Please add profile and word stratagems (Full Version)

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Serben -> Please add profile and word stratagems (1/21/2021 12:43:25 AM)

Sooner or later, in the later stages of the game, it becomes harder and harder to fulfill the faction demands and policy speech promises, causing your word score to slowly enter into a death spiral. My suggestion is to add some stratagems than can improve your word score.

Another problem is the profile points. Right now you have zero control over which events you're going to get that can affect your profile. It would be nice if there were stratagems that could give you profile points of your choosing.



beyondwudge -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/21/2021 7:41:46 AM)

Sounds fine. Can balance them by weighting/cost.



Serben -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 10:06:50 AM)

Yeah. There is nothing more frustrating than being forced by a policy speech or faction demand to explore more of the map when you're at war with everyone and have a difficulty of 500 to send in spies, or being forced to increase your BP production when you have no free labour and can't afford any more BP offices [8|]



zgrssd -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 10:20:39 AM)

At least for policy speeches you can "stay vague", to not get any unwanted quests. I actually started using that one.

Rejecting a faction demand still costs you some word score, but less then a failed promise.
It cost them some serious political capital to even make that demand, so rejecting it will not be cost free.



Serben -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 11:02:31 AM)

You lose word score if you stay vague in policy speeches. So that's not a viable strategy.



mroyer -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 12:33:19 PM)

quote:

Yeah. There is nothing more frustrating than being forced by a policy speech or faction demand to explore more of the map when you're at war with everyone and have a difficulty of 500 to send in spies, or being forced to increase your BP production when you have no free labour and can't afford any more BP offices [8|]


This seems very realistic to me.... one of your factions doesn't read the news and is operating from alternative facts. I know it sounds wild but it could happen, even in real life. [;)]



beyondwudge -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 2:01:25 PM)

Politics is frustrating.



newageofpower -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 3:05:29 PM)

There are already (effectively) Political Profile Stratagems via the Scrap Stratagem mechanic. You need to be on the Beta, however.



mroyer -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 3:33:45 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: newageofpower

There are already (effectively) Political Profile Stratagems via the Scrap Stratagem mechanic. You need to be on the Beta, however.


Do tell! I haven't looked at that very closely - what can you accomplish with in-effect-political-profile stratagems?

-Mark R.



Soar_Slitherine -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 5:33:30 PM)

There's two types of strategems generated from scrapping that I've seen: One recruits a leader with a specific personality trait, skillset and capability level, and the other increases a specific regime profile while constructing a certain private asset. So you can get a Commercial Library strategem that gives +7 to the Commerce profile and builds a private library for 16 political points, for example. The specific combination generated seems to be random, but if it's for a profile that you actually want to increase, that's obviously highly useful.



Serben -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (1/23/2021 8:36:18 PM)

Great, now we just need a stratagem that can increase the word score. Or some other reliable way to keep it stable in the late game.



Serben -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (4/12/2021 9:44:59 PM)

i haven't played for a while and am thinking of starting a new game, but don't really feel like playing if you can't affect your word score and profile except by praying to RNGesus and hoping for the best. so have any of the suggestions in this thread been added yet? or anything similar that lets me affect my word and profile in the game? thanks.



Soar_Slitherine -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (4/12/2021 10:25:07 PM)

The only relevant change is that the scrap stratagems mentioned earlier made it from the beta patches to the main version.



zgrssd -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (4/13/2021 9:42:55 AM)

Some Scrap Stratagems carry a Profile impact. While those are about as random as the Events, at least you can choose not to go the wrong direction (by scrapping the card right back).

The biggest improovements for the beta have been on other fronts:
- ability to modify formations
- balance changes to Logistics assets and certain foot weapons



BlueTemplar -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/15/2021 10:42:30 PM)

Unlike what the tooltip says, refusing faction Demands does NOT lower your Word score.
It DOES have an effect on Faction Happiness... which seems to give big random Relation penalties to the Leaders of that Faction ?
I wonder whether the type of your Political Body *also* has an impact on the frequency of Demands from Majority Factions, or if just has an effect on the maximum number of Demands and the frequency of Demands by Minority Factions ?



zgrssd -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/16/2021 3:33:05 AM)

With the S&S Editor, this should be doable.
It is not explicitly documented and the Decisions do use a special approach, but the Scrap Stratagems should point me in the right direction.

