Simple way to use Unity to make internal politics much more fun

[Aeroclub]

Hey guys, so I came up with this idea that would be pretty simple to implement in the current state of the game. It is based on the following goals that align with the general direction of the game as described by the devs:

1. Make Unity a resource that is used to manage the internal affairs of your empire
2. Make the stale internal politics more challenging and fun
3. Fit in the game narratively
4. Be simple to implenet

So, here is the gist of it:

Each non-governing ideology present in your empire generates tension that will eventually lead to something like a disaster (akin to what we have in EU4). The strength of that ideology can either affect how fast is it going to come or its scale. The disaster can be either an event or a kind of "Incidents" as announced by the devs. The type of the disaster can be based on the type of ideology: for example, xenophobes can go on pogroms, spiritualists will sabotage research, pacifists will organize strikes and block your allow/military production etc.

Depending on the strength of the ideology, you can spend a monthly amount of Unity to stop its disaster from ticking. Or, you can use your Influence to suppress the faction just like you can do now. In other words, you can either invest into Unity which will make all kinds of ideologies co-exist in harmony as everyone is working together for some greater goal, or you can suppress the opposition.

This is how it fits the four goals stated in the beginning:

1. There is a sink that you can spend influence on on a monthly basis.
2. Faction management becomes important as you really HAVE to do something about it or face dire consequences, as opposed to just ignoring it like you do now
3. It's a great narrative for your empire-building as you have to make a choice between harmonizing all the points of view (with Unity) of making sure that everyone's points are aligned (with Influence). It doesn't break any RP or general ethos either, because even such empires as Xenophiles can choce to either tolerate and harmonize xenophobe opposition within their nation or actively suppress it.
4. Implementation would be very simple withing the current game system, we just need to put in a few more disaster events.

What do you think of this?

 

[methegrate]

Hey guys, so I came up with this idea that would be pretty simple to implement in the current state of the game. It is based on the following goals that align with the general direction of the game as described by the devs:

1. Make Unity a resource that is used to manage the internal affairs of your empire
2. Make the stale internal politics more challenging and fun
3. Fit in the game narratively
4. Be simple to implenet

So, here is the gist of it:

Each non-governing ideology present in your empire generates tension that will eventually lead to something like a disaster (akin to what we have in EU4). The strength of that ideology can either affect how fast is it going to come or its scale. The disaster can be either an event or a kind of "Incidents" as announced by the devs. The type of the disaster can be based on the type of ideology: for example, xenophobes can go on pogroms, spiritualists will sabotage research, pacifists will organize strikes and block your allow/military production etc.

Depending on the strength of the ideology, you can spend a monthly amount of Unity to stop its disaster from ticking. Or, you can use your Influence to suppress the faction just like you can do now. In other words, you can either invest into Unity which will make all kinds of ideologies co-exist in harmony as everyone is working together for some greater goal, or you can suppress the opposition.

This is how it fits the four goals stated in the beginning:

1. There is a sink that you can spend influence on on a monthly basis.
2. Faction management becomes important as you really HAVE to do something about it or face dire consequences, as opposed to just ignoring it like you do now
3. It's a great narrative for your empire-building as you have to make a choice between harmonizing all the points of view (with Unity) of making sure that everyone's points are aligned (with Influence). It doesn't break any RP or general ethos either, because even such empires as Xenophiles can choce to either tolerate and harmonize xenophobe opposition within their nation or actively suppress it.
4. Implementation would be very simple withing the current game system, we just need to put in a few more disaster events.

What do you think of this?

Personally I'm a little unsure... I love the goal of balancing simplicity and depth in the mechanic's design. And it's definitely great that we would no longer be able to just write factions off. Instead we would have to pay attention to how nicely they're playing with others.

I think I'd have two concerns though:

First, this seems like it's an exclusively punitive mechanic. You would spend tons of unity on a regular basis not to create new options or strategic opportunities, but rather to just prevent disaster. You'd essentially spend the whole game running faster and faster just to stand still.

Second, this feels like it would just be a new series of semi-random pop-up events. Instead of building new mechanics for how your empire looks, plays and feels, you would just get periodic notice that something is happening. This feels very low-interaction. I'm not sure there's much for the player to actually do here.

Idk... I love where your head's at, definitely. But I'm not sure this would be a great fit for me, personally.

 

[Ludaire]

One serious issue is that gestalts don't have factions, so any mechanic based entirely on factions won't affect them at all. Internal politics should leverage factions, sure, but I think the mechanics need to be able to exist without factions so that gestalts can benefit, too. Similar to how happiness feeds into stability and stability (which works for gestalts) is the thing that increases production.

