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Stellaris Dev Diary #159 - Galactic Community

Hello everyone!

Today we will be talking about a new feature coming with Stellaris: Federations – the Galactic Community!

The Galactic Community is very similar to a United Nations in space. Members can propose and vote on Resolutions, which are laws that affect all the member empires.

Resolutions
The Resolutions are intended to be divisive, so that even empires that are allies can have very different agendas when it comes to which Resolutions should be passed.

upload_2019-11-7_10-51-28.png

Resolutions exist in categories and have a couple of steps in each category.

upload_2019-11-7_10-51-49.png

Go big or go home.

Passing a Resolution
The first step to passing a Resolution is proposing it! Any member of the Galactic Community can propose a Resolution, but they can only have one ongoing. When a Resolution is proposed, it moves into the proposal queue.

upload_2019-11-7_10-52-28.png

The Galactic Community dealing with matters of critical importance to the continued well-being of the galaxy and all of its inhabitants.

Only one Resolution can be voted on at a time on the senate floor, and the proposal that moves into session next will be the proposed Resolution with the highest amount of Diplomatic Weight supporting it.

upload_2019-11-7_10-53-3.png

Senate in session, voting on a Resolution.

When a Resolution is in session and is being voted on, empires can support, oppose or abstain. Voting for or against will add an empire’s Diplomatic Weight to either side, and when the current session ends the votes will be counted. A Resolution will pass if the Diplomatic Weight in favor of the Resolution is higher than the amount opposing it.


Diplomatic Weight
Diplomatic influence will be calculated using a new scoring system called Diplomatic Weight, and it will be composed of things like economy, technology, fleet power to name a couple of examples.

upload_2019-11-7_10-53-46.png

Cooperative Diplomatic Stance increases Diplomatic Weight by +25%.
There will also be a number of different ways to influence how much Diplomatic Weight you are getting from different sources. There are Resolutions that can modify how much Diplomatic Weight you gain from your economy, and there are Diplomatic Stances that increase how much Diplomatic Weight you gain from fleet power or other areas (more on Diplomatic Stances later!).

So as you can see, there are many different ways to make yourself more influential on a diplomatic, galactic stage!

Favors
For Resolutions, empires have the possibility to call in favors to strengthen their votes. An empire can owe another empire up to 10 favors, and each favor is worth 10% diplomatic weight. For example, if an empire calls in 10 favors, they can add 100% of the other empire’s diplomatic weight to theirs. Calling in favors this way will only affect votes on Resolutions. This also means that favors will work the same between player empires as it will between player and AI empires.

upload_2019-11-7_10-54-16.png

Calling in favors costs Influence.

Favors can also be used to increase the likelihood of AI empires accepting diplomatic deals.

Favors can be traded through the trade diplomatic action.

Galactic Council
It is possible to reform the Galactic Community to include a Galactic Council. The council will be composed of a number of empires with the highest Diplomatic Weight. By default, the council will have 3 members, but the number can be changed through Resolutions.

The Galactic Council also gets access to special powers such as veto rights or emergency measures.

Veto rights allows a council member to veto a Resolution that is currently in the proposal queue.

While the galactic senate is in recess it is possible for Galactic Council members to declare a proposed Resolution an emergency. This will immediately put the senate into session and will initiate a vote on the emergency Resolution.

Galactic Focus
It is possible for the Galactic Community to set a Galactic Focus. This will mean the Galactic Community together have decided to achieve something or to deal with a crisis.

There will be Resolutions to declare the galactic invaders a threat to the galaxy, which means it will be against galactic law to have closed borders to any other Galactic Community member while the crisis is ongoing.

The Galactic Market is now founded through a Galactic Focus to “Found the Galactic Market”. When the Resolution to form the Galactic Market has been passed, the bidding process to be the market founder will continue as it previously did.

Creating/Joining/Leaving the Galactic Community

When an empire has established communications with half of the empires in the galaxy, an event will trigger to suggest the formation of a Galactic Community. This means that forming the Galactic Community will be similar to how it used to work to form the Galactic Market.

It is possible to join the Galactic Community (and to see it!) as soon as you have established communications with any member of it.

Leaving the galaxy community is something an empire might choose to do if they become the target of too many sanctions or if there are too many Resolutions that negatively impact them.

----

Next week we will be showing all the Origins!
 
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I think they mentioned in a dev post that only genocidals will be unable to join, non-genocidal Gestalts should be able to. Even Inward Perfection will be able to join for the boni, though they will have a Diplomatic Weight penalty.
it wouldnt make sense for an isolitionistic empire to join federations or the galactic community tho
 
What bothers me is that new reactor techs have no effect on Energy Districts. If only each generation of reactors added +1 energy to the output of Technicians i'd be satisfied, or maybe a +20% empire bonus to energy yield for each tech, or something.
I asume that Industrial Scale Fusion/Cold Fusion reactors already work. The only issue is miniaturzing it.

