Hi,

Are you going to make in The Supremacy option of choosing system of government like in Paradox's games or Civilizations? In DS9 there were similar issues sometimes - threat of military coup in "Homefront" or civil opposition against Cardassian military govt.

I agree with the above. Controlling your empires civics (to a certain extend) would be a great idea and would add more dimensions to the game. One of the problems with BOTF was the lack of internal control of an empire.

Like i said to a certain extend, so the federation would always be goody goody alliance of planets but you would determine whether it is run by a president or a prime minister/parliament. If its a parliament lead government they can overturn your decision in treaties (accepting the terms even if you dont want to) but in turn it gives a higher moral in the empire. Also, the type of government will influence the appeal of your empire for smaller races to join or affiliate eliminating the "bribery only" method in BOTF.

Similar or different types of civics like dictatorship could be applied to other empires. What do you think?

I find that appealing but unsatisfactory in the end. Treaties being accepted by the AI? How smart . Imagine multiplayer games with no AI players, but the AI accepting treaties for you..no thanks! You already have morale effects when declaring war as the Federation, no need to have them accept every ludicruous and treacherous peace offer (just to declare war next turn again bashing Federation's morale completely).

Sounds good, but a when the computer decides that it doesn't want to do what you've told it, possibly at a critical moment, it is a game breaker. This is why you'll never find a feature like this in a game - they'll simulate it in other ways, like morale penalties for unpopular actions, but that's already present with war... maybe some random events could produce a morale penalty and suchlike depending on your choice (a bit like the first Galactic Civilisations game).

I've already written several political random events that affect Empire morale, such as the death of a popular advisor, the mugging of a diplomat, successful/unsuccessful diplomatic summits, forwarding of insulting messages, and anti-empire/pro-empire speeches. if you guys can think of any more that could potentially be added, please let me know.

Please remember that my list of random events is purely a list of events that could be added to the game though, and is not a definitive list of what will be in the game.

I agree with what Mal said; a Civ4-style civics system would on the surface sound great, but in practice it just wouldn't work well. The whole point is that you are in control of your Empire, but the people of your Empire react to your decisions by boosting production or spawning terrorist attacks. A civic system would take control out of your hands and ultimately would be a very different game.

A nice addition would be an attempt for a coup d'etat by some General/Admiral in the spirit of Medieval Total War (MTW). But it should have a low probability (so that it doesn't bust your b@lls like it did in MTW) and only happen if the political system is already unstable.

PS Sorry if it has been mentioned above but I am at work and I don't have the time to go through all the posts

Anyone played Europa Universalis? This game is very similar to our own and imo the best pointer how politics and war should be done. Mike get yourself a copy of Europa Universalis .

personally I'm not a friend of EU-type of games. I always say if anyone wants that much microdiplomacy, go try real-life, has easier controls

I said " good pointer ". Actually what i like in EU is reputation sytem and it's effects on politics, in EU u have different reputation with in each race (culture) some are in love with you and other hates you which is result of your actions on map. Such model would fit nice with dafedz minor race functions. For example: If in war time Federation dishonors alliance treaty with Klingons such action would drop their reputation among honest races like Vulcans and rise among ex. Orions and Nausicaans, more distrustful actions in future will end up with war between Federation and Vulcans. This would solve one thing which i hated the most in old Botf " declaring war without any kind of sense".

It would be good to have a system of informing the player of when there were major shifts in the opinions of member or subject worlds, other than when the race simply tells you good luck with the war against such and such empire. I found the whole dimplomacy (*cough* bribary) system of BOTF to be something of a mystery when I played, never being able to tell how their opinions were changing unless you looked right on their display, and that only summarized their feelings at that moment it didn't tell you the factors contributing to that level. CIV IV is great with diplomacy because it tells you why the other civs do or don't like you (ie same religion, long period of good trade, same civics/government type, dishonoring of trade agreements, recent war, border tension, etc.).

don't forget situations can be "willfully constructed" where you need to leave alliance with the former partner, for example when he obviously reached an informal agreement with the enemy (think of multiplayer, but also "treacherous AI") massing up their fleet with the enemy's one right at the heart of your empire and you know it's not for defense but how should the computer know? So in order to at least defend properly before he has fleets above all your major systems you either declare war or cancel the alliance, both will then lead to even wars with your minor empires around you(?!). I doubt we'd want that. It's bad enough that negative morale effects and reputation will follow your only-choice decision, but then even a system that keeps this incident in memory of all other races forever is pure propaganda .

