by on

Hey everyone!

Without further ado, here are the changelog notes from .7.5. A lot here!

7.5.0 Changelog Notes – WIP

7.18.19

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

  • Added: Spec Ops
    • You will now be able to ‘Prep Special Operations’ as a status once an Inquisitor has been assigned to a House or a Character. This will generate Spec Op points every month towards that target (either the Character or the House Leader)
    • Once you have at least the minimum number of points for a Spec Op (shown on the left in purple on the Action; greyed out until you have at least the minimum shown) you can take the Action at any time. You will have a chance of success (shown on the right of the Action button) that can go as high as 95% (always a chance of failure!) the higher above the minimum Spec Op points you go, the greater your chance of success (represents more planning)
    • Once you initiate a Spec Op, you will find out how it went the following turn as an Event: Success, Non-Critical Failure, or Critical Failure:
      • Success: the op happens as planned, and the desired action takes place. The squad reverts to Passive Intel status, and they gain a significant Spec OP XP
      • Non-Critical Failure: the op did not come off as planned, but the squad’s cover for whatever reason was not blown. You may have them try again next month (in which case you do not need to do anything) or you can change their status/mission. No adverse effects occur, just wasted time/prep. Squad gains a small amount of Spec Op XP
      • Critical Failure: the op failed, and very publically. Your Squad gets away, but is considered injured/damaged in the attempt and will be in Working Up status for 2-6 months. Significant repercussions will happen to you depending on the severity of the Ops (usually a huge hit from the Character’s House in negative rep, also an increase in Fear and Grudge.
    • There are no limits to how many Ops you may have going at one time – as long as you have a free Inquisitor squad, you can do one!
  • Added: Character Fear Mechanic
    • Characters now have a fear level of you from 0-100, where 0 is absolutely fearless and 100 is terrified. This can be determined in very general terms, becoming more specific as you get more Intel Progress on a Character.
    • This effects how likely they are to agree to an Action, their speech/attitude towards you, how likely they are to Demand or Threaten something vs. Request or Favor, and how likely they are to join Plots against you.
    • Keep in mind that while a character with a high Fear level will be far more likely to do what you ask, they will more than likely hold a Grudge which never drops naturally, making them more likely to retaliate if they have an opportunity in the future.
    • Fear drops very slowly over time naturally, and can also be dropped quickly by positive Actions (getting to know Character, making a positive Speech, lending your Support, and promoting them to a higher Position)
    • When you start the game, since you are a young Emperor and widely ignored, most Characters will not Fear you very much. Doing Tyrannical things early in your reign is certainly a viable strategy as long as you can deal with the long-term repercussions!
  • ADDED: Blackmail Mechanic
    • Blackmail is a special status that stays on a Character indefinitely. If you successfully complete the Spec Op ‘Blackmail Character’ they will have a special Blackmail Status. This means the following:
      • They will hate you virulently – their Grudge Level goes to 100
      • They will always agree with what Action you ask for, but the strength of the demand may ‘break’ the Blackmail hold. In other words, if you demand a Holding from a Blackmailed House Leader, they will agree – but asking such a strong thing will almost certainly ‘break’ the blackmail. If you ask for minor things that they might have agreed to anyway, it is very likely that they will stay blackmailed.
      • They will always serve – if they are in ‘Will Not Serve’ status, that will change, making them available for Projects and Offices
      • This status will not affect other Characters’ secondary effects (they aren’t going to tell their friends that they’re being blackmailed, after all!) but ONCE THE HOLD IS BROKEN, ALL Allies and Friends of the Character will have a Grudge and Fear rise of varying amounts depending on the Character and the closeness of the relationship!
    • Once a Character is blackmailed, you can voluntarily release the Blackmail through a Friendly Action. The Character will react much less violently than if they broke it themselves, but they will still not be happy with you, especially depending on the Actions they agreed to during the time of Blackmail.
  • ADDED: Decision Score/Grand Vizier Feedback
    • You will now have significant feedback about whether to spend an AP (and live with the consequences) of asking a Character to do something. Depending on the Intel Progress level, you will have a range of what the Character’s Decision Score (DS) will be regarding the specific Action. Your Grand Vizier will give his opinion depending on the amount of Intel and the score range. Keep in mind that since you do not have exact intel, in close situations, your GV may say that it is more likely than not, but the opposite effect happens.
    • Also, the conversation will be color-coded for quick reference – Green = likely, Yellow – maybe, Red – probably not.
  • ADDED: ‘Neutral’ answer possibility
    • Currently, there are only 2 possible answers when a Character responds: Positive (good results) and Negative (bad results). Now there is a ‘middle ground’ option where basically you didn’t really succeed or fail, but you got a non-answer. In other words, you won’t accomplish what you wanted, but you won’t get a negative effect, either, beyond wasting an AP point.
  • ADDED: Assassination System Expansion
    • Now you can see your monthly Assassination Attempt chance right on the main UI by your Power. A few changes to this have been made:
      • This represents the monthly chance that an ATTEMPT will be made on your life by someone in the Empire. This does NOT take into effect Plots. Those are effectively unknown until/unless they are discovered.
      • At the end of each month, a D1000 roll is made against your assassination chance and if it is LOWER, then an assassination attempt will be made on the next turn. You will have the chance to spend AP for the month, but a random AP expenditure will ‘trigger’ the attempt and you will see the result on a pop-up screen. This can be anything from a missed attempt to an injury that lowers your AP for a few months to, yes, death. (though this is a very low chance)
      • If you don’t spend any AP points, the check is made when you hit ‘END TURN’. There is no escaping the assassination check once it has been rolled. It represents the fact that it will happen sometime that month, but it might happen at the beginning or the end of the month.
      • Factors lowering the check: Low Unrest on your planets, having a smaller Empire (the fewer people, the fewer nut jobs!), high Love, low Fear, being a Tyrant (having a higher Fear than Love), and having a positive GEP. Any of these factors in reverse will raise the chance. You can have a 0.0% chance if your factors are low enough.

