EstyleS EstyleS

does the UP meet often enough?

▼

does the UP meet often enough?

from Stardock Forums
I always thought the United Planets was a great idea for this game, but it doesn't seem to play much part, in my experience. It seems like forever between UP meetings (what is it, like once every 4 years?), and half of the time the issues are essentially meaningless.

It would be kinda cool if you could select the referendums, but I can see how that would be easily exploited. But why doesn't the UP meet more often? I would be able to deal with it as often as once a year. Even once every 2 years would be better than it is now. As it is, I don't see any reason to leave the UP, because there are only ever like 3 resolutions passed before the game is essentially over, even on a huge galaxy (of course, there would have been more resolutions voted on, but not every resolution gets passed), and half of those resolutions are irrelevant.
936 views 30 replies
Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
I dislike the UP. I dislike the concept of the UP. The UP style feature of the MOO series was one of its weakest points and the reason I gravitated to other games. The only reason to tolerate it in GalCiv is that it was implemented in a superior fashion.

It meets too often. If any modification is contemplated, make it user-adjustable with an option to eliminate it entirely.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
"It is sounding like we're asking the AI to have the complexity of a human mind. This not very likely to happen. The best would be for the devs to pull off some kind of illusion of human intelligence. "

I think this is the reason why knowing the resolution ahead of time would be a bad idea. If you let the player know the resolution, you'd have to let the AI know, and then allow them to react in some way. Otherwise, if the player knows it'll be a useless resolution, he sells away his influence, or if he knows it's important, he buys up a whole lot of influence and gets a huge advantage on the AI.

And I can't imagine that anyone can think it meets *too* often... I mean, I actually forget about the existence of the UP in between meetings. Then, finally, after a wait that seems to outlast the entire existence of some races in the game, I get a notice that says, "UP meets next month", and it takes me a minute to remember that the UP is even part of this game. If you hate the idea of the UP, then it gives you every reason to secede from it (although there would be more reason for that if it met more often and actually passed some resolutions that mattered)... you just have to give up trading.

Really, done properly, I think the UP is a great idea. It's a reasonable approximation of how international politics work, expanded to encompass "interplanetary politics" in the game.

It *would* be ideal if there were a slider to select UP frequency in the game, anywhere from 1 year to 4 years. Allowing it to be disabled entirely would allow a player to engage in interplanetary trade without any regard for the political complications that could arise, which I think takes away from the game. If you want to be able to trade, you should have to deal with the UP.
Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree that the UP should meet more often. More like every 2 years would be fine with me. I also agree on advance notice. Now I agree with being able to propose your own resolutions but since we all know most people will abuse the system... I would suggest that the proposels you would be allowed to propose would be more minor ones so that human players couldn't make it to tough for AIs. Proposels such as Banning Terror Stars and anomalies would be ones that you should be able to propose since they could make it harder for AI but not impossible for it to win game. Also I have put a Thread in the mod section about seeing if you can mod the UP meetings. It's titled UP( It needs to meet more) So go there if you have any suggestions on how to mod it. maybe we can start a petition or something or at least pool expertise. So anyway I'll stop taking up chat space now....

Toot a Loo,
(M)illenium (E)dtion :)