I have noticed that is it actually kind of easy to manipulate the ideology trees, so you could end up getting pretty much all of the "perks" from all trees eventually. Like for example you make Malevolent choices until you can make the building that generates malevolent points every turn for you. Then you switch to making Benevolent choices until you get the building that makes those points for you every turn. I mean sure, I like taking advantage of cheezy tactics to crush my enemies just as much as the next guy; but it just seems a little wrong that you can get all of the advantages for being "evil" along with all of the advantages for being "good" at the same time.
I'm sure this has been mentioned and thought of by the devs before. I just want to give a little reminder that it needs fixed
Yes particularly on the larger maps with lots of planets
Working as intended. If you play on very large maps with tight clusters you would be able to get 'all' Ideology perks. Personally I am fine with this as long as the AI can and will take advantage of it as well.
One thing I notice is your initial choice is what determines your 'ideological' choice in regards to AI at first.
Once you head down a path, the others should probably lock out or something.
I agree.
I had hoped it would be more of a long term investment.
Making choices whether it be colony events, UP voting, invasion events or what ever would push you in a certain direction.
Imagine an 'ethics sphere' like the production sphere. 3 point representing the 3 ideologies.
Choices you make would move you 'ethic pointer' towards one of the points, the further you move the more you unlock.
You would have to work hard to reverse the direction.
Just my thoughts.
edit: ninja'd
I kind of like the sphere slider concept.
I mostly go for practical and beneficent, so I can't comment on malevolent, but the Missionary building and Preparedness Centers only give you ideology points when you finish building them, not every turn as before. So they help some, but not as much as before. Or are there some other buildings deeper into the ideology trees that give you points every turn?
Its too easy to swap and change during colonisation. Just pick the choices that will give you the early bonuses.
The building line has some nice early bonuses and then there's the no penalty for sharing a border and no culture flip in the malevolent tree.
I shouldn't be able to make these choices so easily.
I disagree. I enjoy thinking of what perks I want to enhance my play and working my way to them. I may boost evil early in the game to get the border bonus and home planet production bonus, and switch to good to get the research and influence perks, switching to pragmatic to get those fighter escorts... that's fun IMHOP.
there are 2 different types of buildings 1 that grants a one time bonus of 5 ideology pts and a couple that grant 1-2 pts per turn
another solution might be to make the ideology pts all scale together rather then scaling in the three seperate trees.
^^^ This. More players choices equal more fun. Rather than lock out the other trees, I would be ok with a higher cost based on distance to initial pick.
For example, I start out with Benevolent, and go down that path for 4 pics. However I realize I want some pragmatic perks as well, rather than say no, how bout a slightly (1.25) higher cost for Pragmatic and a 'higher cost for Malevolent (1.5 or even 2.0)?
Still allows you to get cross tree perks but at a higher cost than your initial tree?
I personally like how it is now and would not touch it but I bet Moddders like MarvinKosh can tweak the tree costs a bit.
i like aerez4546's idea of the sphere slider.
If you choose Pragmatic for 10 then the other two areas should cost 11 if you buy the next Pragmatic then the other two should go up to 12 after the next Pragmatic the other two go up to 14 cost..
So then they pay 14 for the Bene thing... malevolent should go up to 18 and Pragmatic should be 11... if someone is flip flopping all over the board then ALL of them should increase in cost so that you can get a lot of the lower level things... but never be able to afford the higher level really nice stuff.again the game rewards you for being pragmatic in Ideological concept.. not in application... what's best for me at the moment should limit the long term stuff...
That's what it did in Beta 3 and I didn't like that at all.
Locking a player out, or penalizing for picking other tree's perks, is no fun and leads to the feeling that you have to chose X ideology when colonizing a new world or getting a mega-event. It takes the choice out of the choice system. If you're Pragmatic, and you don't choose the Pragmatic option, then those points are useless. Instead, you can choose the choice you feel best fits your civ, whether for event-specific bonuses or ideology or role-playing.
