FreeOrion

I know that everything fell apart on the relavant thread http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2075&start=360 and it got closed and that's a shame. Basically speaking in my opinion a civilization game needs a happiness system yet an overly mechanical seeming system is just an annoyance.

Given the way the interface works at the moment happiness/unhappyness is a basic way to overcome the basic sense of coldness which the numbers based interface and the scale of the game (star systems, endless millions of people) imposes on the game. The problem as I analyse it is that everybody got confused with the details and lost track of what they were actually trying to achieve. This was started because the argument began and continued on the basis of whether they should have two variables or not and then spiralled out of control into confusion because everyone was arguing about what they meant while trying to add new values etc. I'll focus on the political side of things and leave the actual mechanics to be discussed.

Why two values are needed
Two values are needed because it is needed to accurately reflect the nature of the way that unhappyness leading to rebellion can take two causes. We shall call them ultras and revolutionaries. Both are quite seperate rebel factions which are at war with eachother as well with the government. If one side captures the capital it becomes the government, but it does not gain control of the planets controlled by the other faction.

Allegiance and Happiness explained
Both of these come in both - and + scores.
Allegiance positively represents to what extent the world affirms the legitimacy of the present system and ideology. And negatively it represents to what extent the world's revolutionaries seek to seperate from being part of that empire.

Happiness positively represents how happy the world's people are with the present rulers. And negatively it represents the commitment of the world's people to resist and overthrow the present rulers.

Some happiness factors.
+ The governments succeeds in it's goals, especially in relation to extreme slider values.
+ The planet's material needs are met.
+ Buildings that increase happiness (religion, entertainment).
+ Building things on the planet
+ A rebel planet being conquered by external force sets negative values to 0.
- The government fails in it's goals, especially in relation to extreme slider values.
- The planet has Allegiance below 50
- The planet has negative Allegiance.
- The planet is controlled by rebels.
- Spies, either from rebels or enemy civilizations.
- Devestation in war and destroyed buildings (particularly if done by the government)
- Rebellion in neighboring worlds particularly of the same civilization and race.

Some allegiance factors.
+Cultural buildings.
+The government is pursuing it's slider goals (doesn't mean succeeding).
+The planet is controlled by ultras.
+Being above happiness 50
+Successful revolution +5 (to eliminate 'slightly' seperatist worlds)
-The planet has been controlled by rebels for 20-40 turns.
-Being captured by revolutionaries sets allegiance to 0.
-The government is failing to pursue it's slider goals.
-Being above happiness 0 and government controlled.

Revolutionaries and Ultras explained
Revolutionaries are simple enough, they are those who either wish to overthrow the present order because they consider it unjust or they wish to overthrow those than have conquered them and return to their original civilization.

Ultras are those who just don't think that the present regime goes 'far enough', for instance a warmonger who blames the warlike government for loosing the war but completely agrees that fighting lots of wars is just what the government should be doing.

Revolution
If the capital is conquered by either rebel faction the government falls. Human players lose the game at this point. The government's policy sliders are shifted towards either the extreme end of their existing spectrums. Ultras shift a random amount towards the favoured extreme which Revolutionaries take you to a random point along the other extreme. To simplify matters, only the unification government ever has a completely balanced policy and they rebel differently (see below). All treaties are broken and relations are neutralised.

Seperatism
Seperatism happens randomly when a revolutionary world of negative allegiance has been under their control for 20-40 turns or when a revolution is successful. A set of new slider settings is established against the former rulers as if a revolutionary takover had succeeded. The seperatists join the civilization with a capital of the same race of them which has the closest total slider settings to these new values. That civilization gets offered the chance to accept the seccessionists worlds but this will hurt relations unless revolutionaries have siezed power (succession happens before not after the relations are reset). If they reject, the next civilization of that race gets offered the same deal. If none accept then the worlds form a new empire.

All revolutionary controlled worlds secede together, the trigger world becomes the capital if a new empire is born. It is also quite possible for a civilization to be destroyed by seperatism is all it's existing world's have negative allegiance. Seperated worlds set their allegiance to 50.

Conquest
Conquest by a non-rebel empire inverts the positive happiness and allegiance values, but not negative one's. Those actively in rebellion against the existing regime rather than merely dissilusioned are well prepared to resist any foreign power that conquered them and seperatists do not cease to be seperatist for being conquered by a third power. The only exception is worlds of negative allegiance conquered by a faction of the same race invert negative values and do not invert positive happiness.

Unification worlds
Worlds from unification civilizations (organised in a hive fashion like ants, wasps, bees etc) which are of their starting races are always Allegiance 100 and do not rebel in the normal fashion or much at all. They have a happiness score but because as they have no favoured goals this is only really effected by material factors unless the gameplay factors are very extreme. In the rare event that they rebel, there is no fighting and no immediate potential to repress them with garrisons are the like. Instead the world immediately succeeds from the civilization taking with it other unhappy worlds according to the normal rules. Think of way that a swarm of bees can split in half.

