So we can all agree that one thing that stellaris badly lacks is internal politics, which can lead to civil wars. Empires are way too stable and steady and nobody cares about internal politics. Our empires a just giant, permanent dictatorships. Democracy ? Oligarchy ? Empires ? It feels all the same.
So i’ve laid some ideas and suggestions to make both internal politics interesting and that playing different political régimes let us feel something different. i've already made a thread about it in the past but ideas were a lot less refined then.
The thing i tried to emulate is that the more democratic your regime is, the more constraints you will have, bacause your citizens doesn’t always want what you, the « deep state » want for them. However, political disagreements will remain civil and transition of power peaceful because evryone will have its say with free and fair election. The more autocratic your regime will be, the more unshackled you will be as a player, but having a powerful and discontent faction will always end in a civil war because they won’t have any other way to make their point.
So, let,’s begin
Civil wars :
The idea is to make democracy a regime where you, as a player, will have multiple constraints to deal with and choices to make while having to deal with less violence.
Changes to Oligarchies :
The idea with the oligarchy is to reduce the alternative to the guys in power, letting to more frequent clashes, peaceful change could happen but much more rarely and it would be a lot slower.
The idea is to tie politics to reigns, making all things to revolve around the emperor, because…we are talking about an empire.
The main idea here is that people will accept to have no say about what happens in politics as long as they are happy and prosperous.
When happiness is too low in a dictatorship, peple could start to rebel and fight defensive armies (like slave rebellions), if they succed, the plane twill be considered occupied. Most of the time you will send a fleet and an invasion army and i twill be over before dinner, but there is a chance that your fleet and your troops refuse to unleash death and destruction on their own fellow citizen, and the revolt will spread. The revolters will have some demands, (higher living standards, citizenship for spieces x) that you can met, but the more the revolt spread, the more the radical the demands will be, including, finally democracy. If you persists, revolts could reach your capital world and end your regime by force (and your game)
I know it’s not very detailed, and some (or much) of the idea could not even be doable, and that the AI could very much be unable to cope with the system and fall in a cycle of endless civil wars but, i wanted at least some opinion about these ideas. I also thinks that megacorps and theocracies needs their own internal mechanics, but i've not fleshed out my ideas about them very well (and for theocracies it would need to create somthing about religions too). But this is a first step for réflexions.
Oh, and English is not my native language, so I'm pretty much sure a lot of errors have made their way into my wall of text, please accept my apologies in advance.
So i’ve laid some ideas and suggestions to make both internal politics interesting and that playing different political régimes let us feel something different. i've already made a thread about it in the past but ideas were a lot less refined then.
The thing i tried to emulate is that the more democratic your regime is, the more constraints you will have, bacause your citizens doesn’t always want what you, the « deep state » want for them. However, political disagreements will remain civil and transition of power peaceful because evryone will have its say with free and fair election. The more autocratic your regime will be, the more unshackled you will be as a player, but having a powerful and discontent faction will always end in a civil war because they won’t have any other way to make their point.
So, let,’s begin
Civil wars :
- Each admiral, general, and governor will have a faction affiliation. This affiliation will remain secret except for faction leaders. Psy corps or some civics (I think about police state) will give you a chance to have some affiliations revealed. Sectors will be mandatory. Frontier sectors will have its own governor too (If you try the gamey tactic of not making any sector in order to not have any governor joining the revolt you will then take a very risky bet).
- A civil war is launched by two or three very discontent faction in the same way IA rebellion are launched (seperate empire and total war). Governors who are members of revolting factions will bring their sector to the rebel empire, admirals their fleets and generals their armies. Pops members of rebelious factions will revolt too and fight loyal defensive armies.
- The new empire will be made of the ethics of the rebelious factions. If two factions are involved the stronger one will have a fanatic ethic.
- Civil wars can be launched when the rebels view themselves roughly in equal number to loyalist forces.
- Player will be able to join the side he wants, like the AI rebellion.
- Besides launching a civil war, having unhappy factions will lead to some events, like riots, bombings, political assassination, and so on
The idea is to make democracy a regime where you, as a player, will have multiple constraints to deal with and choices to make while having to deal with less violence.
- Mandates in their actual form will disappear, they are mostly uninteresting.
- Elections will stay the same (you can spend influence to help the faction you want), but doing so with infuriates the non-helped faction (it represents, in my made, the state appartus and bureaucracy blatantly favouring one side against the others, something the others tend to despise).