Read back through the thread. I've given plenty of examples.

See Diplomatic Negotiations - Diplomacy 3.0 for a full test concept of a "social combat" system that does not ultimately depend on war.
Did you just Made the Diplomacy into War?

Flavor text and realism. I always chuckle a little when, in our game about space dragons and psychic mushroom marines, someone complains that a mechanic just wouldn't be realistic.

Easiest way to knock out these complaints is to just link to the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness and ask them where they think Stellaris falls. That gets everyone on the same page, really quickly.
I like to say:
This is Stellaris. "Realism" got shoved out of hte Airlock and left there on teh first FTL jump.

I’m sorry, I find this a bit unsatisfactory.
And I find it unsatisfactory if they speak about "X is increasing exponentially".
I am a programmer. I deal with figures increasing exponentially as my daily bread and butter.

You get over it.

it wouldnt make sense for an isolitionistic empire to join federations or the galactic community tho
And yet China was a founding member of the UN:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Founding
 
it wouldnt make sense for an isolitionistic empire to join federations or the galactic community tho

Having a foot in the UN allows them to run interference on policies they hate. Full cloistering isn't the only option for an isolationist. Obstructionism has its merits.
 
Did you just Made the Diplomacy into War?

There are three advantages to modeling diplomacy as a social combat:
  • It takes time to resolve, giving defenders opportunity to respond.
  • It provides a tension mechanic, with negative events and fallout from hostile negotiations. The effects ripple out and are felt by your society, similar to war exhaustion.
  • It allows each side (and potentially even third parties) to bring resources to bear in order to sway the negotiation to their benefit. These resources could be high skill diplomats, favors, blackmail, or other leverage. You have to grow and deploy these resources according to a cost/benefit analysis. You can fold on negotiations that aren't worth it. You can go to the wall in crucial ones, at the cost of exhausting yourself for that costly victory.
The Galactic UN makes a partial nod toward these principles. Resolutions take time. You must grow your diplomatic weight and call in favors owed by other empires. Presumably there are ways to acquire more favors while you wait for a resolution to move up in the queue (trades, material assistance, saving someone's ass in a war). That way when your item hits the floor you can blitz it.

All of these things make the real meat of the system easier to stomach:
  • You can force other empires to do things against their will, by diplomacy alone.
Those Pacifist-Xenophiles want to annex a planet from a Militarist-Xenophobe? If their diplo game is on point, they can just do it without ever having to fire a shot.

Sure, the Militarist-Xenophobe could declare war to stop this. But their reputation will be sullied. Favors owed to them will vanish. Market fees hit the roof. Ministers resign. Their populace will general strike, paralyzing their industry, and half their fleet will mutiny rather than participate in an illegal invasion.

In effect, a strong diplomacy game can neutralize and route around a mediocre military game.

That kind of diplomacy is not just an accessory to war. It stands on its own.
 
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@Jin_Cardassian
Let me get this straight so I we do not talk past each other: The only way to make Diplomacy more then a sidegrade of Warfare, is to make it into Warfare?
Do you seriously do not see issues going from Irony to Oxymoron in this sugestion?
 
@Jin_Cardassian
Let me get this straight so I we do not talk past each other: The only way to make Diplomacy more then a sidegrade of Warfare, is to make it into Warfare?
Do you seriously do not see issues going from Irony to Oxymoron in this sugestion?

It's kinda like rhye's fall civilization in civ 4 or civ 6 with that new diplomatic mechanic with world congress to shift cities out of your control.
Also funny about Militarist-Xenophobe population caring about what the GC will say
 
@Jin_Cardassian
Let me get this straight so I we do not talk past each other: The only way to make Diplomacy more then a sidegrade of Warfare, is to make it into Warfare?
Do you seriously do not see issues going from Irony to Oxymoron in this sugestion?

I think he's talking about making it an alternative to war.

ES2 tries to do something like this with Influence. Every faction has a sort of tug-of-war going on when not at war based on how much influence they are producing, and if they out produce another faction by a large enough amount over time, they can use a special diplomatic demand that the other side *has* to accept or give up influnce (and if you don't have enough influnce, you have no choice but to give in) IIRC systems can't be earned this way, but techs and strategic resources can. United Empire is pretty good at this, since they make tons of influence.

Planet flipping is done with borders. Borders in ES2 work like they did pre-2.0, with expanding on colonies and growing, based in ES2 largely on the amount of influence that planet made. If two borders met, there would again be a tug-of-war, and if the borders of one empire completely enveloped the system of the other, after X turns (and with the right mid-late game tech) they could pay influnce to flip the system, and the only way to stop it was going to war beforehand. This is also something the UE does well... but the best, or at least the most dastardly, faction at it is the Unfallen, the Pacifist tree people. You see, they don't have normal borders and instead expand by post 2.0 rules, enveloping nearby systems in "vines" before colonizing. They can also do this in the systems of their allies and those they are at peace (but not cold war) with. *However* systems enveloped in their vines are not only considered within their borders for influnce flipping, but having been in their borders long enough to flip even if the vines were finished on that turn. And as long as they have a pacifist-led government, they can force peace treaties on other empires, which they will not be able to break for several turns, long enough for a couple of fleets of vineships to quickly envelop a system each and flip them. (This is somewhat offset by the fact they are basically playing with hardcore Tree of Life rules, and if they lose their homeworld and don't reclaim in soon after, the entire empire goes poof.)
 