 

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

  • CHANGED: Spamming of Actions
    • You can no longer ‘spam’ the same Action multiple times in a turn. Once you attempt an Action, you may not attempt it again that turn.
  • CHANGED: Logistical Network Limits
    • Logistical networks can now only be built to Level III, but their overall area of effect is greater. In addition, there can only be one LN per system, and they can only be built as follows:
      • LN I – Can not be built on a new colony or outpost, must be an established colony or higher rank
      • LN II – Can only be built on a system capital or above
      • LN III – Can only be built on a province capital or civ capital
    • They also cost more per level to maintain. The idea is to limit the LN spam, and build them only when absolutely necessary to expand to another constellation.
  • CHANGED: UI for Power
    • With your Power being so central to the game, the UI for the main screen has been adjusted to add your Assassination Chance, and your current Power is now shown prominently with your change up/down from last turn as an arrow.
  • CHANGED: Economic Prime Tax Effectiveness
    • Now can only be 25% – 115% max.
  • ADDED: New AI House Actions
    • Houses have been given additional Demands and Threats, and can now correctly build Logistical Stations. In addition, they better prioritize systems to claim.
  • ADDED: ADM Tooltip
    • Now when you hover over an ADM value in the system or planet mode, you will get an expanded tooltip explaining how the ADM was generated for the planet and the bonuses/maluses affecting it.
  • ADDED: New Relationship Types
    • Now, there are Patron and Protegee Relationships, as well as Hanger-On and Hung-Upon. These are essentially positive relationships, although the Hung-Upon character sees the Hanger-On as a junior partner in the relationship.
  • ADDED: More Conversation Engine Tags
    • There are now over 250 lines of speech that Characters can say randomly during conversation, and additional speech has been added for the new relationships and the Blackmail mechanic.
  • CHANGED: Intel Nexus UI
    • Cleaner and more iconography to make it easier to navigate the Inquisitor Info blocks.
  • CHANGED: Made the Comm UI clearer – now it is explicit when a Character is issuing a Demand, a Threat, or a Request (color cues). Also added a reminder about the Power effect on the choice
  • BALANCE: Made it harder to migrate – what was happening is any time there was an open job there would be a huge land rush and like 30 Pops would leave to try to get the one job, and 29 of them would be stuck on the new planet in the same situation
  • BALANCE: Viceroys now weight less for ADM generation
  • BALANCE: Government Complexes now produce 5 ADM instead of 4
  • BALANCE: Factories generate 3 times more BP per level
  • GRAPHIC: Made nebulae much lighter on the galaxy screen

BUG FIXES

  • As a general note, there should now be no crash bugs or hangs with turns at this point.
  • Save/Load now work again
  • Fixed issue where after a load, the GEP wouldn’t calculate correctly from earlier versions
  • Fixed all remaining tool tips bugs – wrote null catch code so it should cover any missing descriptions or icon names
  • Fixed bug with graduations not being correct
  • Fixed issue with conversations not always shedding their tags
  • Fixed major issue where a planet with a bio below 50 would not generate hardly any pops, thus creating situations where Houses would have like 20 people
  • Fixed all non-working Action responses
  • Fixed format issue on Action response
  • Fixed issue with Allied Power not showing up correctly in the Main Display – it was stuck to the same number
  • Fixed issue with when trying to perform an Action on a System/Planet that had been attached to a Province, but had not yet been assigned a Governor, you would not have any choices for Project staffing
  • Corrected Assassination formula
  • Fixed issue where Fear was being calculated incorrectly
  • Fixed issue where Comms were being treated as Demands when they should have been Requests, and vice versa

 

 

by on

Hello!

This is Steve with another blog post about an important topic of AotSS. This time, we’re going to talk about viceroys, since they play an incredibly important part of the game and in order to be successful, you need to understand how they work.

First, what do Viceroys do? Basically, they head your planetary government and are the House who holds that planets’ representative to the Imperial government (you).

Viceroys have a thankless job, really. They are accountable to 3 levels: their House, you, and their Pops who are living on the planet. Any one of those entities could cause issues for the viceroy, but it is essential that a good Viceroy understand how their Pops feel about them. They must also try to set forth the goals that their House Leader has set for their House, whether it’s raising cash, creating more infrastructure, building up the planet, or generating more materials for the House to use; this may or may not be at odds with what you want that planet to be doing and how the Pops feel about it!

So let’s talk about about the plight and month in the life of a viceroy on a fairly minor planet, and some of their considerations:

Rural Triglav, in the Kathy System

So what’s the situation? This is a small system capital, with no other planets in the system worth a damn, so it is unlikely there will be any neighbors soon. The planet has just under 100M people, but even though it has a system trade hub, there are not enough merchants to generate even one trade fleet! In addition, the planet is hemorrhaging money, and is a serious drain on the Empire (it’s a holding). Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Not a great economy.

Woof. The planet’s base GPP is only $11 billion credits, and its retail sector is barely making an impact (probably due to the lack of merchants – see the efficiency is only 4/100! Also, there is no trade going on, and the infrastructure of the planet (it’s a desert planet to begin with) is very expensive. Looks like Viceroy Malhin has decided to focus on admin buildings since the base ADM is so low (3 ADM, which is terrible for a system capital – ideally they should be at 50+) with secondary needs for food (makes sense, on a desert planet) and mining (might make sense – depends on the planet mining values) There are plenty of open jobs for engineers and miners, but there are a ton of administrators that are unemployed, so it makes sense that he would prioritize the admin sector. He has decided to run the manufacturing sector at almost 80% of capacity – that’s quite high, and will result in higher build points, but over time engineers will get more and more unhappy. Let’s take a closer look at the viceroy’s information now:

Here’s a close look at the good viceroy’s character screen. For our purposes, we’ll consider his admin skill, his traits, and his personality matrix to try to understand what he might do. He has an admin skill of 1 (not to be confused with the government skill which can go from 0 to 200; we’ll look at that in a minute) which isn’t great for someone who is running a system capital, no matter how crappy. On the positive side, he has high Honor and Empathy, which mean that he will tend to take care of the Pops under his rule (hence the high Food build). He has a low Charm trait, meaning that he’s basically not a great politician, but fortunately he’s a decent guy so his people are generally OK with him (40% Love, no Fear).

The important stat for a Viceroy is their Intelligence, basically how smart they are and what they consider when faced with multiple priorities. Rosko is pretty stupid, meaning that he will often make a poor choice when faced with a task; i.e. recruit certain Pops to the planet, create an intelligent build plan, or run the economy and make good trades that make sense for the planet. It also explains why he’s running his manufacturing sector flat out when there’s not really a critical need (and he’s in the negative with net production of all materials!) So ol’ Rosko will probably need to be micromanaged to some extent to make him useful, but that’s probably not the best way to spend your APs with a sprawling empire to run.

On the down side, he’s avaricious (basically a highly material person) which explains why he has managed to accrue a $28 billion personal account even though he’s on a backwater world, a sybarite (meaning he’s highly likely to take bribes) and superstitious (meaning that he is very likely to change his planetary strategy after an event of some kind). This last won’t matter as game events aren’t in (yet!) but the first two certainly will.

He already has a friendly relationship with me as the emperor, and characters who run Holdings that are of your House are already highly disposed to do what you ask them, unless it really goes against their personality or they really, really, REALLY hate you. So I probably won’t need to bribe him, even though it would most likely work.

