Post by: bvanevery on April 06, 2018, 12:53:59 AM
This makes me think that the social engineering model is the core of meaningful choice, in a game of long historical duration like SMAC. So I find myself contemplating whether the social choices are adequate as is, or whether they could be improved.
Growth bugs me. I've studied UN population data, to try to figure out when Earth is going to be up to its neck in people. Long story short, I think we've got 500 years. Industrial democracies do not stimulate growth. They cause a reduction in population growth rate. All the UN data says so. People seek education, take demanding complex jobs for more money, put off having kids until later, and have fewer kids. It's the back-asswards agrarian societies that breed like rabbits. There, having more kids is like a kind of human capital. Minions to work your farm. They also just don't have birth control, or sometimes even education about sex. They have rapes when women go out to collect firewood.
Maybe Frontier or Survival societies should be the ones with increased Growth rates.
I think a Police State should decrease Growth, if anything. If people don't feel basically safe, I'm betting they don't breed as much. I guess that calls into question whether Police State = Unsafe. China is a police state, they've got gazonkers people.
A Fundamentalist state might increase Growth. Be fruitful and multiply! The cult demands new children to indoctrinate. I think it would have been accurate to call the Nazis a Fundamentalist state, as well as a Police state. That's another big problem with the realism of the game, the artificial distinction between a Police State and a Fundamentalist state. I've never heard of a Fundamentalist state that wasn't also a police state. Think of the Taliban, ISIS, or the Ayatollah Khomeni.
Democracy wouldn't increase Growth. A Free Market should decrease Growth but raise Economy. Also I think the idea that Free Markets are anti-police is complete bollocks. How many shootings have I read of blacks by police in the past 2 weeks, both nationally in the USA, and locally in Winston-Salem NC? Well, a lot. I'm thinking it's Democracy which is a bit anti-police. At least, you don't get to do Police State stuff, if that's what we're defining as "police".
What would be the point of retooling these social choices with more realism? It may end up that some social engineering choices, have clear advantages over others. But we still have the ideological tension in the game that some factions cannot choose those things, and will declare war on those who do. Now, if only we had an AI threatening enough to make good on war. For an experienced player at least, the predilections of most factions, you could just blow off.
Post by: bvanevery on April 07, 2018, 03:00:12 AM
growth mod |
I've started modding. I've been at it for a few hours, tweaking the settings this way and that. One dimension of a mod job I hadn't previously considered, is whether the entries in the Social Engineering screen "look substantive" or not. I tried to juggle Support into other categories, for instance, but it ended up making Police State and Democracy look a bit thin. Democracy in my current rendition still looks thin, but I think it has important game mechanical consequences to leave it that way. Other thinness problems, I solved by going back to the default design.
For those that don't automatically get it, here's the growth philosophy. Real world evidence is that Democracies and Police States do not change people's basic birth rate. Look at the USA and China. Plenty of people, and it's because they already had plenty of people. The USA has less people than China because it was settled by white people much later in history. The indigenous people walked or boated from various directions, and they were about 10,000 years behind the Old World as far as getting a population going. Or anything else for that matter, like techs. USA population swelled up from Old World immigration for awhile. Then laws ended that, and we only get large influxes from people who can actually walk here.
Fundamentalists, on the other hand, do have credos that up birth rates. Look at Mormon families. Look at Islamic extended families. Now, I'm not entirely sure if my statement here is evidence driven, but I'm running with it for now. Fundamentalists are the population booming social choice. What's gonna happen, is they're gonna get up to their ass in people, who are then going to be unhappy. Then they're not going to like Fundamentalism anymore, and they're gonna go Democratic. Which is how I expect it'll actually turn out for all those Islamorepublics out there. We've sorta seen half of that with the Arab Spring.
The other major point is that industrial wealth-driven societies lower population growth. That's evidence driven, all the UN data says so. Women end up with something to do other than sit around getting knocked up and having the men boss them around. They get careers. They have babies later in life, or not at all. Families have less children because they're an expense, not an asset like in an agrarian society.
