Critique my social engineering changes

[lithovore]

Over the last month or so I've been working on finalising a balance mod for SMAX.  My goal was to make things that were not terribly useful more useful, reduce the effectiveness of stuff that's overused, and hopefully improve the AI as well.

Most of this has been done by re-balancing the tech tree - techs like Retroviral Engineering are bizarre; it has NO infrastructure value for the AI, even though it's primary benefit is Genejack Factories.  Why are Doctrine: Air Power and Initiative "colonisation" techs?  You don't exactly make air colony pods.  I "broadened" the tech tree a bit and moved a lot of things that don't see much use to slightly earlier, like Hovertanks, Gravships and all of the future societies.

But I digress: one of my final hurdles is being happy with the social engineering changes I made. My main goals were to make Pop Booming much more difficult and make some of the underutilised choices more appealing.

The table is below:

Frontier,        None,
Police State,    DocLoy,  ++POLICE,   ++SUPPORT,  +PROBE,     --EFFIC
Democratic,      EthCalc, ++EFFIC,    +ECONOMY,   +GROWTH,    ---POLICE
Theocracy,       Brain,   ++GROWTH,   ++PROBE,    +MORALE,    --RESEARCH
Simple,          None,
Free Market,     IndEcon, ++ECONOMY,  -TALENT,    ---PLANET,  ---SUPPORT
Planned,         PlaNets, +GROWTH,    +INDUSTRY,  +SUPPORT,   --EFFIC
Green,           CentEmp, ++PLANET,   ++EFFIC,    --GROWTH
Survival,        None,
Power,           MilAlg,  ++MORALE,   ++SUPPORT,  --ECONOMY
Knowledge,       Cyber,   ++RESEARCH, +EFFIC,     --PROBE
Wealth,          IndAuto, +INDUSTRY,  +ECONOMY,   --MORALE
None,            None,
Cybernetic,      DigSent, ++EFFIC,    ++RESEARCH, ++PROBE,    --GROWTH
Eudaimonic,      Eudaim,  ++ECONOMY,  ++INDUSTRY, ++TALENT,   -MORALE,    ---POLICE
Bioengineered,   HomoSup, ++GROWTH,   ++MORALE,   ++PLANET,   ---SUPPORT

Rationale:

Politics:
Police state is a little weak, and it kinda makes sense for it to have +Probe.

Democracy loses some GROWTH (I'd have removed all of it, but then the University would have been totally unable to pop boom while everyone else would have), gains ECONOMY (because democracies DO have stronger economies), swaps SUPPORT penalty for POLICE (because free citizens are unhappy about things like nerve stapling and wars in Democracies - also I'm doing a swap with Free Market).

Fundamentalist becomes Theocracy (name more in-line with others) and gains ++GROWTH, to make it more appealing (lack of birth control and emphasis on large families).

Economics:
Free market gains -TALENT (people aren't just screwed over in Free Market economies when there's a war happening), and swaps -----POLICE for ---SUPPORT (defence contractors gouge the government, increasing support costs).

Planned swaps GROWTH for SUPPORT, as part of making pop-booming more difficult.

Green is unchanged - but I'm sorely tempted to swap --GROWTH for -GROWTH and -INDUSTRY.

Values:
Power was virtually always crippling to play with --INDUSTRY; it's swapped to --ECONOMY.

Knowledge is unchanged.

Wealth is unchanged, but I'm thinking of swapping --MORALE for -MORALE, -PLANET.

Future Society:
Cybernetic swaps ++PLANET for ++PROBE - ubiquity of encryption in a machine-run society would make for better probe defence, and the planet bonus makes little thematic sense.  It has --GROWTH because people become less relevant, start to disappear into virtual worlds and don't have as many children.

Eudaimonic swaps ++GROWTH for ++TALENT (it was just too much of a good thing) and switches to -MORALE, ---POLICE (nerve stapling wouldn't be permitted in a Eudaimonic society, and they're not too fond of war, either).

Bioengineered replaces Thought Control.  I didn't like Thought Control because it just doesn't seem to fit with a lot of the other social engineering models - how does a Thought Controlled Democracy work, for example?

Bioengineered has the following help text:

Advances in genetic manipulation allow humans to take control of
their own evolution. Bioengineered citizens reach maturity quickly
and enjoy long lives, and are tougher and stronger than baseline
humans. Splicing native DNA allows humans to at last live in true
harmony with Planet, walking among native life and breathing Planet's
atmosphere unaided. However, significant resources must be expended
to achieve this biological perfection.

+2 GROWTH
+2 MORALE
+2 PLANET
-3 SUPPORT

~

Under this setup popbooming is only possible through golden ages EXCEPT for the Hive running a planned theocracy (which I feel is at least thematically appropriate).  Once future society shows up there's enough growth in the table to boom without golden ages, though you'll need either Theocracy / Bioengineered / Creche or Demo / Planned / Bioengineered / Creche, so it's still a bit harder.

There's some interesting choices around +2 economy; you can now get it through Demo / Wealth with a police / morale penalty, or through regular Free Market with a drone, support and planet penalty.