Let’s take a look at Rosko’s skills:

Well, the low Intelligence is borne out by his skill values. Remember that they go from 0-200, where 50 is average, 100 is skilled, and 150+ is exceptional/genius level in a skill. From left to right, his Government Skill is 28 (used mainly for determining ADM that can be pulled out of a planet’s administration infrastructure), his High Tech skill is 4 (used for adjusting the High Tech/energy production on a world/system), his Academic skill is 0 (determines how effective Academies are on a planet, how many Pops they can take, and how likely Academics are to want to migrate there), his Engineering skill is 10 (determines how effectively the planet can generate Build Points and attract Engineers), his Farming skill is 7 (determines how effectively the planet can generate food and attract Farmers), his Mining skill is 9 (determines how effectively the planet can mine materials from the surface, how quickly the planet exhausts its reserves, and attract Miners) and the Economic skill of this savant is 10 (determines how much GPP the planet generates, how effective trades are with other hubs, how effective the retail sector is, and how much Merchants are willing to relocate there).

This is not a smart man. Small wonder that the planet is struggling to make money and mine enough materials to stay positive. In addition, he’s wasting some nice Trade infrastructure – a Level II starbase will allow at least 2 trade fleets to run each month, but merchants don’t want to set up shop on his planet (he’s an economic idiot, meaning on a local level he’s not passing laws that help merchants, making it harder to open/stay in businesses, etc.) so they’re steering clear. So what’s the effect of all this foolishness? Well, let’s first take a look at the planet details to see what context all of this is being placed in:

Well, that’s not exactly Gaia, now is it? 8 regions are desert, 2 mountainous, and the rest are so inhospitable that they are uninhabitable. The bio level is 43/100 which is on the very low end of what you would want a planet to support a large population with. Food will be difficult to grow. Energy reserves are pretty good (65) which is what you would expect from a desert world, and heavy materials are pretty abundant (68) but basic and rare materials are in very short supply. In short, this is a crappy world, and getting the most out of it will take a lot of work. And it is clear that this viceroy does not have many of the answers.

Which is where you, the astoundingly wise emperor, come in! You have several choices! You could:

  • Replace the viceroy with someone else who is currently not in a post in your House. Brutally effective, but it will create Fear in your Empire, and specifically in that planet/system.
  • Manage the viceroy build plan to one more of your liking, perhaps skewing towards mining? Friendly way, but eats up APs that you could be using for (many) other things
  • Find someone from another House (who is willing to serve) to take the reigns of the planet, possibly a courtier from House Ilioaia with their huge mining tradition? If that House is not friendly with you and their members won’t work with you, you’ll have to do something else…
  • Make a Designation Project for the planet. This is sort of a scorched-Earth way of bending a planet to your will, but it will take a lot of the decision work out of the planet’s growth and future plans
  • Stay the course and hope that the Viceroy will learn from experience over time (coming to a version soon is character skill growth if they are in positions where they can learn)
  • Give the planet as a Holding to a House who might do more with it. Maybe Ilioaia won’t allow their House members to work for you, but give them the planet and they’ll put one of their own in charge who might be able to at least take the loss off your hands and get some of those materials into New Terra eventually. Of course, this will upset the other Houses, so choices must be balanced…
  • Reassign the Viceroy to a less-critical planet. You can do this instead of simply removing them, but you have to find them a new posting within 3 months or it will be treated as a broken promise with Fear effects (and the character won’t be thrilled either)
  • Or find your own way to deal with it! Experiment!

Hopefully you can see a taste of what a Viceroy means to a planet, some of the decisions they make, and the options you have to deal with a low-performing Viceroy. This is some of the high-level strategic gameplay that AotSS is aiming to develop and create.

Thanks for reading!

-Steve

by on

Hello everyone!

For this second installment of trade, we’re going to finish explaining how trade works and go into some detail of how you can use trade to your advantage!

When we left, all of the trades in the Empire had been reviewed for the ability to fufill; i.e. does a planet have the resources to fill the order, and do they want to? In other words, just because a planet has 50 Rare materials, that doesn’t mean that they want to export them all (every planet has upkeep) So, with that in mind, a viceroy must determine what’s best for their planet. It might be that they are aggressively trying to raise cash so that they are looking to sell more inventory and bring their planet to profitability (having a money-losing planet unnerves Pops, who don’t want to live on a planet that can’t sustain a profitable economy) or they’re just greedy bastards who want to take more of the personal cut (Viceroys typically get 5% of all income on a planet, AS LONG AS IT IS PROFITABLE, which increases their Power and ability to do things like assist with Projects).

So let’s look at the next step, determining profitability.

Now determining trade profitability for the Celestial Empire.

Viceroy Gluttony: -4 Trade Aptitude: 9 Humanity: 52
Trade hub Juthrbog’s viceroy will not consider trades with less than $1.6 BCs per trade.

So Juthrbog’s viceroy is now examining trades that they have put under review by profitability. They make a determination of how profitable a trip needs to be in order to accept it. Remember, Viceroys have a limited number of fleets that they can deploy at any one time, and they are real objects in the world – if a fleet takes a very long time to get from planet A to planet B, those ships will not be available for quite a while, so the viceroy has to make a cost/time/benefit analysis to having those ships unavailable for a while. In future builds, Viceroys will also make decisions based on relationships with the requesting Viceroys, meaning they will ‘cut a break’ with Viceroys that they have an allied or friendly relationship with.


In this case, they have a Gluttony state of -4, which is about normal (0 is considered ‘average’, and the scale is -100 to 100), so they’re not particularly greedy. They have almost no trade aptitude, (0 to 200) which means they will usually not select the ‘best’ deal and be weighted for other things, like helping their friends and ensuring that food and energy go to planets that need it, emphasized by their Humanity of 52 (pretty high). So they’ll basically take deals that help other planets more, all things being equal, and not look to make much profit. In this case, however, Juthrbog is not reviewing any trades this month, so the program moves to the next hub.

Viceroy Gluttony: -45 Trade Aptitude: 102 Humanity: 43
Trade hub Meide’s viceroy will not consider trades with less than $2.7 BCs per trade.
Viceroy is considering trade with Juthrbog for Energy. The current profit per unit based on prices and energy needed for the trip is 0.0 BCs, with total profit of 0.0.
…. After careful consideration, this trade is denied! Not enough profit to make the trip.

