I like the ethics change, but... (add new ethics, don't change)

[TempusxX]

I to want to see "new" ethics and not reworked ethics, all of the current ethics are boring to me and just meh

 

[Sucellus]

It's ethos, not ethics. There's a difference. That said the game needs to be simple, and not add more to the "political compass". To add more difference between empires we will get Traditions, which I would have called ideology but w/e.

 

[BrokenSky]

It's ethos, not ethics. There's a difference. That said the game needs to be simple, and not add more to the "political compass". To add more difference between empires we will get Traditions, which I would have called ideology but w/e.

I think you'll find it's ethoieses seriously though please don't start that conversation again.

To be honest I think that the main point of ethics should be to differentiate pops. empires should be differentiated by government type and traditions first, and ethoi second. Well maybe traditions first and ethos + government joint second. But at game-start you don't have any traditions...

 

[Noumenon]

I agree absolutely with the OP on retaining collectivist vs individualist (and will be pretty bummed if these concepts are removed, as they are some of the most important concepts debated in politics), but I do take issue with it being called 'authoritarianism' vs 'egalitarianism'. These are not necessarily opposites, egalitarianism is a very loaded word, and it would make more sense to call it 'aurhoritarian' vs 'decentralist' or 'authority' vs 'liberty'.

I don't recall the in-game modifiers attached to 'egalitarianism' in the recent DD, so this may or may not merely be a semantic issue, depending on the concepts illustrated and how they influence the modifiers accordingly.

 

[Derp]

I agree absolutely with the OP on retaining collectivist vs individualist (and will be pretty bummed if these concepts are removed, as they are some of the most important concepts debated in politics), but I do take issue with it being called 'authoritarianism' vs 'egalitarianism'. These are not necessarily opposites, egalitarianism is a very loaded word, and it would make more sense to call it 'aurhoritarian' vs 'decentralist' or 'authority' vs 'liberty'.

I don't recall the in-game modifiers attached to 'egalitarianism' in the recent DD, so this may or may not merely be a semantic issue, depending on the concepts illustrated and how they influence the modifiers accordingly.

If you don't like the names then make a mod. Otherwise...

We do not factor personal political delusions into the game design, I'm afraid.

 

[Vjeldan]

I do not think a heated debate on "communism vs capitalism" is adding much positive to the discussion.
Both ideologies have failed to protect humans from themselves.
"Individualism vs collectivism" though is an interesting discussion on more philosophical and less ideological ideas.

I dearly hope Paradox will find a way to add INDvCOL back into the game in a meaningful way.

 

[AndrewT]

Several inappropriate posts deleted.

Keep modern-day ideological arguments to the OT forums.

 

[Evrach]

@Wiz : Speaking of Ethics, What will happen to ethic-based steam success ?
At this time, we've got :

"Slave to the Systems
As a collectivist empire, have at least 200 enslaved pops in an empire of at least 500 pops"

&

"Tourist Trap
As an individualistic empire, own a planet with at least 10 different species on it"

Will the two of it be kept with "collectivist" replaced by authoritarist & "individualistic" replaced by "egalitarism" with the same conditions of achievement ? Or do you intent to change them ? Supress them totally ? Will there be brand new success for the new ethics ? In that cas what will happen to "Slave to the Systems" & "Tourist Trap" ? Suppressed ? Kept for thoses who achieved it ?

Thanks

 

[zanaikin]

I also really hope that the Paradox devs will not simply replace the Collectivist -- Individualist axis with Authoritarian -- Egalitarian.

The thing is... Ethos is meant to describe culture, the sweeping undercurrent of civilization that outlasts governments, dynasties, and states. Any culture has the potential to tolerate an Authoritarian regime if the going gets rough and decisive action is necessary (like if a foreign race is invading your lands and seeking to kill you all: USSR 1941), and any culture will demand more voice and representation when standards of livings rise and people become more interconnected with the ways of the world -- after all, human are social creatures which makes us political creatures by default. Things like this are the reason why some neighboring nations with a very similar way-of-life have completely different governing styles.

(for example: China and South Korea, both with extremely Confucian-influenced Collectivist meritocratic cultures, but while South Korea successfully embraced Democracy, China has grown to equate Democratization with instability after two disastrous governments during the Revolutionary era and the collapse of the USSR)

The Collectivist - Individualist axis is probably the biggest cultural barrier in the modern world, and why many nations sees "the west" as a new era of crusading zealots, except forcibly exporting plutocratic democracy, instead Christian Catholicism, onto cultures with little desires for 'western values'. Modeling it successfully in a game will go a long way in bridging many of the cultural misunderstandings and clashes in the world today.


