Terra Invicta Dev Diary #4: Nations, Part 1
Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:09 pm
Nations on Earth are an important game element that serve as battlegrounds for the alien invaders’ designs on Earth. They are sites of both political and military conflict. Human factions, including the player, will complete to control nations in order to make use of their resources to fulfill their objectives.
Your councilors are your primary asset for political influence and espionage. Acquiring sufficient control in a nation will grant you access to any armies for use in conventional warfare.
As mentioned in a previous post, a nation typically represents a single Earth country, although in several cases we have combined several countries into a single nation so they can have more relevance to the scale of the game. Examples of these are Central America and the Caribbean being two nations instead of two dozen; we’re not asserting they are unified in any real sense, just that any inter-nation issues exist below the scale of the simulation. Players function as something like in investors in nations, and with enough focus you can take significant control over its future.
This and the following Dev Diary are going to be mechanics and simulation heavy, with less time spent on player interaction with it. More on player-related mechanisms in the future.
Summary:
Use your councilors to gain partial or eventually total control of nations. Gain money, research, boost, mission control, and armies and the ability to make war on other nations. Set the nation’s priorities to give you more of those resources.
Exhaustive Detail:
Nations are composed of one or more Regions. Regions are named for the primary city in it. The function of regions is primarily geographical, not political; they exist to mark the locations of critical assets and armies. When new nations form or existing ones change, they are composed of regions from other nations. Regions in particular are home to space facilities: launch facilities that provide boost; mission control facilities, and later in the game, surface-to-orbit defenses. Some nations have claims on regions that aren’t theirs; these are the regions they may acquire through warfare or secession movements. Armies can control regions, but councilors do not -- they work at the national level.
The UI image attached to this post shows the list of regions in the United States. “St. Louis” is shown at the top because that region was selected by the player in the Geoscape.
The game elements representing political control of nations are called Control Points. These represent key nodes of political, economic and military control over a nation. Each nation has between one and six control points; the number corresponds with the size of the nation’s economy. (The exact formula involves the fourth root of the GDP PPP in billions and some other math.) Initially all control points are "neutral" -- they are the nation's existing set of leaders fumbling about without any coherent policy toward the aliens.
At the campaign’s start, the United States, China and the European Union have six control points; India has five control points; Mexico, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and Japan have four. Other nations have three, two or one.
Remember your factions function as something like secret cabals; control points are acquired for factions by councilor missions that involve putting your supporters in key jobs and purging your enemies. You can also try to clear the board by overthrowing a government with a coup d’etat, or installing your people directly via warfare.
Control points have a rough order; factions acquire neutral control points in that order. The highest-value control point is the “executive” point, meaning if you control it, you can set policies over things like whether the nation goes to war. In nations with more than one, the executive point can only be acquired if you already have a control point in the nation. I’m currently working on names for the other control points on a given nation, stuff like “legislature,” “oligarchs,” “mass media,” “religion,” and so on, and chewing on whether those can provide some bonuses based on their definition.
In the displayed UI, Humanity First has three control points in the United States, and the Resistance has one, and the Initiative has one. The sixth, rightmost control point, is still neutral.
Control of armies is tied to ownership of control points. Big debate I’m having with myself is to put them all in the executive, or, as shown in the UI, spread them out among the control points, meaning to conduct a war efficiently you’ll need more than just one in the bigger nations – otherwise, armies may end up sitting out an interstate conflict. (You can’t go invading anyone without a declaration of war via the executive, however.)
Finally, each control point grants you an equivalent fraction of the nation’s relevant resources. More on that below.
Key National Stats:
This section will get a bit deeper into the simulation. All these values play different roles and may be modified by the player or the AI in different ways – typically through the priorities system.
UI Overview Section
Democracy/Government Score (the capital building): This measures the amount of democracy in a country, which represents things like civil liberties, popular selection of leaders, press freedoms, and rule of law via an independent judiciary. This impacts national stability and cohesion, research production, corruption, economic growth and the effectiveness of the military in controlling unrest.
Unrest (the fist symbol) is violent resistance to the status quo in this nation. High unrest hampers the economy and may result in a coup or revolution, which will transfer or clear many or all of the nation's Control Points at once.
GDP (PPP): The size of the nation’s economy. Determines number of control points, number of investment points, and research production. It also critically determines how difficult it is to gain a control point there.
Military Section
Miltech: The technology level of the national military. Determines how effective armies and regional defenses are against each other.
Nuclear weapons: Nuclear weapons in Terra Invicta represent strategic barrages aimed at destroying the economy and military of a particular region.
Naval score: Wet navies are abstracted in Terra Invicta into a sort of attachment to an Army. It allows the Army to travel to any region touching the ‘World Ocean.’ A nation’s naval score is the number of armies with a navy multiplied by the nation’s Miltech score. When nations are at war, only the side with the higher naval score can cross oceans.
Development Section
This describes critical resources generated by the nation and how much is going to your faction.