I would say the cost should be something like 1 PP per current score and/or Fatepoints if it goes very high?



Soar_Slitherine -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/16/2021 11:07:15 AM)

I considered doing a mod for this where the opportunities to boost profiles were affected by the regime education level, dominant Politics profile (I don't think it makes any sense for democracies to be the best at social engineering just because they get more PP) and maybe the presence of government-run Vidcom Stations, but I think I have too many other things on my plate to look into it in the immediate future.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/16/2021 12:41:45 PM)

Yeah, in practice, in the game Democracies (actually Parliaments¤) end up with lots of unhappy Minority Factions because you are going to refuse their repeated Demands to increase low score, Regime-antagonistic Profiles ?

I'm currently in this situation, what am I supposed to do when my biggest currently "Minor" Faction has my SHQ commander, 1/3 of my Directors, half of my Governors and half of my OHQ commanders and keeps Demanding for me to raise Autocracy every round, which I keep refusing, so their Faction Happiness is now down to 47%... how long will I be able to keep bribing them ? (Here Democracy certainly shines !)
I'll guess I'll find out, having 100% Word Score doesn't seem to help much against random -22 Relation hits...

----

Or, (though it's a bit late now), maybe it's that trying to get 81-90% in a single Profile and 6-0-0 Regime Feats is the wrong way to go about it when playing a Democracy/Parliament¤ (ironically, this includes Democracy itself !).

So you instead have to aim at 51-59% in your "main" Profile and 41-49% in your "secondary" ones, resulting in 3-2-2 Regime Feats ?
This might be easier to pull off than expected, because it gets ever harder to increase Profiles over 50% (and decrease them under 50%).

You just have to be careful to get the Regime Feats in the right order, to go in the direction of Profile Suppression, not against it, and end up picking your "main" profile LAST.

----

¤Or maybe it's because I messed up in granting votes to anyone that asked, so my Politburo became a Parliament... I guess that if you refuse giving more political power, then even a 90%+ "Democracy" is going to keep its Politburo ?
(I guess that would also make high Democracy % harder to achieve ?)



zgrssd -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/16/2021 2:50:23 PM)

quote:

I'm currently in this situation, what am I supposed to do when my biggest currently "Minor" Faction has my SHQ commander, 1/3 of my Directors, half of my Governors and half of my OHQ commanders and keeps Demanding for me to raise Autocracy every round, which I keep refusing, so their Faction Happiness is now down to 47%... how long will I be able to keep bribing them ? (Here Democracy certainly shines !)

With Democracy, your People and Soldiers can vote.
And what they vote for, depends on the Profiles of their leaders (Governors, OHQ and SHQ commanders).

If you give them that kind of power, they are not going to be a minority faction much longer.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/16/2021 5:44:47 PM)

I'm pretty sure that they couldn't vote before I allowed them to.
And that my Regime started out as a Politbureau (starting with +10 Autocracy) not as a Parliament.

You might be confusing starting with +10 Democracy, which then I think always starts you as a Parliament ?

----

They used to be a majority. Funnily enough, the current biggest majority (double their votes) are all Reserve Pool members !



zgrssd -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/16/2021 10:26:32 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

I'm pretty sure that they couldn't vote before I allowed them to.
And that my Regime started out as a Politbureau (starting with +10 Autocracy) not as a Parliament.

You might be confusing starting with +10 Democracy, which then I think always starts you as a Parliament ?

----

They used to be a majority. Funnily enough, the current biggest majority (double their votes) are all Reserve Pool members !

I am refering to 5.6.12. PolItICs
Going democracy should mean they do get voting rights.

In a Polibureau, the political associations of your Council Leaders are what maters the most. Governors and HQ leaders might not mater at all for Faction shares.
In a Democracy it is exactly the other way around - Governors and HQ Leaders mater the most for vote share.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/17/2021 10:33:02 AM)

I'm referring to :
quote:

5.6.12.3. PolItICal system ChanGe
Your Regime Feat Parliament, Senate or Politburo can change based on who
you are allowing to participate.
A Parliament changes to a Senate once neither your Population, Workers or
Soldiers have the right to vote.
A Senate changes to a Politburo upon you have restricted the right to vote
to your Cabinet.
A politburo changes to a Senate or Parliament once the vote has been
extended outside of your Cabinet.
[...]
If you have certain Regime Profile values, certain Political System changes
will eventually be proposed.

