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Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:22 pm
by johnnylump
This post will cover internal and external politics in nations. See Part 1 for a basic description of nations and their role in Terra Invicta.

International Relations:
Relations.png
This is a fairly straightforward system governing the relationships between nations. These are things the various factions can manipulate to their own ends, like creating an alliance of nations fighting the aliens, or fomenting war between two countries to weaken them both. Early in the game, nations will sometimes engage in new alliances or conflicts on their own, as we want to make sure we’d have an interesting world even in the absence of an alien invasion.

Nations may be in one of four states with each other: Allied, at peace, rivals, or at war. These states are general set by the national executives (the faction controlling the highest-numbered control point). In some cases, such as forming alliances or ending a war, status changes require consent of both nations. Only rivals may go to war with each other. Allies defend each other if attacked; they are not required to participate in an offensive war.

Wars can accomplish two changes: a change in government, and/or change in territory. In the first case, one nation invades another, seizes its capital, and creates a friendly government there – “friendly” in this case, means both an alliance and a similar set of control points, so if a Resistance-controlled nation successfully invades an Initiative-controlled nation and captures its capital, the losing nation also becomes a Resistance-controlled nation.

Wars may lead to exchanges in territory if one nation has a claim on the territory of the other. Some claims are in place in the beginning of the game, while others are unlocked with certain social science projects (which occur through the research process, to be detailed later). Except for the aliens, current design is that territorial claims are fairly hard to come by, so you’re not going to be able to paint the world map with some super-nation. It’s through your faction you’ll gain that kind of control.

Non-existent nations with claims on territory may sometimes secede (violently or peacefully) and form new nations. Two allied nations with regional claims may peacefully federate into a larger nation.

Some examples: At the campaign’s start, Europe exists as a single nation, the European Union. Non-existent nations like Germany and Italy have claims on their respective regions in Europe; if conditions are correct, they will secede and become Germany and Italy, with their own set of control points and national assets to control.

Later in the campaign, you may finish a social science project, the South American Union. This grants a bunch of claims that enable the nations of South America to federate to a superpower-sized nation (or for the nation with the capital to try to seize other nations forcefully) if all the other conditions for such an event are met. They'll have a claim on French Guiana, which knowledgeable folks may recognize as having significant strategic importance in the context of the game. We’ve got a few dozen speculative nations, big and small, that can occur in a campaign.

Probably worth noting two things we’re not modeling as distinct systems are trade and migration. (Population changes are influenced by various factors that extend beyond birthrates, though, so migration is somewhat subsumed there.)

Internal Politics and Priorities:

Nations part 1 covered all the various stats that describe a nation and sets up various behaviors, events and mechanisms for control. Once you’ve got some control, you can set its course via Priorities.

The priorities system lets you distribute a portion of a nation’s fungible economic surplus to one or more costly (and usually repeatable) projects. These change the nation as a whole; so your faction as well as others with control points all gain/lose based on how each faction’s priorities are set.

Specifically, the process works like this (this gets a little wonky, but the player’s role is pretty straightforward: tell the nation what you want it to focus on):

GDP determines # of investment points, which are then reduced based on how high unrest is in a nation, and how many armies the nation has. The remainder is divided equally among the control points.

Example: The United States begins the campaign with a GDP (PPP) of almost $20 trillion and an unrest of 1.5 (criminality). The base number of investment points is the fourth root of the GDP in billions, so that’s a baseline of 11.87 investment points per month. Unrest reduces that by 5% (unrest – 1 / 10) to 11.2 and the USA’s six armies by 0.5 each to 8.2. The owner of each of the six control points gets 1/6 of that to distribute, so 1.36 IPs per month.

IPs are distributed by weighting each of the eligible Priorities with a value of 0, 1, 2, or 3. The weights are then totaled up daily and fractional IPs are put in each of the priorities according to weight. So if you have a setting of 3 in UNITY and a setting of 1 in BOOST, 75% of your IPs for that control point are going to Unity and 25% are going to do building rocket launch facilities, and the rest are getting nothing. Investment for a particular priority is totaled across all factions, so if someone else is also building BOOST, the new facilities will go up sooner, increasing the nation’s boost income, which is then distributed back across all the controlling factions.
Priorities.png
(This image is from our UI in testing, but we haven’t done the artwork for the priority buttons yet, so the squares you are looking are placeholders unless we run out of money, then they are exactly what we intended all along :) I'm including it here because I think it makes the system clearer than a text description alone) .

(And rest assured the game isn't all spreadsheet-y looking things like this. Just not ready to unveil our rad spaceships, character art or master map yet)

Each priority requires accumulating a certain number of Investment Points before it triggers changes to the nation. This is usually one, but expensive stuff like building a navy costs more.

