Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: gwillybj on April 12, 2014, 06:52:28 PM

Title: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 12, 2014, 06:52:28 PM

A long time ago (May 23, 2001), at a site over that-a-way (http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/19348-Council-Votes (http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/19348-Council-Votes)), the question was asked by RichardY

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Does anyone know if there is a formula for calculating the number of Council Votes? I can't find any reference in the mannual. If there is already a thread posted on the forum please advise me.

Replies were given by Clear Skies

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There's no set number of council votes. Every faction just gets more and more as they expand & grow.

and Method

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there isn't one. for every unit of pop u have you get 1 vote(plus sp's etc)

That last is not quite true. The manual does talk about how votes are given to the factions, on page 132

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In votes for Planetary Governor (and later, in votes for Supreme Leader), each faction is given a variable number of votes in council depending on its population. The voice of a larger, richer faction counts for far more than the voice of the small and weak.

My question is, since the code has been looked over so much lately, has anyone found how the calculation is done to award votes? It is not "one man, one vote" at all. Looking at my current game, no obvious pattern jumps out with regard to population, wealth, commerce, etc., and votes.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Geo on April 12, 2014, 11:23:55 PM

If memory serves me, there's 2 secret projects and 1 social ability that can multiply a faction's votes: Clinical Immortality, Empath Guild, and the Peacekeeper double votes ability.

Beyond that, I'm at a loss. :dunno:

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 12, 2014, 11:33:41 PM

At least at the beginning, votes are easy to calculate: faction pop + any bonus...

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Nexii on April 13, 2014, 08:20:43 AM

As BUncle said, council votes are the sum of the population of all your bases.  For example if you have three cities at size 6, 4, and 3 you will have 13 total votes.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 13, 2014, 02:31:17 PM

It is "1 population, 1 vote" early, but we are in the Quantum Reactor part of the techtree (I won't explain all that is going on).

Faction1 has 925 votes with 1884 population
Faction2 has 462 votes with 1365
Faction3 has 582 votes with 1305
Faction4 was eliminated
Faction5 has 2781 votes with 2072 population and the Empath Guild (1854 votes without it, possibly only 927?)
Faction6 has 571 votes with 1296
Faction7 has 865 votes with 1312

Total votes 6186, total population 9234

 ???

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Geo on April 13, 2014, 02:35:55 PM

This is in SMACX?

Now you made me curious enough to open up an endsave of the SMAC game I finished last night, and check the votes count.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 13, 2014, 02:42:17 PM

Yes, this is SMAX, with nothing changed in the alphax.txt regarding votes.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Geo on April 13, 2014, 03:05:57 PM

Just checked my SMAC game (Kyrub's latest patch) game, and the population counts comes even with the vote count after Empath, Clinical, and Peacekeeper surplusses. Mind you, in my game only 428 population came into count, which added to 652 votes.

Just to verify, you get more votes then there is actually population for each surviving faction, except for the faction owning the empath guild which experiences the reverse effect?
And this is the GOG version of SMACX, with nothing from Scient, Kyrub, or Yitzi?

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Petek on April 13, 2014, 08:17:20 PM

@gwillybj,

How are you determining pop? Are you actually adding up the pop of each base, using the figure given in the F8 screen, or something else? I find that the population given in the F8 screen becomes inaccurate as the game progresses. I've looked at several of my games and in all cases found that the Planetary Council votes corresponded to the total base pops, considering SPs and faction traits when applicable.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 13, 2014, 08:34:24 PM

Yes, I'm using F8 for the population. I'll have to add them all up.
For the Votes, I'm using the Planetary Council button, then right-clicking each faction for its details.
I'll need some time; it's a huge map and we're well along...

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 13, 2014, 09:35:56 PM

Well, I feel like the total Dunce ;nutz;
13 years playing this game and active on the forums, I should have learned long ago to check my work before posting.

Faction1 = 1014 pop & votes
Faction2 = 492
Faction3 = 593
Faction4 = 0
Faction5 = 2358 pop *1.5 = 3537 votes
Faction6 = 604
Faction7 = 873

Total is, indeed, 5934 population, 7113 votes!
imagine that

What, then, are the "Population" points shown in the F8 scores? I've always relied on that screen to inform me...

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 13, 2014, 09:39:39 PM

Yitzi?



gwilly, I want you to know that I notice and enjoy the sig changes...

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Geo on April 13, 2014, 10:03:00 PM

Quote from: gwillybj on April 13, 2014, 09:35:56 PM

What, then, are the "Population" points shown in the F8 scores? I've always relied on that screen to inform me...

That's, AFAICS, the score computed for your population. I don't know how the games computes that number. Perhaps colony pods are counted as well or something.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Nexii on April 14, 2014, 12:16:12 AM

I see discrepancies as well.  It's some sort of bug - if you destroy all bases the surplus population score remains.  May have something to do with phantom superdrones/talents?

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Yitzi on April 14, 2014, 02:20:19 AM

Quote from: Nexii on April 14, 2014, 12:16:12 AM

May have something to do with phantom superdrones/talents?