I'd be very grateful for any criticisms or problems anyone can identify with this setup, or any suggestions anyone has. Thanks in advance for the input

[Nexii]

Not too bad.  I play with ecodamage being more relevant and native life having 2-3 natural PLANET for combat.  So I'm valuing PLANET a bit higher, and PROBE also with most of the free probe morale boosts modded out as well.  MORALE I'm also valuing a bit more as I play with flat unit costs...defensive armor techs matter more when it doesn't double/triple your unit prices, and the tougher native life means very green/green units need empath/trance.  Incidentally this helps the AI a lot as they love to spam out infantry with max weapon/armor. 

Anyways by tier, without changing the types of benefits/penalties:

Politics:
Theo is the only source of +2 GROWTH and stands out to me as a bit superior.  You can run it and Wealth with Golden Age that will be your +2 ECON.  Or Demo/Knowledge which is decent.  PS is a bit weak (as in the default) as EFFIC on the negative side is much more of a penalty than it is a benefit on the positive.  Suggestion: PS to -1 EFFIC, Democracy to -4 POLICE (otherwise, pac-drones will never be seen till very late game).  Theo to -3 RESEARCH.

Economics:
It feels like none really give enough positives over negatives vs just staying on simple.  They seem pretty close to one another in power.  +2 ECO is great for FM but all those penalties will more than wipe out the +1 E/sq.  Planned has a pretty steep downside, it might work with Democratic only.  Green is okay and maybe could be paired with PS.  Suggestion: FM to -1 SUP, Planned to -1 EFFIC, Green to -1 GROW.  FM might be a bit weak even then, I've tried FM at +3 ECON and that might be an option to try out.

Values:
Looks pretty balanced to me.  Power is pretty on par with the others and might even be a bit strong at +2 SUP.  Might put it at +1 SUP or -3 ECONOMY.

Future techs:
Look pretty interesting and mostly balanced.  Not many games really reach this point anyhow due to how the AI plays into the late game.  Might lessen Cyber's penalty to -1 GROW, it has the weakest general benefits and worst penalty.  Perhaps boost a few/all of its benefits to +3 rather than +2. 

[Geo]

I didn't like Thought Control because it just doesn't seem to fit with a lot of the other social engineering models - how does a Thought Controlled Democracy work, for example?

Very smoothly?

[vonbach]

I took a different approach with my social engineering tweaks. I simply removed nearly all of the penalties for them.
Mostly because I wanted to make life easier for the AI.

[Nexii]

Yea I can see that.  The AI seems to underrate how bad low EFFIC/SUP is especially for its playstyle.

[vonbach]

I think I changed it to something like this.
Frontier +1 Efficiency
Police State +2 Police +2 Support +1 Growth 
Republic +2 Growth +2 Efficiency -1 Support
Nationalist +1 Morale +2 Growth +1 Police

Simple +1 Economy
Free Market +2 Economy +1 Efficiency
Directed +2 Growth +1 Industry
Green +2 Efficiency +2 Planet

Survival +1 Morale
Power +2 Morale +2 Support +2 Probe -2 Planet
Eugenics +1 Efficiency +1 Research
Wealth +Industry +1 Economy - Support

Cybernetic +2 Efficiency +2 Research +2 Planet -2 Support
Eudiamonic +2 Growth +2 Economy +2 Industry -2 Morale
Thought Control +2 Police +2 Probe +2 Morale -1 Growth

I added a lot of little changes as well many building I reduced or removed the maintenance costs
and I changed the values of some of the tiles to have more food.

[Nexii]

Yea the rule of thumb I follow lately is
ECON = 2 pts
IND = 2 pts
GROW = 1.5 pts
All others = 1 pt
Then add up the total, subtract the negatives.  As long as each in the tier is close, they'll be tempting to pick. 

[vonbach]

I'll remember that one.

[bvanevery]

I've been bit by the "fix the SE choices" bug myself.  Here's my current attempt, although I haven't playtested it yet.  BTW I highly recommend screenshots for these discussions.  It is a lot easier to visualize than trying to understand all the ++ and -- modifiers in text, IMO.

Details realism mod

realism mod

Nobody's responded in the actual thread I started about it, so I thought it might help rekindle your discussion here.  Principles in brief:

I don't like how Growth is modeled, it's unrealistic.  Wealthy societies lower birth rates, that's UN data.  I've accepted that pop booming will be more difficult under my current model.

I've always thought -5 Police for Free Market is dumb, so I broke it up between the Democratic, Free Market, and Wealth categories.  I've made Police State less beneficial, but at the same time less onerous to choose.  I will also be accompanying this with a +1 Police for the Hive.

Having lots of Support is overpowered.  I've spread Support out between all the axes of SE choice and nobody gets +2 Support for anything.  I will reduce the Believers' Support to +1.  I am tempted to remove Morgan's -1 Support penalty in favor of something else.

Green is a real economic choice in the modern sense, it is not about capturing mindworms.  I have seen many games where players amass just silly high Planet ratings that aren't doing the player any good.

I have found the -2 Morale penalty from Wealth to be cripplingly bad, it leaves one very vulnerable to being destroyed by mindworms.  The USA is a greedy pig Wealth economy, how is it harming its military?  I'm not even sure I believe in a Morale penalty at all, but there's this play mechanic of Santiago and Svensgaard opposing people who aren't militaristic.  Well I guess they still would.  Anyone not wearing eagles is a wimp in their NSHOs.

[bvanevery]

Details population weapon

population weapon

Oops I didn't mean to hijack this thread so badly.  Above is a screenshot of my next SE iteration.  Full discussion is in another thread.