impressions/ feedback on various different policies

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
quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#1 Post by quarague »

Economic policies:

Planetary/ System/ Interstellar Infrastructure: These only grant their additional policy slots while adopted but uses the exact same wording as the technologies that unlock extra policy slots. Works great, I used all of them. I assumed the bonus was only while adopted and found out after deliberate testing. Putting in the extra words 'while adopted' would make that much clearer.

Industrialism/ Technocracy: good as is, used both for suitable species.
Moderation: never used, description doesn't say how good the bonus is. Also reads like the stability applies only to the capital which would make that part fairly useless, capital usually has very high stability anyway

Environmentalism: never used, kills of the 2 industry from adaptive automation on tech/ influence colonies and 5 industry on industry colonies. Might be useful to rush a tech victory by a few turns but if you can afford the industry hit you would have won anyway.

Feudalism: never used, condition looks to rare, you probably have to build a colony and then declare it independent to make use of it. If you had the colony keeping it is better than using that.

Capital markets: good as is
Black markets:never used, below 8 stability (but above 5 to get any use out of the colony) is something that doesn't happen too often

Centralization and Metropoles: very useful early on, especially for single species empires

Terraforming: seems powerful but by the time I could afford to do major terraforming on a lot of colonies I was well ahead of the AIs anyway so I could win faster than the terraforming would pay off

also used Burocracy, Traffic control and Colonialism but none of the other unmentioned economic policies

quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#2 Post by quarague »

military policies:

In general the effect of a lot of them seemed very minor so I used whatever the species in my empire like.

Continuous scanning: the 10 stealth penalty applies to your own ships or enemy ships? I thought it applies to your own which also makes it odd that Laenfa and Sly like it?

Charge: -18 shields seems way to harsh relative to the benefits, so seems only worthwhile before you have any shield tech

Martial law: -.20 research for a bit of stability sounds never worthwhile

Engineering Corps: I've seen AIs using it, but I never found how much the regular upkeep cost of ships is, so paying influence to reduce and unknown/ insignificant payment in half seemed useless

quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#3 Post by quarague »

Social Policies:

Diversity + Artisanal workshops: very nice for multispecies empires and makes it worthwhile to conquer otherwise useless natives

Algorithmic Research and/or Liberty: give powerful research boni, this is sort of the reference for opportunity costs for other policies, is some other policy worth not taking one of these?

Racial purity: works for single species empires and can offset the metropoles policy stability malus. I never managed to get the industry bonus on a foreign species, didn't see any good way to get them into +5 happiness territory with industry focus.

The Hunt: Successfully used on ancestral guardians for quite a bit of influence without needing to put planets on influence focus (requires a combat ship in orbit to keep the shield down)

Indoctrination: I wanted to use that to get some useful 'servant species' as an alternative approach to diversity, maybe for xenophobics or empires with racial purity but it requires both propaganda broadcasts and conformity and 3 social policy slots seemed way to expensive. In the beginning you don't have that many and once you do the opportunity cost for 3 slots is to high.

Augmentation: looks mostly useful for single species empires, otherwise why colonize with hostile environment species but then you can't combine it with racial purity which any single species empire wants

Necessity: at first glance it looks useful early on but then these colonies grow so slowly because the population grows slowly and the research (or industry) growth can easily keep up with the population. No effect at stability above 6 usually also means it only helps for the first 6 turns of a colonies life.

Native appropriation: requires diversity and if you have diversity conquering the natives for another 0.5 research and stability on every research focus planet seems better than +5 research on a single one.

Divine Authority: needs indoctrination and hence a total of 4 social policy slots just for happiness and a little influence, also kills almost all your research. I have no idea when this should be a good idea to take?

Dream recursion: seems a much easier way to get some unhappy colonies to reasonable stability levels than indoctrination and only costs influence for the colonies where it is actually needed

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#4 Post by LienRag »

Thanks for your feedback, young padawan, but you still being a young padawan shows...
Necessity is overpowered as of now, and not only overpowered, but also quite broken.

quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#5 Post by quarague »

Care to explain in what situations you use it instead of just claiming that I'm wrong?

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#6 Post by wobbly »

Augmentation: Hostile planets are situationally useful for getting a good pilot shipyard at a specific location. Also for laenfa or etty if playing stealth. Laenfa in particular as it can be bright star hostile.

That said main usage is low or no natives game setting.

