FreeOrion

Simulating the happiness or dissatisfaction of the citizens of each empire, is common in 4X games. Making your people happy, usually has benefits, while the cruel, oppressive route generally is (in the short term at least) more economical. And of course citizens pushed too far may riot and revolt.

The general intention of FO is to use the (dis)satisfaction of the citizens as the way to give personality to the empires, thus leaving the emperor free to focus on winning. Thus human players and AI are equally effected. Citizens may have an opinion on all sorts of game actions, such as treaties, wars, technologies, atrocities, development, sciences etc.

This topic will address the kinds of reactions we want the citizens to have, what trigers those reactions, and what meters are used simulate the reactions. It should be noted that the game already has the meter health which effects population growth.


I have some ideas about specifics which i'll present later... I'm doing my best to open the topic impartially.

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Well one possible reaction should be Rebellion (similar to MOO2, the population spawns military units). [although here Rebellion could spawn new/resurrect dead empires and isn't something that goes away once you've waited long enough]

This should consider factors of
Allegiance (more allegiance=less chance of them 'wanting' to revolt)
Happiness (more happiness=less chance of them 'wanting' to revolt)
and
Security (more security=more chance that they are afraid of revolt)

Other possibilities
Revolution... assuming we will have multiple forms of government, and the ability to change between them, the population could spawn military units that, if they took your capital would forcibly change your government.

Riot... decrease in economic meters (output + construction)

Protest/slowdown... decrease in economic Output

Espionage opportunities... Unhappy/Disloyal planets would be more easy for another empire to get information out of, or to sabotage buildings in

Military Revolt... either among ground troops or (for empire wide bad population) Ships could become "Rebel troops" / Defect to the Enemy/ Run away


Some of these would depend on the species... a 'Hive mind' is likely
1. to have a totally different way of dealing with Happiness+Allegiance
2. to at worst probably have Slowdowns

These concepts are often listed separately, but I keep wondering if they should be. Does it really matter how "happy" a population is, as long as they are allegiant to their current ruler? Does it matter if a population is happy if they hate their current ruler and would prefer another? Does it even make sense for a population to be happy but hate their current ruler?

It seems to me that we can do without a "happiness" rating, and just track allegiance. Anything calculation or test that would have used happiness can instead using the allegiance of the population to its current rulers.

Assuming allegiance is tracked for each population for each empire, in what form (of data) should it be tracked? Would we want a separate meter for each population for each empire? That could be a lot of meters to keep track of and display... But using meters is good because we can set up much of the rules that determine how populations' allegiance is affected by situations using existing meter-altering effects, and conditions depending on allegiance meters can determine when things happen based on allegiance meters.

If meters are used, is there a reason to distinguish current and max meter values for allegiance? (or happiness?) Keep in mind that generally current meter values are capped by the max value, so a sudden drop in max allegiance for one turn could result in a long-term drop in current allegiance that would take a long time to grow back to the original max value (although this depends on how fast current allegiance grows over time towards the max)

Moved from the Diplomacy Preliminary thread.

For the purposes of focused discussion i think we should first consider the citizens in one planet only... i.e. leave the question of how different planets in the same empire interrelate till after we've established how a single planet will work.

Also it can be assumed that citizens of different species would act in some ways differently, but those specific differences shouldn't be considered "on topic" here... except to the degree that it's necessary to consider the stated subject.



I tried to think of ways to combine these, and there's the situation where i felt a separate allegiance and happiness were necessary:

Supposed the citizens of planet X love their empire, "Red". And for various reasons they absolutely loath their neighbor the "Blue" empire. Now Blue declares war on Red, and attacks planet X... which is the site of a long, bloody fight. Many of the citizens are killed, and infrastructure is destroyed.

So what happens to the citizens of X? Obviously there feelings toward Blue will become more negative (if possible). But towards Red? If anything should make a planet unhappy (and thus invoke maluses such as to production), it should be wholesale slaughter. But if "happiness" is the same thing as "allegiance" then Blue can push X to disloyalty merely by killing them. I do think that unhappiness should eventually produce negative allegiance. But especially when previously happy, IMHO it would be rather troubling that any embattled planets would start turning against me. It would not be unreasonable to expect an allegiance boost when under attack by an enemy.

