I haven't disagreed with anything you said above, I'm simply stating that I'm pretty sure that not having options was the point of hive minds.
Is there a list of all the new civics?
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I am not asking for a lot.
Remove the restriction "Can not pick PSI or Synthetic ascension Peaks". Just take away the check "is_Hive_Mind_Govt = disallowed to pick this peak". That it.
Maybe better list of civic choices but that can come later.
Let me present to you a bit of how taking away the restriction I listed earlier actually give you more choices.
We all agree that end-game ascension peak are unique and take up two ascension peaks right? So my choices with respect to one ascension peak is not to take them and use those 2 peaks for other things. Or pick the first ascension peak and use the other peak for something else. Or go full into biological ascension peak.
That is at most three choices.
Now if the restriction on PSI or synthetic were lifted. You would end up with 7, not taking any end-game ascension peak count as once across all 3 end-game paths + 3 duplicate of half/half and going in full, choices which is far more than 3. Never mind what you do with the "other ascension peaks".
No, you are asking for a lot more. You are asking for all the events written for those patchs to be rewritten to fit a Hive Mind. And if you think that's little too, then I suppose you should start writing books, if it's so easy.
Just a cursory glance at the events we've been sown so far reveals that those events were all written with an assumption that yourempire consists of many individuals (e.g. citizens receiving implants or various people having various levels of psychic powers.
And if you want to answer with "those events can stay as they are", you are wrong again. Were they not changed hundreds of people would complain.
What is that supposed to mean? Did I ever said that major rewrites of huge amounts of features would not add choices?
Clearly, you do not even realize what you are really asking for. Flavour does not write itself. If it did, we would not pay money to screenwriters or writers in general.
And that's without even delving into the code, which would certainly need a lot of rewrites, to make sure that dumb things don't happen. If there is but an event in the cybernetic ascention path where a single pop gains say materialist ethics as a result of something, that event will break the entire HIve Mind, as Hive Mind was designed to be an ethics for all Hive Mind pops. You are, willy-nilly asking for a major check to all code for those ascension patchs, followed by hours of QA.
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I still don't have an opinion on this topic. But I feel I have something to say in regards to why I don't. Unless either one of you has information about Utopia I don't... than we don't know how much Tavior is asking for. Whether it's a little or a lot.
I hope Me_ is right. If the choice in Utopia is between the developers saying, "We wrote so many good stories and internal strife mechanics into synthetic and psionic ascension, we really feel they encapsulate the core of the materialist and spiritualist ethos but they only work in contrast with factional conflict. We are so excited to hear the feedback on this, we even went out of our way to avoid spoilers during our lets plays." or "Eh, we slapdashed hivemind's together and figured biological ascension is good enough. We wouldn't have even bothered except alot of people were asking for hiveminds." I'd prefer to think it's the former and I think the Stellaris development team has earned my faith in their capabilities. On the other hand Random New World was a mess in EU4 for a long time. And of course that's now allowing for the possibility that you're both wrong. The restriction could make sense for an entirely different reason that may be correctable without bulk rewrites of story.
In about a week I'll know. I'll be playing Synthetic Ascension first and the lack of information has certainly kept my excitement levels high. Until then, as I've said before, Tavior's concerns are probably best provided in the general form and in the general form I believe he's right. Hiveminds will have a flavor gap caused by their inability to pick ethos. That flavor gap will not be bridged by generic government traits that are interchangeable throughout the game. As for solutions to that flavor gap, I probably won't have any suggestions until a good 2 or 3 weeks after the expansion launches. And unless either of you knows a lot more about Utopia than me, you should probably avoid forming strong opinions about what should or shouldn't be done too.
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I wouldn't take the hype for synthetic ascension too far. As far as we know, it involves literally only putting your people into robots (with somewhat bland cyborgs as an intermediate). That's it. Nothing fancy like psionic ascension.
Strangely enough, they seemed to have more character to me. They had some small flavour dettails that could have worked if buffed (like the flagship fortresses or the Hegemony special armies), and while less flexible than the civic system, they had some clearly defined identities and provided bonuses with no racial-trait equivalent.
