Ethics convergence isn't working properly?

[Technotopia]

I tried to fight back the ED and got it significantly in the negative (-20% or even -30%). I expected these pesky xenophobes and spiritualists to eventually switch to the true way of materialistic individualism, yet after more than 20 years of negative ED majority of the pops with wrong ethics are still there.
So far it is just a feeling that something is broken. To be sure I need to calculate the empirical probability of ethics switch

 

[Diezy]

Happiness plays a huge role in Ethics Divergence as well. I suspect they're unhappy from Xenophobia, and the divergence is getting bumped down into positive from that! Xenophobia is Individualists' biggest weakness on its own, but with a few happiness boosts on the tricky worlds, it can be addressed!

It tends to take ages, sometimes, as it's a random process, and you can still end up with "that guy" factions like below. ^__^ Milus ka Pretek has been factioning for years now.

 

[henzington]

This is getting changed in 1.5 but right now the best solution is being a materialist and individualist direct democracy as the happiness bonus making even xenophobic pops happy enough to not join factions.

 

[Technotopia]

Happiness plays a huge role in Ethics Divergence as well. I suspect they're unhappy from Xenophobia, and the divergence is getting bumped down into positive from that! Xenophobia is Individualists' biggest weakness on its own, but with a few happiness boosts on the tricky worlds, it can be addressed!

No. They have happiness above 50 and their total ED after all factors taken into accounts is negative.

base + distance from capital + administration building + Satramene gas + information quarantine + happiness = Total.
This total is negative. For most of pops it is around -20%.

I care about happiness via government +10%, buildings (entertainment forum) + 15%, leader (try to ellect champion of people) +10% et.c, so it is not a problem.

 

[Technotopia]

This is getting changed in 1.5 but right now the best solution is being a materialist and individualist direct democracy as the happiness bonus making even xenophobic pops happy enough to not join factions.

This is exactly what I'm doing. I can live with the dissidents (xenophobes are especially nasty, also religious freaks hate my synth policies). Still I wanted to get rid of the thought-criminals and re-educate everyone. Not the individualist way of doing things, but whatever. Still this thing looks broken and not working as expected

 

[Risa]

-30% ED just means each pop has about 30% of chance switching to one step closer to empire ethic in 10 years. So 20 years are simply too short to done the work. Besides, when a new pop is born, it usually inherit ethos from its parent, which means more pops need conversion.

 

[Malecord]

The answer for your problem is called Orbital Mind Control Laser.

 

[Diezy]

No. They have happiness above 50 and their total ED after all factors taken into accounts is negative.

base + distance from capital + administration building + Satramene gas + information quarantine + happiness = Total.
This total is negative. For most of pops it is around -20%.

I care about happiness via government +10%, buildings (entertainment forum) + 15%, leader (try to ellect champion of people) +10% et.c, so it is not a problem.

It must be bad RNG, then. In the VERY long run, we always got rid of odd ethics, although convergence does feel slower than divergence. I wouldn't rule out a bug indeed, some of my hyper-conformist single-species empires had trouble being all the same ethic, stacking all the buffs like you did there.

Should be less trouble with 1.5, although suppressing or promoting a certain ethic miiight play out the same way, if you're unlucky.

 

[Technotopia]

The answer for your problem is called Orbital Mind Control Laser.

I'm going there eventually. But it is on the end of a long research path. I also have other minor issues to solve, like getting good enough weapons to defeat awakened xenophobic empire, that is currently my overlord.

 

[Malecord]

I'm going there eventually. But it is on the end of a long research path. I also have other minor issues to solve, like getting good enough weapons to defeat awakened xenophobic empire, that is currently my overlord.

Well, now that I read your post again, if your divergence is negative already you actually don't need it yet. Just be more patient.

The ethic mechanism works now... although in 1.5 (when it will be gone for good) I won't miss it.

 

[AmpsterMan]

Unfortunately you can't do much more than wait. As an individualist your options are very limited. I'd say either continue as is OR stack happiness bonuses and embrace the ED. Remember, Individualists get reduced unhappiness from non confirming policies.

 

[The Founder]

In the current game, you got two basic Options:
1. Stack Anti-Divergence until you convert every conquest. Bring time with you.
Do not underestimate Collectivist only techs for this. Frontier Commissars is passive -25%. The Empire Wonder is -15%.
You may also need to supress factions, as they transmit thier Ethos to other pops (Build Support effect).
Ethics divergence seems to be only rolled once per year and as I said, factions work against that.

