I think it's time to replace the Authoritarian/Egalitarian ethics

[Iosue Yu]

What is missing in the game, and requires head canon, is that all the ethics can have positive or negative overtones.

Or, if the game was designed differently, the fanatic aspect of the ethic would have negative overtones.

A xenophobic species might just be one that is strongly tied to their own culture/species, to the exclusion of others. A fanatic xenophobe species would be one that believes their culture/species is superior, and should dominate all others.

Likewise, an egalitarian society would be one that strives to give all individuals in their society equal say in government, while a fanatic egalitarian would try to impose this view on all other species regardless of their biology or psychology.

I have missed your comment the first time. This is precisely the point.

All 8 ethics, 6 of them can have a "bad guy" situation when taken to the extreme.

• Militarist - Warmongering
• Pacifist - Isolationist, or "Surrenderist"
• Authoritarian - Slave Driving Tyrants
• Xenophobe - Genocides
• Spiritualist - Superstitious Conservatives
• Materialist - Nothing sacred, actively seeking religious artifacts and burn them (not present in game though), burning temples

But the Xenophile and Egalitarian are somehow default "good guys".

The Xenophile and Xenophobe pair is worse because by default (neutral), your immigration policy is to give Full Citizenship to everyone, leaning towards Xenophile.

So these ethics are biased to such a degree that reviewing them is something we really need.

 

[MK1980]

...

Consider an insect colony. There are workers, soldiers, breeders, a queen. It's a hierarchical stratified structure. It doesnt mean the workers are oppressed and the queen is a fascist.
...

hive insects aren't hierarchical. the animals we call queens aren't rulers of the state - they are basically the reproductive organs of the hive. there are only few (or only one - depending on species) of them per hive, so workers or soldiers would naturally sacrifice their lifes to protect that important organ, but that doesn't mean that the queen animal is higher in a hierarchy - just that losing it might doom the whole hive while the death of worker or soldier animals is part of everyday life for the hive.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

They already changed those ethics ONCE.

I agree they are not fun, especially sicne we now have HIVEMIND, which si the ultimate Authoritarian :O

I was wondering how long it would take before somebody brought that up...

The problem is, when they got rid of Collectivist vs. Individualist, they broke something that the game had really benefited from.

There just isn't, at present, any way whatsoever to represent a highly individualist society. There's no libertarians, much less anarchists. You can have corporations, but you can't have capitalists whose society is structured entirely around property rights and contract law, because the megacorp holds all the power and admits no competition and rules by oligarchy. You can have people who are all about fighting, and who even say you aren't a citizen if you won't fight, but you can't have people who would fight their own society rather than let it infringe on their freedoms.

Of course, part of the reason for the last thing is that internal politics in Stellaris basically don't exist right now, but even if they did, the militarists go to the Imperialist faction and the egalitarians to the Progressive faction; there straight up isn't any Libertarian faction to counter the Totalitarian faction! The closest might actually be the Prosperity faction, which is at least very non-interventionist, but again that's only external non-intervention; you can still force them all to get gene-mods or implants or work in factories or enslave any xenos you happen to somehow acquire and nobody of that faction will care at all. Meanwhile, those egalitarians will rightly put their foot down about slavery but then turn right around and argue for redistribution and a state-provided standard of living!

You can't even get an actual "Democracy" option; it's basically an elective dictatorship (citation: you can effect nearly whatever policies you like, and and most edicts, no matter their impact on happiness) and the voters have no power except once every 10 years they can pick a new puppet with a meaningless "mandate". Large-scale true democracies are an occasional trope of sci-fi that I'd love to see the game evoke.

Yes, "Authoritarian" makes more sense than "Collectivist" to describe a society that practices classic chattel slavery, but "Collectivist" makes more sense than either "Authoritarian" or "Egalitarian" to describe communism. Individualism is compatible with pretty much anything except authoritarianism but not properly represented by any of the others, egalitarianism included. It's a shame. Stellaris will let you have your luxury space communism and your gritty space despotism and your cyberpunk space corporate hellscape... but you can't have your rugged space frontiersmen or your federated space micronations or your radical space anarcho-*ists.