Additionally, I think this goes against the factions' current design. At the moment, only spiritualists actually care whether governing ethics match theirs or not. Other factions only care that the government does what they want, not that they match. It would be frustrating to me if in my fanatic materialist egalitarian empire, I freely allowed xenos, got a xenophile faction, and then they rebelled despite my policies all matching their demands. Additionally, having a tiny faction that's less than 1% of your empire's population suddenly start a huge rebellion doesn't seem fun. It's all but impossible to completely eliminate some factions; for example, even my synthetically ascended technocracies tend to have a miniscule spiritualist faction, mostly from immigration.

So it should be based on happiness and size instead of just governing ethics. Plus, it should feed into a system that works for gestalts instead of it just being factions all the way down.

 

[Aeroclub]

Personally I'm a little unsure... I love the goal of balancing simplicity and depth in the mechanic's design. And it's definitely great that we would no longer be able to just write factions off. Instead we would have to pay attention to how nicely they're playing with others.

I think I'd have two concerns though:

First, this seems like it's an exclusively punitive mechanic. You would spend tons of unity on a regular basis not to create new options or strategic opportunities, but rather to just prevent disaster. You'd essentially spend the whole game running faster and faster just to stand still.

Second, this feels like it would just be a new series of semi-random pop-up events. Instead of building new mechanics for how your empire looks, plays and feels, you would just get periodic notice that something is happening. This feels very low-interaction. I'm not sure there's much for the player to actually do here.

Idk... I love where your head's at, definitely. But I'm not sure this would be a great fit for me, personally.

Yeah that's some great input and the whole reason I started this topic was to see what community think of this and discuss this to make it better.

I understand your concern about "running faster to just stand still", but maybe there are some bonuses that can be added based on the number of non-governing ideologies you have that do not have any ticking disaster? Again, akin to Confucian "harmonization" in EU4. I think narratively it makes sense that the more ideas you have represented and openly voiced in your society, the higher (for example) your research efficiency will be.

On the other hand, the society that has rallied around the few governmental ethics can have some other bonuses, like increased production (because the citizens just focus on their work and don't have to worry about no ideology).

So in the end, you will have a spectrum between a bonus and a disaster, with completely different ways to build your society around them.

 

[Aeroclub]

Other factions only care that the government does what they want, not that they match. It would be frustrating to me if in my fanatic materialist egalitarian empire, I freely allowed xenos, got a xenophile faction, and then they rebelled despite my policies all matching their demands.

I think that's a great idea too...the disasters can be triggered by your doing the opposite of what they want, and a Unity investment can still mitigate that (i.e. make your people stay happy despite the fact that they have ideological disagreements with the direction that you're taking).

Additionally, having a tiny faction that's less than 1% of your empire's population suddenly start a huge rebellion doesn't seem fun.

For sure it should be scaled to their influence.

 

[methegrate]

Yeah that's some great input and the whole reason I started this topic was to see what community think of this and discuss this to make it better.

I understand your concern about "running faster to just stand still", but maybe there are some bonuses that can be added based on the number of non-governing ideologies you have that do not have any ticking disaster? Again, akin to Confucian "harmonization" in EU4. I think narratively it makes sense that the more ideas you have represented and openly voiced in your society, the higher (for example) your research efficiency will be.

On the other hand, the society that has rallied around the few governmental ethics can have some other bonuses, like increased production (because the citizens just focus on their work and don't have to worry about no ideology).

So in the end, you will have a spectrum between a bonus and a disaster, with completely different ways to build your society around them.

Maybe... Although, and this is certainly personal preference, I'm in the camp of people who just don't find bonuses particularly engaging. Getting +5% here or -2.5% there never feels particularly interesting to me.

My instinct would be to make politics a feeder into how happy and stable your pops are. Then I would build game mechanics around those factors. Pops who are members of a faction that is unhappy should, themselves, become unhappy, with consequences that are expressed through game mechanics. Vice versa for pops who are members of politically dominant factions. In a perfect world, it would be great if pops could express their happiness/unhappiness differently based on their ethics. Ideally, having a pissed off bunch of Pacifists move into your empire should feel different than having a group of angry Spiritualists or Egalitarians. But that's tougher to say.

Still, cool ideas all around!

 

[Aeroclub]

Maybe... Although, and this is certainly personal preference, I'm in the camp of people who just don't find bonuses particularly engaging. Getting +5% here or -2.5% there never feels particularly interesting to me.

My instinct would be to make politics a feeder into how happy and stable your pops are. Then I would build game mechanics around those factors. Pops who are members of a faction that is unhappy should, themselves, become unhappy, with consequences that are expressed through game mechanics. Vice versa for pops who are members of politically dominant factions. In a perfect world, it would be great if pops could express their happiness/unhappiness differently based on their ethics. Ideally, having a pissed off bunch of Pacifists move into your empire should feel different than having a group of angry Spiritualists or Egalitarians. But that's tougher to say.

Still, cool ideas all around!

