Ideas for small empire / technological advancement

from Stardock Forums
One of the problems I often find with empire building games is that bigger is ALWAYS best. The primary reason for this is that there are no negatives for getting too big and just lots of benefits. Every extra planet increases your industry, research, social and military capabilities without exception. I would therefore like to suggest some modifications to this.

The one game I have recently played which treated this very well was Europa Universallis. This game is based on the late middle ages and had a number of ways of making empire building more realistic. Firstly as an empire got larger the religious and cultural differences within its borders could increase. Secondly research costs increased as empire expanded (all the empire needed to reach the next level). Thirdly war weariness was a serious threat to empire stability.

Now in Galciv some of these ideas could easily be implemented. I see no reason why colonies could eventually chage culture/ religion. The further away from the home planets the more likely. A large empire should therefore over time become multi cultural and require effort to remain stable. Failure to expend 'effort' could result in rebellions and independent colonies. Now how do we expend 'effort'? I'm not sure, but it sounds like an excellent application for the social projects. This whole concept could also be nicely tied into the democracy in the game. Any planet which changes religion or culture could therefore have different representives in the senate. THe more this occurs the more you have to pander to them and in a large empire it would be nearly impossible for you to control the senate.

The second suggestion is to do with research costs. While many research projects should be fixed cost, making larger empires (and thus increased research abilities) any social related or culture related research should not be. This particularly applies to anything like ascendance. It should be harder to convert everyone in a large multicultural empire to a higher level of being, not easier. More being advancements should also be added to take advantage of this. Maybe add a few advancements which give an extra tick to the tech bonus at the start. If you advance your whole population you could add an extra tick to any slider. The cost of advancement would be a fixed cost plus 25% of this for every planet you own. This would make small / technology focussed empires a viable option in the game. A large empire could never research these human advancements (consider them genetic engineering or spiritual advancement)

The third addition I would like to see is weariness in the population. This would affect moral. It should be applied empire wide to long wars (assuming they were started by you), but more interestingly it should be applied on a planet by planet level depending on individual factors. These would be related to the culture / religion / party affiliation of a planet. The most obvious of these is a moral drop when a non-friendly culture / party is in control of the senate. This addition in connection with the culture / religion addition would really make the senate an important an crucial aspect of controlling large empires. A small empire would have much less cultural diversity and hence be easier to control (but at a cost of fewer industry, research, social and military facilities)

Do let me know what you think of these ideas.

paul.
177 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, those ideas, while interesting, are not based on reality.
1. So they have different cultures. Look at the US and tell me that California and New York have identic culture. Or look at Europe, where different countries with different cultures strive to become one country.
We are talking about democratic secular governments, there is no reason to assume that the people would act much different from what we experience at the moment. People got lot more tolerant since the middle ages.
And don't forget that there is the threat of hostile aliens. They'd just love to pick such mini-emipires to expand their influence.

2. Why? You seem to mix up researching and implementing. Researching is not related to the population size at all. And implementing is done by building the social improvements. As you need to build them on every planet, this is IMHO already addressed.

3. There are only few factors that are important for war weariness. How do the Mass Media report the events? Is there a draft? How well do I live?
Nothing else is important. If a volunteer army fights it out with the enemy over decades, but the empire prospers, and the Media ignore the conflict, but for a few good news every once a while, why should I get weary?
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
New York and California do not have identical cultures, but there are common threads that run between them. France and the United States have different cultures, but you could probably still find similarities. The Midwest accent is the one primarily heard in movies, on television, etc, and is already more or less the American accent. So media is one way of connecting the world. Now say we develop a mode of transportation that will safely move people from America to Europe...we may see even more cultural blending. So the width and breadth of your stable empire can only go so far as your communications and travel will allow.

I have to admit that I'm borrowing heavily from Christopher Stascheff's theories as expounded in his Warlock series...
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Going to have to digest this stuff. Any way this could be implemented as an event or anamoly?
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
actually EU DOES address some issues regarding research. The farther ahead you are in research over the other countries, the more it costs to do the research. if you are farther behind, it is cheaper to research. basically it takes into account the spread of knowledge. as one country made advances they affected the surounding countries, information leaks, and knowledge spreads. however if you are farther ahead than the others, YOU are doing all the basic research, no influx of knowledge from other areas. Remeber this simple axiom: " once a thing is known to be possible, it will be done " if you know something is possible and have seen it in action, then you have a basic idea of what can be done. HOWEVER, if something has never been done before, where do you start?
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Opps,
Drake,
let me answer your points one at at time.
1. you are comparing cities and countries which are within the same cultural groups and socio-economic groups. Even in europe there is a huge cultural diversity due to language, but everyone is still capitalistic making society similar. Try comparing England with Zimbabwe (topical issue at the moment). There is no tolerance. This african nation feels that western ideas on democracy are being forcefully applied and it is being interfered with. IT feels that England is treating it like a colony and it should be able to govern itself like it wants, even the EU has just branded it a dictatorship and imposed sanctions. Can you not see the possibility of this happening to a planet in Galciv???

2. As a scientist I am completely aware of the difference between research and development (implementation). I was careful to suggest that a large empire should only suffer when human / social research is being developed. Standard technology research will be enhanced by a larger empire. Human / socio research however has traditionally always made it's first advancements in small countries. Democracy, womens vote, education for all. These all were applied in small countries decades if not millenia before they applied to large countries. Why? Because of the smaller cultural diversity. These a empire wide concepts, they cannot be applied planet by planet. Many of these ideas could even cause rebellion and strife initially. In Galciv only the small empires should be realistically able to apply social change easily. Therefore I would like a series of social think advancements or genetics which allow a small empire to successfully compete by becoming more efficient, more intelligent, more ... THis would best be achieved by allowing these advancements to add a point to the technology bonus sliders at the start of the game.

3. I strongly disagree with this. If you are talking about a society with controlled media then I would agree, but in Galciv you could just as easily have a democracy. Look at the effect war weariness had on the US over Vietnam. Consider the effect of people's apathy to any US deployment. The US nearly had to withdraw all troops from the Balkans due to apathy. In an open society this is a very strong effect. The US lost Vietnam not because they could not win militarially, but because politically they they were not comitted due to war weariness at home.

I think it is also worth pointing out that many small countries and city states have prospered throughout history because they were small and could thus stay more focussed and advanced than their large neighbours. Historically large empires have always collasped due to internal pressures!!!

Paul.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Paul,

So why do you think France could not win in Vietnam? Perhaps it was an
unwinable "war" under any circumstance.

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Quite possibly,
but the situations were different. France started out with ownership of the country as oppossed to being invited in to help fight a war. I think a bigger problem was a lack of realistic objectives and the focus to achieve them. The US has learnt a lot since then. Keep wars short, focussed and with clear objectives for the population at home to see. Or else, population gets angry and the next election equals goodbye for the current government.

Paul.