Having alien populations on conquered worlds suggestion.

from GalCiv2 Forums
In a future expansion pack, I would like to see the introduction of a system by which you can have alien populations on conquered world that differ from the citizens of the rest of your Empire and have different abilities aswell as an extra potential for revolt.

The mechanics of planetery invasion.
Planetery invasion happens as it does at the moment, the attackers and the defenders attack with the full numbers and take casualties each round. However both sides also have a courage bar, which represents their continued willingness to fight on. Generally speaking the courage bar is depleted long before either the planet's defenders or the attackers forces are wiped out completely. If the defenders courage bar is reduced to 0, they surrender and the population becomes citizens of the new rulers (ablait unassimilated alien ones), while if the attackers courage bar is reduced to 0 they are forced to abandon the invasion.

If an attacking force is forced to retreat, the transport goes on enforced autopilot back to the world from whence it came. 25% of the time the transport is destroyed while attempting to withdraw, if so all the attacking forces die. The rest of the time they will take a random amount of damage to represent defenders firing at the retreating craft as it attempts to evacuate the attacking forces. They will proceed at full speed to their homoworld, avoiding enemy ships and they cannot be controlled by the player until they reach their destination (at which point they can be re-launched and sent onto a new invasion). A random percentage of the attacking forces troops, decided by technology and soldiering skill of the defending race is also killed while attempting to retreat into orbit.

The Courage bar
The courage bar of the defenders is decided by the morale of the planet, modified by the courage score of the race. The courage bar of the attackers is the total approval rating for the civilization, modified by the courage score of the race. Courage is reduced by particularly de-moralising invasion tactics (mostly available to evil civs) and by taking casualties in battle.

Alien citizens
Just beacause you forced the alien population of a world to desist active resistance against your rule, doesn't make them human. Indeed you can never make them human, merely get them to see the benefits of being under human rule and expose them to human culture (replace human with whatever race you are playing here).

Aliens populations come in four types.
1. Unassimilated aliens
2. Semi-assimilated aliens
3. Assimilated aliens
4. Enslaved aliens

Unassimilated aliens provide only half production, economy and research and no culture to their civilization. They also impart a 25% morale penalty. They do not fight in planetery invasions.
In order to assimilate aliens you must ensure the following
1. They are not part of the cultural borders of a civilization that is of their race. As long as they are, they will never assimilate.
2. They are part of the cultural borders of your civilization, if they aren't then assimilation happens at 50% speed.
3. There morale is kept high, if a planet is unhappy then alien populations will begin to de-assimilate.

Semi-assimilated aliens are aliens that are reasonably well accustomed to human rule, they provide 75% production, economy and research and 50% of the culture of native citizens. The fight in planetery invasions, but impart a courage penalty.

Assimilated aliens are aliens that are well accustomed to human rule, they provide full production, economy and research and 75% of the culture of native citizens. They fight in planetery invasions at full strength.

Slavery is an option available only to evil civilizations and those of an evil leaning (such as Drengin, Yor and Korx). The alien population is not treated with the same rights as citizens of the ruling civilizations and is considered legal property to be bought or sold and has no legal rights at all. Slaves produce full production, economy and research, but only 25% culture.
Slaves do not fight in planetery invasions and may occasionally decide to rebel (see below). If slaves should fall into the hands of a civilization that is not evil or evil leaning they are automaticly freed and become Semi-assimilated aliens. If slaves should fall into the hands of the evil civilization from which they were part originally then the civilization has the option of freeing them. If they elect to do so, they gain a few points towards good (due to the mercy inherant in such an act and also beacause of the influence of these ex-slaves on their civilization). If they do not, they become even more evil.

Revolts
If a planet unhappy (which is very easy expecially if they're unassimilated aliens), then every turn there is a gradually increasing chance of a revolt. There are three kinds of revolt, xeno revolt, civil revolt and slave revolt.

Xeno-revolt
This happens if less than assimilated aliens make up the majority of the world's population. The "attacker" controls the forces of all population that of his race in addition to all assimilated aliens against all unassimilated and semi-assimilated aliens. The attacker decides whether to use planetery invasion tactics against the alien rebels as though he were attacker in a planetery invasion, using his forces, the defender that is the rebels counts as the defender.

Things are decided as though it were a planetery invasion, with courage bars like normal. If the attackers lose the planet falls to the rebels and all surviving population that were of the race become unassimilated aliens. If they win, all semi-assimilated aliens become assimilated and all un-assimilated aliens become semi-assimilated. However a low morale can still cause de-assimilation however as mentioned above.

