FreeOrion

There was some discussion in the "realistic planet population" about factions within an empire.

http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopi ... ht=faction

This also might work as an answer to the question "why do rebellions occur?" in the apty titled "Rebellions!" thread.

http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopi ... ht=faction

Now, I reliaze this has probably been talked about before, but I can't find any obvious discussions.

I'd also like to preface this whole thing by mentioning that I expect this is all far too comlicated for actual inclusion in the (standard) game, but I'm throwing out ideas anyway. It might be moddable or usable to a limited degree. Some internal gamestate representations alluded to here might also be used, which would allow easier extention of the faction system for the more complicated parts of it.


The idea is that factions periodically arise on planets in your empire.

They may be composed of a number of population "points" (or whatever is applicable) and may be generally concentrated on a single planet (initially) and may have a headquarters on that planet (acts as a planet special?).

Natives on a planet, or "foreign nationals" from another empire could be treated as a faction. (This is the part that could be included to allow easier extention)

Perhaps each population point would have attributes such as race and faction affiliation (or just faction afiliation, and foreign nationals are always treated as being in the X foreign nationals faction). (Having a population point affiliated with more than one faction would probably be a bit much...)

Factions have social / military / other agendas (like a SMAC faction) and their happiness / acceptance of empire leadership depends on how these are met. Faction acceptance of empire has effects on the happiness / unrest of the planet where they are located, depending on the portion of the population of the planet that is aligned to the faction. Factions also like / dislike other factions depending on their respective social / military agendas, and occasional nonsensical hatreds (could be explained as racism or planetary nationalism or religious disagreements (reformations, subsects) ). Factions could occasionally split into two subfactions, which would probably be opposed to eachother. Planets with significant numbers of two or more factions could have increase unrest / waste due to faction fighting (gang wars).

Other empires can use spies / money to incite unrest by sponsoring a faction on one of your planets. Their own "foreign nationals" would be particularily succeptible to this.

Particularily unhappy factions that have a large population on a planet could start rebelling. They could ignore imperial orders, form their own militia (ground or light space based), steal imperial ships, start acting like pirates on shipping lanes (if applicable), blow stuff up, or in extreme cases seceed from the empire. Rebelious factions would be particularly vulnerable to enemy spy action... though they could have gotten that way *becase of* enemy spy action.

Colony ships built on a planet may contain primarily members of a certain faction, and the new colony will be affiliated with that faction.

Some factions (religious ones?) have a high tendency to convert people to their faction from a) the general (non faction aligned) populace b) other factions. Aliens / Natives / Foreign Nationals (if treated as a faction) are unlikely to attract new members from your general populace.

Now here's my favourite part: Factions that have been around for some time may also have special bonusus that can offer, like the various specialties of factions in Dune books. This would be very interesting, especially if the standard research tree doesn't offer these possibilities. These 'faction perks' could be quite powerful, much like those in Dune.

The selection of faction perks you have access would probably involve meeting the demands on one faction which upsets another. As such, you would effectively have to choose one or two factions from which to receive perks in your empire. This could be thought of a special general powers in C&C: Generals or picking a particular minor faction to align with in Dune 2000 (or was it Emperor: Battle for Dune?).

I don't really like the idea off factions, unless you mean alliances. Maybe a faction could be an "evolved" alliance?

If by alliance you mean close diplomatic relationship with another empire or tribute state (cold war style third world ally or somesuch), then no, that's not what I meant by factions.

A "faction" would be a political, racial or religious group in your empire that has some significant political power, such that it's capable of significantly affecting the productivity of a planet or three and is worthy of an emperor's attention.

Factions would mainly be a way to explain why a certain planet became unhappy or why a rebellion occured or why you're having a civil war.

They would keep your populace from being and endless sea of generic automatons with no free will, but not be overly artificial / arbitrary restrictions on your ability to make decisions.

They would simulate domestic political forces and objection / dissent to dictatorial commands in a coherent, controllable and interesting way.

They provide a check against geometric runaway growth.

Does that answer your question? I'm not entirely sure what you meant by an alliance or evolved alliance...

This sounds a lot thike the Ethoi idea for MOO3, (in my opinion one of the really good things that was scrapped). Something like this done properly would be a good way to put in 'understandable politics'. Although we still have to work out how 'politics' will work, I hope something somewhat like this gets in.

"Ethoi"? ... how (un)aptly named...