I'm not sure if one can solve the whole problem other than botf did it. just some minor effects and everything's forgotten after a while. All other ideas only work if a human supervisor would watch each game for exploitations I fear . Only simple actions like declaring war on a minor race or declaring war on a major without being allied with someone could contribute to such a system of long-term memory reflection.

I don't know what you exactly mean but my dishonor scheme is quite simple and can't be exploited. You just don't want go to war with your allies klingons against cards,next turn is a war and you don't participate but for reward you have bad reputation.Simple as that.

EDIT- if you willfully leave alliance to declare war on your former allie for reward you get massive bad reputation and moral penalty, now you are easy prey for other empires. Imo any attack on empire which have good relations with should be rewarded with reputation and morale drop.

say feds(you) and klings are allies against cards. klings now send their fleets to feds homeworlds away from the front, cards continue to attack your fleets at the front. You know klingon fleets cannot be there just for defending nothing so you know they want to position themselves over your homeworlds and then break the treaty and even sign alliance with the cards. so what do you do? yes, you retreat and break the treaty yourself before he can use the advantage of using your territory to get to your homeworlds without own outposts and starbases. Now you can go from there on your own I think .

As Klingons or Cardies, I doubt you get much morale penalties. Achieved victory will compensate the effect. As for bad reputation, well, I guess so but do cards and klings really care as not-so-diplomatic races? see, you give them a really nice weapon in their hands. If I were Federation, I would never ally myself with anyone cause I would rely on my diplomatic clean reputation and it would hurt me the most if such a treacherous move would be made against me.

i think i have answered above in edited post. I think you never played EUniversalis?

I am not so sure, klings win is doubtful, the governors are overthrown all over the empire (like in old botf), sudden shortage of dilithium and credits, diconncted trade lanes with honest species... hmmm... very doubtful

really? In case they really have to declare war and breaking treaty wasn't done by feds in the first place, they have their fleets ready for invasion at all major fed system. The turn after they declare war, they have surely taken many of them with some losses which brings morale and credits production right up where it was before. Then after a while, having crushed a whole empire will give the extra +50 morale boost you need to make this whole maneuver an outright success.

I have watched someone playing EU and it was uber-boring for me. All these simplified, yet too complex mechanics which are nothing but unrealistic thus exploitable. I don't want that much "delegated control" over my empire to some strict set of rules and the AI watching those rules. It would kill gameplay for me.

One idea I have for Diplomacy is where a certain race (ie Bajorans) has an aggression with another race (ie Cardassians), if it's a minor race and say you have Race A already in your Empire and you want to invite Race B, you could have Race A objecting to this treaty and threatening to leave your Empire unless you cease the treaty (or you bribe them well) and it can affect your Empire with other races sending messages giving their view, much like the Federation Council and you making the ultimate decision.

If it's a major race, you could see negoiations struggle, and the threat of war could be higher than a struggle with a minor race.

I think the threat of people choosing to leave and have a rebellion, forming their own mini empire, but the only way you can stop them is through trying to negoiate with them, you can find battles with them, but you have to negoiate them to cease, but you have to do it race by race, if it's the main race that negoiated the rebellion, then it ceases.

Complex I know, but just an idea based on DS9 events

that is an idea however that I find very interesting. Could be extended to a certain degree with every contrastable races, i.e. a peace-loving race as the vulcans might object if the breen are to be made members of the same empire. very interesting...

I agree that it is very interesting and realistic, but I bet that after a while the game will get unplayable as you'll be spending all the time crushing rebellions (like Total War.. very annoying aspect of that game especially with the Papal states) or waste resources (for the bribes) for some minor race in the Empire that has a dispute with the newcomers...

well, you have to balance the effect. I'd say just give a relationship malus if you accept the treaty. don't let a member quit the empire right on accepting a new member that the other one dislikes. we can let the relationship meter regulate things.

As far as I know, mike is already planning a system like this. I believe Dafedz has kind of created a way it could be done in his database as well.

In Dafedz's system, each of the minors has a number of preset conditions that the game would use to work out individual race attitudes, work ethics, diplomatic stances, etc. If a war is declared on a race similar to a membered race, there would be a chance of that race commenting on it. If however you have membered races completely unrelated to the war, they would be more likely to support it. The morale boosts would be adjusted accordingly for each race as well.

Precisely what Mike is planning for each race though i'm not sure. Mike hasn't added anything in the editor to allow for these settings to be added - but Mike is currently working on version three of the editor, and I know it's gonna have some new options coz i've asked for plenty of new features on MSN, in PM's, and via codeplex. Actually I think he's making a new editor because of me.