Hey everyone!
Steve here, with a poppin’ fresh development diary. In this episode, I want to talk about a concept that is being added significantly with the upcoming .7.5 update and will be a prominent factor in how you play your game: fear.
Fear actually works on 2 levels: how Characters fear you and how your Pops fear you. Pop Fear mainly determines whether you are seen as Benevolent or Tyrannical, which is its own discussion for a later time (it doesn’t affect game play yet beyond your title). Character Fear, however, will very much determine game play.
For starters, every Character has a Fear level of you from 0-100, where 0 = fearless and 100 = shit-your-pants terror. Of course, you won’t see this number (when was the last time you said to someone, “I’m 42% scared of that guy!”) but you will have this information in 3 areas: character tooltips, the character screen, and the conversation screen. It will be presented as a phrase, depending on your Intel Progress with that character, and the higher the IP the more specific the phrasing (much like attributes).
When you start the game, since you're an 18-year old emperor, most Character's Fear level of you will be naturally low, affected by traits like Courageous or Cowardly.
Simple. So what does Fear affect? Many things: a character’s willingness to ask you for a demand or threat vs a favor or request, their strategy towards you, it adjusts their Decision Score (higher Fear = lower DS), and having a high Fear level gradually builds up their Grudge level.
How can you affect Fear? Easy! Do hostile things that succeed (challenges, exiles, public reprimands, etc), as well as Inquisitor Spec Ops like Intimidation or Blackmail, and sometimes by simply being more powerful than them! (Power truly is everything in AotSS. You can’t overstate its importance either way for your success or failure.) Over time, Fear will decay as the things you have done are forgotten, but a Character’s Grudge level will not decay, and a high Grudge level leads to Plots against you (FYI, Grudge levels are NEVER public, but you might get Rumor Intel saying that a certain Character is very unhappy with you) so keep in mind who you strong-arm!
Since creating Fear also virtually always increases your Power, this may seem like an easy road to keep your Power high and get things done, and indeed it might be, but since a Character’s Grudge level never decays, you will find yourself having to work harder and harder and expend more and more AP (Action Points) to get Characters to do what you want them to do, because at a certain Grudge level they will NEVER ally with you or even become indifferent, they will ALWAYS be an enemy – it’s just a matter of controlling them at that point. In addition, people who have a high Fear of you also pass along their Grudge levels to people that they are Allies and Friends with, so you will basically piss off a lot more Characters than you might expect when you do things that jump the Fear level on a Character who is heavily connected.
Fear works alongside another stat that is handled in a similar way: Trust. That will get the next DD – so signing off!
-Steve