Change in spiritualism - materialism axies

[Archael90]

I know that lot of people will hate this topic because of reasons, and i agree that this changes require lot of smaller changes especially in events and flavour texts, but this change can allow the game to introduce religions that lot of people wants, so its a good start for big paid DLC, so maybe someone should look into it.
Also, science is most important resource in the game, and no ethos should be favoured in science.

First of all - spiritualism doeas not means religous, even in stellaris does not mean it, yet only spiritualist empires can build temples, and this have to change.
All ethos in stellaris are religions in a sense (pacifists believes that wars are bad. Xenophobes BELIEVES that xenos should not be treated equally etc.), so why not allow them to be religious even not being spiritualists.
My idea is to remove temples from spiritualism ethos and put it into civics:
- Temples do not increase spiritualism ethic attraction, but rather governing ethic attraction.
- Exalted priesthood require fanatic ethos and allow to build temples that increase govenment fanatic ethic attraction, and gives high priest job.
- Religious state does not need fanathic ethos, but only allow to build temples instead of other unity producing buildings.

Materialism vs spiritualism should differ in a way of perception of the universe - while spiritualists believe that material world we are living in is not the whole world, and there is much more to learn in spiritual realm, materialists believes that everything is a part of material world even if not yet discovered or explained (even psionics and shroud are part of this word, there is nothing supernatural, aeverything can be explained). Spiritualists ask questions, even if there are no aswers, while materialists answer questions, but dont bother with asking some of them.

Materialists gets bonus research alternatives and bonus research while researching tech other empire knows.
Fanatic materialists can choose to discover rare techs that are known to empires they have research ageement.

Spiritualists have one less research alternatives, but bonus to unity output.
Fanatic spiritualists have no research alternatives, they discover techs at random, but have chance to roll rare tech which criteria they dont met (lists of those thechs should be fixed because we dont want to roll precognitive interface while being synth ascended... or do we?)

Robots and psionics should be not tied to this axies, and change nothing in ethics.

 

[HFY]

Everyone with the Numistic Shrine can have priests.

Even the most fanatic Technocrats.

 

[Rodmar18]

Truth is that there is a certain level of porosity between Spiritualism/Materialism axis in Stellaris, and Conservatism/Mind Openness axis. I guess that it's because of binding to dogma, and religions are a game concept that defines whole societies, not individual beliefs, as sometimes on Earth.

Firstly, this lack of realism allows to design a game that is less sulfurous to some peoples. Secondly, even if pop have individual ethics, they represent whole sub-group in the imperial society, like sects or open religions by themselves, each one.

The mod "Cosmic Religions" does a very good work at developing and diversifying the concept, making some religions less conservative, and even neutral to tech. Let's wait for a Ethics Overhaul DLC. But they first have to address/solidify the concept of pops themselves, I'd say.

 

[Nexus Entity]

"Spiritualism does not means religious", basically it just includes transcendentalism, and materialism doesn't embrace research as essence. Its just existance and expresses itself in opportunism and pragmatism that define all exluded from spiritualism options to do out of materialism perspective, means:
war, slavery, "efficeny"/egalitarian, xenophile, xenophobe and parcifisim are just belive systems to greater chances for survival based on beliefs that existence ends with the term of death.

Materialism means nothing just that the physical body is the only instance of reality and no further insight could change or can change that now or in future, it just a belief system that thinks it's right and knows everything, as all others do.

If you would discover that your mind can alter reality or turn lead into gold, and this would be a fact, you will see it as expression of opportunity and out of competition and survivale you will spend resources to research it.

If you believe in research or scientism you may use probability measures to estimate the chance for participation, on individual or collective measures. There is no denying fact, just possibilities and the will to eradicate everything that limits your perspective, you won't have an end conclusion on things just an to estimate outcome.

Short, materialism doesn't determines as asketical, its just the foundation as your wellbeing and hedonism which allows your perspektive to dear more and develop such things like a sophisticated spiritualism. Spiritualism was never done just used as fear compensation or psychological stabilising instance and as such it served an materialism premise of resources shortcut well to endure it and allow more overtime on collective mesure.

Basically the survival aspect in civilisation was collectively understood and shared as an equalisers between all, and you would have known you can't change that - you littelary need a God to kill your hatred elites for you in your powerlessness. Now we have the question: How you will doing until death? The question isn't any longer death or life, you literally have the illusion you could change some aspects of it until then, which was the death of christianity and the rise of communism as its heritage in religion. So they have grown up and kill by them self - much of an evolution - dirt on the fingers - moralization get difficult (nietzsche greets) - but this is a question of pragmatism and opportunism nothing more.

Cynicism:
Conflicts are a matter of premises: Is cooperation possible or impossible by preserving all participatory interests, or does cooperation give advantages to the individual approach. If not, killing is the chosen action of the versed survivalist. Then exists possibly genetics and troughs of programing to serve your species, so that a partial group is about to die, because not out of free will, but out of proportional strategicdistribution programing to higher chance for survival of your species genetic code used as survival programming.

This doesn't mean they are lesser in complexity, my quite the opposite, just the level of complexity get abbadon to ensure survival.On nature your chance of survival is higher as lesser complex your organism is but it is equally dumber.

I just don't like the actual ideology axis, it was a nice try but it's time to develop further! Maybe I will take a deeper look at it in the future. The kids have to rise the competition level that the lies smaller for the next generation and enforce a higher degree of a Nash-equilibrium.

