EMEX Devlog #12 – Background Civics

Hello all! Been a while since the last post, so I figured I’d get another one out. Perhaps I’ll make these a monthly thing?

Today, we’re looking at a new feature coming in Empires Expanded 2.0. Background civics.

As always, everything shown is not final, and numbers are subject to change. Some details, such as councilor positions or icons, may be missing.

What Civics?

As mentioned in the last post, background civics expand upon (you guessed it) the background of an empire, a sort of inbetween of an origin and standard civic.

Background civics will act almost entirely as normal civics, with a few key rules:
1. An empire may only have 1 background civic (or none, of course)
2. Background civics cannot be removed or added later
3. They need to be bigger or more unique than usual

In 2.0, you will be able to choose from 12 background civics, 5 of which are entirely new, while the rest have been updated from existing civics in the mod (most of them with quite a large change).

We will have a look at a few today, but the full list is below.

Click to see the list of background civics!

Sovereign Nations [UPDATED]
Synthetic Warfare [NEW]
Planetary Cache [UPDATED]
Rapacious Warforms (corporate) [NEW]
Interplanetary Monopsony (corporate) [NEW]
Cache Exploitation (corporate) [NEW]
Splintered Hives (hive-mind) [UPDATED]
Environmental Symbiosis (hive-mind) [UPDATED]
Rudimentary Cybernetics (hive-mind) [UPDATED]
Arcane Constructions (machine intelligence) [UPDATED]
Nanomechanical Entities (machine intelligence) [UPDATED]
Biological History (machine intelligence) [NEW]

Sovereign Nations

In terms of changes to the civic itself, little was done affecting the whole mechanic of nations represented as planetary deposits and blockers; however, to expand its effects, it gained a few boons.

You might notice that something’s hidden in that image. It is something we will discuss in next next devlog. 😉

Synthetic Warfare / Rapacious Warforms

In this case, the civic is more or less identical for the default and corporate variant, apart from slight differences in modifiers.

As you begin with a Synth as your Minister of Defense, they also begin with the Veteran Warform trait. Though you cannot hire more Synthetic leaders at game start, once you are able to do so, they will be a great asset in wartime.

The Warmachine Nexus also greatly boosts robot assembly, and creates armies too. This works well with the new Mechanical Warform armies you can recruit (or maybe “build” is a better word?), which have higher attack and health values than the standard organic army.

Interplanetary Monopsony

Here’s a big one. I spent more time thinking about and changing how to implement this one than it took to actually add it in. Initially, it was going to create a special empire to control the designated planets, but this proved to be finicky, and would impact how the player could interact with the planets.

A bit of a word salad in that description (expect a revision of it!), but the effective change means that standard Miners and Farmers won’t cut it, meaning you will have to designate some worlds as these new colony designations.

The Contracted Miner/Farmer jobs produce more minerals/food anyway, but the +50% minerals/food output from the designation boosts that even moreso! Paired with Mining/Farming districts providing these contracted jobs in larger numbers, you will be able to gain a considerably larger income of basic resources, at the expense of some Energy Credits.

This one will certainly need a pass or two to check everything is in balance, relatively.

Environmental Symbiosis

Last one we’re going through today, and it’s another one that was previously in the mod.

This civic already made sense as the “background” of your Hive Mind, but now your Pops will also produce some free Society Research! And you get some free Pre-Sapients (yes, they also produce research, so perhaps it’s worth it to keep them?)

In the future, I may make revisions or additions to the symbiosis modifier mechanic, perhaps making it something that can be altered with to maximise output?

… and that’s it for this devlog! No doubt this mechanic is something that will receive updates in the future. Let me know what you think of these additions and changes on Steam or Discord as usual.

Expect the next devlog next month, on the 4th of May. I’ll be aiming to get these out on the first Saturday of each month. We’ll be going over another new mechanic introduced in devlog #11: Synergies!

Thanks for reading, see you next month!

–MadeinCanada