Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?

[Vladisi]

Oh, I agree, I actually meant political power should also affect the amount of support they can give to factions(precisely because workers have less influence to give). Sorry if that wasn't clear.

This would lead to a paradoxical situation where the faction with governement ethics and all its issues fulfilled may not necessarily bring the maximum amount of influence, should all the powerful pops just happen to belong to a faction on the political fringe. In stratified economy ruler pops have five times the power of specialists and more than ten time the power of workers, but are the least numerous. Since there's no direct connection between a pop's stratum and faction, it's entirely possible for all the pops from the most numerous faction be entirely workers with some specialists, which is fine for stability, as higher strata jobs get happiness bonus, it would not be fine for factions, as pop happiness has no effect there.

 

[GeorgieBest]

My number of pops following a certain faction never seems to decrease. Looks like they haven't bothered to fix it...

 

[Silens]

From my perspective it isn't fixed at all, at least not in a comprehensible way.

I have +195% Governing Ethics Attraction and through several modifiers additional global +50% spiritualist attraction. A temple on every planet gives a further bonus to that. According to the UI info, due to the current Spiritualist Attraction around 57% of my pops are expected to follow it. For Xenophobe around 29% are expected. But only 33% are following the Spiritualist Faction, only 22% are following the Xenophobe Faction.

Instead I have 10% of my pops following Pacifism, which has mere 2% ethics attraction. Almost as bad are Materialism and Egalitarian ethics, both at 1% ethics attraction, but respective 2% of my pops embracing them. And yes, I suppress all three of them for decades.

In earlier version I had three happy factions with this setup. But now I have 7 (!) factions, three of them unhappy.

If it wasn't such a huge chore with 4500 pops on 90 worlds, I'd fire the Divine Enforcer on each and every of my planets. The whole things needs more work it seems.

 

[RoverStorm]

If it wasn't such a huge chore with 4500 pops on 90 worlds, I'd fire the Divine Enforcer on each and every of my planets. The whole things needs more work it seems.

If you hold shift while making an action, I think you should be able to "Que" up actions. You don't need to hold shift the whole time either; just while you are ordering the action.

So you can pause the game, spend a little bit of time queing up all 90 planets one after the other, then just forget about it while it travels around and purges the heretics.

 

[FrancescoT]

From my perspective it isn't fixed at all, at least not in a comprehensible way.

Let's make a summary:

1. starting POPs ethics distribution is practically random and not weighted considering the capital's governing ethics attraction modifier;
2. growing POPs ethics distribution seems to work correctly according to expected ethics distribution;
3. POPs shifting away from governing ethics seems to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
4. POPs shifting to governing ethics does NOT seem to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
5. promoting faction does NOT seem to work probably because of #4;
6. suppressing faction does NOT seem to work Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?

 

[Riftwalker]

Thank you, that's an interesting read.

In my case it appears that because every ethos is present, there is a complete lock as none of them wants to go under the minimum thresholds?


My core ethics are pacifist and egalitarian, with 50% governing attraction from One Vision tradition and 100% governing attraction from Hearts and Minds edict. Also notable Hearts and Minds gives +100% to the ethics shift chance.

So here's what the game shows me as the current/desirable percentages:
View attachment 557774

Note: These percentages have not changed at all in the past 80 years.

According to the numbers stated above:
Egalitarian - It's 14% with a desired of 29% which means it's probably exactly half (14.5%) and no pops will swap away from it, but in theory there should have been new pops swapped to it.

Pacifist - 13% with a desired of 18% which means that pops could swap away from it every now and then.

Xenophobe - 14% with a desired 2% This one is interesting, I had xenophobe for the entirety of the game, playing mostly isolationist for the first half of the game, so at first this made some sense, but in the second half of the game I've gotten a large influx of refugees due to neighbouring wars, and went mostly xenophile in terms of policy. The desired effect seems to reflect this, but there's been no change in the actual percentage of followers. The desired is much much less than half so it should be impossible for pops to get this ethic.

Militarist - 11% with a desired 6% This was a weird one since I played pacifist isolationist in the first half of the game, but after I got attacked by an AI this faction popped up out of the blue and despite being incredibly unhappy in a pacifist empire, it stayed at 11% for the whole game as well. They didn't grow but didn't disappear either.

Authoritarian - 10% with a desired 3% This is under half so again, new ones shouldn't be popping up. This one does seem to be reactive on the long scale at least, it's the only one that I really noticed changing % every now and then.

Xenophile - 13% with a desired 26% This is exactly half so there shouldn't be any pops swapping away from this one and again stagnation is the name of the game here, nothing really changed with them, I even endorsed xenophile for about a year with no changes at all.

Materialist - 11% with a desired 7% This again popped up after I got some robots, only a handful, but they've been here ever since with no real changes.