Civil revolt
This occurs when a world not predominately alien is unhappy. The attacker (the goverment) controls the percentage of the population that is happy. A world with 10% morale would give the attacker 10% of the population, while the defender has half the unhappy population of the world, so that world would give the rebels 45% of the worlds population as rebels. The attacker decides what planetery invasion tactics to use as normal.

Slave revolts
Slave revolts are randomly occuring, they have nothing to do with morale. A random number of the planets slaves fights against the "free" evil population of the world, aided by 50% of the unassimilated "good" aliens that are present and 25% of the semi-assimilated good aliens. Nuetrally aligned aliens take no part in the fighting.

Assume there was a Drengin world called Weber I, on it there are 5 billion Arcean slaves, 2 billion unassimilated Torians and 3 billion Drengin. The randomly determined percentage is 50%, so 2.5 billion slaves would battle against 3 billion Drengin with the help of 1 billion Torians.

The effects of a revolt
The effects of a revolt succeeding vary according to the nature of the revolt and the galactic situation. If a xeno-revolt occurs the planet will defect to their original civilization, if that that civilization no longer exists, it is reborn and goes back into play (see the rules for new civilizations below). A civil revolt will result in the planet either joining a galactic movement, their counter-civilization (such as the Terran Federation) or defecting to an alien civilization (if they are culturally influenced). Culturally revolting planets, always start of as assimilated aliens in their new civilization.

Slave revolts vary in their effects, if they are pre-dominately alien, then they act like a xeno-revolt, however one catch, they will never join an evil civilization, even if they are of it's race, so Drengin slaves will never join the Drengin Empire. In that case they will usually set up a counter-civilization which is neutrally or good aligned or join a galactic movement.

If they are predominately of the same race as their rulers then they will either join a counter-civilization or a galactic movement which is not evil aligned or leaning.

New civilizations
A new revolter civilization recieves the following upon it's creation.
The total income of the planet for 10 turns.
The same technology level as the civilization is revolted from, minus any ethically incompattable techs.
A special defender for every 5 basic industrial points on the planet, so if a planet produces 20 industrial points, then it recieves 4 of these defenders. They are small ships, with no engines, life support, or sensors, that are equipped evenly with the best weapons and defenses available to the race.

Differing abilities and the effects
The innate racial abilities, plus the 10 selected bonus abilities of the race at start are treated as inherant racial abilities. Technology, event based bonuses to a specific civilization do not count as this, only the inherant racial abilities of the species.

The amount of bonus that you recieve depends on the percentage of the population that they make up. In order to recieve 100% of the bonus, they have to make up 100% of the population.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Very good ideas indeed, I'm not sure about evil slaves not joining their own (evil) race again - it's not like being freed from slavery immediately makes you good and totally opposed to slavery, eg. if one was a Drengin, that was grown up around slaves and accepting slavery. But all in all, good ideas to work on. Being rather hungover I can't maintain sufficient coherency to contribute too much at this point

A rather funny typo in the third paragraph though...
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Having endlessly shuffled around captured alien populations in MOO II and Space Empires IV, I can tell you that I think it is a HUGE pain in the butt, and am glad such details are missing from GalCiv.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Agreed. Too much managing nightmare.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was under the impression (based on the numbers in the combat box and afterwards) that seizing a planet by force is a genocidal affair; so where do alien populations come from? Planets that rebel from other empires and join me are zealous followers of my culture, so I don't see a need to differentiate them.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"so where do alien populations come from?"

When a mommy alien and a daddy alien love each other very much.... or when a mommy alien gets very, very drunk...

Actually, nevermind, just ask your parents.

And yeah, so long as they learn the language and are followers of our culture, let the Mex- err aliens in!
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I kinda like this idea, although I'd add an option in the invasion to wipe the aliens out instead of letting them surrender. Good idea either way, but I'm not sure that StarDock is going to implement it b/c of all the extra micro that would be required.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like this idea a lot as it adds a sense of "realism" to the game (think Iraq). I don't see how this would add much to micromanaging as it appears the number crunching and effects would be largely behind the scenes. Additionaly, stardock could make it an option like minor races that players could turn on and off.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That courage idea was done in Europa Universalis. I thought it worked pretty well, but then that wasn't a space strategy game.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Very good ideas indeed, I'm not sure about evil slaves not joining their own (evil) race again - it's not like being freed from slavery immediately makes you good and totally opposed to slavery, eg. if one was a Drengin, that was grown up around slaves and accepting slavery. But all in all, good ideas to work on. Being rather hungover I can't maintain sufficient coherency to contribute too much at this point

No bieng a slave does not automatically make you good, but it at least makes you neutral. Arguably bieng enslaved by a sufficiantly brutal race would reduce most people to a state of basic primal neutrality, ie reduce them to a state of basicly total focus on staying alive. The higher-ranking slaves placed in positions of authority over the other slaves by the master race, might become very evil, or very good (though this would be discouraged), but the rest are probably only describable as neutral.

