So, who else ignores the galactic community mechanics? (2024)

at most, i cast a vote on something, which tend to be the same votes every time.
i mean, why bother expending time and influence to push a vote or promote an agenda if nearly none of those things have any significant effect on you? and they affect everyone the same way, so why care?

and if something urgent pops up, like a crisis, then it takes decades to bring it to the galactic community's attention.

complete waste of time in most games.convince me otherwise.

I never saw the point.The AI is terrible so there is no reason to be friends with them and my military is always far superior so there is no need to protect my self diplomatically.Votes also take far too long and by the time I could become emperor I'm already stronger than all AIs combined so there is no point in doing it.

Most of the time I never even bother joining it.

aroddo said:

So, who else ignores the galactic community mechanics?​

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The what?

Bezborg said:

I RP with it, but I agree, it’s really shallow and irrelevant

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Yeah but so are like the majority of the game mechanics. Unless you spawn sandwiched between three genocidals, none of the game's mechanics are truly challenging and serve any real purpose outside of roleplaying a galactic empire.

You all need to download Stefan's perfectly balanced mod. Actually, thats wrong.

Paradox needs to download Stefan's perfectly balanced mod and upload it into the game.

Why? Because its constantly being developed by the community and you have famous people as advisors like salvor, the creator of Starnet AI and Startech AI. You know, the mod which makes the AI being able to compete with you at ensign difficulty, simply by telling it how to properly manage its economy. And ontop of that it teaches AI how to build good ship designs - and in turn, it teaches you how to build good ship designs.

What has Stefan's perfectly balanced mod to do with the Galactic community?

Obviously, there are many balance changes, but most importantly balance changes for the galactic community. A ton of laws have been adjusted. Most importantly, changes to the Spiritualists laws. These can now make Spiritualists stronger and Materialists (and Robots) weaker. We all know Spiritualists are a joke in this game and Paradox has so far refused to fix the Materilalist vs Spiritualists matchup. At this point I believe this unbalance is what they want, its intended design. Sadly, this means that no one wants to play Spiritualists in a somewhat competitive game and players who want to enjoy Spiritualist must rely on mods.

Thanks to this mod, the galactic community has huge effects on everyone who joined it, its a diplomatic battle between Materialists, Robots and Organics. This is not the case in the vanilla game, sadly.

Edit: Wait why are suddenly so many disagrees coming in, but no one explains why you disagree? Judging by my post on the dev diary, the vast majority of you want a better balance game, and obviously Paradox thinks this way too, otherwise they wouldn't invest time into actually trying to balance the game better.

The only reason for me to join the community is the galactic market.

I never have influence to spare for issuing a suggestion.

I only care to vote when I'm in danger of 'breaching galactic law', because that would affect only me. Everything else is a waste of time. TBH, I think it's best to just oppose everything: if other empires choose to waste influence on repeatedly issuing the same pointless laws, that's their problem...

The issue with the GC is that there are very few resolutions I care about enough to bother spending my influence on. I only care about making sure council size has been reduced to 1 before the council gets veto powers or else the council reduction resolutions are liable to get vetoed. But that's more or less it.

And part of the reason for that is because the AI is trash. In principle you'd want to pass resolutions that will increase diplomatic weight from areas in which you are strong and reduce diplomatic weight from areas in which others are strong, but since invariably the human player eventually outclasses the AI in all areas that just makes all resolutions that increase diplomatic weight from anything good. Just about the only ones I ever vote against are the spiritualist and pacifist ones because they actually reduce diplomatic weight and the egalitarian one because I tend to play slavers or at least authoritarians.

Once the GC spawns you should have enough diplo power to be a deciding factor in most votes.
At about 50 years total gametime, you should have the diplo power to control the votes completely.
This is at 1000 stars, 30 AI, smaller galaxies and fewer AI lowers the bar massively for full control.

At that point, you can decide whatever you want.
I like to rush cornucopia, and then ban robots for the lols.