Man, I have entire design documents with theoretical civics and possible mods (because this is how I spend my spare time, yep). But just to think of a handful of them:
Benevolent harmony
Organic non-species pops can survive and assimilate into your hivemind. Your species & the assimilated ones can recieve happiness bonuses. However, xeno species will be vulnerable to unrest, factionalism and unhappiness until they have been properly assimilated into your hivemind ethos, making their integration a long-term type of investment. Incompatible with devourer, psy vampires and impregnation drones
"Your hivemind was born due to a peaceful, non-invasive telepathic consensus. Individuals can submit or reject the hivemind willingly, preserving a high degree of autonomy. However, most of your popullation choses to remain connected to hivemind thanks to the peace of mind and sense of community that it provides to its loyal adherents"
Parasitical
Requires "benevolent harmony". +15% attraction towards your hivemind ethoi, -15% xeno unrest. Incompatible with symbiotic. Unlocks "infiltrate society" special project
"Your hivemind was created by a small neural parasyte that took control of the creatures with the most useful prensatile appendages in your planet millenia ago. This parasite is incredible adaptative, being able to survive and thrieve in another foreign, extraterrestial brains"
Symbiotic
Requires "benevolent harmony". +20% migration attraction. Xenos gets +5% to their science and energy output. Unlocks "enhance genetic material" research project
"Your hivemind is a gestalt consciousness born out of a of a microscopic yet extremely complex symbiotic organism. Other species lended their neural cappabilities to your hive and in exchange your species altered their DNA, turning them stronger, healthier and smarter, while allowing them to rettainin a smidgen of their individuality. This millenia-old successful cooperation will be one of your biggest assets in this new foray into the stars"
Psy vampires
Purging xeno pops will provide your empire with extra unity and influence (bonus if the consumed pops have psy capabilities theirselves). Unlocks the psiquic ascension path. Incompatible with machine consciousness, benevolent harmony
"This hivemind needs other lesser yet conscious minds to consume in order to power itself and reach its true potential as a multi-brained psiconic single entity. After consuming the mind of other lesser beings, their useless bodies will wonder aimlessly, flesh husks devoid of all sentience that will eventually succumb to fatigue and starvation"
Cibernetic consciousness
You can build your own pops as if they were synths (note: This is meant to be used as an alternative way to make your popullation grow, since your species pops do not recieve synth bonuses and still need food to sustain theirselves). You automatically assimilate synths from other species as if they were your own popullation. Unlocks materialist ascension path, robots. Incompatible with Psy vampires
"Your biomechanic species was created eons ago in order to aid a misterious, now extinct creator race. However, your now shared consciousness emerged unexpectedly, by linking simple minds into a greater whole. Now this artificial neural network will seek its way into the stars that gave birth to its long forgotten creators"
Devourer
Eating xeno pops grants you extra food and minerals. +25% damage bonus for your armies due to terror tactics. Incompatible with benevolent harmony for obvious reasons
"Your hivemind is presented with an insatiable hunger, a craving for fresh bodies to consume in order to build a better world for your brood by employing the biomass of your consumed prey"
Organic non-species pops can survive and assimilate into your hivemind. Your species & the assimilated ones can recieve happiness bonuses. However, xeno species will be vulnerable to unrest, factionalism and unhappiness until they have been properly assimilated into your hivemind ethos, making their integration a long-term type of investment. Incompatible with devourer, psy vampires and impregnation drones
"Your hivemind was born due to a peaceful, non-invasive telepathic consensus. Individuals can submit or reject the hivemind willingly, preserving a high degree of autonomy. However, most of your popullation choses to remain connected to hivemind thanks to the peace of mind and sense of community that it provides to its loyal adherents"
Parasitical
Requires "benevolent harmony". +15% attraction towards your hivemind ethoi, -15% xeno unrest. Incompatible with symbiotic. Unlocks "infiltrate society" special project
"Your hivemind was created by a small neural parasyte that took control of the creatures with the most useful prensatile appendages in your planet millenia ago. This parasite is incredible adaptative, being able to survive and thrieve in another foreign, extraterrestial brains"
Symbiotic
Requires "benevolent harmony". +20% migration attraction. Xenos gets +5% to their science and energy output. Unlocks "enhance genetic material" research project
"Your hivemind is a gestalt consciousness born out of a of a microscopic yet extremely complex symbiotic organism. Other species lended their neural cappabilities to your hive and in exchange your species altered their DNA, turning them stronger, healthier and smarter, while allowing them to rettainin a smidgen of their individuality. This millenia-old successful cooperation will be one of your biggest assets in this new foray into the stars"
Psy vampires
