Rethinking cultural influence

Cultural influence is one of the best ideas in GalCiv especially because it offers an alternative path to victory other than the traditionnal military conquest. Unfortunately the game mechanics in this area, even if well thought, remain too predictable as soon as one is a slighly experienced player. Basically once you reach a certain cultural advantage, enemy planets begin to defect one by one, without reason. It's kind of "black and white". Moreover a player or an intelligent AI always has the opportunity to declare war to a culturally powerful civilization so that you have to build a sufficient navy anyway. Once you get the ball rolling, it's basically over. I do not even talk about the Cultural victory condition, that I always disable at the beginning of the game.

That being said, I think the cultural thing lacks a dramatic element. There is no surprise basically and there are almost no interactions between influence and other concepts of the game. I'd like to see thoses aspects enhanced in GalCiv II so that cultural games become as exciting as military ones.

First of all, there should be other consequences than a planet merely defecting to another civilization. It should not be "black or white". Defecting should be of course the climax of cultural assimilation but this event should not happen without precursory signs and/or specific triggers. A happy prosperous free planet in a peaceful empire, even if the population is fond of foreign customs or goods, has no reason to make such a hard and hazardous decision which could trigger a full-scale galactic war. For instance, a declaration of war, a change of political regime, a revolt due to low morale, the defection of another planet, maybe even the closing of a trade route (that boosted the local economy or with the admired civilization) could be interesting triggers for defection. Tests should be mostly performed at those occasions. This could lead to interesting diplomatic and polical strategic choices : should I take the risk to cancel this trade route, to start a war, to change my internal politics ?

Then there should also be other consequences than the mere defection. For instance :
- (Slightly) lowered morale
- Need to establish a trade route from this planet to the admired civilization
- Emigration
- Bonus to espionnage for the admired civilization against you
...and so on.
Wa could also imagine several levels of cultural domination for a given planet, maybe even a percentage from 0 to 100. The rate of change and the current level would be influenced by the intensity of the cultural expose, the morale of the planet, the nature of the central government (an Imperium is repulsive, a permissive Federation is attractive), the diplomatic relations between the civilizations, an ongoing war (a winning war against a common foe retighten the links between citizens, a losing war can cause a country implose), etc.

When one or several planets defect to another civ (fo instance after an unjustifed declaration of war), there should also be leaks of vital technologies and even starships defecting at the same time. They could for instance be selected randomly, with a probability depending on the proportion of defections. This could give a culturally dominant but military weak civilization a good hope to survive a war if the culturally weak but military powerful civilization attacks it beacause of the cultural threat it represents.

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I haven't played yet, so I have a few questions. To risk sounding like a tyrant, what weapons do you have to combat defections in your own planets? Can you impose military policing? Can you use Propaganda? Will declaring war help you in any way? What about a lottery to help stem the rebellion by giving people hope of a better life? Can you execute traitors? Will you be able to form a spy network within your own planets to get a better idea of how much dissention is there? Or is the only tactic available to try to raise your own culture level so that people are happier living in your government?

While I don't support most of those methods in real life, they should be effective defenses used in the game. Right now it just sounds like you get high enough over someone else in a certain part of the tech tree, and boom, you win. Seems kinda boring to me.

Please note, I said I haven't played yet, I only know what I've heard in the forum. Please tell me if my concept of how it works is wrong.

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To risk sounding like a tyrant, what weapons do you have to combat defections in your own planets? Can you impose military policing? Can you use Propaganda? Will declaring war help you in any way? What about a lottery to help stem the rebellion by giving people hope of a better life? Can you execute traitors? Will you be able to form a spy network within your own planets to get a better idea of how much dissention is there? Or is the only tactic available to try to raise your own culture level so that people are happier living in your government?

Note that all I say only concerns the way GalCiv I works.

First of all, you can develop your own Influence. No planet can defect if your own influence in each sector is at least as high as your most influencial opponent. This is clearly the best option and you do not need to be as good as your opponents to prevent defections. You can use propaganda too, it's a bit expansive so it must be used as a temporary relief for theatened planets. The last possibility os to weaken your opponent mosty by using military means, taking his planets close to your empire and destroying his culture amplifying starbases.

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Still, it seems that treason in your own influence is allows to run rampant and go unpunished. I think that rebellions should be fought in game terms, i.e. you should be able to involve your millitary in your own affairs, not wait till a planet is defected, and then try to retake it. I mean, what if you cannot raise your influence high enough, or lower your enemies enough, if you have the military might to spare, it shouldn't be a problem. Civil wars have been fought for less in the past. Maybe if there were warning signs before planets broke off, or maybe if a planet did defect, there was a time of "nuetrality" where it does not belong to anyone, and you could move in and conquer the planet again without heavy repercussions on a diplomatic scale. After all, troops have always been a good method (if not ethical) of putting down unrest.

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Lucky_Jack

Join Date 01/2002

+62

Zippo342, in order to understand influence in GC1 I think you really have to play the game, or at the very least, read the documentation on Stardock's site.