The intent here is that you address this occasionally in nations, giving them general direction and letting them develop over time toward what’s most useful to your goals. We’ve made a bunch of presets that we think correspond with various political, economic and faction ideologies and policy sets, so you can use a dropdown to set all your priorities at once. This is where you can select things like “Libertarian,” “Industrialization” or “Reactionary.”

The specific priorities are:

• ECONOMY: This represents investments in industry and growth. It increases the per-capita GDP of the nation by a decent amount, and inequality and environmental damage by a little.

• WELFARE: This represents human and social services, wealth redistribution via taxation and policy efforts, and environmental regulation and cleanup. It decreases inequality and environmental damage in the nation. (I’m chewing on a different name for this priority because of the connotations this term carries in the United States, but haven’t come up with one. Perhaps “Well-being” or something like that.

• KNOWLEDGE: This represents support for education and the free flow of information. It increases education and democracy in the nation (which in turn increase scientific output).

• UNITY: This represents efforts to unite the people against a common foe, at the loss of some civil protections for dissenters. It increases cohesion, decreases democracy, and shift public opinion toward factions with control points. This priority is less effective in nation’s with higher education levels.

• MILITARY: This represents investments in internal security and military technology. It lowers unrest; if unrest is already low the nation’s military technology score increases.

• SPOILS: This represents the direct extraction of wealth from an economy, often accomplished by avoiding paying the true costs of obtaining it. This covers such behaviors as crime and corruption, regulatory capture and tax avoidance, economic rents, unmitigated pollution and exploitation of labor. It grants a lot of money and significantly increases inequality and environmental damage in the nation, and lowers democracy. In addition, any nation that devotes insufficient resources to the SPOILS priority will have dissatisfied elites and is thus more likely to undergo a coup d’etat. “Sufficent” here is defined by the nation’s education and democracy levels, with higher scores in both reducing the portion of the economy that must be directed to elites.

• SPACE DEVELOPMENT: The Space Funding priority directs national resources into legitimate government and private efforts to support a space program. While not as profitable as the SPOILS priority, it does no harm to the nation. Completing this priority increases the nation's annual space funding, which is distributed to factions with control points here.

• SPACEFLIGHT PROGRAM: This one-time priority, for nations that do not have a domestic spaceflight program at the campaign's start, will unlock the BOOST and MISSION CONTROL priorities once completed.

• MISSION CONTROL: Completing this priority grants one Mission Control to the nation. New facilities will tend to go in regions that already have Mission Control facilities.

• BOOST: The Boost priority covers the construction of launch facilities for rockets and other surface-to-orbit craft. New facilities will tend to go in regions that are closer to the equator or already have launch facilities. The amount of boost created increases with proximity to Earth’s equator, with a maximum increase of two tons per year each time the priority is fully funded.

• BUILD ARMY: The Build Army priority will create a new Army in the nation. Nations may build one Army per region.

• BUILD NAVY: The Build Navy priority will add a Navy to an Army, allowing it to cross oceans.

• INITIATE NUCLEAR PROGRAM: This priority will add one nuclear barrage to the nation's stockpile. Nations without nuclear weapons require more investment to make their first one, and building the first one does some environmental damage (from testing).

• BUILD NUCLEAR WEAPON: This priority will add one nuclear barrage to the nation's stockpile.

• SPACE DEFENSES: This priority is unlocked later in the campaign. It constructs a surface-to-orbit weapons array in one region, which will protect it from certain threats from space.

Next up (I think) will be delving into your councilors and how they work.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 10:24 pm
by JOKER
Is there a better word to describe "nation", like "Sovereignty", "Regime" or "Government"? I do understand it's a necessary abstraction, but it still feels a bit weird to see "Non-existent nations like Germany and Italy".

English is my second language, so I apologize if there's some misunderstanding.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 11:28 pm
by johnnylump
Fair point, and certainly there was no intent to cast dispersion on the Federal Republic of Germany or Italian Republic. :) I meant "non-existent" in game terms; that is, they initially function as regions within the European Union "nation" but can operate as distinct polities if events cause them to break from the EU.

And to be pedantic about the term "nation," it is in fact used more broadly at times, instead of just referring to Westphalian nation-states, it can also be a shared political idea that can cross existing borders. (In political science, you sometimes see "state" as referring to the polity, or the term nation-state together.)

And there isn't really a better term that captures what's going on. In adapting the messy realities of the real-world into a coherent system for a game, some abstractions and simplifications are necessary. The EU is a sort of unique thing, and would require a whole separate layer of design and code to portray with any more accuracy than we did by putting it on the same level of organization as Russia, China and the United States, and it wouldn't add a ton to the game. Alternately, we could have left it out entirely and start you with all the European nations as allied independents, but I made a design call to keep them organized as Europe because they cooperate on space programs via the ESA, and the game feels more interesting to me with three initial superpowers in the USA, Europe and China.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:02 am
by Wubs4Scrubs
This is all very interesting. I like the idea of Earth's nations falling into disarray and nuking themselves into the stone age before the aliens even reach Earth lol.

