Genocide doesn't make much sense

[Metroidkirby]

those 53 pops of proud warrior people vs. 3 phone answering machines = 53 pops die without a fight. How? Genocide should be done by armies as a total war causing devastation.

Well, it happened. They fight on my tiny size 10 artic planet, called "Gulag" with like 2500 people in purging process.
The uprising was an "inifinite" army, and now there is a 108k strong army sailing above the planet.

 

[EvilTom]

We need Thanos Purge type. "What... I'm just trying to save you from yourselves."

On Stellaris and Thanos:

Thanos would only have a point, if overpopulation was a problem, then yes. Thanos could have enlightened everyone to environmentalism and provided arcologies, jobs and food technologies. Stellaris gameplay meta is of the point of view that more population is better.

 

[EvilTom]

Well, it happened. They fight on my tiny size 10 artic planet, called "Gulag" with like 2500 people in purging process.
The uprising was an "inifinite" army, and now there is a 87k strong army sailing above the planet.

This makes it sound that revolts and rebellion don't happen enough, or require exceptional circumstances to fire? Maybe everyone is just really good at managing genocide.

I tend to use the "potent rebellions" mod.

 

[Metroidkirby]

You need really low stability to trigger the rebellion. I think it's more or less to help AI empire to not disband themselves by not-managing well happiness.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I have never read about such things in history to those extents where it was not supported at least to some extent by the majority of the population as a whole if not just passively.

Mongol conquest racked up tens of millions of death, all of them done by a relatively minuscule amount of Mongol Warriors and with primitive weapons. Even if we discard those indirectly killed by famine and such, the Mongols razed entire cities to the ground. Baghdad alone meant hundreds of thousands of victims.

It is very well within the means of a modern army to kill tens of millions of civilians if there is no opposition from outside forces. In Stellaris, once you start purging you already have the total control of the planet, so the "soldiers" can dedicate all their capability toward exterminating civilians.

BUT it would make sense that in extreme cases there should be frequent large scale revolts.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Mongol conquest racked up tens of millions of death, all of them done by a relatively minuscule amount of Mongol Warriors and with primitive weapons. Even if we discard those indirectly killed by famine and such, the Mongols razed entire cities to the ground. Baghdad alone meant hundreds of thousands of victims.

It is very well within the means of a modern army to kill tens of millions of civilians if there is no opposition from outside forces. In Stellaris, once you start purging you already have the total control of the planet, so the "soldiers" can dedicate all their capability toward exterminating civilians.

BUT it would make sense that in extreme cases there should be frequent large scale revolts.

The problem here is that they were not exterminating everyone and many could escape someplace else... this is a huge difference.

I never said that attrocities never accured that would be absurd, just that in these circomstances passive and silent resistance is futile and would produce a very different environment and reasons to resist violently.

We know from history that asymetric warfare is by far the most difficult opponent to defeat, especially when supported by the majority of the population.

 

[EvilTom]

I wonder if people would be looking at this from a human-centric popular media perspective...

All the books and sci-fi things I've read where aliens invade (or take us over by other means) and then try and wipe us out either overtly or covertly end in humanity fighting back and in most cases winning... sometimes at huge cost, but we usually end up not actually wiped out. Even in the worst cases humanity escapes the Earth.

In Stellaris, there is less chance of the victims fighting back. Do some escape as refugees... or only when land is appropriate or displaced?

 

[Nakkivene]

We know from history that asymetric warfare is by far the most difficult opponent to defeat, especially when supported by the majority of the population.

Yes, though only because of media coverage and some modicum of ethics. There's no urban guerillas if the city is gone.

 

[ShaTiK]

I wonder if people would be looking at this from a human-centric popular media perspective...

All the books and sci-fi things I've read where aliens invade (or take us over by other means) and then try and wipe us out either overtly or covertly end in humanity fighting back and in most cases winning... sometimes at huge cost, but we usually end up not actually wiped out. Even in the worst cases humanity escapes the Earth.

In Stellaris, there is less chance of the victims fighting back. Do some escape as refugees... or only when land is appropriate or displaced?

Well, if make a movie when humans fight back and fail - then you are just making a movie about Holocaust, and no one wants to see that. Well, that's a simplification, but still.
Nice remark, by the way. Culture often have subtle influence on what we think of stuff, and even simple things like the prevalence of 'hero wins the day' cultural trope affects the way we think.
Plus, again, I think people underestimate the effect of being defeated and imprisoned. They think that 'what's the big deal, you have the numbers and if you are going to die anyway - why not try to escape'. While the reality is grim and dark - a truly broken person have no will to fight or resist, he simply can not. I guess peaceful times makes people a bit ignorant to the more brutal and cruel parts of human nature.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes, though only because of media coverage and some modicum of ethics. There's no urban guerillas if the city is gone.

Asymetric warfare is not a new phenomena.. It is as ancient as written history can take us.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Yes, though only because of media coverage and some modicum of ethics. There's no urban guerillas if the city is gone.

There are much more factors that determine whether it works or not, and it's highly dependant on the technology of the aggressor and guerrillas. We'd go way off topic, i think.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well, if make a movie when humans fight back and fail - then you are just making a movie about Holocaust, and no one wants to see that. Well, that's a simplification, but still.
Nice remark, by the way. Culture often have subtle influence on what we think of stuff, and even simple things like the prevalence of 'hero wins the day' cultural trope affects the way we think.
Plus, again, I think people underestimate the effect of being defeated and imprisoned. They think that 'what's the big deal, you have the numbers and if you are going to die anyway - why not try to escape'. While the reality is grim and dark - a truly broken person have no will to fight or resist, he simply can not. I guess peaceful times makes people a bit ignorant to the more brutal and cruel parts of human nature.

