Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to be about a few different features coming in the Utopia expansion and associated Banks update: Native Indoctrination, Unrest and Faction Interactions.
Native Indoctrination (Paid Feature)
Anyone who's ever accidentally enlightened Fanatic Purifiers should be well familiar with the perils of not checking the ethics of a primitive civilization before deciding to enlighten or infiltrate them. In Utopia, we've added a new tool for players to interfere with primitive civilizations: Indoctrination. Indoctrination is a new observation station mission that allows you to 'educate' primitives in your clearly superior way of thinking. While active, it will greatly increase the attraction of your Governing Ethics for the Pops on the primitive planet, and cause them to drift towards those ethics over time. As the Pops start changing ethics, the Governing Ethics of the primitive ciivlization will change along with them, and you will be notified that your mission is making progress. Given enough time to do its job, this mission will eventually cause the primitive civilization's ethics to precisely mirror your own. The Indoctrination mission requires the Active Native Interference policy and so will be available to all ethics.
Unrest (Free Feature)
Back in Dev Diary #54 we talked about the ethics and faction rework, and mentioned that details on how rebel factions work would come later. After some testing and iteration, we ended up deciding that the new faction system didn't really fit the old rebel style of faction, and consequently separated it into its own system called Unrest. Each planet has an Unrest value from 0 to 100 determined by local conditions and, sometimes, empire-wide effects. Unrest is primarily increased by unhappy Pops and decreased by happy Pops and the presence of garrisoned armies. Free Pops, happy or not, will have a higher effect on Unrest than enslaved ones, representing their ability to better organize against their 'oppressors'.
Unrest has directly detrimental effects on the planet's ability to produce resources, and can also result in a number of different events depending on the severity on the situation. The effects of such events are primarily political, with your population turning towards a particular ethic or against a government that is unable to protect it from violence and terrorism. However, Unrest can also turn more serious when it is coupled with the presence of a particularly discontent or oppressed group, such as an enslaved underclass or a nationalist movement. When such a group begins to organize, you will get an event warning you of the situation that gives you some time to try and get the Unrest under control. If you fail to do so, the situation will escalate, resulting in events of increasing severity such as hunger strikes, riots, and possibly even a full-blown armed revolt.
Faction Interactions (Free Feature)
Also mentioned in Dev Diary #54 was the ability to use Factions to shift your Governing Ethics. The new Faction Interaction system allows you to both influence which Ethics will take root in your empire, as well as change your Governing Ethics when a particular Ethic grows strong enough. Each Ethic has at least one associated faction, such as the Supremacist Faction for Xenophobes, and by promoting or suppressing that faction you can spend a monthly influence cost to increase or decrease the attraction of its associated Ethic across your empire. If a faction grows strong enough, you can also Embrace that faction, shifting your Governing Ethics to more closely align with theirs.
In most cases, shifting your Governing Ethics will involve moving a single step towards that ethic, for example moving from Xenophobe to Fanatic Xenophobe or from Fanatic Xenophile to Xenophile if shifting towards Xenophobe. As this will typically result in having too many or too few Governing Ethics, it will also automatically adjust your other ethics to follow the 3 ethics points rule, downgrading, upgrading, removing or adding ethics as necessary. Which ethic is lost or added is determined by attraction, so if you are Spiritualist, Xenophobe and Authoritarian and make a shift towards Militarist, whichever of Spiritualist, Xenophobe and Authoritarian has the lowest attraction in your empire will be lost as a Governing Ethic.
That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the last of the major feature reworks coming in Banks: Government and Civics.
We'll also be talking about Hive Minds.
Native Indoctrination (Paid Feature)
Anyone who's ever accidentally enlightened Fanatic Purifiers should be well familiar with the perils of not checking the ethics of a primitive civilization before deciding to enlighten or infiltrate them. In Utopia, we've added a new tool for players to interfere with primitive civilizations: Indoctrination. Indoctrination is a new observation station mission that allows you to 'educate' primitives in your clearly superior way of thinking. While active, it will greatly increase the attraction of your Governing Ethics for the Pops on the primitive planet, and cause them to drift towards those ethics over time. As the Pops start changing ethics, the Governing Ethics of the primitive ciivlization will change along with them, and you will be notified that your mission is making progress. Given enough time to do its job, this mission will eventually cause the primitive civilization's ethics to precisely mirror your own. The Indoctrination mission requires the Active Native Interference policy and so will be available to all ethics.
Unrest (Free Feature)
Back in Dev Diary #54 we talked about the ethics and faction rework, and mentioned that details on how rebel factions work would come later. After some testing and iteration, we ended up deciding that the new faction system didn't really fit the old rebel style of faction, and consequently separated it into its own system called Unrest. Each planet has an Unrest value from 0 to 100 determined by local conditions and, sometimes, empire-wide effects. Unrest is primarily increased by unhappy Pops and decreased by happy Pops and the presence of garrisoned armies. Free Pops, happy or not, will have a higher effect on Unrest than enslaved ones, representing their ability to better organize against their 'oppressors'.
Unrest has directly detrimental effects on the planet's ability to produce resources, and can also result in a number of different events depending on the severity on the situation. The effects of such events are primarily political, with your population turning towards a particular ethic or against a government that is unable to protect it from violence and terrorism. However, Unrest can also turn more serious when it is coupled with the presence of a particularly discontent or oppressed group, such as an enslaved underclass or a nationalist movement. When such a group begins to organize, you will get an event warning you of the situation that gives you some time to try and get the Unrest under control. If you fail to do so, the situation will escalate, resulting in events of increasing severity such as hunger strikes, riots, and possibly even a full-blown armed revolt.
Faction Interactions (Free Feature)
Also mentioned in Dev Diary #54 was the ability to use Factions to shift your Governing Ethics. The new Faction Interaction system allows you to both influence which Ethics will take root in your empire, as well as change your Governing Ethics when a particular Ethic grows strong enough. Each Ethic has at least one associated faction, such as the Supremacist Faction for Xenophobes, and by promoting or suppressing that faction you can spend a monthly influence cost to increase or decrease the attraction of its associated Ethic across your empire. If a faction grows strong enough, you can also Embrace that faction, shifting your Governing Ethics to more closely align with theirs.
In most cases, shifting your Governing Ethics will involve moving a single step towards that ethic, for example moving from Xenophobe to Fanatic Xenophobe or from Fanatic Xenophile to Xenophile if shifting towards Xenophobe. As this will typically result in having too many or too few Governing Ethics, it will also automatically adjust your other ethics to follow the 3 ethics points rule, downgrading, upgrading, removing or adding ethics as necessary. Which ethic is lost or added is determined by attraction, so if you are Spiritualist, Xenophobe and Authoritarian and make a shift towards Militarist, whichever of Spiritualist, Xenophobe and Authoritarian has the lowest attraction in your empire will be lost as a Governing Ethic.
That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the last of the major feature reworks coming in Banks: Government and Civics.
We'll also be talking about Hive Minds.
. Random thought - if not too painful to do, would it be possible to have in the 'embrace faction' tooltip a lit of what the ethics would be post-embracing, rather than require people to work it out themselves? Apologies if already there and I'm just being bone-headed.
