Testing Government and Influence

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

Moderator: Oberlus

Forum rules
Always mention the exact version of FreeOrion you are testing.

When reporting an issue regarding the AI, if possible provide the relevant AI log file and a save game file that demonstrates the issue.
Message
Author
User avatar
drkosy
Space Dragon
Posts: 367
Joined: Sat Jul 11, 2020 9:41 am

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#151 Post by drkosy »

since the policy slots is a empire-wide meter, you need to link it to some unique something, and that should be the imperial palace.
I think that is a great choice, giving the imperial palace some more weight. Actually the cultural archives are dominaiting your home world, if looked at ressource output
However, I find the lack of a social slot in early game quite annoying. And the lack of enough social slots in general also a bad thing.
Me too. Even if the first one is not to far away, if it is scrapped due to the bad trait, that would be very frustrating for me. For me there would be two solutions: Either increasing the amount of social slots from techs a lot or change the discussed trait to "bad social race" -> 0 Slots for Palace, "average" -> 1 bonus slot, "good social" -> 2 bonus slots.
The last one could be connected with policies that grants new social slots, like the infrastructure ones for economic slots. I think diversity could be such a policy that opens up another social slot (but only one, not that many as the infrastructure policies does).
Anyway, there's a bunch of ground battle sitreps the moment you go in to negative influence.
Just run into negative IP stockpile at the very beginning, giving me rebels on every planet. Is that always going on? As far as I see you get rebels if your influence got negative or if your stability is negative. I remember in the beginning it was discussed to reduce the stability on planets if IP stockpile is negative. Maybe that would be a good choice, because you had some time to act.

Next thing is the slow increasing amount of IP production with only +1 per turn. Maybe there should be a tech that increase that to +3 like "force energy structures" for RP and PP growth. It would be very more easy to react on running out of IP stockpile. One game I had to change halve of my colonies to IP production to not run into negative but 20 turns later I hat +60 IP per turn...
Want some fresh experience? Try Kosymod

wobbly
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 1880
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#152 Post by wobbly »

Is it intended design that Colonization policy changes the cost of the Colony Pod but not the Outpost Pod or the cost of colonizing an outpost? It is much cheaper for me to colonize with the Pod, doubly so as I have design simplicity policy as well.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#153 Post by Geoff the Medio »

wobbly wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 10:20 amEdit: Random idea - maybe martial law should be adoptable at 0 or negative IP? Perhaps some other draconian policies in emergencies?
I'll make Terror Suppression a lot easier to adopt. I think it fits better for a low-influence-cost policy.

wobbly
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 1880
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#154 Post by wobbly »

Order of operations for influence is a bit strange. So you can see:

Cray Good Influence = ( Cray Influence Focus + Colony Administration Upkeep ) * 50 %

First oddity is the admin upkeep is multiplied by the species bonus (but only when set to influence)
Second oddity is the UI displays "Not Connected to Empire Capital" above "Cray Good Influence". Elsewhere in the UI bonuses/penalties are displayed based on the order of operations. It should be below "Cray Good Influence" for consistency.

Screenshot 2021-05-10 170709.png
Screenshot 2021-05-10 170709.png (138.57 KiB) Viewed 863 times
Edit: My maths was wrong. It's even weirder.

It's:

Cray Good Influence = sqrt ( ( Cray Influence Focus + Colony Administration Upkeep + Not Connected to Empire Capital) * 50 % ) ^ 2 )
e.g. it's multiplying the capital penalty but flipping the sign in the case of negatives.

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3433
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#155 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 7:16 am Order of operations for influence is a bit strange.
agree
wobbly wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 7:16 amElsewhere in the UI bonuses/penalties are displayed based on the order of operations. It should be below "Cray Good Influence" for consistency.
Here also Its shown in the order the underlying effects are applied. The values are the difference between one calculated value and the next. E.g. if the last effect sets everything to 20 and the value before is 13, the effect difference is +7, if the value before is 42, the difference is -22.
wobbly wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 7:16 amCray Good Influence = sqrt ( ( Cray Influence Focus + Colony Administration Upkeep + Not Connected to Empire Capital) * 50 % ) ^ 2 )
e.g. it's multiplying the capital penalty but flipping the sign in the case of negatives.
No. Well kind of. The effect is

Code: Select all

SetTargetInfluence value = Value + ([[GOOD_MULTIPLIER]]-1.0)*abs(Value)
With GOOD_MULTIPLIER being 1.5.

The formula there ensures that good influence trait never decreases influence production. Still upkeep (and other effects which are basically flat negative) should be uneffected by species trait/applied last/after the species trait.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

User avatar
drkosy
Space Dragon
Posts: 367
Joined: Sat Jul 11, 2020 9:41 am

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#156 Post by drkosy »

Order of operations for influence is a bit strange.
I reported that already here: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11917

I changed this in the /species/common/influence.macros by setting all scalings to priority "before scaling" which for me is more consistent but I don't know if that is the intended behaviour for the game.
Want some fresh experience? Try Kosymod

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#157 Post by Oberlus »

STABILITY MODIFIERS (as per 2021-05-28), with some comments and suggestions for gameplay and for game design.