While I was at it, I've always found the Free Market -5 Police penalty to be rather obnoxious and over-the-top. Ever heard of Haliburton? Private security contractors? -3 means that you get to use one military unit per city without penalty. The other part of the Police penalty is shifted to Democracy and to Wealth. So if you go Democratic Free Market Wealth, you've got -5 Police, same as what a Free Market in a standard game would be like. I don't think the idea of having 2 drones per military unit "out on campaign" is bad, I just don't think it should all be due to having a Free Market. What would the USA do? Draft everyone and send them off to Vietnam.
Note that the Pirates end up with a NEAR ZERO-POPULATION GROWTH penalty with this mod. I checked their actual population growth and it isn't near zero though. It could be that Children's Creches keep that from being a problem, as do cities in a Golden Age. I'm a little unclear on the upward portion of city growth. Maybe I've been experiencing Population Booms in many games and didn't realize it was happening? I always thought I needed The Cloning Vats for that, but the wiki section says I just need a a +2 Growth social choice, a Creche, and to keep a Golden Age going.
I have toyed with moving part of the Police State SUPPORT bonus to Planned instead. And not having Growth be part of Planned, or lessening it. But I'm worrying a bit about how one achieves the high end of the Growth rating. The dynamic ranges aren't equal, with tiers going to +6 on the positive side, but to -3 on the negative side. Taking the +2 Growth out of Democratic makes it hard to reach the upper tiers.
Post by: bvanevery on April 07, 2018, 07:10:50 AM
realism mod |
Here is another attempt. This one accepts that it won't be easy to get a lot of Growth. Population boom becomes hard to achieve. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. One would need to make use of a Children's Creche and allocate enough of a Psych budget to keep a Golden Age going for a bit. It makes The Cloning Vats and Eudaimonia more valuable.
Support is more fine tuned. +3 Support is actually all you need to get all the benefits possible. There's not really a way to make Support choices go into the negative, unless your faction has that liability to begin with. That's just Morgan, and he's definitely got the most crippling penalty of any faction IMO. Well, ok, technically Thought Control can make you go negative on Support. But it's very late game, and who gains that without also building The Cloning Vats? In single player at least, pretty much you're going to get that anyways. Thought Control also provides pretty useless benefits in Single Player, because by then you've probably got The Cyborg Factory and advanced weaponry that totally blows your opponents to smithereens.
Fundamentalism is now a bit more attractive. Instead of just being a research cripple with a marginal military advantage, you've got one of the rare ways to increase your population. Islamic extended family will prevail! Go Mormons!
Police State doesn't give you as much stuff, but also doesn't penalize you as much. This makes it easier to choose to be a Police State. I mean really, the Nazis weren't so bad at this stuff. Neither were the Soviets, at least militarily. It's their collectivism and 5 year plans that really got them into trouble. The Nazis didn't do that, so you could think of Nazis as Police State Free Market Power, sort of. Well, maybe not, as that's a net Police of 0. Kinda hard to model Fascism with these options.
In this mode, I'd feel obliged to give Yang +1 Police. Santiago gets that, and I just can't abide Santiago being inherently more Gestapo than Yang. The idea is it should be pretty easy for Yang to get to his traditional +2 Police rating.
Green, I've changed from "capturing mindworms" to an actual business model. That's more like what we think of when we say "Green" today. The so-called Green economy that some pundits say will create all these new futuristic jobs, and conservative Free Market pundits say doesn't work, is a distortion of the market by government interference, etc. A company at the forefront of these questions would be Tesla. If we had much better battery capacity, going Green would be much more of a no-brainer.
The best mindworm capture is at merely +3 Planet. I'm not convinced Deirdre should automatically get that, just for going Green. +2 is still pretty good, and I've never been sure of greater advantages than that, playing various factions. Sometimes I think I can't capture a sloth! So, you could be Deirdre controlling The Manifold Nexus, or Cha Dawn just going Green, which seems like a reasonable distinction between the 2 of them. Cha Dawn also kinda sucks, hardly ever builds Secret Projects, so I won't feel bad if I've subverted his "no Wealth" limitation by throwing some cash his way.