@Jin_Cardassian
Let me get this straight so I we do not talk past each other: The only way to make Diplomacy more then a sidegrade of Warfare, is to make it into Warfare?
Do you seriously do not see issues going from Irony to Oxymoron in this sugestion?

Sigh . . .

The core idea of "combat" in a game can be defined as this: two agents, with opposing motivations, come into contact. That creates conflict. They attempt to resolve the conflict through their choices. That provides challenge. The resolution of conflict through the overcoming of challenge creates drama.

It has nothing fundamentally to do with "making diplomacy into warfare". If you actually bother to read the proposal, it specifies that recipients of an offer can choose to go along with it and both parties will work together to get the deal done quick and smooth. Recipients can also make a counter-offer which, if accepted, locks them into an agreeing stance. In this case the conflict is resolved . . . amicably.

It becomes "combat" when they cannot resolve their conflict by finding a way to work together, but instead try to undermine each other. This can raise tensions and trigger blowback in a functionally similar manner to war exhaustion, but with entirely different content.

The other lens in which "combat" is a useful metaphor is time. War isn't simply a case of building up your fleets until they are 10% bigger than the opponent's and then clicking a green "I Win" button. War takes time to resolve. Every month entails a reevaluation of where and how to allocate resources, and whether or not the gains are worth the costs. War has a "flow" to it. Social "combats" must likewise take time and force these same decisions.

Put it this way. In a TTRPG, the Duke is going to attack a castle you want to protect. Whether you are negotiating with the Duke to convince him to abandon his aggression, or battling him in the field, you are engaged in a conflict resolution that takes time, contains multiple decision points, and has a flow.

Does that mean that rolling Diplomacy checks is just a copy of making attack rolls?

Or does it just mean that there are some broad, general design principles that apply to all types of conflict resolution?
 
It's kinda like rhye's fall civilization in civ 4 or civ 6 with that new diplomatic mechanic with world congress to shift cities out of your control.
Also funny about Militarist-Xenophobe population caring about what the GC will say

Every Xenophobic empire besides Fanatical Purifiers have some stake in maintaining their diplomatic status, and even they use the Galactic Market.

But let's assume they don't care about external politics. What about internal politics? Beneath the player, there are billions of bureaucrats, military personnel, and everyday citizens. All with their own opinions.

Remember that the Xenophobe ethic has two factions: the Supremacists and the Isolationists. They may not be evenly represented in all Xenophobic empires, but it's clear that not all Xenophobes agree that belligerence for its own sake is wise.

You, the player, may desperately want to defend that border planet, but if 90% of your bureaucracy, military, and everyday people "don't give a damn about Vietnam" then you're gonna face a hell of an uphill battle to keep that war on.
 
And I find it unsatisfactory if they speak about "X is increasing exponentially".
I am a programmer. I deal with figures increasing exponentially as my daily bread and butter.

You get over it.


And yet China was a founding member of the UN:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Founding

1) Order of magnitude is a factor of 10 b/c of our number system. I won’t “get over it” any more than people weighing kg, except I can ask them how many kgs they weigh in 0g (it’s rare I get the correct answer: “The question is flawed”).

2) I wouldn’t consider the RoC (1st seat holder who you mention) or PRC (current occupant of the council) isolationist basically ever (anti-imperialist, sure), that’s Qing china.
 
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Hello everyone!

Today we will be talking about a new feature coming with Stellaris: Federations – the Galactic Community!

The Galactic Community is very similar to a United Nations in space. Members can propose and vote on Resolutions, which are laws that affect all the member empires.

Resolutions
The Resolutions are intended to be divisive, so that even empires that are allies can have very different agendas when it comes to which Resolutions should be passed.

View attachment 523836
Resolutions exist in categories and have a couple of steps in each category.

View attachment 523837
Go big or go home.

Passing a Resolution
The first step to passing a Resolution is proposing it! Any member of the Galactic Community can propose a Resolution, but they can only have one ongoing. When a Resolution is proposed, it moves into the proposal queue.

View attachment 523838
The Galactic Community dealing with matters of critical importance to the continued well-being of the galaxy and all of its inhabitants.

Only one Resolution can be voted on at a time on the senate floor, and the proposal that moves into session next will be the proposed Resolution with the highest amount of Diplomatic Weight supporting it.