Spiritualist - 11% with a desired 9% These came up after the half-point when I fought a war and conquered a bit of land from a spiritualist fallen empire. Now, them being a fallen empire, they didn't have a lot of pops, not enough for it to matter in the large scale, and sure enough the numbers while increased initially, seemed to not change at all ever since I acquired them.


So as an experiment, I've endorsed egalitarian ethics and supressed every single other ethic in my empire to get the following attraction rates:
View attachment 557778

I will let the game go for exactly 25 years and we'll see if anything changes. In theory, every ethic other than egalitarian should not gain any new pops anymore and egalitarian should not lose any pops anymore, and every year I should get 4% of my pops (since ethics shift chance is doubled) to swap ethics. We'll see if it works.

PS - I don't have any migration treaties and won't gain any new pops from wars. I've also restricted refugees so no new pops other than those grown here, should affect the experiment.
I have 2948 pops total at the start of the experiment, I will note exactly how many I have at the end as well.

yeah, when you get refugees they'll probably have xenophobe personal attraction because the pop is being purged in the other empire or has been purged recently.

 

[Silens]

If you hold shift while making an action, I think you should be able to "Que" up actions. You don't need to hold shift the whole time either; just while you are ordering the action.

So you can pause the game, spend a little bit of time queing up all 90 planets one after the other, then just forget about it while it travels around and purges the heretics.

Sadly it isn't that easy. For it to work I need to convert all pops that belong to a certain faction in order to eradicate it. As long as the faction exists, pops will grow into and embrace it.

So if I want to kill off the unwanted factions, I have two ways to do it: a) Resettle all pops from the factions to one single world and convert them, or b) stop pop growth and stop internal pop migration for my main species for as long as the Colossus takes to bathe 90 worlds in divine light.

a) is possible, but really tedious. You need to shuffle around your pops until the one you want to move (the one with the unwanted faction membership) is the single remaining pop in either a job or unemployed. That way you are guaranteed to move it from one planet to your divine bath planet. Sometimes it takes 30 sec, sometimes 2 min to do so. The problem is that I have 1000 pops that need reeducation. Do the math, tedious doesn't even begin to describe the amount of work you have to put into it. Oh, and it costs 400k energy for 1000 pops to move to the planet and then back. And minerals to repair all the buildings that are ruined.

b) will cripple your growth and happiness for half a century or more, which isn't ideal either.

In this game I only have my main species and around 200 slaves to guarantee high conformity to government ethics. You can imagine my shock when one faction after another began to shoot up like weed.

Let's make a summary:

1. starting POPs ethics distribution is practically random and not weighted considering the capital's governing ethics attraction modifier;
2. growing POPs ethics distribution seems to work correctly according to expected ethics distribution;
3. POPs shifting away from governing ethics seems to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
4. POPs shifting to governing ethics does NOT seem to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
5. promoting faction does NOT seem to work probably because of #4;
6. suppressing faction does NOT seem to work Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?

When I look directly at the Ethics of a single pop that is in the suppressed faction, I get the following:

I understand that 2% isn't 0%, but with the weaker factions it gets even more absurd:

With a mere 0.535% attraction people become member in a suppressed faction. Yes, I understand, even half a % is not zero, but still, it doesn't feel right. Not at all.

 

[RoverStorm]

Sadly it isn't that easy. For it to work I need to convert all pops that belong to a certain faction in order to eradicate it. As long as the faction exists, pops will grow into and embrace it.

So if I want to kill off the unwanted factions, I have two ways to do it: a) Resettle all pops from the factions to one single world and convert them,

Firing the Divine Enforcer on a planet gives a +999% Spiritualist attraction for ten years. I'm not sure exactly how high you can get ethic attraction for other ethics, but every time I've fired the Divine Enforcer I've only gotten Spiritualists growing on that planet for 10 years.

Now I do think what you brought up is still a problem though. 90 Planets is "probably" going to take longer than 10 years to fire at.

 

[Silens]

Firing the Divine Enforcer on a planet gives a +999% Spiritualist attraction for ten years. I'm not sure exactly how high you can get ethic attraction for other ethics, but every time I've fired the Divine Enforcer I've only gotten Spiritualists growing on that planet for 10 years.

Now I do think what you brought up is still a problem though. 90 Planets is "probably" going to take longer than 10 years to fire at.

It also converts all pops to your Spiritualist Faction, as Spiritualism is the only Ethics they have after the Divine Bath. On a smaller scale I've already done it: Deport all unwanted faction members to a holy bath planet and then convert them in one fell swoop. Without members the faction dissolves instantly.