Post by: bvanevery on April 08, 2018, 06:23:53 PM
population weapon |
In this version, Fundamentalists aren't thought to be any better at fighting. Evidence in Iran and Iraq is they're better at dying. What Fundamentalists get instead, is a population weapon that nobody else has. Well except for Faction bonuses, of course. I suppose Miriam would need to be Fundamentalist Planned Survival to get +3 Growth, accepting a -2 Efficiency to do so. A Children's Creche would put her to +5 Growth in a given city. Hmm, I'm thinking her faction needs +1 Growth to get that up to +6 in a city, triggering a population boom. It would be hard to sustain a Golden Age with only 1 Police and -2 Efficiency, and she does have "lotsa followers" after all.
Wealth driven societies are also not thought to be bad at combat, they just complain about it a lot. Look at the USA! Santiago and Svensgaard will still complain bitterly about anyone who isn't spitting on their boots to polish them and yelling "Yes sir!" If you're not sporting the double eagles, you're a wimp.
Post by: bvanevery on April 08, 2018, 06:45:07 PM
be fruitful and multiply |
Miriam gets 'em when they're young.
growing and knowing |
A spread of her with +4 Growth. I also made her Reserch penalty not quite as bad, primarily so it will fit in her faction modifiers window better. It looks really awful when there are 2 research penalty icons in there. It's primarily an aesthetic decision, but I rationalize it by saying I took 1 of her Supports away as overpowered. Also she won't be getting any +1 Morale bonus if she goes Fundamentalist. I'm not sure that being able to grow better makes up for that. Anyways I think the game would be more challenging against the Believers if she wasn't quite as retarded at tech. Narratively I think it also works better. She's got an awful lot of quotes in the tech tree and doesn't come across as a complete dummy to me. If she can deliver High Energy Chemistry how much of a Luddite can she really be?
Post by: vonbach on April 08, 2018, 06:55:32 PM
Frontier +Growth
Police State ++Police ++Support +Growth
Democracy ++Effic ++Growth - Support
Nationalism +Morale ++Growth +Police
Frontier +Effic
Free Market ++Economy --Planet (This is another one I'd like to change. Both the name and the effects. Maybe to something like Capitalist +Effic +Economy)
Directed ++Growth +Industry
Green ++Planet ++ Effic +Growth (I'm probably going to change this one)
Simple +Morale
Power ++Support ++Probe ++Morale --Planet
Eugenics +Effic +Research --Probe
Wealth +industry +Economy -Support
Cybernetic ++Planet ++Research ++effic --Probe
Eudainomic No changes
Thought control ++Police ++Morale ++Probe -Growth
I buffed the believers a long time ago +Growth ++Support ++Morale, fanatic, techsteal and Immune to mind control I think. Oh and a -research.
Miriam was made to be a parody for atheists to laugh at. She's the "church lady" from Saturday night live. The game is notedly hostile to religion actually.
Post by: bvanevery on April 09, 2018, 02:27:22 AM
Realism is always going to have problems on close inspection, but I think things can be improved over the default vanilla. When realism can't be addressed, I am conscious of preserving the narrative of the game.
Your own objections, in particular, have made me think of a "less cartoon character" interpretation of Miriam's religious belief. She actually doesn't come across in any of the voiced quotes or videos as an Evangelical Yahoo anyways. I'm an atheist, but I have no axe to grind against religion per se, only what people do with it. I have a conservative Christian friend of mine, and although we definitely don't agree on some rather important things (i.e. homosexuality), I wince at the idea of cartooning him. I have a Pentecostal brother in law who was actually improved by that, it made him a better man. Sure I don't buy it, but "the religion" and "the person practicing the religion" are distinct things. He is too much of an inherently good person to begin with, to be ruined by any indoctrination. Even if Pentecostals on superficial inspection might be a little on the yahoo side of things.
I often play Miriam as Democratic. It sometimes bothers me that certain faction leaders can't be thought of as something other than their stereotypes.
The realism I'm trying to implement, is Europe is up to its ass in Muslims now. Whether that's a good, a bad, or a neutral thing, I leave to other people's opinion making. But it is definitely a mass phenomenon and I don't think it was happening in the time SMAC was made. Yes the Civ franchise had Fundamentalism all the way back, and Radical Islam was cartooned. The "yi yi yi yi yi!" stuff in Civ II: TOT is priceless, it's totally unsympathetic. I like the idea of someone actually having a "population bomb" compared to others in this game. It remains to be seen whether the rule changes I've made, actually implement that.
I'm also just irritated that anyone thinks industrial democracy does something other than lower birth rates. It's stupid.