(Possibly-obligatory disclaimer: I doubt I'd want to live in any of those worlds, and I doubt they'd actually work very well, but this is a game with both chattel slavery (and even "livestock") and communist utopias; why should any well-discussed future society concept be left out? It'd be fun to game, regardless of how well it would work in reality.)

 

[roman566]

But the Xenophile and Egalitarian are somehow default "good guys".

They can also be the bad guys by going crusader against anyone who thinks differently than them:

"It is our duty to bring enlightenment to the people of the galaxy and teach them about equality whether they like it, or not."

 

[Mastikator]

I have missed your comment the first time. This is precisely the point.

All 8 ethics, 6 of them can have a "bad guy" situation when taken to the extreme.

• Militarist - Warmongering
• Pacifist - Isolationist, or "Surrenderist"
• Authoritarian - Slave Driving Tyrants
• Xenophobe - Genocides
• Spiritualist - Superstitious Conservatives
• Materialist - Nothing sacred, actively seeking religious artifacts and burn them (not present in game though), burning temples

But the Xenophile and Egalitarian are somehow default "good guys".

The Xenophile and Xenophobe pair is worse because by default (neutral), your immigration policy is to give Full Citizenship to everyone, leaning towards Xenophile.

So these ethics are biased to such a degree that reviewing them is something we really need.

Ask authoritarians and they can tell you how egalitarians are the bad guys when taken to the extreme.
Ask xenophobes and they can tell you how the xenophiles are the bad guys when taken to the extreme.

We see this play out in the game, egalitarian xenophiles are perfectly capable of doing morally bad things like wage unjust war. They are perfectly allowed to build death stars and blow up entire planets.

Your ethos doesn't make you a "good guy".

 

[MateuszS]

I have missed your comment the first time. This is precisely the point.

All 8 ethics, 6 of them can have a "bad guy" situation when taken to the extreme.

• Militarist - Warmongering
• Pacifist - Isolationist, or "Surrenderist"
• Authoritarian - Slave Driving Tyrants
• Xenophobe - Genocides
• Spiritualist - Superstitious Conservatives
• Materialist - Nothing sacred, actively seeking religious artifacts and burn them (not present in game though), burning temples

But the Xenophile and Egalitarian are somehow default "good guys".

The Xenophile and Xenophobe pair is worse because by default (neutral), your immigration policy is to give Full Citizenship to everyone, leaning towards Xenophile.

So these ethics are biased to such a degree that reviewing them is something we really need.

Stellaris nneds internal policy/management (including unrest and rebellions) rework to do so properly. Say, both fan xenophiles and fan egalitarians could have security problems (the former, becasuse "minority enrichment/tolerance/whatever" and the latter "down with the police state").

 

[makaramus]

I have missed your comment the first time. This is precisely the point.

All 8 ethics, 6 of them can have a "bad guy" situation when taken to the extreme.

• Militarist - Warmongering
• Pacifist - Isolationist, or "Surrenderist"
• Authoritarian - Slave Driving Tyrants
• Xenophobe - Genocides
• Spiritualist - Superstitious Conservatives
• Materialist - Nothing sacred, actively seeking religious artifacts and burn them (not present in game though), burning temples

But the Xenophile and Egalitarian are somehow default "good guys".

The Xenophile and Xenophobe pair is worse because by default (neutral), your immigration policy is to give Full Citizenship to everyone, leaning towards Xenophile.

So these ethics are biased to such a degree that reviewing them is something we really need.

Xenophils:Fools that are easy to be backstabbed by their false trust (also when combined with slavers they become collectors)

Also what kind of "super bad guy" did you give to materialists? They dont do "book burning"
"nothing sacred" is true, they dont care about objects that dont mean anything other than to person's belief and they are ready to do many dangerious thing for knowladge
but they are not atheists that seek to destroy faith ot someting.