What needs to be fleshed out or changed from my proposal in order "to work out how 'politics' will work"?

There could be an imperial senate, but what effects would it have? GalCiv's large +/- % bonuses seemed a tad artificial to me...

If there's no senate, then imperial politics are all about empire-planetary-faction interaction, which I think I've set up a basic framework to model...

?

This idea sounds interesting. To work on it, we would need a list of those groups and what makes them happy or not.

Mabye they could be related to various (non)slider qualities of the goverment? Like pro or agaisnt ecology, free market, individualism, religion, and such. They would support or oppose the changes, be prosecuted by the empire (player), supported by enemy intelligence, etc.

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I figured many details could be worked out and/or ideas floated without enumerating the various political agendas of groups... It's a bit risky to do things like that if we're not sure what sort of governemental social choices the player can make anyway...

I originally conceived the agendas to be similar to SMAC faction agendas (though SMAC factions are the opposing player / empire, factions here are within your own empire). This seems justified by calling your "team" an "empire".. ie. there's sufficient expanseand population for significant variation to pop up. Most scifi empires seem to be broad federations of many different groups, so this seems reasonable.

Religions are a great source of factions... they could be based partly on real world religions, but that's not really necessary. Religious factions can be said to dislike eachother for no other reason that having a different religion. They would probably have strong social agendas, though the issues most real world religions care about probably aren't something the player would care about / control. (I avoid any detail here as per forum policy). Sci-fi new-age religions might have more useful agendas (since we can make them be anything) like dislike for a certain class of weapon or other technology, or desire for holy war against such and such a race (natives on a planet you've colonized, or another empire). They probably wouldn't care whether you were a democracy or dictatorship, free market or planned economics...

There could be cultural isolationists, wanting you to limit trade or somesuch to preserve their culture from the generic empire one...

Purely political factions would approve/disappropve of your current choice of government (democracy vs. dictatorship or other...?) or economic system (free market, planned, other...?)

Environmentalists would oppose too much industry on a world. Industrialists would want more...

Separatists would desire secession of their planet from your empire. This could be a motive in of itself, or they could be a very unhappy normal faction that's not getting what its other agena is met.

Natives and "Foreign Nationals" could be treated as factions. Natives would probably have their own range of special interests, and be separatists. Foreign Nationals would obviously dislike war against their original empire, and would have separatists tendencies.... and probabaly social / political agendas as well.

Subcultures would have the possbility to grow into whole cultures if given enough space and time.

Perhaps the cyberpunk datahackers guild grows pretty powerful... you'd need to watch out for them, since if they didn't like you, your research would be severely impaired... though if they favour you, enemy spies would have a hard time stealing any secrets...

...

Factions could have colourful and/or descriptive names... like the "Duroas IV Green Democratic Separatists" or the "League of Stellar Merchants" or "Penitent Church of the Blue Star" or "Andoricus Native Tribes".

...

One issue to worry about is that if there's too much variation within a single empire / race, then there's not much room left to make each race / empire different from the others. I say this as a worry / problem, but it might actualy be a good thing, depending on how the inter-empire political game is envisioned... On the other side of the too much factional variation issue is the possibility that different empires, if having totally different forms of life making them up, could also have completely different types of factional variations, and there would be no worry about all empires seeming like clones, only differentiated by their factions that (randomly?) appear each game... I suspect that for balance and game mechanics uniformity purposes, most empires will function essentially the same, however... other than a few bonuses / penalties to this or that production or a few bonus / forbidden techs...

Maybe factions could be limited somehow? For example, an empire might have 4 factions:
Religious faction - pro religious belief, the more popular it is allowed to become then the happier the people are, but the less effectively they work
Research faction - big on the free ideas bit. The more popular they become then the more research is generated, but the more sensitive to oppresion/taxes the empire becomes as they feel restricted
Anti-government faction - perhaps the most dangerous faction. They speak out against the current government's flaws, if policed/restricted too much then people may feel unsafe/oppressed, but if allowed to grow too popular then it can threaten unrest/rioting and even a planet leaving your empire.
Military faction - generally groups of ex-soldiers who harbour particular hatred for a specific empire. They will reduce unrest and promote feelings of goodwill towards your empire as long as you are at war or remain aggressive toward a particular empire. But if you choose peace then they can develop into an anti-government faction.

