Fix faction and ethics for new games.

[Red Earth]

While we're in the subject, I remember there being two xenophobe factions. One was a supremacist type, made of your founding species and wanting xenos persecuted. The second was isolationist, with xenophobe xenos and wanted no entangling treaties with other empires. The first one didn't spawn in my most recent game. Did my primary species just not develop enough xenophobia to found it or does it no longer exist?

EDIT: Never mind. Pacifists can't have a supremacist faction.

 

[Mauer]

Wasn't ethics shift supposed to work with the 2.6 update? I remember the devs saying it was working now. I do have noticed some factions popping up which are not of my governing ethics, but they're not huge and I assume are mostly from relations with empires with them.

 

[Vilcoyote]

faction creation threshold should be a % of pop following it instead of a fixed number

 

[ashbery76]

You know base issues should be fixed before adding more stuf.I don't mean to sound harse as they have only had 4 years to fix this.

 

[Dan1109]

Yeah, this for me is now the biggest disappointment in the game. I know it can take decades to switch ethics, but disheartening when you don't even see a 1% change in a year or two. Time to play a GC I guess....

 

[GeorgieBest]

Wasn't ethics shift supposed to work with the 2.6 update? I remember the devs saying it was working now. I do have noticed some factions popping up which are not of my governing ethics, but they're not huge and I assume are mostly from relations with empires with them.

It's been broken for as long as I've had the game, so at least 2 years.

The 2.6 included a note saying it had been fixed, as does the 2.6.3 beta patch notes. Unfortunately neither 'fixes' have improved the issue. Still just as broken as ever. No Dev responses on it either, seems they aren't to bothered about fixing this mechanic.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

It's been broken for as long as I've had the game, so at least 2 years.

The 2.6 included a note saying it had been fixed, as does the 2.6.3 beta patch notes. Unfortunately neither 'fixes' have improved the issue. Still just as broken as ever. No Dev responses on it either.

I have to say that you are perhaps over exaggerating with this. It IS working, albeit more slowly and not in the same way than perhaps we were expecting.

There are two factors at play. Firstly (and this is a change since 2.6) your homeworld now starts with random ethics, which aren't tailored to your starting ethics. This can lead to big factions that you're not expecting when you make first contact (the trigger for factions) so if you meet other empires early, there's a good chance you'll start with unwanted factions, however if you meet after 10-20 years, your outlying ethics would have changed enough to meet your governing ethics types (more so if you are conformists)

As for actual ethics shift, on its own it is slow, but it is working unlike pre-2.6, however increasing government ethics attraction alone doesn't shift it quickly. If you use the 'encourage political thought' edict, this increases the 'ethics shift' interval, meaning if your governing ethics are high then you can quite quickly shift ethics around (even more so if you support/suppress factions). I will agree whether spending influence for this edict to get your influence supply in line is a good idea, or is too much of a cost is debateable.

But it's not broken, just maybe not so clear how to handle it.

 

[GeorgieBest]

I have to say that you are perhaps over exaggerating with this. It IS working, albeit more slowly and not in the same way than perhaps we were expecting.

There are two factors at play. Firstly (and this is a change since 2.6) your homeworld now starts with random ethics, which aren't tailored to your starting ethics. This can lead to big factions that you're not expecting when you make first contact (the trigger for factions) so if you meet other empires early, there's a good chance you'll start with unwanted factions, however if you meet after 10-20 years, your outlying ethics would have changed enough to meet your governing ethics types (more so if you are conformists)

As for actual ethics shift, on its own it is slow, but it is working unlike pre-2.6, however increasing government ethics attraction alone doesn't shift it quickly. If you use the 'encourage political thought' edict, this increases the 'ethics shift' interval, meaning if your governing ethics are high then you can quite quickly shift ethics around (even more so if you support/suppress factions). I will agree whether spending influence for this edict to get your influence supply in line is a good idea, or is too much of a cost is debateable.

But it's not broken, just maybe not so clear how to handle it.

But it isn't...

The issue has always been that it's extremely unlikely for pops to change ethics. As it stands, it's still extremely unlikely for them to change ethics. In my testing I saw an ethic with an expected distribution of 0% grow from 10% to 20% from 2300 to 2400 when I had no migration treaties and was not taking over any other pops. Whilst I didn't try using the edict to improve this, I doubt doubling the very small base chance is going to make up that much of a difference.