So Meide’s Viceroy has a very low Gluttony, but a very high Trade Aptitude, meaning that they will tend to take smart, profitable trades even though they have a pretty high Humanity. So, their floor for a trade is $2.7 BC’s (billion credits) per trade, as opposed to Juthrbog’s at $1.6 BCs. Juthrbog requested 2 units of Energy for $0.7 BC’s total (for an average of $0.35 BC/unit, less than what Luminescence was offering, remember?) With the distance this trade will have to travel, and the low amount requested, this trade would actually LOSE money, so not surprisingly, it is kicked to the curb swiftly by the incredulous Meide viceroy.

Viceroy Gluttony: -86 Trade Aptitude: 99 Humanity: 33
Trade hub Voluspa’s viceroy will not consider trades with less than $0.2 MCs per trade.
Viceroy is considering trade with Illitch for Basic. The current profit per unit based on prices and energy needed for the trip is 0.3 MCs, with total profit of 0.6.
…. After careful consideration, this trade is provisionally accepted, pending sufficient fleet availability! Final cost of trade, including fuel and shipping: $2.2. Total expected profit: $0.6.
Viceroy is considering trade with Luminescence for Basic. The current profit per unit based on prices and energy needed for the trip is 0.3 MCs, with total profit of 2.7.
…. After careful consideration, this trade is provisionally accepted, pending sufficient fleet availability! Final cost of trade, including fuel and shipping: $9.8. Total expected profit: $2.7.
…. There are excess potential trades for number of available fleets! As a result, the trade from Voluspa to Illitch is denied due to other trades being more profitable!

OK, now Volupsa is up. They’re looking at several trades here, including with Illitch and Luminescence. Now, remember that Volupsa only has 1 available fleet? (they only have 18 Merchants, and it takes 10 per active trade fleet) So they need to make it count!


With a super low Gluttony, this Viceroy is not really interested in profit for himself, so it comes down to which trade is smarter for the planet? Illitch is requesting a trade for 2 units of Basic for $0.58 BCs per unit. Pretty good offer, but the volume is low.


Luminescence, however, is asking for 10 units of Basic for $.6 BCs per unit. Better offer, and more volume. That’s why the total expected profit is much higher ($2.7 BCs vs. $0.6 BCs) Even with requiring more fuel and ships to sent 10 units, it’s still an equal profit per unit for both trades, so volume wins out. Even though both trades were accepted, since Volupsa can only create one trade fleet, the trade from Illitch is denied in favor of Luminescence! Yay!!!

And the trade (white ship) is now on the way to Luminescence! Yay!! It should arrive in 4 months, as seen by the text above the ship.

So all’s well that ends well. Volupsa made a profitable trade, Luminescence is getting basic materials that they need, and they didn’t pay an exorbitant price. As more House diplomatic dynamics are fleshed out, there will be more emphasis placed on relations between Houses and the Empire, and between Houses with each other.


So that’s great and all, you ask, but how can I use this to my advantage? Ah, young Emperor, you have asked a great questions. Let me explain.


The most important concepts to understand is that YOU DO NOT CONTROL TRADE. You can direct its flow, and you will soon be given the power to embargo planets, systems, or even whole provinces from trade, but until that time your power lies in creating the infrastructure required to trade. If a system does not have a trade hub that is not connected to a larger province hub, they can only trade with planets in their system with a trade hub. A connected and large, province-spanning Trade Group, however, connects ALL systems within its borders as long as the system has a hub. So in the example above, the Ipabog system is cut off from the Podaga trade group because they don’t have a system hub. However, when/if they build one, their proximity to the hub influence of both Percunatel and Podaga (the big purple circles) will ensure that they will be added to the Podaga trade group once they have a system hub built. That will have several effects:


* The Pops in Ipabog will be happier since they will have access to more goods (their Retail Sector will improve, which increases Happiness and generates income)

* 2 more planets will be added to the trade group, meaning that there are more possibilities for trade proposals, and thus more competition for better trades

* For you, this means that materials generated in the Ipabog system will now have a way to get to the Podoga Province hub, which means more supply fleets will be generated, meaning more materials for the Empire!

So in order to facilitate trade, you need several things to happen:
* You need merchants, who are drawn to larger trade infrastructure planets (the bigger hub and starbase, the better!) With more merchants, you can…
* …Have more trade fleets, and a larger retail sector, which can generate more income, which allows….
* …Your planets’ Average Development Level (ADL) to increase (representing more affluence and development), which allows…
* …More Pops to move to your planet, since they see wealth and opportunity, which allows…
* …More Factories and Mines to be built, which create…
* …More excess Trade Goods (materials) that can be sold at a profit by…
* …Merchants, who are drawn to larger trade infrastructure….

And that’s the circle of trade, when it’s executed right. Of course, you need competent Pops and Viceroys to make this work, which we’ll explore in this evening’s blog detailing Viceroys.


Until then, have a great day!

-Steve

by on

 

Good morning everyone! Just so you know, as we get closer to launch, you will see more and more blogs explaining various things about AotSS, and this particular blog was inspired by a comment on the YouTube channel – basically, the question was ‘Who are you playing against?” It seemed like a silly question, right off the bat, honestly… until I thought about it. It’s actually a complicated question, and one that is significantly different from most 4X games. So I want to talk about it here.
There are basically 5 levels, each more or less sitting on top of each other, and part of your challenge as Emperor is to determine which level needs attention at any given time. As the game continues to develop, more of these levels will become more emergent, which will give you more interesting choices as the player to decide how best to use your very limited time!

LEVEL 1: You

Yup, everything starts with taking care of ol’ number 1. You are an entity in the game, much like Crusader Kings, and if you die, humanity’s screwed, so you need to keep yourself healthy, learning new skills, stay (relatively) popular (or feared, either works) by your Pops, and striving to keep yourself out of bad situations. For example, just because you CAN travel to a planet where you have a 5% Popular Support doesn’t mean you SHOULD travel to said planet. Improving your skills and keeping your popular support high enough to avoid widespread revolt is the absolute foundation of AotSS, and almost every decision and action you take should address that in some direct or peripheral way.

