How to improve Ideology system

What your implying is that Stardock redesign the game to suite your idea comparing this game to Civ5. While your idea's are good, this is not Civ5 and should not be compared to Civ5. You are basically telling Stardock to redesign the game to play more like Civ5 and not GC3

IMHO, On that conclusion I am strongly against your idea's.

That wont need much redesign.

I only shought a way to improve the game for the good of all.

There are presently  buildings that create Ideology points.  Those seem to do what you are talking about.  I am of the opinion that you should only be able to pick one of the three points-per-turn building choices.  Also, you can build whatever one-time points buildings you choose, but you shouldn't be able 'to destroy them. But still, there are already "culture" buildings.  The rest is some tuning and tweaking.

For a small map and the way I play, I would know to beeline my ideology choices to get the Benevolent trait that got me the building for those points-per-turn and get it up as soon as possible.  I would consider that a perfectly suitable answer to the challenge you identified.  Again, I am having trouble understanding what you are trying to improve.

I'd rather see a limiting of choices based on previous selections. IE, If I choose any of the first level of Malevolent options, I would be automatically locked out of the top level or two of the benevolent tree. Take a 2nd tier and you're locked out of the opposing ideology's 3rd, or 2nd and 3rd tier (Stardock determines balance). If you choose a 3rd tier option of either benevolent or malevolent, you are locked out of ANY (further) choices in the opposing ideology. Any picks made before being locked out are kept...not sure about this one though. It may encourage spreading points too much.

Pragmatic would be a bit more forgiving. Perhaps if you take a 3rd level Prag selection, you are locked out of the 5th tier for Mal and Ben. Take a 5th tier Prag selection and you are now locked out of the 4th tier of Mal/Ben. Taking high tier Ben or Mal picks also starts reducing your Prag choices.

This would prevent going all the way down each opposing tree and getting the best of both worlds, which is silly. We need an incentive to concentrate on a single ideology. Options:

1. Perhaps an overall bonus if you fully unlock two/three/four lines of the same ideology.

2. Perhaps the final choice in a line is given a bonus based on how many lines in the same ideology you have already completed.

3. Perhaps an overall bonus simply based on the number of picks in an ideology. Give it an exponential scale so the first few picks aren't worth much but the last 5 picks or so are worth the most. That way you'd be encouraged to stay with a certain ideology to build that bonus as fast as possible.

Erischild, I completely agree that you should only be able to build one type of the points-per-turn buildings. Ending the game with hundreds or thousands of Ben and Mal points is silly.

There are also serious bugs with the current system. Sometimes when I spend points, I keep them and am able to spend them again the next turn (after ideology buildings give me more).

-edit

On second thought perhaps the ideology system is fine, otherwise why would there be any choice at all on colonizing or through events, it'd seem a bit railroaded. Perhaps a nerf to the amount of points is all that is needed, or diminishing returns as you gain overall points.

Original Post:

1 - An option to gain all ideologies to a certain limited level.

2 - An option to gain 2 ideologies to a less but still limited level.

3 - An option to go into 1 ideology all the way.

4 - An option to reverse choices at high personal cost - perhaps through events, perhaps a rebellion, or anti government party forms.

The problem with ideologies is that there are not enough interesting choices AND picking perks is too inconsequential for ideology's sake. Further, it is possible to eventually get all the perks.

Even if costs are increased, some choices do not make sense (example: having all benevolent and malevolent perks)

Problem 1: Restrictions

An idea I had a few days ago was to lock a category based on the first ideology you picked.

So if you pick :

* Pioneering (Benevolent), you lock Aggression (Malevolent) AND Vigilant (Pragmatic) perk costs increases by 50%

* Aggression (Malevolent), you lock Pioneering (Benevolent) AND Vigilant (Pragmatic) perk costs increases by 50%

* Vigilant (Pragmatic), both Pioneering (benevolent) AND Agression (Malevolent) perk costs increase by 100%.  Non-Pragmatic perks restricted up to tier 3 perks.

That in addition to the regular cost increase

That will make getting all the perks imposible, but it is still possible to be "pure" benevolent/malevolent/pragmatic or "chaotic good" (Mixing benevolent and pragmatic perks) / "chaotic evil" (mixing pragmatic and malevolent perks) or plain pragmatic (mixing benevolent, pragmatic and malevolent perks).

An added bonus: you can use the benevolent/malevolent/pragmatic/chaotic good/chaotic evil characterization to drive relations with other races.

Problem 2: Choices

Ideologies are "nice", but the only "choice" you have is "pick the order of perks you want". So if you want a particular benevolent/pragmatic/malevolent perk, you just choose the relevant "choice" at the event screen and that's it. Eventually you'll get enough points to "buy" one perk.

I'd rather have more choices per tier/category, that way you can further customize your ideologies so even if two races share ideologies, they do not get the same perk bonuses.