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That should be easy to do if Planet X is damaged in a War between Blue (Attacker) and Red (Our Empire),

Allegiance to Blue goes down because they Attacked
Allegiance to Red goes down because they didn't defend us

Because Red and Blue are at WAR
Allegiance to Red goes up IF Allegiance to Blue is low (Red is fighting an enemy we hate.. yay red)
Allegiance to Blue goes up IF Allegiance to Red is low (Blue is fighting an enemy we hate...yay blue)

so if we start with Red>Blue... Red Allegiance wil stay stable, Blue Allegiance will drop really fast
if we start with Blue>Red... the opposite situation
if we start with Blue=Red... then they will both drop until something 'breaks the symmetry'


There are a few other things... I would include some social measure Other than allegiance to differentiate wanting Independence for a new Empire from wanting a new Government of our empire [difference between American and French/Russian Revolutions]

Perhaps that happens IF a planet successfully beats the occupying forces, it then chooses (based on the populations allegiances, the game state, balance of power, etc.)
1-be a "Rebel" Planet (its still 'part of your empire' in the sense that if ou want to you can control IT instead... which would turn all your other planets into Rebel Planets)
2-join a "Rebellion"
3-become a new "Empire"
4-join an "Empire"

So that way (using a RW example) once the American Troops successfully pushed the British out of say virginia, Virginia decides to either
A.. carry the anti-Monarchist sentiment to London
B.. join the "pro-Papist" Rebellion in Ireland
C..Start the "American" Empire
D..join France

A Rebellion in progress can switch to an Independenc movement if it continues long enough (ie to explain a realworld event in game terms...
The Communist Rebellion in China gets bigger and bigger,
the Player then switches to controling Communist China instead of Nationalist China [making it a Nationalist rebellion against a Communist Empire]
Eventually, because the Nationalist rebellion makes no gains it turns towards independence instead.


The key difference between Independence and Rebellion would probably be Peace with the other Empire... when the British made peace with the Americans, once the Americans accepted peace it became an "Independence" as opposed to Rebellion. Because the Union+Confederates didn't accept a peace deal, it could be considered a Rebellion as opposed to a new Empire.

It would probably come out of how much planet X liked the government.. If Planet X has a low allegiance to Red, but they Mostly like the Type of Government Red has, then you are looking at Independence. If they have a low allegiance to Red and that is because they REALLY hate the Red government, then you are looking at Revolution.

This means that "Independence" is caused when there are things Other that 'hate Red government' that drives down Red.


After that long discussion, I think I know what I would have

Allegiance meters to all relevant empires (to this planet)
Including
Allegiance to the "Independence" empire

so we can ditch Happiness (except as a composite score reported to the player)

When a planet successfully breaks off, they look at their options, join an empire (including the 'independence' one) OR stay a rebel... a rebel planet can join an empire at anytime, and overtime allegiance to "Independence" will grow...eventually enough to overcome the fact that it has 0 power.

I can't say how the various aliens would feel about it, but the Blitz bombings and 9/11 both dramatically increased the allegiance of the poeple to their respective nation.

The way I'd do it for any species that thinks like humans is simple, bombing or any weapon that kills civilians, increases allegiance to the side that didn't do the bombing, and decreases it for the side that did.

Not necessarily.. Red is at war with War on Blue, and now WE are suffering for it... maybe if we declare independence from Red (who we hate anyways) or change the government we can get Peace with Blue and end the suffering (Russian Revolution)
Probably happened a lot in the Middle Ages... That army is burning our crops, the King isn't here to defend me... I'm going to pledge Allegiance to another King that Can protect me (maybe even the attacking Army, They can protect me)

The exact amounts would vary based on the situation, bombing would certainly decrease loyalty to the bomber, but it would also decrease loyalty to the defender (who isn't defending) But because the defender is at least at war with the bomber they would benefit.
If in 9/11 Bush had said... "That's OK bin Ladin is a good friend of mine"...do you think there would be an Increased loyalty to the US... No, the reason the loyalty went up is because the US government said, "We will attack the people who did this/we will defend our people, etc." if on the other hand we had been under some incredibly weak version of the Articles of Confederation, New York might have said, "well its time to break off from America and defend ourselves."

And if you are dealing with military forces that can take Years to travel around, the fact that you (as an emperor) didn't keep enough forces in a location to defend your people would be very bad.