That being said, I do understand that the current mechanics are having trouble modeling the Collectivist - Individualist axis, possibly even in a detrimental way. Any Confucian scholar would be aghast to see that Collectivism is somehow equated with the enslavement and purging of whole populations. Heck, your own Swedish Carolean Kings would be rolling in their graves if their "rule by heaven's will" was somehow perverted into PURGE THEM ALL!

...But just personally, I hope the devs will keep trying to work on this rather than simply give up on it because it is a difficult task. To quote the Extra Credit gamedev channel: Nobody ever said game design was easy.
And games are one of the few mediums through which we could truly attempt to experience and understand people from across the world.

EDIT:
BBC actually just wrote this article the day I made this post, highlighting the significance of the "Collectivism vs Individualism" axis.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170118-how-east-and-west-think-in-profoundly-different-ways

 

[Amaroq]

But do you think that Authoritarianism has more to do with slavery than Collectivism does? Because Communism is collectivistic and the Soviet Union was the only Slave State that existed in modern times. So what about Collectivism did not fit?

We do not factor personal political delusions into the game design, I'm afraid.

This is why I'm salty about the change. Individualism vs Collectivism was the only honest depiction of that ideological clash that I've ever seen in a video game. There is absolutely no contradiction in a collectivist espousing love and equality for his fellow man, and then enslaving and purging people. They do both of those things because they believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Socialist and communist regimes have always started with the former and ended up as the latter, precisely because of the collectivist worldview.

If you wanted to make an honest change, maybe you could get away with isolating the slavery and purging to fanatic collectivist, and non-fanatic collectivist could be puppies and unicorns, per the personal political delusions of socialists that you're factoring into the game design. (Or in 1.5, Collectivism could allow the "soft" forms of slavery and purging, such as domestic servants and displacement. Fanatic Collectivism could allow slave labor and killing people.)

There's also no strain in individualism being a worldview of freedom and rights and a worldview that leads to laissez-faire capitalism. The individual's right to pursue his own happiness must naturally be protected by rights, and also naturally leads to capitalism, a system where one can freely pursue their own profit.

I'm also salty because I play individualist because I'm an individualist, and "egalitarian" (everybody having exactly the same outcome) is also a collectivist concept. So my empire will no longer be a self-expression without some kind of radical changes to the way I play.

You certainly have the right to design your game how you see best. But I think it's a horrible decision. Yeah, I'm being a bit disrespectful in this post. But my empire, as an expression of my views, meant a lot to me, so... I'm kind of sorry but I'm kind of not.

I suppose it'll be easy enough to find a cosmetic mod that changes it back once 1.5 is out.

 

[BrokenSky]

This is why I'm salty about the change. Individualism vs Collectivism was the only honest depiction of that ideological clash that I've ever seen in a video game. There is absolutely no contradiction in a collectivist espousing love and equality for his fellow man, and then enslaving and purging people. They do both of those things because they believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Socialist and communist regimes have always started with the former and ended up as the latter, precisely because of the collectivist worldview.

If you wanted to make an honest change, maybe you could get away with isolating the slavery and purging to fanatic collectivist, and non-fanatic collectivist could be puppies and unicorns, per the personal political delusions of socialists that you're factoring into the game design. (Or in 1.5, Collectivism could allow the "soft" forms of slavery and purging, such as domestic servants and displacement. Fanatic Collectivism could allow slave labor and killing people.)

There's also no strain in individualism being a worldview of freedom and rights and a worldview that leads to laissez-faire capitalism. The individual's right to pursue his own happiness must naturally be protected by rights, and also naturally leads to capitalism, a system where one can freely pursue their own profit.

I'm also salty because I play individualist because I'm an individualist, and "egalitarian" (everybody having exactly the same outcome) is also a collectivist concept. So my empire will no longer be a self-expression without some kind of radical changes to the way I play.

You certainly have the right to design your game how you see best. But I think it's a horrible decision. Yeah, I'm being a bit disrespectful in this post. But my empire, as an expression of my views, meant a lot to me, so... I'm kind of sorry but I'm kind of not.

I suppose it'll be easy enough to find a cosmetic mod that changes it back once 1.5 is out.