I would find it interessting to transport ideas like Nash-equilibrium, opportunism and pragmatism into the world for the "kids". As earlier you reflect a certain idea you better your extrapolation of it gets and your doing will be guided after it in your life, but what sells - monitorization - better as the illusion that you survive - once told by God!?

Ironically the need to better their lifes with funds, inside a company, to stabilise their jobs, and centralisation concludes, who will integrate the most, will lead to abandonment of a great parts of population as its growing uselessness - vicious cycle. Maybe people will kill their kids by trying to better or conserve their social class. Its all a question how likely you think you gonna participate, if you can't, it's never too late to find your belief in the communism religion and pray to it. If it isn't pragmatically realisable its like you would call for collective suicide because you won't gonna do it.

 

[Rodmar18]

Steam Workshop::Cosmic Religions

steamcommunity.com

Steam Workshop::Ethics and Civics Alternative 2.8

steamcommunity.com

 

[hfel]

Yeah, the spiritualist-materialist axis in Stellaris is contradictory, since psionics has clearly materially observable effects on the universe. If meditation actually made someone levitate above ground or it was possible to summon entities from some other dimension, every materialist worth their salt would be bending over backwards to get at a chance of studying it. How can the Stellaris materialists in their ethic flavor text say “we must leave childish things like gods and spirits behind” while a psionic avatar is staring down their mouth??

I think religion is implemented narratively much better in games like Civilization: it's a powerful mechanic to coax your populace and spread your civilization's influence beyond your borders, but it doesn't actually have any supernatural effects. I think it's just used as a false dichotomy in Stellaris to artificially create conflicting and unique values for different empires, even if narratively it doesn't make sense.

Same for xenophile and xenophobe. Doesn't xenophile also value real cultural diversity and uniquenesss and want to preserve it by allowing cultural autonomy and closed borders instead of a grey and blended monoculture?

And also egalitarianism-authoritarianism. The USSR was economically more equal than the West but also much more authoritarian. But in Stellaris, you cannot be authoritarian and have economic equality living standards.

Mehh...

 

[HFY]

How can the Stellaris materialists in their ethic flavor text say “we must leave childish things like gods and spirits behind” while a psionic avatar is staring down their mouth??

"Use the red button to activate the ... uh ... nuclear probe device."

"You mean shoot nuclear missiles at it?"

"Yes. Probe the psionic avatar with extreme nuclear prejudice."

"How will we report this?"

"Sensor error, just like the last five psionic avatar glitches."

"Works for me."

 

[indalecio248]

I've thought on this before. I think maybe renaming Ethics from Spirtualist <-> Materialist to Introspective <-> Extrospective.

Introspective
Who am I? Why am I here? What is my place in the universe? Introspective pops ask these questions, and their focus is more inward.

Extrospective
Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? What are the lights in sky? Extrospective pops ask these questions, and their focus is more on explaining what's going on around them.

 

[GOLANX]

First of all I consider Spiritualism to be the application of Religion in Governance, other empires can have religion, that's fine, but to for the State to build temples to their God isn't respecting the separation of Church and State, also is taking away one of the Unique things Spiritualist can do.

Now Spiritualist could be good at spreading their religion to other empires getting them to become more friendly and compliant, shifting their ethics towards the Spiritualist.

Then you went about directly Nerfing the ethic by reducing their research alternatives while buffing Materialist, that's insane you want to make the best ethic stronger and one of the worst ethics get Nerfed? If Spiritualist are asking questions and Materialist aren't then why isn't that flipped, Spiritualist would have more Alternatives and Materialist less. It even helps them balance, Materialist do research fast but have fewer options, Spiritualist do it slow but get to pick the best options.

 

[mammonmachine]

I've thought on this before. I think maybe renaming Ethics from Spirtualist <-> Materialist to Introspective <-> Extrospective.

I like this idea, and it would map fine to Unity focus vs Tech focus. But what other gameplay differences could be introduced? It doesn't make a lot of sense for Introspective societies to dislike robots and AI, right? (Though spiritualist dislike here was always a bit questionable).

 

[Rodmar18]

Currently, spiritualists have use of robots and droids. And they can even save neural prints to a later use (the Limbo event).

Don't forget that ethics are defined at pop level, faction level and empire level., and it's perhaps why the game struggles with the ethics axis. I think it's better if a new, more general suggestion thread is opened.

 

[Rostyk.96]

The USSR was economically more equal than the West but also much more authoritarian. But in Stellaris, you cannot be authoritarian and have economic equality living standards.

because it never was more equal than west, don't know where you got it, there was always elite in form of the party that had all the luxuries USSR could have allowed itself, and everyone else waiting in queues, sometimes to get essentials, with constant deficits.

 

[indalecio248]

I like this idea, and it would map fine to Unity focus vs Tech focus. But what other gameplay differences could be introduced? It doesn't make a lot of sense for Introspective societies to dislike robots and AI, right? (Though spiritualist dislike here was always a bit questionable).

Yeah, it doesn't make sense for Spiritualists to dislike robots. That's never been an issue in RW religions, and it doesn't make sense here. The only setting I can think of where it does make sense is in Dune, where humanity has had a bad experience with robots, with them being enslaved by robots for awhile. The robot hate might work for a civic, where the society can't use robots, but instead get increased worker and specialist pop output.

As for the Intro vs Extro, I can see Intros getting a bonus to Society research and possibly Unity, and Extros getting a bonus to Physics and Engineering research.