- Instead of just electing some dude randomly, election will give you a pie chart of election results, each faction gaining a percentage of votes.
- You will have to create a governement with the factions of your choice, while these factions in governement account for at least 50% of the votes. Opposing faction (like militarists and pacifists could not be in the same governement)
- Each faction will present to you a task (their electoral manifesto) you will have to fullfill before the next elections, otherwise the faction you failed will feel betrayed, will be angry as hell and will refuse to be in the next governement. These tasks (these new mandates) will be as linked as what happen in the game (the less generic « build x mining station the better), for example, xenophobes will want you to crush this nearby empire who has your spicies in slavery, xenophile would want you to grant citizenship to spicies y. Ideally their demands will scale with their strength, with a very powerful faction which are not one of your starting cethics will want to become one
- All « faction control » tools (repressing, promoting) will remain in place but using them will anger the victims of your schemings : in a democracy, you are supposed to let people make their own opinion about politics.
- If you can’t build a normal governement with 50%+ votes (bcause you have failed too many people too many times), you can form an « emergency governement », but you will anger all the factions who are not part of it, bringing you closer to a civil war.
Changes to Oligarchies :
The idea with the oligarchy is to reduce the alternative to the guys in power, letting to more frequent clashes, peaceful change could happen but much more rarely and it would be a lot slower.
- Like in democracies it would features elections, but only ruler-tier pops will vote. Ruler having some incentive to be of the ruling ethics. You can however spend influence to help a faction. It costs less influence than in democracies, and it has less impact on non-ruling factions (for them it’s business as usual). Ruling faction however will not take it kindly if you try to push an outsider in front of them.
- Electoral agendas will be a lot less radical in democracies, evrybody knows that election are not a very efficient way to change things in an oligarchy.
- Factions who are not of your ruling ethics will have a permanent malus to their opinion (their perspective to come in power in a regular, legal way are thin, and they don’t like that). Meaning that they have much more chance to go violent if they don’t agree with your policy.
- You can repress outsiders faction without maluses (other than angreeing the repressed, which could end badly if they are too much powerful) and promoting one ruling faction, but repressing a ruling faction or promoting an outsider one could start mayhem.
The idea is to tie politics to reigns, making all things to revolve around the emperor, because…we are talking about an empire.
- Emperors and heirs will be tied to one of the ruling faction, making it super happy, making the other ruling factions less happy and the outsider factions angry.
- However, sometimes, an heir could have « strong ties » with an outsider faction, which will send you demands and, if you fullfill it, will be somewhat happy for a time.
- When such an heir start to rule, it will be proposed to the player if he wants to replace one ruling ethic by this new ethic. Whatever the answer will be, there will be one happy faction and one angry faction.
- The angry faction could gather other discontent faction and launch a succession war in a bid to remplace the emperor by another one, launching a civil war.
- All faction control tools will be available without maluses, but repressing one other ruling faction could have dire consequences.
The main idea here is that people will accept to have no say about what happens in politics as long as they are happy and prosperous.
- Ethics change will be tied to happiness. Happy pops will favor ruling ethics, unhappy pops will strongly diverge.
- Outsider faction will always be super angry.
- Too much unhappy people could lead to a « popular revolt », which is NOT a civil war but another mechanic that will be explained below.
When happiness is too low in a dictatorship, peple could start to rebel and fight defensive armies (like slave rebellions), if they succed, the plane twill be considered occupied. Most of the time you will send a fleet and an invasion army and i twill be over before dinner, but there is a chance that your fleet and your troops refuse to unleash death and destruction on their own fellow citizen, and the revolt will spread. The revolters will have some demands, (higher living standards, citizenship for spieces x) that you can met, but the more the revolt spread, the more the radical the demands will be, including, finally democracy. If you persists, revolts could reach your capital world and end your regime by force (and your game)
I know it’s not very detailed, and some (or much) of the idea could not even be doable, and that the AI could very much be unable to cope with the system and fall in a cycle of endless civil wars but, i wanted at least some opinion about these ideas. I also thinks that megacorps and theocracies needs their own internal mechanics, but i've not fleshed out my ideas about them very well (and for theocracies it would need to create somthing about religions too). But this is a first step for réflexions.
Oh, and English is not my native language, so I'm pretty much sure a lot of errors have made their way into my wall of text, please accept my apologies in advance.
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