Currently favors are a bit of a mess. One of the favorite tactics for min-maxers is to trade favors to everyone in exchange for oodles of resources. The player than happily crushes them to dust before they can even think to using them. They're currently overvalued by the AI, but they don't have to be if we can make a few changes.
In order to make favors impactful, but balanced we need to make 4 changes:
1. You have finite favors to hand out at any one time.
No more handing out 10 favors to everyone who shakes a few alloys at you. Finite favors make it an actual resource to manage. How many that is, is up to what you guys think is best, but I think they should feel precious. Obviously, once a favor is used (or expires), it returns to you to trade out however you like.
2. Favor trading is on a timer.
It would kind of suck if you traded out your limited favors early on and then some isolationist empire just sort of sat on them for 300 years. Also it doesn't really make sense for an empire to feel like they owe another empire for that long. This would encourage them to actually be used promptly. Like monthly resource trading you can trade favors on a 10-30 year timeline. Obviously the 30 year favor trade would be worth more than the 10 year one.
3. Favors can now be zero sum.
Currently, a favor represents 10% of an empire's voteweight, however you couldn't subtract 10% from their actual voteweight because theoretically everyone could have enough favors from that empire that the number would quickly go into the negative. However, by making favors both finite and temporary, you can now also make them zero sum when it comes to voting. If I have 2/10 of the UNE's favors, while another empire has the remaining 8, and we both use them on a Galactic Community vote, the UNE's voteweight for that vote drops to 0.
4. Favors can be cashed into the Galactic Market
Two problems with resource trading using favors is that. One, if the AI hates you it doesn't do much good, and two the AI only seems to resource trade through the markets. By letting everyone sell their accumulated favors on the market you can bypass both. However, if we want to make it zero-sum instead of just free cash (which would 100% be exploited), the market would merely serve as a medium. Once an empire cashes in someone's favor, that someone now has to settle the debt on the marketplace before they can buy anything more. Note that you can still sell resources so you don't get stuck. The amount of energy you get for selling a favor would be based on the current diplomatic weight of said empire.
In order to make favors impactful, but balanced we need to make 4 changes:
1. You have finite favors to hand out at any one time.
No more handing out 10 favors to everyone who shakes a few alloys at you. Finite favors make it an actual resource to manage. How many that is, is up to what you guys think is best, but I think they should feel precious. Obviously, once a favor is used (or expires), it returns to you to trade out however you like.
2. Favor trading is on a timer.
It would kind of suck if you traded out your limited favors early on and then some isolationist empire just sort of sat on them for 300 years. Also it doesn't really make sense for an empire to feel like they owe another empire for that long. This would encourage them to actually be used promptly. Like monthly resource trading you can trade favors on a 10-30 year timeline. Obviously the 30 year favor trade would be worth more than the 10 year one.
3. Favors can now be zero sum.
Currently, a favor represents 10% of an empire's voteweight, however you couldn't subtract 10% from their actual voteweight because theoretically everyone could have enough favors from that empire that the number would quickly go into the negative. However, by making favors both finite and temporary, you can now also make them zero sum when it comes to voting. If I have 2/10 of the UNE's favors, while another empire has the remaining 8, and we both use them on a Galactic Community vote, the UNE's voteweight for that vote drops to 0.
4. Favors can be cashed into the Galactic Market
Two problems with resource trading using favors is that. One, if the AI hates you it doesn't do much good, and two the AI only seems to resource trade through the markets. By letting everyone sell their accumulated favors on the market you can bypass both. However, if we want to make it zero-sum instead of just free cash (which would 100% be exploited), the market would merely serve as a medium. Once an empire cashes in someone's favor, that someone now has to settle the debt on the marketplace before they can buy anything more. Note that you can still sell resources so you don't get stuck. The amount of energy you get for selling a favor would be based on the current diplomatic weight of said empire.
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