Policies that add likes/dislikes

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wobbly
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Policies that add likes/dislikes

#1 Post by wobbly »

So I had an idea about environmental policy but it could also fit policies such as industrialism. What if instead of the industry malus it adds: dislikes industry centres, industry, gas giant generator, solar generator and black hole generator? It could also be modified to fit well with stealth empires giving +planet stealth to not industry focus.

Industrialism could be the mirror of this policy.

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#2 Post by Oberlus »

I'm not sure, it could clash or have little sense with the already present (dis)likes.

Current system already allows for flexibility regarding policies/buildings effects on stability of species:
- liked/disliked policies increase/decrease stability to represent people's agreement with the policy.
- policies can increase/decrease stability by themselves to represent the social effect on the people (species that like it get more stable than species that dislike it, but one can make them all more or less stable if that's what one wants).
- If one wants stability changes (or other effects) based on species opinion that are different than what likes/dislikes allow, one can consider directly the species opinion on the policy/building (SpeciesContentOpinion species = Target.Species name = This; or something like that) to filter the scope or modify its effect, e.g. not applying an effect and/or doubling the stability malus to species that dislike the content.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I'm planning some "Tourism" policies (Ecological and Cultural) that give bonuses to stability related to the presence of ecological preserve buildings, similar to if a species liked that building, or some to-be-determined property of planets that makes them culturally interesting to other species.

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#4 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:36 pm I'm planning some "Tourism" policies (Ecological and Cultural) that give bonuses to stability related to the presence of ecological preserve buildings, similar to if a species liked that building, or some to-be-determined property of planets that makes them culturally interesting to other species.
The stability bonus could go to the planet that has the building/property and/or to all planets in the empire that owns that building/property.
And some species could like/dislike that building/property and get more/less stabilty bonus.
Right?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#5 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 2:45 pmThe stability bonus could go to the planet that has the building/property and/or to all planets in the empire that owns that building/property.
Planet with building probably would get an influence boost, and other planets that like them could get stability boosts.

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LienRag
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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#6 Post by LienRag »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:36 pm I'm planning some "Tourism" policies (Ecological and Cultural) that give bonuses to stability related to the presence of ecological preserve buildings, similar to if a species liked that building, or some to-be-determined property of planets that makes them culturally interesting to other species.
We're reeaally approaching the "design by comittee" problem here...
I had the same reaction towards Capital Markets (what makes you think that a Space Empire would have Capital Markets ? Also what's the relation between Capital Markets and liked fluff that would make the availability of liked fluff be the dominant effect of Capital Markets, to the extant that they'll dwarf any other consequences of having them ?).

Your Policy could be interesting game-mechanism wise, but a rag-tag of Policies with not really coherent fluff between them is a really good way to break immersion and destroy the game's atmosphere.

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#7 Post by LienRag »

wobbly wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:08 am So I had an idea about environmental policy but it could also fit policies such as industrialism. What if instead of the industry malus it adds: dislikes industry centres, industry, gas giant generator, solar generator and black hole generator?
That is a very interesting idea.
Not necessarily the Policy you describe itself, but the idea to have it impacts likes and dislikes.
Actually, having (nearly) all likes and dislikes come from policies rather than Species values (with Species likes and dislikes kept towards Policies and Foci, but removed - with maybe a very limited set of duly balanced exceptions - towards buildings themselves) is imho the way to go.


wobbly wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:08 am Industrialism could be the mirror of this policy.
Having Policies in mirrors rather than working slightly differently from each other is a bad idea imho, though.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#8 Post by Geoff the Medio »

LienRag wrote: Sat Jul 17, 2021 1:19 pmWe're reeaally approaching the "design by comittee" problem here...
Except that the policies are almost all created and implemented by just me. I assume you mean there are a lot of them with a lot of different ideas represented? That's intentional. Part of the plan for the policies system is a way to get a lot of concepts / mechanisms for how to organize an empire / society into the game. 4X isn't just about making ships and conquering. It's also about designing or building up a society and economy. Picking from policies with a wide variety of fluff should let one model a wide variety of values and goals and social and economic structures and means of keeping control over them as an empire.
I had the same reaction towards Capital Markets (what makes you think that a Space Empire would have Capital Markets ?
Why would you not? If we accept the biased perspective of humans writing speculative fiction potentially over-representing what they know and have done, if there is an "economics" category of policies as an important part of designing how an empire works, then I think it's pretty reasonable to include some representation of private ownership of the means of production and a way to exchange that ownership for other things of value... ie. Capitalism. There can be Star Trek Federation style societies that have abandoned money and material wealth as a concept of any importance, but there can also be Star Trek Ferengi style societies that are based around them as a fundamental tenet of economics as they see it.
Also what's the relation between Capital Markets and liked fluff that would make the availability of liked fluff be the dominant effect of Capital Markets, to the extant that they'll dwarf any other consequences of having them ?).
I'm not really satisfied with Capital Markets being the policy to unlock liked stuff, but I figured it made some sense to have profit-motivated parts of society make use of markets to raise the capital to establish commercial enterprises to extract and distribute luxury goods and experiences. Both this fluff and this mechanic should probably exist in the game, I think, though they don't necessarily have to be specifically linked as they are now with this policy.
Your Policy could be interesting game-mechanism wise, but a rag-tag of Policies with not really coherent fluff between them is a really good way to break immersion and destroy the game's atmosphere.
I'm certainly focusing more on getting concepts in and working on the relevant game mechanics to attach to them, more so than on writing any overarching story or connection between them all. A coherent and meaningful in-game story has never been a high priority for FreeOrion development, though if someone is motivated to start making it more impactful and connected to policies and their mechanics, they are welcome to try...