New colonies start at stability 0. That is a problem, I suggest starting at TargetHappiness.

Base target stability of a colony (non-capital) supply connected to a Palace or RegAdm is 5 minus jumps, min -5, so 5 if in the same system, -5 if at 10+ jumps. I suggest giving this to CENTRALIZATION.
Base target stability of a colony supply-disconnected to Palace/RegAdm is -10. With CONFEDERATION you get 10 on disconnected empires and -1 all planets (it is unlocked by Interstellar Logistics, this is maybe a bit too late to make viable early expansion for disconnected empire, either by choice or because of bad starting position).

It would be good to have a bonus based on environment tolerance: Good +10, adequate +7, poor +4, hostile +0.

Policies that can make sense to use to overcome low base stabilities and be able to reach 10+ stability to enjoy bonuses of certain techs, buildings and policies:
  • INDUSTRIALISM: +10 if industry-focused. Nice to have since it also gives a +25% bonus to industry (not +0.25*pop). It's fast to get: research Industrial Center 1.
  • ENVIRONMENTALISM: +10 if not terraformed, -10 if terraformed. Mutually exclusive with INDUSTRIALISMTERRAFORMING. It would make unusable terraformed colonies so only affordable if not terraforming planets (who does it, anyway?), at the expense of not using INDUSTRIALISMTERRAFORMING, a policy that makes terraforming cheaper. Correction: It is bittersweet, you get -5 PP (ouch), -10 infrastructure, +2 IP, +3 RP, and +10 planet stealth bonus, all on every non-terraformed colony. The -5 PP is crippling for every colony set to industry, and makes worthless to have Adaptive and Sentient automation (their +2+3 gets cancelled). So this is a policy very specific for empires going for research and only producing in colonies with huge populations. Hard to use, specially in a game where production is key and population of new colonies grow so slowly. Weird enough, you need to research Terraforming to unlock this policy.
  • INDOCTRINATION: +10, building up at 0.25 per turn (40 turns to reach max). Good to have the sooner the better. That it halves the opinion effects of policies (because it has CONFORMANCE as a prerequisite) is irrelevant or helpful. There is no point on getting the mutually exclusive LIBERTY or DIVERSITY (see later), so this one is a no-brainer must (you need to research Psionics, that unlocks CONFORMANCE).
Other policies that affect stability but are not useful to get 10+ stability early game
  • RACIAL_PURITY: -20 to non-capital species and +2 to capital species if these like the policy. Seems so cheap, but it is a prerequisite for other policies, and concentration camps.
  • DREAM_RECURSION: +max(0, 5 + 2*#OwnedCollectiveNetworks - TargetHappiness), but costs the same amount of IP per turn. So it gets you up to 5 stability (after all other modifiers), +2 per Collective Net building, in exchange of tones of IPs that will sink your butget. The ratio Stability/IP seems too low, but I haven't tested it (this really depends on the balance of all other IP sources and sinks). Anyways, with current values it is a suicide for sure. Plus it gets you nothing useful unless you have three Collective Nets (to get stability>10 and enjoy most stability-dependent bonuses). Maybe make it +max(0, 10 + 5*#OwnedCollectiveNetworks - TargetHappiness) and 20% of that as the IP upkeep (ratio 5:1), for starters.
  • TERROR_SUPPRESSION: +0.25 per owned warship in system. Not useful enough as a empire-wide stability solution, you'd need tons of ships, all dispersed over your empire instead of covering the entrances. Could be interesting for controlling some rebel populations in the borders, if playing a xenophobic species that sets all non-capital species to conc. camps (this has RACIAL_PURITY as prerequisite, so you must do it anyways). Unlocked by researching Bombardment.
  • ISOLATION: +min(10, MinDistToOtherPopulation/20-10), so -10 for a colony in the same system, 0 if at 200 uu, 10 if at 400+ uu. Too restrictive in distance (you need to not colonize lots of stuff to make get some significative stability bonus). Besides, I would base it in jumps instead of in direct distance. It is a social policy that is unlocked by Planetary Infrastructure (a econ policy that increases econ slots).
  • LIBERTY: -2, plus -1 IP and +2 RP while stability>=8. If you have some policies to get your stability above 12 (that doesn't include INDOCTRINATION), and you have at least 1 IP surplus per planet, you can take this for a nice 2 RP per planet. Currently, maybe useful during very early game (when you don't have the policy), but useless later on due to extreme IP cost and low return (something to be balanced, so probably no need to change this policy). RP bonus should be based on population or be a percentage bonus like industrialism. The IP malus should be removed altogether, or IP production should get a bump thanks to other compatible policies.
  • DIVERSITY: +0.5*(#species-4). That is -1.5 for a single species, +0.5 from 5 species, +2 from 8 species... And the same for RP and IP. Totally worth it if you have 5 or more species. And you only have to not be a racist (which actually sucks by itself). Actually a no-brainer in games with enough natives or quick species exchange (unless for some reason you don't want to put to conc. camps your starting xenophobic species, although that might be tricky, but doable if you got enough ships to keep happy the non-capital species until you can de-adopt RACIAL_PURITY). Unless swamped by nearby native worlds, this won't be an option to rise stability until mid or late game.
  • BALANCE: irrelevant stability bonus, because it only applies to capital, which will probably have a value above 10.
  • BOOTSTRAPPING: +10 at colonization and -0.5 per turn. Seldom worth it and only temporarily, even considering its other bonuses. No good ideas to improve it for now.
  • DIVINE_AUTHORITY: +4 if stability already above 10. So interesting only to reach higher stability values, if you managed to get a nice stability already.
  • MARTIAL_LAW: +0.2 per planetary troops, but also a crippling -1 RP per troop. So you get some extra stability but delete most research in the empire. Needs balancing.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#158 Post by Oberlus »

