Changes to the Social Engineering models

[Nexii]

Yea I try to balance factions around an SE set that makes sense to me rather than the other way around. If the SE set changes over or underpower a specific faction then I change it at the faction level.

I've been trying out a more thematic version of Cult with +1/+1/+1 on fungus. It's interesting to play a faction that doesn't really have to terraform very much. I stuck them with -2 ECONOMY though which is harsh. Even if you do run FM+Prosperity that's only +1 ECON. As well even if you do reach +2 ECON by GA, the energy bonus doesn't apply to fungus. So it just wouldn't be a strategy that would be worth the downsides. Planned is also painful at -3 ECON, so they aren't likely to get any positives to INDUSTRY (Democracy averse).

[Nexii]

Been trying some more changes. I feel like I'm close to a final SE set.

Police State got -1 GROWTH, replacing -1 EFFIC. -1 EFFIC is a far bigger penalty than I wanted to admit and Police State was just inferior to the other choices. Anyways I felt that Police States are more marked by oppression, than corruption.

Democracy got an additional -1 PROBE. -1 POLICE alone made it a free SE for most factions. Represents the more open nature of Democracies, and opposes it to PS's benefits.

Planned nerfed from -1 to -2 ECONOMY. Same as Democracy, -1 wasn't a real penalty anyways, only affecting the HQ. It's a significant mineral boost.

Green reduced from +2 to +1 EFFIC, new benefit of +1 RESEARCH to compensate. Represents the research knowledge gained from understanding and protecting Planet's ecosystems.

Power got a big rework. Less of a MORALE boost. I didn't want factions being able to get so much morale early-mid game. However it got a big boost to SUPPORT. Meaning you can go Planned for really large armies but it's not a necessity. -1 EFFIC is about on par with -2 GROWTH. Power I see as more related to corruption and energy skimming. 

Knowledge got +1 PROBE added. Knowledge needed a little boost, since the other Values were made a little more powerful. I did consider +TALENT but that mostly negated the POLICE penalty. This is kind of against the stock vision. But as I see it one of the best ways to gain information is to steal it by espionage.

Prosperity got +1 EFFIC, replacing +1 ECONOMY. Penalty reduced to -1 MORALE. Having +1 ECONOMY on this tier wasn't really a good thing, it meant for factions with high economy Prosperity could give more labs than Knowledge. Now that's a lot less likely. This is quite a big change too as it makes it so +1 ECONOMY factions can't run Prosperity to avoid Free Market penalties. The efficiency represents increased equality and justice when excess wealth is shared with one's followers.

It feels like I've sort of come complete circle on the SE table. Tried extreme benefits, mild benefits, and in the end I think the developers weren't too far off. This set has 7 less in total penalties and 1 less in total benefits. The problem with the original set was that many combinations or even individual choices were just bad, EFFIC was overrepresented as a penalty. Thus giving the AI a lot of troubles with energy, often making it weak by mid-game. I can say it's very rare to see a game where a faction doesn't win by 2500 now.

Politics, Economics, Values, Future Society
Frontier,        None,
Police State,    DocLoy,  ++POLICE, ++PROBE, -GROWTH
Democratic,      InfNet,  ++EFFIC, +INDUSTRY, -POLICE, -PROBE
Fundamentalist,  Psych,   ++GROWTH, +MORALE, --RESEARCH
Simple,          None,
Free Market,     IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, --SUPPORT, --PLANET
Planned,         PlaNets, ++SUPPORT, +INDUSTRY, --ECONOMY
Green,           CentEmp, ++PLANET, +EFFIC, +RESEARCH, -INDUSTRY
Survival,        None,
Power,           AdapDoc, ++SUPPORT, +MORALE, -EFFIC
Knowledge,       Integ,   ++RESEARCH, +PLANET, +PROBE, --POLICE
Prosperity,      AdapEco, ++GROWTH, +EFFIC, -MORALE
None,            None,
AI Controlled,   DigSent, ++INDUSTRY, ++SUPPORT, ++EFFIC, ---PROBE
Utopian,         Eudaim,  ++ECONOMY, ++RESEARCH, ++GROWTH, ---POLICE
Orwellian,       WillPow, ++POLICE, ++PROBE, ++MORALE, ---RESEARCH

[Nexii]

There were a lot of little things I tried to stick with in this SE set.

