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SE settings for a variant
I'm posting this in response to Eternal Spark's thread "What would you have changed in the SEs" on the Strategy Forum. The ideas for this variant are currently very preliminary, almost totally untested. But have fun looking.
This variant is intended as a challenge for players who are bored of the regular settings, and who like to compete with the AI in single-player play as builders. If it works, not only will you fear Marr's rover rush at the beginning of the game, but in the endgame you may find yourself rushing against time to achieve Transcendance before he finishes his 6 subspace transmitters.
I envisage playing this on a huge world with abundant native life and no pod scattering. Needlejets and choppers are removed from the game in SP, although they would be welcome back in MP. The Cloning Vats are always disabled, for reasons that will become apparant.
Here are the revised social engineering settings, followed by modifications to three of the factions. There are explanations beneath the settings. Comments on play balance issues in particular are welcome.
Politics:
Democracy: +1 talent, +3 efficiency, -2 police
Police State: +2 police, +2 support, +1 probe, -2 efficiency
Fundamentalism: +1 growth, +1 morale, -2 planet, -2 research
Economy:
Free Market: +2 economy, -3 police, -2 support, -3 planet
Planned: +1 growth, +1 industry, -2 economy, -2 planet
Green: +2 planet, +2 efficiency, -1 industry
Values: unchanged.
Future Society:
Cybernetic: +2 efficiency, +2 research, -2 support
Eudomaia: +1 talent, +1 economy, +1 planet, -2 police
Thought Control: Unchanged, but remember you can't get the Cloning Vats so there's no way out of the disadvantages.
Notes:
As you can see, it's difficult to pop boom. (Perhaps too difficult
, though not impossible, at least in SMAX.) Therefore the Vats can't be left in, they'd be way too powerful.
Democracy: Letting the locals govern their own affairs, instead of a far-away leader deciding everything, makes the locals happy. It is also more efficient - especially since I consider things like the rule of law to be implied in "Democracy". You can't have a rule of law when you have a supreme leader who's above the law (as in police states), and you can't have meaningful contracts without law, and you can't have an efficient industrial economy without contracts. Thus the huge efficiency bonus. There is a big -police because, by definition, if you (the supreme leader) are letting the locals run their own affairs you aren't clubbing them over their heads every time they disagree with one of your whims.
Democracies do not have a historical correlation with fast population growth that I am aware of - some do, some don't, other factors (such as medical technology and development of infrastructure) seem the crucial factors, so I take that out. This version of Democracy has enough already
.
Police State: If you are spying on your own citizens' every move, you have already built up much of the expertise you need to spy on foreigners. And it's hard for others to spy on you without being noticed. Hence the bonus to probe. Otherwise unchanged.
Eternal Spark, I thought about giving this -1 Talent, but I'm limited to 4 effects per SE (I think), and it's a pretty weak SE setting so I don't want to give it more -'s.
Fundamentalism: "'Go forth and multiply', said the Lord", and so the Fundamentalists do. But this disturbs Planet. (And the vivid description of Hell in Sunday's sermon doesn't make it easier to fight mind worms on Monday
). Such people are more willing to fight and die for a greater cause than those who have been taught that the pursuit of happiness is their goal, but they are also deeply conservative, and unlikely to research new ways of doing things.
Perhaps it should have only -1 planet.
Free Market: The changes here are basically a reaction to the changes I made to Democracy. But, let's see, paying soldiers and industrialists for war material is more expensive when you have to compete on the free market for workers and equipment rather than just conscripting everyone, hence the support costs. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
It would be nice to give -TALENT to represent the unhappy people who are at the bottom of the free market, but that would be a huge effect on small bases with no facilities, and a trivial one on large bases with holo theatres, bio labs, and research hospitals. I can't see how to make it work.
Planned Economy: If you look at the game effects of -efficiency, you see that it hurts large factions a lot but small ones very little. So if -efficiency was really a good description of the drawbacks of planned economies, Romania and North Korea have should worked a lot better than the former Soviet Union. In fact, they all worked roughly as well as the others, considering where they were coming from, so I consider -economy a better description of their situation than -efficiency.
