple species in the same empire happy.

Diplomacy vs. Isolationism

Factors which Increase Current Isolationism

• Breaking treaties/alliances
• Leaving a Multi-Governmental Body

Factors which Increase Current Diplomacy

• Entering treaties/alliances
• Giving, receiving or exchanging resources, information or other items
• Creating or joining a Multi-Governmental Body

Factors which Increase Isolationism Growth

• Natural decay

Factors which Increase Diplomacy Growth

• Being involved in a treaty or alliance with another race
• Being a member of a Multi-Governmental Body

Strategic Tradeoff

Isolationism

+ Isolationist species are the only species which can’t be charmed by the diplomatic empire. As such, having an empire comprised of only Isolationist species would put that empire in a unique position to wage a ruthless war against the diplomatic empire without incurring happiness penalties on his planets.

- There’s a lot to be said for the advantages of trading and entering treaties with other empires, and choosing to use a Isolationist race significantly reduces the desirability of diplomacy, which essentially means that the Isolationist empire is on its own.

Diplomacy

+ Encourages a diplomatic strategy and essentially adds a bonus to the player for all diplomatic negotiations, whether otherwise favourable to him or not. This encourages the player to use the diplomatic strategy and gain high allegiance from all (non-isolationist) species, so that empires containing such species will give him gifts to get the happiness bonus.

- Although the diplomatic strategy is dependent on pleasing as many races as possible, it makes it more difficult to actually incorporate those races into your empire while still pleasing elitist races, because doing so will mean that the acquired races will have to, on average, be 1 level below the highest rank in the empire to keep elitism and egalitarianism even. This means species-empire alignment for the newly acquired race will decrease as a result of having been reduced to a lower rank by that empire, and all other empires who have that race will be less inclined to give gifts to that empire. If the empire makes the new race the same rank as his original race, then empires which contain elitist races will be less likely to favour his empire. This forces the diplomatic empire to make a choice between pleasing elitist races, and maintaining a productive multi-species empire. Furthermore, in the early game, the player must try to reach out quickly to meet new empires before allegiance from his diplomatic races decreases significantly.

Security vs. Freedom

This section involves some (perhaps premature) assumptions about espionage.

By default, anyone can have an espionage meter on anyone’s planet or ship, and nobody knows of the presence or value of anyone else’s espionage meter.

A special security project, which costs trade to maintain and even more trade to initiate (so that it’s not more efficient to just activate it for one turn, just to check, but implies a commitment to tracking espionage on that particular colony/ship), allows the player to see the current values - but not the max/target values and owners - of all espionage meters attached to the planet or ship. If this project is in place, the planet is said to have “basic security”.

If desired, additional trade can be expended to “purge” a planet or ship of enemy agents, which will gradually decrease all current espionage meters until they reach 0 (at a faster rate than the espionage meter can regrow - both this, and basic security should be cheaper on planets with higher happiness and on ships with whatever the ship equivalent of happiness is, eg. security). Any planet or ship on which this project is being enacted is said to be in a state of “active purgation”.

(This is all just an example - perhaps it won’t work this way at all - perhaps basic security will be a status that applies to the entire empire - perhaps basic security will make infiltrating your empire more expensive - point being, there had better be some kind of anti-espionage measures, and when there are, they can affect this alignment scale.)

Factors which Increase Current Security

Initiating Basic Security

Factors which Increase Current Freedom

• Ceasing Basic Security

===Factors which Increase Security Growth

• Having planets and ships with Basic Security
• Having planets and ships in a state of Active Purgation

Factors which Increase Freedom Growth

• Natural Decay

Strategic Tradeoff

Security

+ Players with high security will have strong resistance against enemy spies. With the empire’s most essential planets and ships constantly in a state of basic security, it’s very difficult for the sneaky espionage player to get a significant upper hand. Because of this, such an empire need not waste significant resources trying to increase the happiness of his citizens - he can deal with significant problems on important worlds as they come up.

- Security costs trade, and the more population and ships you have, the more you’ll need to spend to maintain high security. Enemy spy empires will try to focus on eliminating your trade production, and if they succeed, they’ll have free reign over your empire due to the lack of focus on other forms of espionage prevention. In addition, there may be some other penalty to active purgation aside from the cost in trade, such as a decrease in the population of the planet.