The reason it seems like ethics attraction works at the start of the game is because the modifiers seem to apply properly when creating new pops from growth. Because you start the game with few pops, individual pops can create big swings in the observed distribution of ethics. But once you're out of the early game and have enough pops it becomes impossible to influence the distribution. That is not what I, or many other people, consider to be a working system.

 

[Snoipah]

Hey, I haven't dabbled in 2.6.3 yet, are the attractions fixed? Do pops actually shift now?

 

[GeorgieBest]

Hey, I haven't dabbled in 2.6.3 yet, are the attractions fixed? Do pops actually shift now?

No, the system is still broken unfortunately.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Hey, I haven't dabbled in 2.6.3 yet, are the attractions fixed? Do pops actually shift now?

They do, but not in a particularly rapid or intuitive way. It takes a bit of fiddling.

Will try and show how it works tomorrow.

 

[GeorgieBest]

They do, but not in a particularly rapid or intuitive way. It takes a bit of fiddling.

Will try and show how it works tomorrow.

Would love to see you post screenshots of it working, but I'm not optimistic.

Do your testing from 2300 onwards: if you do it any earlier then pop growth is obscuring the fact that individual pops aren't actually changing their ethics.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Would love to see you post screenshots of it working, but I'm not optimistic.

Do your testing from 2300 onwards: if you do it any earlier then pop growth is obscuring the fact that individual pops aren't actually changing their ethics.

Will try and do the whole process.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Okay here it is:

This is from an AI run I was using to test out an AI personality mod I've been making (this doesn't affect the way ethics distribution works, just the AI personalities file is altered.)

I've picked up the Human Sol Force empire at the year 2315. Here are the faction distribution for them at this time:

As you can see, there is a strong Spirtualist faction, in what should be a Militarist, Xenophobic and Materialist empire. These governing factions are present, but their faction approval is really quite low for some. The reason why there is a high spiritualist faction is due to the this empire allying with a fanatic spiritualist / militarist empire to it's east. This also led to an increase in Xenophile attraction due to diplomatic relations, which is another large faction within the empire.

THE TEST:
So here's what I did, I ran the game for 10 years. I cancelled my federation to both remove the spiritualist and xenophile ethics, cancelled all the empires diplomatic action, I supressed both the spiritualist and xenophile factions, and promoted the Governing ethics factions of militarist, supremacy (xenophobe) and materialist factions.

Here are the results:

Now, as I mentioned in my previous post on this thread, whether this is quick enough of a change, or too expensive with influence to have an effect you could argue are fair points to be discussed about the system, or whether the factors that affect ethics shifts are too great, but is ethics shifting broken? The answer is no, as you can clearly see that the numbers being promoted have increased, and the numbers for those suppressed have decreased (albeit slowly)

 

[GeorgieBest]

Okay here it is:

This is from an AI run I was using to test out an AI personality mod I've been making (this doesn't affect the way ethics distribution works, just the AI personalities file is altered.)

I've picked up the Human Sol Force empire at the year 2315. Here are the faction distribution for them at this time:

View attachment 565649

As you can see, there is a strong Spirtualist faction, in what should be a Militarist, Xenophobic and Materialist empire. These governing factions are present, but their faction approval is really quite low for some. The reason why there is a high spiritualist faction is due to the this empire allying with a fanatic spiritualist / militarist empire to it's east. This also led to an increase in Xenophile attraction due to diplomatic relations, which is another large faction within the empire.

THE TEST:
So here's what I did, I ran the game for 10 years. I cancelled my federation to both remove the spiritualist and xenophile ethics, cancelled all the empires diplomatic action, I supressed both the spiritualist and xenophile factions, and promoted the Governing ethics factions of militarist, supremacy (xenophobe) and materialist factions.

Here are the results:

View attachment 565647

Now, as I mentioned in my previous post on this thread, whether this is quick enough of a change, or too expensive with influence to have an effect you could argue are fair points to be discussed about the system, or whether the factors that affect ethics shifts are too great, but is ethics shifting broken? The answer is no, as you can clearly see that the numbers being promoted have increased, and the numbers for those suppressed have decreased (albeit slowly)

What are you talking about? Your results prove I am correct. Your xenophile faction actually grew when it should have almost disappeared. I would understand if it had shrunk slowly, but it actually grew. How can you justify this? The system doesn't work and isn't fixed.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

What are you talking about? Your results prove I am correct. Your xenophile faction actually grew when it should have almost disappeared. I would understand if it had shrunk slowly, but it actually grew. How can you justify this? The system doesn't work and isn't fixed.