But on a larger scale it's not feasible anymore. It would be if we had a way to filter pops for faction membership in the resettle menu. I'd gladly pay up 400k energy just to get rid of those factions. With what we have now, however, it's nearly impossible.

 

[RoverStorm]

All this Divine Enforcer conversation has truly convinced me is it might be a good idea to remove the 1 colossus per empire limit.

Somehow. Even if the only way to increase the limit is +1 Colossus limit for each copy of a planetary unique building that requires 75 pops on a planet.

I know what they're concerned about: a giant flood of colossus's all being thrown sacrificial style at enemy planets, with no care if a few die because there's too many for them to all be destroyed in time.

 

[Silens]

All this Divine Enforcer conversation has truly convinced me is it might be a good idea to remove the 1 colossus per empire limit.

Somehow. Even if the only way to increase the limit is +1 Colossus limit for each copy of a planetary unique building that requires 75 pops on a planet.

I know what they're concerned about: a giant flood of colossus's all being thrown sacrificial style at enemy planets, with no care if a few die because there's too many for them to all be destroyed in time.

The balancing aspect aside, this whole thing with the Divine Enforcer only works with one single ethic. That's less than ideal.

For this to work we need the ability to outright ban factions to stop their growth, a planetary decision to massively boost and speed up government ethics swaps and a building for reeducation purposes. I don't expect it to be easy or cheap, but at least we should've something that works for all ethics.

 

[GeorgieBest]

Let's make a summary:

1. starting POPs ethics distribution is practically random and not weighted considering the capital's governing ethics attraction modifier;
2. growing POPs ethics distribution seems to work correctly according to expected ethics distribution;
3. POPs shifting away from governing ethics seems to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
4. POPs shifting to governing ethics does NOT seem to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
5. promoting faction does NOT seem to work probably because of #4;
6. suppressing faction does NOT seem to work Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?

What if you are promoting a faction which is not the governing ethic? Would that work correctly?

 

[FrancescoT]

What if you are promoting a faction which is not the governing ethic? Would that work correctly?

Probably .. but it needs to be tested to be sure .

 

[Flame13223]

So here is what I find strange when it comes to pop ethics attraction logic:
1. Happiness is supposed to increase attraction to governing ethics.

Spoiler

# Happiness Levels
pop_happiness_positive = {
pop_government_ethic_attraction = 0.50

2. Supressing factions is supposed to decrease attraction to a specific ethic, BUT it also drops a pop's happiness

It just seems like these two factors are working at cross purposes. If you want more pops following your governing ethics you want to boost your happiness. If you want to decrease the popularity of another ethics you're supposed to suppress it. However, suppressing a faction will almost invariably give them very low approval. Very low approval means -10 to happiness. Lower happiness means lower chance to switch to governing ethic attraction. If it causes happiness to dips below 50% than you're actively discouraging your governing ethics!

The factions that appear to come out most ahead when it comes to low happiness + suppression are third party ethics that you're not suppressing.

This may be relevant because my empire basically has above 80% happiness EVERYWHERE. Sometimes 100% sometimes 90% sometimes 80 and something %, but overall super high happiness.
So maybe something there is acting weirdy. Maybe my pops are too happy to feel like they need to change ethics, who knows?

Anyways my test is done and I will provide all the deteails below.

Let's make a summary:

1. starting POPs ethics distribution is practically random and not weighted considering the capital's governing ethics attraction modifier;
2. growing POPs ethics distribution seems to work correctly according to expected ethics distribution;
3. POPs shifting away from governing ethics seems to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
4. POPs shifting to governing ethics does NOT seem to work correctly Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?;
5. promoting faction does NOT seem to work probably because of #4;
6. suppressing faction does NOT seem to work Has governing ethics attraction been fixed yet?

Umm, yeah I don't really know about growing pops ethics distribution to be honest. It feels like maybe it is working but only to a degree and I'll show you why.

Here's my finished 25 year experiment (with doubled ethics shift chance mind you) and well let's take a look:

So as you can see, in 25 years of promoting Egalitarian (governing ethic nr1) and suppressing all other ethics including pacifist (governing ethic nr2) I ended up with the following results:

- Egalitarian +3% support
- Pacifist -1% support
- Xenophobe -1% support
- Militarist +0% support
- Authoritarian +0% support
- Xenophile -1% support
- Materialist +0% support
- Spiritualist -1% support

Now there is 3-4% that is missing if you add it all up so there's a couple places where some fractions are missing.

Now let's check by population numbers:
- Egalitarian +185 pops
- Pacifist +42 pops
- Xenophobe +46 pops
- Militarist +44 pops
- Authoritarian +48 pops
- Xenophile +48 pops
- Materialist +54 pops
- Spiritualist +36 pops

Total pop difference: 3463 - 2948 = 515 pops
Now eagle eyed readers may have noticed that adding all the previous + pops up is only 503 not 515. That might be because I took the total pop measurement after some time had passed in-game already.