Freedom

+ The empire need not spend lots of trade on basic security and active purgation. He is free to use his trade for offensive espionage and propaganda.

- Finding and eliminating insurgents will be more difficult, which will make the empire more prone to espionage. To counteract this, the player will have to be focused on keeping his planets happy, or preventing spies from entering his empire at all by staying geographically isolated.

The Diplomatic Strategy

I’m assuming for now that events which occur between Empire A and Empire B will have an impact on the happiness of planets in Empire A which contain species whose allegiance towards Empire B is higher than their allegiance towards Empire A, and vice versa. This effect is proportional to the difference in allegiance. There is no impact on happiness of planets in Empire A which contain a species with higher allegiance to Empire A than Empire B, and vice versa.

Actions which increase happiness include giving a gift (or being involved in any exchange which is beneficial to the other empire), actions which decrease happiness include accepting a gift (or being involved in any exchange which is beneficial to one’s own empire) or taking military action against the empire, such as the actions which would increase current bloodthirstiness.

The Diplomatic Strategy is essentially to keep allegiance from all species very high so that other empires will have an incentive to give you gifts in order to gain happiness bonuses on their planets, and will be deterred from attacking your planets and ships, which would cause a happiness penalty on their planets. Propaganda is employed to increase species-empire allegiance and to compensate for necessary deviations in other alignments.

Because of this advantage, the diplomatic player also has a degree of control over other empires, in that he can cease to accept their gifts at any time, so they’d better listen to him. He can use this advantage to play other empires against each other, cause unnecessary wars between other empires, and just be generally manipulative. He might make considerable use of multi-governmental bodies to achieve his goals as well.

Pacifism vs. Bloodthirstiness

The diplomatic player has two main options with this one: he can either try to balance it, or he can go towards pacifism. Being bloodthirsty isn’t viable, because other players aren’t really going to take to kindly to you if you always go around destroying their ships and bombarding their planets. In addition, such a player probably won’t have the resources to spend on numerous prolonged wars.

Being a bit bloodthirsty is fine, though, since that only requires war with a few other empires and a bit of destruction, as well as a bit of propaganda to tie up the loose ends. Furthermore, you’ll have lots of empires willing to defend your colonies as a favour, so that they can continue to get happiness bonuses by giving you gifts, and as a bit of a threat so that you’ll keep accepting their gifts (‘cause otherwise they’ll blow you to smithereens), but this is OK, as long as the player knows how to play his opponents against each other, to divert their military attention from himself.

Being totally pacifistic is the cheapest route in terms of resource expenditure, but it also has potential to be the most expensive in terms of long-term consequences. The player doesn’t have to waste lots of resources on ships, and can turn his resource production to other things such as research and espionage. Furthermore, pacifistic species will like him more. This isn’t obviously a good thing, because the more they like you, the less their empire has to give you to keep them happy. However, the fact is that this will end up being an advantage for the diplomatic player, since pacifistic species are the ones who are less likely to like you more than their owner empire in the first place, since they would either belong to a similarly diplomatic empire, or an isolationist empire (see Ethos, below), so this would help raise your empire up in their eyes to the same level of diplomatic excellence that it is at with non-pacifistic species.

The long term consequences of choosing pacifism however, is that bloodthirsty empires aren’t going to like you as much as otherwise, which means less incentive to give you presents and avoid destroying your colonies. The pacifistic diplomat will have to ensure that his colonies are not in a vulnerable position to any bloodthirsty empires.

Egalitarianism vs. Elitism

Once again, the player has two main options: he can be neutral, or he can be egalitarian.

Being elitist would mean that some species in his empire would be upset with him due to being at a lower status, which in turn would mean that those species in other empires would have lower allegiance towards you (particularly since increased species-empire alignment is the main reason an empire with neutral alignment can have higher allegiance from species than empires who actually support that alignment, and species-empire alignment is what would be lowered by the lower status), which in turn gives those empires much less inspiration to give you presents. This makes elitism a poor choice for the diplomatic player.

Balancing the alignment scale for this is easy: just stick with a single species in your empire and the alignment will stay completely neutral. This allows the player to fairly easily please both sides, but doesn’t give the player the advantage of having a diverse empire with lots of different bonuses.