 
LEVEL 2: Your Pops
A Pop is the basic unit of population in the game, and it is the smallest entity that you can see results and interact with, albeit not directly. Pops do just about everything in the game – they settle new planets, they manufacture materials to build more stuff, they fight wars, they grow food, they mine minerals, they accumulate knowledge, they generate Admin points, etc. They also act as an additional pressure point for characters in the game to support your initiatives when your popularity is high. This is all good stuff.
What’s not so good is when Pops are unhappy or there’s tension between 2 (or more) Cultures on a given planet. Then bad stuff happens, like strikes, desertion to other civilizations, riots, and even full scale takeovers of a planet. Not good stuff. And even worse: If enough of them are unhappy with your rule, your reign may become very short, Emperor. So you can’t just ignore the signs of discontent smoldering around your Empire, unless you enjoy watching the world(s) burn…

 
LEVEL 3: Your Houses
Especially Great Houses, but Minor Houses can become a pain as well, these institutions can make or break you as an Emperor. At the most basic, Houses who hate you will strongly discourage their members from being a part of your government, which may make it difficult for you to find competent Viceroys with skill sets you need. Remember, at the heart of AotSS is about finding the right people for the right post. There are very few ‘amazing characters’ with high stats across the board, and even a great-looking character may have a hidden cost (psychopath, backstabber, etc) So the more people you have available for a given position, the better.
At a more advanced level, having Houses on your side means they will trade with you, share more of their Holding revenue with you, and be at your side when other Houses attempt to expand their territory or even attempt a breakaway war against you. Keeping your empire as strong and united as possible is a huge part of the game (esp. for Level 5) and while you (almost) can’t make everyone happy, you do need to have several strong allies, or else Houses will band together to achieve goals. Remember, Houses have relationships with each other and some Houses are mortal enemies who will never join together, but the vast majority are more or less neutral towards each other, and are simply looking out for what’s best for them, not necessarily you or your Empire. Don’t forget about your Minor Houses! If you can’t find an ally among the Great Houses, maybe you can construct one from a Minor… and perhaps even lift them up to become a very, very grateful new Great House… at the cost of another Great House… who will most likely be very, very angry at this state of affairs. Be careful!

 
LEVEL 4: Breakaway Civilizations
The Celestial Empire, nee the Terran Alliance, once stretched across the parsecs before the Xyl came for the second Xyl war. As a result of that war and the interregnum of weak leaders that followed, many colonies and even whole provinces simply lost contact with New Terra over the ensuing centuries. At this point, those systems, planets, and Pops have developed whole new cultures and technologies after half an eon of living alone without Empire support, and with the Empire’s resurgence under you, some of those civilizations are looking to get some back by taking back some of the current Empire. Most of the civilizations are angry with the Empire, but in order to deal with Level 5 and ultimately ‘win’ the game, you will have to expand into uncharted space and see what’s out there. You will need a strong and united Empire with as many able bodies as possible to fight, so it is to your advantage to try to reclaim systems and provinces that once belonged to the Empire, long ago. Whether through diplomacy, espionage, or old-fashioned military force, a significant investment at this level could make or break your long-term game. Because at the end of the day….

 
LEVEL 5: The Xyl Rescension
Without giving too much away, at some point (50+ years) in the future you will have to deal with the return of the Xyl, and they are not happy about your continued existence. Humanity battled them to a draw 500 years ago, and they are finally back to finish their job, which is to bring their ‘god’ back into this universe by using the power of billions of human souls… and there aren’t too many sources of human souls around anymore, if you catch my drift. All that you do in the previous levels of play lead to this level, and you will be given clues throughout the buildup phase as to when the first Xyl attacks may happen and the size of the overall force, as well as the countdown to Rescension that, unfortunately, due to an unknown (to them) flaw in the Xyl’s Rescension gate, will end life in the entire universe. So yeah, you gotta deal with that as your endgame. Pretty important.
So there it is. Your 4 increasingly complex and expanding levels of play. They will build upon each other – you will probably spend the first 10-15 years or so reshaping your empire, building up your military, researching technologies and Progress projects to advance your capabilities, sorting out your planets and systems, and possibly tending to your Houses’ affairs before you go charging out for any galactic adventures, but you are certainly not forced to wait – that’s the freedom of play in AotSS: nothing’s stopping you from pursing any strategy you want, when you want!!
Good luck, Emperor!
-Steve

by on

Hey all!

Well, despite a hurricane, a super busy time at work (when you sell cars and you’ve just had a massive flood, you tend to be very busy), and a very tricky stack overflow bug that took days to hunt down, AotSS Archimedes release .6 is still on track for an early October release. It will still be $7.99, and purchase of Archimedes will allow you updates throughout the lifecycle of the game. I’m not a huge DLC fan, so rest assured there will be plenty of updates (more Projects, more Actions, more dialog, more planet types, more Houses, etc) that can come for free! Details on how to purchase will come next month; we’re still working on revamping our website.

Also, we are restarting the alpha tester program. We’re far enough along now that there is a lot going on with the program and it is now impossible for me to track every little permutation. While there should now no longer be any show stopper/crash bugs, logic bugs, UI errors, data inconsistencies, etc. are something that need to be looked at. Balance is another huge aspect at this point. Other than adding a few data views, Archimedes is essentially feature-locked at this point, so testing can begin. If you’re interested, please email me at steve@imperia5x.com with your contact info, a brief background of your game interests, and any relevant experience. If you were a prior tester, I will be reaching out to you to see if you’re still interested, so no need to write. (If you were a tester for the previous (non-Unity) verion of Imperia, you will need to contact me as I no longer have that contact list.).

I will be releasing a new LP tomorrow as well. This will be a true LP, walking through some of the strategic choices and what you can do so far in this version of AotSS. As always, remember that this is a pre-alpha – there is a lot left to add!

Thanks for reading!

-Steve

by on

Hey all!

Thanks for everyone’s patience on the video thing. I’m terrible about always wanting to add one more thing or fix one more bug, and I have to remind myself that it’s just a pre-alpha and people will understand. (ha!) Seriously, though, it’s a good overview of the new stuff that we’ve been working on. There was so much that I didn’t cover, I’m going to do another video on Sunday. Anyway, sorry for the echo sound, but there’s some good stuff in there. Check it out!

Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/xhIZidSxZOw. Enjoy!!

-Steve

by on

Hello everyone! Wow, what a week it’s been! We went from living life to evacuating our home within 45 minutes due to Hurricane Harvey. While we didn’t end up suffering any damage, it certainly did a number on Houston and Texas in general. We’re fine, but this is a storm that we’ll remember for a long time. (And oh yeah, as I write this Irma is about 4 days away from the US. Joy.)

Anyhoo, I wanted to wrap up the economic series of DDs by talking about the planets themselves. Now, everything around AotSS revolves around power. At the end of the day, those that have it, make things happen, and those that don’t, can’t. So the most important building blocks of power are…you guessed it, planets.

When I sat down to design Imperia years ago, I knew even early on that I wanted detailed planets. Maybe not Aurora-level detailed, but certainly more detailed than 3 stats and a planet type. I feel that in a good 4X game, a player should see planets (and systems) not as disposable entities but as things that they care about and actively guide throughout the game. Cheesy as it may sound, I feel that a successful 4X-type game allows each planet to tell its own story, to write its own history, and to contribute its own glory.

