Stellaris's current victory conditions at release seem rather shallow; Destroy the other races or own most of the planets. The first thing I thought, as well as many others I assume, is where's the peaceful option? What about a diplomatic victory, technological victory, cultural? Well, due to how the game is designed, the only thing neccesary is just one peaceful victory since both diplomacy and technology are more means to an end than an end itself.
It's just the problem is that the only means of accomplishing these two goals eventually boils down to war, even if you form a mighty federation, you are still going to have to militarily crush everyone else eventually.
So what I propose is a system that will provide a peaceful means of conquest, eliminate the mid-game "drag" and boring peacetime, and provide a much deeper experience overall without making it SO deep you alienate the casual player base. (This is good, right?) This system will focus on just one new number; Your races unique culture score! This score will be effected and multiplied by a number of moderators including empire - wide happiness, sector happiness, station modules, your leader, governers, new planetary buildings like cultural exchanges, new naturally present planetary bonuses and anomalies, and even new diplomat units which I'll talk more about later.
Basically, every race will have a base unaltered score of 20 at creation. Certain government types, traits, and ethos can add more points to that score to a maximum of 25. This score represents the base attraction of that individual races culture. For example, any democratic or religiously focused government type will add one point (If its a Theocratic republic it still counts as one).
Charismatic, Agrarian, Talented, Communal traits will add one and they stack to a maximum of 3. (You can't really get more than 3 with a maximum Trait number of 4)
And long as you pick Individualist, Xenophile, Pacifist, or Spiritualist (and their fanatic counterparts) you will also gain another bonus point.
So if you decide to pick a specific setup combination you could end up with a base score of 25, so if you want a race totally optimised for culture you have a decent amount of options.
So once you have created your race and you have your base score set this score is then modified by your sectors happiness and researched techs. For every 10% total happiness the score will be multiplied by 1. So for instance, if your sector happiness is 83% and your base cultural score is 23, it will be timed by 8.3 now making it 191 (It's actually 190.9 but it's rounded to the nearest one). Then that can be modified further based on certain techs which can increase it by a small percentage or even a flat numeral amount. Once this is calculated, then your leaders traits, governers traits, and all the accumulated bonuses created from buildings and modules found in systems of that sector is added to give you your sectors final cultural score, then the average of all your sectors scores is then calculated to give you your empires average cultural score. This scores only purpose is to give you and everyone else an idea of your cultural strength, but what really matters is the score provided by your sectors and the planets within them. This is where things get interesting!
Each sector has its own cultural score based on its individual happiness percentage like I've mentioned. Then the systems within them take that score and apply the bonuses given by the buildings and spaceport modules within the system (which provide a percentage boost of 1% each which can increase depending on technology and upgrade level) to decide its own individual final score then radiate this score around them projecting their cultural influence to surrounding sectors and planets, creating the cultural border similar to other games! This boundary is separate from your empires political borders in that even though a system is within your political border, it could actually be within the cultural borders of another sector or empire, in which case it's primary culture will slowly begin to change to the culture that the sector sits in!
Once a system of your culture (very slowly, like decades or even centuries depending on how matched the cultural strength of the two empires are) shifts 100% to that of another culture, it becomes vulnerable to a bunch of things. An increased ethos deviation to that of the influenced cultures primary ethos, an increased displeasure for being part of the ruling empire, may start asking to revolt and change sides if they are unhappy enough and even under threat of total annexation if the other empire decides to send diplomat characters commanding new Envoy ships to spend influence on an attempt at causing the sector to willfully change hands to the other empire (which can only be done if a diplomat is present at the sector capital). However, even with a culturally weak empire, this can be combated with edicts and other diplomats who are more skilled and have certain traits improving their diplomatic resistance. Long as they are present it severally decreases the chance of a successful annex from other diplomats and they can even be used to spend influence themselves to even boost that sectors culture score or even making the entire sector immune to annex, and decrease or stop the siphoning of influence for diplomats of other empires.
This creates a whole new front to fight not only in times of peace but also war, since diplomats can also be used to spend influence on pursuading systems to surrender if your war score is high enough and your cultural influence on the system is also high. Note that it doesn't have to be 100% during war times due to the systems pop having much less moral and faith in their ruling empire. Just make sure the envoy ships are defended or else they can be shot down by enemy fleets!
This cultural tug-o-war is the center of the culture system and would provide a whole new level of depth to the already deep political system present in game. But there is more to it than just the culture system. Diplomats would be a new tool for many different things. They can be used to dispute borders by being sent to another empires frontier stations and then spend a huge amount of influence to flip the stations control over to your empire (this is significantly easier if you was the first to survey the system). They can be sent to another empires capital to spend a LOT of influence on attempts to force treaties and agreements they otherwise would never accept, though not without taking a big relations hit with the empire (the same can be done to you as well!). The can be used to spend influence to quell rising tension on your own sectors and even be sent on campaigning missions on your own sector capitals to have a chance to win large batches of influence for you depending on their skill. Though failure can force them into retirement or even being switched out with a new, lower level diplomat, which could be good or bad depending on the new diplomats traits. They can also be sent to another empires sector capitals to siphon influence to politically undermine empires by draining their influence reserves to your side! The amount depends on diplomats present, edicts, and the cultural influence you have on the system. They can even go as far as using their traits and influence to force enemy characters into quitting their jobs, changing hands, and many other things!