If the numbers work out that way, that sounds reasonable.
Though i think citizens should be much more upset by an empire which actively kills them, than one which fails to protect them. I.E. if planet X likes Blue, and hates it's ruler Red, but Blue kills most of them in the process of taking them away from Red, they shouldn't end up being very fond of Blue either.


This doesn't make sense to me. If your planets rebel, they are in effect rebelling against you. What sense does it make for the player to assume control of planets that hate him? It takes away most of the "sting" of having mismanaged your planets to the point of rebellion. It would only be a sensible option, if the majority of you planets rebelled... which would in effect penalize the player more for a moderate rebellion than one that the majority of his planets participated in. (i.e. you end up with more planets)



The distinctions you are making between "rebellions", "revolutions" and "independence" seem subjective to me. Weather or not planet X likes a its form of Government in principle isn't an important definition... it will just come into play if/when they choose a new government, but it shouldn't cause a different state.


OK, ignoring for now the distinction (if any) between allegiance and happiness, here is my view of what should happen if a planet rebels. It's similar to what Krickkitone has presented, but IMHO more streamlined.

If a planet sufficiently dislikes it's owning empire, it may rebel— based in part on the probability of overcoming whatever forces the empire has to squash the rebellion. "Rebel" forces are AI controlled and are solely focused on fighting their former empire. If they succeed militarily, they are then left with a decision on what to do next. They evaluate all known empires by:
1) how much they like them: "allegiance",
2a) how powerful the empires are (and thus able to protect and defend), and
2b) the proximity of the empires (not much point in joining an empire it it's too far away to defend you)

The relative weight placed on #1 vs #2 may be determined by the planet's ethos and/or picks... and of course by the former empire's nearness and power to reclaim the planet.

* If an empire has a combined score above a certain threshold, the rebel world will petition for membership. If refused, it will petition the next empire on the list, until it is accepted or no qualifying empires remain.

* If no known or willing empire has a sufficient combined score, the planet will form a new (and probably short lived) empire. This empire is automatically "at war" with it's former overlords.


This should prevent the galaxy from being unnecessarily cluttered up with temporary "empires" while still allowing new empires to form under the right circumstances.

I should probably mention, that the above is the most complicated thing that i foresee citizens every having to "decide". The vast majority of the time i believe they should be reactive, not proactive, being happy or unhappy in predictable if complex ways.


The other event where i'd like to see citizens behave proactively is in self-initiatedmigrating from an unhappy planet.

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Well hopefully racial differences will show clearly here, so that we can have races that truly feel and are unique.

One thing that might be nice to have is some sort of a historical memory, where your citizens get very upset if you suddenly become very friendly with an empire that you were recently at war with and that killed your citizens. However if the war isn`t very recent your citizens would only be a little unsatisfied, and when enough time is past from the war, becoming friendly with the very old enemy no longer affects your citizens. But then again having this sort of a system for every planet might stress the computer too much.

I also hope that we can provide the player enough information, so that he/she knows, why the citizens of a particular planet are dissatisfied. And also some ways to fix these problems, since it is quite irritating in some games that I have played that there seems to be very little that you can do to make your citizens more satisfied.

As for citizen reactions having lower production due to the dissatisfaction, destroying possible buildings/infrastructure, breaking their planet free from the empire, and when multiple planets are concerned starting a civil war against the rest of the empire could be ways to express dissatisfaction. Most of these have probably already been mentioned in this thread or in other threads.

I also apologise that this post isn`t as informative or well thought out as I would like it to be, since unfortunately I don`t have as much free time nowadays as I would want to have.

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If Red has a peace treaty with Blue, then
the Allegiance to Red will go down if the Allegiance to Blue is low
AND
the Allegiance to Red will go up if the Allegiance to Blue is high

The opposite happens when Red is at war with Blue


As for independence v. government change, I'm trying to see some way that you government could be forced to change without losing your empire. (Agreed it might be simpler to say that such a Revolution takes place by first a few planets either breaking off or going into active rebellion... and Then the player decides to change governments violently .... all planets begin having Rebellion problems... planets that favored the old order break off now and the new order planets are more easily reconquered, and the player with the new government then gets control)

...I guess as long as you have a detailed breakdown of Why a planet is unhappy, then a player can either change their government (a potentially violent+messy process) OR let the planets rebel, so Independence v. Government change is whether you decided to accomodate the rebels demands or force them out.
(the Russian and French players changed their government before rebels actually broke off, the British player didn't [in 1776])

Also I think the "New Planets" should be a good degree more willing to stay independent. (especially if they are of your species and there are no other empires of your species besides yours.)

