Diversity: Overpowered?

[Derron116]

But consider also that some races are just shy.

Their societies will always be homogenous (which I think requires xenophobia in the game), but they might be peaceful.

The Nox from Stargate are a prime example of this.

"Isolationist and non-interventionist in the extreme, they feel morally obligated to help both sides of an argument, no matter if one side is thoroughly evil."

So they would not benefit from slavery.

I'd say Xenophobic, Fanatic Pacifists? In that case, I think it'd make sense to be a bit weaker. You are turning away from the benefits of diversity/enslavement and towards homogeneity.

 

[Spartanlemur]

I'd say Xenophobic, Fanatic Pacifists? In that case, I think it'd make sense to be a bit weaker. You are turning away from the benefits of diversity/enslavement and towards homogeneity.

Right, but then they're absurdly kind and peaceful, so they would never enslave, meaning they would have to be neutral...but then this wouldn't reflect their isolationism, which requires "xenophobia".

So I have to conclude that they simply could not exist in Stellaris as it stands (or the closest approximation would be fanatic pacifist spiritualist, leaving xenophobia/philia on neutral).

I hope that ethos's will be reworked somehow to allow such a species to be better reflected.

To be honest, I see that system becoming a lot more deep in the future anyway, to allow for races to have more character (more ethos choices and higher limits). I can see a major rework on the horizon once we've all played the game and provided feedback to Paradox.

 

[kreissig]

Another good example might be the United States. The parts which are most ethnicity diverse (California, New York, Chicago) are also the safest, most advanced, most stable and richest (once you factor out resource-extraction wealth.)

I think you need to go back and research the gang activity in LA, Chicago and NYC. In the case of Chicago, its about as bad as it gets. I personally work as a firefighter in California and deal directly with Mexican gangs that are supported by the Mexican mafia - drug trafficking. This is no Shangi La here.

Also, the diverse population here is stratified by wealth. ie...minorities are mostly poor. The richest Hollywood executives are all from the same ethnic group - and almost exclusively male. The other big industry in California is military weapons production. I wouldn't exactly characterize this situation as "xenophilic".

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

I think you need to go back and research the gang activity in LA, Chicago and NYC. In the case of Chicago, its about as bad as it gets. I personally work as a firefighter in California and deal directly with Mexican gangs that are supported by the Mexican mafia - drug trafficking. This is no Shangi La here.

Also, the diverse population here is stratified by wealth. ie...minorities are mostly poor. The richest Hollywood executives are all from the same ethnic group - and almost exclusively male. The other big industry in California is military weapons production. I wouldn't exactly characterize this situation as "xenophilic".

Thank you for that, I learned something.

 

[ikki]

xenophobia does not seem very problematic at all. just keep all the races on separate planets like god intended. Besides, its more efficient that way anyway.
Hopefully xenophobia offers a good reason for the race to stick together and keep shooting down the rebellious alien scum as they try to rebel. Just keep a bunch of troopers to oversee the filthy mutants.

Now robots, those things are truly lacking a soul. Meanwhile alien mutants are merely disgusting and lack morals & basic hygiene.

And should you find aliens that prefers the same planet type, well, exterminate them and settle with the one true god created race.
Inhospitable worlds could still be populated by the filth of the universe for all you care. They only exist to serve the master race. Just like god intended it.

ie spiritual, collective, xenophobe

 

[Safehold]

Do you remember the ~10^10 threads about Pluto?

Only at the tail end. I said Pluto was a drifting battle station watching the solar system.

Quite the opposite really, given a core world is likely to have a population in the billions, at least with orbital weaponry killing that many people is feasible, who the fuck is going to transport them?

Starvation is usually effective for wiping out large groups. It just takes longer.

 

[13Foxtrot]

Ok a bluff if you will, the bluf that japan can actually pay that debt back. Than again the same goes for the US.

You don't actually pay the debt back, you pay the interest....That is what every country's public debt is based on.

