Riots

[Mylon]

I can't quite understand the riots. That is, "Oh dear no! Enemy ships are bearing down on us and going to kill us! Let us go raid the planet's space yard and protest so it can't build the ships would otherwise protect us!"

I'm getting stomped in a game against the AI and it's annoying. Thankfully it looks like the AI found a bigger fish to fry for the moment...

[capnq]

That's why even the most xenophobic stock AIs have Peaceful as their happiness type. I've seen a few custom AIs that use Bloodthirsty, but even a human player has a hard time managing Neutral.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Mylon:
I can't quite understand the riots. That is, "Oh dear no! Enemy ships are bearing down on us and going to kill us! Let us go raid the planet's space yard and protest so it can't build the ships would otherwise protect us!"

Well the galactic population in SE4 is a little weird by contemporary human standards.

I remember when the first game I started to win vs the AI. Those crystaline, xenophobic, 5 year life span, gas giant born methane breathers were only too happy to live on a small methane rock, rip out the oxygen domes, and build extra intelligence facilities to help me kick over their old government.

I do that now all the time without thinking about it, but at that time, I was marveling at how this game worked. I thought I had discovered some grand mystery of the game, now I hear on PBW people trade population as soon as they meet for the mutual bonus.

Rioting is just there to penalize you for not defending your planets. The population is just a number to determine bonuses, not a group of people with opinions.

Which is something I probably wouldn't like. People griping 'cause I expanded too fast, or too slow. If I ignored some oxygen world 'cause I didn't think I was ready to defend it -- conspiracy theorists would spring up and wonder what the goverment's real agenda was, just who was I really working for, votes of non-confidance ending the game, or maybe they would build a colony ship and go there on their own?, etc.

[ September 23, 2002, 16:56: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Wardad]

It pays to add some cultural and racial points to happiness. Avoiding riots in the middle of a war is essential.
The minor bonuses are nice and so is the extra reproduction. I also like not having troops everywhere, costing cargo space and build turns, and not having Pop facilities taking up space.
Bloodthirsty can be handled easily enough. Don't make too many treaties too quickly, and kick butt.

[ September 24, 2002, 00:25: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Grandpa Kim]

The thing is, all the enhancements you can add act very slowly. Battle losses of any kind appear instantly. For instance, loss of any planet is a drop of 5%. So all you have to lose is 4 planets in a turn and your happiness goes down one level. Lose two systems and a fleet and you can go from Jubilant to Angry. Riots are just a turn away.

Kim

[Saxon]

But two systems and a fleet are a big loss, you should expect things to get unruly. Look at how certain countries treat the loss of even one service man, the reaction is well out of proportion to the real, military cost. As for the logic of rioting and shutting down the local space yard when the enemy gets close, it may not seem logical, but it is realistic. Russia in 1917 can be seen as a “riot” against a poorly managed war. Vietnam war protests are cited by many as the reason the US had to withdraw, a clear case of “riots” at home hurting the ability to prosecute a war. I think it is a reasonable way of representing this sort of situation.

Of course, the easy response is dictatorship. As far as I can see, building troops early on quickly pays off, as they will lift your happiness quickly, boosting production. They pay for themselves with the extra production kicking in a few turns earlier. If you do take a few hits to happiness, martial law sets in right away and you recover more quickly. The main cost is the lost turn building them, so you have to decide if having that extra mineral miner and losing the productivity is worth it. For the more resilient empire, I feel it is. Of course, I had to buy a copy of Castle Wolfenstein after losing a game to a friend when 16 of my planets started rioting in the middle of the big war, so perhaps I am overly emotional about this.

[Fyron]

You know, 120 seems to be the magic number with troops. At least, that many on every planet got them all back from rioting to jubilant in only a few turns, even with a few more minor losses coming in.