Post above edited for some corrections.

Here a diagram of exclussions (crossed arrows) and prerequisites (pointed arrows) between policies. Policies that doesn't appear have no relations to the others.
Attachments
PoliciesRelations.png
PoliciesRelations.png (48.76 KiB) Viewed 767 times

User avatar
LienRag
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 2148
Joined: Fri May 17, 2019 5:03 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#159 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 1:53 pm [*] BOOTSTRAPPING: +10 at colonization and -0.5 per turn. Seldom worth it and only temporarily, even considering its other bonuses. No good ideas to improve it for now.
Good work, but I disagree with your comment on Bootstrapping.
Which is the new version, not the one actually in play now, right ?

As you describe it, I consider it to be a very interesting policy, and quite a good design as it is.

Not "interesting" in the meaning "as a player, I will always pick it" but interesting in the meaning "it brings something to the game, and works differently than other mechanisms", so congrats to Geoff (if I'm not mistaken) for this design.

Of course it's mostly interesting if there is something to do about Stability during these 20 turns before the bonus disappears; and since we don't want spammable buildings (which would be the obvious way of allowing a per-planet management of Stability) I'm not sure about what we can propose to this effect¹.

¹ Except maybe the "species relations" part of my Galactic Congress proposition.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#160 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 5:28 pm Of course it's mostly interesting if there is something to do about Stability during these 20 turns before the bonus disappears
No, it's not, even before the bonus disappears, with current (as per today) implementation, because you need 10 turns to get to stability 10 (colonies start at 0), so the same turn you can start doing something with the extra stability, you start losing the stability again. If you had another source of stability then it doesn't improves by much: say +10 from INDUSTRIALISM and no maluses, then by turn 15 you have target stability 15 at it will start going down.
Wobbly suggested somewhere to make BOOTSTRAPPING boost stability meter growth, to be able to get something from it. But only while you look for some permanent solution to stability. Hence it would be a policy to use during turn 30 to 50 or something like that.
The other bonus it gives is faster meter growth, but in newly colonized planets there is nothing to grow, or hardly anything. Since all flat bonuses have some minimum stability, you manage to get those bonuses for a handful of turns, not worth it. And if you fix the starting low stability as per wobbly's suggestion, it only gains you the right to get your other policy bonuses, that gets maxed out in 1 or 2 turns after reaching stability 10.
Anyways a cool policy to have once we make it worth it. Maybe some temporal bonus to supply? Or to outpost supply?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#161 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 5:44 pm...you need 10 turns to get to stability 10 (colonies start at 0)
Just 5, as it also gives faster influence [edit]I meant stability, but it does also affect influence...[/edit] growth: https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... cs.txt#L27
Hence it would be a policy to use during turn 30 to 50 or something like that.
It's intentional that there should be some policies that are adopted temporarily. Bootstrapping helps get new colonies working faster. Colonization is use when building colony ships, but not (much) after that.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#162 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff, that's great, I stand corrected. If new colonies keep starting at 0 stability, BOOTSTRAPPING might be a nice policy to keep as long as you are getting new colonies and doesn't need the slot for something better. So much more lifespan than turn 50 I think (now).

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#163 Post by Oberlus »

I think CONFEDERATION should be unlocked from start, to allow Sly to overcome the -10 stability from disconnected-from-capital from turn 3 or 4, instead of having to research up to Interstellar Logistics (or use not-hidden outposts).

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#164 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I'll probably rather make it possible to add an effect that unlocks stuff, such as policies, and make Sly unlock Confederaton for their empire if they are the species on the capical.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Testing Government and Influence

#165 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 9:25 pm I'll probably rather make it possible to add an effect that unlocks stuff, such as policies, and make Sly unlock Confederaton for their empire if they are the species on the capical.
Right.
Giving Sly the tech from start, like Abaddonni:

Code: Select all

        EffectsGroup
            scope = Source
            activation = Turn high = 1
            effects = [
                GiveEmpireTech name = "SHP_INTSTEL_LOG" empire = Target.Owner
           ]
Or using an effect that unlocks policies? Do we have that already?

Post Reply