But I agree with their General 'Decision process' in choosing whether to join a new empire or go it alone.

Also the New Planet doesn't have to be at war with the former overlords... the overlords should get the message that Planet X has kicked us out and established their own government, do you wish to negotiate peace with them? (Y/N)
You should get the opportunity to let them go peacefully before another player has a chance to pick them up and go to war with you. [of course they might not Want peace... but]

Good point... i hadn't thought very concretely about this yet.
Some events that cause (un)happiness are naturally singular, such as planet X is starves, or is decimated by an attack. Other events will tend to repeat each turn for a long time such as X is unhappy because it's empire has a form of government it doesn't like, or it is a slave planet, or it's empire is allied with a hated empire.

Obviously each turn we can push the allegiance levels a bit toward "neutral", so that past events gradually drop off the scale. But can we balance the numbers so that naturally reoccurring events don't excessively overwhelm the effect of singular events?



I doubt we can fully answer the question "why are the citizens of X (dis)satisfied?", since there could be dozens (or hundreds) of events with a historical memory which combine to produce the current level.

It might be possible, however to remember the events (positive and negative) that had the biggest impact on the allegiance level. And/or the player could receive sitrep messages informing him when allegiance changes by X amount, and list the primary cause that turn.

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Well, if for instance the majority of your planets hate your chosen form of government, and start on the path to rioting and rebellion, it's not necessary for them to rebel in a different way than if they hated you because you were lousy ruler who recently grabbed them from an empire they liked.
The causes are different, and the solutions are different... but the result (if no solution is found) may be the same.
In the circumstance of the hated form of government, the player or AI may deal with the problem by giving them the form of government they want... or by mollifying them some other way, or by tightening security and/or enslaving some of the planets.


If a planet dislikes its empire enough to violently secede... it seems that the default state of affairs is "war". Maybe you can negotiate peace with them, but that should not always be the case.

In the real world population subsets rebel sometimes merely because they want to run their own lives, not only because their former government is antithetical to what they want. However, for the purposes of FO, i think we should skip that, since it is totally outside of the player's control. Maybe there's a certain degree of randomness, but primarily the impulse towards "rebellion" should be a reaction to what the player does or doesn't do based on understandable rules (which however may vary with species and/or ethos). The goal of this project is not to produce a game where the player is a glorified spectator of his own empire.


If it is important to be able to settle a secession with a peaceful parting of ways, then perhaps the player should be able to grant independence to a planet before it turns bloody. But i'm not sure that's a good idea....

As i'm considering this thread i'm getting more of a feeling that my ideal is biting off more than we can chew. We'll see.

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Well I think the key idea is the 2 different causes of something happening to affect allegiance

1. We don't like what you did TO US
2. We don't like what you did IN PRINCIPLE

Now there is some overlap, but generally those are seperate categories (if an empire is Xenociding your race then you don't like it in Principle but if you are a Subject of that empire you also don't like the fact that they are doing Xenocide To You)

This is why I think Happiness isn't quite as necessary.. the point is every bad/good event/condition gets Blamed on some Empire(s), and it affects the Allegiance for that Empire(s)

Because Allegiance (Liking) isn't the only thing involved in a War/Peace decision for a normal Empire, there is no reason why they should only consider that as a new/temporary empire.

I think "Kicking you out" is quite Valid as a goal because you didn't do enough 'For Them' (I'd probably make Allegiance tend towards 0 rather than Neutral so you must have a government that maintains a state they like.[this is somewhere I would put Money in... it can help to maintain minimal Allegiance])

Sorry, i really don't see how your post above related to the portion of my post you quoted.



I don't see the point in dividing things up like this. Naturally a planet would object more strongly to a genocide against itself, than genocide somewhere else, but i don't think that's the point you are making.

What are you saying should be different if:
1) planet A really hates it's empire because of "what you did TO US", vs
2) planet B that really hates it's empire because of "what you did IN PRINCIPLE"? And of course there's planet C that really hates it's empire because of an equal mix of "what you did TO US" & "what you did IN PRINCIPLE"?

I don't see a reason that planet A, B, & C shouldn't do exactly the same thing (assuming all other things are equal)... nor really do i understand how you are arguing it should be different, especially given "every bad/good event/condition gets Blamed on some Empire(s)".

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