The -planet is a consequence of the huge industrial activity and population growth. Historically these economies polluted worse than free market ones.
Green: Industry is at a penalty because everything has to be run carefully, taking longer to build equipment that is designed not to pollute the environment, and often knowingly producing less in order to produce much less pollution. Conversely, such equipment is technically efficient, and the whole procedure helps keep from disturbing planet.
Many thanks to Eternal Spark, whose idea (of an industry penaltry here) I have stolen.
Ideally I'd like to change the +2 efficiency to +1 efficiency, +1 something else, so this would be more useful for the Gaians, but I have no idea of what the something else could be.
Eudomaia/Cybernetic: I'm not even going to try to rationalize these settings - they're future settings, so who knows, but these values fit, for me. I haven't thought much about them, either, and I'm just plain uninspired for thought control.
Faction modifications:
The Hive: Gets immunity: economy to go along with immunity: efficiency. This is a consequence of the changes to Planned.
The Caretakers: Oh my. First, the Progenitors are designed, in this variant, to be an AI antagonist to the human protagonist, so bear that in mind when I give them the following changes:
Impunity: Planned (as an alien species they don't suffer the disadvantages humans do when trying to centrally plan an entire faction's economic activities)
Aversion: Free Market (again, they are an alien species, and their entire society does not resonate with the human concept of the Free Market). This fits in with Firaxis' portrayal of them as defaulting to a planned economy and not trading with human allies.
The Usurpers:
Like the Caretakers, the Usurpers get Impunity: Planned (replacing their +1 growth), and Aversion: Free Market (replacing their Aversion: Democracy). It seems unreasonable that a faction who title their capital "Courage: To Question", and which originated by violating one of its own culture's deepest taboos, would be inherently fundamentalist, as they are with the default settings. The Usurpers also get their priority changed to Research, not Planet, since their goal is to discover how to induce a controlled Flowering, not to preserve Planet unchanged.
This variant is intended as a challenge for players who are bored of the regular settings, and who like to compete with the AI in single-player play as builders. If it works, not only will you fear Marr's rover rush at the beginning of the game, but in the endgame you may find yourself rushing against time to achieve Transcendance before he finishes his 6 subspace transmitters.
I envisage playing this on a huge world with abundant native life and no pod scattering. Needlejets and choppers are removed from the game in SP, although they would be welcome back in MP. The Cloning Vats are always disabled, for reasons that will become apparant.
Here are the revised social engineering settings, followed by modifications to three of the factions. There are explanations beneath the settings. Comments on play balance issues in particular are welcome.
Politics:
Democracy: +1 talent, +3 efficiency, -2 police
Police State: +2 police, +2 support, +1 probe, -2 efficiency
Fundamentalism: +1 growth, +1 morale, -2 planet, -2 research
Economy:
Free Market: +2 economy, -3 police, -2 support, -3 planet
Planned: +1 growth, +1 industry, -2 economy, -2 planet
Green: +2 planet, +2 efficiency, -1 industry
Values: unchanged.
Future Society:
Cybernetic: +2 efficiency, +2 research, -2 support
Eudomaia: +1 talent, +1 economy, +1 planet, -2 police
Thought Control: Unchanged, but remember you can't get the Cloning Vats so there's no way out of the disadvantages.
Notes:
As you can see, it's difficult to pop boom. (Perhaps too difficult
, though not impossible, at least in SMAX.) Therefore the Vats can't be left in, they'd be way too powerful.Democracy: Letting the locals govern their own affairs, instead of a far-away leader deciding everything, makes the locals happy. It is also more efficient - especially since I consider things like the rule of law to be implied in "Democracy". You can't have a rule of law when you have a supreme leader who's above the law (as in police states), and you can't have meaningful contracts without law, and you can't have an efficient industrial economy without contracts. Thus the huge efficiency bonus. There is a big -police because, by definition, if you (the supreme leader) are letting the locals run their own affairs you aren't clubbing them over their heads every time they disagree with one of your whims.
