Chapter 5: Controlling
Your Empire
The Big Picture
You've digested lots of information here, so let's put it to work with
some examples. Using University as our sample faction, let's see how a
few simple adjustments can make a big difference in how our empire operates.
At the most basic level, University is -2 on probe and +2 on research,
two factors that are set in stone at the beginning of the game. If we
wanted to massage our negative probe rating, we really only have one choice:
applying thought control in the future society category. Looking down
our society checklist, we can see improvements in morale (+2), police
(+2), and our once negative probe rating has settled in at 0. Unfortunately,
this has come at the cost of degrading our support rating, which is now
a nasty -3, making each unit in our empire require a mineral each for
support. If your empire could tolerate this, all would be well, but a
little more tweaking may be in order.
By toggling our politics to
a police state, we can at least get our support rating to a more comfortable
-1, but now our efficiency is suffering at -2. One last change can flesh
this out in our favor; setting our values to knowledge. Now we're -1 on
efficiency, -1 on support, but +2 on morale, +4 on police, and a whopping
+4 on research. This translates into a society that:
1. Is easily subdued by military
units sitting within a city
2. Has upgraded military units that will be stronger in battle
3. Has lab research sped up by a rather choice 40 percent!
Where you set your various
society models should be directly related to what you currently need to
accomplish as an empire. By constantly returning to this screen and adjusting
these settings, you can improve those areas of your empire that need the
most help.
Gateway Technologies
The following technologies must be researched for their corresponding
societal effects to appear on the Social Engineering screen.
* Advanced military algorithms
- power
* Centauri empathy - green
* Cyberethics - knowledge
* Digital sentience - cybernetic
* Doctrine Loyalty - police state
* Ethical calculus - democratic
* Eudaimonia - eudaimonic
* Industrial economics - free market
* Planetary economics - planned
* Secrets of the Human Brain - fundamentalist
* The Will to Power - thought control
Next: Chapter 6: Terraforming
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