Being egalitarian requires getting lots of species into your empire, which is easy for a diplomatic empire, since you can just trade for a planet or a colony ship. However, the egalitarian diplomat will run into the same problems as the pacifistic diplomat. Elitist empires will have no significant incentive to give him gifts, and will instead be more willing to capture and enslave his planets. Having good allies and a good strategy can help with this, but even more so, being balanced between bloodthirsty and pacifistic will help with being egalitarian and vice versa, since the player will be able to wage war agains the elitists fairly effectively, which will both protect him, and keep his bloodthirstiness in the desired range.

Diplomacy vs. Isolationism

There’s only one valid option here: Diplomacy. However, the fact that other empires may have Isolationist races makes this interesting. Such races will not be amused by their empires’ attempts to increase their happiness, and will have lowered allegiance towards him. In addition, such attempts would be mostly futile even in the short-term, since such races won’t have very high allegiance towards the diplomatic empire. In short, the diplomatic empire will have trouble if there are a lot of Isolationist races in the galaxy, and he should do his best to turn all the other empires against whatever Isolationist empires may be present.

Ethos

Assuming there are 2 ethical preferences for each ethos, having 3 paired alignment scales allows 12 possible ethoi. What follows is a short list of combinations that make sense conceptually and strategically:

Bloodthirsty + Elitist (Warlord)

Egalitarian + Diplomatic (Democratic)

Diplomatic + Pacifistic (Tolerant)

Pacifistic + Isolationistic (Reclusive)

Isolationistic + Bloodthirsty (Xenophobic)

Each preference is used at least once, and each of these ethoi is compatible with a unique, effective strategy.

Warlord

A Warlord species loves to destroy and conquer as much as possible. It will usually have industry, mining, space combat, or ground combat, which will complement its owner empire’s general strategy of massive war and slavery. It might have population growth penalties, to encourage capturing planets, and possibly penalties to other resource production such as food and research, for which the player can make up using diplomacy. Diplomacy is not harmful to the warlord species, and using threats of annihilation to extort resources, ships and technology from other empires will be a common strategy.

Early in the game, the player will be forced to reach outwards as much as possible to claim the most territory and reach potential victims the most quickly, which puts significant limitations on the amount of research and internal development that can occur. In the later game, when there are fewer empty planets left to colonize, he will be compelled to take planets from other races. It is most advantageous for his Elitism alignment if he captures and enslaves enemy planets, so he should make sure that his research strategy focuses on technology which permits easy capture of colonies.

Democratic

The Democratic race is pleased when the empire has lots of different species all being treated equally and when the player has lots of diplomatic negotiations with other empires. This empire will find it advantageous to follow a diplomatic strategy in which the Bloodthirstiness alignment is neutral and the Elitism alignment is at extreme Egalitarianism. The fact that his Egalitarianism and Diplomacy will become maxed out means that the allegiance of his Democratic species will also become maxed out, and he can use them as his primary military race.

Since this empire will be somewhat focused on war, space combat bonuses are likely, in addition to whatever bonuses affect diplomacy. Resource production bonuses are unlikely and not required, since the diversity of species which will exist in this empire will be sufficient to allow bonuses to production of essentially all resources to be available.

This empire will usually use diplomacy to acquire planets and colony ships with new species, but he is also likely to liberate slave planets from Elitist empires and incorporate them into his empire. In addition, diplomacy will also represent a large part of his strategy in general, and he will use it to manipulate other empires to put himself at an advantage.

Species of all different ethoi could conceivably be brought into this empire without significant allegiance penalties, but any Warlord, Xenophobic or Reclusive planets will still represent a weak spot in the player’s empire due to the ethical incompatibility which will result in an allegiance of about 60 at the very best (the value would usually be a bit lower due to species-empire alignments, since the empire was probably waging war against these race’s previous owners), making them good targets for espionage compared to the rest of the empire, and potentially being candidates for espionage-incited rebellion.

Tolerant

Tolerant species are pleased by Diplomacy and Pacifism, and the Tolerant empire will usually try to resolve his differences with other empires in the least violent way possible. It will be advantageous for this empire to follow a diplomatic strategy in which the Bloodthirstiness scale is at extreme Pacifism and the Elitist scale is neutral. Elitist empires will be more favourable to him, but unless he expands carefully and keeps his colonies well defended and in protected positions, he will be in danger of attack from Bloodthirsty empires, particularly Xenophobes.