It probably grew because to be fair I had cancelled my federation about 3 years in when I realised it was still affecting the growth.

But look at spiritualist - it has completely dropped by several pops, with the technologist faction taking over, with the others also gaining significant numbers of pops over time. It's working.

 

[GeorgieBest]

It probably grew because to be fair I had cancelled my federation about 3 years in when I realised it was still affecting the growth.

But look at spiritualist - it has completely dropped by several pops, with the technologist faction taking over. It's working.

I don't know what your agenda is, but your results are inconclusive. You have one faction which went the right way, and one which didn't. Pointing to the spiritualist faction and saying the entire system works is facetious. I've done my testing and my conclusion is that it doesn't work. Seems the vast majority of players have had my experience. If the vast majority feel this way then clearly something needs to change. Unfortunately I only have hand written notes of the numbers, not screenshots, but if I do another test I'll take screenshots.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I don't know what your agenda is, but your results are inconclusive. You have one faction which went the right way, and one which didn't. Pointing to the spiritualist faction and saying the entire system works is facetious. I've done my testing and my conclusion is that it doesn't work. Seems the vast majority of players have had my experience. If the vast majority feel this way then clearly something needs to change. Unfortunately I only have hand written notes of the numbers, not screenshots, but if I do another test I'll take screenshots.

1. I don't have an agenda

2. Your premise is that the ethics shift doesn't work at all.

3. I'm showing you that ethics do in fact, shift.

4. There are some other factors that could be at play here, such as reduced governing ethics attraction (there were 1-2 planets with low stability in them, this could of played into xenophile not reducing quick enough), lack of reasons to shift ethics either way (we weren't at war, nor was there any alien pops in my empire).

5. I can appreciate that my 1 test isn't enough to show that it works effectively, or that it doesn't have issues, but to re-iterate point 3, I'm simply showing that ethics do in fact, shift, which you're saying doesn't happen.

 

[GeorgieBest]

1. I don't have an agenda

2. Your premise is that the ethics shift doesn't work at all.

3. I'm showing you that ethics do in fact, shift.

4. There are some other factors that could be at play here, such as reduced governing ethics attraction (there were 1-2 planets with low stability in them, this could of played into xenophile not reducing quick enough), lack of reasons to shift ethics either way (we weren't at war, nor was there any alien pops in my empire).

5. I can appreciate that my 1 test isn't enough to show that it works effectively, or that it doesn't have issues, but to re-iterate point 3, I'm simply showing that ethics do in fact, shift, which you're saying doesn't happen.

Shifting randomly isn't working. It should shift towards the expected distribution in the faction screen. Currently it fails to do that. Not working.

If it's that they are shifting to a different distribution than the one displayed, then that isn't working either. It's worthless information if there are other things influencing it which it doesn't take into account.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Shifting randomly isn't working. It should shift towards the expected distribution in the faction screen. Currently it fails to do that. Not working.

If it's that they are shifting to a different distribution than the one displayed, then that isn't working either. It's worthless information if there are other things influencing it which it doesn't take into account.

I think it is, but as I mentioned before it's really slow, and there are an abundance of factors that get in the way, such as forming diplomatic ties creating a strong attraction to xenophile, or rivalries boosting military attraction. Combining this with the glacial pace it changes does give the impression of static ethics shifting.

So don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's perfect, and I think the numbers for both factors that affect attraction and the rate of shift need to be respectively decreased and increased (eg, making diplomatic ties less intrinsic to xenophile attraction, and boosting ethics shift to be a similar rate to when the 'encourage political thought' edict is used as standard).

Also to achieve any degree of shift does eat into your influence quite a bit, so reducing the cost to suppress or promote factions could help to give the player more agency over this.

It's a tricky thing to balance, as I also wouldn't want it to be too quick, allowing to cheese the system, or have constant ethics shifts through a few decades, but it is incredibly slow at the moment.