 

[xeleth12]

I think I did a rather good job at explaining why this conversation is mostly redundant into such a high sci-fi setting, taking into accound the "true" alien factor of evolution and development on an alien world and how it's long history, mixed with alien biology and world would make then truely "alien" to us, even culture/government-wise.
Broad terms are here for a reason, and can thus encompass many, many tropes.

Talking about real life politics and purely human politics in relations to truely alien beings is redundant to say the least. I can't believe this conversation has dragged on for so long.
Try thinking outside the box folks~

 

[Iosue Yu]

I think I did a rather good job at explaining why this conversation is mostly redundant into such a high sci-fi setting, taking into accound the "true" alien factor of evolution and development on an alien world and how it's long history, mixed with alien biology and world would make then truely "alien" to us, even culture/government-wise.
Broad terms are here for a reason, and can thus encompass many, many tropes.

Talking about real life politics and purely human politics in relations to truely alien beings is redundant to say the least. I can't believe this conversation has dragged on for so long.
Try thinking outside the box folks~

I therefore beg for your pardon to not have done a good job at explaining a counterargument.

Sci-Fi are always about real world problems. Their main spirit is foreshadowing worries about human societies. Fictions with dragons flying around aren't really about dragons and magical fantasy worlds are also not about magic, but about the people's interactions. It's still a people's story.

Now Aliens are humans but with a different upbringing.

No, it's not a simplification or bad writing. It's good writing.

If Aliens are truly alien, then you'd not be able to socially interact with them even with translators. Now we're at the stage of having Galactic Communities and spies. We should be way past this stage.

If Aliens can be socialised, then they would follow some form of sociology. Also, Sci-Fi stories have a tendency to make human-like Aliens. Hmm... Even magical fantasy fictions would make human-like gods and entities. But why? None other than the very reason that all gods, magical being, ghosts, daemons, Aliens and stuff would never get a good connection with the readers if they are too inhuman. Remember the Geth from Mass Effect? We all love the Geth because they are more human than expected when they ask "Does this unit have a soul?"

So the disbelief of Aliens following human sociological patterns is in stark contrast to most Sci-Fi stories - as authors want to create more human-like entities for the readers to get connected to. So that "He may have blue skins but he's as human as us, with a bleeding heart and good natured." And often the biggest villains go to another human who has chosen a path that he loses his humanity.

So, dear gentleman. I advise you to think more deeply on fictional works. All fictions have some meaning or message underneath the explosions and genocides. Aliens are not so alien after all. But sometimes it's human's evil intents that are truly alien.

 

[FuzzyLogic]

It's Xenophile in Stellaris term because everything about increasing trade belongs in this category.

But if you think about such an exporter country with a strong pride about themselves, they would prefer to be mostly inwards with a closed door policy.

"I want to earn your money because I am better and you're buying my things. But I am simply not interested in your foreign trinkets."

And they would not allow foreign companies to operate within their soil. Even if allowed, foreign companies will be operated under big limitations and handicaps setup by the government. When they migrate to another country, companies opened there would be hiring people from their own country but not the locals. Their immigration policies will be strict and would generally discourage immigrants. They can open up their own churches on your soil but you can't send missionaries there. If for example some immigrants who follow a faith that eating certain things is not allowed, similar to Muslims in our world, this country would be feeding them with just this forbidden food as the assimilation policy.

Are you sure you want to say these people are Xenophiles?

Trade in this game is a reciprocal thing. I'd argue that a nation like the one you described *may* have some historical precedent (Postwar Japan or the US at some point in the XIXth Century) but in Stellaris there's just no mechanics to represent mercantilism or nationalist economics, since you just can't do one-side deals.

Also, bear in mind that Xenophobes in Stellaris don't get penalties for interacting with other nations of their same species. It's alien life that bothers them, so I'd say that Xenophobia in the game has absolutely nothing to do with nationalism.