Disclaimer I did also make a minor mistake right before the end unfortunately, by accepting a rebel planet that wanted to join my empire. It happened literally 1 month before I stopped the test, and they have in total 64 pops according to the planet's info tab, however 27 of those are robotic hive mind pops that are being auto-purged.
Luckily that means that only 37 pops in total are affecting the make-up of my empire's ethics diversity. 37 pops amidst 3463, is a drop in the bucket. But I checked the ethics distribution anyways and the planet is majority egalitarian with 32% with the other 68% being randomly split among the other factions, between 5% and 16% each.


Anyhow, let's check the total pops gained as 515.

185 of those is Egalitarian meaning only about 36% of the newly grown pops follow Egalitarian ethics, despite my attraction for Egalitarian ethics on average being between 70% and 80% at all times. Even checking random planets individual random pops reveals 70%+ attraction to Egalitarian ethics.

Now, I did make a mistake, by accepting those 37 pops...however I manually counted them, 10 of them are egalitarians exactly. Meaning if we remove the 37 from the total gained we get 478 pops grown and only 175 of them were grown egalitarian. Which is coincidentally also 36%

So my mistake didn't seem to change much there, thankfully.


The interesting thing is, it does appear like going below 10% representation is nigh-on impossible for any faction. I clearly remember that at no point during this test has ANY faction ever had less than 10% support. Which is strange and seems to support the theory that having the presence of all factions within your empire causes an ethic deadlock where none of the factions can ever get into a dominant position, therefore everything stagnates completely. It only appears that people who have only a handful of the 8 possible ethics present in their empire can ever get the ethics to shift quickly from one to the other.


PS - Also notable that governing ethics attraction of 150% did not seem to matter for the 2nd governing ethic in Pacifist.

Pacifist faction is one of the few that lost 1% despite having a bigger attraction overall than the other factions, some of which didn't lose any % at all.

 

[GC13]

185 of those is Egalitarian meaning only about 36% of the newly grown pops follow Egalitarian ethics, despite my attraction for Egalitarian ethics on average being between 70% and 80% at all times. Even checking random planets individual random pops reveals 70%+ attraction to Egalitarian ethics.

That is... Strange. I would have figured that at least newly spawned Pops would correctly adhere to the attraction weights, but it looks like even that isn't happening.

 

[Jman5]

So, I was playing around with the numbers to see if changing them would do anything

Spoiler

POP_ETHOS_DIVERGENCE_RATE_MULT = 0.02 # Chance of a pop evaluating its ethics every year
POP_CHANGE_FACTION_CHANCE = 0.02 # Once every month a pop has X chance to change faction but only if the pop wants to

I changed each of their chances from 2% to 100% and ran the game for about 10 years. Then I changed both of them together and ran it. After that I looked to see if anyone had switched ethics. As far as I could tell none of the pops who were from the non-governing ethics non-faction ethics shifted over to another ethic/faction.

This leaves me with 3 possibilities.
1. Ethic switching is broken.
2. pops don't want to switch ethics (not sure why unless I misunderstand how it works)
3. I'm missing something like a minimum number of years before they switch (it's only supposed to be 1 year, and I even tried changing this to 1 day and it did nothing)

 

[Flame13223]

That is... Strange. I would have figured that at least newly spawned Pops would correctly adhere to the attraction weights, but it looks like even that isn't happening.

To be fair, now that I think about it, it IS possible that 70% of new pops were grown egalitarian and they just swapped later to something else, or that previously egalitarian pops swapped away from egalitarian somehow.

Not likely, but possible.

The most likely situation in my opinion is that the growth rate is even less than 36% because about half of that is from pops swapping ethics. In fact if I were a betting man, I'd say the amount of new pops that are grown egalitarian are actually somewhere between 10% and 17%, mirroring the total distribution.

 

[FrancescoT]

3. I'm missing something like a minimum number of years before they switch (it's only supposed to be 1 year, and I even tried changing this to 1 day and it did nothing)

Maybe it's 1 pop shift check for every planet?

I don't think that, for performance reason, there is an every pop check.

 

[GeorgieBest]

Seems to be a lot of confusion about this topic. Have the devs ever commented/acknowledged that there is a problem in the mechanics of ethic shifts?

 

[Jman5]

Maybe it's 1 pop shift check for every planet?

I don't think that, for performance reason, there is an every pop check.

No idea. I was just using 1 planet to test this. Maybe the starting pops are hardlocked into their ethics. Or maybe you can't change these values and then load up a save. It's worth noting though that new pops that grew seemed to be assigned to actual factions instead of the non-faction ethics.