Aristocratic Elite is a must have because the game is lying

[Stars_and_Bars]

Can somebody please translate this for me? Right now I can not tell if he is making something up or just on the wrong way in the wrong reality

The idea behind the opressive Living Conditions is to have stability be more reliant on Ruler and Specialist Stratum.
There will be plenty of Specialists to begin with. And the Enforcers you need to counter the crime explicitly count as well.

No he's right if you look at Defines.

MIN_POLITICAL_POWER_POSITIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 0.0
        MAX_POLITICAL_POWER_POSITIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 2.0
        MIN_POLITICAL_POWER_NEGATIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 0.5
        MAX_POLITICAL_POWER_NEGATIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 10

You'll see that a happy pop with 10 political power can only provide no more than 2 political power to the happiness weighting, while an unhappy pop with 0.25 political power will always provide at least 0.5 political power towards the happiness weighting.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I only use AE as an efficiency boost to get my stability to 100%. Realistically, a society with more than half its population as slaves is doomed to fail. Expecting this kind of government to succeed is only possible with some kind of extreme control, ie nerve stapling.

What do you base the idea that any society with more than half its population as slaves is realistically doomed to fail on? Is it wishful thinking or do you have arguments to back up why this should "realistically" be the case?

Going by our historical record, all societies either a) failed eventually, or b) are currently in existence and are at most a few hundred years old without major government/civics changes as represented in Stellaris. Moreover the recorded society with highest estimated slave rate (Imperial Rome) at 30-40% was at least good for several hundred years, beating many societies with fewer slaves.

So what's the argument in favour of 50%+ slaves => doomed to fail?

 

[osric_athanasius]

Has anyone tried modding these values to test their actual in game effects?

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

What do you base the idea that any society with more than half its population as slaves is realistically doomed to fail on? Is it wishful thinking or do you have arguments to back up why this should "realistically" be the case?

Going by our historical record, all societies either a) failed eventually, or b) are currently in existence and are at most a few hundred years old without major government/civics changes as represented in Stellaris. Moreover the recorded society with highest estimated slave rate (Imperial Rome) at 30-40% was at least good for several hundred years, beating many societies with fewer slaves.

So what's the argument in favour of 50%+ slaves => doomed to fail?

I know the figure you're quoting, and it's misleading. 30-40% of Italy were Slaves in 100 B.C, but that tells us nothing about the rest of the empire. By 260 A.D. Only 10-15% of the empire were slaves, so maybe the empire's population was smaller than 40% or maybe the proportion of Rome that were slaves decreased over time.

Even if it were true that 40% of the empire was enslaved, then that's still a ratio of 3 to 2 of Free people to Slaves. A heavily militaristic and brutal society like Rome can handle that. How did they handle slavery? If a slave-owner died from non-natural causes, all of his slaves were to be killed. Plus under harsh roman slavery, the slave population could not reproduce at a rate that could sustain replacement. If you're advocating that Roman Slavery is what is being used in Stellaris, then you'd have to have zero slave pop growth and the occasional slave pop dying.

If we look at Haiti, which had a ratio of slave to freemen of 8 to 1, and this includes mulatto free blacks on the same side as the slave owners. Slave rebellion is inevitable because the Slaves outnumber their masters significantly. That's the only reason I said 50%, because that's when Slaves are equal in proportion to freemen.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Has anyone tried modding these values to test their actual in game effects?

Yes, mod them to logical values of 0 and 10, and they work logically. I've already tested them, but don't take my word for it, try it yourself.

 

[Urza1234]

I know the figure you're quoting, and it's misleading. 30-40% of Italy were Slaves in 100 B.C, but that tells us nothing about the rest of the empire. By 260 A.D. Only 10-15% of the empire were slaves, so maybe the empire's population was smaller than 40% or maybe the proportion of Rome that were slaves decreased over time.

Even if it were true that 40% of the empire was enslaved, then that's still a ratio of 3 to 2 of Free people to Slaves. A heavily militaristic and brutal society like Rome can handle that. How did they handle slavery? If a slave-owner died from non-natural causes, all of his slaves were to be killed. Plus under harsh roman slavery, the slave population could not reproduce at a rate that could sustain replacement. If you're advocating that Roman Slavery is what is being used in Stellaris, then you'd have to have zero slave pop growth and the occasional slave pop dying.

If we look at Haiti, which had a ratio of slave to freemen of 8 to 1, and this includes mulatto free blacks on the same side as the slave owners. Slave rebellion is inevitable because the Slaves outnumber their masters significantly. That's the only reason I said 50%, because that's when Slaves are equal in proportion to freemen.

Crazy space slave collars anyone?
Its Sci-fi guys.

 

[Alblaka]

No he's right if you look at Defines.

