What do YOU want from factions?

[ZomgK3tchup]

Inspired by today’s Tinto Talk, which is about the estate system for the upcoming game that totally isn’t EU5.

Tinto Talks #5 - March 27th, 2024

Welcome to the fifth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design for our upcoming top secret game with the codename ‘Project Caesar.’ The state is me! Oh, you meant E-state, sorry.. not me .. Today we will go into detail about one of the...

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If we got another faction revamp, what would you want from it? What would you want factions to do and how would you interact with them?

I always thought it’d be neat if factions could have “influence” over systems and planets in your empire, somewhat like how estates used to work in EU4 before the current version. It’d also be cool if when you became large enough, factions could have capitals and fleets. You might still own Centauri Prime, for example, but the militarist faction has a headquarters there, modifying the planet’s output and also spawning an NPC fleet that defends the area and adds ambience.

The game that totally isn’t EU5 is also getting a system for making concessions to factions, increasing their influence over your country in exchange for various bonuses. EU4 has this too, and while the EU4 version leaves something to be desired, I always thought the concept was interesting.

 

[dawedqafdAD]

its gonna be an absolute hard pass on more space feudalism for me. the last thing i want is my militarist faction holding my alloy world hostage because i didn't want to meet our max naval cap of 6000.

 

[Calvax]

I want them to be more dynamic, factor into council legitimacy, and offer a basis for reform and revolution. I'd like to see special interest groups form around certain policies or events like a sector secession movement, or a faction of a particular species advocating for greater rights. I'd like to have to carefully think about who I'm going to put in my council as a trade off between how good they are at their job and how much I can afford pissing off the faction they represents.

Essentially I want them to stop being a small list of often arbitrary policies that you look at once and ignore for the rest of the game.

 

[Dubanian]

Factions can influence colonies' happiness. That's it.

 

[Mastikator]

I kinda liked the original version, where they may revolt if their demands weren't satisfied and they were numerous. Where the faction happiness served as baseline.

I want factions to have agency, having opinion on policy is fine but I think they should serve a bigger role. They should give bigger rewards and punishments, more than just pop happiness and unity. And their actions should depend on their ethos.

 

[A2ch0n]

- They should tell me a story what is actually happening in the empire. Maybe beside some fitting situations for each faction that change depending on approval.
- Decisions (maybe the respective situation) that can influence the course of the empire
- A happy faction should give a bonus beside unity or stability. Something that make your empire known (example: If your xenophile faction is happy, you gain a additional envoy and a diplomacy acceptance bonus. Or if the militarist faction is happy for a long time, you gain an additional tech or special leader).

 

[Incompetent]

I want their demands to vary and not just have them happy/sad about the exact same things every single game. Some of this can be driven by events, leader traits and so on, but even if it's partly just RNG, simply the fact of not being able to plan out decades in advance exactly how to keep your favourite 1-3 factions happy would make internal politics more interesting.

For factions to be interesting, it also has to be harder than it is now to have all your pops in those favoured 1-3 factions with every other faction killed off.

Finally, I don't really like the way factions currently produce unity: it feels like an optional perk, like trade. Instead, like in other Paradox games, I think non-Gestalt authorities should have a notion of "legitimacy" that functions as a kind of empire-wide stability factor that takes a while to build up. (Maybe even Gestalts could have "cohesion" for a similar purpose, but it would have quite different modifiers.) There would then be factors that cause legitimacy to gradually tick up or down or time, and factional approval would be one of these (especially important in Democratic or Oligarchic authority).

 

[Theodorian]

Enemy/antagonistic factions should be scarier than the fascist, militarist, xenophobic empire on your borders.

The largest empires in history were not felled by military defeat but rather by elements of factions inside the empire conspiring against it.

Ignoring factions should have huge repercussions in the long run.

 

[HFY]

- Same empire should NOT always have the exact same factions. Different games with different maps and different neighbors should result in (some) different Factions.

- It's fine to have a few "reliable" Factions for each empire type but not all should be reliable.

- When two factions overlap, one should eventually "eat" the other.

- When one faction isn't focused on the needs of some of its members, the faction should split into two or more, especially if that faction represents a large number of pops.

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Factions should have physical HQs, initially on the homeworld but eventually on different colonies & sectors. The colony & sector should play a role in the faction's priorities.

2200 your factions should include:
- Spaceward, Ho! - this faction wants to focus resources on new colonies.
- Home First! - this faction wants to focus resources on improving the homeworld.

