The Silent One wrote:A way to achieve this would be to introduce economics into the game. I'm not aware what is planned at this point
As Geoff already pointed out, the current plan (which is still at an very early brainstorming state) is to introduce a resource type called "Influence", in addition to the two basic resource types we already have, "Industry" and "Research". I don't count "Trade", as this one doesn't do anything yet, and will probably be replaced by "Influence".
My rough idea what that resource should be is more or less what Geoff already said, I'll try to sum it up (a bit differently maybe) in my own words:
"Influence" represents an abstraction of several concepts/aspects that make up what maybe can be called the "exertion of power", in a very broad sense. It subsumes all the resources, efforts, structures, organizations you need to govern, adminstrate, organize your empire and everything within it, to influence your citizens (propaganda, policing, etc.) and other empires (the entire diplomacy thing as well as intelligence, espionage, sabotage etc.). Like "Industry" abstracts and subsumes everything industry and production related, and "Research" everything research, science, development of technology related. Your idea of an "economy" or "money" would be included in (in the sense of being a subset of) that concept of "Influence". IMO the idea of "Influence" works much better for that purpose, because it's more abstract and generalizes the underlying concepts more that "economy" or "money". The latter are very specific to current day humanity and its societies, but, as Geoff pointed out, may be very different for a distant future interstellar empire, even a human one, not to speak of empires of races as alien as intelligent plants, crystals etc.
A very fundamental application/use of that resource would be to "pay upkeep" for all your colonies. So the "influence cost" for your colonies represent all the resources and efforts your empire (or its government/administration) needs to spend to rule and administrate all the worlds under your control, organize all the logistic required to transport resources etc. around, to police the population, keep everything in order, etc. This should nicely achieve what you want to do with your idea of "economics"/"money".
Factors that could affect the "influence" upkeep cost for a colony might be:
- Size of population
- Distance to capitol
- Distance to homeworld (of the same species as the colony of course)
- Wether or not the species of the capitol is the same as that of the colony
- Allegiance of the species of the colony to your empire (empire/species relationship mechanics come into play here)
- Population happiness
Just some ideas off the top of my head.
If you don't have enough influence points to pay the total upkeep costs for your empire, depending on how big the shortage is and how many turn it already lasts more and more detrimental effects will occur, like drop in population happiness, species allegiances to your empire, colonies going into riot, or something along these lines.
I would introduce a "starlane upkeep" that is charged for every jump between colonies of an empire
Hm, interesting idea, but I'm not sure about it, especially the strong preference of systems with more planets. If you want to keep empires "compact", factoring in distance to the capitol into the influence upkeep costs for a colony (like I've suggested above) would be the simpler and more straightforward way IMO.
I would also introduce a ship upkeep instead of reducing production, but this is another matter.
Yep, that's an idea I already had too. We'd have to think through all the repercussions (production costs and upkeep costs not being paid with the same type of resource might create some difficult hassles), but that would be something I'd definitely prefer over the current mechanic.
Influence would also be the resource you need to pay for intelligence/espionage/sabotage action against other empires, there could be "influence projects" like winning over an independend native planet to join your empire instead of invading it (advantage: the species will be much more loyal to your empire from the beginning than if invaded, disadvantage: takes more time than military acquisition). Improving the allegiance of member species to your empire could also be such an influence project. Some things that are now implemented as buildings might make more sense as influence projects, I'm thinking of the evacuation and concentration camp buildings (working a population to death is more a matter of logistics and organization than having an actual special building complex) for example.
The influence resource would be generated much like the other two, by setting a planet to a respective resource focus (thus becoming the net positive influence contributer Geoff was talking about). Also, just like with industry and research, the resource output for influence would be improvable by certain techs that unlock direct boni, or buildings that help increase influence "production ", there could be influence boosting specials.
My idea would also be to make the whole telepathy thing influence related (telepathic races requiring less influence upkeep, be harder to sway via influence projects, telepathy techs grant influence production boosts, etc.).
So these are my current ideas about influence, sorry if I'm got carried away a little bit and went off-topic
