I would like this if...I could kill the undesirables! Making my race spread across the galaxy and having primary access to resources is my primary goal not some other race. This was in civ but it was more of a cultural indicator, so for who it may concern make sure it is something besides be more numbers we have to look at. Make it creative.

Bty. Hë Drassiem ieo na dat an EVieell pyill!!! No I won't translate it.

DARCA.

It doesn't have to become over-complicated. Just create a race percentage counter and a distinct Civ-style cultural/citizenship counter. If these two percentages did not interact with each other in any way and/or it was assumed that citizenship by empire is uniformly distributed between races present as changed by some minor species-affinity modifiers, then a lot of problems will be resolved.

I think a lot of the "complexity" of the idea stems from the fact that there haven't been many specifics proposed on how the idea would function in practice. Once those specifics were proposed I believe a lot of the discrepancies would reduce significantly.

Yes, that's very true.

@Wer90: I am with the Pro group here. After playing GalCiv2 extensively it always seemed to be a missing part that missed races were not even given a nod. The races are so very different at the beginning of the game with the racial bonuses, yet when they join your 'empire' they suddenly become 'your' race.  I haven't modded GalCiv at all but from other games here is a whiteboard level concept of how it could be done and what might come from it:

A basic would be a simple bar on the planet screen fills with the banner color of the race based on percentage of planetary population. To get specifics, you could then have a tooltip show up when you hover over it that Shows the top 3-5 races by percentage with all the rest lumped into 'other'. So the tooltip might look something like:

Terren Alliance 54%

Dregin Race 21%

Altarian Resistance 4%

Other 21%

For the truly interested party, we can go further and via double click on the bar it could take you to the planetary details page (that I only looked at perhaps three times in GalCiv 2) where the demographics can really be laid out to include % for all races and the number of people/things that correlates with.

As for how the multiple population types would grow, well, that was already there in GalCiv2 in some form. There is most likely a population growth algorithm in the game that factors in planet type, racial bonuses, and technology/building/planet bonuses. I would suggest as a starting point to use the base growth rate of the species without any tech/building help and add a -25%ish base growth penalty to any race not of the players (because really, this is now a planet owner by [insert players race] and we get preference in breeding). Perhaps expand on this a bit to have a bigger/smaller negative based on the race relations (ie. arch enemy races would have a BIG problem with each other while two neutral races really don’t care)

Just having that, the information and basic population growth, would truly help my immersion to turn it less into a fun game to a immersive world.

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Some additional features that I would have loved to have in GalCiv2:

Upon taking a planet have an option of how to 'deal with' the survivors that affects the players alignment and provides a bonus. In example:

"My lord, with the help of the dissidents from your propaganda efforts, we have taken the planet. What shall we do with the survivors?"

1) Reward them with full citizenship, we welcome those that support us (minor bonus based on race involved/number survivors; ie. iconion refuge population means planet gets a bonus to science)

2) Very good, however we cannot forget the crimes of the people. Place them under arrest and let them work to atone (production bonus, bigger negative hit on secondary race population growth.)

3) Excellent, however they are inferior and have the intelligence of farm animals. Luckily, they are delicious and the farms are empty. (all secondary races are removed, population growth bonus.)

Also, it would be nice if current events impacted planets. A complex system can be created with some simple rules. this could be made more complex just be adding more 'simple' rules to dictate how each individual race would handle the situation. IE the Dregin population doesn't care about being at war with other Dregin as much (or at all) when compared to say the Iconians who care very much about you killing other Iconians.

Change to how 'approval rating' of a planet is done

Proposed rule examples:

War discontent: Being at war with a faction will cause citizens that share a race with that factions primary to be disapproving

Alliance Approval: Opposite of above

War Crimes: Doing really mean things will cause a big spike of dissatisfaction among citizens of your empire that share a race.

Change to How Planetary Defense is calculated: Add the equation for 'soldier strength' of every race to every planet and have it be multiplied by the population % with result be the sum of the equation. I do not believe that is too far off from how it is currently calculated.

Immigration/Emigration. Influence attracts people from factions that have lower inflluence.  Population growth bonus to secondary races on planets near borders becoming smaller the furthur in you go.  Again, this would most likely be done via algoritm and build on everything else. If population actually means more then just tax farming and meat shields for a planet this would make influance an interesting sabotage mechanic.

@DLWildcat: I would like to modify your idea slightly. There should be three sliders present for race, culture, and citizenship. Race would of course define how one would have to feed the population or what racial abilities one would have access to, while culture would be determined by the influence mix on a planet as modified by trade, conquests, etc. Citizenship would be more rigid than culture but would gradually tend to it; citizenship would determine how many residents would serve in the military of a given empire. So with all of these factors considered, an individual could be a Terran genetically, but follow Torian customs as a loyal Iconian citizen.