For instance:

Pioneering-> Grants a new colony ship PLUS 25% cost reduction for colony ships or +2 movement points for colony ships.

Explorers-> A previously unnoticed class 10 planet is revealed near one of your colonies PLUS +2 Sensors for Scout Ships OR +2 Sensors for Survey Ships

Prolific-> All new colonies start with 3 extra population OR each colony starts with a pre-built Factory.

Adept-> Each existing colony receives 1 additional tile OR the capital tile provides an extra level for production, research and military

Beacon-> Reveals all planets up to 16 hexes away  (scaled depending on map size) of all your colonies OR gain a colonized level 12 planet.

Idea:

In order to get more interesting choices I'd like to borrow a concept from CIV Beyond Earth: Synergy bonuses.

Since we have less perks, we need to adapt the idea to GalCIV. A simple enough way to do that is to get SYNERGY bonuses starting at tear 3 for each category.

For instance:

Pioneering-> Grants a new colony ship PLUS 25% cost reduction for colony ships or +2 movement points for colony ships.

Explorers-> A previously unnoticed class 10 planet is revealed near one of your colonies PLUS +2 Sensors for Scout Ships OR +2 Sensors for Survey Ships

Prolific-> All new colonies start with 3 extra population OR each colony starts with a pre-built Factory. SYNERGY: 1% extra production on each colony

Adept-> Each existing colony receives 1 additional tile OR each colonized planet gains a bonus tile bonus. SYNERGY: 3% extra production on each colony

Beacon-> Reveals all planets up to 16 hexes away of all your colonies OR gain a colonized level 12 planet. SYNERGY: 5% extra production on each colony

I have no problem changing the game to allow only one ideology, or multiple ideologies, but it is not that simple. The greatest number of ideology points come from the events when a planet is colonized. You are given 3 choices which are intended to picked by free will. If you are supposed to always pick pragmatic, (if that was your first choice), why even have the choices. Just have the player choose one of the three ideologies at the start of the game and then accumulate points per turn and with the improvements you are allowed to build.

You could still have the colonization choices as part of the game but instead of ideology points let the choices have some other effect, like morale or approval or bonus points or something else not connected to ideology.

Or, they could do it like GCII, which as I recall, you made ideology choices freely and at some point, before you benefited, you had to declare your ideology. You could choose any of the three but if you picked an ideology different from your average record of choices there was some penalty. Is that the way they did it? I can't really recall for sure.

Any way you look at it, it makes no sense to read the colonization story about the robots, worms, fish, and bug and be expected to automatically pick the same ideology regardless of how you feel about the choices. By the same token it makes no sense to play the choice to gain the most benefits from all of the ideologies.

If they leave things the way they are you should be able to be malevolent when the choice is killing a bunch of bugs, Benevolent when the choice involves saving the lives of sentient beings and Pragmatic when it makes sound financial sense. There is no immersion in the game if you not allowed to choose freely the choice you think is best, regardless of ideology.

However the system worked in GCII, the metaverse recorded games won and by what ideology. By my recollection very few games were won with a pure ideology. I think most were a mix of all three, but I might be wrong I know that there were specific players who played pure evil and some tried to win games as pure good and pure evil. Surely some others here can recall it better than me and might have an opinion on whether a similar system could work for GCIII.

Okay I went over to metaverse and checked out my games that were recorded. Instead of ideology it was called alignment and mine ranged from Very Good, to Very Evil, to Chaotic Good To Chaotic Evil. There was one Pond Scum and many Neutrals I had 28 game recorded in 2008 and my average alignment was chaotic evil.

This is true franco, I will edit my original post as you make a good point.

A player shouldn't always be forced into one ideology, not if there are multiple options, as why would we have those options every single time they colonize or receive an event. It's more that the player has too many points to spend at present.

This would fix the system if all things were equal. The problem is balancing the points allowed with the game being played.

If you scale the points for a game with abundant habitable planets, what happens when you play a game with rare planets? You might wind up with 4-5 colonization choices instead of the 30-40, or more, you might get on abundant. Then you have the problem of scaling the ideology for map sizes.

Theoretically you should have the opportunity, in a well played game, to earn up to 20 ideology bonuses, regardless of the number of habitable planets or the map size. I don't know how they can do this without a total overhaul of the system.

Somehow there needs to be a way to earn ideology points independent of the colonizing events. I think it comes down to earning points, or fractions of points per turn and scale back the number of colonization events based on map size. On a tiny map every planet colonized would be a choice. On an Insane map maybe one choice for every 5-6 planets colonized. It seems excessive to have an event for every colony anyway. Somehow they must also factor in the rare/abundant option.

Each time you choose an ideology bonus you would be allowed to pick from any of the three tables, knowing that you will only get up to 20 or so bonus choices per game. At the end of the game you would learn where you fall on the ideology scale. This is the way it should be. Your choices should determine how good or evil you are instead of a good or evil label dictating your choices. 