In MP however the GC is really awesome and the best chance of some semi-engaging non-combat gameplay.
If you think the GC is irrelevant, you have never absolutely destroyed a player by banning his bots, when their influence is too low to leave the GC. Smart players have the influence banked at most times, but when they don't they just crumble and die.

Yeah, the Galactic Community is less than it should be. The laws are in itself not a bad idea, but they alone are not enough to give it much meaning and as already mentioned it often takes too long to get a crisis resolution passed. The latter could be solved by making crisis resolutions have a drastically lower voting time (6 month?) and create a separate way to push for an emergency measure for those resolutions if the supporters have a combined diplomatic weight of 33%? of the total behind them. As well as program the AI to attempt do so if they or one of their neighboring empires are directly affected by a crisis.
The complete control of the Galactic Community by one member should be made impossible as that would realistically cause the other members to no longer play along. Maybe cap voting power at 25% of the total? Obviously favors would allow you to exceed that cap, and equally obviously the Galactic Empire wouldn’t have a cap for voting power of the sovereign.

To make the Galactic Community more interesting requires more meaningful options in my opinion. At the top of my head, I can think of the following:

• Allow empires in a defensive war to try to get the galactic community to intervene on their behalf, by applying sanctions to the aggressor if he is in the Galactic Community unless they agree to a white peace and for X days if they end the war by winning. If the aggressor is not in the community give everyone in the Community an end war and remove claims Casus Belli and reduc their claim cost on the aggressor. Maybe also give the defender a buff to ship build speed, rate of fire, or such to represent the support of the Galactic Community. This should also be treated as a crisis resolution.
• Allow empires to try to get their stolen systems returned after a lost war through the Galactic Community. Again, with sanctions for refusal if a community member and a Casus Belli if the aggressor is not in the community and reduced claim cost on them for community members.
• Allow empires to the Galactic Community to intervene if their founder species is being purged to force displacement to their worlds. Again, this would be treated like a crisis resolution. Sanctions or Casus Belli with reduced claim cost if refused.
• Allow empires to get the Galactic Community to intervene if their founder species is enslaved by another empire to force them to return the population. Sanctions or Casus Belli with reduced claim cost if refused.
• Create a resolution to form a Galactic Bank for Reconstruction and Development in which every Galactic Community Member has to pay a certain monthly fee (relative to economic power; energy and minerals?). Allow empires with low economic power to apply for development aid, which gives them additional energy and mineral income, reduces the cost for districts, buildings and mining stations for them and speeds up colony development. Maybe even give them a monthly chance to receive a free tech from those that more than ¾ of the Galactic Community members know (limited to non-military techs). Give egalitarian and xenophile AI empires an interest to support this.

aroddo said:

at most, i cast a vote on something, which tend to be the same votes every time.
i mean, why bother expending time and influence to push a vote or promote an agenda if nearly none of those things have any significant effect on you? and they affect everyone the same way, so why care?

and if something urgent pops up, like a crisis, then it takes decades to bring it to the galactic community's attention.

complete waste of time in most games.convince me otherwise.

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Well, some resolutions do have an affect on you.

• Industrial Development Resolutions can be used strategically. Not only does it improve your alloys/CG production and efficiency, the penalty to habitability doesn't matter if you A) Are a ME B) Go Synth Ascension C) Can Terraform Gaia Worlds/Hive Worlds D) Live in Orbitals. If you meet these requirements, you gain all the bonuses while suffering none of the drawbacks.
• The Greater Good punishes Authoritarian Empires and forces them to spend as much on CGs as you do.
• Higher levels of Ecological Protection can now be weaponized for Catalytic empires. You gain a bonus to food production, empires with standard Alloy production take a penalty to Mining jobs, and everyone takes the penalty to Alloy production equally.
• Unchained Knowledge can eventually target Egalitarians.
• Divinity of Life obviously attacks MEs and Synth Ascension

WastelandScout said:

The complete control of the Galactic Community by one member should be made impossible as that would realistically cause the other members to no longer play along. Maybe cap voting power at 25% of the total?

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Most interesting 4 player game ever.
Every vote deadlocked with no option to ever change it.
That sounds absolutely horrible.