Having played a couple of games with MegaCorp now, I'm realising more and more a weak spot in all Paradox games; they are too realistic. Of course, I mean this in the light of the political science theory where states are the dominant actors on the international stage and there is little space for any others. Stellaris is just like this: 99% of the interaction the player has is with other empires (traders and artists are an exception). Moreover, our own empire is just one actor. There is little to no internal conflict even if your empire spans half of the galaxy.
What we need are independent actors within our empire, challenging the player or nudging them in a certain way.
Some other examples of this could be:
- factions giving you missions to accomplish
- sectors building their own fleets if you let the reigns go too much (including dragging you into a war with your neighbours)
- a senate ordering you to do things, or forbidding them if you're a democracy (of course, this should come with a copy of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent in order to learn how to play these upstarts like a pair of bongos)
- MegaCorps that are actually trading in other empires and drag you into conflicts over trade rights, embargoes, and tax. Or even demand the right to arm themselves to intervene in an empire that is trying to tax them.
The bottom line of my argument is that the player is never dragged into a certain direction by the game, you either declare war yourself on a weak neighbour, or a strong neighbour wants your real estate, crushes you and it's basically game over. There is no need of preparing your empire politically or having to react to warmongering cries from parts of your population.
An even more striking example is the ascension perks; the player decides what path their society follows. He presses two buttons and suddenly everyone follows the selected path without struggle or conflict. Religious pops don't rebel or ask for help when they are forcefully upgraded to cyborgs, nor do my spiritual neighbours intervene or set an ultimatum to protect certain populations from being upgraded.
etc.
To sum up, we need the game to tell better stories and one way would be to create extra internal struggles.
What we need are independent actors within our empire, challenging the player or nudging them in a certain way.
Some other examples of this could be:
- factions giving you missions to accomplish
- sectors building their own fleets if you let the reigns go too much (including dragging you into a war with your neighbours)
- a senate ordering you to do things, or forbidding them if you're a democracy (of course, this should come with a copy of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent in order to learn how to play these upstarts like a pair of bongos)
- MegaCorps that are actually trading in other empires and drag you into conflicts over trade rights, embargoes, and tax. Or even demand the right to arm themselves to intervene in an empire that is trying to tax them.
The bottom line of my argument is that the player is never dragged into a certain direction by the game, you either declare war yourself on a weak neighbour, or a strong neighbour wants your real estate, crushes you and it's basically game over. There is no need of preparing your empire politically or having to react to warmongering cries from parts of your population.
An even more striking example is the ascension perks; the player decides what path their society follows. He presses two buttons and suddenly everyone follows the selected path without struggle or conflict. Religious pops don't rebel or ask for help when they are forcefully upgraded to cyborgs, nor do my spiritual neighbours intervene or set an ultimatum to protect certain populations from being upgraded.
etc.
To sum up, we need the game to tell better stories and one way would be to create extra internal struggles.
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