Testing Government and Influence

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Daybreak
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#271 Post by Daybreak »

Will you have the ability to turn off Government and Influence?

I am asking because games that become too complicated may find it harder to attract new players.

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#272 Post by Oberlus »

Grummel7 wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 6:37 pm
Oberlus wrote: Sun Aug 15, 2021 8:29 pm Will the +2 from good stability be enough to allow for some stability-bound stuff on itself or will it require always some extra stability bonus?
What do you mean with "some stability-bound stuff on itself"? Every point helps, but of course +2 is not as strong as +5.

My main point is that player races with -5 are really tough to play. Adaptive Automation and Nascent AI e.g. require stability 10, which is relatively easy to achieve in colonies close to the capital with normal stability, but really hard with -5 early in the game.
Sorry for the wait. I read this in a hurry and forgot to answer later. I meant that I wonder if a +2 from Good Stability is enough for the species to be able to benefit from some techs/policies that require minimum stability and that Average Stability species won't be able unless they get some other bonus to stability first (like a policy). In other words, will it make a difference or be barely cosmetical trait?

When I first set stability steps to +5 I also had in mind to tweak the required stability levels of some techs and also provide more stability at start of game, from a bonus for planet environment (e.g. +5 for good env., +2 for adeq, -2 for poor, -5 for hostile). Thus most empires are able to get most early-game bonuses without having to do acrobatics with the stability. But I got busy and distracted and never sent the PR.
So I really need to play a lot to grasp things and figure stuff out, and I don't have much time these days.

Meanwhile, I totally agree that -5 stability with current stability modifiers and requirements is a pain in the ass. Until other stuff is adjusted, we could make the trait Bad -2, Average +0, Good +2, Great +5, Ultimate +10. Agree?

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Grummel7
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#273 Post by Grummel7 »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 10:21 am Meanwhile, I totally agree that -5 stability with current stability modifiers and requirements is a pain in the ass. Until other stuff is adjusted, we could make the trait Bad -2, Average +0, Good +2, Great +5, Ultimate +10. Agree?
I've played quite a few games with 2.5 per step and this seems to work much better. I've raised Exobots to Great, so nothing changes for them. Ultimate give 7.5, but there is currently no race using Ultimate anyway.

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#274 Post by Oberlus »

Make a PR if you are willing. I'll be happy to play with those values.

Magnate
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#275 Post by Magnate »

Hi folks,

Hope everyone is well. Is there a handy list somewhere of which techs/buildings/policies:

(i) increase or decrease stability
(ii) increase or decrease influence
(iii) provide policy slots

Happy to write a wiki page if one doesn't exist ...

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#276 Post by Oberlus »

Magnate wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:50 pm Hi folks,

Hope everyone is well. Is there a handy list somewhere of which techs/buildings/policies:

(i) increase or decrease stability
(ii) increase or decrease influence
(iii) provide policy slots

Happy to write a wiki page if one doesn't exist ...
Good to see you around, Magnate.
Currently there is no handy list anywhere.
You can get the info from greping the source code. Look for SetTargetHappiness.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#277 Post by Geoff the Medio »

There was a bit of discussion about this on GitHub: https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... -944879524

It should be possible to add something to the bottom of metertype X articles that automatically lists content (buildings, specials, techs, policies, fields, etc.) that contains a SetX effect.

That wouldn't necessarily cover all cases, though. For example, a species could have a SetX effects in its own script that depends on some other bit of content. It could list that species as affecting meter X but that wouldn't be especially useful for the player as it wouldn't really explain why / how that works.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#278 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Grummel7 wrote: Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:39 pmThe formula of Balance is weird. You actually get a decent bonus when all your planets have the same focus since the difference becomes 0. This seems totally against the idea of Balance, I think it should use number of focuses - 1 as a factor.
I've pushed a branch with the Balance focus-dependent formula reworked to (CountUnique-1)/(HistoSpread+1) and made it additive rather than multiplicative. Not sure about the scaling, but I think this is a better formula form.

Using (CountUnique-1)/(HistoMax) as suggested earlier probably wouldn't be good, as it'd mean an empire with more planets would get less bonus even if their foci were perfectly balanced in frequency.

wobbly
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#279 Post by wobbly »

The 2nd issue with balance policy is its fiddly. Built a new colony? Adjust. Change focus on 1 colony? Adjust. Invaded a colony or outpost? Adjust.

I'm not sure whats best here, but a partial solution would be to lower the precision. Count the difference in focus in steps of 2 or start the count at difference 2 instead of 1.

Lower precision is probably better anyway. I don't want to have 2 or 3 colonies on logistics everytime I put 1 on. If I switch a colony to defense I don't want to put 2 or 3 on etc.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#280 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Grummel7 suggests https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... -948769707 using the ratio of ((number of planets with the most-used focus) over (total number of planets) - 1). This means any changes in the number of planets not using the most common focus has a minimal impact, generally with more being better. If using this calculation, I'd probably want to rename the policy "Moderation" instead of "Balance", though.

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Oberlus
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#281 Post by Oberlus »

Would it be a good idea to use coefficient of variance? Counting the zeros of non-used foci.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#282 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I intentionally did not include any dependence on the number of different focus settings that exist or are available, since this is potentially highly variable, unpredictable, and thus hard to balance against. Rather, the tests were just based on how many different focuses an empire currently uses and how the numbers of planets using just those are distributed.

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Grummel7
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#283 Post by Grummel7 »

I think wobbly got it quite right. Getting the best of Balance while your empire is expanding requires continuous adjustments. It's like a small optimisation game within the game and I think it contradicts the idea of avoiding micromanagement.

I like the idea of using All/Max or (All/Max)-1 because it simply rewards using a variety of focuses instead of e.g. production on almost all planets, while small changes have only a small effect. Perhaps Variety could be a good name for it, too.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#284 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Grummel7 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 1:36 pmI like the idea of using All/Max or (All/Max)-1 because it simply rewards using a variety of focuses instead of e.g. production on almost all planets, while small changes have only a small effect.
Not really, I think. It rewards not using a single focus much more than all the others, which is not the same as rewarding using lots of different focuses. It doesn't matter if you use 8,8,8 or or 8,4,4,4,4 or 8,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 since in all three cases, the most-used focus is used 8 times, and the total number of planets is the same. Thus I thought "Moderation" was appropriate. "Variety" would be more suited to a bonus that increases based on how many different focuses are used.

wobbly
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#285 Post by wobbly »

Ok centralization/beauracracy/techocracy. First issue its 3 slots and I have 2 without spending another 80 + 200 IP (2nd and 3rd infrastructure policies). But ok we can unadopt centralization for techocracy. 2nd issue we can no longer build regional admins for beuracracy, because we unadopted centralization.

So we solve these issues and start building regional admins but its very unclear the order. Do we want as many admins as possible before adopting beuracracy? As few as possible? Some optimal of x?

Ok now we have our admins and beuracracy. We need to build an admin every x turns. Fine. They need to be y distance apart. y is a large number. Large enough that we have to be doing some serious steamrolling.

I smell issues. The above is just my thought process/planning before trying. Yet to ingame test it. But things are certainly not adding up in my head.

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