Hi, I just wanted to share my opinion about obtaining a victory by election. In MOO2 population was the major factor for being victorious. MOO2 tried to balance this by various ways but at the end.. population mattered the most. I think ISG is on the same course. Is this by design? Clearly a lot of technologies have support for population growth. The thing is that it somewhat hinders diversity among races because every race is trying to be as numerous as possible. What does mean? Well, by ISG standards it means that when you have 100 drunk red-necks they can outsmart a one professor because they are producing 100 RP in total and poor professor will produce 1 RP Or (2-3 with a bonus). Clearly in reality that is not the case. The same goes for money. In real world 100 red-necks will not generate more taxes than one good prospering businessmen. 1 % of population owns 90 % of worlds wealth. I am giving these examples to show, that it is OK to have diverse alien races, that population does not have to be the crux of everything. I digress, sorry about that, but election is tied to population as well. So I wanted to ask, do you think it is fair to have one vote per one population unit? Again, it depends whether ISG want to have diverse races in terms of population size or not. If not,I would propose to change how votes are counted. I know that it was like that in MOO2 but ISG wants to be better than MOO2 so we should look for improvements I would suggest to introduce Penrose method. Instead of telling a player how much votes he has, game would tell how much percentage of votes he has. That would give a chance for smaller races (but for example smarter) to have impact on voting. What do you think?
I understand what you mean. POPs are the most important factor for galactic council votes. However, there are other 3 sources of votes in ISG. Besides POPs (which you get 1 vote for each unit), you also get votes from: - Strategic resources amount (2 votes per resource source controlled); ancient artifacts found in ruins (10 votes per artifact found); and galactic wonders (5 votes for each). These numbers are still preliminary, and we can adjust them as we go, but as you can see there are other factors other than POPs that contribute to voting. I realize this is opaque at the moment and that you'd have no way to know this since there is no tooltip to inform the player from where those votes came from. However, we'll add that information to the game soon.
Thanks for the laugh @Wodzu I sure needed it today. In seriousness though, consider that 1% that owns most of the wealth If my pop is 100 and your pop is 20 My 1% is larger than yours. It's a simplistic approach, but with the other considerations as outlined by Adam it's better than the MoO2 model Lately I take advantage of all these other considerations (strategic resources, ancient artifacts, galactic wonders) to great effect. I've seen myself have the highest vote count in numerous games, but never had the highest overall population. In all honesty, I like Adam's system, it's simple, fresher than just straight pop count (rednecks), and handles well in game situations.
I am glad I made you laugh That is true assuming that are races are the same, but otherwise does not have to be, that is why we have those parks at the begining to differentiate them I agree that is a neat idea, but still I think that population should not have 1:1 translation to votes. That is why we have it different in European Union. I mean, we have it for a valid reason, so smaller countries could have impact on voting.
Also, you need to remember the voting victory is not really a voting thing. It's not even a diplomatic thing (though diplomacy is one of the means to gather said vote shares). The system is a dressing put onto something simpler, a sort of shares or score victory of sorts. Pops were used because it's a decent measure of "shares" you got in the game. When you colonize you raise your pop cap, properly managing your planets lets you fill that cap, conquering planets straight-up takes those pops from an opponent to give them to yourself (hostile takeover if we keep using the corporate metaphor), and gaining another's support (the diplomatic route) is a means to get another's shares via peaceful means (a merger or a partnership). However, if presented in its honest form it would be immersion breaking as I doubt in-game people see themselves as shares of a global pool within a game. So it is dressed like a council vote for purposes of in-game lore and thus for immersion. Now, in ISG we decided to mix it up a bit and not leave it to just pops, we factor other things to have a share value. Now building an outpost to grab those strategic resources also tips the balance in your favour for example. Also, what is one pop is also an abstraction of sorts, it is a game unit to represent resource production pools. What counts as a Human pop is not the same as a Moltar pop, though both represents one game unit. So even if it seems like a "vote" in game, think of it more like gathering up or creating VPs or shares that exists in the game world to build up a tally where you have most of them and thus win. It's an abstraction wearing a pretty coat of paint for immersion. Hopefully me explaining how the sausage is made hasn't ruined the flavour of the delicious sausage.
