User Guide

In the middle is a display showing your current energy reserves, the time
between new technologies, and the upheaval cost, if any (see Upheaval Costs,
below), to switch to the new choices you have tentatively selected.
You can always hit
RESET to restore your choices to the way they were at the
start of the turn.
Upheaval Costs. When you try to make a radical shift in political philosophy,
there’s going to be some social upheaval. To get your faction “over the hump”
to the new order, you may be required to pay some energy credits. This is
called an “upheaval cost.” You can eliminate or mitigate it by slowing down
your rate of change, making the move to the final new order gradually over a
number of turns.
POLITICS
How your faction reaches policy decisions.
• Frontier. The default. Frontier politics represent the informal governing
arrangements made in early colonies, before populations reach levels requir-
ing more advanced forms of government. No positives or negatives.
• Police State. Police states use oppression to keep their citizens in line, and allow
their leaders great power over military decisions. However, oppression of this sort
also decreases economic efficiency. +2 Support, +2 Police, -2 Efficiency
• Democratic. Democracies allow citizens to participate in government, and
forego oppression and the stability it confers in favor of growth and effi-
ciency. However, citizens remain suspicious of large military deployments,
and civilian oversight creates large military bureaucracies, so military sup-
port costs increase. +2 Efficiency, +2 Growth, -2 Support
• Fundamentalist. Fundamentalist politics unite a society behind a strong,
dogmatic religion. Evangelizing the populace can create loyal, even fanati-
cal military forces, and tends to immunize citizens against (other forms of)
brainwashing. However, technological research tends to suffer under the
continual assaults on intellectual integrity associated with such regimes.
+2 Probe, +1 Morale, -2 Research
CONTROLLING SOCIETY
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