The Tolerant empire has one particular dilemma however: it must keep its Elitism neutral, which means that once it has multiple species in its empire, some of them are going to have to have a slightly lower status than others. The species which is reduced in rank will have lower species-empire alignment, and therefore lower allegiance to the Tolerant empire. Therefore, the empire which consists primarily of this species will be less inclined to deal favourably with the Tolerant empire. Therefore, this empire must be eliminated. Simply not acquiring planets of other species in inadvisable, since other methods of expansion are more difficult, and the player will be giving up a significant advantage if it chooses not to incorporate any new species into its empire.

This is the main difference between the Tolerant diplomatic strategy and the Democratic diplomatic strategy: Tolerant empires will target other empires one at a time, manipulate them into giving them resources, weakening them severely from within using espionage, and causing assault from without by requesting other empires to declare war on and attack the target empire, which they are inclined to do both to curry favour with the Tolerant empire, and because they know that they will receive significant support from within thanks to the Tolerant player’s espionage. Then, the Tolerant player will divide the spoils of war with his allies in a way that is thoroughly favourable to his own interests, and gives him a good balance of lower-status planets.

Democratic empires on the other hand, will try to stay friendly with everyone throughout the game, to make sure that no single empire gains too much power. While this is going on, he himself is mustering power to prepare to declare war on empires who have foolishly weakened themselves by fighting with each other. The Tolerant empire takes them down one at a time, while the Democratic empire weakens them all gradually at the same time while accumulating strength himself, then mops up at the end.

The Tolerant empire isn’t going to be doing a lot of actual combat himself, so ground combat and space combat penalties are likely. Espionage however, is indispensable, so large trade and espionage bonuses are extremely useful.

Reclusive

Reclusive species just don’t want to deal with anybody. We don’t want to fight you, we don’t want to talk to you, just go away.

Reclusive empires will attempt to colonize planets in their own system and nearby systems as much as possible, but will probably send out high-detection long-range scouts to determine the location of other empires, so that they can avoid them at all costs.

This ethos is very much compatible with tech victory, or sole-survivor victory through espionage (which is pretty hardcore), and empires who intend to use this strategy are very likely to have high research, trade and espionage bonuses, with large penalties to space combat, ground combat and diplomacy. This empire will usually choose stealth techs and techs that help him manipulate starlanes in order to keep the other empires from being aware of his existence. An extremely successful Reclusive empire should be able to play through the game without making diplomatic contact with even a single other empire, but this would by no means be easy or occur frequently. Reclusive empires have no objection to slavery, so abducting citizens from other empires and using them on slave worlds would be a strong method of increasing production of other resources, particularly since a good Reclusive race would be able to hide those worlds from his enemies, therefore keeping these low-happiness planets from being good espionage targets.

Xenophobic

Xenophobic species are intent on destroying other species, and are totally unwilling to make treaties or alliances with anybody. Slavery is just fine though, as is capturing other planets, so the player essentially can capture a planet and enslave it when it’s convenient, and likewise just completely annihilate a planet when it’s convenient.

Xenophobic players will usually focus primarily on military, but not to the same extent as the Warlord empire, since the Warlord empire is able to get a lot of the resources and technology he needs just through threats of violence. A Xenophobic empire will not be willing to do so, and therefore will need to use other means of manipulating empires and taking their resources and technology, most notably, espionage. The advantage he’ll get from weakening the other player’s empire from within will make up for the fact that he will have fewer production points to build lots of warships. Also, unlike the Warlord, he is not compelled to have many slave planets, allegiance of his main species is unaffected by the Elitism vs. Egalitarianism scale. This will give him an advantage in terms of flexibility, since he can enslave enemy planets to get a good resource bonus, then exterminate them if they prove to be too much of an espionage liability.

Xenophobic races will usually have some combination of space combat bonuses, ground combat bonuses, espionage bonuses, and various resource production bonuses, particularly trade, mining and industry, since essentially all of these can be of great use to him. Penalties will certainly include diplomacy, and will probably also include other myriad penalties which don’t apply directly to resource production.