Post by: vonbach on April 09, 2018, 03:55:34 AM
Quote
You can add bonuses and penalties to the base category? Coulda sworn when I tried that, I got an error about an invalid key. I will try again. I had wanted to implement one of the base categories, like Frontier or Survival, as having a higher reproductive rate until a more advanced social form was taken.Sure you just have to be careful of the spacing. The Alphax is touchy but you can mod it in many ways, same with the faction files.
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When realism can't be addressed, I am conscious of preserving the narrative of the game.
I modded the game the way I did so I could preserve gameplay narrative. The problem with realism is it
would leave some choices simply unused. I've made extensive changes in the past but it can mess with the AI.
Thats why I kept it similar to the original.
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The realism I'm trying to implement, is Europe is up to its ass in Muslims now. Whether that's a good, a bad, or a neutral thing, I leave to other people's opinion making. But it is definitely a mass phenomenon and I don't think it was happening in the time SMAC was made.Its the rough equivalent to simply marching into cities and taking them over with unlimited money and probe teams.
Post by: bvanevery on April 09, 2018, 06:42:12 AM
Its the rough equivalent to simply marching into cities and taking them over with unlimited money and probe teams.
Hmm I don't think so. War refugees, economic refugees, and economic opportunists, are simply an undirected mass swarming into Europe for a better life. Much is made of source governments trying to create conditions to move people this way and destabilize Europe, but the falseness of the narrative is, Europe does far better than the [poop]holes these people are leaving from. It is obvious to any self-interested person what they should be doing in such circumstances.
This is easy to see from a US perspective on immigration. People flee Mexico because it is a [poop]hole; they can do much better here. Until they can't, which did briefly happen here during our Recession. Mexicans and OTMs went home for awhile. Couldn't make the money here.
No nefarious foreign entity is destabilizing the USA by these movements. It is simple economic reality. The USA also wants this cheap exploitable labor pool. It grows you lettuce and asparagus. I worked a Property Rights ballot initiative in WA state a number of years ago. I got told point blank by a 60+ year old farmer in Wenatchee, he hadn't seen a white person work the fields in 60 years. I suspend judgment that it may happen somewhere, some time, but if he hasn't seen it, that's a data point and the truth of it has to be taken at face value. The fields are picked by Mexicans and OTMs.
I guess strictly speaking in a game sense you're right though. The game has no way to model a giant influx of poor people into your society. If someone in the game is the USA, the Believers can compete by becoming some kind of gigantic Brazil and then making tanks to invade with. That teeming mass of humanity doesn't actually get sent over as the weapon itself.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 09, 2018, 06:47:48 AM
Post by: vonbach on April 09, 2018, 07:18:57 AM
Its the rough equivalent to simply marching into cities and taking them over with unlimited money and probe teams.That teeming mass of humanity doesn't actually get sent over as the weapon itself.
That is exactly what is happening actually. Its genocide.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 09, 2018, 02:21:29 PM
Post by: bvanevery on April 09, 2018, 06:12:19 PM
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Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2[4]
That's not "war refugees, economic refugees, and economic opportunists". To model those, I'm wondering if one could create a kind of Specialist that has negative economic consequences, and cannot easily be gotten rid of. There are of course sticky wickets as to just how much good or bad they should do. Illegal immigrants are growing your lettuce in the USA, after all.
Another modeling problem, is how populations would be transferred from one faction to another. Do they create a kind of colony pod in their home cities, decreasing population over there, walk over the border, and create an "immigrant specialist" in a new city?
While we're at it, revolts are kinda weird in SMAC. You simply cannot put a modern US city into revolt, for instance. It's not going to join Canada or China or any other nation. SMAC doesn't have any model for how strong a central government has to be, to be immune to revolts. Civ II actually had it closer to correct: if you were under a Democracy, your cities could not revolt. In SMAC, a faction has to be sufficiently Fundamentalist to be immune to revolts, and that doesn't really make any sense. It should have to do with how egregiously unhappy the citizens are, and what the central government is going to do to them if they express unhappiness. North Korea isn't going to have cities going into revolt either.
Post by: Fibonacci on April 13, 2018, 07:57:11 PM
Binary Dawn Social Engineering choices window |
Have you looked into adjusting the starting social engineering choices as well? Binary Dawn, http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=19644.0 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=19644.0), has some good examples of what you can change.