 

[Iosue Yu]

Trade in this game is a reciprocal thing. I'd argue that a nation like the one you described *may* have some historical precedent (Postwar Japan or the US at some point in the XIXth Century) but in Stellaris there's just no mechanics to represent mercantilism or nationalist economics, since you just can't do one-side deals.

Also, bear in mind that Xenophobes in Stellaris don't get penalties for interacting with other nations of their same species. It's alien life that bothers them, so I'd say that Xenophobia in the game has absolutely nothing to do with nationalism.

To be frank, trading in Stellaris isn't trading. It's just some resource production that needs delivery to your capital instead of instantly banking it.

 

[balmung60]

have missed your comment the first time. This is precisely the point.

All 8 ethics, 6 of them can have a "bad guy" situation when taken to the extreme.

• Militarist - Warmongering
• Pacifist - Isolationist, or "Surrenderist"
• Authoritarian - Slave Driving Tyrants
• Xenophobe - Genocides
• Spiritualist - Superstitious Conservatives
• Materialist - Nothing sacred, actively seeking religious artifacts and burn them (not present in game though), burning temples

But the Xenophile and Egalitarian are somehow default "good guys".

The Xenophile and Xenophobe pair is worse because by default (neutral), your immigration policy is to give Full Citizenship to everyone, leaning towards Xenophile.

So these ethics are biased to such a degree that reviewing them is something we really need.

The game actually presents different bad guy scenarios for spiritualism and materialism, in part because by their flavor text, if not their governments, neither strictly deals in religion, but rather in whether souls are real (spiritualists say they are real and consciousness creates reality, while materialists say they aren't and reality creates consciousness).

The bad guy situation for spiritualism is messing with higher powers they can't possibly understand and potentially dooming the whole galaxy to being a snack an abomination from beyond the Shroud.

The bad guy situation for materialism is, as the spiritualist fallen empire helpfully points out, the collective suicide of billions of beings and the annihilation of their souls to give rise to pale imitations of the divine spark that once resided within them. And worse, that they might try to "share" this by killing everyone else to create false metallic copies, giving rise to a galaxy of machines that pretend to think. Even at less than full-on synthetic ascension, materialist synthetic research can be seen as creating machines to rule over and possibly even enslave "real" life and barely different from creating rogue servitors. Though admittedly, this only really makes sense if you're already coming at it from the spiritualist perspective of "souls are real and possibly create the material world".

"Bad guy" scenarios for xenophilia and egalitarianism are easy, especially when viewed from the opposing ethic.

• Xenophiles - hybrid abominations
  • Alternatively forced cultural integration that annihilates local cultures into a homogenized "acceptable" culture (or basically "Amerika" by Rammstein)
• Egalitarians - have no direction and can't get anything done because they're too busy voting on everything and changing leaders every ten minutes
  • Also, democratic crusaders, who are cartoonish neoconservative warmongers who totally just want to spread democracy and definitely don't want to "liberate" your betharian crystals

As an aside, I disagree with your earlier assertion that egalitarianism is chaos, both because nothing in-game suggests it has anything to do with class conflict (at least outside of the shared burdens civic), and because one of the oldest anarchist slogans (and anarchism clearly fits within the shared burdens civic) is that "society seeks order in anarchy" or "anarchy is order" (hence the circle-A symbol).

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

hive insects aren't hierarchical. the animals we call queens aren't rulers of the state - they are basically the reproductive organs of the hive. there are only few (or only one - depending on species) of them per hive, so workers or soldiers would naturally sacrifice their lifes to protect that important organ, but that doesn't mean that the queen animal is higher in a hierarchy - just that losing it might doom the whole hive while the death of worker or soldier animals is part of everyday life for the hive.

As a training myrmecologist I can confirm that you are fully correct.

