Puzzlemaker

Join Date 03/2009

Second expansion suggestions (Part 2: Cultural Suggestions)

Ideas for more peaceful solutions to problems.

In case you missed it, my two previous suggestions threads Challenge Maps and Part 1

New Culture Ideas

Ideas relating to a new cultural system.

Cultural Takeover Changes

The way in which culture takeovers of planets needs to be revised somewhat. Here are my suggestions for this.

New Revolt Mechanic.

Right now the Planet Revolt mechanic seems... odd. The entire population of the planet just disapears? I suggest the following way to decide if a planet should revolt:

If the planets Alliegience percentage is lower then the opposing culture percentage affecting it, then the planet enters the Disloyal phase. In the Disloyal phase, your net tax revenue will decrease depending on the difference between it's alliegence to you plus friendly culture and opposing culture strength. The formula would be (Alliegience + Friendly Culture - Opposing Culture)

Once the difference becomes more then a certain amount (Lets say 10%), the planet enters the Revolting phase. All revenue has stopped completely. This phase lasts a set time, perhaps depending on the planets population. Once that time is up, one of two things happen.

The planet still has loyal subjects. This can happen if the planet was close to your homeworld, so it started with a lot of alliegience, but had no friendly culture. The planets population who is still loyal abandon it, heading towards worlds that have population openings, if any.

The planet has no alliegence once the Revolting stage is finished, and so converts over without too much fuss.

The damage the planets Infrastructure takes depends on how much alliegenence the planet still has when the Revolting phase starts. If it's low, then the upgrades the planet recieved generally stay. High, they go bye bye.

Example 1: A world close to your homeworld is getting hit with large amounts of culture. The culture percentage rises to 50%, but the alliegence has only dropped to 50%. The planet enters the Disloyal phase.

The culture bombardment continues, and the alliegence drops more, and the enemies culture rises. The planet enters the Revolting stage. At the start of the revolting stage, the Alliegence is 45%, and the culture is 55%.

At the end of the revolting stage, the alliegence is 25%. 25% of the remaining population leaves the planet. The planet also loses all of it's infrastructure. The planet joins your enemy.

Example 2: There is an enemy fringe planet with low alliegence. You put a bunch of culture generators near it. The planet succumbs, revolts, and joins you with minimal loss of infrastructure and population.

Summary: A new system to take planets with culture, that results in taking the planet with some population, depending on a number of factors, instead of the population completely disapearing.

Unity Through Strife

Bombarding a planet should increase it's alliegience to it's owner.

Takeover

A planet who has revolted successfully should take control of some of the orbital structures, such as the refineries. However, these structures should take damage and have a lower output for a time, depending on the alliegience, much like population after a revolt. (See New Revolt Mechanic).

Culture Spread and Neutral Planets Affect

New mechanics for the way culture spread and how neutral planets are affected.

Neutral Planet Populations

Neutral Planets that have defenses should have limited populations on them (perhaps 10-20, depending on the type of planet). This should have no affect on if you can colonize it. However, if you do manage to turn a neutral planet using culture, then its population and protecting fleet will turn completely over to you. To get full population and build structures, you will have to colonize it as normal.

Neutral Orbital Buildings

In some places, there are small trade facilities or other structures that can be taken just like neutral resources can. My suggestions for these include: Trade facility, Broadcast Center, Refinery, and Repair Facilities.

Taking Neutral Orbital Buildings with Culture

Neutral orbital builds should all be able to be captured via culture, and shouldn't be capturable if they are heavily affected by culture.

Diplomacy and Culture

Culture should affect how diplomacy works

Friendly Allies

Allies should not be effected by your culture as much in terms of alliegience. Culture should also pass through allied planets more quickly. Note: If you start fighting with a former ally, they begin to be fully affected by the culture, which could lead to some interesting scenarios.

In Tune

You should be able to make a deal with an ally who is particulary affected by your culture, and has been your ally for a long time. Your two cultures should stack as if they are one when affecting other planets.

Free Speech

This agreement between two players gives your culture a bonus when flowing through their planets, and how much it affects their planets. This stacks with the allied natural bonus (See Friendly Allies Suggestion)

Thats all for now, Part 3 coming up fairly soon.

Edit: Added diplomacy and culture, forgot about that part.

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Wow some good ideas. I always thought culture should turn the planet over to you and not simply become neutral. And this would also add some nice complexity to the game.

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Better think of buffs for TEC and Vasari then, because the Advent Deliverance Engine will become waaay overpowered. 2-5 shots (staggered) will comvert many, many planets quickly...

And what of planets starting with 25% allegiance?

Yes, need more stuff with allies, though.

On the subject of superweapons... why not have a couple more abilities: "Salvo" and "Stagger," which launch multiple projectiles and staggers projectiles over a time respectively, say maybe 3 minutes between shots (Vasari Structure Disable), or salvo for TEC bombardment. Time shots based on predicted time-to-impact, not predicted firing. And add a little note about when the shot will hit, too...

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Ah, wait, for the cultural takeover I forgot to include the effects of friendly culture. Editing now.

Also,

Quoting Enderjmu,

reply 2

Yes, need more stuff with allies, though.

See part 1 and 3, they are sorta spread around.

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Great ideas.

However, the population does not dissapear.

Population growth does not refer to breeding, but to that fact that it takes a while for your subjects to be registered for taxation. When you lose a planet and get it back again, you need to register your subjects for taxation again, because the records have beedn destroyed. Hope that makes sense.

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Huh? There has to be more to it than that. When a novalith shell blasts the surface of a planet it doesn't "just" make the owning empire "forget" about 40% of its taxeable citizens.

I guess the system is simply abstracted, but in a rather confusing way.

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there are some problems with the explanations for how capturing planets via bombardment and culture etc works.

so this is how i understand it.

First off, all planets barring dead asteroids have native populations, reason for why all planets have militias. but i believe only 'Valued Citizens' and colonists are considered citizens and are therefore the only ones taxed etc. when you colonise a planet. the planet upgrades build more cities for these valued citizens etc and, as more cities are built, the easier it is for the two cultures to integrate. the rest of the population are (i assume) just slapped into manual labour etc. and thier 'owners' lets say, are taxed.

as for the population number itself, i think everyone here can agree its not a real number, but more like a representation or at least the number of thousands/millions on the planet (i.e. there are 25 'thousands' of people on the surface)

so, takeover by bombardment would target these cities; the infrastructure and the populations. populations go down until the number is 0 or negligent enough to be usurped by the attacker. where the process of building cities etc can begin again.

now, takeover by culture is more like co-ercing the local population to revolt against the ruling empire, so the population doesnt dissapear, but the empires ability to control the planet is destroyed, being effectively giving the same result as bombardment. then when you or someone else colonises the planet, your number of colonists have to increase and meld with the local population, just like any other situation.

at least thats how i explain it. to be honest, as long as i can steal the planet from him and get my 20 pieces of silver, im fine

however, i cant explain why a planet under your influence would not join you... perhaps there was a problem reconciling differing technologies (for example, a TEC planet full of Vasari tech...)

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