Feudal Empire Civic

[tobias.mb]

Hegemons give you three homeworlds as does voidborn. One vassal, potentially with fewer starting pops would not be overpowered or even the strongest of the current origins.

Hegemons can't integrate their Hegemony subjects though. So you can't really count it as "your" worlds. You could start integrating a starting vassal on day 1 and finish integration after a few years.
And Voidborne is a different matter altogether. They have their own downsides in return for starting with 3 "worlds". Also they don't start with more pops.

 

[M@ni@c]

I am very suspicious this would be overpowered. This would make the Feudal Civic by far the largest contributor of influence in the game. 6 one planet vassals would grant 3 influence. Perhaps granting up to 1 influence based on the total empire sprawl of you vassals as a percentage of your empire sprawl.

I'd disagree. One planet vassals are only possible/likely if you enlighten a primitive planet. How many of those you can claim depends on your game settings I guess. For vassals other than those, you'd need to either release an entire sector, or vassalize another empire. Perhaps in the early game there's a strategy there be to be found, but not working all those planets yourself becomes an increasingly big opportunity cost. There's also a diminishing return in having lots of influence. Again, early game it's great, as you can expand faster. Though building outposts also cost alloys, so it comes at the cost a reduced fleet size. Later on how much influence you can use, is limited by how much alloys you can afford to spend on habitats. So all in all I'd say, from my experience playing with the civic changed like this, it can leads to a fun alternative playstyle, especially when combined with a Hegemonic federation, but definitely not an overpowered one.

 

[Dragatus]

I've thought it might be interesting if Feudal Empire became a major conversion civic, in the vein of Inward Perfection, and only be available at empire creation.

It would allow for only 2 sectors: core + 1 in development, while also penalizing fringe worlds enough to prevent players from ignoring the limit and simply playing with tons of fringe worlds.

The point being, after a sector is set up the way a player wants, it must be released as a vassal before the player can create an additional sector.

As for the payoff ... well, it could really be a number of things. I'm not sure what would really be balanced, but it should probably be a some kind of bonus(es) based on the number of vassal states.

Such as:
+% to naval capacity per vassal
+% to admin capacity per vassal
+% to trade value per vassal

Possibly counter-balanced with something like:
-% to unity per vassal
-0.1 influence per vassal

This all seems, IMHO, like a potentially fun way to play tall-ish while painting the map.

I like this. As for the benefit, I would go with getting a good portion (somewhere in the 25%-50% range) of all your vassals' naval capacities and a bonus to AI empires accepting offers to vassalize them or turn them into protectorates.

Vassals in general need more utility though so perhaps they could give you 25% of their naval capacity and alloys as standard and the civic doubles how much of their naval cap you get to 50%.

 

[Honon]

I'd disagree. One planet vassals are only possible/likely if you enlighten a primitive planet. How many of those you can claim depends on your game settings I guess. For vassals other than those, you'd need to either release an entire sector, or vassalize another empire. Perhaps in the early game there's a strategy there be to be found, but not working all those planets yourself becomes an increasingly big opportunity cost. There's also a diminishing return in having lots of influence. Again, early game it's great, as you can expand faster. Though building outposts also cost alloys, so it comes at the cost a reduced fleet size. Later on how much influence you can use, is limited by how much alloys you can afford to spend on habitats. So all in all I'd say, from my experience playing with the civic changed like this, it can leads to a fun alternative playstyle, especially when combined with a Hegemonic federation, but definitely not an overpowered one.

The ideology wargoal makes it easy to get one planet/few system vassals. Go to war, force liberation of a planet sector, immediately vassalize it. As far as diminishing returns, any mechanic that renders an entire recourse trivial is going to be a problem. a +3 or 4 influence at 0 cost would trivialize influence as a recourse period. Further compare this to other sources of influence like:

Fanatic Egalitarian: 1 (max)
Fanatic Authoritarian: 1
Gestal Conciousness: 1
Parliamentary System .5 (max)
Finishing the Domination Tree 1

 

[CrazyJ]

The ideology wargoal makes it easy to get one planet/few system vassals. Go to war, force liberation of a planet sector, immediately vassalize it. As far as diminishing returns, any mechanic that renders an entire recourse trivial is going to be a problem. a +3 or 4 influence at 0 cost would trivialize influence as a recourse period. Further compare this to other sources of influence like:

Fanatic Egalitarian: 1 (max)
Fanatic Authoritarian: 1
Gestal Conciousness: 1
Parliamentary System .5 (max)
Finishing the Domination Tree 1

you forgot factions (+2/3 with the right tech) gestalts gain an extra influence via a tech. and there is will to power with puts all other sources of influence to shame.

not to mention all of the events that give influence, hell the bunker bot alone gives enough influence to build an entire sector's worth of starbases

 

[Tarquin de Atromons]

There are many great ideas in this thread, and I hope the developers will take note that the Feudal civic has languished in sub-mediocrity for a long time. The changes coming to Humanoids in the next patch present a great chance to correct this. The advent of Hegemonies, in particular, has replaced a lot of the reasons for having vassals.

Several posters in this thread have suggested that the Feudal civic make vassals into more like Satrapies - I think that is a great idea, so long as the AI bonuses issue is addressed. Perhaps it could also eliminate the possibility of vassal integration, in exchange for the AI buffs + expansion + contributions to the player of resources/diplo weight/naval capacity. With the new espionage mechanics, vassal rebellions could be an interesting dynamic for players to face.

There is so much flavor that could be added to the game with proper feudal empires, ala Dune.