Agents Of Empire/Mechanics III

Overview

Here's what's new in part 3 of the game. If not mentioned, everything from the old mechanics, mechanics update and economics pages are still in effect.

Trade/Diplomacy Merger

Trade and Diplomacy, as House skills, are getting merged together.

Region Cost Changes

All regions now cost 20/level, except mining regions, which stay at 10/level.

Victory!

Victory is at hand at last! See the victory page for how to win the game.

Research Regions

Research institutions are the only buildings left, so get rid of them; regions can now be devoted to research instead, and produce a certain number of research points/turn which can be spent on stuff (like mining regions).

Specifically, research regions cost 20 mc/rank to build, and produce 3 research points/rank (or 4/2 points per rank for Houses with Good/Bad research). Points can be spend on analysis, research, theorizing, etc. Costs are as follows:

• Base cost: 1-6 points
  • Pure research is always 1 point base (just studying the subject matter in general, which is helpful for the relevance multiplier on later discoveries)
  • Researching how to make or do a thing is 1 point base, plus 1 for each of "cheap", "widely applicable", "large-scale", "long duration or frequently repeatable", "fast".
  • Analyzing a thing is a base of 2 for things in current use, 4 for things in historical or specialized use, and 6 for unique or alien things; +1 for investigating "non-core" functions of those things, -1 for a very specific question, +1 for a very general one (also note the analysis multiplier, below)
• Relevance multiplier: The relevance multiplier is taken by looking at the two existing discoveries most similar to the new discovery, scoring them each 1-3, and multiplying the base cost by their sum (so x2 to x6)
  • x1: Very similar (direct extension/modification of previous research)
  • x2: Somewhat similar (same subfield, but not directly related)
  • x3: Not at all similar (different subfield)
• Analysis multiplier: If analyzing an existing item, rather than researching a new one, the cost is divided by 3 (round down)

Exploration and the Map

The map and hexes will be coming back in some form, but in a way that keeps regions and the mechanics around those. Here's how it works:

• Regions are 5x5 blocks of hexes
• Hexes are ranked 1-4; a rank-N explorer can explore N points worth of hexes a turn
  • The hexes explored must be connected to at least one already-explored hex
  • A rank-N explorer can't explore any hexes that are rank N+1 or higher
  • Explorers can partially explore hexes they can't afford to finish exploring this turn, and have it finished by another explorer or themselves on a later turn
  • Two rank-N explorers can team up to act as a single rank-N+1 explorer for a turn
• A region is explored to rank N if it has at least N*5 hexes explored
• Explored hexes can have things built on them
  • The cost per building is either 2 or 4 megacredits (depending on the type)
  • Buildings must be placed contiguously with other buildings in the region (except the first building in the region).
  • A building cannot be placed if it would cause any unbuilt hex (explored or unexplored) to have four neighbors which are built
• A region is rank N in its type if it has at least N*5 buildings built in it

---

Not Actually Going In

The following changes aren't actually going to happen this game, but I wanted to record them for posterity or something.

Pricing/Component Revamp

A total rebuild of the economics system, to make prices match up with effort, and let people have different playstyles (you could just mine, or just buy raw materials from other people and refine them, or just buy refined materials and build items, etc). Anyway, it goes like this:

• Mining: you can sell raw materials to the imperial market for 1 mega-credit and buy them from there for 1.05 mega-credits.
• Refining: you buy three units of raw materials (for 3.15 mega-credits) or obtain them some other way, and create a component; components for rank 1-4 items can be sold for a markup of x~1.15, x~1.20, x~1.25, x~1.30 respectively, or 3.60, 3.75, 3.90, 4.10.
• Construction: items have a rank 1-4 and a scale. Scale 1 is explorers, military ground units, and useful devices; scale 2 is diplomats and air military units; scale 3 is cargo ships; scale 4 is military ships. Luxury goods can be built at any scale. An item of rank R and scale S requires R*S rank-R components to build, and can be sold at a markup of 1.05, 1.15, 1.25, 1.35 for rank 1-4, plus 0.05 * the scale. So for a scale-1 item, ranks 1-4 can be sold to the market for 3.96, 9, 15.21, 22.96.

This isn't perfect -- the numbers are a little fuzzy on the one hand, and not round enough on the other. Also, there should be a cut for the store between refining and construction. But it does correctly price things in a relative way, so there's a cut for people at every stage in the process and it's never better to (say) sell components directly than to make them into something else and sell that something else, except for the time/factory investment.

House skill aptitudes at the factory level are I think reflected by letting them use fewer components to build, or maybe their factories can build more components. Similarly people with good industry might be able to refine four components a turn instead of three.

Regions are built with items/components: raising a mining region from rank R-1 to rank R requires a useful device of rank R-1 (so a mining region of rank I can be built for free, although maybe you have to allocate some colonists to it or something), raising a refining or factory region requires a useful device of rank R (a factory region also requires 3 rank-R components), and a mercantile region requires a luxury good of rank R. This creates a bootstrapping problem, which is fine -- you either have to buy the useful device for your useful device factory from the market, or else maybe a PC can work with a region to let it create stuff at +1 rank for the turn.

I'm not sure how mega-credits fit into this -- possibly there's just some exchange rate where you can spend like 4+R mega-credits to build a rank-R component, or maybe that is actually sloppy and you should have to always buy the components on the market.