 

[Cruxador]

Well I understand that the pacifist 'rebels' on the walking forests world would be a bit like that (though really they should really be more effective in other ways consider ghandi and martin luther king).

They organized a strike once. The stream reveled that you are given an option to bribe or assassinate Ghandi/MLK, and the player picks one. After doing that, the faction never caused trouble again.

But I'm kind of dissapointed neither of the militarists they absorbed used modern freedomfighting techniques, more like the ones they use in HoI, that is terrorism. A more neunced version of it ofcourse more like how we with the benefit of hindsight can view IRA and ETA (Or perhaps even better Gavrilo Princips Young Bosnia) than how we are currently viewing Salafist jihadism.
In fact I find the way that EU4 and CK2 chose to represent rebels kind of boring, it has them line up ti fight just like any other army, this was usually very much not the case, in pre modern times freedomfighters and common brigands were a very blurry line, in more modern days terrorism has mostly taken the place of those activities (but not entirly, for an example several south american freedom fighting groups kidnapped westerners for ransom to fund their war).

Keep in mind that something distinctly "modern" is more likely than not to be historically anomalous; if it is particular to our time in the history we know, occam's razor suggests that it is particular to our time in the history that we don't know as well. The evidence that we have available to us in this time also suggests that terrorism is not a very effective way to achieve victory, but only to prolong conflict. Keeping that in mind, it makes sense that it wouldn't still be a major way of fighting in a future historical period.

Another good example might be the United States. The parts which are most ethnicity diverse (California, New York, Chicago) are also the safest, most advanced, most stable and richest (once you factor out resource-extraction wealth.)

From context I don't think you are, but this is wrong enough to seem sarcastic. "Safest" is definitely not true (Chicago especially is renowned for its murder rate) and "stable" is meaningless with regard to a state within a greater nation which hasn't had a notable rebellion since before the population patterns you're talking about were established. And "most advanced" is meaningless in general while "richest" is more likely a cause of diversity than an effect.

You're right that that wealth leads to diversity, but it is also true that diversity leads to wealth. Both of these factors contribute to one another. Wealth and dynamism attract people from all across the world; most of these people will be those who had the motivation and determination to leave their birthplace and find new homes. As a result, they foster an even more creative, dynamic atmosphere.

There's a reason why I no longer live in South Africa. The brain drain is a real thing.

"wealth attracts diversity" is a clear and obvious fact. "diversity attracts wealth" is not necessarily, and all you've actually argued in support of it is "education attracts wealth" which isn't the same thing.

As for the whole xenophobia vs xenophilia is productive argument, I think is coming from the wrong angle. It is economically growing and abundant that tend to grow more xenophilic and welcoming, whereas stagnating or collapsing economies grow more xenophobic. It is more apparent for the ones hit hardest by economic downturns who always find something to blame, that someone is often a xeno. It also worth noting that this is all from a human perspective and there is no gaurantee it will hold true for aliens.

This is true, but Stellaris is built on the paradigm that ethos effects societal conditions, not that societal conditions effect zeitgeist.

Right, but then they're absurdly kind and peaceful, so they would never enslave, meaning they would have to be neutral...but then this wouldn't reflect their isolationism, which requires "xenophobia".

So I have to conclude that they simply could not exist in Stellaris as it stands (or the closest approximation would be fanatic pacifist spiritualist, leaving xenophobia/philia on neutral).

I hope that ethos's will be reworked somehow to allow such a species to be better reflected.

To be honest, I see that system becoming a lot more deep in the future anyway, to allow for races to have more character (more ethos choices and higher limits). I can see a major rework on the horizon once we've all played the game and provided feedback to Paradox.

I've mentioned this before, but the amount of ethos points is actually very limiting, one more would unlock a wealth of other options. And Xenophobia/Xenophilia is a very shallow and specific take on the philosophies which it attempts to emulate, a problem not really in common with the other ethos options.