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

wobbly wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:08 am So I had an idea about environmental policy but it could also fit policies such as industrialism. What if instead of the industry malus it adds: dislikes industry centres, industry, gas giant generator, solar generator and black hole generator?
This doesn't make much sense to me. Species need to be quite distinct, in a variety of ways, and having them like and dislike stuff inherently is an important way to making them different, I think. Instead having likes added or removed very frequently as part of an empire adopting a typical policy rather undermines those differences between species. I also don't understand what the different being proposed actually is, mechanics-wise. Policies already can result in various planets in the empire having stability or influence boosts if they meet conditions associated with the policy, which is similar to the results of likes and dislikes of a species. How is it beneficial to instead go through an additional step of adding some state info to to a species to do that? Possibly there could be some interesting gameplay involving modifying species that are also present in other empires, but it's not clear that this is what was meant in this suggestion, and I don't think doing this as a normal part or side effect of adopting typical policies makes much sense (rather than it being a specific action an empire can take to modify a particular species somehow...)

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#10 Post by LienRag »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:17 pmI'm certainly focusing more on getting concepts in and working on the relevant game mechanics to attach to them, more so than on writing any overarching story or connection between them all. A coherent and meaningful in-game story has never been a high priority for FreeOrion development, though if someone is motivated to start making it more impactful and connected to policies and their mechanics, they are welcome to try...
I hear your answers, thanks for taking time to expose them.

But I think that you miss the point here : it's not about having a coherent overarching story (though like you say, why not if someone can create a good one), but having a coherent model of how a society works, a frame of reference that is common to all mechanisms/policies.

A little bit like how putting a sorcerer in a sci-fi setting can be done with a full model of the interactions between science & magic, but just grafting it there is lame (and if you throw in deities, you get something as lame as superhero comics).

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#11 Post by wobbly »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:23 pm
wobbly wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:08 am So I had an idea about environmental policy but it could also fit policies such as industrialism. What if instead of the industry malus it adds: dislikes industry centres, industry, gas giant generator, solar generator and black hole generator?
This doesn't make much sense to me. Species need to be quite distinct, in a variety of ways, and having them like and dislike stuff inherently is an important way to making them different, I think. Instead having likes added or removed very frequently as part of an empire adopting a typical policy rather undermines those differences between species. I also don't understand what the different being proposed actually is, mechanics-wise. Policies already can result in various planets in the empire having stability or influence boosts if they meet conditions associated with the policy, which is similar to the results of likes and dislikes of a species. How is it beneficial to instead go through an additional step of adding some state info to to a species to do that? Possibly there could be some interesting gameplay involving modifying species that are also present in other empires, but it's not clear that this is what was meant in this suggestion, and I don't think doing this as a normal part or side effect of adopting typical policies makes much sense (rather than it being a specific action an empire can take to modify a particular species somehow...)
Well its been a while since I wrote the original post, so my memory is a little foggy on this one, but from memory it was mostly about finding a way to make environmentalism make actual sense. Current implementation is a hodgepodge of bonuses and maluses. I was looking for a way to make it mesh well with decisions made in-game. Likes/dislikes seemed a natural enough fit, as environmentalism, despite being an economic policy is a whole bunch of societal attitudes as well. It also means the policy specifically punishes environmentally destructive activities. In some ways current implementation encourages it. You need big concentrated industrial stacks to overcome the flat penalties.

More generally I think policies are more interesting when they gel well with an in game strategy. At least for "major" policies. I don't mind the bulk of them being the way they are now. Stuff like "traffic colony", "exobot productivity" etc. are fine being little bonus/penalties. Stuff like "centralism", "environmentalism", "liberty", "conformance" etc. should change the way you play in game to match. Centralism does, but it needs work to make it viable later in the game. I think liberty and conformance probably do a reasonable enough job here. I say probably because they are actually quite hard to get. They cost a lot and if you try saving up for them, you are likely to grow and as you grow they will cost more. As you grow your colony influence costs also grow faster then your influence generation. Any change to policy past a certain point in the game turns into a major undertaking where you have to temporarily shut down a large amount of research and production. You need to really want the damn thing.

Anyway as to the orginal idea I'm not necessary enamored to the idea myself. I think it has its good points and its technical problem. One of those ideas you have where you think, maybe this is a good solution, maybe its just terrible. So I just proposed it to see what others think.

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#12 Post by Oberlus »

Oh, great post, wobbly.
wobbly wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 7:05 am environmentalism, despite being an economic policy, is a whole bunch of societal attitudes as well. It also means the policy specifically punishes environmentally destructive activities. In some ways current implementation encourages it. You need big concentrated industrial stacks to overcome the flat penalties.