The first item in the list is what we’re calling “Investment Points.” This represents fungible surplus in the nation’s economy; the owner of each Control Point gets to distribute a share of them to various Priorities, which are how you fund national-level projects in the game, such as space programs, armies, or changes to the general political and economic conditions in the nation. This will be described in detail in Part 2. The number of Investment Points is determined by the nation’s GDP, with a reduction for each Army the nation has on the map.
The other rows are space program funding (which is the money resource), research, boost and mission control. In this case, the Resistance has 1 of 6 control points, so they get 1/6 of the nation’s incomes in these categories.
People Section
Education (book symbol): Plays a critical role in research production and how the nation responds to propaganda.
Cohesion (X symbol): A measure of unity among the nation’s citizens – a catch-all for cultural, ideological, ethnic and religious unity or conflict. Low values mean the nation’s people are fragmented or even tribal; middle-lows represent a high degree of polarization. High values mark a unified society that brooks little deviation or dissent. Middle values represent a fairly diverse society that has both conflict and creativity. Middle values provide bonuses to research while high values drastically reduce unrest. Low values are just bad.
Public Opinion Chart: This is a breakdown of how the population of the nation feels about the aliens, with points of view corresponding to the ideologies of the various human factions. Favorable ideological conditions make running certain councilor missions a lot easier. Ideology can be affected by world events, certain R&D projects, and councilor missions. In the attached UI, support is strongly in favor of cooperating with the aliens, which supports the Academy’s goals.
Per-Capita GDP: A measure of the quality of life of the average citizen of the country. Higher PCGDP lowers unrest.
Inequality (seesaw symbol): A measure of distribution of wealth and income in the nation; high values mean the nation doesn’t have much of a middle class. Inequality grows as a product of normal economic activity (a little) or corruption (a lot). High inequality reduces Cohesion as the nation divides into haves and have-nots.
Discussion
So in looking at grand strategy and 4X games with a modern or futuristic bent, there’s a strict line between “Earth games” and “space games.” Earth games stick exclusively to Earth with lots of detail and mechanics. Space games tend to treat your homeworld as a well-developed, fully populated colony planet – that is, you can settle some other planet and eventually build it up to be something close to your homeworld.
Neither works for our scope: During the timeframe of the game, mother Earth will remain so, and the space development taking place on and around other bodies in the Solar System will function via different mechanisms – generally by working directly for your faction, rather than functioning as a big shared space you are fighting over.
In Terra Invicta, the player will determine which nations to target, and how to target them. Do you go for big wealthy countries with lots of resources, but are expensive to conquer and will also be battlegrounds with the other factions? Or grab a corner of the world to build up and serve as the geographic core of your efforts? How much violence are you prepared to use to acquire control of nations?
Coming Up:
Nations, Part 2 will describe International Relations and the Priorities System.
Your councilors are your primary asset for political influence and espionage. Acquiring sufficient control in a nation will grant you access to any armies for use in conventional warfare.
As mentioned in a previous post, a nation typically represents a single Earth country, although in several cases we have combined several countries into a single nation so they can have more relevance to the scale of the game. Examples of these are Central America and the Caribbean being two nations instead of two dozen; we’re not asserting they are unified in any real sense, just that any inter-nation issues exist below the scale of the simulation. Players function as something like in investors in nations, and with enough focus you can take significant control over its future.
This and the following Dev Diary are going to be mechanics and simulation heavy, with less time spent on player interaction with it. More on player-related mechanisms in the future.
Summary:
Use your councilors to gain partial or eventually total control of nations. Gain money, research, boost, mission control, and armies and the ability to make war on other nations. Set the nation’s priorities to give you more of those resources.
Exhaustive Detail:
Nations are composed of one or more Regions. Regions are named for the primary city in it. The function of regions is primarily geographical, not political; they exist to mark the locations of critical assets and armies. When new nations form or existing ones change, they are composed of regions from other nations. Regions in particular are home to space facilities: launch facilities that provide boost; mission control facilities, and later in the game, surface-to-orbit defenses. Some nations have claims on regions that aren’t theirs; these are the regions they may acquire through warfare or secession movements. Armies can control regions, but councilors do not -- they work at the national level.
The UI image attached to this post shows the list of regions in the United States. “St. Louis” is shown at the top because that region was selected by the player in the Geoscape.
The game elements representing political control of nations are called Control Points. These represent key nodes of political, economic and military control over a nation. Each nation has between one and six control points; the number corresponds with the size of the nation’s economy. (The exact formula involves the fourth root of the GDP PPP in billions and some other math.) Initially all control points are "neutral" -- they are the nation's existing set of leaders fumbling about without any coherent policy toward the aliens.
At the campaign’s start, the United States, China and the European Union have six control points; India has five control points; Mexico, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and Japan have four. Other nations have three, two or one.
Remember your factions function as something like secret cabals; control points are acquired for factions by councilor missions that involve putting your supporters in key jobs and purging your enemies. You can also try to clear the board by overthrowing a government with a coup d’etat, or installing your people directly via warfare.
