Confederations, Integrated Empires, Vassilisation (Applies to Industrial to Space)

Firstly, this could apply to anywhere from industrial or even society onwards, but I feel would mainly come into play in the space stage.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot and have talked about it in a few different places and I've seen a few other people mention it, so I feel we should discuss it one place. Also discussion about these later stages should not be at the expense of the microbe stage which is our focus.

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Heres what I have so far.

Confederations, Integrated Empires, and Protectorates can all be considered effectively the same thing for our purposes. There will be a lead nation/tribe/country/nation and protectorate nations that are ruled by the lead nation known as the overlord nation. Each nation can have any number of protectorates and protectorates can have protectorates of their own. This is different to alliances.

Effects of being a protectorate:
50% of revenue go to overlord
Increase chance of spread of religion
Improve relations
Nations are allied
Spread of research
Can be called to war by overlord
Vassal may declare war on overlord
Nations who have poor relations with overlord have lower relations with the overlord's vassals.

How a nation may become a protectorate:
Through war, the victor may force the nation into becoming a protectorate as a peace term.
Peacefully, the overlord may ask the subject to become a protectorate (if prerequisites are met)
Peacefully, Subject may ask to become a protectorate.

Prerequisite of peaceful protectoration (overlord to protectorate):
Max/ Very good relations
Must be allies
Tolerant of each others religions
Minor nation should be relatively smaller (by some ratio)

Prerequisite of military protectoration (overlord to protectorate):
Total victory or maybe 80%+

Protectoration can end by:
Overlord can release protectorate
Overlord can be forced to release protectoratel as a part of peace negotiations
Protectorate can declare independence (and gain it through victory in war). If the protectorate looses it cannot declare independence again for a number of years (10) and tax could increase

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So what do you think? Additions changes, whatever, discuss.

There should be a bit of a relations stigma to being vassilised as well, such as nations that don't like the overlord should have a relations penalty to the vassal as long as they are a vassal, it makes sense to me anyway.

If Integrated Empires means what I think it means, then didn't Nick clear that up on the misc. thread? Two species can't be the same nation, the player's species is the species for the nation. If this is not where you are going with this please correct me.

In terms of the prerequisites, I'm guessing all three of these would be similar if not the same. But I don't think religion should play into these prerequisites, as far as my opinion goes, but if there is a good reason it should, I'm all ears.

Yeah that makes sense, I'll add that in.

No this is not two species in one nation. The two nations still exist as separate entities, think of it as a few steps more than an alliance. The vassilisation can end and then the two nations can go their separate ways.

Hmm, I suppose religion wouldn't really make that much of a difference, I was just thinking if the nations have conflicting views, they might not be willing to team up in this way.

Ok, so Integrated Empires still have their own separate governments for each, but they have to be in agreement for alliances and wars? Or maybe some kind of joint-government?

And Confederations, could you please elaborate?

Yeah pretty much. They are still separate governments and are still governed by their own set of AI.

Well I don't have anything different for the way confederations & integrated empires are set up. I'm currently considering them as the umbrella term for all the nations which may be linked through a tree of vassals?

Looks good so far. I wouldn't get in too much depth for the different alliance structures though. I think the vassal idea sounds great, and would fit in well with the current concept.

Thats great idea.

I agree with everything Inca said, I would only suggest a slight difference in naming.

Since vassal is a very narrow term, and is only used in feudalism, while players will have many different types of government, maybe we should call it something like "satellite state" so that the computer doesn't have to detect if the player has a system similar to feudalism, or have republics with vassals.

Or maybe the name could be a protectorate, like in Empire Total War?

As far as I'm concerned, satellite state would work just as well as protectorate, as they are both a source of income for the overlord nation/empire/etc.

I like the name Protectorate.

I'm kind of wondering how the computer would use this function diplomatically. I know that, for the AI, these satellite states react to the offer to join based on relations, but what if the nation given the offer is really powerful, and suddenly a weak ally wants to become a protectorate state? Logically, the potential satellite state won't just accept, because it is a larger and stronger nation. I think we should have a potential satellite state's decision be based not on just relationship, but also statistics of both nations as well as circumstances, including the current leaders and enemies.

Incidentally, what will the AI be playing for? Is it playing for a set condition (Civilization AI plays to win), or does it just play to survive? I'm thinking the second, since there isn't exactly a victory condition for any stage apart from going to the next stage, and, in reality, becoming a multicellular organism is less a win condition than a prerequisite to reaching the next stage, which is mostly what Thrive is about.

Hold on a second, doesn't every stage involve the AI making decisions to survive? In Microbe, it uses organelles to survive, and doesn't give a hoot about the multicellular stage. In Multicellular, it still just wants to survive, and it evolves its structure to become more complex if it means survival. So on and so forth, until Society and Industrial, where the AI wants to preserve its nation, which is why it wants to expand, to cover more ground and prevent a housing crisis; either give its people freedom so that the nation doesn't collapse, or stockpile power to become too strong for the people to rise up and defeat; even preserve its allies if they are useful enough, if we don't have a morality function. And that brings us to the vassalage function; if a weak nation has no chance to grow stronger and survive, and suddenly a nation that could compete and win, offers to be a protectorate state, then that smaller nation would accept, even if that means losing income, because that means that they'll survive. At the same time, if the nation can't afford the costs (the "yes or no" screen should have pros and cons), there is a majority of citizens demanding to decline the offer, or if the current leader doesn't want the nation to become a satellite state, then they will decline. A strong nation wouldn't become a satellite state to a weak one, and a protectorate would want to bring in smaller states before becoming that to ones of equal size to it or the confederation as a whole. Being the protectorate gives increased survival, since you have several nations under your command; a confederation might be able to defeat a standard nation of the same or greater size, since each of these satellite states have their own bonuses based on government and specialization, so there would be a greater variety in troops, as opposed to the standard nation just having its single bonuses.

MitochondriaBox wrote:

I'm kind of wondering how the computer would use this function diplomatically. I know that, for the AI, these satellite states react to the offer to join based on relations, but what if the nation given the offer is really powerful, and suddenly a weak ally wants to become a protectorate state? Logically, the potential satellite state won't just accept, because it is a larger and stronger nation. I think we should have a potential satellite state's decision be based not on just relationship, but also statistics of both nations as well as circumstances, including the current leaders and enemies.

Military and economic strength also tie in to influence, what effect the likelihood of AI nations accepting your offers. That means that will be accounted for.

MitochondriaBox wrote:

Incidentally, what will the AI be playing for? Is it playing for a set condition (Civilization AI plays to win), or does it just play to survive? I'm thinking the second, since there isn't exactly a victory condition for any stage apart from going to the next stage, and, in reality, becoming a multicellular organism is less a win condition than a prerequisite to reaching the next stage, which is mostly what Thrive is about.

There would be several preset AI personalities we could create after making the generic "Survive" AI. We could make an expansionist AI, a defensive one, a trading powerhouse, a militaristic empire, etc.