There are probably a lot of holes and unintended consequences in my ideas and it would involve a lot of work on a game feature that has already had major revisions. It definitely needs to be tweaked. We'll see how it goes. They are getting plenty of advice.

Seen people been a little confused about my post I'd write some more to explain myu thought.

1. Choices during the colonizations and events.

Let them be!  I do not propose to remove them from the game. I propose those choices influence your aligment instead of giving you points into three separate pools to unlock something.

I'll remind that in GC2 aligment aligment was a single slider which shown other races that you are Good or Evil and that influenced your relations with them.

2. I suggest making a single pool for culture point so that it can be accumulated and spent to progress down ANY tree of Ideaology (including mix of them) But picking perks would still influence your aligment making you Benevolent, Malevolent or in the middle. 

So you effectively have your chosen aligment and still capable of chosing abilities you need much easier without stockpiling points that you cannot use. The simplest idea ever! Pick anything you want and it will make you good or evil depending on your pick.

3 This can be easily patched into the game. Adde few improvements here and there, made one pool instead of three, leave colonization events as they are now and that is it! Any modder could do that. Just we will be needing Stardocks devs to balance it out to use proper.

I think I understand what you are proposing and I agree with everything except the simple part. Nothing is ever as simple as it sounds when it involves fundamental change in a system already adopted.

Basically one of your ideas seems to agree with what I think. Points must be derived from somewhere other than just colonization and a few point giving improvements, in order to allow access to ideology bonuses in any game on any map.

Precisely.

Just remember, for every person who thinks it is too easy to accumulate ideology, there is at least one person who thinks it is too hard. 

(insert obligatory comment of mine about there being not enough opponents for larger sized maps HERE ;))

Still, I did ask about this in the last game stream and Paul sounded open to the possibility of tying ideology cost into the game speed setting.

As for restricting ideology growth in the separate tables, that I am 100% completely against.  Make it more difficult to go up one the further you go up another?  Sure.  In fact, I'm kinda partial to that.  But saying flat out you can't navigate up a table anymore if you choose elsewhere?  No, no, a thousand times no.

For one thing, showing that factions might not be as ideologically committed to their supposed principles when opportunity is staring them in the face isn't exactly "immersion breaking" to me.  

And the thing is, if one thinks it breaks immersion to be benevolent and malevolent at the same time..... don't do it then!  Simples!  No one is forcing a player to spend those ideology points, after all.

At the same time, those ideology points are the reflection of the choices you made while playing the game.  Perhaps one should listen to the game if it is hinting that you aren't quite the Hippy Dippy Weatherman or Big Bad Leroy Brown one claims to be.

===

To put this all in another way... If one is truly a Single Ideology Only player, one won't get those other ideology points, and thus couldn't go up the other tables even if they were temped to.  I mean if one was truly ideologically committed they'd take the good with the bad with the events and be true to themselves, no?

So perhaps being able to get multiple ideology rewards is simply reflecting what the player's true outlook is when it comes to the game.

And when it comes right down to it, civilizations are messy, complicated things with conflicting goals and ideals.  Having a game recognize that isn't the worst thing in the world.

I can see this revised for an expansion game pack but I don't see it going into vanilla GC3. Ideology is already set in stone. I don't see the devs going to back and doing a complete design since we have less than two months left before release.

For an GC3 expansion game the idea is better placed there.

Perhaps. I brought this matter into light. It is now their will on how to deal with it.

I like the set up we have now.

pardon my quoting myself from an earlier thread,

I just didn't want to retype the whole thing.  I think micro events every turn will be better than single colonization events....  but I also realize this is probably not possible without a huge re-write of current code.

But the locking out the ideology until the age of war and then having some specific reserchable techs...  I really want.

I really enjoy the colonizing events but there needs to be other ways to access ideologies for smaller maps or players who just get a bit unlucky on having access to more planets. Sure, there are those building that give ideology points, but they are obviously set to scale with number of planets considering how slowly most of them generate points (basic one being 1 every 10 turns). I also think it is problematic to restrict player choice on ideologies just so they can get that building, especially considering how much the game's general mechanics benefit going wide already.

More galactic events could be an option, though I wouldn't want to over do that. However, I am playing with them on the highest setting in a game right now and as of turn 40, we haven't seen one pop up.

One thing that would be cool is a tech tree devoted to ideologies, with some one per player/galaxy buildings for different ideologies. This gives players going for (or forced in to) a tall game a better way to access the ideologies. For the one per player buildings, they can be mutually exclusive, so, for example, one tech could unlock 3 buildings (one for each ideology), but once one is built, the other two cannot be constructed. These one per player/galaxy could give 1 point per turn or more, depending on how much the ideologies scale.