Control points have a rough order; factions acquire neutral control points in that order. The highest-value control point is the “executive” point, meaning if you control it, you can set policies over things like whether the nation goes to war. In nations with more than one, the executive point can only be acquired if you already have a control point in the nation. I’m currently working on names for the other control points on a given nation, stuff like “legislature,” “oligarchs,” “mass media,” “religion,” and so on, and chewing on whether those can provide some bonuses based on their definition.
In the displayed UI, Humanity First has three control points in the United States, and the Resistance has one, and the Initiative has one. The sixth, rightmost control point, is still neutral.
Control of armies is tied to ownership of control points. Big debate I’m having with myself is to put them all in the executive, or, as shown in the UI, spread them out among the control points, meaning to conduct a war efficiently you’ll need more than just one in the bigger nations – otherwise, armies may end up sitting out an interstate conflict. (You can’t go invading anyone without a declaration of war via the executive, however.)
Finally, each control point grants you an equivalent fraction of the nation’s relevant resources. More on that below.
Key National Stats:
This section will get a bit deeper into the simulation. All these values play different roles and may be modified by the player or the AI in different ways – typically through the priorities system.
UI Overview Section
Democracy/Government Score (the capital building): This measures the amount of democracy in a country, which represents things like civil liberties, popular selection of leaders, press freedoms, and rule of law via an independent judiciary. This impacts national stability and cohesion, research production, corruption, economic growth and the effectiveness of the military in controlling unrest.
Unrest (the fist symbol) is violent resistance to the status quo in this nation. High unrest hampers the economy and may result in a coup or revolution, which will transfer or clear many or all of the nation's Control Points at once.
GDP (PPP): The size of the nation’s economy. Determines number of control points, number of investment points, and research production. It also critically determines how difficult it is to gain a control point there.
Military Section
Miltech: The technology level of the national military. Determines how effective armies and regional defenses are against each other.
Nuclear weapons: Nuclear weapons in Terra Invicta represent strategic barrages aimed at destroying the economy and military of a particular region.
Naval score: Wet navies are abstracted in Terra Invicta into a sort of attachment to an Army. It allows the Army to travel to any region touching the ‘World Ocean.’ A nation’s naval score is the number of armies with a navy multiplied by the nation’s Miltech score. When nations are at war, only the side with the higher naval score can cross oceans.
Development Section
This describes critical resources generated by the nation and how much is going to your faction.
The first item in the list is what we’re calling “Investment Points.” This represents fungible surplus in the nation’s economy; the owner of each Control Point gets to distribute a share of them to various Priorities, which are how you fund national-level projects in the game, such as space programs, armies, or changes to the general political and economic conditions in the nation. This will be described in detail in Part 2. The number of Investment Points is determined by the nation’s GDP, with a reduction for each Army the nation has on the map.
The other rows are space program funding (which is the money resource), research, boost and mission control. In this case, the Resistance has 1 of 6 control points, so they get 1/6 of the nation’s incomes in these categories.
People Section
Education (book symbol): Plays a critical role in research production and how the nation responds to propaganda.
Cohesion (X symbol): A measure of unity among the nation’s citizens – a catch-all for cultural, ideological, ethnic and religious unity or conflict. Low values mean the nation’s people are fragmented or even tribal; middle-lows represent a high degree of polarization. High values mark a unified society that brooks little deviation or dissent. Middle values represent a fairly diverse society that has both conflict and creativity. Middle values provide bonuses to research while high values drastically reduce unrest. Low values are just bad.
Public Opinion Chart: This is a breakdown of how the population of the nation feels about the aliens, with points of view corresponding to the ideologies of the various human factions. Favorable ideological conditions make running certain councilor missions a lot easier. Ideology can be affected by world events, certain R&D projects, and councilor missions. In the attached UI, support is strongly in favor of cooperating with the aliens, which supports the Academy’s goals.
Per-Capita GDP: A measure of the quality of life of the average citizen of the country. Higher PCGDP lowers unrest.
Inequality (seesaw symbol): A measure of distribution of wealth and income in the nation; high values mean the nation doesn’t have much of a middle class. Inequality grows as a product of normal economic activity (a little) or corruption (a lot). High inequality reduces Cohesion as the nation divides into haves and have-nots.
Discussion
So in looking at grand strategy and 4X games with a modern or futuristic bent, there’s a strict line between “Earth games” and “space games.” Earth games stick exclusively to Earth with lots of detail and mechanics. Space games tend to treat your homeworld as a well-developed, fully populated colony planet – that is, you can settle some other planet and eventually build it up to be something close to your homeworld.
Neither works for our scope: During the timeframe of the game, mother Earth will remain so, and the space development taking place on and around other bodies in the Solar System will function via different mechanisms – generally by working directly for your faction, rather than functioning as a big shared space you are fighting over.
In Terra Invicta, the player will determine which nations to target, and how to target them. Do you go for big wealthy countries with lots of resources, but are expensive to conquer and will also be battlegrounds with the other factions? Or grab a corner of the world to build up and serve as the geographic core of your efforts? How much violence are you prepared to use to acquire control of nations?
Coming Up:
Nations, Part 2 will describe International Relations and the Priorities System.