I think this would be a phenomenal addition and I hope this inspires some sort of new cultural system for this stellar game and if you read all this I very much appreciate it. I have spent an unhealthy amount of time figuring out all this xD.
It's just the problem is that the only means of accomplishing these two goals eventually boils down to war, even if you form a mighty federation, you are still going to have to militarily crush everyone else eventually.
So what I propose is a system that will provide a peaceful means of conquest, eliminate the mid-game "drag" and boring peacetime, and provide a much deeper experience overall without making it SO deep you alienate the casual player base. (This is good, right?) This system will focus on just one new number; Your races unique culture score! This score will be effected and multiplied by a number of moderators including empire - wide happiness, sector happiness, station modules, your leader, governers, new planetary buildings like cultural exchanges, new naturally present planetary bonuses and anomalies, and even new diplomat units which I'll talk more about later.
Basically, every race will have a base unaltered score of 20 at creation. Certain government types, traits, and ethos can add more points to that score to a maximum of 25. This score represents the base attraction of that individual races culture. For example, any democratic or religiously focused government type will add one point (If its a Theocratic republic it still counts as one).
Charismatic, Agrarian, Talented, Communal traits will add one and they stack to a maximum of 3. (You can't really get more than 3 with a maximum Trait number of 4)
And long as you pick Individualist, Xenophile, Pacifist, or Spiritualist (and their fanatic counterparts) you will also gain another bonus point.
So if you decide to pick a specific setup combination you could end up with a base score of 25, so if you want a race totally optimised for culture you have a decent amount of options.
So once you have created your race and you have your base score set this score is then modified by your sectors happiness and researched techs. For every 10% total happiness the score will be multiplied by 1. So for instance, if your sector happiness is 83% and your base cultural score is 23, it will be timed by 8.3 now making it 191 (It's actually 190.9 but it's rounded to the nearest one). Then that can be modified further based on certain techs which can increase it by a small percentage or even a flat numeral amount. Once this is calculated, then your leaders traits, governers traits, and all the accumulated bonuses created from buildings and modules found in systems of that sector is added to give you your sectors final cultural score, then the average of all your sectors scores is then calculated to give you your empires average cultural score. This scores only purpose is to give you and everyone else an idea of your cultural strength, but what really matters is the score provided by your sectors and the planets within them. This is where things get interesting!
Each sector has its own cultural score based on its individual happiness percentage like I've mentioned. Then the systems within them take that score and apply the bonuses given by the buildings and spaceport modules within the system (which provide a percentage boost of 1% each which can increase depending on technology and upgrade level) to decide its own individual final score then radiate this score around them projecting their cultural influence to surrounding sectors and planets, creating the cultural border similar to other games! This boundary is separate from your empires political borders in that even though a system is within your political border, it could actually be within the cultural borders of another sector or empire, in which case it's primary culture will slowly begin to change to the culture that the sector sits in!
Once a system of your culture (very slowly, like decades or even centuries depending on how matched the cultural strength of the two empires are) shifts 100% to that of another culture, it becomes vulnerable to a bunch of things. An increased ethos deviation to that of the influenced cultures primary ethos, an increased displeasure for being part of the ruling empire, may start asking to revolt and change sides if they are unhappy enough and even under threat of total annexation if the other empire decides to send diplomat characters commanding new Envoy ships to spend influence on an attempt at causing the sector to willfully change hands to the other empire (which can only be done if a diplomat is present at the sector capital). However, even with a culturally weak empire, this can be combated with edicts and other diplomats who are more skilled and have certain traits improving their diplomatic resistance. Long as they are present it severally decreases the chance of a successful annex from other diplomats and they can even be used to spend influence themselves to even boost that sectors culture score or even making the entire sector immune to annex, and decrease or stop the siphoning of influence for diplomats of other empires.
This creates a whole new front to fight not only in times of peace but also war, since diplomats can also be used to spend influence on pursuading systems to surrender if your war score is high enough and your cultural influence on the system is also high. Note that it doesn't have to be 100% during war times due to the systems pop having much less moral and faith in their ruling empire. Just make sure the envoy ships are defended or else they can be shot down by enemy fleets!
This cultural tug-o-war is the center of the culture system and would provide a whole new level of depth to the already deep political system present in game. But there is more to it than just the culture system. Diplomats would be a new tool for many different things. They can be used to dispute borders by being sent to another empires frontier stations and then spend a huge amount of influence to flip the stations control over to your empire (this is significantly easier if you was the first to survey the system). They can be sent to another empires capital to spend a LOT of influence on attempts to force treaties and agreements they otherwise would never accept, though not without taking a big relations hit with the empire (the same can be done to you as well!). The can be used to spend influence to quell rising tension on your own sectors and even be sent on campaigning missions on your own sector capitals to have a chance to win large batches of influence for you depending on their skill. Though failure can force them into retirement or even being switched out with a new, lower level diplomat, which could be good or bad depending on the new diplomats traits. They can also be sent to another empires sector capitals to siphon influence to politically undermine empires by draining their influence reserves to your side! The amount depends on diplomats present, edicts, and the cultural influence you have on the system. They can even go as far as using their traits and influence to force enemy characters into quitting their jobs, changing hands, and many other things!
I think this would be a phenomenal addition and I hope this inspires some sort of new cultural system for this stellar game and if you read all this I very much appreciate it. I have spent an unhealthy amount of time figuring out all this xD.
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