I think you need to go back and research the gang activity in LA, Chicago and NYC. In the case of Chicago, its about as bad as it gets. I personally work as a firefighter in California and deal directly with Mexican gangs that are supported by the Mexican mafia - drug trafficking. This is no Shangi La here.

Also, the diverse population here is stratified by wealth. ie...minorities are mostly poor. The richest Hollywood executives are all from the same ethnic group - and almost exclusively male. The other big industry in California is military weapons production. I wouldn't exactly characterize this situation as "xenophilic".

You're forgetting the tech industry, which does include some amount of women, and makes often hires minority ethnicity as long as they cleave to the correct culture (which is more a culture of wealth and a certain background than an ethnically defined one, despite being majority white). Also technically not all of the top Hollywood guys are the same ethnicity. The number one richest movie mogul (George Lucas) is not even Jewish, nor is James Cameron (number 10) though all the ones in between are (and apparently all ashkenazi specifically). And the word "mogul" itself makes its way to the English language from Jewish...



I do think we're rather off topic by now though.

 

[kreissig]

And the word "mogul" itself makes its way to the English language from Jewish

I think you meant to say "Hebrew"

The tech industry is somewhat intertwined with military weapons production, and its diversity has zero to do with its success. The US government chooses to award large contracts to companies like Boeing, GE, Flour-Daniel ect. that subsequently sub-contract thousands of other small firms to make the parts for all the jets, rockets, bombs and related hardware.

 

[Cruxador]

I think you meant to say "Hebrew"

I didn't. I think it came from Yiddish, where I imagine it would have gotten to from Ladino.

 

[BrokenSky]

You're right that that wealth leads to diversity, but it is also true that diversity leads to wealth. Both of these factors contribute to one another. Wealth and dynamism attract people from all across the world; most of these people will be those who had the motivation and determination to leave their birthplace and find new homes. As a result, they foster an even more creative, dynamic atmosphere.

There's a reason why I no longer live in South Africa. The brain drain is a real thing.

True, but part of diversity is respecting diversity of opinions. That means (among other things) that you shouldn't penalize a play-style in a video-game just because it's evil, but you should include both good and evil options, and not specifically state "this is good" or "this is evil". Some people have different ideas of good and evil, and it's annoying to be penalized for disagreeing with the game manufacturer about good and evil (I for example think that it's not evil to be the bad guys in a video game, but I know there are people out there who disagree with me. I would not like to be penalized for playing as the 'bad guy').

Wrt it being a trade off, yes that's true. The point in question is whether purging xenos, enslaving dissidents, farming mermaids for their valuable bones, kicking the dog and banning rainbows are actually viable options. If a diverse empire is twice as strong, but risks collapsing to a mere fraction of it's strength (half, of the sake of this example) then a purge happy stable empire is always worse. This, then, means that purging is not really viable.
In addition, it has been mentioned that purging will generally make pops unhappy in the short term, which actually weakens stability in that short term (general in the sense that pops being ok with purges are the exception rather than the rule; xenophobes are exceptional in that they are ok with purging aliens for example).

So the question is, given that it's hard to balance, and there is motivation to make it weak (most people subconsciously or otherwise want the bad guys to lose), has a lot of effort been put into making sure it is at least viable?

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Thank you for that, @BrokenSky. You make a good point and if I am to reply it will be when I am sober, which is not right now.

Mermaid farming though. That takes me back a while.

 

[TheDungen]

They organized a strike once. The stream reveled that you are given an option to bribe or assassinate Ghandi/MLK, and the player picks one. After doing that, the faction never caused trouble again.

Keep in mind that something distinctly "modern" is more likely than not to be historically anomalous; if it is particular to our time in the history we know, occam's razor suggests that it is particular to our time in the history that we don't know as well. The evidence that we have available to us in this time also suggests that terrorism is not a very effective way to achieve victory, but only to prolong conflict. Keeping that in mind, it makes sense that it wouldn't still be a major way of fighting in a future historical period.

