Re: Managing Planetary Government
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:52 am
Aha! Someone gets me! xDFlatfingers wrote:<EDIT SNIP>
Its goals. It might want fast military expansion and control. It might want to make bucktonnes of money. It might have a technology priority. Etc.Cornflakes_91 wrote:Also: why shouldnt the AI beeline for the most effective governmental form? What keeps it from doing that?
Which they don't. They each have different bonuses and perks and penalties.Cornflakes_91 wrote:If the governmental forms only affect the economy they'll only beeline to the most effective money generator and stay there
First post.Cornflakes_91 wrote:Outlined where?
Searched hard, only found one fleeting mention "what did you expect by making them believe 2+2=5?"HKY09 wrote:First post.Cornflakes_91 wrote:Outlined where?
If such a form exists, most competent (i.e., not-crazy) AI faction leaders should eventually converge on it.Cornflakes_91 wrote:why shouldnt the AI beeline for the most effective governmental form? What keeps it from doing that?
Let it begin. c:Flatfingers wrote:I really want to give a good reply to this, but I'm already criminally late for sack time.
So I'll just lob these out there fast-like:
I've never played Alpha Centauri - too young for it (*gasp*), so I'll just do some quick research.Flatfingers wrote:1. If you like the idea of interesting policies to select from, definitely take a look at Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The "social" settings were not only very smartly chosen and balanced (for the most part), Firaxis exposed the underlying values of the social settings as flat files so that players could re-balance them as they felt appropriate. (Sound familiar? ) Any game developer thinking about implementing social/political/economic policies as factional management choices really needs to study SMAC to see how to do this very well.
Economic discussion is the best. I spend most of my waking hours on this site because its unblocked everywhere. Check it out (;Flatfingers wrote:2. I don't want to get into a go-round on real-world economic theory; it tends to make some people grumpy and I'd rather not inject that into an otherwise very enjoyable thread. I'll just note that even people on the right acknowledge a need for some regulation and an consistently-enforced code of law supporting truth-telling in economic exchanges because that creates the necessary framework for maximizing economic activity. The serious arguments aren't over "whether" there needs to be some oversight, but "how much" is best.
Ah, I see. There is supposed to be little correlation between the two forms - yellow squares have an equal opportunity to succeed (happiness, no revolution) or fail (unhappiness, revolution), yellow-green squares are more likely to succeed but still fail. Perhaps the players should get more incentive for playing more dangerously (although, they will have to think more strategically to ensure planets don't just up and leave their control - increased military presence, for example), which is already the case if they go for Molotovist-Atlasism... they get just amazingly wow wow wow amounts of money, which they can then use to purchase bigger ships, which they can use to police the system and keep everyone from succeeding (oh wow... how much have I deviated from libertarianism now xD) so it becomes theoretically possible for people to use the most dangerous systems of government which huge benefits.Flatfingers wrote:3. When I say that Mixed Voterism or Imperial Syndicalism are best in the initial model, that's because both are a combination of one light green square and one yellow square. Every other combination is worse. (A bright green square and a bright red square might add up to the same raw score numerically as light green + yellow, but I think you'd take off points in practice for being extreme forms, driving away some potential market participants.)
True. Would you mind taking some time to rebalance the choices (or making entirely new ones)? c:Flatfingers wrote: Choices of this kind need to be roughly equivalent in the value of their benefits, but those benefits need to be of different kinds. That way players make a choice because it's what seems the most interesting (fun) to the player, not just whatever seems to yield the most utility. Utility maximization actually is the main kind of fun for some gamers... but not all.
Nailed it here.Flatfingers wrote:To the observation that 4X games seem to get away with "clearly best" choices, please note that these choices are actually constrained by time. You don't get all choices at once; what is a good choice in the early game becomes sub-optimal later. Even if there's a "best" choice at one point in time, it's not necessarily always going to be the best choice. That's not perfect, but it's functional as gameplay in a game that has a defined ending. LT won't.
well, i just assumed your analysis to be right.Flatfingers wrote:If such a form exists, most competent (i.e., not-crazy) AI faction leaders should eventually converge on it.
The problem is that such forms should not exist. If they do, that's a design flaw because it means the other policies, which seemed interesting enough to create, won't get enough usage to justify the cost to implement them.
Example?Cornflakes_91 wrote:well, i just assumed your analysis to be right.Flatfingers wrote:If such a form exists, most competent (i.e., not-crazy) AI faction leaders should eventually converge on it.
The problem is that such forms should not exist. If they do, that's a design flaw because it means the other policies, which seemed interesting enough to create, won't get enough usage to justify the cost to implement them.
but i agree that there shouldnt be a "the" policy
we could in theory introduce multiple matrices, like the ones we already have, for multiple factors.
one matrix for researcgh efficiency, one for production capacity etc.
so choosing isnt a 2 input 2 optimisation but 2 input n output optimisation