View attachment 523839
Senate in session, voting on a Resolution.

When a Resolution is in session and is being voted on, empires can support, oppose or abstain. Voting for or against will add an empire’s Diplomatic Weight to either side, and when the current session ends the votes will be counted. A Resolution will pass if the Diplomatic Weight in favor of the Resolution is higher than the amount opposing it.


Diplomatic Weight
Diplomatic influence will be calculated using a new scoring system called Diplomatic Weight, and it will be composed of things like economy, technology, fleet power to name a couple of examples.

View attachment 523840
Cooperative Diplomatic Stance increases Diplomatic Weight by +25%.
There will also be a number of different ways to influence how much Diplomatic Weight you are getting from different sources. There are Resolutions that can modify how much Diplomatic Weight you gain from your economy, and there are Diplomatic Stances that increase how much Diplomatic Weight you gain from fleet power or other areas (more on Diplomatic Stances later!).

So as you can see, there are many different ways to make yourself more influential on a diplomatic, galactic stage!

Favors
For Resolutions, empires have the possibility to call in favors to strengthen their votes. An empire can owe another empire up to 10 favors, and each favor is worth 10% diplomatic weight. For example, if an empire calls in 10 favors, they can add 100% of the other empire’s diplomatic weight to theirs. Calling in favors this way will only affect votes on Resolutions. This also means that favors will work the same between player empires as it will between player and AI empires.

View attachment 523841
Calling in favors costs Influence.

Favors can also be used to increase the likelihood of AI empires accepting diplomatic deals.

Favors can be traded through the trade diplomatic action.

Galactic Council
It is possible to reform the Galactic Community to include a Galactic Council. The council will be composed of a number of empires with the highest Diplomatic Weight. By default, the council will have 3 members, but the number can be changed through Resolutions.

The Galactic Council also gets access to special powers such as veto rights or emergency measures.

Veto rights allows a council member to veto a Resolution that is currently in the proposal queue.

While the galactic senate is in recess it is possible for Galactic Council members to declare a proposed Resolution an emergency. This will immediately put the senate into session and will initiate a vote on the emergency Resolution.

Galactic Focus
It is possible for the Galactic Community to set a Galactic Focus. This will mean the Galactic Community together have decided to achieve something or to deal with a crisis.

There will be Resolutions to declare the galactic invaders a threat to the galaxy, which means it will be against galactic law to have closed borders to any other Galactic Community member while the crisis is ongoing.

The Galactic Market is now founded through a Galactic Focus to “Found the Galactic Market”. When the Resolution to form the Galactic Market has been passed, the bidding process to be the market founder will continue as it previously did.

Creating/Joining/Leaving the Galactic Community

When an empire has established communications with half of the empires in the galaxy, an event will trigger to suggest the formation of a Galactic Community. This means that forming the Galactic Community will be similar to how it used to work to form the Galactic Market.

It is possible to join the Galactic Community (and to see it!) as soon as you have established communications with any member of it.

Leaving the galaxy community is something an empire might choose to do if they become the target of too many sanctions or if there are too many Resolutions that negatively impact them.

----

Next week we will be showing all the Origins!
Someone's clearly been reading my suggestions :p
 
. When the Generalissimo instructs his 2220 corvette fleet to attack that Fallen Empire and purge the xenos, ministers are going to resign in protest. Admirals will mutiny. Loyal officers are going to be fragged.
Not if you're metal!
 
It has nothing fundamentally to do with "making diplomacy into warfare". If you actually bother to read the proposal, it specifies that recipients of an offer can choose to go along with it and both parties will work together to get the deal done quick and smooth. Recipients can also make a counter-offer which, if accepted, locks them into an agreeing stance. In this case the conflict is resolved . . . amicably.
How will the AI decide what to do in that Sitaution?

2) I wouldn’t consider the RoC (1st seat holder who you mention) or PRC (current occupant of the council) isolationist basically ever (anti-imperialist, sure), that’s Qing china.
So then what would be a real life isolationist for you?
 
I think he's talking about making it an alternative to war.

ES2 tries to do something like this with Influence. Every faction has a sort of tug-of-war going on when not at war based on how much influence they are producing, and if they out produce another faction by a large enough amount over time, they can use a special diplomatic demand that the other side *has* to accept or give up influnce (and if you don't have enough influnce, you have no choice but to give in) IIRC systems can't be earned this way, but techs and strategic resources can. United Empire is pretty good at this, since they make tons of influence.