I have two questions:

1. Having resources such as 'Welfare' or 'Unity' to me signifies that there will be ways to topple opposing nations outside of simply warfare. Are there any plans for an infiltration system or ways to spread propaganda in another nation to cause internal strife? I could see how such a system would be very valuable to a potentially militaristically weaker nation trying to go up against a stronger one.

2. I imagine you get asked this a lot, and I read a response you posted about how it is mainly based around the funding the project eventually gets and how the game develops, but is there any potential for multiplayer comparable to something like "UFO: The Two Sides?"

If you aren't familiar, it's essentially a standalone mod for the original X-Com that had one person controlling X-Com and one controlling the Aliens. They both set up bases and had to build up their forces just like you'd expect. I tried it with a friend recently and it was so cool being the side sending off terror ships after being terrified of them for so long as the human player.

I realize this is a large question with a ridiculous amount of variables, however I was just amazed at the amount of fun I was having playing a very janky (was stopped very early in development) standalone mod for a nearly 25 year old game.

Looking forward to the future diaries!

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:31 pm
by johnnylump
Thanks!

1. Yes. This is one of the main things your councilors do. You can gain control of nations via political means, through coup d'etats, and by increasing unrest until the nation has an "organic" (not caused directly by the councilor mission) coup or revolution. When I get into councilor missions in a future post, I'll explain all the options there.

The propaganda mission, which moves public opinion in favor of your faction, can lead to cohesion problems, which in turn can lead to organic coups and increased unrest as well. That said, its main purpose is to make missions in that nation easier (more public support) and to increase generation of the influence resource.

2. Multiplayer is budget dependent. Our first goal would be to allow you to play the other human factions and possibly co-op play. The alien side would be a bit more work; they have some different rules and would need some alternate UIs. Definitely doable, just a bit more work.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 12:20 pm
by tarkalak
johnnylump wrote:...
The EU is a sort of unique thing, and would require a whole separate layer of design and code to portray with any more accuracy than we did by putting it on the same level of organization as Russia, China and the United States, and it wouldn't add a ton to the game.
...
I beg to differ. Having the EU as a separate thing could add more then just the unique present EU situation. In another post you mentioned the creation of a South American Union nation. If you implement the hypothetical European Union mechanics you could use them for any such alliance. Furthermore the game factions could also make their own unions in order to consolidate the power of individually weaker countries, or save on control points. Similarly infiltrating the constituent countries within such union could allow you to get some leverage of control in it with less effort.

Another point against your EU nation is that in real life it is not a military alliance and doesn't have a unified military. Of course most (all?) EU members are also NATO members and are allied militarily within it.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 11:08 pm
by johnnylump
The problem, I think, is within the mechanics we already have -- control points, alliances, regions, national policies -- there wouldn't be much more game by creating some kind of game element that's not quite a nation as we've defined it. Between the EU, NATO and the ESA, I think the game-relevant aspects of real-world Europe work better within the mechanics as a nation.

But it's perfectly possible that Europe can break up into its constituent nations -- in fact, any faction that gains executive control of Europe can cause this to happen fairly quickly.

It's the same story with the other prospective unions we've defined. You can also cause the breakup of other larger nations, including the United States, India, and Brazil. Unlike Europe, these events would require some additional steps.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 9:44 am
by tarkalak
From an european point of view, that destroys immersion a bit. We do not view the EU as a nation and we do not identify as europeans rather than one's nationality. Creating such unified nation was tried in Yugoslavia, but did not work out.

May be in 100 years or so that will happen, but not today.

There are organizations like EU in the world today (like Comonwealth of Indipendant Nations (most of the former Soviet Union) or OPEC) but they have far less centralization and autority over the constituent nations.

From the game's perspective the nations are static entities, the do not "play", but are instead played by the "factions", so your concept is fine.

How much can we, as players, pool several nations' resources?

Is it viable for the player to run mostly in the poor countries, or are we forced to go big?

Can I play as an insurgent organization that runs lots of third world countries?

As far as I understand each country needs to develop it's own space capabilities so getting a lot of smaller countries and having them pool they resources into an united space program (like ESA in real life) doesn't seem possible in the game.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 5:30 pm
by johnnylump
How much can we, as players, pool several nations' resources?
Pooling multiple nations' resources is fundamental to gameplay, so much so it's automated-- that is, the resources you accumulate (money, boost, mission control) are drawn from everywhere you have control points.

As multiple nations pooling their resources for a single space program with facilites in one of them, that's possible, in a somewhat abstracted way that makes use of the investment/priorities system. You can spend the money resource to rapidly complete various priorities in nations. So you can set several nations to focus on generating funds for you, and then focus on a single nation to build the boost resource.