Democracies do not have a historical correlation with fast population growth that I am aware of - some do, some don't, other factors (such as medical technology and development of infrastructure) seem the crucial factors, so I take that out. This version of Democracy has enough already
.Police State: If you are spying on your own citizens' every move, you have already built up much of the expertise you need to spy on foreigners. And it's hard for others to spy on you without being noticed. Hence the bonus to probe. Otherwise unchanged.
Eternal Spark, I thought about giving this -1 Talent, but I'm limited to 4 effects per SE (I think), and it's a pretty weak SE setting so I don't want to give it more -'s.
Fundamentalism: "'Go forth and multiply', said the Lord", and so the Fundamentalists do. But this disturbs Planet. (And the vivid description of Hell in Sunday's sermon doesn't make it easier to fight mind worms on Monday
). Such people are more willing to fight and die for a greater cause than those who have been taught that the pursuit of happiness is their goal, but they are also deeply conservative, and unlikely to research new ways of doing things.Perhaps it should have only -1 planet.
Free Market: The changes here are basically a reaction to the changes I made to Democracy. But, let's see, paying soldiers and industrialists for war material is more expensive when you have to compete on the free market for workers and equipment rather than just conscripting everyone, hence the support costs. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
It would be nice to give -TALENT to represent the unhappy people who are at the bottom of the free market, but that would be a huge effect on small bases with no facilities, and a trivial one on large bases with holo theatres, bio labs, and research hospitals. I can't see how to make it work.
Planned Economy: If you look at the game effects of -efficiency, you see that it hurts large factions a lot but small ones very little. So if -efficiency was really a good description of the drawbacks of planned economies, Romania and North Korea have should worked a lot better than the former Soviet Union. In fact, they all worked roughly as well as the others, considering where they were coming from, so I consider -economy a better description of their situation than -efficiency.
The -planet is a consequence of the huge industrial activity and population growth. Historically these economies polluted worse than free market ones.
Green: Industry is at a penalty because everything has to be run carefully, taking longer to build equipment that is designed not to pollute the environment, and often knowingly producing less in order to produce much less pollution. Conversely, such equipment is technically efficient, and the whole procedure helps keep from disturbing planet.
Many thanks to Eternal Spark, whose idea (of an industry penaltry here) I have stolen.
Ideally I'd like to change the +2 efficiency to +1 efficiency, +1 something else, so this would be more useful for the Gaians, but I have no idea of what the something else could be.
Eudomaia/Cybernetic: I'm not even going to try to rationalize these settings - they're future settings, so who knows, but these values fit, for me. I haven't thought much about them, either
, and I'm just plain uninspired for thought control.Faction modifications:
The Hive: Gets immunity: economy to go along with immunity: efficiency. This is a consequence of the changes to Planned.
The Caretakers: Oh my. First, the Progenitors are designed, in this variant, to be an AI antagonist to the human protagonist, so bear that in mind when I give them the following changes:
Impunity: Planned (as an alien species they don't suffer the disadvantages humans do when trying to centrally plan an entire faction's economic activities)
Aversion: Free Market (again, they are an alien species, and their entire society does not resonate with the human concept of the Free Market). This fits in with Firaxis' portrayal of them as defaulting to a planned economy and not trading with human allies.
The Usurpers:
Like the Caretakers, the Usurpers get Impunity: Planned (replacing their +1 growth), and Aversion: Free Market (replacing their Aversion: Democracy). It seems unreasonable that a faction who title their capital "Courage: To Question", and which originated by violating one of its own culture's deepest taboos, would be inherently fundamentalist, as they are with the default settings. The Usurpers also get their priority changed to Research, not Planet, since their goal is to discover how to induce a controlled Flowering, not to preserve Planet unchanged.
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