In Imperia, once I met Pavlos, the design really started taking off. Pavlos brought the idea of planets down to a science, and proposed no less than 14 different star types with 15 different planets that could be generated. After months of working on different generation models, we designed a model that is both true to science and playable.

To start with, each star is generated randomly and can be a single, binary, or trinary star. This affects things like gravity and what types of planets are generated. Stars also have a spectral class from OB all the way to a D star, with our good old sun (‘K’) and red giants (RG), supergiants (SG), small blue stars, white stars, brown dwarves, neutron stars… they’re all here, and each modeled by size, traits, and metallicity. These determine what types of planets and how many minerals are on each planet.

Once stars are generated, they are placed into constellations. This is another ‘true to life’ way of generating stars in a realistic manner. Not only does it provide a way to create provinces in ‘grouping areas’ but it makes it easier to find systems when you know what constellation it’s in. The game has 30 constellations, each named by the game lore, but the only one that’s guaranteed to show up in any given game is Enosis, your home constellation.

So now that you’ve got your stars and your constellations, what about planets? Well, planets (and asteroid belts and ice belts) are procedurally generated from the type of star that is currently being generated from. There are only certain types of planets that can be generated, and each type has a weighted chance of being created. So you won’t find a SuperEarth planet in a Red Giant, for instance, but you might find a Barren or Ice planet. Each system has 5 spots, from closest to farthest from the star, and the planets types are generated as well based on how far the planet ‘slot’ is from the star. So closer to the star, you will have lava and barren planets, while farther away you will have more ice and ice belts, as well as gas giants. Again, just like science.

So once the planet type is generated, we’re not done! Next comes size and axial tilt (determines habitability) to determine how habitable the planet is to humans. Basically, the closer it is to a star, and the more tilted it is (violent weather changes), the Bio rating of a planet is generated, based on the base type of planet, size, location, and some variability.

Next, the industrial multiplier is generated. Certain planets are easier to build things like factories and mines (like desert planets and barren planets) as opposed to gas giants and lava planets, both for mineral richness and tectonic stability. This effects output of mines and factories.

Next, moons! Moons provide a few traits to a system, and tides, that sometimes improve the Bio of a planet.

Now we drop minerals and energy resources onto a planet! Again, each type of planet has a range of minerals that it may have, depending on the type of star and the metallicity of the star. Some planets are very likely to have a lot of energy (gas giants, lava, greenhouse planets) but lower levels of minerals, and vice versa. Since a huge part of the game is building up a strong resource economy, and since mining outposts and colonization projects take a lot of resources and time, finding the best planets and systems is part of your responsibilities as emperor to direct!

The types of planets in AotSS are:

  • Asteroid Belt
  • Barren
  • Greenhouse
  • Desert
  • Terran
  • Ice
  • Ice Giant
  • Gas Giant
  • Ice Belt
  • Lava
  • Irradiated
  • Super Earth
  • Ocean
  • Brown Dwarf
  • Organic
  • Dust Ring
  • City

Some of these planet types are created rather than generated, especially City (think Trantor/Coruscant) and Organic (think living planet) but most can be found out there in the void. What will you find?

The last part of planet generation is the concept of regions. Now, regions are interesting in that most of the time, the player will not be aware of their existence. If you play a flight simulator, and you want to turn the plane left, you don’t have to know the lift forces acting on the ailerons, nor do you have to know the yaw forces acting against the body to provide lift, drag, and spin. Nope, all you the player have to do is turn the mouse/stick to the left, apply some rudder, and voila! The plane turns left. Good simulations work under the radar, while immersing the player in their model of reality without them actually having to know how it works.

AotSS’s region system works in much the same way. When a planet is generated, it’s not one contiguous planet. Just like Earth is not all grassland, mountains, etc. most planets are an amalgamation of different terrain and biome types that put together create the overall planet structure and resources. Small planets might just have 4 regions, while large terran planets have as many as 20, and gas giants might have 36! (Of course, the vast majority of them will not be habitable!) Each region is generated procedurally, and depending on the planet type, your planet will have some of the following types of regions:

  • Plains
  • Mountains
  • Lava
  • Volcanic
  • Ocean
  • Forest
  • Grassland
  • Jungle
  • Barren
  • Uninhabitable
  • Frozen
  • Desert
  • Helium Islands
  • Dead

Each type of region is more conducive than others to support life. That said, with the proper infrastructure ANY planet can sustain life, but your Pops don’t have to like it (one reason why it’s so important to build outposts in the right places – build it too far from other planets and you’ll have a hell of a time convincing miners and engineers to come join, even if you are paying top dollar, if it’s on a raging inferno planet)

So each region has its own type, but it also has unique modifiers for activities in the game, such as farming modifiers, bio modifiers, manufacturing modifiers, and even for ground combat (attack and defense mods). A plains region is going to be more attractive to a Pop than a lava region, obviously, but when a planet is colonized cities will be built in the regions that are most conducive to high production.

Cities, you say? Of course! Regions also have an infrastructure rating, from uninhabited to tiny outposts to small towns, all the way to super cities and megalopolises. The more resources your viceroy puts towards infrastructure, the larger your cities can grow, which will allow more people to be housed comfortably. That’s the key. Each region has a maximum safe population level at which Pops will not grow discontent. You can exceed it, but then Pops will start to get unhappy with living stacked on top of each other, so they will eventually move to another region, or if there’s not another region with jobs and there’s a better planet nearby, they’ll simply leave. Building more infrastructure will prevent this.

So planets are not just a box of ratings and values, but a tapestry of regions that collectively form the planet. Again, as the player, you won’t see most of this. You’ll know how many regions the planet has, what types they are (percentage wise), what the base development level of a planet is, and the base population level it will support, and as infrastructure is built, you’ll know how many more Pops the planet can support without Pops going haywire. Regions can be bombed from space or destroyed during ground combat, so losing a region with a Large City and numerous developments such as academies, factories, etc. will really hurt a planet’s output. But the region system is why you will have one Terran planet with an 80 bio rating that has so-so farm output, and another Terran planet with a 75 bio rating that has awesome farm output, because the second Terran planet has a lot of ocean and plains regions with high output farming modifiers, while the first Terran planet has a lot of grassland and jungle. Still great for life, but not so great for farms. With mountains, however, it might be great for minerals! This is one facet of how planets tell their story and start to become unique.