Problem is that the game don't have any asymetric warfare at all... defeating and imprison people on that scale is not really easy without serious rebellion or asymetric warfare breaking out... especially in societies where information can flow relatively fast through modern technology.

The easy way as done in the game is pure fantasy even if it could be done in some rare cases because of some specific circumstances.

 

[The Exile]

Yes, the Bosch Paperclip Manufactory has already provided the entire universe with enough paperclips! Better yet, they spawned in the next game as a Fallen Machine Empire.

Words cannot express how gratifying this is.

They took The Universe Next Door option I guess, but didn't properly balance Hazard Remediation against Self-Replication? Easy to lose your swarm and stall out that way.

View attachment 439491
Buffet anyone?

This is seriously, hilariously awesome. Please post this to the Obligatory Stellaris Strange Screenshot thread!

This makes it sound that revolts and rebellion don't happen enough, or require exceptional circumstances to fire? Maybe everyone is just really good at managing genocide.

I tend to use the "potent rebellions" mod.

Love that mod! It's much more realistic, and very cool when rebellions actually succeed once in a while.

Plus there was that one time I was forced to fight a xenophobic rebellion that took over all my conquered space (2 empires' worth) while simultaneously having to fight off a fanatic purifier, a devouring swarm, and lead the non-aligned league against both sides of a war in heaven (and all the empires they'd vassalized). Then one of my few allies got a rebellion too... I had 6 war exhaustion clocks piled up in the corner at one point, a personal record.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Plus there was that one time I was forced to fight a xenophobic rebellion that took over all my conquered space (2 empires' worth) while simultaneously having to fight off a fanatic purifier, a devouring swarm, and lead the non-aligned league against both sides of a war in heaven (and all the empires they'd vassalized). Then one of my few allies got a rebellion too... I had 6 war exhaustion clocks piled up in the corner at one point, a personal record.

I would never play any Stellaris game without the Potent Rebellion Mod... makes things allot more interesting.

 

[ShaTiK]

Problem is that the game don't have any asymetric warfare at all... defeating and imprison people on that scale is not really easy without serious rebellion or asymetric warfare breaking out... especially in societies where information can flow relatively fast through modern technology.

The easy way as done in the game is pure fantasy even if it could be done in some rare cases because of some specific circumstances.

Well, devs maybe even wanted to have it, but decided against it due to the abundance of other things for player to do. No real need to add another layer, at least they probably thought so. And it's always useful to remember that not every good idea is a good game mechanic. I assure you that devs and designers had tons of nice ideas that got scrapped because in the end they didn't provide enough to the game for the price of managing (and properly developing) proposed system. Plus, at some point game designer should stop adding new features to the game, at least until the existing ones are fleshed out. Which they are not, currently. Like, say, espionage - it's a neat system to have, but before they fix diplomacy as a whole they, in my opinion, don't have the right to even start developing espionage mechanics. Fix what's already here - then add new things.

 

[Althizor]

The game already has a framework for making it difficult to oppress/purge large groups of people.

The problem is they have no teeth. Stability/crime is both easy to maintain and doesn't do all that much even when not maintained.

Ground armies being necessary to keep the peace when large scale enslavement/purging are happening would be a way to make armies more relevant, at least.

 

[Secret Master]

On Stellaris and Thanos:

Thanos would only have a point, if overpopulation was a problem, then yes. Thanos could have enlightened everyone to environmentalism and provided arcologies, jobs and food technologies. Stellaris gameplay meta is of the point of view that more population is better.

Pretty much.

I'd only purge in the current iteration of Stellaris if I was an FP or DS. In all other cases, purging POPs is, if nothing else, an unconscionable waste of labor and biomass.

Although I had to learn the hard way that as fun as livestock is, it's not as efficient as farming if you run nutritional plenitude. As it turns out, giving your population extra food to grow via policy also gives your livestock extra food, making them far less efficient.

So, I don't use livestock as much anymore, since I love the POP growth from that policy.

Well, it happened. They fight on my tiny size 10 artic planet, called "Gulag" with like 2500 people in purging process.
The uprising was an "inifinite" army, and now there is a 108k strong army sailing above the planet.

Ummm, so if the army is a 108k fleet, does the AI realize it can still kill them? I mean, they are unarmed transports, but with that much fleet power, could the AI be bluffed?

 

[Ashantai]

A reminder to keep discussion confined SOLELY to the game. No real world or external discussion of this topic is allowed.

 

[Metroidkirby]

Ummm, so if the army is a 108k fleet, does the AI realize it can still kill them? I mean, they are unarmed transports, but with that much fleet power, could the AI be bluffed?

That's a good question, but even without this "fleet" power, it had more than 2000 pop and my tech level. It was far ahead of the other AI empire. So even if it was on the border, I think an AI wouldn't have dow them.

I'll add that this 108k army in space, was the cause of massive stuttering (not so much when they weren't moving), so it was basically fine until I dow them. The "fight" last for months with a slow pace.

On the other hand... the planet was on massive deficit, shortage on food, amenities, energy and so on. I don't know why they keep this army around. AI late game is pretty dumb with its economy, more than on previous game version, so it's probably coherent.

 

[TarnishedSteel]

I certainly hope it is not. There are currently many game breaking problems (for games beyond the first 100 year). An exploit is not game breaking at least....

Sure, but there’s currently some mumbling that total pop number and speed are related. I don’t want Chucklefuck McDevouringSwarmAI to nuke my CPU because it can’t open its horrific gaping maws quickly enough.