Post by: bvanevery on April 13, 2018, 09:48:46 PM
Part of me thinks a mod manager is needed.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 13, 2018, 10:03:35 PM
Yah. BD is just a .txt mod, IIRC - based on SMAniaC.
Post by: bvanevery on April 13, 2018, 10:30:34 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 13, 2018, 10:42:29 PM
Post by: bvanevery on April 13, 2018, 10:51:16 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 13, 2018, 10:55:29 PM
Post by: Fibonacci on April 14, 2018, 12:18:19 AM
The bit that got changed in alphax.txt:
Code: [Select]
#SOCIO
ECONOMY, EFFIC, SUPPORT, TALENT, MORALE, POLICE, GROWTH, PLANET, PROBE, INDUSTRY, RESEARCH
ECONOMY, EFFIC, SUPPORT, TALENT, MORALE, POLICE, GROWTH, PLANET, PROBE, INDUSTRY, RESEARCH
Politics, Economics, Values, Society
Freehold, None, +ECONOMY, -GROWTH, --RESEARCH
Democracy, AdapEco, ++GROWTH, ++EFFIC, --SUPPORT
Police State, DocLoy, ++SUPPORT, ++POLICE, --EFFIC
Fundamentalist, Brain, ++PROBE, +MORALE, +TALENT, --RESEARCH
Subsistence, None, +GROWTH, -PLANET
Free Market, IndAuto, ++ECONOMY, --PLANET, -----POLICE
Planned, Algor, ++GROWTH, +INDUSTRY, --EFFIC
Green, CentEmp, ++PLANET, ++EFFIC, --GROWTH
Knowledge, None, ++RESEARCH, +EFFIC, --PROBE
Power, Neural, ++SUPPORT, ++MORALE, -INDUSTRY
Empathy, Integ, ++TALENT, +PLANET, --POLICE
Wealth, Subat, +INDUSTRY, +ECONOMY, --MORALE
Conservative, None, +TALENT
Cybernetic, NanEdit, ++EFFIC, ++PLANET, ++RESEARCH, ---POLICE
Psionic, WillPow, ++POLICE, ++MORALE, ++PROBE, --SUPPORT
Oviparous, EcoEng2, ++GROWTH, ++ECONOMY, +INDUSTRY, ---RESEARCH
Modding SMAC instead would go in alpha.txt, right?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 14, 2018, 12:47:12 AM
Post by: Fibonacci on April 14, 2018, 01:05:42 AM
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2018, 01:40:55 AM
One of my mods is to remove The Human Genome Project from Biogenetics, and put it later into Gene Splicing, since it is a powerful SP to have all game. I remove Recycling Tanks from Biogenetics because they have nothing whatsoever to do with the stated subject matter. It is an industrial practice, so I've made them available with Industrial Base. This leaves me with a completely empty Biogenetics, so what do I put there instead? Bio labs, stolen from Centauri Empathy. Now this becomes a pure research tech, meaning it is only good for getting more research faster, if you leave aside the alien lifecycle bonus. This is what Discover oriented research should really look like. When informing the AIs what to research, I suppose I will have to make it a Discover 4, Explore 2 tech, due to the lifecycle bonus of the Labs.
I'm not sure if I should also make it a Conquer 1. I'm thinking not. All captive bred lifeforms are useful for conquering, but if we regard them all that way, the Explore tech tree almost doesn't exist. By comparison, foils have to be a Conquer tech, because you get seaborne artillery that way.
Post by: Fibonacci on April 15, 2018, 12:57:47 AM
Quote
I have often been asked: if we have traveled between the stars, why can we not launch the simplest of orbital probes? These fools fail to understand the difficulty of finding the appropriate materials on this Planet, of developing adequate power supplies, and creating the infrastructure necessary to support such an effort. In short, we have struggled under the limitations of a colonial society on a virgin planet. Until now.;santi; Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
Spacefaring nations know about spacefaring as well...
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein, explores a few ideas about societies' expanding into as well as over the surface of the Moon. Air circulation, ice farming, waste collection, food production, etc. And in his typical way, he also explores variations on family structure due to the huge imbalance between the male and female populations on the Lunar prison colony.