I like role-playing. When I'm the Yor, I'm malevolent with a bit of pragmatic. Sometimes my actions are mistaken as being benevolent -for example, there's no way a Yor would ever want to bond with an organic being, even if it heightened intellect - and I take advantage of those misconceptions. And despite being sometimes pragmatic, there's no way I would pass up the opportunity to destroy sentient plants, even if we don't actually need the good soil.
Krynn I'm more benevolent, but they have a malevolent streak too. "Alien Culture Trash" is a good example of that. That religious fervor sometimes manifests in a mean way - and when I play them, their society reflects that - both through events and ideology bonuses. Krynn would be my argument against a system where being Benevolent made Malevolence cost more than Pragmatic. I feel like Pragmatism doesn't suit them - but they aren't above Aggression, Motivation, or Awe.
A system that penalized you for picking other traits, or worse, didn't allow it at all, would be less fun. We just need to make sure the AI can take advantage of that, too.
They could make the choices "blind" An exampleYou discover a new species of animal.. it is sooo cute that your citizens cannot help but pet it. However 25% of them are deathly allergic...A. Have your population tested and develop an anti-allergy drug. -50 credits a year for 10 turns, +25 happiness on all worlds.B. If they are petting some fluffy cat they are not working. Entice the population to work harder with "cat" rewards. Warn the population the "cats" might be dangerous +15% production +10% happiness -5% growthC. We cannot have our population dying from these things. Research what makes the allergy to the things so dangerous. Our population will gain from having better resistances. -5% happiness +25% researchEach choice gives you 10 Ideology Points not tied to a larger ideology... The player chooses which one fits them the best...Then in the Ideology tab they spend it on what fits them best... at the exception of other options.
Being able to game the game to get everything you want is counter intuitive Some of the choices SHOULD lock out other options... You cannot have people love you so much they WANT to join you... and be brainwashed so much they will never leave you at the same time.... these sorts of choices should be mutually exclusive.
That said... simply cost prohibitive based on the spherical graph would work great as well and is honestly my preferred choice here.
Limiting players to one tree, any way you go about it, is limiting to gameplay and strategy options. Right now, if I want a "Chaotic Neutral" style civ, I can make that. If I want to pick and choose - both for individual worlds and overall ideology - what best suits my strategy, I can do that. The big thing to me is the ability to shape a civilization to create a unique personality. Diplomatic with an appetite for war. (pragmatic, malevolent) Militant isolationists who take care of their own, but are aggressive to outsiders. (benevolent/malevolent/vigilant) Dedicated Pacifists. (benevolent/pragmatic) Masters of manipulation (affinity, prominence, traders, negotiators, awe, motivation) Crusaders, Paranoid, Hyper-capitalists, amoral, passive, I can think of so many ways to craft a civilization.
Otherwise, it's simply Good/Neutral/Evil and that is boring. A system which pushes or forces us in one direction is a system to which I am vehemently opposed. It makes for linear strategies and predictable opponents. There's no personality. I would welcome more options, rather than fewer - more flexibility, not less.
The most effective way of dealing with any problems is to:
A)Let AI use ideology strategically (or in interesting, goal-oriented ways), and
B)Give the galaxy creation option to make ideology cost more (or less) overall. This way, if we create a galaxy with a whole bunch of planets, we can raise the cost to make it take longer to earn traits.
The Definition of Ideology:
What I want is a game that is fun, not dictionary definitions. I don't care how "Ideology" is defined, I care how it works in the game. Besides, the examples of mixing and matching in my post adhere to ideological principles, just not the way the game defines them.
It's all about fun. Not dictionaries. Dictionaries are boring. Flexibility is fun.
yes well, given some of the things the dev's have said and how Good/Neutral/Evil worked in the previous game... I suspect flexibility is unintended and broken... being tested only in beta and will be removed.