Actually you raise a very interesting point about the Drengin slaves. I guess it comes down to trust. The freed slaves immediate concern is too mantain their freedom, not too form alliances with those whose slave-holding ways might cause them to not recognise it and re-enslave them.

However Drengin slave rebels, would probably want to re-enslave those slaves that took no active part in the fighting, in other words the weak and unworthy. A successful slave revolt by Drengin might simply make the slave rebels see themselves as better than the common herd and have "earned" their freedom in strength.

Arguably though there is the "soft sociological approach" which would see the evil of the Drengin not as inherant but as a result of the super-structure of Drengin society, once that super-structure was demolished then one would assume that the Drengin would become essentially neutral in nature. However really being enslaved by another evil race might probably reinforce that super-structure, however if they were liberated by a good or neutral race then that super-structure vanishes completely.

The best way to sort this out is to have a revolt by "evil" slaves result in a second battle, this time between the slaves who took part in the uprising and the other slaves, aided by the "good" race population of the world. If the former wins then all other population on the world, including the "good" race population become their slaves and the planet will happily joing the evil race civ. If the latter wins then all are free and the civilization will not joing the evil race civ as I mentioned above.


Having endlessly shuffled around captured alien populations in MOO II and Space Empires IV, I can tell you that I think it is a HUGE pain in the butt, and am glad such details are missing from GalCiv.

You can't move un-assimilated or semi-assimilated aliens onto colony ships or transports, it's a detail I forgot to add above. You can however move slaves and fully assimilated aliens, but can never move them on the same ships as those of other races, you can only move one type of population on one ship.


I was under the impression (based on the numbers in the combat box and afterwards) that seizing a planet by force is a genocidal affair; so where do alien populations come from? Planets that rebel from other empires and join me are zealous followers of my culture, so I don't see a need to differentiate them.
That's the reason for the courage bar. The reason to differentiate assimilated aliens in culturally turned world is as follows
1. They provide 25% less culture (still modified by their cultural abilities)
2. They can more easily be influenced by their old civilization
3. If they get unhappy they can unassimilate (it doesn't matter how long you've ruled them for).


I kinda like this idea, although I'd add an option in the invasion to wipe the aliens out instead of letting them surrender. Good idea either way, but I'm not sure that StarDock is going to implement it b/c of all the extra micro that would be required.
Only very evil civilizations (normally evil civilizations have to enslave instead) have the option to fight a war of extermination. If this option is taken, the enemy will keep fighting even when there courage bar is reduced to 0 (but your side still won't) so you are able to as present, wipe out every single last alien. You gain a significant bonus to your combat ability when you reduce their courage to 0, but not to your own courage, so your troops may flee without first completing the extermination.

The greatest problem with extermination is that every single improvement other than the colony building itself it laid waste to, so you have to build everything up again from scratch. You cannot kill the entire population of the world, and still expect the world's infrastructure to function to the full extent as before, all of it is either reduced to rubble as the troops rampage through the world destroying every building the worlds population might hide in, or simply fall to rubble through neglect and decay with no mantainance. As a result, even the most evil civilization may choose to "merely" enslave the populations of more developed worlds with wonders and capitals as such, in order to mantain those facilities for use by them.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like your idea about the courage "slider". I don't like multi-turn invasion, though. I would prefer a modifier representing the natives willingness to fight to the death.
If the population had a sufficently low courage modifier, they wouldn't fight hard, giving up after taking minor losses, or not fight at all.

The courage modifier is modified by:
1)The courage racial pick
2)Morale (or lack of)
3)Cultural influence- a world already falling to your culture will fight back less.
4)Numerical Superiority- if one side's victory is inevitable to overwhelming force.
5)Modiifers from Invasion Tactics
6)Modifiers to due differences in Ethical Alignment. A Good civilization will fight another Good civilization less, and everyone will fight an evil civilization more.
7)Modifiers from race-specific AI. Torians always fight to the death against Drengin, the Drath fight harder against Atlarians, etc.

