Introduction
Axioms, as I am always mentioning, is a unique game with a level of mechanical integration some people have trouble really grokking. Who has “control” over a province is complex and connected to all sorts of game systems. And that isn’t even considering how much *information* a given character has about a province.
This post is going to go into quite a bit of detail about the relevant map visualizations as well as the practical understanding of who has what power where and the impact on the player, and the NPCs.
Provinces basically have two kinds of information. Static information and dynamic information. Static information is relatively easy to acquire and outside of special circumstances like terraforming never changes. Climate, terrain, locations, position implicitly, and so forth. Dynamic information is changing relatively constantly.
Now due to technological limitations we can’t handle dynamic information perfectly. Essentially you either have access to the current data or you have no access. There is no real way to handle stuff like storing snapshots of older data and so forth.
This is mostly a matter of RAM capacity. I am looking into some workarounds but this will likely be part of one of the 2 intended major expansions or the sequel, assuming the game sells well enough to earn a sequel.
Dynamic information would include things like buildings present, populations present, characters currently present, information on local or regional armies and so forth. Basically stuff that changes or updates frequently.
Information about a province is a major factor in contol calculations.
Provincial Control
The primary “control” map visualization computes a color, and also a tooltip breakdown for the details, based on your information level in a province, your characters and populations in the province vs characters and populations you don’t control, your military assets, various buildings, and intelligence and administrative assets plus diplomatic and political agreements.
There are distinct map visualizations, or perhaps sub-map visualizations depending on how I structure the interface, for the contributing factors. So you can see a visualization of the control over resident populations distinct from the overall calculation. You can also see military presence, based on your intel level in the province, and probably also competing intelligence assets.
Your intelligence network in general will display a level of uncertainly about the information you have which will also factor into control. This is calculated partly by your intelligence tier, 1-8, and party based on how much activity is happening that you aren’t aware of specifically.
Military And Intelligence Superiority
Axioms is a unique TBM&M, or turn based map and menu, game and it has a relatively distinct military system. Military units will not immediately enter a battle with enemy military units in the same province. Military units are only visible to enemies, or neutrals, or in some cases allies, if those entities have either sanctioned or unsanctioned information on them.
So each leader can provide official information on their military assets at a variety of levels based on relationship. Allies will have a high level similar to the owner’s level, if the owner wishes, or not, on a unit by unit and relationship by relationship basis. I’m sure everyone is capable of coming with a reason why you may not want an ostensible ally to know too much about your military assets and also why you may want an enemy to know about your giant army coming at his capital.
Based on a variety of factors like province information level generally and population support and also communication capability and potentially magical efforts different entities will have varied information on friendly and enemy military assets in a province. You can also use a “tracking” mission to keep vision on a unit you are already aware of.
Finally you can engage in administrative actions like having message towers using fire/smoke or mirrors or other methods, or having messenger stations and/or sentries/guards at settlements, river crossings, on road, and so forth. Essentially pre-deployed non-targeted intel assets. You will of course pay various upkeep on these.
These methods can also improve counter-intel, taxation, help with non-state actor issues like bandits and monsters and so forth.
Armies will gather information and maneuver around until a battle is joined. Sometimes armies might pass each other by if one army is moving out of a province quickly. One or the other army could have an advantage in the battle due to better intel or smarter maneuver. Another factor in one army bringing another to battle would be logistics vs devastation. Is the invading army running out of supplies? Are the supporters of the ruling army mad about the instability and lack of response?
The hypothetical ability and practical of an entity to ward off hostile actions is part of the control calculation.
Intelligence Concentration
A key mechanic regarding intelligence level and military asset awareness is that intelligence levels bleed together to some degree. Imagine a hypothetical hexmap, though this isn’t what Axioms uses.
Owning a single hex and having 10 intel value is pretty simple. What if you had 7 hexes in a 2 layer hexagon all with 10 base intel value. Your central hex might have 10 + 10*6/2/6 or 10+5=15 intel value. Each other layer Hex would be touching 3 hexes at base 10 and 3 at base 0. So their final value would be 10 + 10*3/6/2 or 10+2.5=12.5 intel value.
With a third hex layer you’d get the outside layer at 12.5, the second layer at 15 and the central hex would get 16.25. These numbers are just an example with simple math. The point is that more central core provinces would have improved intel.
