Ethos Bonus - Selection

[shadowrook]

I'm pretty excited about Stellaris and I love everything that I've seen so far.

One thought I've had from watching the streams and reading some of the comments is that the Ethos bonuses seem to play into a specific archetype, which may not be exactly what the player is roleplaying. For example, the Collectivist gives bonuses to slavery tolerance and food production, however unless you're playing a hive-mind like collectivist society, this may not be the right RP bonus.

My thought on this, would be that you select an ethos and then there are a few options to select from, that are unique to the ethos. For example, for collectivist, maybe you could choose "sub-ethos" related to industry production, slavery tolerance, food production, etc. that provide bonuses to those areas. Alternatively, maybe there are some technologies that modify the existing bonuses. The benefit that I see from this, is that each race would become even more unique to play and also other interactions through things like diplomacy could be tailored. To continue along the same example, maybe that could play into things like war goals or trade treaties. So the collectivist society that is a slave trader, might want to annex a planet to turn them into slaves, but that option wouldn't be available unless you selected the slavery tolerance sub-ethos. Or maybe when you're trading with this society, offering slaves (which I'm not sure if you can do, but it works for other things like food or materials) could be seen more favorably.

I think that this could allow for more variability in the long-term, as it would keep you guessing with each new empire you meet, rather than one specific ethos. The major drawback to this, is that unless balance is done correctly, you'll be forced to choose certain traits due to the enormous advantage that you receive from it.

Any thoughts?

 

[Orkonkel]

I don't know. Feels like we don't need additional layers of complexity at this point. I'd rather see one or two more additional ethos pairs on the axis.

 

[[Q]uik]

Considering you can choose 3 ethos - with "less severe" bonuses and negatives, i think we're fine as it is.

 

[Joe Joerson]

I'm pretty excited about Stellaris and I love everything that I've seen so far.

One thought I've had from watching the streams and reading some of the comments is that the Ethos bonuses seem to play into a specific archetype, which may not be exactly what the player is roleplaying. For example, the Collectivist gives bonuses to slavery tolerance and food production, however unless you're playing a hive-mind like collectivist society, this may not be the right RP bonus.

My thought on this, would be that you select an ethos and then there are a few options to select from, that are unique to the ethos. For example, for collectivist, maybe you could choose "sub-ethos" related to industry production, slavery tolerance, food production, etc. that provide bonuses to those areas. Alternatively, maybe there are some technologies that modify the existing bonuses. The benefit that I see from this, is that each race would become even more unique to play and also other interactions through things like diplomacy could be tailored. To continue along the same example, maybe that could play into things like war goals or trade treaties. So the collectivist society that is a slave trader, might want to annex a planet to turn them into slaves, but that option wouldn't be available unless you selected the slavery tolerance sub-ethos. Or maybe when you're trading with this society, offering slaves (which I'm not sure if you can do, but it works for other things like food or materials) could be seen more favorably.

I think that this could allow for more variability in the long-term, as it would keep you guessing with each new empire you meet, rather than one specific ethos. The major drawback to this, is that unless balance is done correctly, you'll be forced to choose certain traits due to the enormous advantage that you receive from it.

Any thoughts?

I'm excited too.

The Collectivist and Fanatic collectivist are not hive-mind nor do they need to be. The bonuses represent an increased tolerance for taking and accepting less "for the greater good"
not hive-mind like disregard for individual units.

Whiles it's a good idea in it's current form it is too complex and not really applicable or balancable enough. Maybe at some point down the line some sort of sub-ethos might be needed but not now nor in that state.

While it would undoubtedly add more variability it would not make sense in how ethos works.

Yes above.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

Not right off the bat, but I would take this as dlc or mod material. When we get used to the various combinations and their consequences, I would greatly enjoy sub ethoses for rollplaying reasons.

I know "hive mind" is just some name that was associated with one of the AI during the Blorg stream, I don't know what it actually implicates in-game, but collectivism can also just mean communism that worked for the species (the members might be individuals with dreams and beliefs, but will prefer to put the state over themselves, or perhaps they care more about their species than their government). Thing is, we have to be really creative with sub-ethoses, at least I can't think of that many.