These four are just a few quick ideas of different kinds of factions. They could be dealt with in much the same way as an empire through diplomacy, they may make varying requests/demands, each with their own pros and cons for accepting/refusing them. But they would have additional options. For example you may want to try and force a faction to become unpopular by running a campaign to discredit them.
Some factions you may wish to outright police, ie you have spies watching them, you have big security turn-outs at marches/rallies and so-on. Extreme actions like imprisonment of leaders, blackmail and assasination could also be possibilities.
The key to playing would be to all keep factions fairly happy so that you get some of the benefits and not too many of the penalties. Some factions could cause permanent bonuses through certain actions, for example; if you were to offer the leader of the anti-government faction a place on your ruling council then this would effectively dissolve the faction and reduce overall feelings of unrest and oppression.

I think that seperatist factions though should be rare and very unlikely to break-off, only through directly aggressive behaviour from their empire's leader would they feel like leaving and taking what they can with them.
Factions should also tend toward a race's advantages. For example a militaristic race would be more likely to have military factions forming, a scientific one would have a more active research faction and similar. While a few general factions dealing primarily in unrest would be common to all empires.

If there are only 4 factions, then they're more like single-issue political parties than what I was envisioning. With only 4, they couldn't be very well localized to a particular planet... and if they're not localized, they can't really be separatists.

Well, I suppose they could, but a major goal of having factions was to give a reasonable explanation as to why a particular planet is having unrest problems or seceeds. If the factions/parties are nonlocalized, then you lose this and have to revert to a random system for which planet seceeds, unrest based only on tax rates and such...

I'm not saying politcal parties are necessarily a bad idea, or necessarily worse or better than factions, but they're not really what I was talking about

MY idea was to have this as a Goverment choice called "Factional". Under this choice your normal HeadQuarters disapears and several "Faction HeadQuarters" apear the player can move these around and each gives a particular bonus of effect and their potential for friction between them so its best to spread them out. Their would be some way to control/manipulate what faction/s dominates a planet and you get a variety of bonuses because of this. If you piss off a particular faction too much they might cause trouble.

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

nice suggestions factions could have local HQs with influence on nearby systems. Unrest may happen where 2 areas of influence overlap. i agree with that we should have only a few factions. we should be carefull not to overcomplicate things, imo factions are something that should be in for the flavour & immersion and to give a reason why things happen, but they shouldn´t distract too much from the main gameplay, which is still "deal with the enemy races".

I'm thinking more in terms of limiting it somehow, 4 might be a bit too tight, but it would quickly become un-manageable if you have factions all over the place, realistic perhaps but not very fun I don't think.

It would however be quite possible to localise one of the several possible factions to a planet though and have them spread to other worlds as traders and so-on become sympathetic. Planets with high unrest would be good places for factions to begin, or to spread easily to, some of these factions if given the right attentions could solve this unrest problem for you.
For example, if people are objecting to enforced labour of a certain race on a world then an equality group could quickly spring up there, or spread there from worlds/systems/sectors with similar racial unequality. They would then make demands such as lowering enforced labour, thereby reducing unrest.

The way I see it though is that there wouldn't be all that many different types of faction anyway, there may be two similar factions with one being more extremist than the other, but for the most part it seems that a particular type of movement would form a single empire-level faction. Lots of little planetary factions wouldn't seem as significant on an imperial scale to me.

The best of both worlds could easily be incorporated you see. A faction may come into existence based on certain factors, when it does then it might have say 20% of Calia VII in it. If conditions don't improve then this could quickly rise to 60% at which point the faction will start looking for like-minded individuals on other worlds. Thus the faction now has Fomalhaut II and Bensis IX under 70% and 30% sway. In this way a faction starts limited to a world, dealing with or feeding from the unrest there and spreading to other worlds. It may be possible to just ignore them when they are at a planetary level, but if they spread in such a way then they suddenly hold more bargaining power and you can easily see that if they are not dealt with correctly then their seperatist tendencies might become stronger and they form their own empire on Calia VII and Fomalhaut II.

I had hoped that factions would help explain the source of unrest, rather than propegate due to it. I guess people are happy enough with high taxes -> unrest, though?

other things can cause unrest too. Unemployment, overpopulation, space pirates, space monster breeding ground close by, cohabiting a world with different species, whatever... I do like the idea of factions though. Possible that factions could spring up (originally) as a way of reducing a type of unrest, then eventually as they become more main stream cause thier own types of unrest, due to different agendas then the main government. It's like the NRA vs. the federal government, you know??