Goveners in SCs

As of request by Alaska, here's a thread on Goveners.

While playing strategy, micromanagement would become a huge pain as your empire grows. To ease this, you will quickly develope the ability to appoint goveners to take control over SCs.

Goveners will control all actions within an SC that you don't want to, minor construction, maintenance, resource management, the like. This might be customizable.

Goveners will notably have attributes, stats, and personality traits.
Stats include:
Popularity (With different bars for each caste you have): This affects the likelyhood of (re)election if they are democratically chosen, and decreases happiness if it becomes a negative value. If it falls too low, order will also take a hit.

Corruption: This negatively affects tax income, and increases the likelyhood of being succesfully bribed by an opposing faction. It also increases the likelyhood of a scandal. This bar is invisable, but if there is a scandal you will get a breif glance at it.

Skill: Overall skill affects generally how well the SC is run. It increases tax revanue, order, decreases maintenance costs, etc. Note that the increases are by a small margin. Rarely will you find a govener you'll want based on skill alone.

Attributes function as small little notes about the character that affect their performance. Depending on their background, they will have some, but most will be gained through in-game actions. This is very similar to the system for characters in Medieval 2, Total War. A few examples might include:

Master Defender: [Insert name here] is extremely skilled at defending when in battle. Friendly AI is greatly improved when defending if [Insert name here] is commanding.

Drunkard: Excessive drinking has made [Insert name here] more popular amungst the coarser of your people, but has affected his mind somewhat. + 1 Popularity, -1 Skill

Calculating: [Insert name here]'s cold and calculating mind has served him well, but damaged public relations somewhat. +10% Tax revenue, -1 Popularity

You get the idea.

Personality Traits are similar to attributes, but affect specific actions the govener is likely to take. These include political veiws, religion, and others. For example, a risk taker would be more likely to support promising projects even if they're likely to fail. A sex feind would be drastically more likely to end up in a scandal (If that sort of thing is seen as scandalous by your culture).

Goveners are chosen differently depending on your political system.(Not nessicarily the same way the head-of-state is chosen) Vassalage would allow you to pick the first govener of a particular SC, while ever after they would be hereditary (Or until a scandal). Democracy would cause popularity to come into play in a big way. Instead of selecting the govener right off the bat, you support a candidate. This greatly increases likelyhood of them getting the job, but doesn't garuntee it. Alternatively you could fix the election, but that would massively increase the likelyhood of scandal, and if cought, massively increase the likelyhood of rebellion in the SC.

Any thoughts?

Right off the bat i don't like the scandals thing. Like you said down the bottom, it may change with the values of the Nation and that may be tricky to get across. In fact, i don't really like many of the traits stated here. Don't get me wrong, Rex. Governors is one of the best ideas you've ever come up with, and it'll definitely save Strategy Mode from death by micromanagement. But a lot of your ideas only fit into certain time frames *coughmedievalcough*. And also, the master defender seems like something more suited to a general than a governor.

Sorry to seem to dump on you, but i'm going to propose an alternative trait system. (When we disagree we make progress, right?)

Alaska's Traits
Much like the religion trait system i've suggested, these traits directly relate to the happiness, production, science output and other things that affect SCs output.They could also be used as traits for the Nation Leaders and the people who form the Legislation Party.

Organised: -Maintenance, +Production
Charismatic: +Happiness
Aggressive: +Military Unit Production, +Military Science
Philosophical: +Science
Medical: +Health
Industrious: +Production
Rural (???): +Gathering
Financial: +Wealth
Creative: +Bonuses from Entertainer Specialists
Fanatic: +Happiness from State Religion, -Science, -Happiness from other religions
Pacifist: +Science, -Military Unit Production
Progressive: -Order, +Science
Conservative: +Order, -Science
Corrupt: -Order, +Wealth
Diplomatic: +Relations with nearby Nations
Xenophobe: -Relation with nearby Nations
Protective: +Military Unit Production, -Relations with nearby Nations
Spiritual: +Bonuses from Religions
Proletariat: +Bonuses from all Specialists

And that's all i've got right now. Are people liking the idea?

I like the Alaska's traits better, they may need to change a little bit, but they are good overall. They go well with religion traits we already have. To add something, each governor should have multiple traits.


However, the Popularity value is also important, it will make players choose governors based on both their popularity and traits.

Commander Keen wrote:

I like the Alaska's traits better, they may need to change a little bit, but they are good overall. They go well with religion traits we already have. To add something, each governor should have multiple traits.