Planet flipping is done with borders. Borders in ES2 work like they did pre-2.0, with expanding on colonies and growing, based in ES2 largely on the amount of influence that planet made. If two borders met, there would again be a tug-of-war, and if the borders of one empire completely enveloped the system of the other, after X turns (and with the right mid-late game tech) they could pay influnce to flip the system, and the only way to stop it was going to war beforehand. This is also something the UE does well... but the best, or at least the most dastardly, faction at it is the Unfallen, the Pacifist tree people. You see, they don't have normal borders and instead expand by post 2.0 rules, enveloping nearby systems in "vines" before colonizing. They can also do this in the systems of their allies and those they are at peace (but not cold war) with. *However* systems enveloped in their vines are not only considered within their borders for influnce flipping, but having been in their borders long enough to flip even if the vines were finished on that turn. And as long as they have a pacifist-led government, they can force peace treaties on other empires, which they will not be able to break for several turns, long enough for a couple of fleets of vineships to quickly envelop a system each and flip them. (This is somewhat offset by the fact they are basically playing with hardcore Tree of Life rules, and if they lose their homeworld and don't reclaim in soon after, the entire empire goes poof.)

I would like to see a more targeted system than this.

One of the criticisms I have of the Civ 4 / Endless Space 2 system is that it's too binary and passive. You build up general capacity and then influence flips either happen randomly, or they happen without having to spend influence down, or both. It doesn't really feel like a satisfying, player controlled system.

I prefer to think of it like this:
  • Every ongoing negotiation is a front.
  • If you are actively opposing or actively cooperating with another empire, you need to devote diplomatic resources to that front.
  • Resources get used up and need to be replenished.
  • There are strategic choices over whether to favor the production of diplomatic resources over other things, and whether and how many resources to devote to a particular negotiation.
Example: You are playing a Xenophile-Spiritualist. At a given point in time:
  • You have opened a negotiation for a mutual Migration Treaty with a Xenophobe-Militarist. You hope to secure a path for missionaries to shift them toward your ethics. You could sway them by offering a ton of resources, but you don't want to feed their war machine. So this will be a hostile negotiation requiring lots of diplo resources employed over a period of time. If you win, you force the treaty on them.
  • A neighboring Pacifist-Authoritarian wants a border planet of yours. To sweeten the deal, they offer a bunch of resources and guarantee Full Citizenship to members of your primary species (If you agree, they'll be locked into that for 10 years). Do you accept? Do you counter-offer for even more concessions? If you don't accept, how much effort are you willing to spend opposing them? Do you just declare war to stop them; tanking your diplomatic status, throwing your administration into chaos, and compromising your ability on other fronts?
  • Within your federation, there's a vote on a law change.
  • Within the Galactic UN, there's some bill on workers' rights that has reached the floor.
You have four fronts. One you opened. One someone else opened with you. One at the federation level. One at the galaxy level.

Instead of just having a blob of influence that spreads slowly in all directions, you must choose which negotiations are worth winning. You must decide if they are worth the cost.
 
The other cool thing about producing/spending diplomatic resources is that it helps solve the alloy optimization problem.

There isn't an optimal "maintenance and then nothing more" level to diplomatic production. The more you build, the more pies you can have your fingers in.

If it's mutually exclusive with alloys, you now have a cost to maxing out alloy production at the expense of everything else.
 
I would like to see a more targeted system than this.

One of the criticisms I have of the Civ 4 / Endless Space 2 system is that it's too binary and passive. You build up general capacity and then influence flips either happen randomly, or they happen without having to spend influence down, or both. It doesn't really feel like a satisfying, player controlled system.

I prefer to think of it like this:
  • Every ongoing negotiation is a front.
  • If you are actively opposing or actively cooperating with another empire, you need to devote diplomatic resources to that front.
  • Resources get used up and need to be replenished.
  • There are strategic choices over whether to favor the production of diplomatic resources over other things, and whether and how many resources to devote to a particular negotiation.
Example: You are playing a Xenophile-Spiritualist. At a given point in time:
  • You have opened a negotiation for a mutual Migration Treaty with a Xenophobe-Militarist. You hope to secure a path for missionaries to shift them toward your ethics. You could sway them by offering a ton of resources, but you don't want to feed their war machine. So this will be a hostile negotiation requiring lots of diplo resources employed over a period of time. If you win, you force the treaty on them.
  • A neighboring Pacifist-Authoritarian wants a border planet of yours. To sweeten the deal, they offer a bunch of resources and guarantee Full Citizenship to members of your primary species (If you agree, they'll be locked into that for 10 years). Do you accept? Do you counter-offer for even more concessions? If you don't accept, how much effort are you willing to spend opposing them? Do you just declare war to stop them; tanking your diplomatic status, throwing your administration into chaos, and compromising your ability on other fronts?
  • Within your federation, there's a vote on a law change.
  • Within the Galactic UN, there's some bill on workers' rights that has reached the floor.
You have four fronts. One you opened. One someone else opened with you. One at the federation level. One at the galaxy level.

Instead of just having a blob of influence that spreads slowly in all directions, you must choose which negotiations are worth winning. You must decide if they are worth the cost.