What I'm worried about with this approach though is that a relationship between politics and happiness can only be truly meaningful if you have the tools to manage it at the individual pop level...and that's already a Victoria territory for me

That being said, I think it can be cool if instead of bonuses this can be used to affect stability. As in, either suppressing dissent OR using unity to make your people look beyond their differences will result in a higher stability, while the lack of thereof will provide a stability hit...and if stability becomes more impactful, all the better.

 

[methegrate]

What I'm worried about with this approach though is that a relationship between politics and happiness can only be truly meaningful if you have the tools to manage it at the individual pop level...and that's already a Victoria territory for me

That being said, I think it can be cool if instead of bonuses this can be used to affect stability. As in, either suppressing dissent OR using unity to make your people look beyond their differences will result in a higher stability, while the lack of thereof will provide a stability hit...and if stability becomes more impactful, all the better.

That's very fair, and I think also touches on the sort of big-picture issue that Stellaris still suffers from a lack of direction. In its original incarnation, the game was supposed to be about the pops specifically. The original dev talked about how other games are about the nation (EU) or the leaders (CK), so he wanted this one to be about the people who make up the game. Then they got a dev who wanted Stellaris to be about exploration. He talked about how he wanted Stellaris to be a 4X game with an emphasis on the first "X," the one that other games blow past. Now we have a new team, and while I'm not entirely sure what their design philosophy is, it seems to focus on growth and development. They've built in a lot of mechanics that emphasize leveling and tiers, so that you can take your empire in a direction and see it grow over time.

This isn't meant to be a criticism of any individual team. All of those ideas are great. I would play all of those games! And given that Stellaris has been something of an experiment for Paradox, with all of the problems that you would expect, I can see how each dev saw something that wasn't working, and said, "let's try this."

The trouble is that each of these new directions has been layered on top of mechanics built for the last design philosophy. So now we have sort of a horse designed by committee. There's lots of different mechanics that interact in wonky ways because they were each designed for essentially a different game.

The point of this whole rant is just to say that you make perfect sense. Stellaris as-is makes much less sense for individual-pop level gameplay. But the whole pop mechanic (with individual pops that have their own ethics, needs, etc.) came from a 1.0 design which was specifically supposed to mimic Victoria in that sense.

I feel like they've kind of hit an impasse there. They have a system that doesn't work because they've never finished it. Pops are a huge, complicated part of the game (because they were supposed to be central to the experience). Yet the same system doesn't do anything (because they shifted direction before that gameplay was finished). I keep feeling like it's fish-or-cut-bait time. It's either time to embrace the Vicky of it all and build in real gameplay around autonomous pops, or cut that mechanic entirely and make them the spreadsheet entries they are in every other 4X game.

 

[Aeroclub]

That's very fair, and I think also touches on the sort of big-picture issue that Stellaris still suffers from a lack of direction. In its original incarnation, the game was supposed to be about the pops specifically. The original dev talked about how other games are about the nation (EU) or the leaders (CK), so he wanted this one to be about the people who make up the game. Then they got a dev who wanted Stellaris to be about exploration. He talked about how he wanted Stellaris to be a 4X game with an emphasis on the first "X," the one that other games blow past. Now we have a new team, and while I'm not entirely sure what their design philosophy is, it seems to focus on growth and development. They've built in a lot of mechanics that emphasize leveling and tiers, so that you can take your empire in a direction and see it grow over time.

This isn't meant to be a criticism of any individual team. All of those ideas are great. I would play all of those games! And given that Stellaris has been something of an experiment for Paradox, with all of the problems that you would expect, I can see how each dev saw something that wasn't working, and said, "let's try this."

The trouble is that each of these new directions has been layered on top of mechanics built for the last design philosophy. So now we have sort of a horse designed by committee. There's lots of different mechanics that interact in wonky ways because they were each designed for essentially a different game.

The point of this whole rant is just to say that you make perfect sense. Stellaris as-is makes much less sense for individual-pop level gameplay. But the whole pop mechanic (with individual pops that have their own ethics, needs, etc.) came from a 1.0 design which was specifically supposed to mimic Victoria in that sense.

I feel like they've kind of hit an impasse there. They have a system that doesn't work because they've never finished it. Pops are a huge, complicated part of the game (because they were supposed to be central to the experience). Yet the same system doesn't do anything (because they shifted direction before that gameplay was finished). I keep feeling like it's fish-or-cut-bait time. It's either time to embrace the Vicky of it all and build in real gameplay around autonomous pops, or cut that mechanic entirely and make them the spreadsheet entries they are in every other 4X game.

I agree 100%, yet this appears to be more of a "Stellaris 2" discussion.

One of the fundamental principles that I based my suggestion on was that it was relatively easy/fast to implement while providing a big impact for the feel of the game.

 

[-Marauder-]

Sounds... tedious?

 

[Aeroclub]

Sounds... tedious?

Well, maybe, but I think we all can agree that something has to be done with the stale and irrelevant mechanic of political factions?