Changes to the Social Engineering models

[Nexii]

Yea I may put Green to values tier, replacing Wealth instead of Knowledge. I found with Wealth it's just very similar to Free Market. And giving it really good econ/industry makes it super good with Green. Too good really as Morale doesn't affect native life. The idea was to keep all the economy +/- on economics tier. Kind of like I did with Politics being the main place to get efficiency, but stricter (not counting Utopia ofc).

High growth is more like Socialism, which would be a new economics choice. Planned might be better renamed as command economy, I'm not too sure. Same with socialism it could be also called communism.

So I see the main benefits as:
Free Market - economy
Planned - support, industry
Socialism - growth, efficiency

Power - morale, support, police
Knowledge - research, probe
Green - planet

I'm not as sure on the penalties for many of these. Green only giving planet might be a bit weak. Maybe it would steal support from Power, 'clean' units so to speak.

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This is my first draft I'll work from here. Fundy and Police State were just a bit too efficient IMO. Creches give a lot of EFFIC (+2 each). I didn't really like how Police State felt a lot of the time. I'd rather have it be a bit less efficient without the negative growth.

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

[EmpathCrawler]

Green is a weird one because on Planet particularly it's clearly a "value" in that you are choosing eco harmony with a semi-sentient Planet but economically speaking you're emphasizing efficiency (the recycling of the resources you already extracted) over raw energy or industrial output. A Green value does have the nice effect of pitting the Spartans against the Gaians as the lore suggests. In my Gaian games I usually try to ally with Santiago and prop her up against Yang as much as I can so that dynamic doesn't play out.

You can have market socialism (Yugoslavia) or a command economy and still be socialist. "Planned" in the game only implies there's a top-down structure that emphasizes heavy industry and growth at the price of inflexibility. The decisions can be made either democratically or not as chosen by the politics SE.

What's a good economics word that means "we recycle a lot" lol

[Nexii]

Environmentalist/ism is probably the word you're looking for. Or conservationist.

I do like the idea of Green being a values the more I think about it. Interestingly you could use it to offset Free Market. Although you'd be giving up Knowledge/Power benefits, so that's probably okay. I didn't really like it being on Economics tier because PLANET is sort of like a morale bonus, meaning it would be paired with Power. And yea that sort of goes against Planet's harmonious nature.

So would you name those economics "Planned" (industry/support) and "Communist" (growth/effic)? It seems to me that true Communism wouldn't be planned, the common people would make economic decisions rather than a central authority. "Free Market" could also be capitalist but I think they're very similar. Capitalist might be a bit more fitting, because the stock Free Market had a big police downside representing a more laissez-faire economy.

I suppose Socialist is represented by your amount of PSYCH allocation now that I think about it.

It seems the AI doesn't like Green or Communism, not a surprise. I think I'll try this set like it is for awhile anyways. Gaia can be Democratic agenda, Cult can be Fundamentalist. Not much I can do about the AI overvaluing MORALE and undervaluing PLANET. It also seems the AI values INDUSTRY too high relative to SUPPORT. Even a +2 SUPPORT -1 INDUSTRY Green wasn't taken by the AI. Which in the early game makes no sense.

[EmpathCrawler]

Communism is a classless society which is not possible early in the game when you make the economic SE choices. The economy of Planet is still too primitive. It's what I think the stock Eudaimonic is supposed to represent since you make so much energy and so much production it's easy at that point to have golden ages everywhere. I also wonder if Industry and Support are too powerful combined like that. You can pump out a big military and you don't even have to pay to maintain it. This is one tripartite economic arrangement I can think of:


Free Market: Financialization of Planet by the means of producing as much energy as possible. Maximum rapaciousness for flexibility. I don't like terming this "capitalist" because the conflict between public and private ownership isn't being simulated in the game. The player has complete control over their faction's resources no matter what SE choice they make.

Planned: Bootstrap your colony by emphasizing production. You trade flexibility for raw industry so you can make one thing but quickly.

"Environmentalist": Growth is tough to reconcile here because it is so powerful and pumping out babies isn't very eco-friendly. I do like the symmetry of one resource per economic system, though. What about high efficiency coupled with support here? You don't have powerful modifiers, but you lose less of what you make? It's tough.

[Nexii]

Green could probably get +1 EFFIC and still not be too powerful. I may reduce it to +2 PLANET also, PLANET stacking is super strong with native life fixed.

Yea true communism is more like the future SE Utopian, post-scarcity society.

Maybe Mixed Market economy is a better term for the third one. It has aspects of both Free Market and Planned, and is halfway in between as far as ECONOMY SE.

I didn't want to give Green and Mixed too much efficiency because then there's no need to run Democratic. But a bit does make sense. If you play on huge maps I'd probably give PS, Democratic, and Fundamentalist all +1 EFFIC more. EFFIC doesn't scale by map size. Likewise for small maps they can be balanced by giving them all 1 EFFIC less.

[vonbach]

Is Police state supposed to have no penalties?
The only problem with the idea of putting green in the values tree is I'm not sure how the AI will react.
Its one of the reasons I haven't done so before.
The only thing I would do with the economics tree is reverse the penalties for  planned an mixed.
Planned economies are soul crushing.

[Nexii]

Yes, no penalties for Police State right now. The penalty is that you have a very low baseline for efficiency, and there's few other ways to get it. At least that sort of was the idea.