I have not found the votes to be unfairly skewed in any one direction. The strategic resources make a big difference, and given their role in the galaxy, I feel this is justified. I have not had a game yet where I felt the relative power level of the empires was not properly reflected in their available votes. Mmmmmm sausage.
I would like to see something done, because I still keep winning the election the first time it's called. I have way more votes than anyone else and if someone else votes for me, I win. Been playing on hard, too. Maybe have more than two candidates, so everyone just votes for themselves unless they are allied (and inferior to their ally)
The AI does not have to vote for either candidate as-is. They can abstain. There is no need for them to vote for themselves.
I can't explain how/why you are winning the first election each time. I agree that it needs to be addressed though. Obviously winning the game right away without any challenge is not a fun experience for the player. Have you tried impossible or hardcore? You may have a harder time having way more votes than anyone else early in the game that way. I believe there are two main issues with the election process currently: 1. The AI needs to abstain more often instead of arbitrarily picking a side. I don't know what the factors currently are that influence how they vote, but they should be more reluctant to name anyone (aside from themselves) the winner. 2. The first election should be delayed until later in the game when empires have started jockeying for position. This may need to be based on map size and number of players.. Also, as more players are added to the game, it should also be harder to get the vote count needed since votes would be divided up all over the place. I am anxious to see all 6 main races in, and potentially more in the future. That combined with custom races should spice the voting up quite a bit.
In the last release (Hotfix 2), we made the AI less prone to vote for others unless they really had good relations. From your words it seems that this may not have been enough. Judging from what others have said this may be specific to the playstyle you usually go with and this justifies digging a bit deeper on this, if you don't mind. So, when you run into this issue, what are the game settings you are using? Are you playing the Hotfix2 version (changes were made on that version to tone down AI voting)? What faction do you usually play with where you find it easy to get votes on the galactic council (I suppose the humans or another race with the Charismatic trait, is this correct?). What galaxy size do you usually play? How many players (the more players in the game the harder it should be)? What difficulty level? Do you usually have trade treaties or other treaties going with the ones voting for you? Do you happen to have leaders with the "Emphatic" trait (as this confers bonuses to diplomacy)? Do you usually pick the "Empathic Diplomats" space culture perk (as that confers additional bonuses to diplomacy)? When you "Win", you usually win "because you have no choice", i.e. irrespective on who you vote for? Or, could you delay your winning by abstaining or voting for the other guy? Do you tend to favor going after strategic resources as soon as you can (strategic resources give extra votes)? Do you tend to favor going after wonders as soon as possible (as these also confer votes)? If after analysing your reply we still don't reach a satisfactory conclusion, then we could do two things: a) make the AI abstain even more than currently in Hotfix2; and/or b) the Galactic Council voting could be delayed until later in the game, when the empires start getting a position on the galactic scene, as @aReclusiveMind suggests. I just want to stress that most of the times you should have a choice of not winning if you abstain or vote for the other guy. I know it sounds silly, but it's something you can do to delay the game if you're having a good experience. Just a suggestion, of course. Let us know. Thanks!
Not so sure about having the resource function for voting. It will strengthen the option of taking the survey ship. It will let you get a jump on the artifacts. Though I do like the concept of amelioration the election. I was never fond of the galactic council. It came too soon and too often in Moo. It took too many clicks to get it out of my way, which meant the immersion was gone.
You have the "Skip" button if you don't want to go through all that process. Let us know if it's still too many steps using Skip. Also, we may think about going with an option to turn off the Galactic Council. We'll see.
Sounds good. In Moo1 and Moo2 I always just want to get past the vote, unless I was ready to stop playing that map. Well, one other condition was to force an all war vs me.
The issue becomes if society will become more egalitarian. I suspect it must or it would quickly destroy itself.