I wonder if AI Morgan is smart enough to rush purchase the recycling tanks with them attached to Industrial Base. Any of the base facilities that changes the growth rate by increasing nutrient "income" is fair game for retuning.
I know you talk about playing blind research most of the time, but if your mod just happens to make directed research more interesting than choosing between Secrets of the Human Brain, Industrial Automation, or Intellectual Integrity I'd be most pleased. The techs descending from Doctrine: Mobility, Applied Physics, Social Psych, and Progenitor Psych all feel useful... later... unless you're on a small map. Your adjustments to Biogenetics and Industrial Base both look good. I wonder whether Doctrine: Mobility can swipe the land transport module from Doctrine: Flexibility without the Aquatic version by tacking on a premade Truck unit (speaking of things they should already know about, getting into and out of vehicles should be one of those things, not just being born/manufactured into one and being stuck in it).
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2018, 01:19:28 AM
Spacefaring nations know about spacefaring as well...
Look Industrial Base will get you plumbing.
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I know you talk about playing blind research most of the time, but if your mod just happens to make directed research more interesting than choosing between Secrets of the Human Brain, Industrial Automation, or Intellectual Integrity I'd be most pleased.
I've changed so many things around that at this point, "who can say?" I'm not entirely clear on whether those AI weights are simply for AI benefit, or also define the degree to which a tech is a member of {Explore Discover Build Conquer}. I do know that the dominant AI number for it, defines which primary category it's in.
Quote
I wonder whether Doctrine: Mobility can swipe the land transport module from Doctrine: Flexibility without the Aquatic version by tacking on a premade Truck unit (speaking of things they should already know about, getting into and out of vehicles should be one of those things, not just being born/manufactured into one and being stuck in it).
Why wouldn't you just change the tech prereq in the following line to whatever you want? It's a "weapons" module.
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Troop Transport, Transport, 0, 7, 4, -1, DocFlex,
As for premade trucks, I'm concerned that the AI will have no idea how to use them.
Post by: Fibonacci on April 15, 2018, 05:14:12 PM
At some point the quest for realism suffers if you're concerned the AI won't take proper advantage. At which point, improving the AI so that it can take advantage by being subtle, or sneaky, or opportunistic, or merciful, or altruistic, or brutal as fits that particular faction will probably be a more difficult but potentially rewarding project.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 15, 2018, 05:24:36 PM
GREAT project idea, but I'm just sayin' one HECK of a challenge...
Post by: Fibonacci on April 15, 2018, 05:29:20 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War) is one of my inspirations for the suggestion. The idea of competing AIs in a battle simulation isn't new. The idea of connecting them to other games isn't terribly new either (auto aim bots in Quake and other FPS have been around for ages).
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 15, 2018, 05:34:35 PM
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2018, 08:15:17 PM
Doing such, you can also make adjustments to pare down the game to something more AI fungible. To the extent that SMACX is gratuitously complicated, it's more difficult to write an AI for, because the possibility space becomes much larger. I think an obvious area to pare down is individual city improvements. There's basically no need for it, it's a complete waste of time even for a human. The idea works up to about 9 cities, then just seriously sucks.
police probe |
Here is another attempt at the social engineering. I am toying with the idea that Police State is actually what improves your probe teams, as the Communism mechanic did vs. Democracy in Civ II. Fundamentalism no longer relates to Probe Teams. I do not accept that fundies are harder to brainwash, because they are brainwashed, proving it can be done. The "mind control" stuff is also just this game's flavor text for "triggering a coup". I see no evidence that actual Theocratic societies are magically immune to such things, if the price is right. I do think the pricing for that is grossy wrong in this game, but that's another issue.
I never bought that the Believers should be good at Probe Team stuff. It struck me as merely a game mechanic, foiling the ability to steal tech, for the inability to make tech. But the truth is anybody with a Probe Team can steal tech, it's not a particularly special ability. Your Probe Teams might die more often, you may run out of pristine cities to steal from, your teams may die more often, but so what? You can still do it. Having Elite probe teams is most relevant for framing factions, getting the job done undetected. In SMACX, the only faction that should be demonstrably good at that out of the box, is the Data Angels. Everyone else can suck it AFAIAC. Much like Support, I'm turning Probe into "a game of inches" rather than everyone getting these wacky large bonuses for it. The range of Probe ability is only -3 to +3 anyways. If Roze goes Police State, then she's got the best possible teams.