Honestly I think this suggestion falls under the category of things that look great on paper but don’t work well when implemented.

I can see how it would be fun to be able to track % of the planets population that belonged to each species, but once you get into the complexity of trying to direct the different species to maximise use of their bonuses it quickly becomes a game of very complex micromanagement.

Another factor if by having a species diverse civilization you can maximise use of all species traits, species specific tech trees and bonuses for the initial species you chose to play pretty quickly stop making sense or being relevant.

Over all Moo3 tried to implement many things that looked great on paper, but what they ended up with was a game that was I’m sorry to say broken and not fun and I followed the development of that for a long time and had high hopes, indeed it’s what bought me to GalCiv2.

Well, so long as it is done cleanly to minimize micromanagement while adding new avenues for gameplay, I am okay with it. For this reason, having a race should give access to certain techs that are race-specific, having a culture should give access to culture-specific techs, and having foreign citizens should spread your influence to foreign lands but do not give techs. Other effects could of course be added, but as far as techs and racial abilities are concerned this should be the basis.

Indeed. Citizen races should spread through influence, which should no longer be transmitted through meaningless "influence starbases" but through trade and population flows, internal and external.

I do not necessarily support this idea. It is needlessly complicated and I only see game mechanics at its raw state. With 100 different races / species in the game it is plausible that the most populous race is 1% of the planet. Even if they do not support the 100 races, it removes the fact that my civilization does not label other species and treats all species equally. We don't even go as far as saying you are not my species. There is no need for the labels beyond cultural follower and rebel rouser. I always assume that the citizenry is a diverse set of species creating what is the supreme galactic empire. The bonuses received from races are really the way culture is developed, and the mentality of that culture. I do not have to be Chinese to follow and emulate the culture of China. I do not need to be Japanese to emulate the culture of Japan and the idealogies of that culture. I do not need to be American to idealize the culture of the US and follow the culture there.

Separating the planet as such will create a mountain of paperwork. Have fun doing this with 300 plus planets you may control on a huge map. Might be fun with the first 100, but it would get tedious as the citizenry would be changing depending on breeding rates of different species and mortality rates of those species. Making it too much of a big grey pot in the end.

Could this be fun, sure it can be. Should this be involved in the game, only if they fold it into the entire game which would require a rewrite of quite a few things. I tend to think of the Galactic Civlizations as not being a Species dominated thing, but more of a collection of species emulating the leaders culture and spreading it across the galaxy. Unrest / Culture percentage takes care of all the citizens that are not following your doctrine.

Frogboy mentioned it here and here.

This could be a harsh way to breakdown population.

As I understand, Ideologies is also intended as a way for malicious races to cooperate with one another as they also need to trade! Benevolent are expected to get along with other benevolent races and Pragmatism will more likely form alliance with other pragmatic.

So I would split down population into only 6 categories.

Your race: split into ideology. Even among Drengin, there must be a small fraction of them that is actually pragmatic or even benevolent.

And one categorie for other races: also split into ideology.

         Drengins     (70%): 57% malicious; 11% pragmatic; 2% benevolent

         Xenos          (30%): 10% malicious; 3% pragmatic; 7% benevolent

Of course, a pie graph could be used.

My logic: this is still a game, and I agree with the fact that knowing 2.1% of my planet are human is not so important, especially if we actually get to 100+ race in a map.

On the other hand, Ideology can become relevant.

I guess there will still be election and special resolution voted when declaring war, alliance, etc. So if your population feel more pragmatic, and you are declaring war to another pragmatic race, they will vote against you whether they are Human or Iconian.

This would also be compatible with those great idea about genocide, slave and citizenship option when conquering other worlds.

Tourism/immigration could contribute as well to this.

About gaining other races ability, I don’t think it’s a good idea because the starting race would become a lot less significant in late game or completely outclass xenophobic race that just want slave or extermination.

It could lead to player always starting with a race that as better bonus in early game knowing that they will eventually gain all other race’s late game bonus.

Hope I make sense!

Mr. Kurt

As fad as gaining other races abilities I think it could be done without making it overpowered. 

Any race whose  population represents greater then 60% of your population you get 100% racial bonus

any race whose population represents  60-40 % of your population you get 50 % racial bonus. 

And if you have no races greater than 40 % then there should be some special bonus for mixed races 

so the next question is what other effects would there be for mixed race planets 

should there be a diplomacy bonus if a large enough portion of my opponents population is of my race 

would these planets be more or less susceptible to culture flip?  ( did the people move here because they wanted to escape to a better lif or because they got a good deal and wanted to bring a better life with them? )