[dogscoff]

This is gonna be another too-long post. Sorry.

I think the civil war idea is the best suggestion for hard-code changes I have seen suggested so far. More sophisicated civilian management (rather than just as a portable workforce with a "happiness" score for each planet) would really improve the depth of the game. After all an empire is not a purely military entity (that comment will start debate) - the purpose of being in charge of one is to bring happiness to your population, not just to squish aliens and conquer the universe for your own ego=-). If the game motivated you more to keep your population happy it would improve realism / atmosphere enormously.

I think the idea of a capital city/ homeworld as a centre of civic order is a good one, and I like the idea of local government as well - doing the same job on a smaller scale. I suggested something along these lines in the pirate thread as a way of
seperating space-borne races (nomadic, pirate) from "settled" ones (everyone else), by not allowing the nomads & pirates to have these features.

As for the implementation of it... since we are talking about MM making hard-code changes I don't why these government centres should be facilities.

How about if cities were to grow on planets automatically, without any direct influence from the player? Each colonised planet would have a city, rated from "Outpost" to "Metropolis". This status would not be a simple factor of population but would be influenced by things like space ports, security, planet population, system population, breathable atmos, colonised moons, racial diversity, proximity to warp points and diversity of facilities/ industries.

High-status cities would give back huge benefits in production, pop growth, troop defence and maybe even extra facility space or something. Government and capital cities would have even better benefits. This would have the added advantage of forcing the player to consider stability - Picking up 80 million people and taking them away, or suddenly redeploying the massive fleet stationed in orbit would have a major impact on a planet's city. Gradual changes would be better, just like in real life.
Of course the AI will hate all this=-)

Local government cities and Capitals should have a "Minimum Status", as follows.

A system with a tiny population has no local government of it's own, but is a dependent of the nearest system with local government. Once the dependent system has a city of minimum status or higher, it gets it's own local government in that city.

A player can transfer a government centre/ capital to another city but the nw city must be of minimum status. The transfer also costs time and resources.

When a government centre is destroyed, or falls below minimum status the player can select another city in the system to be the government centre. If there is no city big enough, then the system becomes dependent another system. Transferring power from city to city or systm to systm takes time, however, and all the while civil unrest is growing. Civil unrest can lead to insurrection in the affected system and it's dependent systems in the ways already thouroughly discussed.

Capital cities work in a similar way, except the effects are empire wide rather than system+dependent wide. Capitals can be moved anywhere within the empire, at a cost. When a capital is destroyed or shrinks to below a minimum statusthe player must select another city to transfer power to. If there is no other city of minimum status or higher civil unrest will grow across the empire until either another capital can be built or the empire bcomes a protectorate of another empire.

This is the clever bit: Minimum status for a capital would be tied it to the overall empire size: A huge empire requires a city of status "Massive City" to be it's capital, but a small empire needs only "Large Town." Local government minimum statuses are scaled accordingly. Therefore, if an empire's minimum status for capital is "massive city", and it does not have a city that big, unrest will grow until part of the empire breaks away. The first empire is now smaller and therefore has a lower minimum status, enabling it to build a capital and restore order.

This would restrict the speed of empire growth, but would make the game far more involving. It would make targetting specific planets and systems far more meaningful, and would make use of the near- redundant protectorate treaty.

Just my two pence worth (with interest=-)


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There is an exception to every rule. Including this one.