Testing Government and Influence

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wobbly
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#301 Post by wobbly »

Even simpler is removing the unlock from centralisation. Small centalised empires can't build it anyway, it requires over 5 jumps from capital. Large centralised empires would need interstellar infrastructure.

wobbly
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#302 Post by wobbly »

Apologies for triple post. I had not considered beuracracys requirements when suggesting the above. Though the option of moving admin unlocks to beuracracy is another idea.

Anyway looking at some figures for beuracracy. 1 region admin / 10 turns. 8 turns to build a colony including ship/outpost. A minimum of 6 jumps expansion. 6? turns to build the region admin which can't be started until colony is established. Arguably a 5 turn buffer before losing the entire stability bonus to meter decay.

Ophiuchus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#303 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Wed Nov 03, 2021 9:16 amto build the region admin which can't be started until colony is established. Arguably a 5 turn buffer before losing the entire stability bonus to meter decay.
you can build region.admin. on outposts; so i guess you could build a ring of detached(?) region.admin outposts and around your empire (?)

also de- and reapplying the policy should reset the timers i guess(?)

also you can build the buildings in parallel
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Grummel7
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#304 Post by Grummel7 »

I agree that fluff-wise it doesn't make much sense to unlock Regional Admins by Centralzation, but then unlocking them by System Infastructure is no better. Fluff-wise we could possibly unlock them by Metropoles or Intergalactic Infastructure, but gameplay-wise that would not be an improvement.

Maybe we should use a technological prerequisite instead? Insterstellar Logistics perhaps?

Regarding Centralization: I usually adapt it for a few turns anyway, sometimes disabling it again as soon as I have the Automatic History Analyzer, sometimes keeping it much longer. The research and construction bonuses are usually worth the influence it costs. There is one change I made in my on version, that I suggest to use: I've lowered the stability requirement to 16 so that even races with bad stability actually do get the bonuses.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#305 Post by Ophiuchus »

I think that artisan workshops' flat +4 focus bonus is a probably overpowered source of influence and worse, it is restricted to artistic species - so if you dont start with one/have a single-species empire you might miss out big time. Human, Cray, Egassem, Scylior are the starting species which are artistic. It is gated by a low +1 stability.
It also has a nice +0.5 flat un-focus bonus (gated at stability 10) and the stability bonus for other in-system artists.

The focus bonus from algorithmic research is only +10% of the lower of construction and population so is probably(?) quite low at the beginning of the game - and artisan workshop works on the most feeble colonies. Also it is gated by +8 stability.

I also think for influence the bonus from focus should be population dependent.

So I would make both bonus rather in the 15%-20% pop range.
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wobbly
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#306 Post by wobbly »

Re: deadopting prereq policies.

A bigger issue it creates is the kind of juggling where you deadopt a policy to clear a policy slot for a prereq policy that you are going to unadopt to clear the slot to readopt the policy you unadopted to clear the slot in the 1st place

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Grummel7
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#307 Post by Grummel7 »

wobbly wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 6:47 am Re: deadopting prereq policies.

A bigger issue it creates is the kind of juggling where you deadopt a policy to clear a policy slot for a prereq policy that you are going to unadopt to clear the slot to readopt the policy you unadopted to clear the slot in the 1st place
Good point. I've used that trick too, but it is clumsy.

I see two ways to improve it:
  1. Without changing the rules: If B cannot be adopted without A, change the interface so that you can replace A with B in the same slot.
  2. Change the rules: If B cannot be adopted without A, you cannot de-adopt A in the same turn that B is adopted.

wobbly
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#308 Post by wobbly »

Grummel7 wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 10:32 am
  1. Without changing the rules: If B cannot be adopted without A, change the interface so that you can replace A with B in the same slot.
I think this would be my preference.
This would mean with 1 free economic slot you could: adopt Centralization on turn x, replace with Bureaucracy on turn x + 1, replace with Technocracy on turn x + 2
You would still need to un-adopt exploration on turn x (opposed by Centralization) and re-adopt exploration on turn x + 1 (not opposed by Bureaucracy)

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#309 Post by Oberlus »

At game start (no policies), there is a distance-to-capital bonus-malus to stability, and adopting Centralization policy adds a distance-to-capital malus to influence.
There are discussion somewhere on how to make UI better to allow the player see the effects on Empire's influence output prior to adopting Centralization, to allow avoiding the "catastrophic" effects that it can have if adopted when having too many/distant planets.
I've thought of another option to solve the influence dismay effect of Centralization:

Make the distance based influence upkeep apply from start (some policies can remove it or change it by something different), and make Centralization apply the distance-based stability effect.
(Note that I'm not talking about changing number-of-colonies influence upkeep.)

This way the player can't cripple the empire by adopting Centralization: if the change is bad because stability drops in key planets and the player wants to de-adopt the policy, the only loss is in IP from adopting the policy and some PP/RP from eventual stability-gated bonuses, but there won't be a huge drop in influence stockpile or planets getting into rebellion from influence shortage.

