Its Easy to Run an Empire When Taxes are the Only Thing That Makes You Unpopular

In Galactic Civilizations II, the people are indifferent to wars. Shouldn't long protracted wars cause the people to become unhappy? It does in real life. If a war drags on too long, popularity should drop.

It's not that simple, as such a thing would have to vary from race to race. With the Drengins for example, it could quite possibly be the opposite: your popularity would fall as long as you're NOT at war with someone else!

I can cut production in my factories to a fraction of its full capacity and the people don't care. Shouldn't the leader lose popularity when so many people are thrown out of work?

You're already providing government-funded food and entertainment, so as long as enough people are willing work to pay the taxes needed to keep things running, why should anyone else care? They've already got their bread and circuses, as it were.

My government has a huge debt and the people don't care about that either. Shouldn't they?

If you stay in debt long enough, a sad face will appear next to your current treasury in the lower left corner, indicating that your morale is being decreased due to the extended deficit.

Well, the factories and employment thing is presumably a bit of an abstraction. In free, capitalist societies, the government doesn't really own much in the way of factories. They buy military and other goods from private sector companies which have their own factories.

The way I rationalise GalCiv2's mechanic in my head is:

- Your government "building a factory" really amounts to things like zoning that region for industry, building the necessary infrastructure, etc.

- The private sector then comes in afterwards and builds the actual factories themselves. They're owned by the private sector.

- Normally (when your government isn't actively building anything) those factories are busy cranking out big screen TVs and talking Elmo dolls which those private companies are selling for their own profit.

- If the government wants to build something, they pay the private sector to build it, using the private sector's factories. This is nicely reflected in GalCiv2's mechanic where the government dishes out money to use the existing industrial output of their society.

So when your government isn't using factories, that doesn't necessarily mean they're sitting idle. Of course all this really only applies to free, capitalist societies... but whatever.

It's not that simple, as such a thing would have to vary from race to race. With the Drengins for example, it could quite possibly be the opposite: your popularity would fall as long as you're NOT at war with someone else!

That would be a wicked cool twist... to have several different civilization "preferences" that would help give flavor to the civs and a more expanded reasoning behind if one's people are happy or not!

I agree.

Maybe Kryo could bring it up with the devs. It might be an 'easy' tweak for DA that would really give a new twist to the game.

The way I see it, factories and tech labs are government-runned complexes, while Economical bonus buildings favor the private industry. If you BUY something, you invest directly in private industry..

mm.. maybe we could try to put in a money loop, where you get back in taxes what you invest in private industries?

I suppose it should change depending on the kind of government you choose (Empire, Republic, Democracy and Federation).

That would be a wicked cool twist... to have several different civilization "preferences" that would help give flavor to the civs and a more expanded reasoning behind if one's people are happy or not

Sounds kind of hard to balance correctly.

Sounds kind of hard to balance correctly.

The game isn't balanced, and I don't recall any developer ever claiming it is.

Implementing succesfully, then showing the AI to use it, would be a problem though. So it's unlikely to happen in DA, and if the second expansion is multiplayer odds are they would THEN have to think about balance, so it probably wont ever get in.

Which is a shame, because it's a good idea. Yay for kryo, and deliberate misinterpretations!

Actually, this system was used pretty effectively in Star Trek Birth of the Federation

True. It was so cool/frustrating playing the Federation. Your support would get high really often, but you would be just useless in war, 'cause no planetary invasion was allowed..

However, I onced manage to get a Federation-wide "fanatic" morale level by liberating a minor species from the Cardies and making them member within the same round. I just looved it

Let me read the credits and see who helped design the game....

True. It was so cool/frustrating playing the Federation. Your support would get high really often, but you would be just useless in war, 'cause no planetary invasion was allowed..

Yeah, I had a game like that. The Klingons kept jerking me around, declaring war, then wanting a treaty, then declaring war, and back again. Finally said to heck with it, the next time they declared war, I dropped the invasion from Hell on them. Took almost all their worlds in one shot.

The resulting morale backlash had two of the planets I just conquered get so defiant they rebelled and went back to the Klingons....