The five oppressive edicts: what should be changed?

[Tamwin5]

One potential issue is that +4 Encryption would make the overlap between the population control edicts more problematic. Since the effects from relative encryption cap at +4, getting multiple +4 bonuses would be pointless. Empires would then be encouraged to pick no more than one of these edicts. At least if Encryption remains the main bonus.

It now also just occurred to me that it would be conceptually reasonable for Information Quarantine to also offer an Encryption bonus. If that edict is changed to also include an Encryption bonus, the overlap issue could become even bigger.

The perks overlapping is entirely intentional. One of them requires an ascension path, one of them requires an ascension path, and the last is locked behind two rare technologies (the first of which being Chemical Bliss, which is often skipped, and the second being tier 4 with weight 20). In the early/early mid game, I'd go as far to say that it's more common for an empire to have unlocked none of these than it is for them to have unlocked one or more.

But it is also pretty easy for an empire to stack Codebreaking. Bureau of Espionage (+2), Going Psionic (+2), Subterfuge tree (+2), civic combos (+2 for normal or megacorp), whisperers in the void shroud pact (+2). A psionic empire focused on espionage can get +10 codebreaking. Even using all three edicts in that situation wouldn't be enough to max out relative encryption (although with the +2 encryption from going psionic yourself, it would).

Going full espionage is a bit of a meme (and likely still will be even after it's buffed), and that level of encryption would be gross overkill for any other empire fool enough to attempt infiltration on you. But if a player wants to say "You shall not spy on me", I think they should be able to have that option. More realistically, you would just use one of them to significantly hamper espionage efforts.

Information Quarantine is about inward protection of information, keeping your populace from learning about wrong ways to live their life, not about preventing information from getting out to other empires. While I could see a point of encryption being tacked on, it shouldn't be more than that, and the edict is already very strong so the cost might need to be raised if that was done.

Remember that all three of the -happiness edicts were originally added in the espionage update. Making them not about espionage just feels weird and wrong.

 

[HFY]

One more thought on distinguishing the unloved Edicts:

- Enhanced Surveillance might cost Energy (not Unity). Low cost, small effect (if you can tolerate the -10% happiness).

- Thought Enforcement might be *free*. No cost (if you can tolerate the -% happiness) unless we count Psi Ascension as a cost, and perhaps we should.

- Tracking Implants can remain expensive in Unity and thus be buffed to be the "best" of the oppressive edicts, if you can afford the Unity cost.

 

[PanzerMan7]

The effects should depend on ethics. Authoritarian pops will feel safer and secure from the oppressive edicts, thus being happier. Non authoritarian pops should be angry.

 

[jaketoms16]

I wish Thought Enforcement had a stronger Ethics effect... seems to be the niche use for it (and Spiritualist/Psionic empires may be the only ones who would care much about such things).... +Ethics attractions, +Ethics Change chance... - Happiness ONLY for those not following government ethics?

 

[SEELE 01]

Thought Enforcement requires Psionics. It is literally enforcing thoughts.

Well, maybe they were forced to be happy, having a psionic high all day long and dopamine skyrocketed through the roof

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

One more thought regarding the Enhanced Surveillance edict from the Domination tradition tree:

One reason for making this edict tilt more towards population control, rather than making it primarily an Intelligence edict, is that in the latter case the edict could easily make more sense as an edict locked behind the Subterfuge tradition tree (the Information Security tradition would be a decent fit). As long as the edict is locked behind the Domination tradition tree, its primary benefit should probably be about Domination.

 

[HFY]

As long as the edict is locked behind the Domination tradition tree, its primary benefit should probably be about Domination.

Domination is a mixed bag.

You get +5% to all worker productivity -- not at any penalty, you just get +5%.

You get to clear Blockers faster.

You get increased housing.

You get lower Sprawl from pops.

It's not purely about oppression, though the maximum benefit is locked behind an oppressive Edict.


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Honestly I'd like to see something similar for Subterfuge. Give that Tradition some non-espionage benefits -- perhaps Diplomatic, perhaps warfare-oriented, or even both.

Moving in the Enhanced Surveillance edict could be useful in that regard, but only if the edict were buffed.