More generally I think policies are more interesting when they get well with an in game strategy.
In the themed tech I put a policy similar to environmentalism, in the Bio theme, undecided name, something about Industrious Nature, Natural Industry, something like that. The idea was inspired by Gaia, and it would give a relatively small unfocused bonus to industry and stability when planetary focus is not industry, a small bonus to research when focused to research, idem for influence, and cause a malus to stability when focus is set to industry. The fluff is about having a society that is simbiotic with nature, that learns to get the most from nature without exploiting or damaging it. I also considered having a malus to population.
Would that make more sense?
It would go well with strategies that exploit research and/or influence, without stopping players from using industry focus nor forcing them to have big planets set to industry, but still being as industrious as other strategies.

wobbly wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 7:05 am Stuff like "centralism", "environmentalism", "liberty", "conformance" etc. should change the way you play in game to match. Centralism does, but it needs work to make it viable later in the game. I think liberty and conformance probably do a reasonable enough job here. I say probably because they are actually quite hard to get. They cost a lot and if you try saving up for them, you are likely to grow and as you grow they will cost more. As you grow your colony influence costs also grow faster then your influence generation. Any change to policy past a certain point in the game turns into a major undertaking where you have to temporarily shut down a large amount of research and production. You need to really want the damn thing.
I have a mental breackdown with the policies related to governance (currently mostly Centralization, Confederation). I tried for several weeks to find a good set of alternative forms of galactic empire organization (fluff + effects): centralized empire vs union of self-governing worlds vs something else that is different enough from the previous two.
Current version of Centralization policy is not about governance but about economic organization, and that broke me, because then I tried to have two different sets of policies, one with fluffs about how to govern and politically organize worlds (social slots) and one about how to organize economics of worlds (economic slots). And I could not find anything satisfactory at all, all I could come up with was too overlaped with others. I wanted the economic policies to be able to combine with the social policies, so you could have say a democratic league of worlds with centralized economics, or an oppressive empire with distributed economics, but that makes little sense: empires are centralized, democracies are more flexible and could be centralized or distributed (really?), is anarchy an option? what's anarchy actually? confederation is democratic? in any case it wouldn't be centralized, that makes little sense for a league of self-governing worlds...
And my mind blew up, I couldn't make them satisfactory to myself (mostly here).

At some point I thought "I better try to put aside my perfectionism and just create some playable policies for the game to be just playable", but Geoff always beats me to that and keeps creating policies that are playable or can be after some balancing. So I thought then "let's focus on balancing what Geoff is creating", but I often can't make my mind up because I still clash against my perfectionism and my need of fluff making sense... Well, at least I realize all this is quite difficult at least for me and I praise Geoff's work up to now (and look with contempt some criticisms to Geoff's work that does not provide any solution, just "you should do it better, this makes no sense"... Mpfff!).

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#13 Post by Geoff the Medio »

wobbly wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 7:05 amI think liberty and conformance probably do a reasonable enough job here. I say probably because they are actually quite hard to get. They cost a lot and if you try saving up for them, you are likely to grow and as you grow they will cost more. As you grow your colony influence costs also grow faster then your influence generation. Any change to policy past a certain point in the game turns into a major undertaking where you have to temporarily shut down a large amount of research and production. You need to really want the damn thing.
Having policies be difficult to change when an empire is big isn't necessarily a bad thing... At least it makes some sense theoretically that a big society is less nimble and has more social intertia than a small one.

But if it's particularly problematic from a gameplay perspective as things are now, then the cost formulas can easily be changed. There wasn't a huge amount of thought put into the particular formulas that are there now, and that you seem to implicitly be assuming they were carefully designed to be as they are now is much more balanced that I'd have expected for most of them. I definitely assumed that the costs would need adjusting for balance.

Also, there can be other ways to mitigate the difficulty in switching policies as things are now. For example, the cost could be reduced by having some of a particular building in the empire, or having particular conditions like variety of species or planet sizes or types or numbers of neighbours or whatever else. Thus the player could make it easier to convert the empire to a new policy by preparing for the switch for some turns before.

It's not very feasible to make adopting a policy a more gradual process in of itself, but other gameplay features could be used to do something similar.

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#14 Post by LienRag »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:36 pm Also, there can be other ways to mitigate the difficulty in switching policies as things are now. For example, the cost could be reduced by having some of a particular building in the empire, or having particular conditions like variety of species or planet sizes or types or numbers of neighbours or whatever else. Thus the player could make it easier to convert the empire to a new policy by preparing for the switch for some turns before.

It's not very feasible to make adopting a policy a more gradual process in of itself, but other gameplay features could be used to do something similar.
That would certainly improve the game indeed.

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Re: Policies that add likes/dislikes

#15 Post by Krikkitone »

Switching a policy could be made something you “build” like a ship. with options
-rapid change: takes less than 3 turns to “build”…increased influence cost…possibly stability cost
-incrementalism: takes 5-25 turns to “build”…less total influence cost, no stability cost

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