From context I don't think you are, but this is wrong enough to seem sarcastic. "Safest" is definitely not true (Chicago especially is renowned for its murder rate) and "stable" is meaningless with regard to a state within a greater nation which hasn't had a notable rebellion since before the population patterns you're talking about were established. And "most advanced" is meaningless in general while "richest" is more likely a cause of diversity than an effect.

"wealth attracts diversity" is a clear and obvious fact. "diversity attracts wealth" is not necessarily, and all you've actually argued in support of it is "education attracts wealth" which isn't the same thing.


This is true, but Stellaris is built on the paradigm that ethos effects societal conditions, not that societal conditions effect zeitgeist.

I've mentioned this before, but the amount of ethos points is actually very limiting, one more would unlock a wealth of other options. And Xenophobia/Xenophilia is a very shallow and specific take on the philosophies which it attempts to emulate, a problem not really in common with the other ethos options.

You're forgetting the tech industry, which does include some amount of women, and makes often hires minority ethnicity as long as they cleave to the correct culture (which is more a culture of wealth and a certain background than an ethnically defined one, despite being majority white). Also technically not all of the top Hollywood guys are the same ethnicity. The number one richest movie mogul (George Lucas) is not even Jewish, nor is James Cameron (number 10) though all the ones in between are (and apparently all ashkenazi specifically). And the word "mogul" itself makes its way to the English language from Jewish...



I do think we're rather off topic by now though.

Actually there are very few cases in history when rebels have raised up armies to fight on the battlefield, mostly they use other means of resisting and only fight when forced to by those they seek to resist.

 

[FerdinandVeblen]

I didn't. I think it came from Yiddish, where I imagine it would have gotten to from Ladino.

Mogul comes from Mughal, i.e. the Mughal Empire. It means rich and powerful person in allusion to princes in India. AFAIK there is no connection to Yiddish or Ladino.

 

[FerdinandVeblen]

Marxists are powerful in the forums i see.

Hey now, Paradox does have a game series where the game mechanics are heavily built on Marxism. And Victoria II is pretty much the best game ever (well, once you get the AHD expansion to fix the economy, anyway). So don't knock it too much, as Johan (I believe?) said, Marxism isn't great for running a real-world country but it works pretty well for game design

 

[6076]

Meanwhile Japan is very xenophobic, but they also don't actively hate everyone else..

I'm pretty sure koreans and chinese will disagree with you.

 

[NakedBeast]

Hey now, Paradox does have a game series where the game mechanics are heavily built on Marxism.

Could you please elaborate?

 

[FerdinandVeblen]

Could you please elaborate?

The Victoria series is what I'm talking about. I don't have the exact quotes with me, but I remember King, and I think Johan, talking about the influence of Marxist theory on the game deisgn. Marxist elements of it:

- The people are divided primarily by social class and occupation
- The masses slowly gain revolutionary consciousness and then rise up to change the system
- Displaced petit-bourgeois (the artisans) are most likely to turn to fascism
- The great capitalist powers compete for markets around the world through economic spheres of influence and colonialism

 

[Cruxador]

Mogul comes from Mughal, i.e. the Mughal Empire. It means rich and powerful person in allusion to princes in India.

No shit. It didn't teleport from one language to another halfway around the world, though.

 

[TheGrinningMan]

My suggestion for empires that want to play non-violent xenophobes, so xenophobic isn't just throwing away RP points for an advantage they'll never use: a decrease to ethos drift, a la conformist, representing a resistance to foreign ideas as much as foreign species. So even if you never enslave another species, your fanatic xenophobe pacifists will reliably remain fanatic xenophobe pacifists, and you won't have just tossed two ethos points down the drain.

Xenophile may or may not need the opposite; I don't think it does, since they'll have enough trouble with conflicting ethos just by actively integrating aliens.