 

[FuzzyLogic]

Xenophiles - hybrid abominations

• Alternatively forced cultural integration that annihilates local cultures into a homogenized "acceptable" culture (or basically "Amerika" by Rammstein)

Ah, that's why I think Xenophilia shouldn't come with a blanket ban on slavery. I can perfectly picture an empire that seeks to strenghten itself by forcibly incorporating other species into their fold, sometimes as thralls, sometimes as simple biological spare parts. The Horatio from Endless Space or the Ethereals from the XCOM saga come to mind.

 

[MichaelJanuary]

As an aside, I disagree with your earlier assertion that egalitarianism is chaos, both because nothing in-game suggests it has anything to do with class conflict (at least outside of the shared burdens civic),

Egalitarian = consensus of the individuals, with all individuals having a say. (though its very badly implemented, as someone else points out, you basically elect a Dictator every 10 years, and there is no 'political mandate' as such that limits what the dictator can do - factions maybe?). Besides the elections, there is not much in game that implies a 'democracy of equals'.

Authoritarian = decisions made by the few, on behalf of the many (whether the few were chosen, bred for the position, appointed, trusted, not trusted, usurped or inherited power is irrelevant). The only manifestation in the game is that the society is stratified, with different classes having varying amounts of political power.

Everything else (rights of the individual, fascism, anarchy, oppression, freedom, equality, good, evil) are merely projections of the player's own bias. (headcanon).

If we were to imagine a society that elected to apply genetics or eugenics over multiple generations to differentiate between a 'brainy leader class' to make decisions and a 'strong worker class' to implement the decision, and that they did this voluntarily or due to evolutionary necessity for the good of their species, then such a society may be 'authoritarian' by Stellaris definition.

To come back to animal analogues, examples of Authoritarianism in nature (wolf packs, pride of lions, herd of elephants, pod of dolphins, troop of primates), and examples of Egalitarianism in nature (flock of birds, school of fish, swarm of locusts). Lions operate in groups with a hierarchy, Leopards operate as free individuals. Both approaches has positives, and negatives. Neither is better or worse than the other. Egalitarians are as likely to sacrifice a few individuals for the survival of the group as Authoritarians are to protect all individuals because of their value to the group. Implying that an individual is better or worse off in any one or the other is merely our own biases.

 

[grommile]

then such a society may be 'authoritarian' by Stellaris definition

This is canon.

Using Selected Lineages or Capacity Boosters is no bueno according to Stellaris Egalitarians.

 

[Iosue Yu]

Well, back to Egalitarian and Authoritarian?

Let have a look at their interests:

1. Egalitarian - Free Movement
   1. Well Free Movement itself doesn't indicate much. But non-Free intranational movement actually means Planned Economy typical of Authoritarian regimes.
2. Egalitarian - Reproductive Freedom
   1. I think they ripped this out from China's one-child policy and have it in reverse.
3. Egalitarian - Attracted by high Living Standard
   1. Living Standard isn't really universal living standard. If you look closely, it's increasing political rights of the working class and give them benefits.
4. Authoritarian - Elitism
   1. Elitism is a very common agendum for the Economic Conservatives

So the Egalitarian represents better worker's rights. What does it mean? It means that the labour laws, contract laws and everything are leaning towards the working class, guilds and labour unions. High living standard giving higher political rights to the working class is the strongest sign. It would represent a simplified political climate where the workers have more say relatively to their employers comparatively to an Authoritarian society, where you really can never win a lawsuit against your boss.

This shows that Egalitarian represents Economic Progressive, Working Class interests, Classical Left, Proletariat, and generally the Dominated Class;

While Authoritarian represents Economic Conservative, Planned Economy, Employer's Priviledges, Bourgeois, and generally the Dominant Class.

I would like to see how the argument of Living Standards be disagreed.

 

[Pancakelord]

The way I look at it, mechanically, there is a split between Authoritarians focussing on the worker stratum (Authoritarians actually do more to influence workers than egalitarians do - with a special exception for shared burdens) and Egalitarians focussing on the specialist stratum.