Here is a simplification of how it works in GC1:

Influence in GC1 is a sector by sector thing. Each planet you have in a sector increases your influence in that sector, and fractionally in adjacent sectors. Influence from a planet is affected by some other factors, such as 1). a solar system having some special characteristic. 2). The more population a planet has, the more influence it has, 3). Influence generating social projects being built on planets increase that planet's influence, 4). Building a star base and adding influence generating additions to it increases your influence in that sector (and fractionally, in adjacent sectors).

Then there are some wonders and some techs, which add more influence, some of them across the entire galacy.

In sectors where your influence is as strong or stronger than everyone else, there will be no defections of your systems. In sectors where your influence is significantly less than another race's, you risk defections.

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And, you get warnings if defection is a likely thing. A pop up warning you, and Icons show up on the planet from then on while the planet is "restless", showing it is at risk. You need a report that shows all your restless worlds, so you can do things to help convince them to stay (ie, adding strong influence facilities, or alien-influence resistance facilities, or greatly raising the morale).

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I still don't know. If what Star Pilot said is right, there are things you can do to resist the culture, but historically countries on earth don't defect to another with a greater culture. Look at China, it has always boasted having a very old, very strong culture, but you didn't see Mongolia join them, instead they were always trying to invade. I guess the whole cultural victory seems kinda weak to me. From my point of view, I just can't see how one of my planets leaves my empire because they want to join another culture, and I'm just gonna sit there and watch them without putting up a fight.

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So you don't think cultural should be included in games like GC and Civ?

It's just a mechanism to have worlds rebel over, and to provide a means to take over opponent worlds without invading. And there have been instances in history where cities have decided that they wanted to be part of those people's empire, rather then what they are in currently. Most of the time, that started a war, if the new empire wanted to keep them. Romans employed this approach on occasion. They'd persuade some small village to join them, and when it got attacked by it's former lords/claimants, the Romans could then "defensively" go to war against the "aggressors".

What do you think will happen if Quebec leaves Canada? Will the Canadians want them back and invade? Or let them be? It won't happen, but what if Quebec, for whatever reason, joins France? Do you think then that Canada is going to do anything? Rebellions, independance, and the changing of flags do happen in the real world on occasion. So... is it unfun in GC?

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I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but I think there should be more options given to players on how to deal with it, each with their own pros and cons. There should also be enough feedback to tell a player when rebellion is likely as well, then the player could take action by invoking martial law, improving the conditions people live under, executing dissenters, or whatever the player chooses to do. Some methods are more effective in the long run, while others have more immediate effects.

With the examples I put forth, the former would get you in a position to fight to retain the colony, and make dissenters think twice about rebelling, but would increase the total amount of dissent. The second would make the dissenters content that they have been agnowledged, but may take a while, putting you at risk of losing them before you can improve their way of life. The third would strike fear into the hearts of the people, and may work for some time, but if conditions deteriorate as they might, people will eventually become immune to that fear and rise up.

There are other ways you could handle it, each with it's own charm, but I'm just saying I don't like how you have such limited choices at your disposal as it's been described to me. Evil and selfish rulers have to [shock!]Be good and nice to their people[/shock!] in order to avoid dessertion from their ranks. It seems to me that they are at an unnecessary disadvantage in that regard. I say, "Give them the option of being Evil Bastages!"

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Even if the influence concept can be seen as partly irrealistic when applied to the (modern) real world, I think it is a fun concept in the game, giving the civs other a path to victory different from brute force. Moveover when applied to the GalCiv universe is it so unrealistic ? Let's consider planets are small islands lost in a big inhostitable ocean. Don't you think they can develop their own local culture, customs even if they respect the central power ?
It be compared to the Habsburg Empire in the XVIth Century : travels were slow compared to the size of the territory and every part of the Empire had a different culture, different laws and evensome limited autonomy. The empire was eventually divided in two (Spain/Austria), every part being ruled a branch of the family, not always cooperating. And the remote Netherlands finally broke away. Well, this could be a good model for the GalCiv universe.

But you are right wjhen you say that different regimes would handle secessionists in different ways. There are different political regimes in GalCiv, reflecting mostly the way your Empire is centralized. Imperium = The central power is strong and planets must obey. Federation = Planets are allowed to have their own internal policies. It would be nice to have political regimes modify the way influence works. For instance an Imperium could have an easier time preventing emigration and other inconveniencies of being under foreign influence. However it would suffer from having a poor cultural influence and the empire would be at risk of crumbling in one go if foreign inflence becomes too strong. A Federation would not be able to prevent citizens from emigrating but would enjoy a better cultural influence itself and the empire would not crumble in one go.

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If you look at history, the main cases of cultural influence bieng used to influence an area to rebel against it's masters have resulted in the establishment of protectorate regimes under the influence of the civilization rather than directly ruled by it. Therefore the main purpose of cultural influence should be to drive a wedge between the homeworld and the worlds on ideological and moral ground, with the aim of causing a protectorate to break away. Therefore a new minor civ should be created and should start life as your protectorate.

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