Looking back at "The Journey Ahead" thread now that we know what Utopia will have

[AKicebear]

Steal Star Ruler 2s espionage and diplomacy card system.

 

[PalmettoExplorer14]

Steal Star Ruler 2s espionage and diplomacy card system.

Oh? What are those systems like?

 

[mergele]

Oh? What are those systems like?

There is a global stack of cards, which any nation can buy. Every few minutes the stack shifts by one, the leftmost cards vanishes and a random new one appears on the right. If an empire buys a card this card is unavailable for other empires and will also vanish at the next shift, bringing in an additional new card to fill the stack again. The cards are diplomatic and espionage actions. For example there is a card "Spy on an empire", when you play this card you can choose another empire and then get access to their vision for a certain time period. The currency with which you buy these cards (influence) is a seperate resource, you can't directly produce it, but there is a global rate in which it is produced and depending on the % of global diplo (it's actually also called influence, but to avoid confusion between the seperate instances I renamed it) production you have you get assigned an equivalent % of this global rate. The cost of the diplomatic cards depends on their position in the stack, for each position they are futher away from the end of the stack their cost increases by one, which creates a pretty interesting constant stand-off between not buying them now so they become cheaper, but risking that another empire will buy them for their higher cost now. Also playing the cards you have bought also costs influence, so you have to weight playing the cards you have vs. buying new ones that are currently available.
Most of these cards though are used for the galactic senate. There are cards like "Annex a planet" which when played don't immediatly activate their effect, but instead first have to pass a galactic senate vote. A vote that is in progress has a bar (-3 minutes to +3 minutes) which starts of at 0 and as long as there are more supporters than opposition this bar will tick up every second, else it will tick down. A vote passes if it reches +3 minutes and fails (which causes the card which is voted upon to disapper without an effect) if it reaches -3. Many of the diplomatic cards are just there for adding support/opposition to a vote in progress.

It is a pretty interesting system, works great for Star Ruler 2 and I wouldn't mind seeing other games take inspiration from it, but I don't think it would really work well for Stellaris. Maybe the voting system in the senate could be adopted.

 

[bronze Void poison]

I would addvacate Trade and Espionage should go together leting you manipulate other but not dierectly also they could be fun

 

[binn05]

We could always plot to find out.

Send invites to all courtiers around the realm. I'll back your plot.

 

[Atlasien]

4) Realism. At the end of the day, 99.999% of espionage looks nothing like what we see in most games. Part of that is because technology looks very different in the real world (consisting of lots of minor, incremental improvements, rather than making one discovery and suddenly unlocking the next level of power plant), but part of that is because we expect flashier things from espionage. When North Korean intelligence assassinated Kim Jong-un's brother this year, it was a big deal because that sort of thing almost never happens; intelligence agencies tend to focus on surveillance and data gathering. While you may have the occasional flashy sabotage effort (think of Stuxnet and the sabotage of the Iranian nuclear program, for a recent example), far more of intelligence goes to things like "where is this person" "who are they talking to" "what is their opinion on X topic." Those are all little things, but make up the vast majority of what intelligence agencies actually do in real life, but they aren't depicted in games (again, aside from the ability to occasionally steal a new technology from some other country).

Well, military information in Stellaris is pretty closely tied to sensor range, so there isn't much an espionage system could add there.
Techs researched could be interesting, but not that much gameplay impact outside of rocking their scissors.
Not sure how much of policies and species rights will be visible, but again its more interesting than important.

There is however another area where espionage is often used to act instead of observe. And that is politics. Researching and supporting/undermining parties and power groups in other countries is quite common, as is foreign sponsorship of rebels and political pressure groups. And of course organizations to promote ones ideology, both governmental and private.

In Stellaris terms this would mainly be interaction with other empires' factions - increase/decrease attraction, modify goals, sponsor new factions and more. This need not be just "create rebellion" since the 1.5 factions could be used to push an empire to be more (or less) democratic or spiritual and so on - which would then have diplomatic impact with 3rd parties.

 

[Ikael]

Welp, since the other tread about what to expect after Utopia got closed due to polling, I will repost here what I expect / hope that the next Stellaris expansions will be about:

WAR & PEACE (post-Utopia expansion)

- Super weapons. Exclusive unique doomsdayweapons and ship classes for militaristic and materialistic empires, including stealth ships, planet busters and the much dreaded Nova bombs!
- Revamped ground combat. Deeper land battles and planetary defenses being able to shoot down attacking fleets makes for a new dynamic interaction between ground and space combat!
- Reworked defensive systems. Introducing mega-fortresses, galactic geography, minefields, self-destructing stars and warp dissipators. Now terrain and position matters more than ever!
- Fleet formations. Change your combat stance mid-fight in order to change the course of battles. The more skilled your admiral, the more formations avaible and the less downtime to change your tactics!
- Attrition system. No more super stacks of doom. Win battles against superior enemy forces and fight guerrilla wars and skirmishes outside the open battlefields
- Sector governors and leader ambitions. Intra politics never were so tangled. Love stories, personal grudges, greed, envy, ruler lineages and special skills makes for a more dramatic and complex politics and better sector management
- Spyionage. Manipulate factions outside your empire, bring xeno leaders into your fold and play with their interest and desires in order to make your enemies crumble from within. Comes with its own "secrecy" tradition tree, too!
- From confederations to federations to actual unified star nations. New and improved systems for nation building and more diplomatic venues for cooperation, including secret pacts, research treaties and much more!!
- Introducing the galactic senate. Build a harmonious new galactic order, instaurate a despotic pan-galactic hegemon or fight for your independence against foreign influence!
- Separatist factions, civil wars, rogue hiveminds and revolutions will provide new challenges and opportunities for galactic empire builders
- New victory conditions. Win either trought military might, peaceful federation building or ascension!

TOWARDS A GLORIOUS FUTURE (long term, post-post Utopia expansion)

- Expanded tech and civics trees enlarges the game's scope and late game like never before!
- New ethos-specific winning conditions. Experience special endgame crisis and ascension paths beyond the materialist - spiritualist axis. Treathen to activate ancient weapons of mass destruction as a xenophobe, build a post-scarcity economy as an egalitarian, and much more possibilities!
- Tile-based habitability. Introducing more granularity and flavour to planets and their management
- Introducing corporations and trade routes. Foster your independent intellestellar corporations or control your economy with the iron grip of the state
- New collectivist VS individuallist axis, with all the factions, policies and special perks that it entails
- New hivemind types, "devourer", "symbiotic", "parasitic", "cibernetic collective", "warp vampires" and "benevolent harmony" allows you to play wholly different types of unified consciousness
- Introducing nomadic factions, opening up never seen before gameplay possibilities and a brand new refugee dynamic