The thing I've never loved, admittedly, about the Civ and ES models is that I don't really like having borders change through something like culture or forced-sale. I mean, that's fine if someone agrees to sell you a system or to let it go because the population has become too unruly. But any other time, my main reaction is always "what the hell? I certainly don't remember agreeing to sell that city!" *

I think I would keep actual territory flipping as an issue for warfare. If you want to take territory from an empire that they're not willing to give, you have to get it at the point of a gun. That works for me. It has the virtue of simplicity.

Maybe we should broaden our focus. Instead of looking at "you can only declare war," maybe the issue is "the only way to harm another empire is by taking their territory." I mean, there are no other aggressive or coercive tactics. Every other move is something you ask for and they're free to decline. What if, instead, we try to make a coercive mechanic for each major element of the game?

Like I posted earlier, as far as I can tell, that's three things: territory, resources and options. (Am I missing anything though?) Even if we need to take someone's territory to formally beat them, we can effectively beat them by undercutting any one of those three elements. So maybe instead of new ways to take territory, what we really need is:
  • A mechanic to undercut someone's resources and economy
  • A mechanic to undercut someone's civilian and military development options
After all, if I can take all of someone's resources or leave them unable to build anything, I've effectively beaten them. Absent a brilliant move on their part it would be all over but the formalities. So then we'd basically have:

Territory
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get more territory for yourself): Outposts and colonies
  • External Mechanic (how you deny territory to your opponent): Warfare
Resources
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get more resources for yourself): Economy and internal trade
  • External Mechanic (how you deny resources to your opponent): ???
Options
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get to build more things for yourself): Empire development
  • External Mechanic (how you prevent your opponent from building things): ???
By "empire development" I mean the basket of things you do to make your empire bigger and better. Technology, pop growth, starbase upgrades, traditions, etc. They all to my mind fall under the fairly coherent category of growing your empire internally, even if this can mean growing it in different ways.

Anyhow, that's where I'd start. I don't think I'd make either system rely on espionage or diplomacy. Espionage, because it's too random and troll-y. I mean, it feels like a natural fit for sabotage, but that generally leads to players rage-quitting if it happens too often or ignoring the mechanic at all if it doesn't happen enough. I don't think I'd focus on diplomacy because diplomacy always requires fundamental buy-in. At it's core, diplomacy is about making deals. They might be coercive deals (i.e. "you really need this, so here are some lousy terms"), but forced diplomacy is just a fancy way of saying war. I don't think the system would feel right if it involved players being unable to say no to something.



** As an aside, I'd certainly be all about maybe integrating this into some sort of better politics and leader system. Like, if you have a local leader who decides to betray the empire and hand over the Far Away system to a neighboring empire, that kind of mechanic could have cool potential.
 
The thing I've never loved, admittedly, about the Civ and ES models is that I don't really like having borders change through something like culture or forced-sale. I mean, that's fine if someone agrees to sell you a system or to let it go because the population has become too unruly. But any other time, my main reaction is always "what the hell? I certainly don't remember agreeing to sell that city!" *

I think I would keep actual territory flipping as an issue for warfare. If you want to take territory from an empire that they're not willing to give, you have to get it at the point of a gun. That works for me. It has the virtue of simplicity.

Maybe we should broaden our focus. Instead of looking at "you can only declare war," maybe the issue is "the only way to harm another empire is by taking their territory." I mean, there are no other aggressive or coercive tactics. Every other move is something you ask for and they're free to decline. What if, instead, we try to make a coercive mechanic for each major element of the game?

Like I posted earlier, as far as I can tell, that's three things: territory, resources and options. (Am I missing anything though?) Even if we need to take someone's territory to formally beat them, we can effectively beat them by undercutting any one of those three elements. So maybe instead of new ways to take territory, what we really need is:
  • A mechanic to undercut someone's resources and economy
  • A mechanic to undercut someone's civilian and military development options
After all, if I can take all of someone's resources or leave them unable to build anything, I've effectively beaten them. Absent a brilliant move on their part it would be all over but the formalities. So then we'd basically have:

Territory
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get more territory for yourself): Outposts and colonies
  • External Mechanic (how you deny territory to your opponent): Warfare
Resources
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get more resources for yourself): Economy and internal trade
  • External Mechanic (how you deny resources to your opponent): ???
Options
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get to build more things for yourself): Empire development
  • External Mechanic (how you prevent your opponent from building things): ???
By "empire development" I mean the basket of things you do to make your empire bigger and better. Technology, pop growth, starbase upgrades, traditions, etc. They all to my mind fall under the fairly coherent category of growing your empire internally, even if this can mean growing it in different ways.

Anyhow, that's where I'd start. I don't think I'd make either system rely on espionage or diplomacy. Espionage, because it's too random and troll-y. I mean, it feels like a natural fit for sabotage, but that generally leads to players rage-quitting if it happens too often or ignoring the mechanic at all if it doesn't happen enough. I don't think I'd focus on diplomacy because diplomacy always requires fundamental buy-in. At it's core, diplomacy is about making deals. They might be coercive deals (i.e. "you really need this, so here are some lousy terms"), but forced diplomacy is just a fancy way of saying war. I don't think the system would feel right if it involved players being unable to say no to something.



