Social Context and Advanced Start

Each cycle after the first one  (in standard games) will now gain a new social context chosen at random, which will basically change the rules of the game to a lesser or greater extent.

Each cycle will now have a set of social contexts chosen at random, although with some constraints, from a growing list. These will significantly change the game experience by basically providing players with a dynamic set of rules to which they'll have to adapt.

So far the game has 16 social contexts, but more will be added over time, maybe even before the release. This means that perhaps in some cycles you'll get sanctioned trade or extraction monopolies preventing you from earning any revenue through those methods and forcing you to find different ways in which to make a living. Maybe the colony is a demilitarized zone in which building fortifications or owning or manufacturing units is forbidden. In some cycles the colony might be a forbidden zone altogether so you might be one of the very few people inside it. Another fun context is the existence of a free veto a la Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the negative vote of any aristocrat is enough to cause a proposal to fail.

These contexts can combine to radically alter a cycle. At most, 3 different social contexts can be in play at the same time, meaning that in standard games you'll start the first cycle getting the vanilla experience, but with each successive cycle you'll be given a new context along with an explanation as to why it came to be. After 3 of these contexts are in play, the game will start replacing the oldest one in each new cycle. You will be able to see the social context that applies to the current game in the "Current Affairs" information screen.


Because these changes would be very gradual and veteran players might be interested in playing with them right away, or perhaps simply because you're just interested in making the game more unfair to you, you'll also now get the chance from the start to play in standard or advanced mode.

At least for now, two things will happen when you do this. First, you won't get those mini-tutorial messages even at the start of a game and, more importantly, you'll start the game with 3 social contexts already in effect from cycle one.


The one thing these social contexts will leave alone is access to renascent allies so that the player is never completely stuck in a cycle, making him or her able to at least retrieve the pieces of the relic.

In any event, now you'll be better able to claim that you're not evil for resorting to banditry and raiding territories. Maybe it is actually true that it is just society and the social context that forces you to do those things.