And yes, Pops migrate around the planet looking for a better job, or a better opportunity (*just like us! Hmmm) I haven’t decided yet if I will allow the player to see this – it’s happening on a scale that you as the emperor wouldn’t control (you’re not able to manipulate regions; that’s your viceroy’s job) but it might be nice to see the living world a little closer. But yes, if you have a region on a planet that just opened up a new batch of farms, your farmer that is living with 4 other people on the other side of the world just might move to that new region for the same job, but now he’ll be a lot happier. As Emperor, you can create an Infrastructure Project on a world where you can send a massive construction armada to build more cities and towns, but this is much more expensive than to allow the planet to grow organically (a certain percentage of the planet’s build points ALWAYS go towards expanding infrastructure, and automatically go where growth is creating the most problems). You can ask the viceroy to focus on infrastructure as well.

So what happens if you don’t have enough materials (basic and heavy) to maintain your planet’s infrastructure? Well… it starts to decay. And Pops don’t like that so much. So it is incumbent on a good Viceroy to make sure that they beg, borrow, trade for, mine, or steal whatever they have to to ensure enough materials are on their planet to keep their lights on, their buildings up, and their roads from collapsing.

Well, that was a long post, but the region and galaxy creation system are what I consider a defining feature of AotSS. We give you a richly detailed world to work in, culturally, literarily, and scientifically. What happens in it is up to you!!

Excelsior, Your Majesty!

-Steve

 

 

 

by on

Hey everyone!

Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about how the production side of the economy works, and specifically what the materials do, and how they are used.

So first, an overview of the system. There are 3 main materials that represent various minerals, materials, goods, and resources, collectively called ‘basic’, ‘heavy’, and ‘rare’ materials. Basic materials are used for virtually everything in the game – from building and maintaining infrastructure to building everything from mines to spaceships. Fortunately, basic materials are fairly easy to produce and mine. Heavy materials are used mostly for space installations and ships, so any Projects that have space-based applications will use a lot of heavy materials, as well as upkeep. Rare materials are mostly used for science and for energy stations, as well as labs. While they are rare, they are not generally used much, especially for agriculture-based planets.

So how do you get these materials? Easy – they need to be mined. All planets have a basic, heavy, and rare material rating, that represents how easy it is to get materials from the planet. This is done by miners, using mines. The more mines on a planet, that are staffed by miners, with high skill ratings (and backed by a Viceroy with a high Mining aptitude) the more materials that can be mined. These are raw materials that are then stockpiled for use. A certain percentage of the goods are set aside for maintaining existing infrastructure, and another percentage of goods are set aside for trade, while another small percentage is set aside for retail (explained earlier, if you are allowing basic goods to be traded). Now we get to the second part of the process, which is creating Build Points (BPs) that actually go towards construction of infrastructure, ships, etc.

BPs are split into their three types – basic, heavy, rare. Each structure that you build in AotSS takes a certain amount of BPs. For example, to build a new farm takes 30 basic BPs, 5 heavy BPs, and 0 rare BPs. By contrast, to build a new power generator (High-Tech), it takes 70 Basic BPs, 40 Heavy BPs, and 15 Rare BPs. These BPs are generated each turn and accumulate based on the build plan of the viceroy. The actual math to determine how a BP is generated is rather lengthy, but the basic calculation is to take how many factories are online (meaning they are staffed, one Pop to one factory), take the amount of raw materials that are allocated (based on the build plan; this can be overdriven as well if you have an aggressive viceroy) and take into account the engineer’s ratings and the viceroy’s Engineering aptitude (if any) plus their House’s engineering skill, take a industrial multiplier (kind of like the overdrive in MOO3) that the viceroy can use to overwork their engineer pops to get more build points at the cost of unhappiness and possible revolt) and voila! BPs fresh out of the oven. Next, the BPs are allocated to the planetary build plan.

The build plan is basically how the viceroy chooses to allocate the BPs that are generated monthly. So, for example, if the viceroy focused on farms, they might allocate 50% BPs to farms, 25% BPs to infrastructure (houses, apartments, and the like), and 25% to high-tech. So each month, farms would get half of the BPs, infrastructure would get 25%, and so on. Focuses can swing these build plans, and are one way you as the emperor can change the build ratios of a planet.

You also need to be able to pay for the upkeep of each level of development on your planet, which takes materials. If you are running out of materials, your most high-tech structures will start to decay and shut down, putting your Pops out of work (and they won’t be happy about it). Eventually, your farms will shut down, your food supply will dry up, and you’ll be living on stockpiles and/or trades until you get your development rebuilt. In game terms, there is a percentage chance that increases slowly each turn a level of development can’t be maintained. Once it’s shut down, it effectively needs to be rebuilt and restaffed.

So that’s the process in a nutshell. As the emperor, you want to make sure that your planets have enough raw materials to ensure that their factories can run at maximum efficiency. You also want to attract engineers and miners with high skill ratings, and you want to install a Viceroy who comes from a strong engineering and mining House (probably Ilioaia or Hawken) (Now you start to see why you might want to keep certain Houses in your good graces – it’s hard to build a manufacturing powerhouse world if you can’t get a Viceroy who’d be suited to run it!) You will be able to bring ‘prefab’ factories to planets in emergencies, but this is a Project and will cost much more in materials and coin than building factories would in the first place, but if you let your factories go this may create a ‘death spiral’ where you don’t have any factories left to rebuild! Don’t let this happen.

Well, that’s about it for now! Have a great day and we’ll talk soon in DD#4 about how food and energy work and how they factor into your Pops!

-Steve

by on

Hey everyone!

Well, I’ve been sick so I haven’t been able to record a video (my voice is kind of shot) but I did want to show some of what we’ve been working on the last few weeks! Below is a mosaic of some new stuff in AotSS… enjoy!!

 

-Steve

A look at the new galaxy view – cleaner and now with MOAR Nebulas!!
You can now bribe your friends (or foes)…
A close-up of your home constellation.
Trade view, zoomed out. Notice the green and grey ships – Imperial trades are green, and are moving towards Neo Sirius, while grey are moving between other planets.
A look at the new logistical station system. Stations can now be built up from Class 1 to Class 10.
Migration view. Here, you can see what pops are leaving, and where. In a future update, you’ll know why as well.
A look at the system information panel.
The WIP trade panel.

by on

Hello everyone! In advance of the LP that will be out later tonight, I wanted this week’s DD to be focused on a new concept that’s really pretty neat, I think, and certainly unique to 4X-type games. I will be going over the economic system in detail, but because it’s pretty intricate, I will be going over chunks at a time, so as to dive more in depth into each system. First, retail!

 
So, to understand where retail fits into the planet economy, you have to know that all planets have a Gross Planetary Product (GPP) that is comprised of 4 ‘parts’: the ‘base’ GPP, retail revenue, trade revenues, and import costs. This GPP is used throughout the year to set an import budget (to allow the viceroy to know how much they can/should spend on imports) and to improve the ADL (Average Development Level) of the planet by building infrastructure. While most of the ‘economy’ is based on goods and materials, the GPP of the planet is important for one critical reason: it funnels tax money back to the empire (and by proxy, you), the province governor, the system governor, and the viceroy. Since money and power are two lifebloods of AotSS, it is critical that both the Empire (and you) and Houses have as much as possible. Poor planets are worth very little, and provide very little wealth and power to Houses who Hold them.