2. Ignore it. Basically add anything giving a passive/building happiness bonus to Fanatic Individualist. FI cuts down on the Unhappiness from Unfitting Policies and Alien Overlords. Happiness boost will keep them in line. However not every penalty is covered by FI and some of them stack quite high.

 

[Qoff]

To change a pop ethics there is a yerly roll, thats why take it so long.

 

[smjjames]

There's going to be an ethics divergence rework in Utopia anyway. Check out the dev diaries, one of them explains divergence somewhat I believe as it'll work differently in Utopia/Banks.

 

[Technotopia]

Well, I'm waiting for Utopia too, but I thought about reaching some kind of "I won" situation in my current 1.4 game.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

This issues has been discussed several times before. It always seemed that "bad" divergence had a greater chance of turning pops away from your governing ethics than "good" divergence did turning pops towards it, but that could all be confirmation bias on our part. I have not one shred of proof that it happens that way and eventually I just used mods to help manage ED better and was happier for it. Looks like the whole mechanic will change in Banks so it will be interesting to see how it works.

 

[Torp]

It must be bad RNG, then. In the VERY long run, we always got rid of odd ethics, although convergence does feel slower than divergence. I wouldn't rule out a bug indeed, some of my hyper-conformist single-species empires had trouble being all the same ethic, stacking all the buffs like you did there.

It's probably not a bug as much as an effect of population sizes. You typically have many pops with some ethics divergence, resulting in some of them changing their ethics. Now, if you flip the divergence to convergence, you only have that fraction with differing ethics. Say you have 100 pops, and, for simplicity, that all your pops have a 20 percent ethics divergence. Over 10 years, about 20 percent of your pops would change to have a different ethic from your original. Now switch it all around, and have an ethics divergence of -20% (i.e. an ethics convergence of 20%). Now 20% of divergent pops should change back over the course of the next 10 years - 20% of 20 being 4, you still have 16 pops of differing ethics. The 80 who never changed simply won't be affected, since they already conform to your government ethics.

Having recently played through a game where I embraced the Worm, and as such had my entire species change ethics thanks to a single click of the mouse, I can attest that it seems to go as quickly both ways.

 

[Seomis]

-30% ED just means each pop has about 30% of chance switching to one step closer to empire ethic in 10 years. So 20 years are simply too short to done the work. Besides, when a new pop is born, it usually inherit ethos from its parent, which means more pops need conversion.

-30% ethics divergence gives each pop a 3% chance of shifting closer to empire ethics every year. In ten years, there's a ~26% chance.

 

[The Founder]

It's probably not a bug as much as an effect of population sizes. You typically have many pops with some ethics divergence, resulting in some of them changing their ethics. Now, if you flip the divergence to convergence, you only have that fraction with differing ethics. Say you have 100 pops, and, for simplicity, that all your pops have a 20 percent ethics divergence. Over 10 years, about 20 percent of your pops would change to have a different ethic from your original. Now switch it all around, and have an ethics divergence of -20% (i.e. an ethics convergence of 20%). Now 20% of divergent pops should change back over the course of the next 10 years - 20% of 20 being 4, you still have 16 pops of differing ethics. The 80 who never changed simply won't be affected, since they already conform to your government ethics.

Having recently played through a game where I embraced the Worm, and as such had my entire species change ethics thanks to a single click of the mouse, I can attest that it seems to go as quickly both ways.

It is worth noting that diverging Ethos has two additional way of spreading besides Divergence of existing pops:
- New pops take a random Ethos already on the planet. They prefer thier own race here. So divergence on a growing colony is particulary bad. Even worse if the first-in colonist was already diverged
- Factions. the support effect explicitly says they will affect pop ethoi to make people less happy and build more support

So it can appear as if Ethos Convergenc is slower then divergence, when in reality divergence simply has additional ways to spread.

 

[evilon]

- New pops take a random Ethos already on the planet. They prefer thier own race here. So divergence on a growing colony is particulary bad. Even worse if the first-in colonist was already diverged
.

Plop down colonist with correct ethos, build droids (or the level of robots that gets ethos) to fill up the planet with "correct" ethos people before you get "undesirables".
Manage growth by deleting robots.
This way you can make sure that you always will have a dominance of the correct ethos, and new pops will more likely be born "right"

I bit gamy perhaps