An exception is armies and nuclear weapons, which you can only use in accordance with the current state of international relations in the nation. If you have executive control over the nation, you can set those relations.
Is it viable for the player to run mostly in the poor countries, or are we forced to go big?
Our general philosophy is unchanged from the Long Wars -- we want to give you a big bag of tools to solve the problem the game throws at you, and let you decide how to use those tools. So the game isn't a bunch of puzzles with solutions we've deliberately engineered for you to work out.

Specifically, that means that, yes, we intend for there to be value in smaller, poorer countries. One, they are a lot easier to take complete control of, making it easier to full authority over their direction. In addition, many of them are close to the equator, which allows them to grow the boost resource more quickly than in nations at high absolute latitudes.
[/quote]
Can I play as an insurgent organization that runs lots of third world countries?
Sure.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 9:14 am
by AdolfTinker
>• INITIATE NUCLEAR PROGRAM: This priority will add one nuclear barrage to the nation's stockpile. Nations without nuclear weapons require more investment to make their first one, and building the first one does some environmental damage (from testing).

>• BUILD NUCLEAR WEAPON: This priority will add one nuclear barrage to the nation's stockpile.

How does that even work? I mean, iirc Russia have around 1.5k~ nukes in arsenal, Americans probably have lots of them too.

Or are you talking about different nuclear weapons here?

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 11:25 pm
by johnnylump
I'm not quite sure what you are asking.

The game models only large-scale strategic nuclear "barrages" on Earth, and the a nuclear action uses multiple real-world nuclear weapons. So yes, both the USA and Russia have many hundreds of strategic nukes, but the game doesn't model them individually, but in groups.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2020 8:50 pm
by johnnylump
As this came up previously, just wanted to add that we've recently added a setup for modeling "federations" which are international associations that tie nations more closely than simple alliances. This is currently applied to the nations of the EU and Russia with some former Soviet states. So France and Germany and other European nations have a more direct presence, and then share certain resources via the federation mechanic.

We also have added a "breakaway" nation status, which has most of the powers of a regular nation, but it's limited in some diplomatic options. This will initially apply to Taiwan.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2020 4:40 am
by Anonymoose
Will a faction be able to use their own resources to improve nations or support national projects? How will this be accomplished?

For example: Hi, we're Project Exodus, and we want a spaceflight program in Kenya. Will we be able to directly donate money or influence to that? Will we be able to send a councillor on a mission to help amplify Kenya's investment?

Also, will it be harder to prioritize Spoils in countries with high education and democracy?

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:12 pm
by johnnylump
Yes, there is a direct invest option to put your faction's money directly toward completing a priority. Added it to the game after the DD post.

Councilors have an 'advise nation' mission that also boosts investments while it is active. The amount is based on their admin stat.

It's not harder to prioritize spoils in countries with high education/democracy, but it does reap less benefits in nations with high democracy.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 11:13 pm
by PTTG
Might I propose that WELFARE is split into JUSTICE, SERVICES and GREEN? While all are laudable, they aren't quite the same.

GREEN policies alone decrease environmental damage and slightly increase GDP and education due to the need to focus on high-tech solutions. Many otherwise autocratic nations might turn to this to counter alien influence, too.

JUSTICE is the most directly opposed to SPOILS, but does little about pollution directly. Instead it moderates cohesion as high-cohesion nations are forced to allow minority voices to speak, and low-cohesion nations address their divisions. It likewise increases democracy.

Finally, SERVICES are essentially SPOILS for the poor; it increases pollution slightly (as people have higher standards of living), but prevents discontent among the masses. It also decreases GDP, especially at high ends, as productivity declines slightly.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2020 2:06 pm
by johnnylump
Nothing wrong with the suggestion and it would represent a more precise simulation. It's just a level of granularity that, in the face of all the management tasks for the player (and, critically, the AI!), we determined was a bit too complicated.

Re: Terra Invicta Dev Diary #5: Nations, Part 2

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2021 10:11 pm
by dstar3k
• SPOILS: This represents the direct extraction of wealth from an economy, often accomplished by avoiding paying the true costs of obtaining it. This covers such behaviors as crime and corruption, regulatory capture and tax avoidance, economic rents, unmitigated pollution and exploitation of labor. It grants a lot of money and significantly increases inequality and environmental damage in the nation, and lowers democracy. In addition, any nation that devotes insufficient resources to the SPOILS priority will have dissatisfied elites and is thus more likely to undergo a coup d’etat. “Sufficent” here is defined by the nation’s education and democracy levels, with higher scores in both reducing the portion of the economy that must be directed to elites.
It's been a while since I followed development of Terra Invicta, but this should probably be renamed to something like "SPOILAGE"; when I see "SPOILS", I think of something positive, a la "Spoils of war".