You seem to think that collectivist == socialist/communist. It has been explicitly stated previously (even before release) that this was not the case. You seem to believe that certain eastern dictatorship who claim such ideologies act in a manner typical of their ideology, rather than a manner typical of dictators. As general rule, the fact that someone is a dictator determines their actions far more than any ideology (whether they believe in it or only claim to).
You explicitly state that capitalism follows naturally from individualism, and this isn't the case either. Capitalism is an artifact of our specific history of trying to acquire power over one another (i.e. politics). [EDIT: most things are, to be fair.]

The reason that this has been changed in game is because the ethics as written, with one being good for slavery and having a dictatorial government preference and the other being pro-democracy, fits the ideals of egalitarianism vs authoritarianism better than collectivism and individualism.

 

[zanaikin]

Collectivist simply means that they value the good of society as a whole more than the good of the individual. It has NO connection with whether they accept purging, slavery, or are socialist, etc.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of collectivist states that are STAUNCH anti-socialist / anti-communists (fascism and monarchism are the famous examples).

At the same time, a Collectivist culture can just as much reject slavery and purging because they see it as detrimental to the public order. Buddhist teachings and Confucian philosophy are both examples of this. That's not to say those society don't have a bottom class who live a slave-like existence (like the Dalits in the Hindu caste system or the Enunches in the Confucian bureaucracy). But they are nevertheless treated as human beings and not property.

There's a reason why slavery was never as widely practiced in Asia as it was in Europe/New World and the Middle East.

 

[Republic of Swag]

Both dichotomies are overly simplistic but I think authoritarianism vs egalitarianism works better from a gameplay perspective. Ideally I'd like it if they retained Individualism vs collectivism as well. A vs E could represented the political system while I vs C could represent the economic system. But the devs seem unwilling to do this and I really don't think it's a huge deal since how the economy of your empire functions isn't really fleshed out anyway.

 

[Stadhouder]

More is not always better. We should not have ethics that lack clearly defined mechanics and roles.

I agree the ethics are not unique enough but adding more ethics without the mechanics to support them will only make that worse.

Are you saying that if we come up with a good suggestions for roles and mechanics for individualist vs collectivist mechanics you might chance your mind?

 

[Ikael]

The more I read this topic, the more I think that the Individual VS collectivism axis will probably be implemented whenever the trade system is expanded and improved, probably on a major future expansion like Utopia, with individuallist empires recieving bonuses to trade routes / corporations / commerce, and the collectivists ones implementing socialistic policies and planned economies. However, with a bare-bone economic system as it is now, the inclussion of this axis seems, indeed, bloat.

 

[Krajzen]

Personally I would like to see new ethics axis, but less general than collectivist-individualist...

Currently each axis is about another aspect of empire:
- sociopolitical order
- attitude towards aliens
- degree of militarisation
- cosmic philosophy

Do you see what is missing here?
Yeah,
Economic stance!

I'd love to see an expansion which would expand economy and trade, while also adding new ethos axis:
"Communist-Capitalist" or
[input better and especially more subtle names instead - I am not great expert on economics - for example Statist-Libertarian, Equality-Free Market etc]

"But Krajzen, aren't communists innately autocratic and capitalists vice versa?"
Not necessarily, especially in faraway galaxies with alien psychologies and cultures.
I can easily imagine Egalitarian [democratic] space Communism and Autocratic Capitalism - in the latter case we even have a perfect example of such society today: Singapore! It was an autocracy, and still is rated as not free, while being crazy rich, capitalist and innovative. To some degree you could argue modern China is "authoritarian capitalism".

 

[Hertzila]

A lot of people seem to miss the point. There never was, effectively, individualism vs. collectivism axis in the game, it was always egalitarianism vs. authoritarian. Forgive me for going all 1984 on this, but this is a bugfix, a retranslation. Since before the launch, there's been a constant debate that the axis was named poorly and it really doesn't represent what it claimed to represent. As the devs themselves noted, individualism was a confused mess of laissez-faire economics and libertarian or egalitarian philosophy, while the collectivism axis was basically just authoritarian and nothing else.

There's also not enough room in the game for another ethos axis. What role would it have? Economical model? There's not enough stuff about economy in the game for it to do anything. How valued an individual is? What exactly would be the gameplay ramifications of that, compared to just setting the appropriate policies? There's just not enough mechanics to support another axis. Maybe in a future DLC, but even then, the current axes are pretty comprehensive. What else could you fit there?

Are you saying that if we come up with a good suggestions for roles and mechanics for individualist vs collectivist mechanics you might chance your mind?

Isn't that always the case? I wouldn't hold my breath, though. There's way too much other stuff that could be added to Stellaris and the devs have a limited amount of time.