Diplomatic And Political Agreements
Overall control of a province also integrates legal agreements. Various forms of diplomatic relationships are valued to determine real power. Not only do you have standard stuff like various kinds of agreements between political leaders but Axioms also considers the actual opinions of populations and characters, and military units, towards the top level entity. You can read some of my other posts relating to acceptance/integration/assimilation and political agreements:
A direct leader of a population may agree to terms with another political leader, or even multiple other leaders. A direct population leader might pay taxes/tribute to more than one external leader, or engage in any other number of non-exclusive agreements. Various potential agreements are covered in previous posts.
Authority
Authority is an umbrella term for a variety of mechanics in the game related to legitimacy and/or experience ruling a province. Characters, populations, and other entities have a special modifier based on how long a specific entity has ruled over a population or province. They also consider, depending on ideology, the “right to rule”. Are populations of a specific religion or culture or race ruled over by a leader of the same kind? Have two entities made treaties or agreements over who is the rightful ruler of something?
An example of this from real history would be Catholicism where the pope assigned regions of the world for colonization by different nations and of course the various other Catholic examples like excommunication, crowning by priests or bishops, and so forth. You also have broader agreements such as the Treaty Of Westphalia.
Authority impacts the support of local populations for their various tiers of rulers which is a key aspect of who “controls” a province. Especially since the level of taxation and military levy is very important and how much you can extract from a province is based on large part of what the population and also local characters are willing to accept.
Autonomy
Autonomy is essentially part of diplomatic and political agreements but also somewhat a superset of that. Autonomy is not a variable in Axioms but a visualization/measure of control on the map. Autonomy is especially impacted by taxation and mobilization levels but also by integration/assimilation/acceptance. It is additionally heavily impacted by centralization vs decentralization. Can local leaders raise personal military assets? Can they appoint important administrative positions? Is there a state religion? Can they change important laws themselves?
Autonomy not being an actual variable is a key part of the design of Axioms. Fewer “modifiers” that impact other “modifiers” and more direct representation of concepts in the mechanics. Most map and menu games don’t have “administrative mechanics” because they are lacking both characters and populations to which to assign rights and responsibilities.
In Axioms you can appoint administrators/bureaucrats to specific positions, for instance you could represent the “magistracies” of the Roman “course of honors” with administrative positions with very similar actual powers to which you appoint specific characters.
You can also pass laws limiting who can be appointed to these positions and appointed as subordinates of the relevant official. “You must be a [citizen](character/population with access to relevant privileges and status) to be appointed as [consul](top level military and civilian position with twin appointees).
It might be helpful to read the relevant design post on laws:
No Overall Control
Mostly in the early game and especially in day 0 starts but somewhat applicable in theory for any game is the concept of a province having no singular owner. In fact technically there’s no “ownership” mechanic at all for a whole province. A province could have any number of populations all with individual leaders and all competing for the use of land and resources.
Similarly military units from an arbitrary number of entities could be engaged in a province in a web of conflict.
Map visualizations will generally try to accurately relay this information. The primary map visualization will, unlike in nearly every other map and menu game, not be a “terrain” or “political” visualization. And ideally players will dynamically swap map visualizations relatively frequently similar to how they engage with menus in existing games.
I expect that the most commonly used map visualization would be control, intel, military and “national”. The “national” map visualization generally try to provide a cohesive and high level representation of the player’s own character’s experience. Of course you can play characters that are neither state leaders or subordinates to top level state leaders and in that case I’d expect the use of a very different set of map visualizations based on the specific experience the player was going for and the primary roles they intended to play. Traders, mercenaries, archmages, adventurers, etc.
Conclusion
Axioms will require some level of adjustment, minimized as much as possible, for players who are used to the primary map visualizations of map painters like Total War and Paradox games. More standard 4X map visualizations might be closer to what Axioms will use as the core map visualization but still not precisely the same.
Additionally both 4X and map painter games rely much more heavily on gamified and abstract “modifiers” to differentiate things like different government types and different religions, and the difference between nations and factions and so forth.
Also crucial to understand is how little Axioms relies on boardgame style abstractions and cookie clicker like modifier stacking. Probably the most abstract element in the game is the “wealth” variable for populations. But this is a far cry from how things are handled in some of the current AA and AAA games. There’s no “tax efficiency” or “production value”. Taxes are assigned as a percentage of population wealth and Axioms uses an actual citybuilder-esque resource system for production.
Like almost every high level abstraction in Axioms “control” is a measure of something and not a cause. It is a way to visualize information at a high level for the player and it doesn’t “cause” or “modify” or “interact” with any of the variables in the simulation.
The Control Map Visualization gives an at a glance representation of the power the player character has over territories and populations on the map.