And if you're changing the edict, why not just make a new edict (or several) which is strong on its own, and which is applicable in flavor to more than just an oppressive regime?


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Right to Privacy (Edict): 10 base Unity, +10% happiness, +1 Encryption, +1 TV from Clerks, +50% political power to specialists and workers -- This society has embraced cryptographic technology to enhance identity and secure anonymity, and facilitate both mercantile and political communications.

Biometric Transactions (Campaign): 30 base Energy, +50% enemy espionage cost, +1 Encryption, +5 amenities from Medics -- This society has decided that the individual's genome or other biometric data is better than any password, and now requires the equivalent of medical equipment for many important transactions. This has a side-effect of making medical data easily available for institutions which safeguard citizen health.

Autonomous Agent Matrix (Edict): 30 base Unity, +20% TV, +1 Codebreaking, -1 Encryption, +50% specialist political power -- This empire allows privately-owned autonomous "agent" programs to act on behalf of its wealthier citizens, increasing GDP at the cost of some control.

Stuff like that could go in Subterfuge. Not strictly Espionage, but related enough IMHO.

 

[Ikael]

One more thought regarding the Enhanced Surveillance edict from the Domination tradition tree:

One reason for making this edict tilt more towards population control, rather than making it primarily an Intelligence edict, is that in the latter case the edict could easily make more sense as an edict locked behind the Subterfuge tradition tree (the Information Security tradition would be a decent fit). As long as the edict is locked behind the Domination tradition tree, its primary benefit should probably be about Domination.

While I don't necessarily agree with the rationale (Domination is a deliberately vague term that can encompass almost everything authoritarian-y), as long as each oppressive edict gets different from each other and specializes in a different niche (anti-crime, intelligence & societal cohesion), I would be fine with them. I just don't like when game elements overlap or become slightly different dressings of the same mechanic.

 

[MathyM]

Honestly I'd like to see something similar for Subterfuge. Give that Tradition some non-espionage benefits -- perhaps Diplomatic, perhaps warfare-oriented, or even both..

Well, it has +10 Tracking and +5 Chance to Evade right now, so it does yield some benefits to warfare.

 

[HFY]

Well, it has +10 Tracking and +5 Chance to Evade right now, so it does yield some benefit to warfare.

That's technically true, but IMHO it's not much.

Is it sufficient for you to justify taking the Tradition?

 

[MathyM]

That's technically true, but IMHO it's not much.

Is it sufficient for you to justify taking the Tradition?

It could be better than Supremacy and I still wouldn’t take it solely out of spite for Espionage.

 

[Tamwin5]

While I don't necessarily agree with the rationale (Domination is a deliberately vague term that can encompass almost everything authoritarian-y), as long as each oppressive edict gets different from each other and specializes in a different niche (anti-crime, intelligence & societal cohesion), I would be fine with them. I just don't like when game elements overlap or become slightly different dressings of the same mechanic.

While I’m in general a fan of giving unique specialties to different things, in this instance I don’t think it quite works. The main reason for that is that all of these operations are somewhat difficult to gain access to. You need a tradition, an ascension perk, and a tier four rare tech locked behind another (normally skipped) rare tech respectively.

Now, I’d like for espionage to be an actually useful tool. Part of making a balanced improved espionage system is giving tools to the defender. It’s fine if those tools aren’t immediately available, but they need to BE available.

So it’s less about giving the player three buttons with similar effects, and more giving the player three paths to similar buttons. Very few players will have access to all three.

My opinion is that all three edicts should keep the -10 happiness and give encryption (imo, buffed to +4). If you can specialize the edicts with just the ancillary bonus then go for it, but there isn’t a lot of room both in terms of power level and lines of text.

 

[Ikael]

While I’m in general a fan of giving unique specialties to different things, in this instance I don’t think it quite works. The main reason for that is that all of these operations are somewhat difficult to gain access to. You need a tradition, an ascension perk, and a tier four rare tech locked behind another (normally skipped) rare tech respectively.

Now, I’d like for espionage to be an actually useful tool. Part of making a balanced improved espionage system is giving tools to the defender. It’s fine if those tools aren’t immediately available, but they need to BE available.