I agree revolt mechanics are necessary. However, I don't think it is necessary to have a separate "revolt to change government" and "revolt to separate" [especially as we don't even Have governments yet.]
also there probably won't be "policy sliders" (although alignments may be similar)

I'd far rather have worlds revolt piecemeal.. only using one factor. (since if you liberate ie reconquer your world, the 'negative allegiance' should go positive) If we want a large separation, then a 'successful revolt' by one world should trigger more revolts by neighbors.

One way is to have Allegiance reverse Every time conquest happens (but that gets coounterintuitive if there are 3 empires involved, and it means rebels welcome enemy invaders.)

Another is to store Allegiance for each empire on a world (the problem is too many empires... so perhaps only having the 'important' ones .. ie empire the world is in, and other empires that are farthest from 0..with the value decaying towards 0 if all else is equal)

OR Have "species" hold the only 'tracked' Allegiance... worlds still revolt based on their species allegiance and their 'current conditions'. (makes species fairly monolithic, but is much simpler)

Nothing "fell apart" in that thread. IMO, we made a lot of progress towards a good system. It was closed because there was no immediate advantage to further discussion - i.e. the remaining disagreements weren't relevant to the implementation, and could be dealt with later as content - and any further discussion on the matter would probably be specific enough to warrant its own thread.

You seem to perceive the entire discussion as a bunch of people talking at cross-purposes and not really getting anything accomplished, whereas it was actually a constructive, if lengthy, design discussion, that came to some generally agreed-upon conclusions, though leaving a few issues unresolved.

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Yeah, that discussion ended and hasn't been resumed because in the time since the topic of citizens was picked up we changed our minds about what would be worked on "next", prioritizing some other things before diplomacy/citizens.

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—

I agree with you. There is no seperate revolt to seperate. All seperatists are counted as part of the revolutionary faction of the civilization they are rebelling against (that is those who want a reversal of government policy). They co-operate with them militerily in every sense.

Seperatism is an event that triggers only in a - Allegiance world under revolutionary control. It automatically triggers on one random planet of each species that has -Allegiance.

Worlds that are not under revolutionary control with one exception (unification civs) never ever secede, this includes worlds still under government control when the regime falls.



You can't do that because you don't want to end up with millions of 1-world mini-empires or a patchwork quilt of defections to various same-species empires, you have to have them secede together if you are to avoid this happening.

Revolts spreading is already in the rules, each rebel controlled planet inflicts a happiness penalty on neighboring planets.



Positive values invert as you said but negative values remain the same. Rebels do not welcome enemy invaders because negative values, both of happiness and allegiance DO NOT INVERT. Rebellious and seperatist worlds remain rebellious and seperatist regardless of how many times they change hands.

The only exception to this is when you capture a world of your own species THAT IS OF NEGATIVE ALLEGIANCE. This does mean however that seperatist worlds created as a result of fights between two empires of the same species don't care if they are liberated by a third power of that species.

But is that really so counter-intuitive? Are they really rebelling against the occupying powers for the sake of nationalistic loyalties to their distant former masters many light-years away or are they rebelling or do they primarily 'nationalise' with their planet and see the invasion of their world as a brutal intrusion by 'foreigners' upon their worlds traditional way of life.

It is assumed that seperatist rebellion is a rebellion really not in favour of a civilization but against the values that have been imposed upon by the invaders. As a result if their former masters are more similar to their oppressors than a third power, they could see the third power will better guarantee the counter-values they have defined against their oppressors, values which may not have ever been or are no longer strongly defined in the civilization they were originally ruled by.

Another problem is that I need to add an additional one-time -10 allegance penalty for occupation in order to make fully revolutionary world (0 allegance) mildly seperatist if conquered.



That is not neccesary. A load of additional complexity for little benefit. Worlds that secede can just decide who join on the basis of species and 'common values' and who will have them.

Yes, we don't want millions of mini-empires, but no, they don't need to secede together to avoid that.

Here's how i see it:
When a rebel planet successfully breaks away, it immediately considers which empire to join, based on proximity, power, happiness of it's citizens of the same species, and whatever other measures of compatibility the game may have. It may need to ask permission to join an empire. So in most cases it will try to join and existing empire. Only when no existing empire is a match and/or willing and when the total number of empires is below a certain hard limit will a break-away planet start it's own empire. The new empire should be ideal for additional break-away worlds of the same species from the same empire.



Free Orion doesn't have the concept of "your own species". While you generally start with a single species in your empire, the game mechanics and rules give that species no special status. It's not like MoO. Empire != Species.

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—