However, the Popularity value is also important, it will make players choose governors based on both their popularity and traits.

I'm with Keen on this.

Commander Keen wrote:

I like the Alaska's traits better, they may need to change a little bit, but they are good overall. They go well with religion traits we already have. To add something, each governor should have multiple traits.


However, the Popularity value is also important, it will make players choose governors based on both their popularity and traits.

Yes! Multiple traits is definitely a good idea.

And i am fine with this compromise.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Right off the bat i don't like the scandals thing. Like you said down the bottom, it may change with the values of the Nation and that may be tricky to get across.

Not at all. Scandals would only be taking money to harm the nation the govener is working for, or performing a taboo that has been marked in the culture editor.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Right off the bat i don't like the scandals thing. Like you said down the bottom, it may change with the values of the Nation and that may be tricky to get across.

Not at all. Scandals would only be taking money to harm the nation the govener is working for, or performing a taboo that has been marked in the culture editor.

Ah. Well when you explain it like that, i like it more. And everyone likes the popularity slider. Maybe we could work how prone to scandals governors are, too...

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Ah. Well when you explain it like that, i like it more. And everyone likes the popularity slider. Maybe we could work how prone to scandals governors are, too...

I'm so persuasive.

I'm not sure how we would work out certain goveners being more prone to taboo than others, seeing how variable taboos will be. On Earth the easiest identifyable (And only universal) taboo is sex in some way shape or form. Whether it be adultery or homosexuality*, incest (Though funily enough in early God-Emporer cultures this was prevalent as a way to preserve the line's purity) or infedelity, that's the only non-religious/illegal one I can think of on Earth. That itself would be easy to program, but even then there's a miriad of background info that would play a factor. Taking in the cultural differences we'll deal with (Ex: My Caelumnen have a taboo on bigotry) I can't see a way to calculate likelyhood. Perhaps if it conflicts with evolutionary desire the chances are higher?

However, if the taboo has only been made such recently, the chance for scandal through that would be somewhat higher than usual. At all other times I feel it would be just a small, constant chance. The corruption bar of course would factor in as a way of adding the likelyhood of traitorous scandal, something which I beleive all cultures would find apprehensable.

*I strongly advise we not include this in the game if possible. Don't get me wrong, I myself am both Male to Female transexual and lesbian, but not only would it stir up controversy but it's difficult to program (seeing auto-evo) and would have minimal affect on gameplay.

Tenebrarum wrote:

I'm so persuasive.

I'm not sure how we would work out certain goveners being more prone to taboo than others, seeing how variable taboos will be. On Earth the easiest identifyable (And only universal) taboo is sex in some way shape or form. Whether it be adultery or homosexuality*, incest (Though funily enough in early God-Emporer cultures this was prevalent as a way to preserve the line's purity) or infedelity, that's the only non-religious/illegal one I can think of on Earth. That itself would be easy to program, but even then there's a miriad of background info that would play a factor. Taking in the cultural differences we'll deal with (Ex: My Caelumnen have a taboo on bigotry) I can't see a way to calculate likelyhood. Perhaps if it conflicts with evolutionary desire the chances are higher?

However, if the taboo has only been made such recently, the chance for scandal through that would be somewhat higher than usual. At all other times I feel it would be just a small, constant chance. The corruption bar of course would factor in as a way of adding the likelyhood of traitorous scandal, something which I beleive all cultures would find apprehensable.

I think as long as we keep the term open-ended and arbitrary, that is we just say "Governor (Name) has become part of a huge scandal and his popularity and the stability of the SC is dropping!"

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I think as long as we keep the term open-ended and arbitrary, that is we just say "Governor (Name) has become part of a huge scandal and his popularity and the stability of the SC is dropping!"

We should say whether or not it was a cultural taboo or corruption, as I beleive that certain forms of governance will increase corruption, like beurocracy perhaps?

Also, corruption via an opposing faction could cause a full out turncoat, if (s)he's not found out.

Just noticing, is anyone in favor of the Personality Traits idea I proposed in the OP? I say we should include them, but merge it with the regular traits system.

Ex.: A govener with the Xenophobe trait would be more likely to act aggresively against other nations. (Not nessicarily military aggresion)

Or maybe:

A govener with the proletariate trait would be more likely to have communist sympathies. (Assuming idealogical leanings enter the game at all.)

Corruption: I think having a statement for Scandal and one for Corruption will suffice.

Traits: Definitely. I have always intended for traits to change personalities of governors and leaders.