Fix faction and ethics for new games.

[Olterin]

Here's a thought - I'm observing ethics shift become slower and slower as time progresses (as @klc123 suggested I keep an eye on things past 2300). First fifty years went by like a breeze in terms of ethics drift, the next 50 were a crawl, now I have 97% projected xenophobe ethics and it's sloooooooooooowly growing, but the pace has become glacial (2339). I suspect that the ethics shift might be limited to a certain number of pops checked every time there is such a check, not literally every pop in your empire. If that is the case, then you'd observe it becoming slower and slower until, around 2400 with pop counts in the thousands, it might as well not exist. The "easy" check for this would be to see how much, if any, pop ethics shift after 2400.

I'll report back when my Inward Perfection save is far enough along, as I have exactly two factions, and no outside interference short of foolish AI wars (which will stop once I beef up the fleet). Last time I checked I can swing it from 97% xenophobe expectation to around 40% by switching promotion/suppression on and off (and those do work, by the way, or I'd not have gotten to 87% xenophobia in the first place) (and getting rid of xeno slaves). Once I have that save I'll also upload it so you can see for yourself what's happening (and have mercy on my gene clinic memery spam )

 

[mrt1212]

This is purely observational but it seems to me that merely having faction pops on a planet is a bigger issue than their attraction model in the Faction section. Once the cat is out of the bag with even one pop on a planet then you're playing a different kind of management game with them convincing newly minted pops to join them as egals despite you being a Xeno/Authoritarian empire.

 

[MartinSWE]

There seems to be conflicting views on just how a fixed ethics shifting system would look. For me it's unacceptable that the Capital starts out as a 'free for all' especially since it can completely **** your game if you play as a dictatorship and your Ruler decides to join the weakest faction (usually egalitarians) thus making it immediatly grow even when you do everything you can to supress it.

It's not logical for a dictator to join a Faction that wants to promote democracy and quite frankly that should never happen even if it's the biggest faction in your Empire. This to me is a much bigger issue then wheater ethics shifting is fast enough or not. That POPs do change ethics proves that it's atleast possible and Mods have shown that it's quite simple to increase the speed at which it happens.

 

[Red Earth]

I also started a game and had diverse ethics. 40% militarist which was equal to attraction, but while xenophile wasn't the expected 60% and instead had a portion divided among the rest. However, after 10 years it had worked itself out and no factions other than militarist and xenophile formed and both were close to their attraction number. This was with the beta patch so at least I've seen ethics shift work.

There seems to be conflicting views on just how a fixed ethics shifting system would look. For me it's unacceptable that the Capital starts out as a 'free for all' especially since it can completely **** your game if you play as a dictatorship and your Ruler decides to join the weakest faction (usually egalitarians) thus making it immediatly grow even when you do everything you can to supress it.

It's not logical for a dictator to join a Faction that wants to promote democracy and quite frankly that should never happen even if it's the biggest faction in your Empire. This to me is a much bigger issue then wheater ethics shifting is fast enough or not. That POPs do change ethics proves that it's atleast possible and Mods have shown that it's quite simple to increase the speed at which it happens.

I don't know how faction leaders are chosen (I think it's just random) but I'd say your emperor should ALWAYS be the leader of the authoritarian faction. Should their heir take over as faction leader after their death? I don't know. Might make authoritarian ethics too easy to maintain, but it should at least start this way.