Steve -
Now that I've conquered a population, I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I've looked for a rules explanation, but I haven't found it. I do remember your posts from some of your campaigns talking about modifying the political relationship between a conquering power and a vanquished population, but I don't remember the details.
Any help would be appreciated.
Unfortunately it looks like the rules post with the conquered pop rules was one of those lost and I can't find an original version. This is a significant problem as the rules were quite detailed. From what I remember (and I will have to check the code to be certain), when a pop surrenders it becomes part of your Empire. All your 'normal' pops will have a status of Imperial Population. Conquered pops will have a status of Conquered, if conquered through ground combat, or a second state (which I can't remember) if conquered through bombardment. The political state affects the production and wealth of the pop in question and this is shown as the Political Status Production Modifier and Political Status Wealth/Trade Modifier on the pop summary. You will need to garrison the planet if you conquered it through ground combat or maintain ships in orbit if you conquered it via bombardment. The occupation strength (or PPV) required will be shown on the ground units section or the summary section. Over time, the population will move through other political states, such as subjugated, client state, etc, with each one being more productive and requiring less troops. Eventually the pop will become a full imperial population. The rate at which this happens, plus the garrison strength needed, will depend on the characteristics of the conquered pop. More militant, xenophobic and determined species will be harder to occupy and assimilate. If you don't provide enough garrison strength, there will be unrest and the pop might eventually try to break away.
Steve
The political state for conquered through bombardment is "Vanquished".
I'm kind of glad that the post disappeared, because I was pretty sure I remembered that there was a post, but I couldn't find it and thought I was losing it.
I've discovered that Aurora automatically makes the modifications to the relationship based on its own internal criteria, which answers my question of how to make those changes.
I do have a suggestion. When Aurora is going to make changes to the political state, perhaps the player should be given the option to accept the change or not. For example, twice now in the Twin Moons campaign, I've had populations under bombardment decide to surrender to the other side. The first time this happened that was fine, as the Colonists were getting plastered and if they didn't surrender they were going to get wiped out anyway. The second time, though, was when the remnants of the Colonist navy was bombarding the Strug colony on Five. After the second or third salvo went in, the colony surrendered to the Colonists. This surrender was inappropriate, in spite of the fact that it met Aurora's criteria for triggering the surrender. In this case the Colonists had no way to garrison their conquest, or even hold it, as they had lost their home planet and only population. They could have tried to hold it, of course, but their purpose was genocide and they wouldn't have accepted a surrender in any case.
My thought was that, rather than program in all of the possible special cases or exceptions, Aurora should generate a popup telling the player that the population is surrendering, and ask if he wants to accept the surrender. If the player says yes, Aurora continues on as it would have if it hadn't of asked, and if the player says no then it aborts the surrender process.
Kurt