Both should have valid positions from a gameplay standpoint. You should favor one or the other, which locks you into one set of positive benefits or another roughly equal set (you can't have both).

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Factions should have leaders which can exist and remain visible outside your employed leaders list, and should always be available as part of your leader pool to recruit from.

- If you're running Feudal System / Aristocratic Elite / Oligarchy / etc. then there should be some kind of per-colony noble house that has its own interests. There should be some way to give a single house control of multiple colonies and even a whole sector. This might be great if they're loyal, or a terrible idea if they decide it's better to rule in Deneb than serve on Terra.

- If you're running Parliamentary System / Shared Burdens / Beacons of Liberty / etc. then you might get industry unions which represent workers of the most important job on your most productive colonies. They'd have union leaders randomly chosen from pops in that job.

- If you're running Exalted Priesthood / Death Cult / Gospel of the Masses / etc. then you might get a high priest which represents the spiritual needs of your top X population centers with an upgraded Holo Temple or higher.

- If you're running Technocracy then you might get a Science Director from your top X research colonies, generated from one of the Researcher pops on that colony.

- Agrarian Idyll should have disproportionate Farmer representation. Mining Guilds should have disproportionate Miner representation. Etc.

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Most importantly, when you conquer a colony or incorporate a primitive civ, you inherit some of their Factional structure for a while. You may be a Democracy, but you are now dealing with a planet that has an entrenched Aristocratic power structure (or vice-versa). There should be peaceful, passive ways to convert them to your preference -- and risky, violent ways to do it faster. (The risk would be lower if the power structure isn't popular with the population.)

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Factions might have a core constituency which could be:
- A species
- A stratum
- A job
- An ascension trait (cyborg / erudite / psionic / synth)

Factions should have fewer current demands, and should gain new demands as their previous demands are met. (The new demands might not be as important, and you should still get credit for meeting the previous demands, and there should be a new demand cooldown so they can be 100% happy for a while but never forever.)

Non-core constituents should join if the current demands are in their interest, and should leave if the demands change to NOT meet their own interests anymore.

Demands should be sane and not require metagaming. For example, if I have not met any xeno empires, then my Research Without Borders Faction should not be angry at me for failing to make 3 shared research treaties. Similarly, if there are only 2 xeno empires left in the galaxy, then my Research Without Borders faction should be delighted if I have a treaty with both of them.

The ability to dynamically change demands over time means the game can avoid the current situation where factions can make demands that are stupid.

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There should be multiple Factions which cover part of the same niche.

Example: Commerce.

- Peace Dividend (commerce + Pacifist) - this faction wants you to make commercial treaties and build civilian infrastructure.

- Military Industrial Complex (commerce + Militarist) - this faction wants you to conquer, raid, and Vassalize others to open new markets.

- Small Business Alliance (commerce + Egalitarian) - this faction wants you to enforce fair trade and provide well-regulated markets; they're somewhat protectionist when dealing with Authoritarians and Merchant Guilds, and they favor Liberation Wars.

- Deregulation Advocates (commerce + Authoritarian) - this faction wants you to favor monopolists and "merchant princes", they advocate for Merchant Guilds and policies which benefit the Ruler stratum at the expense of the Worker stratum.

You should have at least one of these pop up when your Trade Value goes above some per-capita threshold, perhaps more than one if you're not firmly in one of their corners already.

 

[mrt1212]

I would like Factions to be the little voice of the volks that tells the volkgeist that their RP/Fluff has gone way the hell off course from what the volks want. "If you build one more Ecu as a Void Dweller, we're gonna riot, bet." would be a nice little message to get every so often, even as I plead that I found two relic worlds and it'd be a shame to leave it off worse than I found it.

Okay, maybe I just want a fluff Clippy that bugs you like an editor would. For laughs alone.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

I would like to have some factions that you can't eliminate but get bonuses from containing.

A "Slave" faction would be kool for slaver empires as something you have to push against. On the flip side, if you keep them contained and make sure they can't rebel, your slave pops would be more productive.

 

[Bloodbat]

• A toggle to force AI empires to never change ethics willingly, so they'll automatically suppress and promote factions to keep the status quo rather than bringing factions into government based on ethic attraction.
• All factions being able to reach 100% approval, even if some are more difficult to please than others.
• Dynamic factions/multiple factions for more ethics; maybe the ones in government would conform to your ethics/civics, while opposition factions wouldn't.
• Ethic attraction rebalance so some ethics don't inevitably overtake others.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Some suggestions, in list form!