I mean, we could take another example. Xenophobes can mean many things. If we look at history, many people on the forums like to associate Xenophobia to Nazi Germany, but it can also mean Japan (and we are all pretty confident that the Japanese people are nice). Then again, that rollplay can be formed by picking Xenophobia and choosing between Militarism or Pacifism, and Spiritualism or Materialism (Germany or Scandinavia for example are like Xenophobe and Materialism combination, feudal Japan is Xenophobe and Spiritualism combination etc.) Same deal with Xenophilia (British Empire or the various Muslim empires that existed were Xenophilia and Militarism, USA is Xenophilia and Materialism, old USA is Xenophilia and Pacifism, India and old China is Xenophilia and Spiritualism, etc.).

So many political rollplays already covered by the existing combinations. I'm just sure there are more that aren't, that is why I support this idea. Spiritual militarists are very much bent on honour or military tradition (within convenience), whilst materialist militarists care only about victory and prowess of all means. Individualist militarists might be comparable to the Steppe Hordes (or Modern USA JK), and Spiritual pacificsm might be comparable to the Buddhist or Jainist faith. Extremist individualists might be anarchists, or might only matter to upper classes (lower classes don't get to be individualists). And these are all just combinations of 2 ethoses, you can choose 3 non-extremist ethoses too.

 

[incarnate]

If I am not mistaken there are already 240 possible combinations of ethoses which I like very much. They have apparently done a lot of work already tailoring diplomatic messages to these, so for the base game at least we imo have enough room for replayability due to "countless" different AI empires and for differentiating choices for the player to roleplay.

I am not saying your thought doesn't have merit. But I think we are being spoiled with this multitude of choices already, pending review after the actual release ofc.

 

[S5731]

If I am not mistaken there are already 240 possible combinations of ethoses which I like very much. They have apparently done a lot of work already tailoring diplomatic messages to these, so for the base game at least we imo have enough room for replayability due to "countless" different AI empires and for differentiating choices for the player to roleplay.

I am not saying your thought doesn't have merit. But I think we are being spoiled with this multitude of choices already, pending review after the actual release ofc.

Completely agree - I think it is worth waiting to play the game and see/understand the complexity of the current system before adding to it.

 

[Rabid]

Just do what I always do in games like this - ignore the fluff associated with mechanical choices between different options and go with whatever fits your concept best. In this case, don't just think that you need to be 'collectivist' because your culture has a strong sense of communality - other options may be more appropriate.

Adding "sub-ethos" seems like an extremely clunky suggestion to fix what is essentially a complaint regarding the observed vs. implied meaning of the individual names of the ethos choices, aside from being a nightmare to balance properly.

 

[Voidlord]

Personally I would prefer more Ethos axis at first, one I could see would be a Merchantile, and non commerical Ethos Axis, in a perspective Trade DLC

 

[Cruxador]

My thought on this, would be that you select an ethos and then there are a few options to select from, that are unique to the ethos. For example, for collectivist, maybe you could choose "sub-ethos" related to industry production, slavery tolerance, food production, etc. that provide bonuses to those areas. Alternatively, maybe there are some technologies that modify the existing bonuses. The benefit that I see from this, is that each race would become even more unique to play and also other interactions through things like diplomacy could be tailored. To continue along the same example, maybe that could play into things like war goals or trade treaties. So the collectivist society that is a slave trader, might want to annex a planet to turn them into slaves, but that option wouldn't be available unless you selected the slavery tolerance sub-ethos. Or maybe when you're trading with this society, offering slaves (which I'm not sure if you can do, but it works for other things like food or materials) could be seen more.

We already know that there are laws, technologies, and government types dependent on ethos. Considering that these exist, I think adding an arbitrary sub-ethos like you describe wouldn't benefit the game enough to justify the added complexity.

I'd rather see one or two more additional ethos pairs on the axis.

I think four is an appropriate number, and it seems a thing that's very hard to add to after launch without screwing everything up from a game design/conceptual perspective.

Personally I would prefer more Ethos axis at first, one I could see would be a Merchantile, and non commerical Ethos Axis, in a perspective Trade DLC

That would be redundant with the spiritual/materialist axis.

 

[moglus]

That would be redundant with the spiritual/materialist axis.

would you care to elaborate on that?

 

[Voidlord]

That would be redundant with the spiritual/materialist axis.