The AI doesn't like Green much (it never did) because it puts a low value on PLANET and a high one on INDUSTRY. However if you really want factions to run it you can give them immunity to the penalty. Or -1 IND could be removed and maybe it wouldn't get the +1 EFFIC. I think otherwise it sort of risks outclassing Knowledge.

Likewise with Mixed, it hates losing MORALE (always did) even when it's not at war. Which seems sort of like a bug, there definitely is logic to raise the importance of +2 ECON when not at war.

Planned and Mixed swapping penalties I'd have to test out. I think the penalties are roughly equivalent. -2 ECON might be a bit worse earlier in the game and -2 MORALE a bit worse later on. I need to brush up on my economics to figure out what makes sense.

I did some tests and it seems that AIs with Green agenda have no problems with a Green that gives +2 PLANET, +1 SUPPORT only. I'll probably keep it this way. Because then Knowledge will always be better research than Green no matter what.

Whichever economics gets the -MORALE the AI will basically never pick. So to swap them means it goes more for GROWTH than INDUSTRY

[vonbach]

Maybe try -talent instead of -morale? I'll bet the AI would handle that better.

[Nexii]

Yea I can test some other penalties like -2 TALENT on Planned. I think what usually happens is the AI will prefer one of Mixed or Planned half the time, and Free Market otherwise. But there might be a breakpoint that entices all three like the Politics tier.

Putting Green to Values and introducing Mixed Economy does mean having to rewrite about 20 dialogue lines in script.txt so that factions say suitable things relating to Agenda. I'll do this once I've tested and played more.

It's interesting there are even diplomacy messages commending and expressing dislike for the Future SEs. Never got to see any of them in normal gameplay because so few factions had Future SE agendas, or the game would be over before then.

It's even hinted that Thought Control should maybe give negative research.

#SOCIAL3CAT3BAD2
#xs 440
#caption $CAPTION7
"$TITLE0 $NAME1, it is a terrible waste of human potential for
you to be the sole controller of your populace. Think of the
brilliant researchers and mighty warriors you will never
discover due to the quelling of all creative thinking. Please
re-think these policies before it is too late."

[Nexii]

-2 TALENT seems to work. The AI will pick FM, Planned, and Mixed. I won't say all factions will pick all 3 necessarily, but that's good enough for me. I was worried it would break my droneless CyCon because -TALENT is calculated after NODRONE but then I realized I can just make them immune to planned. I think B-drones are also taken after NODRONE so if their empire is really really big they might get a few drones. But typically its just 1 and the police sentinel controls it.

[vonbach]

It's even hinted that Thought Control should maybe give negative research.

I always give my thought control negative research. I usually buff it with a point of +industry or something just because its so weak.
The only problem I have with the current draft is Police state and mixed just seem to take to long to get to with random research.

[Nexii]

I'm pretty sure the blind research uses the same method as the AI where the technology's priority is used. I'm not sure if I should make them any earlier where they're all already at most Tier 3 (stock game is up to Tier 4 on some like Power & Knowledge). I think better to customize your priorities.

Doctrine:Loyalty has a rather low priority for all but conquer priority at 3. Which is still only moderate (3, 0, 2, 2)
Adaptive Economics likewise is only prioritized for build priority at 5. (0, 1, 5, 2)

Edit: Mixed should logically be moved to IndAuto, as OP as that tech already is (and it's what Wealth had originally anyways). Because it requires FM and Planned techs as direct prereqs. I brought in a few by one tech, Fundamentalism, Power, Knowledge.

I'll have to play and see if Planned and Mixed are good enough. Often for mixed it seems the EFFIC cancels the ECONOMY. Planned feels like a hard downside. Maybe not too bad in Police State or Power with non-lethal methods control. Green is probably always okay, even +1 SUPPORT is like +1 INDUSTRY (or better) until midgame.

[vonbach]

I like to move SE techs to much earlier than normal. Mostly because I want to see them earlier. It doesn't hurt to let the AI have them earlier either.
Besides I want to test them faster. I'll move them myself.
Have you ever thought of renaming knowledge to something like Progress? It just seems to fit better.

[Nexii]

Yea if you want to test quickly you can set them all to None for prereq even. I usually run quick AI sim games with the map hidden so I can blast 20-25 turns forward in a few seconds. But it's not quite the same as actually playing a long game.

I've sort of considered just reverting all my SE labels except Mixed because in the end they're very similar ideas to the originals. Though I may rewrite the societal descriptions to be accurate. Re-doing the AI speech will take a bit of creativity. Mixed economy would propose to be more balanced, egalitarian, and promote population growth/well-being. Planned will have to promote industry rather than population growth as before.

Planned would be degraded as oppressive and controlling. Free Market as exploitative and wasteful. Mixed, I'm less sure. Perhaps an idealistic, impure, tepid or mongrel economy from the viewpoints of Free Market and Planned.

Some of the Green benefits and insults can be recycled (pun intended). But they'll have to change a bit too.

I worry a bit whether Planned and Mixed are 'good enough' compared to Free Market. They might need a little bit of a boost or penalty lessening

[Nexii]

I'm playing around with the idea of all economies being bad for Planet. Free Market as the worst, Planned the least bad, Mixed in between. This way none are so crushing in terms of energy or drone control.

Free Market,     IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, --SUPPORT, ---PLANET
Planned,         PlaNets, ++INDUSTRY, -PLANET
Mixed,           IndAuto, ++GROWTH, +EFFIC, --PLANET

Green might become the opposite of Free Market
Green,           CentEmp, +++PLANET, ++SUPPORT, --ECONOMY

Seems to work for the AI choosing everything like it should