1) Every penalty being represented. The original set didn't have -ECONOMY which was what started this thread discussion.
2) POLICE was broken up from stock Free Market so that its variety of effects could be realized. -5 or 0 made the whole POLICE scale meaningless. From less drone control (Demo or Knowledge), to a bit of P-drones (Demo and Knowledge), to a lot of P-drones (Utopian with others).
3) Keep pop booming in, but at a slightly higher cost. I guess this is debatable but Demo/Planned only costed -2 SUPPORT in the stock set. Here you have to eat -2 RESEARCH and -1 MORALE with Fundamentalism+Prosperity combination.
4) Disallowing any really crippling combinations. Fundamentalism+Planned+Power is about the worst for research. And even then you'll get something, it's not complete stagnation. like PS/Planned was. Likewise you can't hit -3 GROWTH (like CyCon/Pirates could with Green before), or any of the really bad dynamic ranges.
5) +3 PROBE earlier in the game if you really want mind control immunity (PS+Knowledge). Of course much easier to reach for +PROBE factions with a single SE.
6) More extreme SEs reserved for the late game. Tech speeds up late so even Orwellian isn't as bad as it seems.
7) Making SUPPORT easier to get. Since the AI likes to make a lot of cheap and garrison units, sort of have to go with it. PS+Power was just bad in the stock set. AI Controlled opens new options late game.
8.) SEs that the AI will actually pick. Tempering MORALE on values tier helped a lot there. The AI isn't crazy over Green but Green factions will pick it consistently now due to the research benefit.
9) Moved Politics techs earlier to tier 1. Economics to tier 2 (Green being Tier 3 is okay). Values all on tier 3. Follows the progression on the chart more smoothly. DocLoy is now tier1 in my tech tree.

[vonbach]

I actually like that set up.
I was thinking of moving green to knowledge and adding Autarky in place of Green myself
.

[Nexii]

Autarky seems like it could perhaps replace Planned instead? Planned is more of a closed economy -2 ECON hampers trade. Self-reliance would reduce military costs.

Green as a value is interesting. My Knowledge ended up being a bit like that, gaining knowledge about Planet and respect for Planet as a side benefit of research.

[vonbach]

What I was thinking of was Free market as basically wealth oriented with moderate costs attached.
Autarky is a closed economic system focused on its faction so it basically sacrifices economic growth for
actual physical growth.
Planned was going to  be something of a compromise between the two. I wanted to give them other bonuses besides growth.

I was thinking of doing something  similar with the governments. With Totalitarianism security  with growth penalties.
Democracy (I'll probably change the name) with  economic and efficiency bonuses at the price of probably support or police.
With fundamentalism (nationalist or traditionalist) focusing on growth at the price of progress and efficiency.

I've always wanted to move green to be a value not a economic system. With heavy bonuses but probably industry or growth penalties.

I was thinking something like this
Police State: +2Police +2 Probe -1Growth  Democracy: +2Efficiency +1 Economy -1police -Support Traditionalist: +2Growth +Morale - Research -Effic
FreeMarket: +2Economy +1 Effic -2Planet -1 Police? Planned: not sure yet Autaky: +2 Growth +2Effic -2 Economy.

I actually like what you've  done with yours a lot.

[Nexii]

Yea thematically the governments (Politics) are a bit weird when thought about with some of the future societies. And some are a bit hard to envision with certain values. Police State / Prosperity is a stretch.... Democracy / Power, Fundamentalism / Knowledge too. But I guess they somewhat cancel so at least that makes sense. More generic politics descriptions might help me get my head around it. I mean maybe a police state could be a utopia....?

I thought Police State and Democracy quite strange with my version of CyCon (where they're more like enslaved Borg). Police State might represent a more guarded/centralized command mode, Democracy more collaborative. It would be kind of cool if you could relabel SEs for certain factions. Or have 'replacement' SEs. Maybe the PKs don't like Police State but they have some other choice. That's a big wish though lol.

As for FM penalties I tried a lot of things even -TALENT. Pretty much anything that isn't economy or effic I think can make sense. FM is all about making money no matter what the cost is. Downside has to be fairly significant though cause +2 ECON is just so good. I sometimes think mine is a bit mild. Probably would be -3 PLANET if I didn't have native life boosted up so much

I'm still unsure about whether I really have planned right. I suppose often in the real world planned economies are used to support military and infrastructure. At the cost of luxuries and trade (economy). Or whether there's a better term, because a planned economy could decide to have the opposite focus

[vonbach]

One of the big problems is whether you want to try for realism or game play in your political models.
Sometimes its better to keep things simple. One of the things I like to do is just remove the penalties
to help the AI.

[Nexii]

I was curious about EFFIC penalties and how they compared to Civilization 2. Since that really was the precursor to SMAC. I wondered just how bad it was in that game. Haven't played it in ages but I remember how it felt. Rough comparisons with a bunch of math/tables but they line up quite close

-1 EFFIC ~= Anarchy
0 EFFIC ~= Despotism
1 EFFIC ~= Monarchy
2 EFFIC ~= Fundamentalism
3 EFFIC ~= Republic
͚∞ EFFIC = Democracy and Communism, immune to inefficiency

So even the worst default Civ2 government wasn't more punishing than 0 EFFIC.