I dont think so. Materialism in game is more about being grounded in reality while spiritualism isnt. A Merchantile axis would be more about how driven your civ is about gathering wealth...

 

[moglus]

I dont think so. Materialism in game is more about being grounded in reality while spiritualism isnt.

Well i think that's a bit of a harsh summarization, it's more like a Materialist vs. Metaphysical view on life, consciousness and existence as a whole

 

[Voidlord]

Well i think that's a bit of a harsh summarization, it's more like a Materialist vs. Metaphysical view on life, consciousness and existence as a whole

So being grounded in reality, and not?
I know its a harsh summarization, but its the easiest way to desrcibe it. Of course being Spiritualist isnt a bad thing, they get Psionics afterall.
I was pointing out how the Spiritualist/Materialist axis doesnt take into account more Merchantile races (like Ferengi) and those that arent (UFP as a general rule)

 

[Oscot]

We already know that there are laws, technologies, and government types dependent on ethos. Considering that these exist, I think adding an arbitrary sub-ethos like you describe wouldn't benefit the game enough to justify the added complexity.

I think four is an appropriate number, and it seems a thing that's very hard to add to after launch without screwing everything up from a game design/conceptual perspective.

I agree that sub-ethoses are unnecessary and that the number of full ethoses we have right now is fine, but I literally cannot think of any reason why "Adding an extra one would fuck up the game design". The four are independent of each other and hardly interact whatsoever, other than "If a nearby Pop has a different ethos, happiness decreases" and "If a nearby empire has a different ethos, diplomacy suffers". There's nothing complex about the interaction of Materialist/Spiritual with Xenophile/Xenophobe, for example, and you could add another axis with no trouble at all. All you have to do is think up "Democratic Crusaders", "Xenophobic Isolationist" names for their new combinations.

So do share your thinking with me, 'cos I got nothin'.

 

[Cruxador]

I dont think so. Materialism in game is more about being grounded in reality while spiritualism isnt. A Merchantile axis would be more about how driven your civ is about gathering wealth...

It's an axis about how you value what is physical and observable versus what is not. The former of those things can be summarized as wealth. The only way a mercantile set of values would be separate from materialism would be if it's specfically valuing the gain of that wealth through trade, as opposed to through industry (which makes little conceptual sense; something must be created before it's traded and the race had to exist on its own first) or through conquest, in which case it would overlap with the militarist ethos. A "militarist v materialist" ethos does not well supplement the existing system.

I agree that sub-ethoses are unnecessary and that the number of full ethoses we have right now is fine, but I literally cannot think of any reason why "Adding an extra one would fuck up the game design". The four are independent of each other and hardly interact whatsoever, other than "If a nearby Pop has a different ethos, happiness decreases" and "If a nearby empire has a different ethos, diplomacy suffers". There's nothing complex about the interaction of Materialist/Spiritual with Xenophile/Xenophobe, for example, and you could add another axis with no trouble at all. All you have to do is think up "Democratic Crusaders", "Xenophobic Isolationist" names for their new combinations.

So do share your thinking with me, 'cos I got nothin'.

Please note that I said game design, not the mechanical implementation thereof. They could probably add new ethoses without breaking the game. That doesn't mean that doing so would make conceptual sense. The most diverse set of analogous choices I can think of is in Dominions, which has order vs turmoil, production vs sloth, growth v death, heat v cold, luck v misfortune, and magic v drain. Six. And there's a lot of little bits of overlap there. But the most important issue is that it greatly reduces the degree to which the characterize your nation. Saying "my nation is materialist, militant, collectivist, and doesn't care about xenos" gives a clearer picture than "my nation is orderly but lazy, plagued by death and heat, but filled with good fortune and strong magic." Something as simple as the D&D (good v evil, law v chaos) paradigm would be too small, there's no nuance. But the bigger the system gets, the less the variation actually means something. That's design. Into gameplay, it either requires more points (to be honest, I think we'd be better off with one more anyway) or there would be a much smaller portion of foreign nations where there's an overlap or opposition in ethos, and while the gameplay may not support it that strongly, this still is a problem that throttles narrative.