So it’s less about giving the player three buttons with similar effects, and more giving the player three paths to similar buttons. Very few players will have access to all three.

My opinion is that all three edicts should keep the -10 happiness and give encryption (imo, buffed to +4). If you can specialize the edicts with just the ancillary bonus then go for it, but there isn’t a lot of room both in terms of power level and lines of text.

If at some point espionage is going to be legitimately threatening, then make the most "essential" edict (that is, the encryption-providing one) to be gated just by a (non-rare) tech, which is a way to ensure that every empire will end up getting it, sooner or later. As for the other edicts, I am ok with not every empire having its own anti-espionage edict. Not to mention that there are other alternative ways to tackle those problems other than oppressive edicts. there is no need to duplicate their effects: you can combat crime with enforcers, get empire ethic attraction with happiness, or get espionage buffs with the subterfuge traditions.

 

[Tamwin5]

If at some point espionage is going to be legitimately threatening, then make the most "essential" edict (that is, the encryption-providing one) to be gated just by a (non-rare) tech, which is a way to ensure that every empire will end up getting it, sooner or later. As for the other edicts, I am ok with not every empire having its own anti-espionage edict. Not to mention that there are other alternative ways to tackle those problems other than oppressive edicts. there is no need to duplicate their effects: you can combat crime with enforcers, get empire ethic attraction with happiness, or get espionage buffs with the subterfuge traditions.

Ah yes, Subterfuge, granting a grand total of +1 encryption and +1 operation difficulty. Completely countered by +2 codebreaking from the Bureau of Espionage edict that every empire gets access to.

There are very few ways to increase encryption currently, and that's part of the problem. You get +2 from Transcendence and Enigmatic Engineering each, +1 from the three edicts discussed, +1 from subterfuge, and really that's it. Inward perfection gives +1, but you can't swap to that. The Imperial Security Directorate resolution gives +4 (along with +2 codebreaking), but that's very late game and if you are emperor you've already basically won.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Ah yes, Subterfuge, granting a grand total of +1 encryption and +1 operation difficulty. Completely countered by +2 codebreaking from the Bureau of Espionage edict that every empire gets access to.

There are very few ways to increase encryption currently, and that's part of the problem. You get +2 from Transcendence and Enigmatic Engineering each, +1 from the three edicts discussed, +1 from subterfuge, and really that's it. Inward perfection gives +1, but you can't swap to that. The Imperial Security Directorate resolution gives +4 (along with +2 codebreaking), but that's very late game and if you are emperor you've already basically won.

Shameless suggestion link drops:
Isolationist diplomatic stance should give +1 Encryption, -1 Codebreaking
Shadow Council should add +1 Encryption

As for these edicts, I am more open to +2 (as long as they are made more unique in other regards). Even if we presume that thse edicts will rarely all be used together at the same time, +4 is still a massive bonus that could smother the value of other sources of Encryption bonuses (by raising Encryption so high that the Relative Encryption cap of 4 is exceeded). Much less risk of that with +2, and it would also be easier to justify other benefits from these edicts.

 

[Ludaire]

There's something quite poetic about oppressive policies being a net negative even from a strictly pragmatic perspective.

Small balance oversight that needs correction or principled narrative told through game mechanics that should be lauded?

 

[Tamwin5]

Shameless suggestion link drops:
Isolationist diplomatic stance should give +1 Encryption, -1 Codebreaking
Shadow Council should add +1 Encryption

As for these edicts, I am more open to +2 (as long as they are made more unique in other regards). Even if we presume that thse edicts will rarely all be used together at the same time, +4 is still a massive bonus that could smother the value of other sources of Encryption bonuses (by raising Encryption so high that the Relative Encryption cap of 4 is exceeded). Much less risk of that with +2, and it would also be easier to justify other benefits from these edicts.

Shameless links shamelessly upvoted

Considering the -10% happiness associated with these edicts, they are a very significant negative to your empire. People will only use them if they NEED to stop espionage against them. It is also much easier to gain encryption than decryption. It’s less about smothering other encryption bonuses (which would still be valuable for not taking 10% happiness as part of their protection), and more about needing to smother the significant amount of code breaking that an aggressor can have. An espionage focused empire can have +10 codebreaking (+2 from civics, +2 from subterfuge, +2 from edict, +2 from psionic, +2 from shroud pact), more if they get an event giving an empire modifier (rock brain, mycelial network, found encryption key) or are up a level on tech.