There was also a maximum distance, around 36, where inefficiency didn't get any worse. In practice this would have only helped Fundamentalism and Republic a small amount, since by that distance most energy (trade) was lost. I feel like they should have kept that in though, it would fix some of the inefficiency problems on huge maps. Or better just made the factor scale with map size.

It does make me consider whether to put all or most of the EFFIC bonuses and penalties on the Politics tier. That would potentially be a big redesign though.

[Nexii]

May try something like this. It ended up being similar. Democracy got 2 EFFIC for 1 IND. Fundamentalist got 2 EFFIC for 1 MORALE. Other tiers got +/- TALENT instead of EFFIC.

Theme wise I kind of like TALENT more. Helps Prosperity with booming and doesn't make it superior to Knowledge for research by giving ECON or EFFIC. The AI will probably hate it. It loves, loves, loves Power SE. But it also likes to war a lot and really it is the best choice in war.

Politics, Economics, Values, Future Society
Frontier,        None,    None
Police State,    DocLoy,  ++POLICE, ++PROBE, +EFFIC, -GROWTH
Democratic,      InfNet,  ++++EFFIC, +TALENT, --POLICE
Fundamentalist,  Psych,   ++GROWTH, ++EFFIC, --RESEARCH
Simple,          None,
Free Market,     IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, --SUPPORT, --PLANET
Planned,         PlaNets, ++SUPPORT, +INDUSTRY, --ECONOMY
Green,           CentEmp, ++PLANET, +RESEARCH, +TALENT
Survival,        None,
Power,           AdapDoc, ++SUPPORT, +MORALE, -TALENT
Knowledge,       Integ,   ++RESEARCH, +PLANET, +PROBE, --POLICE
Prosperity,      AdapEco, ++GROWTH, +INDUSTRY, --MORALE
None,            None,
AI Controlled,   DigSent, ++INDUSTRY, ++SUPPORT, ++EFFIC, ---PROBE
Utopian,         Eudaim,  ++ECONOMY, ++RESEARCH, ++GROWTH, ---POLICE
Orwellian,       WillPow, ++POLICE, ++PROBE, ++MORALE, ---RESEARCH

[vonbach]

I might give yours a try and see how it goes.

[Nexii]

Cool let me know. I feel like Fundamentalism might be just a little better than the other 2 politics choices. But each serves their purpose. I think in practice it would be more like flipping between Fundy/PS or Fundy/Democracy for pop booms.

I thought Democracy might need +5 EFFIC but +4 is probably okay. It depends a lot on empire size and whether you've built Creches.

Edit again: Made Democracy +4 EFFIC, +TALENT, -2 POLICE instead. Roughly as powerful, losing the police unit is both worse and better than +TALENT. The reason I went back on this is factions with -1 POLICE are rather aversive to Democracy. The second citizen in a town being a drone is a huge downside, I suppose stock Free Market would have had this issue too but it was a big economy boost so you were supposed to put some in PSYCH. With Democracy that's not the case, hence +TALENT. This way the second citizen will be a drone but the first will be a talent, so the base won't riot.

Knowledge has this issue too admittedly with negative POLICE. But I think I can kind of ignore it. Knowledge comes later in the game when most bases should be bigger than size 2. It can be offset by Democracy, Police State, Free Market, and Green. Or facilities.

[vonbach]

I'm early in the game yet but all the choices seem reasonably viable. The only one I think is a bit weak is police state its bonuses and penalties are fluffy but a little underpowered.
I'd give it a point of efficiency or something. 

Heres a silly question is there a way to edit the pod settings to keep the computer from killing itself with mindworms and fungus explosions while exploring?

[Nexii]

Yea I agree, PS should be less corrupt than frontier politics. It was kind of weak for factions that didn't already have +1 POLICE, or got it through Ascetic Virtues. Granted you can abuse it a lot in that case, 3 police sentinels is 9 drones quelled for cheap. +1 EFFIC for PS it is! Removing -GROWTH or giving it +3 POLICE or +3 PROBE outright I felt would be a bit much.

I also feel like Green is maybe a bit weak, though I'm not sure what I'd give it really. I've thought about just eliminating the INDUSTRY penalty though that's kind of boring. FM / Planned I can say is balanced, good tradeoffs going on there. FM may need -3 PLANET in the stock game though I do play with PLANET affecting PSI defense.

There's not much you can do about AI behavior. Though you can turn off scattered unity pods from the map as a map creation option. One thing I do play with is 50% intrinsic base defense and 50% sensors, countered by +3 PLANET on native life. Makes native life less threat to cities. But the AI is still dumb and leaves cities empty early a lot.

[vonbach]

I haven't used green yet. The bonuses seem decent but thats a serious penalty for what you get. I'd rather have some ++effic instead of research though.

I'm tempted to simply turn off the unity pods for once.