An ideology should be just that...a major direction that your race progresses in as a civilization. The idead that your whole civilization can jump around between being good and evil just to scoop up bonuses is pretty silly and immersion breaking. I stand by my idea that progressing down one path should lock out the others. Or at least make changing Ideologies a major undertaking.
the biggest problem with that is who defines these ideologies? ideology A is considered malevolent because its in the Malevolent tree but is it really? what if i feel that ideology A suits my races choices but i play benevolent.
for example the Scary ideology in my opinion has no right to be a malevolent trait it should be renamed and put into the benevolent tree i mean who would you rather have as a neighbor the good guy who always returns the things he borrows and is always willing to lend a hand; or the guy who doesn't even ask to borrow things and will stab you in the back when you're not looking
The Stardock team. They create the universe the game is set in. I suspect the details about what ideology goes where will be tweaked, but I still think you shouldn't be able to bounce around all three trees as you wish.
Okay, here's the fix: rename Ideology. Call it "Social Development" or something.
I think increasing a cost to go up one tree if you are far up another is certainly a reasonable choice and helps address the "immersion" complaints. It also helps address concerns about maxing out a tree or three on very large maps. But I am against "locking" out a tree since it can show that empires aren't One Note Ponies but are instead varied and complex.
And if one wants to play as a solo ideology for RP purposes, nothing is stopping someone from doing that.
Getting back to the ease of getting ideology on very large maps, I would also support having the option to set ideology growth/speed like we are able to set the speed of tech research. If the tech research speed can be set to "very slow", for instance, the ideology upgrade could be set to "very steep".
OTOH, I do think some of the ease of growing in ideology might be a bit of an illusion. We don't have minor races in the game yet. And at the moment on a base game we are restricted to six total major races (including the player). On an Immense map, it should probably have at least eight to ten majors (including the player) and a dozen or more minors. With more factions gobbling up planets, it should become harder to easily gobble up ideology. The cake would get sliced up in more pieces, in other words.
And on that famously mooted 100+ faction game it might be very hard to go up in ideaology simply by grabbing planets.
That being said, I could still support being able to set a larger ideology cost as an option if it seems like I am sprinting it up too easily in my games.
I would like it if you had to openly commit to one tree, then pick a secondary one and the third would be one were you get a penalty with civs that have it. This would keep in place the freedom of choosing any tree while instituting diplomatic order it is currently lacking.
So I could be ⅓ of everything but diplomatically id be registered as whatever I chose like in galciv2.
I think the way it is currently set up is that whatever ideology trait you unlock first is the one other factions think you have when it comes to diplomacy. So there is still some gameplay effect for the one you initially choose.
I know that currently I am getting bonuses and minuses for having same/opposite ideologies on the Diplo Screen.
Hehe ... my college roommate Kevin objected to the AD&D class system on the same grounds. He said, "If I want to play a non-human fighter/cleric/magic-user/thief (which I shall hereafter call the "ziggy") with no weapon, armor, or level limits, then I darn well shall do so". His ziggies can cast mage spells and backstab while wearing plate and wielding two swords. He even went so far as to grant to any player who had the gall to run a ziggy all of the NPC ability-score bonuses for all 4 classes (from the old DM guide).
As Kevin pointed out, ziggies are incredibly hard to get to level 3, because they need 4 times the EXP as anybody else for each level (on average). They get (d10 + d8 + d6 + d4)/4 ~= d7 hp, so they have a survivability problem for many, many levels. Around level 7 they finally start outclassing any single-class character in a 1-v-1 fight (if you're willing to blow half your mage spells to pump yourself up for one fight, which works for a boss at the end of a dungeon, but not for the dungeon). They still just kind of suck as line fighters because they can't hold their own place in a side-by-side slugfest with comrades of the same EXP range. Ever since then, I always try to make ziggies in every skill-points-based RPG system I play.
Anyways, it sounds like we're having ... ideological differences about the definition of Ideology If there's any penalty at all for cross-dipping, then a race (or player thereof) that insists on "pick-and-choosing their own path" will always buy less total bang for their buck than the straight-and-narrow races. But if there's no penalty, then it's not really an ideology, just another grab-bag of pump-ups.
I favor (for now) three clearly-separated Ideologies with a cross-penalty. It's a simplified abstraction, but GC3 is full of simplifying abstractions. Let's optimize the game (and the AI!!) for that first, before we worry about pick-and-choosing from a flea market.
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