 

[aitaituo]

I agree that sub-ethoses are unnecessary and that the number of full ethoses we have right now is fine, but I literally cannot think of any reason why "Adding an extra one would fuck up the game design". The four are independent of each other and hardly interact whatsoever, other than "If a nearby Pop has a different ethos, happiness decreases" and "If a nearby empire has a different ethos, diplomacy suffers". There's nothing complex about the interaction of Materialist/Spiritual with Xenophile/Xenophobe, for example, and you could add another axis with no trouble at all. All you have to do is think up "Democratic Crusaders", "Xenophobic Isolationist" names for their new combinations.

So do share your thinking with me, 'cos I got nothin'.

I like that each ethos is vague and uniform in its bonuses, because that means collectivist can mean space communist or space ants or space Orwellian nightmare.

I like that each ethos may push you towards a specific playstyle even if that conflicts with your particular vision of how you would like your empire to unfold. Because if I am a fanatical collectivist and have no interest in slavery, won't I be tempted, perhaps during a losing war, to enslave my pops for the production bonuses? Or if I am an individualist an annex a planet of alien fanatical collectivists, perhaps the humans back home won't like it, but those aliens won't and don't I need those minerals ASAP anyway?

Sometimes it is good when you can build a pool, throw your simspops in it, and then remove the ladder. Sometimes it is good when you pick the slacker career due to your pops' whimsy instead the business career. Sometimes it is good when your pops say screw the +300 lifetime achievement points I'd get from this activity, I'm going to urinate in a toilet, you monster.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I'm pretty excited about Stellaris and I love everything that I've seen so far.

One thought I've had from watching the streams and reading some of the comments is that the Ethos bonuses seem to play into a specific archetype, which may not be exactly what the player is roleplaying. For example, the Collectivist gives bonuses to slavery tolerance and food production, however unless you're playing a hive-mind like collectivist society, this may not be the right RP bonus.

My thought on this, would be that you select an ethos and then there are a few options to select from, that are unique to the ethos. For example, for collectivist, maybe you could choose "sub-ethos" related to industry production, slavery tolerance, food production, etc. that provide bonuses to those areas. Alternatively, maybe there are some technologies that modify the existing bonuses. The benefit that I see from this, is that each race would become even more unique to play and also other interactions through things like diplomacy could be tailored. To continue along the same example, maybe that could play into things like war goals or trade treaties. So the collectivist society that is a slave trader, might want to annex a planet to turn them into slaves, but that option wouldn't be available unless you selected the slavery tolerance sub-ethos. Or maybe when you're trading with this society, offering slaves (which I'm not sure if you can do, but it works for other things like food or materials) could be seen more favorably.

I think that this could allow for more variability in the long-term, as it would keep you guessing with each new empire you meet, rather than one specific ethos. The major drawback to this, is that unless balance is done correctly, you'll be forced to choose certain traits due to the enormous advantage that you receive from it.

Any thoughts?

well, I don't really see how "collectivist" makes sense giving tolerance to slavery... if there is a slave, there is also an owner, and this is the very antithesis of a collectivist, egalitarian society. Societies built around slavery weren't collectivist in the slightest, just think ancient Rome and pre-civil war US... Even in an insectoid hive mind, where roles are determined by birth, everyone, even the hypotethical queen, is a "slave" to the race as a whole, so there isn't any actual socioeconomical slavery.

 

[Chaos_TLW]

well, I don't really see how "collectivist" makes sense giving tolerance to slavery... if there is a slave, there is also an owner, and this is the very antithesis of a collectivist, egalitarian society. Societies built around slavery weren't collectivist in the slightest, just think ancient Rome and pre-civil war US... Even in an insectoid hive mind, where roles are determined by birth, everyone, even the hypotethical queen, is a "slave" to the race as a whole, so there isn't any actual socioeconomical slavery.

The slavery tolerance applies to the pop being enslaved. That means it is more likely to accept its lot because it thinkt it is for "the Greater Good".

 

[Cruxador]

well, I don't really see how "collectivist" makes sense giving tolerance to slavery... if there is a slave, there is also an owner, and this is the very antithesis of a collectivist, egalitarian society.

Collectivism isn't inherently egalitarian. It just means putting the needs of the group first.

China is pretty much the quintessential collectivist culture after all (at least in popular perception, of course every nation with that long a history has some variation) and Confucianism is all about unequal relationships.