** As an aside, I'd certainly be all about maybe integrating this into some sort of better politics and leader system. Like, if you have a local leader who decides to betray the empire and hand over the Far Away system to a neighboring empire, that kind of mechanic could have cool potential.

And I think it's a feature, not a bug, if some empires are more resistant to certain approaches than others. For example say our external resources mechanic is "External trade and piracy." Something like a fanatic purifier or determined exterminator won't ever open themselves up to external trade, so it would probably be a lot harder to hijack their resources. Or if our external options mechanic is "politics and culture," well a gestalt empire has neither.

That's a good thing in my opinion. It will enhance asymmetry.

Edit - In fact, if anything I might try to tailor this like a rock-paper-scissors system, so that any given empire type tends to gravitate toward one form of pressure, making them vulnerable to a different kind and particularly strong against a third. That would probably be tricky given the ethic system of empire building, but it might make for some interesting options and challenges.
 
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Simple simple solutions to these will probably have to take the form of consuming an advanced resource (alloys, consumer goods, or trade) in order to solve the alloy mono-optimization problem. Surplus trade could increase your capacity to target economies and internal trade. Surplus consumer goods could increase your capacity to target build options.

This would mean that Gestalts will lack options unless they are given a means of substituting them. Thematically any non Exterminator/Swarm should have at least one substitution option, if not both. It makes too much sense for a Machine to crash a financial system even if they don't have one of their own, or an organic Hive Mind to degrade a species or ecosystem directly. But likewise, even an Exterminator is vulnerable to computer viruses and a Swarm needs to protect the health of its drones and planets.

Another criterion is conversion speed. With fleets, you first create a surplus production in order to build a higher up-front killing power. Then you keep a reserve which can be converted into actionable killing power at the rate of total shipyard production.

Then after that there's deployment speed. Once your fleet is built, it takes time to reach a destination at which it can act.

Then there's the concept of fronts and the opportunity cost they entail. Ships sent to invade one enemy, or protect one avenue of approach, cannot simultaneously be used on others. Assets focused on offense are not focused on defense.

The final factor is rate of harm. Ships can do a lot of damage in the short amount of time you are at war, and nothing when you are not. While it may be balanced to just impose a constant -10% efficiency on an enemy's economy, it doesn't feel particularly fun. To feel fun, and to make the choice of deployment meaningful, these other avenues need to be able to do sharp damage when they are used, and then not when they aren't.

That's the only way these are going to be competitive counters to war. If someone jumps you when you didn't expect it, you might face an initial disadvantage, but it is still possible to redeploy your ships in time to stop them if they aren't pinned down doing something else. To stop a war through other means, economic options need to actually hard crash an economy for a time. Build disruption needs to hard crash shipyard production, or otherwise take the enemy's fleets out of action.

Territory
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get more territory for yourself): Outposts and colonies
  • External Mechanic (how you deny territory to your opponent): Warfare
Sponsoring unrest could be part of this as well, but for now we can leave diplomacy and espionage off the table. I do think there's a value to them having some meaningful capacity for this, if only because you could also use military capacity to target resources and build options (piracy, ships to rebels etc).

Resources
  • Internal Mechanic (how you get more resources for yourself): Economy and internal trade
  • External Mechanic (how you deny resources to your opponent): ???

The way to do this IRL is to 1) buy up crucial assets in their domestic economy, 2) obtain control of foreign-derived resources they need, 3) extend credit and place them in debt, or 4) ruin their commercial reputation so that trade deals and credit acquisition will be more costly.

Stellaris 1) has no private economy, 2) strongly encourages autarky with the market as an afterthought, and 3) has no loan function.

4) is possible. We could raise a target's market fee for a while. It just wouldn't do much to them.

I can't see any other way to hurt an economy aside from some form of the above, even if it is very abstracted. If you could stockpile trade value and then weaponize it to kill production, that could be an option.

  • Internal Mechanic (how you get to build more things for yourself): Empire development
  • External Mechanic (how you prevent your opponent from building things): ???
By "empire development" I mean the basket of things you do to make your empire bigger and better. Technology, pop growth, starbase upgrades, traditions, etc. They all to my mind fall under the fairly coherent category of growing your empire internally, even if this can mean growing it in different ways.

No idea how to do this without some kind of espionage component. It's a rather diverse arena in any case. I could see pop growth effected by bio-weapons / computer viruses. Technology and traditions? You can't exactly knock an opponent back in time and undo the effects of research or traditions for a 5 year period. Stabases and could be sabotaged or rendered inoperable, but that's a little difficult to pull off short of bombs or labor unrest. Maybe you could do something that puts a 5 year moratorium on new construction.
 