• Since the game already has leaders, I would love for each faction to be lead by someone.
• For factions to have opinions about things other than government policies. A militarist factions should want their empire to have the Supremacist tradition and Galactic Force Projection ascension perk, a science or Egalitarian faction to want the Exploration tradition, authoritarian or egalitarian factions to want the Shared Destiny ascension perk and so on.
• Getting bonuses for having related civics. Militarists wanting you to have a civic like Distinguished Admiralty. A militarist/authoritarian faction really wanting you to have Nationalistic Zeal and so on.
• For some civics to give specific factions some unique opinions. Having the Selective Kinship civic should make your xenophobic faction want to have another species of the same type in your empire.
• "Mixed" factions like a militarist/materialist faction that wants you to do things like unlock new ship/army techs and have combat robots.
• Stacking opinion bonuses for things like recently uplifting a species instead of a temporary boost. With reasonable limits for things like first contact so you don't get like +10 opinion once the galactic community is formed.

 

[Ikael]

I already made an in-depth rework for factions and internal politics because game design is my guilty pleasure and I am weird like this, but in short:

- Rebalance faction demands, for the love of the Shroud. At the very least, split half faction demands between "passive" demands easy to fulfill (click a policy and forget) with the other half being "active" demands that require player involvement or even roleplay ("make 3 vassals", "get a xeno leader in the council", "invaded a planet in the last 10 years", etc, etc).

- Make a clear distinction between the egalitarian-authoritarian VS xenophobe-xenophile axis, avoiding overlap between those two (hint: is all about how you treat your own populace VS how you treat xenos).

- Make certain civics or game events such as crises or ascension paths modify faction demands. Barbaric despoiler militarist faction should look considerably different from a Citizen Service militarist faction, pacifists should be able to go gloves off when a crisis appears, and so on. The new cybernetic origin executes this idea to great effect.

- Increase both rewards and punishment for high and low faction happiness. The fabled "institutions" might be of help here. Happy spiritualist faction for a long time? Get a church charity that increases pop growth and provides amenities for the faithful. Anger a spiritual faction? Now you get a fundamentalist terrorist group that decreases your robot assembly and might even kill robot leaders. You get the idea.

- Link other game systems with factions, namely, espionage and leaders. Leaders belonging to a mistreated faction should be a national security liability, which sounds quite realistic and fair to me, unlike most espionage systems out there.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I still think factions should be tied more directly to sectors so that they can declare independence and become new empires.

 

[klopkr]

I basically came here to say the same thing as @prismaticmarcus but he beat me to it.

I'd love to see factions actually be factions inside my borders who can become their own empires if they're too popular. They should be the source of internal conflicts even to civil war.

Honestly I think it would be cool if pops could be in multiple factions or have two sets of factions. Factions like the ones we have, and then regional/leader/powerstruggle factions. So you might have the religious pops try to split off or take over a system of yours or get their leaders in charge to change your ethos, or a regional faction.

Imagine if having worlds more powerful than your capital could become them starting a struggle to either coup you and take power for their sector as capital or just split off.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I basically came here to say the same thing as @prismaticmarcus but he beat me to it.

I'd love to see factions actually be factions inside my borders who can become their own empires if they're too popular. They should be the source of internal conflicts even to civil war.

Honestly I think it would be cool if pops could be in multiple factions or have two sets of factions. Factions like the ones we have, and then regional/leader/powerstruggle factions. So you might have the religious pops try to split off or take over a system of yours or get their leaders in charge to change your ethos, or a regional faction.

Imagine if having worlds more powerful than your capital could become them starting a struggle to either coup you and take power for their sector as capital or just split off.

For me, this is what an 'internal politics overhaul' would look like.

 

[Dubanian]

I still think factions should be tied more directly to sectors so that they can declare independence and become new empires.

If factions become too troublesome, then what about megacorp? Just create vassals, spam branch offices.

I think factions' happiness should create benefits or penalties on colonies of their influence.

 

[GhostDanny]

I wish factions would try to work with the other ethic(s) of your empire.
E.g. The Egalitarian faction working with Xenophobe faction would allow Xeno slaves, but ALL the xeno slaves should get the same standard of living.

 

[Dr. B]

I want factions to be able to rebel, and form their own ideal empires. For example, the materialists become fed up by being downpriotitized in a spiritualist empire. Thus they break away, taking a representative % of the population and fleet with them, a (materialist) leader or two and make their own society on the other side of the galaxy, or some other safe place.

You'd want the same to happen for hives (deviant drones form their own overmind a la the Zerg etc) and machines (rogue AI break away (Chatgpt vs MuskNetX?)).