Authoritarianism = +worker output - worker PP (via slaves) : makes pop happiness largely irrelevant.
Egalitarianism = +Specialist output + all pop happiness (generally, but that's more the playstyle than any particular mechanic)

Shared burdens = lock stratum PP to 1 so worker happiness has a far larger affect​

​

There are ofcourse builds that bypass this all and make slaves better specialists ... than specialists, but that IMO is a failure to balance.

Generally I dont see the point in changing this ethos (again) as it'd be superficial, each set of mechanics is tied to an ethos - changing auth/egal doesnt actually go far enough - it's also why we dont start with empires with no ethos and grow it all organically.

• IMO if you want to change up auth/egal, go all-out and modify the entire ethics system (this would be more interesting with internal politics) so that you can do anything you want, but if you do stuff outside of your governing ethics, it provokes a massive civil backlash.
• This would shift the game away from "pick your favourite flavour of stat buffs" to "pick your favourite flavour of penalisations", and a more fluid set of governments could arise from that.
• And given how many countries operate in the real world, this is more relatable too, its better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, as the saying goes (in Stellaris you ask for permission, by selecting ethics, not for forgiveness by dealing with backlash from actions outside your ethical scope).
• CK3 took on a similar philosophy with Roleplaying your actions and dealing with ruler stress if you played outside of your trait-set.
  • Empires in Stellaris could adopt a similar system, letting them do what they like but having to deal with mounting internal strife for committing "genocide" or running "organ harvesting operations" on livestock pops, if they arent geared for that as xenophobes.
  • This would also turn (some) shitty AI decisions into "features", feeding into RP - the human brain is a marvel at making up its own internally consistent logic:
    • e.g. an egalitarian AI killed a bunch of pops off?
    • Clearly that Leader was secretly a filthy racist and it wasn't at all a badly weighted decision lol.

Break the wheel, rework all the ethics.

 

[Ashantai]

A reminder once again to focus on the game mechanics, not arguing about real world examples.

 

[Incompetent]

I think the Authoritarian–Egalitarian axis is fine, the only problem is that the "Egalitarian" end is misnamed.

In Stellaris, this axis is about political/social rights and status. One end believes in strict control and hierarchy, that there are a few leaders and many followers, that the interests of the regime come first. The other end believes that everyone should have free and equal opportunity to participate, that the most important thing is individual rights. The former is indeed authoritarianism. The usual word to describe the latter perspective though is "liberalism"; this is the ideological tradition that is most consistently anti-authoritarian. (You could also use the word "libertarian", although nowadays this word means "hyper-capitalist", so it's kind of lost its original meaning.)

Now economics are another matter. It's true that authoritarianism allows for more extreme disparities in material conditions, by virtue of the absolute power of the elites, and conversely (as many liberals argue) too much economic disparity leads to coercion and an erosion of rights in practice. But even if you are on the extreme liberal end in Stellaris (so-called Fanatic Egalitarian), you are not obliged to strive for equality of outcomes (i.e. egalitarianism, "true communism", whatever you want to call it). Indeed, you're allowed to adopt a civic like Meritocracy, which as a concept is a rejection of egalitarianism (it implies a competition for status in which the more talented/hard-working will gain an advantage over others); or if you are Materialist, you can adopt Academic Privilege living standards, which has much the same theme and pretty much guarantees that you will have a large underclass working 0.25CG jobs with no unemployment benefits. On the other hand, the right to hoard a big pile of energy credits or consumer goods is not a fundamental right of sentient pops. So this ideology is also compatible with something like an anarchist or libertarian socialist society, if that's where you want to go. (My headcanon for "Shared Burdens" isn't some centrally-planned tankie nonsense, which is in effect another form of authoritarianism; rather, it represents a fully decommodified society. It's not that high-stratum pops are forbidden from getting rich by society, but rather the whole concept of private wealth accumulation is meaningless to them.)