I dislike the elaborate revolt system though. Not because it isn't well thought out, but because it is elaborate and would lend itself more towards forcing MOO3-style micromanagement of conquered planets.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't think all new civilisations after a revolt should have the same tech level as the player. If I'm an evil enslaving dictator I'm hardly going to give my slaves access to my technology, not weapon or hull tech at least.

Even a good aligned race with un-assimilated aliens isn't going to let them get at the highest tier techs.

Good ideas though.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah some interesting ideas
-it did always strike me as a bit harsh that when you conquered a world you effectively wiped out its native population
-however some of your ideas are a little complex-and as was mentioned would probably invole a lot of number crunching you would not actually see-and would provide a headache for the player.
The ethical alignment of your civ could be interesting in converting the alien population-perhaps with the options of if your evil using those secret police stations, propaganda etc. to bring the aliens oto the same brainwashed docile level of your own darling civillians
-Or if you are good have ways of persuading the population that you were totally righteous to take their planet as their rulers were bad bad men and YOUR way of doing things is 'oh' just so great for everyone in the galaxy cuz you're the imperial equivelant of a big hug.
Just my 2 cents !
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Of all the ideas I have read on various improvements to the game this is one of the most well thought out ideas I have read. It really does work very well. I dont even mind the intricate revolt system. You dont need to micro-manage the revolts because they just happen. Weither or not who lives on the planet if the moral is low enough bad things will happen that will require to act.

These ideas will make each planet unique and over time as planets get conquered and reconquered even evolve a little to end game. The new civilization idea is brilliant, GalCiv had something similar to that but it was more like a digest version, nothing as detailed as your ideas. It wouldnt even be to hard to manage populations. Whenever you launch anything that can carry people (transports, colony ships) a little bar will pop up before confirmation showing you which races are on the planet and what percentage they make up and then you just choose one.
To add even more to it, when you launch a troop transport from a planet that has, lets say Acreans, that troop transport will get their origional races bonus' for grounds battles as they are all made up of loyal Acreans. This could add some depth making certain planets races better for certain roles.

However if they do add these in the game or something like it they will seriously need to change the GUI to clearly show you at all windows which planets have which races and what percentage that is. Eventualy I could immagine it would be hard to find a pure blooded planet of a specific race. I could see evil civilizations having a option of mass genocide to rid a planet of any one but their race, even after you enslave or assimilate.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

The courage modifier is modified by:
1)The courage racial pick
2)Morale (or lack of)
3)Cultural influence- a world already falling to your culture will fight back less.
4)Numerical Superiority- if one side's victory is inevitable to overwhelming force.
5)Modiifers from Invasion Tactics
6)Modifiers to due differences in Ethical Alignment. A Good civilization will fight another Good civilization less, and everyone will fight an evil civilization more.
7)Modifiers from race-specific AI. Torians always fight to the death against Drengin, the Drath fight harder against Atlarians, etc.

1. Yes courage, even for aliens that are assimilated or semi-assimilated into your Empire is a major factor,
2. Morale again fine.
3. Cultural influence, no the cultural influence is not a factor, whether you eat the same food as they do and wear the same clothes, if they invade you, your willingness to fight is not going to be affected. Indeed if you invade a culturally influenced planet by you, it should immediately lose it's culturally influenced status to represent their rejection of your culture in the name of resisting invasion.
4.That is already factored in the casualties system.
5. Some invasion tactics, available exclusively to evil civilizations target courage directly.
6. The attacking force should have a weaker courage bar when it is a good civilization attacking another, to represent their lack of resolve. A good civilization should have courage bonuses when defending against evil civilizations. Evil civilizations should also recieve a courage bonus whenever they attack good civilizations beacause they see them as weak.
7. Race specific bonuses, definate no. The enemy of the now is the only enemy that matters, the Torians might resist to the death against Drengin, but this requires them to have a very high courage.

I don't think all new civilisations after a revolt should have the same tech level as the player. If I'm an evil enslaving dictator I'm hardly going to give my slaves access to my technology, not weapon or hull tech at least.

Your not giving them anything, the rebels have simply taken the planet and stolen all your technology, nobodies asking you for anything. Seriously this is the only way, how complicated could it get to track down what tech they had when they were conquered and what tech they could have got from their conquerers since, it would be a nightmare.


The ethical alignment of your civ could be interesting in converting the alien population-perhaps with the options of if your evil using those secret police stations, propaganda etc. to bring the aliens oto the same brainwashed docile level of your own darling civillians

Propaganda should be available to all civilizations, not just evil ones. Both evil and nuetral civilizations should have access to secret police and terror, but the particularly advanced versions such as torture gallaries and such should be evil only. However the effectiveness of terror should depend on the courage level of the population, the braver the population the harder they are to terrorise.

