Being able to horsetrade before the vote would be a fun addition - if they can code the AI to be able to compete in it and not get taken by the Human everytime.

I've tried to add some resolutions, but they don't work well.
Love to propose some, so I can see mine come up more often, more testing.

I would love to see it just be a round robin: Each civilization gets a turn in order. As you discover new races, they would just get added to the end of the line for who would get to pick a resolution to vote on. (You would pick the resolutions from a list.) But I don't mind it much as it is now - so if they add it great, but if not I won't mind.

I too think it needs to meet more than once every 50 turns. That is too long between meetings.

Maybe have 3 quarterly meetings where 'lesser' bills are voted on - and vote on long term props in the end of the year meeting.

At the lesser meetings there would also be a vote to choose which prop is discussed at the next meeting, say from among 4 choices - you would not know the result until the next meeting, but you would know the four candidates so you could determine the practical value of selling/buying influence.

Temporary Boycotts of the UP should be allowed - so you can ecape the effects of a prop for a short period until the next quarterly meeting. There would be heavy penalties involved - and the other races must vote on whether to reinstate you on your return - (you could also buy your way back in.) If you are not allowed back, then the penalties would continue.

This stuff would take a lot of coding/balancein to get it right for the ai - and I would not expect to see it (Except for the more frequent meetings) until a major expansion pack or GC3.

This is an exiting part of the game and I would like to see if lot more put into it and it be a lot involved. A series of drop down menus could give you hundreds of combinations on what votes you could suggest and they could be programed in toeach have avarying degree on the game - please guys, give this some thought and make it more often; at least twice as often as it comes up.

You can already buy votes. Votes at the UP is influence. On the trade screen, you'll note that under bc is a tab for influence. Influence are esssentially votes. just trade goods, tech, whatever for influence.

When you buy influence you are permanently buying votes; I was proposing buying votes for a single vote.

I hate that a complete ignorance of how or why the AIs will vote on particular resolutions can ruin a voting session. I would like some ability to coordinate votes with allies. It's extremely annoying when a majority of votes are in favor of doing something to different degrees, but because that vote is split (say, the good civs vote for 3, 4, and 5 trade routes for the evil ones, giving each option 20%) the plurality goes to the other side (the two guys who vote none to give it 40%) so nothing happens.

I agree! This is why I started this thread!

Another way to eliminate this particular frustration would be to have two part votes. First we vote on whether or not to impose fines on foreign starbases in another race's influene, and then we vote on how much that fine will be if the first resolution carries.

I like this idea!

Bringing GalCiv 2 resolutions into a model more influenced by SMAC would be my dream. But since that's something of a redesign, I'll stick to suggesting two-part votes.

I had SMAC voting in mind when I created this post.

Bump.

Web POLL: What is the Difference Between "more advanced diplomacy" and "more politics"? I think they should be combined in which case this would be the #1 feature request with "Tactical battles" being a close second.

Having played games which include "Tactical battles" like Space Empires IV, I think Stardock made the right choice to leave it out. A good human player performs better than any AI in tactical battles. Including this feature will weaken the AI and increase the game micro-management as experienced players will feel to need to take control.

I think the UP should be a bit bigger in the game, such that there's occaisonally some reason you'd want to leave it (other than the "Should we make starbases utterly worthless?" and "Should constructors be incapable of moving at a reasonable rate?" resolution). Also, if that happened, there should be more complicated mechanics for when you're out of it--negative diplmoacy modifiers would be a good start, but being to negotiate your way back in would be even better. Also, "black market" trading while outside the UP--where other races attack your freighters and give you negative relation modifiers if they see them--would be nifty.

Finally, we should be able to cheat on the resolutions. "Warning! Building this module will put you in violation of UP orders--other races may go hostile if their ships see this base. Are you sure you want to continue?" or "Warning! Your constructors will anger other races if seen! Do you wish to decomission your constructors?" Also, there should be stealth materials to try to hide illegal ships.

I actually voted for politics on the poll, but I didn't really understand the difference between that and "advanced diplomacy."

Neither did I. Frogboy/Brad later explained that politics refered to domestic politics and diplomacy, external politics.