MIN_POLITICAL_POWER_POSITIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 0.0
        MAX_POLITICAL_POWER_POSITIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 2.0
        MIN_POLITICAL_POWER_NEGATIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 0.5
        MAX_POLITICAL_POWER_NEGATIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 10

You'll see that a happy pop with 10 political power can only provide no more than 2 political power to the happiness weighting, while an unhappy pop with 0.25 political power will always provide at least 0.5 political power towards the happiness weighting.

Yes, mod them to logical values of 0 and 10, and they work logically. I've already tested them, but don't take my word for it, try it yourself.

Any chance you can (or already have) filed this in the bug report section?

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Any chance you can (or already have) filed this in the bug report section?

It's not a bug. It works as intended. There's no way they went to all the effort of creating min/max for negative/positive stability weighting in the defines file and didn't realize what they were doing.

It's not a bug, but I don't particularly like it, so in my personal mod I change the values. If you're not one of the ridiculous people who insist on getting achievements in iron-man, then you can just as easily do the same.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Crazy space slave collars anyone?
Its Sci-fi guys.

Nerve Stapling comes later. Sure, you can probably put crazy collars on every slave, but you'll just have to accept the fact that people will be unhappy and that you will have low stability, because again MOST of your population are SLAVES.

 

[Alblaka]

If you're not one of the ridiculous people who insist on getting achievements in iron-man, then you can just as easily do the same.

I take mild and irrelevant offense to being called ridiculous. I like challenges.

It's not a bug. It works as intended. There's no way they went to all the effort of creating min/max for negative/positive stability weighting in the defines file and didn't realize what they were doing.

I will go out on a leg here and claim it's a bug/design oversight, because it was added at some point prior to the system getting it's final touches and possibly before it was ever possible to have 1000% power on a single pop. I mean, that wouldn't have been the first time...

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I take mild and irrelevant offense to being called ridiculous. I like challenges.


I will go out on a leg here and claim it's a bug/design oversight, because it was added at some point prior to the system getting it's final touches and possibly before it was ever possible to have 1000% power on a single pop. I mean, that wouldn't have been the first time...

Challenges are fine, needing acknowledgement for challenges is the ridiculous part.

Digression aside, I am going to quote Dev Diary #123

However, even Pops with no political power at all can still drag down your Approval Rating, so a planet with a vast mass of angry slaves will need some Rulers to keep them in line.

The implications from this quote is that the unhappiness of species can still lower your stability, even though their abundant happiness may have very little to no effect to raise your stability.

Therefore I don't think it's a bug. Also since they created new defines for this, it means that some programmer had to deliberately hardcode the "bug" into the game. The defines file is the most hardcoded part of all the moddable game files, so I sincerely doubt that it was changed without multiple programmers discussing it.

 

[The Founder]

No he's right if you look at Defines.

MIN_POLITICAL_POWER_POSITIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 0.0
        MAX_POLITICAL_POWER_POSITIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 2.0
        MIN_POLITICAL_POWER_NEGATIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 0.5
        MAX_POLITICAL_POWER_NEGATIVE_STABILITY_IMPACT        = 10

You'll see that a happy pop with 10 political power can only provide no more than 2 political power to the happiness weighting, while an unhappy pop with 0.25 political power will always provide at least 0.5 political power towards the happiness weighting.

And that sentence still makes no sense.

Political Power is how much the Happiness affects stability.
Max Political Power is the Maximum Political Power Living Standarts can give.

Pops with 25% PP are not inherently unhappy nor are pops with +200% PP inherently happy. They receive a buff and a penalty, but that is it.

 

[The Founder]

It's not a bug. It works as intended. There's no way they went to all the effort of creating min/max for negative/positive stability weighting in the defines file and didn't realize what they were doing.

You apparently have never programmed, with your wierd view that 100% of all config variables added will be used in the actuall project.

I mean it is not like Defines contained values for FTL types they cut with the 1.5 rework.
Oh wait, it did.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

And that sentence still makes no sense.

Political Power is how much the Happiness affects stability.
Max Political Power is the Maximum Political Power Living Standarts can give.

Pops with 25% PP are not inherently unhappy nor are pops with +200% PP inherently happy. They receive a buff and a penalty, but that is it.

No, political power is mainly just how happiness is weighted for pop approval. Though it's obviously annoying for Pops that technically have a political power of 0.25 or less to have political power of 0.5 if their happiness is below 50%, and likewise for pops that technically have a political power of 10 to only have a political power of 2 when their happiness is above 50%.

Though again, there is a simple solution. Simply mod the defines file for your own personal use. If you actually think it's a bug, it's better to submit a bug report, though this isn't the first time somebody has told me they thought this was bug. Presumably if they're to be believed they had already submitted a bug report, and seeing as it is not "fixed yet", it may not be a bug.

Still, the quicker you submit a bug report, the quicker the issue can be "resolved". I'm assuming that you still desire to earn achievements in iron-man mode with this easier way to play empires with slaves.

 

[The Founder]

No, political power is mainly just how happiness is weighted for pop approval.

And thus Stability Calculation. Yes, that is what I wrote.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

And thus Stability Calculation. Yes, that is what I wrote.