Generally speaking, it is easier to assimilate races closer to your aligment than opposed, an evil civilization finds it easy to assimilate other evil civilizations beacause they lack any real principles to justify their resistance, an evil citizen sees that the new masters of the block differ from the old masters and doesn't much care, if he can profit by working with them and suffer for opposing them, he is going to work with them.

Good civilizations on the hand would find it more easy to assimilate citizens from other good civilizations, beacause these respond best to being treated well.

However an evil civilization might find assimilating a good civilization hard, beacause the good citizen is disgusted by his new masters and their culture and is likely to have plenty of beliefs to "die for" and obtain martyrdom.

A good civilization on the other hand is going to find assimilating an evil civilization difficult beacause their attempts to empathise with them will be percieved as weakness and the evil citizen will stab them in the back having no real respect for the kindness shown to them.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

These ideas will make each planet unique and over time as planets get conquered and reconquered even evolve a little to end game. The new civilization idea is brilliant, GalCiv had something similar to that but it was more like a digest version, nothing as detailed as your ideas. It wouldnt even be to hard to manage populations. Whenever you launch anything that can carry people (transports, colony ships) a little bar will pop up before confirmation showing you which races are on the planet and what percentage they make up and then you just choose one.
To add even more to it, when you launch a troop transport from a planet that has, lets say Acreans, that troop transport will get their origional races bonus' for grounds battles as they are all made up of loyal Acreans. This could add some depth making certain planets races better for certain roles.

The fact that different races would have different abilities in your empire creates some interesting situations. Some races, having a higher population growth rate than others would immediately rise to dominance over any planets they colonise, I'm not sure whether nuetral and worse species should be able to introduce birth control to keep the populations of races whose population growth rates are higher than yours, parallell.

A high population growth rate would be the ultimate ensurer of a race's prominance.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This really just makes things really really complicated. If, say, I picked extra soldiering or social production for humans, do enslaved humans havethese characteristics? Will there be different base fighting stats like in MoO3? Would they even get the full soldiering bonus from techs(I know I wouldnt fully arm enslaved drengin durin a war). Who takes casualties in subsequent battles? How does their growth work? Does each population have independent growth rates? Ideas like this should really be saved for another game. Master of Orion.... 4.... or something...
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Slaves don't fight in planetery invasions at all, any soldiering bonus held by slaves is not used, unless they should rebel against you.

As for social production, the slaves social production is used according to the percentage of that race on the planet according to the above mentioned forumula.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Slaves don't fight in planetery invasions at all, any soldiering bonus held by slaves is not used, unless they should rebel against you.

As for social production, the slaves social production is used according to the percentage of that race on the planet according to the above mentioned formula.

Casualties are evenly distributed among all races that fight in a plantatery invasion.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd rather not write this all out again, so bump.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A good Idea, just a bit complicated I think. If there was a good way to simplify it, and make it less taxing on the processor, I think it would be a great idea.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can't see how it would it be any more taxing on the proccessor than the present system. As for the complexity, the only thing that is complicated really is the revolt system and the stuff about the different races behavior and such and the different types of revolts.

I think that probably the morale of the different populations should be treated and shown separately and slaves shouldn't have a morale and then the total medium determined to create the ultimate morale of the planet. In a planet predominantly slaves, only the free people count for morale purposes.

To launch xeno-revolts, the aliens have to be unhappy, aswell as unassimilated. I've decided that rebels should always have a morale of 50 as for determining courage while the courage of the loyalists is decided by their morale. An unhappy assimilated alien and human population, faced by a xeno-revolt, will not fight very hard. But however easily they folded, the human population would become unassimilated under the new rulers and the assimilated aliens would be aswell, as long as they are of a different race to the new rulers.

Unhappy humans and assimilated aliens, would lanch civil revolts against the happy humans and assimilated aliens. In this case, both sides would be treated as having a morale of 50, per courage bar calculation. Both sides would typically have the same abilities, unless there are assimilated aliens with differing morale to the others, which is only likely to happen if they as a race have a morale bonus, which the humans lack. Numbers and invasion tactic would be the deciding factor, numbers would be decided by unhappyness, while a planet has to be unhappy in order to rebel in the first place. But the rulers would have the advantage of counting as the attackers, as with all revolts.

Cultural influence, should reduce the happiness of a world gradually, until they rebel in order to join the influencing civilization as assimilated aliens.