It also makes sense description/fluff wise: no policy empire is an ambiguous/generic form of government in which only capital has sovereignty, so distance colonies are harder to manage (cost more influence), but all are ruled in a similar fashion and so all have a similar stability. Then, adopting Centralization means concentrating industry and services in central planets, so inhabitants of the further away colonies can't access certain services or luxuries or pursue the more profiting profesions and thus are less happy. The trade-off for Centralization then becomes the loss of some bonuses on distant colonies in exchange for the extra production of central planets.


Feedback on this idea will be appreciated.

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LienRag
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#310 Post by LienRag »

Interesting indeed...

In a way, it integrates naturally into the narrative of a new starting Empire that it has to develop not only its Production, Research and Influence but also Political abilities.

And you're right that removing the player's ability to shoot himself in the appendage¹ would be useful to not completely discourage new players².

I will repeat my argument (which gets even more important if your proposal is accepted) that Imperial Palace Influence Bonus is way too low, it should be +7 or +10 (obviously, some Policies costs should be modified in consequences).
Else it won't even be possible to use the starting Colony Ship before bankrupting the Empire if the first Good planet is too far away...

There will also be a need to have more Policies easily researchable at start to compensate for the new obligatory Centralization, especially for Species that are designed to spread in the Galaxy (like Laenfa and Sly).

Vezzra's "Origins" addressed this I believe ? Maybe the initial formula for Stability and Influence upkeep cost should vary between different Origins ?

That's gonna be a big change though, and I'm not sure of its effects on the luck factor.
In a way in will reduce the advantages of having good planets at start, as the time needed to find enough Influence or the right Policies to colonize them will still be nearly the same for all players.
In another way though, the initial distribution of good or adequate planets will be a huge luck-dependant asset as long as a player hasn't found a way to eliminate the distance factor in Influence upkeep cost...

¹ foot or whatever his species is constituted of
² which alas will probably the result of the 5.0 release for a while, as the Influence and Policies mechanisms are absolutely not intuitive

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#311 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 11:11 amMake the distance based influence upkeep apply from start (some policies can remove it or change it by something different), and make Centralization apply the distance-based stability effect.
No objection from me.

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Grummel7
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#312 Post by Grummel7 »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 11:11 am At game start (no policies), there is a distance-to-capital bonus-malus to stability, and adopting Centralization policy adds a distance-to-capital malus to influence.
There are discussion somewhere on how to make UI better to allow the player see the effects on Empire's influence output prior to adopting Centralization, to allow avoiding the "catastrophic" effects that it can have if adopted when having too many/distant planets.
I've thought of another option to solve the influence dismay effect of Centralization:

Make the distance based influence upkeep apply from start (some policies can remove it or change it by something different), and make Centralization apply the distance-based stability effect.
(Note that I'm not talking about changing number-of-colonies influence upkeep.)
Making Centralization cost stability instead of influence sounds good to me.

I do not like applying the the distance based influence cost from the beginning on top of the number based costs. Have you ever tried keep Centralization while your empire grows? Whatever removes this cost will become mandatory at some point. It will also make your starting races influence skill even more important than it is now.

Just replace the influence penalty with a stability penalty. Maybe 1 per jump, so effectively doubling the default penalty, but also affecting Sly and Laenfa and not affected by Regional Admins. Max penalty should not be too extreme, though. Planets disconnected from the Capital already get -10 after all.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#313 Post by Ophiuchus »

another +1 to (trying out) oberlus (switch effects) or grummel7 suggestion (change centralization only)
Grummel7 wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 10:10 pm Have you ever tried keep Centralization while your empire grows? Whatever removes this cost will become mandatory at some point. It will also make your starting races influence skill even more important than it is now.
well, if one wants to keep centralization one needs to counter its bad effects. that is mostly as intended i think. i am not sure centralisation is intended to work well in a broad empire. the bonus is capital flat and pop based, so your only growth option is increasing population on the capital. I.e. research growth tech and move capital to a huge gaia planet with good pop species. In order to minimize the bad effects you would put the capital in the middle of a dense populated cluster. Anyway it is probably not paying off after mid-game(?). In principle it is ok if a policy cant be used throughout the game.

if centralization is decreasing stability, one can use colonial bootstrapping at first and then regional admin buildings to counter the effect.

As the centralization bonus does not scale up with empire size it is fine to have a flat max penalty. So the way the policy gets obsolete is not so much by its rising cost but by other policies paying off more.
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Grummel7
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#314 Post by Grummel7 »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 10:41 am
Grummel7 wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 10:10 pm Have you ever tried keep Centralization while your empire grows? Whatever removes this cost will become mandatory at some point. It will also make your starting races influence skill even more important than it is now.
well, if one wants to keep centralization one needs to counter its bad effects. that is mostly as intended i think. i am not sure centralisation is intended to work well in a broad empire.
Of course it is mostly for small empires, I never intended to say that should change. In fact the thing I like most of it, is that it helps empires that cannot spread quickly.

The quote was trying to depict how the game would look like if we do Centralization's current influence penalty permanent.

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#315 Post by Oberlus »

Distance-based influence upkeep permanent (unless certain policies are adopted) but counting also regional admin centers, not only capital. Average extra upkeep per planet could be around 1 IP (adjustable for balance) once RegAds are stablished.

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