Populations, Politics, Luxuries, Food, And Amenities

How population happiness and opinion function outsides of politics

Populations

So population is probably one of the most unique factors in Axioms. No one aside from Paradox really does that in the map painter space. Of course city builders do it but aside from maybe Songs Of Syx in a few updates none of those really have much strategy involved. Songs of the Eons by the MEIOU &Taxes 2.0: Pop Overhaul modders will eventually have something comparable to Axioms pop wise but they also went much further in other areas of their sim and I’m not sure how their political layer will turn out. I’ll buy the game is they ever finish it, probably a decade from now.

In Axioms populations are actually pretty similar to a city builder. They eat food and require a variety of goods as well as amenities. Well require is the wrong word. Even if you don’t provide food that will just stop growth. But these commodities are crucial for having a happy nation with key bonuses to Opinion and other factors, which as previously noted essentially represent your “political capital”.

Populations have a race(this is a fantasy thing not a skin color thing), generally a class/caste, a religion, and a nation of origin. This stuff is stored in the “PopulationType” class. Additionally the actual population class has opinions, ideologies, a leader, a home province, an average wealth, and a population count. They also currently have a faction but I might end up implementing this part of the simulation in a different c++ class and concept.

Taxes, rights, and obligations like military service are assigned based on population traits. Military capability starts with racial attributes. Magic potential is often linked to race.

Amenities

Amenities were discussed a bit in a previous article. Amenities are provided by buildings and include stuff like waste disposal, fresh water access, hygiene options, shelter quality, a sort of building/city quality type thing called Architecture, air quality and eventually a few other things. There might be a mana grid and potentially an electric grid which would take much longer into the game to develop. I haven’t locked down all the potential Amenities. It is possible Entertainment will be included here rather than as a separate thing which is the current design.

Commodities And Luxury Goods

Populations will gain strong happiness bonuses, which translate to extra opinion bonuses which means more political capital for leader characters, from a variety of basic and luxury goods. Clothing, something like appliances, and so forth. These will actually be produced and in variety rather than in the Vicky2 style.

Some of these might go to amenities like hygiene/health stuff. Tooth sticks for instance existed in ancient times. Later the actual mass produced toothbrush was developed in the late 1700s. Some plants like purple nutsedge had anti-decay properties. Chairs, tables, and bed of varying types and qualities will be included under goods.

Luxury goods will include stuff like jewelry, fancy sartorial goods, art, perhaps makeup(for men and women), and other things like that. Luxury foods will be discussed in the food section and implemented in the food rather than luxury code.

Food

Different races have different caloric requirements. I may or may not deal with fats and proteins vs carbs. The key element of food is variety. A larger variety with luxury stuff like spices and other things drastically increases happiness. Each food gives a boost but as mentioned elsewhere over time foods build up a sort of requiredness whereby losing access has a negative penalty beyond just losing the bonus for that food.

Quality of life is compared among populations such that inequality produces some degree of unhappiness. While inter-class comparisons produce only limited negatives beyond the existing penalties from being lower class comparisons between populations of the same class in different provinces and more importantly among different polities can have moderate repercussions. Unless there is quite a bit of inequality there aren’t nation-breaking consequences but it does matter.

A large risk is becoming dependent on imports. An example I often use is trading for cinnamon and then either the supplier or someone able to influence or disrupt them gets you cut off and you need to find a way to get access to cinnamon within a few years as the ticking “expected/traditional ingredient” penalty starts hitting you. Although you could compensate in other ways if you had good options. Sources of Opinion are fungible.

Political Capital

I’m going to try to explain with more clarity and detail what I mean when I say Opinion is equivalent to “Political Capital”. Every action in the game has various impacts on how people feel about the character taking it. Revolts happen when populations and characters see a character or polity they prefer to their current liege. Some factors are not incorporated into Opinion directly but this is a limited set of variables. The game does tell you when you are risking revolt and shows the non-opinion variable.

Since Opinion is the major general factor involved in political stability having an excess of positive Opinion means that you can take small to medium or even large hits to achieve some goal you desire. Additionally you can take hits to other factors that are mitigated by high opinion. Dishonorable actions, actions that will negatively impact society like war, and so forth.

Each character and population will have an opinion on going to war with any given other character or populations or polity and they’ll have opinions on when you’ve hurt those entities enough and they’d like to get back to peace and stability. If you have more of an Opinion buffer you can engage in unpopular activities longer before facing serious consequences from entities in your state who have a net negative feeling about what you are doing.

Your job as a character with decision making power, and the same applies to the AI, is to manage your “Political Capital” so that you can get things done without your state being heavily negatively impacted. One of the values of Intrigue in this system is that you don’t take hits on actions no one knows about.

Whereas starting a war has public and expected negative impacts from death to trade disruption to economic retooling when you do some action in the shadows your ability to keep it quiet functions as a sort of pseudo-political capital. And if you delay consequences or discovery till the action pays off you end up with net neutral effects comapred to the up front costs of war.

Diplomacy is more limited in application than war is but the costs are typically lower for the impact of the action. Diplomacy does sort of trade off later costs for avoiding up front ones. A defense pact is free till you get called to war for instance.

In the case of a revolt population resources are what are used. High wealth populations or those which can carry private arms or those who are common in the military are the most dangerous. To some degree magical potential is relevant as well. Poor, weak, unarmed populations with few characters correlated with them can be upset to a greater degree since their military potential is limited.