Socio-Economic Model Full Draft

Sorry for that, i thinked its going to be calculated by chances, not by minute

In my goal to simplify the economics and social aspect of the Strategy Mode, I figured out how to eliminate the Officers Pop without taking anything away from gameplay.

The purpose of the Officers Pop was that they would generate Leadership Points (LP), which you would then spend to hire Generals and Admirals (Also known as Military Leaders, or Commanders). However, this was causing many problems. For one thing, LP would naturally rise over time as the player's nation grew, and as a result the price of Commanders would have to rise to accommodate that. But, the problem with that is its forcing the player to have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place, aka grow their officer pop larger and larger to match the rising price.

What's more, it added a lot more management needs for the player. Having to meet the needs of another Pop, having to build buildings to generate more LP when more Commanders are wanted. It just all felt like too much work for not enough gain.

However, if LP was taken out of the picture, everything would change.

Commanders can be hired at any SC without any costs or any restrictions. Commanders are not a requirement for armies, and are instead only needed when you want to automate an army. This way, officers are no longer needed, and can be eliminated as a pop, reducing the total number to 9. Moreover, players won't have to constantly work to generate LP, in addition to the multitude of other resources they are striving to produce and collect.

And to expand on the army automation, commanders can be used to go on campaigns without player guidance. All the player has to do is select a group of units, and form it into an army (Ctrl + A), like grouping in other RTS games. Next, you select the button "Assign Campaign", which gives you a pop-up box. First you select a commander from the list you have recruited (you can recruit more in this menu).

(Commanders will have randomly generated command rating ranging from 1-10 which will determine the intelligence level of their AI.)

After selecting a commander, you give a series of orders to your commander. For example, Attack Move to Target X, Move without Attacking to Target Y, Hold for Z seconds, and then Attack Society Center X. They will not be orders you type in. All the orders will be buttons that you select that are added to the list. The same order can be added multiple times. You do have to select targets and SC's on the map for certain orders. When you are finished, you click the check-mark at the bottom, and your commander executes his orders. This leaves you free to do whatever you want in the meantime.

As a backup measure, you can always go to an army that is being automated, either by selecting one of the units/squads within it, or selecting its icon on the military panel, and you will get the UI box of the commander of that army, but you will not be able to control the army yourself. There will be a red X on the commander's UI which will say "Cancel Campaign", and when clicked it will cancel the campaign and return the army to your control, returning the commander to the commander pool.

Commanders will die after random periods of time based off of your species' lifetime.

Okay, big change coming up. Big, BIG change.

Actually, its not that big, but its still quite a leap from what has settled into current concept. After having worked on the Tech Editor, and the Nation Editor, and the Squad Editor, and just experienced the sheer detail and diversity of gameplay available to the player, I more and more have come to think that this whole concept of Pops is not only too complicated, but not very rewarding in terms of what implementing it would yield.

For that reason, I suggest a shift to a new system, composed of elements from the original Specialists system (straight from Sid Meier's Civilization) and the current Pop system (straight from Victoria II). Pops will go back to being called Specialists, and the list of them will be reduced as some of the similar ones are merged, but at the same time the important parts of the Pop system will still be included. What will be lost, however, is class/social conflict, and slavery.

Class/social conflict I never really saw as a big thing, or an exciting feature, and is more just a gradual competition between the Pops of your nation to have their demands met and rise in social status. Slavery, although interesting, was never something that could be explicitly implemented, and was more of a behind the scenes, implied feature. Lastly, when Pops were deployed, i.e. on the ground as units instead of populated into cities and just numbers on a screen, few had any uses. Most were quite useless. With specialists, it goes back to being a lot more like an RTS, with Worker Specialists, Military Specialists, Science Specialists, Citizens, etc.

Speaking of which, all units/people in your nation are now either citizens or specialists. Citizens are like nerfed workers. They can gather, build, repair, fight, but all at a poor rate. Then there are specialists. These are units specifically tasked for a certain job. Worker Specialists build fast, but gather slow and are weak. Military specialists fight well, but build slowly and eat more food. Some specialists, like Research/Science or Artist Specialists, only give bonuses when they are populated into a city.

So the list of them is (I might be forgetting some):

Military Specialists
Gatherer Specialists
Worker Specialists
Merchant Specialists
Research/Science Specialists
Artist Specialists
Citizens

So this takes out social class, and it takes out social status. It takes out the incredibly arduous assigning of income yields and resource demands that I had begun ploughing through a while back. It cuts back on the number of processes the computer has to run to calculate stats for your nation. It also takes away much of the management it would have demanded of the player to keep Pops stable or growing or happy or suppressed or whatever.

And btw, the commander concept in my last post still applies, regardless of this change. What do you guys think of making this change?

Also, if you have any questions as to concept which you might think is now obsolete or invalidated with this change, but I haven't said something about it, ask away and I'll tell you whether or not it still applies.

Do you guys support this shift? Would you like to move from Pops to Specialists?

Yea, I always felt like the pop system was too complicated, while the specialist approach is good and not overly complicated

Okay great to hear. To make it easier I'll put a poll up to see what people think.

Okay as long as no objection shows up soon, we'll move over to the Specialist system.

I know that this post isn't active for a while, but I read it and I found it interesting. I'm new here and I'd like to tell you my opinion on the matter.

First of all Nick-the-Nick was right about the term capitalist. Capitalist isn't necessarily a person that believes in capitalism, but a person that has a huge fortune and power. Aristocrats do not exist anymore and they will never come back. Today the capitalists are the leading class and most governments work for them.
Capitalism isn't the only system. Before capitalism we had feudalism (Aristocrats were the leading class). At the fist societies we had a "prehistoric communism" (by the term communism I mean not a class system).

I do not believe that capitalism will last forever. Every system has an "expire date". I liked the idea of the resource-based economy (RBE) and I believe that the day will come that the capitalists will lose the power and the humanity will be able to cooperate (it's a long and hard road, none said it's easy).

About the communist states. There are none. According to the most famous communist Marx, there's not such thing as state during communism. States exist in socialism (socialism is immature communism). Communism never existed.

I do not support the existed socialist states. Some people like Stalin used the title of "communism" to commit terrible crimes. I do not try to pass on this forum any communist propaganda, but the real communism (and the real socialism) is about direct democracy, liberty and equality. Dictatorships have nothing to do with (real) socialism or communism.

I'm telling you this because socialism/communism is a term that was used by a lot of people the wrong way. Like science. In the wrong hands it can be used to cause destruction, in the right hands it can help humanity, prevent further ecological catastrophes on the planet and much more.

This thread is Archived, meaning it is out of date. Check the new thread on how societies will be modelled.