I'm a little unclear on how many other things can add to Probe bonuses, like the Covert Ops Center. I never build them. Seems easy enough to get Elite teams via Command Centers, Bioenhancement Centers, and various social choices, so how does it help me further?
I'm also working on Police State and Planned not having a -2 Efficiency penalty, but a -1 Efficiency -1 Economy penalty. However, I'm finding that plain vanilla SMACX, the Hive's immunity stuff isn't working. Yes I did try IMMUNITY, ECONOMY but it didn't work. IMPUNITY, Police State seems to have the desired effect, but the negative icons don't go away on the SE screen. Hopefully that is just cosmetic. I'm still experimenting. I haven't tested whether Yitzi fixed any of this.
Oh yeah, growth. I figured out what I was doing wrong with the default social choices. I had replaced the keyword "None", which is wrong, as that's the tech prereq. I needed to put stuff after "None". Then things worked fine.
I say that the default economy of the human race, is to have more babies. More terrified young-uns you can command, are more hands for your farm, more commodities you can marry away, more people who might take care of you in your old age, and more units to sell into the sex slave trade. Babies, babies, babies! As many as you can keep alive. So this is modeled as +1 Growth if you have a Simple economy.
Planned lets you keep doing this in a more advanced societal framework, but it isn't an automatic "pop boom" social choice anymore. You're going to need multiple things to get to a pop boom. Fundies make babies, that's their indoctrination. The Believers also make more babies in my mod, so they can get to +4 Growth if they go Fundamentalist and either Planned or Simple. Get some Children's Creches and they're gonna be Yuuuuge!
I didn't want every default SE category to award Growth though. Having everyone start with +3 Growth is rather unbalancing, makes getting bonuses or penalties in Growth pretty much meaningless. I figured out that Frontier shouldn't enable you to grow. When you don't provide advanced political infrastructure for your society, there's no collective safety net and the wolves get you. Ergo, everyone starts the game at +0 Growth. If you have more advanced politics, you remove a growth penalty. Which is like growing more, until you get advanced economics as well, which makes it a wash again. Except of course that Free Market and Green both give growth penalties, so you have to sacrifice growth to have those things. That's intentional, it should sting.
Values I decided have nothing to do with Growth. A society focused on Survival should be tougher than one that isn't, unless of course we're talking Power. When all your citizens are sleeping with a rifle at the ready, they're gonna fight better. Everyone starts off a survivalist on Planet, except for faction penalties, which would just be hippie skippie Deirdre.
;hippy
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 15, 2018, 08:39:11 PM
Post by: Fibonacci on April 15, 2018, 08:51:45 PM
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I never bought that the Believers should be good at Probe Team stuff.I suspect it was peer pressure from the conversion mechanic in Age of Empires (I used to love playing the Babylonians). It also with the idea of nation versus country. Fundamentalist tries to model the spread of the two. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash explores a kind of "mind worm" spreading through a population and the inoculation against it, the "nam-shub of Enki". Fundamentalist appears to serve as such an inoculation.
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I'm a little unclear on how many other things can add to Probe bonuses, like the Covert Ops Center. I never build them. Seems easy enough to get Elite teams via Command Centers, Bioenhancement Centers, and various social choices, so how does it help me further?The base gets +2 probe from a covert ops center, which along with the bonus from children's creches makes a base more expensive to steal, and less chance of success. If you're playing a faction withenough negative morale, running wealth and/or eudaimonia, plus modifiers can get halved. Each facility ends up +1 and I find myself having a bioenhancement center/children's creche plus one or two others at times as Morgan in a base, and then having that base produce a unit every turn to send off to support elsewhere. It's not a necessity, but it's certainly still useful to some factions.
For realistic tuning of Police State, I'd favor making it something more like +2 Support +2 Police -2 Probe +1 Econ. Bribery and hyperinflation are normal things in police states. I'd also like to add a 1 energy maintenance per supported military unit to complete the bribery theme and the "easy come easy go" nature of money in police states (here's your government issued wheelbarrow full of bank notes, they'll be worthless by the time you get through the line to spend them or deposit them). Not sure how to implement it as usual. My imagination exceeds my grasp.