Alternatively, unlocking the techs could just create an event similar to the colonizing events, complete with complimentary bonuses. That might be the simplest solution.

I really like the ideology trees as they are, but they are probably the least accessible part of the game right now without scooping up a lot of colonies, which doesn't seem mechanically or thematically ideal. 

Don't like the ideologies in their current form.

I invariably go for the pragmatic one first for the three constructors (who doesn't want free early starbases?) and then the benevolent free colony ship, because by then I've blatantly got a juicy planet I want to colonise. After that it's probably pragmatic stuff for eco boost and malevolent gets more or less ignored initially, and there's nothing to stop you maxing out all three ideologies. Probably better to take the spawny unlocks out, actually, and instead make it affect the way your civ develops and affects your reputation with other nations.

Basically, I find that it's too easy to treat morality as throwaway as technology. I prefer the dilemma outcomes - being 'good' is less about cutting your own nose off to spite your face, in a Stupid Good kind of way, and instead offers some actual benefits to the player - but I don't like that there's no real weight attached to the decision. It's too easy to think 'right, I've been good the past few times, let's throw in an evil or two so I can get that free frigate.' Being good, evil or neutral is too much of a means to an end, rather than being its own end, and aside from a (rather large??) diplomatic penalty for anyone who doesn't happen to have taken as many levels in Good/Evil/Neutral that you have, when in fact you might just have had a few more dilemmas to pick between so far.

It probably would make more sense to have to declare at the pre-game section which of the three ideological trees you want to go down for the bonus unlocks. Still offer the choices for each planet, but have the 'ideologically consistent' option give you more points towards the bonuses, while the 'ideologically inconsistent' ones perhaps confer stronger buffs to the individual planet (for example, you might have colonised a Ghost World -a pro-science world type- but the option that fits with your ideology would give a -30% to research, the option that runs counter to your ideology offers a +10% to Research. as you're intending for it to be a Research planet you pick the counter- one).

Or, declare pre-game and scrap the ideology-producing buildings and incorporate them into certain building types (such as slave pits or military installations for malevolent, entertainment centres and hospitals for benevolent, trade and embassies for pragmatic), and have [faction culture+ideologically-consistent dilemmas] as a multiplier? Nobody wants to clog up their planetary real estate with otherwise pretty pointless buildings for the sake of simultaneously moving up all three ideology trees...

Probably not explained myself very well here TBH.

Basically this.

I wasn't going to respond to this thread as I am not really interested in seeing Ideology change, but I am so against this option that I had to post.

Civilizations change their nature. Once benevolent or malevolent societies can become reversed. The Third Reich is a good example.

The only way to proceed realistically even partly along lines like this is relatively simple and would probably involve the minimum of code changings. If you have progressed along both the mal and bene trees, whichever one you are currently ahead with, (more points earned) the point building structures for the opposite tree won't function.  Real life example. Auschwitz still stands, but Germany's manufacturing doesn't benefit from it, and it isn't gaining malevolence points.

That way, to reactivate those buildings, it would take serious and conscious effort in the colonizing choices to push the other tree ahead again.

I don't like the idea of locking anyone out and, while I understand people have different flavor/theme preferences, my concern with ideology is more mechanical.

Basically, going wide (lots of planets) already has tons of benefits and is the number one way to increase ideology. While there are a few buildings that can be unlocked after claiming planets, these contribute very small amounts of ideology unless, once again, they are built on many planets. Mechanically, there are very few ways for a tall (few well developed planets) civ to gain points.

I don't necessarily think beefing up the ideology buildings is the best bet (it would work, but it is a shame for smaller civs to lose out on the event mechanic, which is fun). More ways to trigger events that lead to ideology choices would be great. Unlocking new tech seems a both mechanically and thematically sound (we just unlocked planetary invasion, leading to an ideological choice on how our people feel about that) to give players that don't have as many colonizing options a chance to get some ideological events going.

I tried turning up the galactic events to max just to see if that could work for me, but it hasn't come up yet on my huge map that has been completely settled for over 50-60 turns. That could be a separate problem in itself!

Sure, that'd work. The real problem, to my mind, is that presently you can be both completely 100% evil and completely 100% good simultaneously, and benefit from both. This isn't an ideology system. It's more like 3 separate XP systems that you can max out - once unlocked, traits are yours forever, so that you can push all-out-good even while running a huge slave trading/genocide operation from a palace called the Temple Of Ultimate Evil (we're the good guys now, honest! :D).

Except that, in my proposal, you could build that temple of ultimate evil, but the building itself would do nothing. (in cases where there is enough planets to max out both trees, whichever one you maxxed first would be the functioning one.)

Exactly, that's why I said your suggestion would work Anything to prevent the 'first world go evil, get evil building perk, second world go good, get good building perk, third world go neutral, get neutral building perk' issue.