I went ahead and changed the "Base Upgrades" menu item under projects for "Settlement Upgrades" and included an option to build housing requiring resistance and 1 hectare of land. Doing this will yield a number yet to determine and properly balance of friendly colonists, probably 100 each, and will not allow negative immigration values to lower the number of friendly colonists bellow that number.
These colonists could still end up killed or converted in every other way, so it'd be in your best interests to have a sizeable number of housing hectares to serve as a buffer. Furthermore, a weariness value of over 100 in your home base will damage housing as well as the other assets.
The other noticeable change concerns voting and is one that some of you might find disagreeable. Up to now, you could always vote as long as you had 1 Merit and a base. I'm thinking about changing things so that you'll need 10 Merits to be invited to vote. I want to do this because I believe many people find the game overwhelming not because it's hard, but because a lot of features are presented at the same time. A lower cap of 10 Merits will allow players some time to familiarize with other systems before they are introduced to politics. They will still be able to start as governors, but warned that it'd be a more complex experience.
If any of you have a good argument against this, I'll be glad to hear it and maybe undo the changes.
I also went ahead and removed the display of each individual lobby's votes when you can't attend a voting, which helps a lot with the flow of the game.
That sounds like a good compromise right now. In the future, I'd suggest introducing political parties/factions. You already have them in the form of lobbies. In order to take part in politics, the player would need to join an existing faction or start his/her own. Being part of an existing lobby would give some benefits, but the lobby would leech Merit from the players and randomly assign duties. Starting own party would be expensive and hard, but would give total freedom. Plus maybe you could use companion renascents somehow in your own party? Of course, there should be an option for leaping between factions and/or backstabbing a lobby you belong to in order to kickstart your own faction.
ReplyDeleteSomething like that could work. The ultimate goal of politics being proclaiming yourself emperor/empress, forming some sort of party could involve bringing under your wing local aristocrats and renascents in order to exert a greater power than your current Merit allows.
DeleteThe idea of joining lobbies is also intriguing, especially for adventurers and outcasts. Besides duties and small tasks, something like pledging what few Merits you have during voting in exchange for bonuses other than favours could make lobbies more interesting.
Yup and as added bonus, it would make politics a choice. You could choose not to take part, thus avoiding the hassle with voting, if you decided to run for military victory or something else instead. Of course, I imagine a combination of many factors would be the best, but some players prefer focusing. Anyway, keep up the good work and remember to drop by in Bay12 forums now and then too. :p
DeleteI'll make sure to announce the release on the Bay12 forums once it's finished sometime this month and then address the usual following bug reports and questions. I tend to remain quiet outside of this blog between releases because I dislike to promote my own game unless there is something substantial to announce.
DeleteThis release did drag on a little longer than expected though.