Only if it was based on regular drones/talents.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 14, 2014, 04:21:26 AM

I wonder if it is the total number of population points the faction has ever generated:
Current population + those lost to starvation + those lost to conquest = Population Points?
There has been a lot of both types of loss going around in my game.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Geo on April 14, 2014, 10:24:55 AM

You might be onto something here.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Yitzi on April 14, 2014, 01:11:19 PM

Although that would mean that frequent back-and-forth conquest would inflate scores...

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 14, 2014, 01:43:00 PM

Something more to watch :look: in the next game.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Kirov on April 14, 2014, 04:13:36 PM

The population in F8 is actually the score for population, as per the scoring formula in "advanced concepts" datalinks (which has nothing to do with 'might'). It states that you get 1 point for each citizen of your base and each citizen of any surrendered base, but this description doesn't match my last single-player save I opened (with MY 2208). In fact, the correspondence looks quite random - one faction has the same number of votes and pop score, me - 87 points for 56 votes, others get results like 40 for 20 or 31 for 11 votes. I've never paid much attention to scoring, but right now it seems broken like hell. I wonder if the same goes for the might formula... My initial tests were rather inconclusive.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Buster's Uncle on April 14, 2014, 04:26:05 PM

If only we had a bug report forum and some .exe modders around...

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Dio on April 14, 2014, 05:49:40 PM

Quote from: Kirov on April 14, 2014, 04:13:36 PM

The population in F8 is actually the score for population, as per the scoring formula in "advanced concepts" datalinks (which has nothing to do with 'might'). It states that you get 1 point for each citizen of your base and each citizen of any surrendered base, but this description doesn't match my last single-player save I opened (with MY 2208). In fact, the correspondence looks quite random - one faction has the same number of votes and pop score, me - 87 points for 56 votes, others get results like 40 for 20 or 31 for 11 votes. I've never paid much attention to scoring, but right now it seems broken like hell. I wonder if the same goes for the might formula... My initial tests were rather inconclusive.

Do you have Cooperative Victory enabled?

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Kirov on April 14, 2014, 06:01:25 PM

I believe so. You mean it counts pact bros pop as 1? Yeah, I think it's true. I thought it's only for the diplo victory (as the 'scoring' datalink says). But why exactly my pact brothers got 20 pop score from me if I have 56 votes? In return, I got the full amounts of their pop towards my pop score.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: gwillybj on April 14, 2014, 09:55:46 PM

Quote from: Kirov on April 14, 2014, 04:13:36 PM

... I've never paid much attention to scoring ...

I don't either. I just had a habit of looking at the Score window to see how I was doing overall when compared to the others. My bases were going to get quite large, so I went looking for information about the population limit. (Is it 127?) Also, the limit for the number of bases, which I discovered is tied to the map size.
For some odd reason the difference between Population points and Votes bothered me just enough that I went searching for the scoring formula I knew I'd seen once or twice. (Didn't think of the Datalinks, duh!)
I'll try to take notes during my next game to see if it comes out right.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Petek on April 14, 2014, 10:40:11 PM

The difference between the true population and the entry in the F8 screen is definitely related, at least in part, to the presence of pacts. The attached save file, Test Votes.sav, demonstrates this. Santiago has an actual population of 49, but a population of 59 in the F8 screen. She is pacted with Lal. Now ring up Lal and cancel the pact. The F8 screen now shows a pop of 49. Lal has five bases, so I expected to get five additional pop points for the pact, not 10. Perhaps Lal's voting bonus carries over to the score?

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Kirov on April 14, 2014, 11:00:00 PM

The scoring formula doesn't mention anything about the number of bases, it's the base citizens. In your save, try giving other factions' bases to Lal ('change owner' button in 'edit base') and see that you get one point for his additional pop2 base or 2 points for pop4-5. So it looks like half, rounded down. But now look at my save here. When cancelling pacts with Domai and Dee, I lose their full amount of pop (11 and 20, respectively), while they lose 20 points each, which is in no way related to my own pop (56). So what gives?

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Petek on April 14, 2014, 11:17:47 PM

You're right that the score with pactmates should be based on base pop, not number of bases. Will have to think more about your save game later.

Title: Re: Votes in the Planetary Council
Post by: Petek on April 16, 2014, 02:16:31 AM

Here's what I found looking at your game. The problem seems to be the calculation of the AI population scores in the F8 screen when a pact is involved. Those scores for Deidre and Domai make no sense while the pacts with Sparta are in effect. After the pacts are cancelled, the F8 scores are correct (they are the same as the true total populations of all their bases and also the same as their UN votes). The same is true for the game I posted.

In your game, the F8 pop score for Sparta is correct before the pacts are cancelled. That's not true in my game. Based on your observation that changing the ownership of Lal's bases decreases the F8 pop points by 1/2 of the base's pop (rounded down), it now appears to me that Sparta's F8 pop score of 59 is being computed as her own true pop (49), plus 1/2 the true pop of each PK base (again, rounded down), a total of 10. If you can confirm my analysis, I'll post a bug report and let the exe coders assign it a priority.