Alien ethos revealed too early?

[ConcermedCanuck]

I finally sat down and watched the Blorg stream as a way of getting some Stellaris into my bloodstream... loved the whole thing, but I had one concern come up.

Is it me, or is it a little too much of a giveaway to discover an alien's ethos as soon as you establish communications? It seems a bit strange to me that you'd know that precisely and instantly, and it seems to have a huge and immediate impact on your strategy. To use a CK2 parallel, it's almost like kingdoms come prelabelled as "Good" or "Evil".

I would have preferred that gets revealed over time, possibly based on how well you get to know the aliens, since otherwise it seems to force everyone to play according to the given stereotype (e.g., "oh, a militarist, I better abandon diplomacy and start building ships immediately...).

Thoughts?

 

[ahhheygao]

Yes and no.

I agree with you in spirit, but in practice I prefer to err on the side of giving players relevant information instead of withholding it (unless it's some feature for espionage). Ideally, I'd like multiple tiers of contact instead of the current binary states, though I completely understand why the devs made Establish Communication so powerful... after all, it does require research and is supposed to halt societal tech research progress (which didn't happen during stream due to bugs).

 

[Ramiel]

No and no.
The devs have explained that knowing the AI's ethos and personality is absolutely necessary from a gameplay perspective for the player. They likened it to other Grand Strategy Games - you know right away that France, for example, is going to try and blob in Europe, Genoa and Hansa are going to try and dominate trade, Spain and Portugal are gonna colonize rapidly, etc. In Stellaris, having no idea whatsoever what a new AI was like proved to be a massive hindrance to the player, both in gameplay and in enjoyment.
On the fluff side, I also disagree. You say the player learns 'precisely and instantly' what an AI is like, but I would argue that's completely wrong. You forget that contact involves a large research project before communications are established - that is the gradual process, involving both learning how to communicate but also learning enough about them to communicate effectively. It makes perfect sense that once you've finished that project you know enough about them to understand their basic personality and culture.

 

[Galu]

Oh my... again this Listen, I understand yours concerns, PDX also (Wiz answered in similar thread) but player should know who are he is dealing with. And btw. to communicate you have to study aliens for 180 days, belive me, you would know what humans are after 30 min observation ;-)

 

[corny.1234]

I finally sat down and watched the Blorg stream as a way of getting some Stellaris into my bloodstream... loved the whole thing, but I had one concern come up.

Is it me, or is it a little too much of a giveaway to discover an alien's ethos as soon as you establish communications? It seems a bit strange to me that you'd know that precisely and instantly, and it seems to have a huge and immediate impact on your strategy. To use a CK2 parallel, it's almost like kingdoms come prelabelled as "Good" or "Evil".

I would have preferred that gets revealed over time, possibly based on how well you get to know the aliens, since otherwise it seems to force everyone to play according to the given stereotype (e.g., "oh, a militarist, I better abandon diplomacy and start building ships immediately...).

Thoughts?

To establish communication, you research for several month the alien culture and language. Therefore the ethos is still unknown until done

 

[aitaituo]

"Greetings, this our name, this is our government, this is our leader, and these are the diplomatic courtesies we expect you to make."
"Hello! You are so exotic and mysterious. I wonder what happens in that tiny, disgusting brain of yours."
"I'm not sure if the translator doesn't work or you're just morons."

 

[CyberSpyder]

If it helps, consider the research going into that contact to be an exhaustive and minute poring over every scrap of information and attempt at communication they get out of them for however long it takes. They're not just building a translator, they're also building up an inventory of the aliens' apparent psychology, society, and behavior.

 

[witchveil]

Its worth considering that a species culture/ethos is probably reflected in their language and diplomatic expectations. Like the saying that Innuits have many words for snow - thats because it snows a lot where they live. A war like species may have many words for fighting/conflicts, for example, which will most likely come across in early diplomatic contacts.

 

[mrinku]

I'd suggest that more complex and incomplete contact intelligence would make a good feature of an Espionage DLC.

 

[Kliwarrior]

A war like species may have many words for fighting/conflicts, for example, which will most likely come across in early diplomatic contacts.