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#7 Post by wobbly »

Moderation: I'm unsure how to write the actual formula in the pedia. My recommendation is try it out. You'll probably find it stronger then industrialism/technocracy when your empire is small and weaker when your empire is large.

Indoctrination: My impression is that this is only feasible with a lot of admins on influence focused planets.

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#8 Post by wobbly »

quarague wrote: Sat Jan 21, 2023 5:49 am Care to explain in what situations you use it instead of just claiming that I'm wrong?
Necessity policy is in flux. See this thread for details.

viewtopic.php?t=12665

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 12:56 pm
quarague wrote: Sat Jan 21, 2023 5:49 am Care to explain in what situations you use it instead of just claiming that I'm wrong?
Necessity policy is in flux. See this thread for details.

viewtopic.php?t=12665
and without details: the consensus is AFAISI that Necessity might be overpowered and leads to optimisation strategies which are un-fun
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
LienRag
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 2148
Joined: Fri May 17, 2019 5:03 pm

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#10 Post by LienRag »

The problem is general statements like the one about Charge : yes, your observation is right about the important drawback it has on shields, but shields are not an obligation for ship designs - it's an arbitration between what you get from the Policy and what you lose from it.

User avatar
Grummel7
Space Dragon
Posts: 335
Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:44 pm

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#11 Post by Grummel7 »

quarague wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 9:21 pm Native appropriation: requires diversity and if you have diversity conquering the natives for another 0.5 research and stability on every research focus planet seems better than +5 research on a single one.
Maybe useful if you already have that species, so conquering it won't increase diversity.

Also, technically, "cannot be adopted without diversity" does not mean that you have to keep diversity adopted afterwards.

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#12 Post by wobbly »

quarague wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 8:42 pm Moderation: never used, description doesn't say how good the bonus is. Also reads like the stability applies only to the capital which would make that part fairly useless, capital usually has very high stability anyway

Code: Select all

                SetTargetInfluence value = Value + ((NamedReal name = "PLC_MODERATION_INFLUENCE_SCALING" value = 3.0) *
                    ((Statistic Count
                        condition = And [ Planet OwnedBy empire = Source.Owner ])
                    / (Statistic HistogramMax
                        value = LocalCandidate.Focus
                        condition = And [ Planet OwnedBy empire = Source.Owner ])
                    - 1.0))
Is this just (3 * no. of planets) / (no. of most common focus)?

quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#13 Post by quarague »

That formula for moderation is annoying to explain in words although not that complicated as a formula. In terms of effect, it gives 0 extra influence if your most common focus is used 100% of the time, 3 extra influence for half the time and 6 influence if the most common focus is used one third of the time. This effect is independent of empire size.

As this is supposed to be an alternative to industrialism and technocracy which each give a bonus to every single colony that has the suitable focus this looks fairly underwhelming. Maybe one can change the effect to something like:

Grants 0.5 influence and 2 stability to every populated colony that does not use the most common focus setting in the empire. The influence bonus requires a minimum stability of 5.

This is easy to understand and written to be very similar to industrialism and technocracy. The value of 0.5 influence could be adjusted if play testing shows it to be to big or to small.

BlueAward
Vacuum Dragon
Posts: 646
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2022 3:15 am

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#14 Post by BlueAward »

As wobbly was alluding to, I find moderation quite powerful in the early game. Nicked that idea from Oberlus. While you have few planets and able to put each on different focus (and an outpost), you can rack hundreds of influence points relatively quickly, you can stockpile those for later or have interstellar infrastructure adopted easily before turn 50 for extra economic policy slot. And early prioritization on architectural psychology may make sense anyway due to social policy slot unlock which is likely to be more science at this point to pay back for the research (liberty, algorithmic research...)

Later on as you get more planets and outposts it is less useful (powerful) and other economic policy likely makes more sense.

Not that I think this is the only true way. I can see how going with technocracy or industrialism is good too, depending on what you need. I just want to get interstellar architecture asap and be done with it, enjoying the extra slot from then on, but I appreciate I paid for that in influence dearly and in the opportunity cost of not having technocracy or industrialism earlier
Last edited by BlueAward on Sun Feb 05, 2023 6:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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

Re: impressions/ feedback on various different policies

#15 Post by wobbly »

Is this clear enough?
moderation.png
moderation.png (205.51 KiB) Viewed 945 times

Post Reply