The table under that might be wrong, IIRC I got a decision about giving *all* my leaders the right to vote despite having less than 50% meritocracy ?

----

I looked some more into Faction Happiness :
quote:

5.8.10.3. faCtIon haPPIness
[...]
Ideal Happiness
If current Happiness is higher than Ideal Happiness, it moves up to 10%
towards its ideal Happiness. In the reverse case (decline), it goes much,
much slower.
This Ideal Happiness is an average between:
1.) Your Regime Profile’s similarity with the Likes of the Faction
2.) The average Faction-member Leader Relation
3.) The relative prestige of the Jobs held by the members of the Faction.
Especially their Faction Leader.
4.) Power Base Modifiers
5.) Word score can modify it with up to -25 to +25. Which is a big range.
And makes Word an important statistic for the Happiness of your
Factions.

Also, the manual only lists 6 factions in the leader table, but I have 7 factions for 60 leaders, and I'm pretty sure that I got the 7th before hitting 60 leaders, so those numbers are wrong ?

Ok, so I've got 1,3,4 and 5 pushing it up. (4 is a whopping +22 !)
2 is a problem, I've just had a "spreading discontent through their ranks" News that reduced morale, relation and *especially* loyalty by 17% for ALL the 20 leaders in "Reformist League" (and their troops) !
Together with the random -XX due to the faction membership this looks like the start of a death spiral. I'll try minimizing 2 by retiring useless faction leaders and raising Reserve Pool salaries in the meantime...

Hey, *here's* the solution to raising Faction Happiness !
Get rid of as many of their leaders as you can, then they will come begging for you to accept a new hire, raising their happiness - rinse and repeat !

----

BTW, I'm getting the very strong impression that it's not only the Majority/Minority status and the last election voting % that determines the frequency of Demands :
Compare :

Reformist League is a Minority Faction with 20 members and 17% of the previous vote.
They are +++ Autocracy, Government, Mind, with a Power Base of +22
My Regime is 5% Autocracy, 77% Government, 89% Mind.
They keep spamming me every turn with demands to raise Autocracy.

Justice Superior Knights is a Minority Faction with 3 members and 15% of the previous vote.
They are ++ Meritocracy and Commerce with a power base of +8.
My Regime is 15% Meritocracy and 26% Commerce.
They hardly ever make any demands.

So either it's all just the difference in Profile mismatches, or Power Base and/or the number of Leaders in the factions has an impact too ?

----

Or potentially it might also be a bug : According to the manual, Demands are always linked to our Regime Feats.
I've had the first Autocracy Regime Feat : "Strength of the Will" for a very long time now, despite having 26% chance per turn (!!) of losing it.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Please add profile and word stratagems (5/24/2021 10:53:24 AM)

quote:

Or potentially it might also be a bug : According to the manual, Demands are always linked to our Regime Feats.
I've had the first Autocracy Regime Feat : "Strength of the Will" for a very long time now, despite having 26% chance per turn (!!) of losing it.

Ok, not sure what the manual is talking about here :
quote:

5.8.10.6. faCtIon demands
[...]
The Demands are always linked to one of your Regime Feats. A Regime
Feat linked to a low value Regime Profile that is. A Regime Feat liked by the
Faction is more likely to get involved in a Demand.

But it seems to be wrong :
Reformist League has *finally* asked me to do something else than to raise Autocracy (to raise Government), and after I accepted, it was the turn (?) of Justice Superior Knights to make a demand to raise Commerce. Even though I don't have a single Commerce Regime Feat !

----

Also, I think I've found another way to keep up Faction Happiness (at least for some of them), this time quite gamey :
Since (?) Reformist League is +++ Government, they also regularly demand me to build more BP-generating buildings... but only if I can actually build any !
So the trick would be to keep X cities (2 in my case) with 0 lvls of Bureaucrat Offices, then when the demand is made to build those offices, then when they are built and the demand is solved, immediately close them down !
Rinse and repeat as much as necessary...
(This trick should of course also work with demands to build other kinds of assets.)



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