Hello, we are earthling, we come in peace and we have a nice word called "war" which means "to desire more cows - or planets".

 

[zukodark]

Wouldn't you know right away anyways? You do, after all, see their first message, and much can be taken from that.

 

[Wizzington]

No and no.
The devs have explained that knowing the AI's ethos and personality is absolutely necessary from a gameplay perspective for the player. They likened it to other Grand Strategy Games - you know right away that France, for example, is going to try and blob in Europe, Genoa and Hansa are going to try and dominate trade, Spain and Portugal are gonna colonize rapidly, etc. In Stellaris, having no idea whatsoever what a new AI was like proved to be a massive hindrance to the player, both in gameplay and in enjoyment.
On the fluff side, I also disagree. You say the player learns 'precisely and instantly' what an AI is like, but I would argue that's completely wrong. You forget that contact involves a large research project before communications are established - that is the gradual process, involving both learning how to communicate but also learning enough about them to communicate effectively. It makes perfect sense that once you've finished that project you know enough about them to understand their basic personality and culture.

I was going to write out a reply but you did it for me.

 

[Trithemius]

Good and Evil seem kind of strange labels.

We might reasonably expect certain ethics to interact interestingly - maybe militarists like each other because of common ideals... but maybe people dislike militaristic xenophobes even more than normal? Players are not limited in their choices by their computed regard for others but might want to know it so they can RP? You can't do this without the information being available.

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

To use a CK2 parallel, it's almost like kingdoms come prelabelled as "Good" or "Evil".

No. It would be more like in CK2 if you could just click on a character's portrait and know all sorts of things about them that your character wouldn't, like the exact number of troops they could muster and some sort of numeric value to represent their skills in diplomacy, martial affairs, administration, intrigue and learning.

 

[Murmeldjuret]

The fact that the descriptors are pretty general offsets whatever notion that you know the AI. I hope that the different AI personalities do not prevent any actions from being done, just weighing them differently. You can think of AI personality like the different leaders of civ. Each of the leaders has different weights for different actions and knowing them actually adds to the enjoyment of the game, at least for me. Montezuma is a warmonger, but knowing that, you are even more impressed when he doesn't go invade everyone. With enough variety of AI personality and with them not being hard limiters it adds to the experience and immersiveness of the world.

 

[Lamahorse]

Could it be an option to make their ethe hidden from you until 20-30 years after contact?

 

[BrokenSky]

This is another feature which needs to go in hard mode though.

 

[uplift17]

With Civ V they initially went with the option of not providing diplomatic feedback for players, with devs preferring that players feel the AI have slightly inscrutable motives, and... Players absolutely hated it. Made them feel like the AI was totally arbitrary and the diplo feedback was added in in a later patch.

 

[Vojcek]

No and no.
The devs have explained that knowing the AI's ethos and personality is absolutely necessary from a gameplay perspective for the player. They likened it to other Grand Strategy Games - you know right away that France, for example, is going to try and blob in Europe, Genoa and Hansa are going to try and dominate trade, Spain and Portugal are gonna colonize rapidly, etc. In Stellaris, having no idea whatsoever what a new AI was like proved to be a massive hindrance to the player, both in gameplay and in enjoyment.
On the fluff side, I also disagree. You say the player learns 'precisely and instantly' what an AI is like, but I would argue that's completely wrong. You forget that contact involves a large research project before communications are established - that is the gradual process, involving both learning how to communicate but also learning enough about them to communicate effectively. It makes perfect sense that once you've finished that project you know enough about them to understand their basic personality and culture.

On the other hand you don't have to start that research project at all and wait until aliens finish it by themselves. You can then communicate with them and know their ethos without any effort. Just because they learned your language you suddenly know everything about them. Not saying it's bad from gaming perspective though. After all first impression when talking to someone often provides you with quite accurate estimate of what personality he/she is.

 

[Wulfram]

Though it'd be sort of fun if they could fake their ethos for a little while.
"Hello, we're innocent little pacifist xenophiles, will you agree to an open border treaty with us?" *hides mountain of skulls under the sofa*