 
With that in mind, let’s talk more about retail. So in AotSS, retail is somewhat abstract, and is based around 4 things: merchants, their skill, the planet’s ADL, and the number of Pops on a planet. (There are some other things that can affect this, like Viceroy skills and traits, or planet traits, but these are the main levers.) Basically, the idea works like this:

 
1. CALCULATE THE MONTHLY ALLOCATIONS TO THE RETAIL SECTOR: A yearly percentage of a planet’s stockpile of food and energy (and basic if the viceroy or emperor allow it; heavy and rare materials are mostly used for military and space technologies and would not be widely available for retail as we know it). For this example, let’s say 4% is the hold percentage that the viceroy has selected for their planet. So by using the formula (x * .04) / 10 (for 10 months per AotSS year) we can calculate how many goods are put ‘on the market each month.

Let’s work our way through an example on the planet Argus. If we assume, say 10,000 food units are in Argus’s planetary stockpile, and we’re holding 4% yearly, calculating the monthly food units available for retail on Argus comes to 40 units (10,000 * .04) / 10 = 40.

2. DETERMINE THE MERCHANT EFFICIENCY: The next step is determining how effective your merchants (and remember, these are merchant POPS, not individual merchants, representing a million units with an average skill level and culture between them) are in actually selling the goods to the citizen Pops on the planet. So while I’m not going to give the exact calculations, I will give enough information so that you understand how best to utilize retail. The merchant efficiency (ME) is calculated using the merchant skill and total merchants on the planet to determine a ratio from .01 to 3.0. To get the best ratio, you need either a lot of Merchant Pops or highly skilled Merchant Pops (there is a bonus to efficiency after 50 Skill, 50 is average, and below 50 is a malus).

For the purposes of this example, let’s say the ME on planet Argus is .35 (there are only 20 Merchant Pops, and their average skill is 41). 

3. DETERMINE REVENUES FROM EFFICIENCY: So now you’ve got a set amount of food out on the market, and you have an efficient (or not so much) merchant corps distributing it throughout the planet. Great! There’s 2 other things that determine how much the planet actually wrings from a given retail network: the good price on that planet, and the ADL of the planet. Since ADL is derived mostly by the types of Pops that are on a planet, you’re going to have scientists and engineers who make more money going out to expensive restaurants and buying nutritious organic food, not your miners and farmers. So: the higher the ADL, the more money made.

So for our example, on Argus it’s a nice planet and there are a lot of scientists, government folk, and engineers, so the ADL is 17 (pretty high). After determining how much of the food is actually sold, the result is 11.5 units (Available Food Units / Merchant Efficiency) * (Average Merchant Skill / 50). That’s a lot of wasted food. So the last step is to determine how much revenue is made from those 11.5 units planet wide. We simply multiply the amount of goods by the current food price on the planet (we’ll say $.10 to keep it easy), and add a variable for the ADL (17) and… congratulations! Your merchants made $19.5 billion crowns (BC) from food this month!

4. DETERMINE THE PLANET’S CUT: Great! You now have your merchants out on the planet, hopefully finding a market for the finest food and finding buyers for every bit of goods you have allocated. One last thing: what part of that amount goes to the GPP? Easy. There’s a commerce tax that is set by the viceroy that determines how much of the profits the merchants make stay in their pockets. Keep the tax low? Not as many revenues, but your merchants will love it (and will stay, increasing their skills, and a planet with such a progressive tax structure for humble merchants will attract other, good merchants as well). Jack up the tax? You’ll get a quick spike in revenue, but be prepared for merchants, grumbling about oppressive fees, leaving for greener pastures. And your other Pops won’t love it either as their favorite retail establishments close up shop as well, leading to unrest and lowered Popular Support. So smart viceroys do not increase this tax too high unless there’s dire need. This is changed every year at the start of the year, like all other taxes and the Imperial Budget.

So for Argus, the viceroy set the commerce tax at 15%, so the empire’s cut (what goes to GPP that month) in food is only $2.9 BC. That’s our final number!! Remember that the same calculations are made for your energy sector and (if you have allowed it) basic materials as well.

So what happens to the goods that don’t sell? Well… they’re gone. That’s why it’s important to not set your retail allocation very high especially on a new planet. You won’t have the Pops or Merchants to support tons of retail, and the goods that are unsold are basically wasted. And if you waste too many goods, you risk running low on food or energy (or Basic) which creates its own issues. So don’t be greedy – you can overrule the viceroy on any given planet, and usually they’ll be OK with it unless you try to set the value too high, but be judicious. Also, you have the option to allow your Basic stockpile to be released to the retail allocation and since prices on basic units tend to be much higher than food or energy, this can be a quick way to boost your retail sector.

So some of you may be asking – can the retail sector cause prices to change? No. Remember that on a global scale, retail in this futuristic economy is not as all-encompassing as what we know today. Even 15% of stockpile allocation of a given good on a planet is extremely high, and that’s a yearly allocation. It’s not enough of a lever to move prices one way or another. But don’t fret. It’s possible, and I’ll describe how to manipulate prices of goods on the next DD.

So that’s a decently detailed explanation of how retail works. Now the real question: How can you, as emperor, affect the retail engine on any given planet? Several ways, in fact. Here’s just a few – you can use your imagination for others (that’s why it’s called strategy!)

  • Create shortages within a trade group of a certain good. The higher the price, the more the profit
  • Expand your trade infrastructure to attract more merchants
  • Look for ways to keep your merchants happy! Low taxes, high ADL, a benevolent (high Humanity) viceroy, and a nice planet (terraforming) all help.
  • Attract, shall we say, more noble folk (Pops) to your planet
  • Train your merchants! You will eventually have the ability to build Academies on planets that train Pops, and lower-class Pops will look to use those Academies to become another Pop, and existing Pops will use them to improve their skills
  • Change your retail allocation – but be careful, you don’t want to flood the market with unsold, wasted goods and decrease your stockpile!

A tooltip will give you your monthly allocation of goods and the merchant efficiency so you know how you’re doing there. Remember, if it’s low, you need either a) fewer goods b) more Merchant Pops c) better Merchant Pops d) lower Population.

That’s all for today! LP coming in hot – look for it as well! And next week: How goods work in the economy, what each good does, and how you can manipulate them all like a champ!

Excelsior!

-Steve