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Simple simple solutions to these will probably have to take the form of consuming an advanced resource (alloys, consumer goods, or trade) in order to solve the alloy mono-optimization problem. Surplus trade could increase your capacity to target economies and internal trade. Surplus consumer goods could increase your capacity to target build options.

This would mean that Gestalts will lack options unless they are given a means of substituting them. Thematically any non Exterminator/Swarm should have at least one substitution option, if not both. It makes too much sense for a Machine to crash a financial system even if they don't have one of their own, or an organic Hive Mind to degrade a species or ecosystem directly. But likewise, even an Exterminator is vulnerable to computer viruses and a Swarm needs to protect the health of its drones and planets.

Another criterion is conversion speed. With fleets, you first create a surplus production in order to build a higher up-front killing power. Then you keep a reserve which can be converted into actionable killing power at the rate of total shipyard production.

Then after that there's deployment speed. Once your fleet is built, it takes time to reach a destination at which it can act.

Then there's the concept of fronts and the opportunity cost they entail. Ships sent to invade one enemy, or protect one avenue of approach, cannot simultaneously be used on others. Assets focused on offense are not focused on defense.

The final factor is rate of harm. Ships can do a lot of damage in the short amount of time you are at war, and nothing when you are not. While it may be balanced to just impose a constant -10% efficiency on an enemy's economy, it doesn't feel particularly fun. To feel fun, and to make the choice of deployment meaningful, these other avenues need to be able to do sharp damage when they are used, and then not when they aren't.

That's the only way these are going to be competitive counters to war. If someone jumps you when you didn't expect it, you might face an initial disadvantage, but it is still possible to redeploy your ships in time to stop them if they aren't pinned down doing something else. To stop a war through other means, economic options need to actually hard crash an economy for a time. Build disruption needs to hard crash shipyard production, or otherwise take the enemy's fleets out of action.

Sponsoring unrest could be part of this as well, but for now we can leave diplomacy and espionage off the table. I do think there's a value to them having some meaningful capacity for this, if only because you could also use military capacity to target resources and build options (piracy, ships to rebels etc).
The way to do this IRL is to 1) buy up crucial assets in their domestic economy, 2) obtain control of foreign-derived resources they need, 3) extend credit and place them in debt, or 4) ruin their commercial reputation so that trade deals and credit acquisition will be more costly.

Stellaris 1) has no private economy, 2) strongly encourages autarky with the market as an afterthought, and 3) has no loan function.

4) is possible. We could raise a target's market fee for a while. It just wouldn't do much to them.

I can't see any other way to hurt an economy aside from some form of the above, even if it is very abstracted. If you could stockpile trade value and then weaponize it to kill production, that could be an option.
By "empire development" I mean the basket of things you do to make your empire bigger and better. Technology, pop growth, starbase upgrades, traditions, etc. They all to my mind fall under the fairly coherent category of growing your empire internally, even if this can mean growing it in different ways.

No idea how to do this without some kind of espionage component. It's a rather diverse arena in any case. I could see pop growth effected by bio-weapons / computer viruses. Technology and traditions? You can't exactly knock an opponent back in time and undo the effects of research or traditions for a 5 year period. Stabases and could be sabotaged or rendered inoperable, but that's a little difficult to pull off short of bombs or labor unrest. Maybe you could do something that puts a 5 year moratorium on new construction.

I'm not sure exactly what this would look like myself. I'm still thinking about it. I agree completely that it would probably have to involve creating new mechanics, not just tweaking the old ones.

I also agree that this needs to involve resource consumption to solve the alloy optimization problem. Mostly because otherwise I think there'd be no mechanism to force a choice. If you didn't grow your capacity in these three areas through a zero-sum economy, what would keep an empire from just maxing out all three strategic approaches at any given time? Not that I think we should have an empire hard-limited or handicapped. More that you should have to choose where to dedicate resources.

I think where'd I'd disagree is that these things don't necessarily need to hard-crash someone's economy or building options. They don't need to function symmetrically to warfare in the sense of attack/counterattack. I think the criteria I'd make are that any given system should be:
  • Active (as you say, it is something the player does, not simply a modifier that they apply to another empire)
  • Conceptually simple (should be as straightforward in concept as "you build ships and take their territory")
  • Sophisticated in practice (there should be a variety of options for how you advance or defend against this)
This doesn't necessarily have to be as powerful as warfare because it isn't intended to replace going to war, more supplement it. Maybe do a nested design? If this is an R/P/S-ish design, then have the idea be that within each system there'd be a set of three main options also built that way? So like our resources/economic attack would have three main things you can do, designed to circularly offset each other? That way it's more complex than just "push button, do thing," but structurally straightforward?

Idk... It definitely needs more brainstorming.

Espionage... I'm reluctant just because I've never seen it work well. When it's powerful, it tends to feel more like getting trolled by an RNG than a fun mechanic. To prevent that, it's usually gimped past the point of usefulness.
 
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