If these edicts only gave +2, then the most a maximum encryption focused empire could reach would be +12 (+1 inward perfection, +1 subterfuge, +2 enigmatic engineering, +2 psionic, +6 edicts). While this is more than the codebreaking above, it’s running -30% happiness and still can’t max out espionage defenses. My philosophy on espionage is that the defender should always be able to ‘win’ if they want/need to, it just requires significant investment or cost. If an empire is willing to tank their empires happiness (and thus production, crime, ethics attraction, etc), they should be able to shut down espionage against them. Dropping the encryption bonus prevents that from being achievable.

But there are other ways to have anti-espionage effects beyond just encryption. Decreased hostile infiltration gain, increased hostile operation difficulty, reduced hostile infiltration cap, increased hostile operation influence cost, increased hostile operation infiltration cost.

I’m disinclined to add these effects. Encryption is generally more powerful; the first three are just the main components of encryption split apart. But if you are capped out in encryption against an empire, that should be enough. You shouldn’t need to then stack more bonuses on top of that. So splitting the bonus into part encryption and part one of these makes you better against everyone who doesn’t matter, and worse* against the empires with high codebreaking; the empires probably causing the problems in the first place. So while I could see giving one of those effects as an ancillary bonus (probably to enhanced surveillance to replace the random +1 envoy), I do think that high encryption should be the main bonus.

*subject to exact numbers, ofc. +10 hostile operation difficulty will obviously be better than +1 encryption. But many espionage events are specifically about relative encryption to codebreaking, so even giving +1 hostile operation difficulty, -10 hostile max infiltration, and -10% hostile infiltration gain isn’t as good as +1 encryption.

 

[Ikael]

Ah yes, Subterfuge, granting a grand total of +1 encryption and +1 operation difficulty. Completely countered by +2 codebreaking from the Bureau of Espionage edict that every empire gets access to.

There are very few ways to increase encryption currently, and that's part of the problem. You get +2 from Transcendence and Enigmatic Engineering each, +1 from the three edicts discussed, +1 from subterfuge, and really that's it. Inward perfection gives +1, but you can't swap to that. The Imperial Security Directorate resolution gives +4 (along with +2 codebreaking), but that's very late game and if you are emperor you've already basically won.

I am quite in favor of increasing the encryption edict bonuses, but I am not in favor of replicating the same effects along 3 carbon copy edicts. I would much rather if one of them would get the bulk of encryption bonuses (+4 as you suggest), making it "the internal security edict" rather than having all of them spread out and leading to... sameness.

 

[Tamwin5]

I am quite in favor of increasing the encryption edict bonuses, but I am not in favor of replicating the same effects along 3 carbon copy edicts. I would much rather if one of them would get the bulk of encryption bonuses (+4 as you suggest), making it "the internal security edict" rather than having all of them spread out and leading to... sameness.

I covered this in some of my later comments, but it's very unlikely for an empire to have all three, and very possible for a midgame empire to have none of them. It's less the same button three times, and more three paths to the same button. If you wanted to only have a single one be "the internal security edict", then it would have to be a completely different one that's unlocked by a common technology (say, the first +2 encryption one) or maybe the subterfuge tradition. Furthermore, +4 codebreaking alone isn't enough to fully shut down an espionage focused empire: you need the full +12 from edicts, plus an extra +2 from transcendence, to accomplish that.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I covered this in some of my later comments, but it's very unlikely for an empire to have all three, and very possible for a midgame empire to have none of them. It's less the same button three times, and more three paths to the same button. If you wanted to only have a single one be "the internal security edict", then it would have to be a completely different one that's unlocked by a common technology (say, the first +2 encryption one) or maybe the subterfuge tradition. Furthermore, +4 codebreaking alone isn't enough to fully shut down an espionage focused empire: you need the full +12 from edicts, plus an extra +2 from transcendence, to accomplish that.

Tracking Implants?
While it is technically a level 4 rare technology gated behind another rare technology, at least the predecessor technology feels like I draw it "all the time".