Sorry, I like to get technical. There's the political power for each pop that is quoted in your tooltip that determines both living standards and "political power".
If a pop has a political power between 0.5 and 2, then this actually how that pop's happiness is weighted for stability calculation.

But if a pop has a technical political power less than 0.5 or greater than 2, this may not be true. That's why I said you were incorrect for saying that political power is how much happiness affects stability. In a very real sense that is true, but the political power in the tooltip and the political power after the min/max effect are both called political power, reuslting in confusion and the need for further classification.

 

[The Founder]

Sorry, I like to get technical. There's the political power for each pop that is quoted in your tooltip that determines both living standards and "political power".
If a pop has a political power between 0.5 and 2, then this actually how that pop's happiness is weighted for stability calculation.

I previously wrote this:
"Political Power is how much the Happiness affects stability.
Max Political Power is the Maximum Political Power Living Standarts can give.

Pops with 25% PP are not inherently unhappy nor are pops with +200% PP inherently happy. They receive a buff and a penalty, but that is it."
You disagreed with it.

Now you repeat it in way more words. And at least for me, less clear.

 

[MechaThumper]

The limits to political power have been previously noted when megacorp first came out and nothing has changed yet, so I don't think it's fair to say it's developer oversight.

To be clear on how the game calculates the planets political power and stability with a stratified society (with only 2 rulers & 10 slaves on the planet for simplicity sake):

The rulers when happy will only stabilize the planet with 2 political power into the calculation, but when they are unhappy they will use all 10 of their political power to make it unstable, this basically means that rulers are limited in making the planet stable but can quickly cause the planet to become unstable when displeased.

The slaves when happy will stabilize the planet with 0.25 political power into the calculation, but when they are unhappy they cause 0.5 political power to make it unstable.

So for example, 75% happy rulers and 25% happy slaves will get you:

2 rulers x 75% happy x 2 PP and 10 slaves x 25% happy x 0.5 PP for 425% in the numerator.
2 rulers x 2 PP and 10 slaves x 0.5 PP for a 9 in the denominator.
So you have stability of 47%

If you flip them so rulers are 25% happy and slaves 75% happy you get:

2 rulers x 25% happy x 10 PP and 10 slaves x 75% happy x 0.25 PP for 687.5% in the numerator.
2 rulers x 10 PP and 10 slaves x 0.25 PP for a 22.5 in the denominator.
So you have stability of 31%

Slave processing centers are interesting because their PP decrease to slaves only works when slaves are happy, but since slaves tend to be the least happy pops it still works in a generally positive manner.

So for example, without a slave processing center, you have 100% happy rulers and 75% happy slaves will get you:

2 rulers x 100% happy x 2 PP and 10 slaves x 75% happy x 0.25 PP for 587.5% in the numerator.
2 rulers x 2 PP and 10 slaves x 0.25 PP for a 6.5 in the denominator.
So you have stability of 90%

So for example, with a slave processing center, you have 100% happy rulers and 75% happy slaves will get you:

2 rulers x 100% happy x 2 PP and 10 slaves x 75% happy x 0.0 PP for 400% in the numerator.
2 rulers x 2 PP and 10 slaves x 0.0 PP for a 4 in the denominator.
So you have stability of 100%

I think Nerve Stapling has been fixed so that those types of pops have 0 political power, so a slave processing center would not affect the PP on the planet or the stability calculation, and those kinds of slaves neither increase nor decrease stability.

 

[RoverStorm]

The slaves when happy will stabilize the planet with 0.25 political power into the calculation, but when they are unhappy they cause 0.5 political power to make it unstable.

This simply cannot be true. This utterly defeats the purpose of building a slave processing facility, which deliberately lowers slave PP by -25%. That's supposed to be a GOOD thing, because you certainly aren't building it for a measly +5% output if the political power a happy slave would provide WITHOUT the facility would INCREASE the stability by more than +5% output to ALL jobs. It would also mean it is effectively the only building with a proper downside other than upkeep cost, and +5% slave output is simply not worth it if it has such a huge downside against happy slaves, and does nothing against unhappy slaves (which the tooltip basically says it's supposed to suppress).

And no, the base slave PP is already -75% (0.25) with nothing that increases it, so that means the -25% PP from a processing facility is ONLY capable of harming happy slave PP, and NEVER helping to suppress unhappy slaves.

 

[AlanC9]

I know the figure you're quoting, and it's misleading. 30-40% of Italy were Slaves in 100 B.C, but that tells us nothing about the rest of the empire. By 260 A.D. Only 10-15% of the empire were slaves, so maybe the empire's population was smaller than 40% or maybe the proportion of Rome that were slaves decreased over time.

Well, the proportion of slaves did decrease over time, apparently. OTOH, nominally free citizens were turning into serfs in practice; late Imperial latifundia were hardly different from medieval manors. I don't know if in Stellaris terms this means fewer slaves, or more slaves.