And hope spring eternal as far as AI clients, making something that shoves keystrokes and move movements/clicks has been done to other games. ;)
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2018, 09:14:35 PM
For realistic tuning of Police State, I'd favor making it something more like +2 Support +2 Police -2 Probe +1 Econ. Bribery and hyperinflation are normal things in police states.
That's not the right way to decide the issue IMO. First you need to notice the range of possible Police State effects is only -5 to +3. On the positive end of the scale, giving +2 Police is a huge goosing. In general I don't believe in all these +2 "huge goosings" in any of the SE choices. I try to find something that should give +2 as the "best" thing, and something that only gives +1 as a "contributing" thing. When the upper range of the ability is only +3 anyways, you get there by making the choices.
Instead of making Police State so kickass for getting a better Police rating, I made it that you have to choose Power as well. And you get the Probe benefit, which you didn't previously get. Yang, I've fixed so that his faction is inherently +1 Police. I couldn't abide him having less police ability than the Spartans. I might take the +1 Police away from the Spartans and do something else with them.
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I'd also like to add a 1 energy maintenance per supported military unit to complete the bribery theme
Is there any mechanism in SMAC to do that? Bear in mind, the Hive is already modeled as economically poor. I've been trying to generalize that to Police States and Planned economies.
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and the "easy come easy go" nature of money in police states (here's your government issued wheelbarrow full of bank notes, they'll be worthless by the time you get through the line to spend them or deposit them).
That's false. Modern day China is a Police State. What you are thinking of, sounds more like a Kleptocracy. c.f. Nigeria.
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And hope spring eternal as far as AI clients, making something that shoves keystrokes and move movements/clicks has been done to other games. ;)
Just because it has been done, does not make it sane from a programmer hours standpoint to do so. There's a point at which, to have that amount of code and sustain yourself at the effort, you need a means of support. People get paid to pour that many hours into stuff. And those that aren't getting paid to do it, like myself, need to figure out how to sell games to get the support. I can't get money by dumping man-years of work into a SMAC license I don't own and have no right to make money from. Even pursuing as much modding as I am at present, some devs would call a waste of resources. My justification is it might bring me closer to a design for my own 4X TBS "SMAC-like" game. If I reach a point where I decide it's not actually helpful for that agenda, then it'll be time for me to move on.
At present, I'm also finding it somewhat informative as to "what works in modding and what doesn't". I have a lot of "what doesn't" experience with Wesnoth. Screw XML styles of specification, they're horrid for a human to type! SMAC has a pretty clean sense of modification for the most part, very minor changes in text files actually get immediate effects in the game. I would have a faster way to reload the changes than starting a new game, like a F# key for it. Needed that in Wesnoth as well, didn't have it. Main thing that's a little clumsy in SMAC so far is lack of centrality at times. Like having a bunch of settings in alphax.txt, but faction stuff will be in somefaction.txt. I know why they did it, but it's still a pain for tracking and modification. Some kind of packaging and diff system for the content would be helpful too. At present it would be overengineering, but for an ideal game I'd want this.
Post by: Fibonacci on April 15, 2018, 11:05:59 PM
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That's false. Modern day China is a Police State. What you are thinking of, sounds more like a Kleptocracy. c.f. Nigeria.I'm quite familiar with modern day China. I picked up Mandarin when I was a U.S. Army linguist...
Tedious bureaucracy with the option to pay your way past it is definitely a thing still. And it's only corruption when you don't give the right cut to the other party members.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2018, 12:56:52 AM
So for instance, Probing. A Police State or a Fundamentalist thing? Or a Democratic thing? USA has spies, USSR had spies, Russia has spies, China has spies (but I don't know what they do). UK's got spies, Israel's got spies. Maybe Iran has spies but I don't think they have good spies compared to ours? Spying would seem to be more a function of budget and technology than national identity.
What to do? Well I'm inclined to say that spying is "not inherently Fundamentalist". It is inherently a Police State thing to do, whether they're good at it or not. I toyed with making Fundamentalism a kind of police state as well, seeing as how all the theocracies actually are police states as well. So then I get left with game mechanical questions. What does it mean to choose between the two?