Sins of a Solar Empire 2 recently brought the iconic space strategy series to modern gaming with a massive upgrade to performance and visual fidelity, all while keeping its core gameplay authentic but improved. In line with that spirit of authenticity and improvement, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is reintroducing the population mechanic from its predecessor—but with a far deeper and more meaningful implementation.
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 offered Game Rant an exclusive deep dive into the new population mechanic which readers can find below. In the post, they detail how the population mechanic will push the game’s economic depth forward, open new avenues for strategy, and how its implementation leaves room for other ways to leverage the system in future updates.
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Sins of a Solar Empire II – A New Look at Population
By: Conor Harris & Brian Clair
After the release of Sins of a Solar Empire II, one of the seemingly minor items that players told us they missed was population on planets. With the core gameplay changes made in Sins II, population was removed because it didn’t have any underlying purpose anymore. In the original game, population was a main driver for credit income generated by your planets via taxation. In Sins II, the TEC and Advent factions gain credits through trade (for the TEC) and a planet’s commerce (the Vasari don’t use credits at all). As a result, there was no point in having population any longer except as some flavorful lore element.
In the later stages of development however, it became clear that we would need more mechanical depth if we hoped to push the economic side of Sins II to new heights. After examining player feedback and considering the reasons why population was so loved in Sins: Rebellion, we decided to not only bring it back but re-imagine it. This was an exciting decision for us as developers, as it let us explore faction diversity and mechanical storytelling at the time – all while making meaningful improvements to economic depth.
The first step was to expand on the basics of what population does. With so much more of the economy represented by planetary surface upgrades now, population extends into far more aspects of the economy. The size of the population impacts a planets credit income via Commerce, but also its metal and crystal mining incomes and research rate upgrades. Since the size of the population directly impacts these income rates, even a relatively unsuccessful enemy attack can reduce the value of a planet’s economy by killing population with orbital bombardment. Different planet types have different maximum population values to reflect their relative habitability, further adding differentiation to the many unique planet types featured in Sins II.
With the basics established, we wanted to push the system further and convey several aspects of the games narrative through the mechanics players interact with:
First, that the planets this endless war is being fought over had people living on them before the TEC, Advent or Vasari took them over, and by extension that those people would largely remain when a planet changed hands between two different conquering empires. Trader Space has been colonized for thousands of years after all, and people do not depart their homes simply because alien invaders arrived. This is reflected by population existing on a planet at the start of the game and remaining persistent after a planet is colonized (aka subjugated) by a player, and also when it is bombed back to neutrality by an opponent (although the size of the population will likely have been reduced somewhat by the orbital bombardment).
Once a planet is colonized by a player, we wanted to then reflect on how each faction interacts with the populations under their rule via technology and planet items. The Vasari, for example, make heavy use of nano-technology and genetic modification to allow the human population of planets under their rule to adapt to normally hazardous environments – all for the purpose of putting them to work in large scale mining operations. The TEC are more concerned with ensuring jobs are available for their people to further their hyper capitalist society – they do not typically grow their population’s maximum size, but they can get more value per population.
Finally, we wanted to use population as an excuse to bring back and re-imagine another much-requested mechanic – Allegiance. It’s one thing to subjugate a planet and its people, it is entirely another to make them believe in your cause. Although all factions do this, the Advent are experts in using culture to convert populations to their allegiance – gaining significant economic boons in the process. Once convinced to believe in your empire, the population will remain allied persistently – even if you lose control of the planet, potentially providing economic maluses to an opposing player should they succeed in their own colonization.
A planet can have several different allegiances represented within its population at the same time, providing a record of sorts for who as managed to spread their culture there over the course of a match.
We’re proud of what we have already achieved with the population system so far, but we have many more ideas for how to further exploit these new mechanics in future updates as well.
- Released
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August 15, 2024
- Developer(s)
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Stardock Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
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Stardock Entertainment