Purging xeno pops will provide your empire with extra unity and influence (bonus if the consumed pops have psy capabilities theirselves). Unlocks the psiquic ascension path. Incompatible with machine consciousness, benevolent harmony
"This hivemind needs other lesser yet conscious minds to consume in order to power itself and reach its true potential as a multi-brained psiconic single entity. After consuming the mind of other lesser beings, their useless bodies will wonder aimlessly, flesh husks devoid of all sentience that will eventually succumb to fatigue and starvation"
Cibernetic consciousness
You can build your own pops as if they were synths (note: This is meant to be used as an alternative way to make your popullation grow, since your species pops do not recieve synth bonuses and still need food to sustain theirselves). You automatically assimilate synths from other species as if they were your own popullation. Unlocks materialist ascension path, robots. Incompatible with Psy vampires
"Your biomechanic species was created eons ago in order to aid a misterious, now extinct creator race. However, your now shared consciousness emerged unexpectedly, by linking simple minds into a greater whole. Now this artificial neural network will seek its way into the stars that gave birth to its long forgotten creators"
Devourer
Eating xeno pops grants you extra food and minerals. +25% damage bonus for your armies due to terror tactics. Incompatible with benevolent harmony for obvious reasons
"Your hivemind is presented with an insatiable hunger, a craving for fresh bodies to consume in order to build a better world for your brood by employing the biomass of your consumed prey"
I am a programmer I know how much work can go into those said events. I am still confident in the sense it is something they can do over time. I was disappointed that they decided to keep the first version of Hive Mind work rather smaller than I liked. Because it had to be done along Ethics rework and other 1.5/Utopia features. I think it would have gone over better if they had made HIve Mind the solo focus of a separate expansion instead of being mixed with other features.
There are already events in 1.4.1 that has unique flavors (fanatic militarist greating to a fanatic pacifist vs fanatic materialist vs fanatic spiritualist to just start with).
Will those flavor be enough? I have no idea and I have a certain expectation to be able to emulate something like MorningLightMountain to have some fun (basically Hive Mind that doesn't possesion ANY kind of PSI capable and instead uses normal network, not that different from in-real world wide web only used for thoughts instead of bytes, that would have gone completely synthetic) someday if not in 1.5.
Erm. No not willy-nilly... I do have a reason why I want said feature. Read the last paragraph again.
Something like "is_Hive_Mind_Govt = No" add to that said event. It won't break anything and instead can check if you can use ethic or not. Not that complicated as you think. Sure QA take times. But that always been true for all features regardless of what you want to think.
Certainly sure flavor could take time to write up which is why I wished Paradox had an entire separate patch cycle entirely dedicated to Hive Mind feature itself instead of mixed it with other features like ethic reworked/general 1.5 stuff/Utopia expansion.
Thanks. I was hoping someone had put thought into this question. Would make for a great mod!
Eh, they planned ahead enough to make farms worked by populations ascending to synths automatically convert into energy plants. We know there's a project that converts your populace into cyborgs and it's a natural thing to increase difficulty of the ascension process based on how many populations you're upgrading. A good way to do that is internal strife.
But if you're right. I'll probably still enjoy it and the next time this topic comes up instead of saying "I'm waiting on more information to have an opinion" I'm much more likely to say "I agree, I'm not really seeing the reasoning behind the ascension path restriction."
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We finally learned what the "Imperial Cult" civic does. It's -33% on Edicts. Great success!
Based on stream information, it appears it will be possible to have a government with both Beacon of Liberty and Police State as starting civics. That is one schizophrenic society.
Everyone is free to do as they choose, some people just like disappearing in the middle of the night ok?
I find that questionable, otherwise you wouldn't ask for Paradox to remove "is_Hive_Mind_Govt = No" in code for the two ascentions that are not available to Hive Minds before, nor argue that it's super fast and easy to make those ascensions work before you changed your stance, but w/e, I'm not going to throw my education and experience at you only to derail this thread futher. Let's just agree that we both think Hive Minds deserve at least a small separate DLC and disagree on whether or not they should be introduced in a simplified version in the upcoming DLC.
As for the topic at hand, I must rescind my earlier claim. Seems like +20% damage is actually a good thing, at least early-game, as your army size is now limited by population. That may actually be a go-to civic for someone wanting to play the Zerg, especially since Hive Minds won't be able to use conquered pops for armies.
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If you knew what I have worked with you wouldn't doubt my claims. I do disagree on DLC vs Expansion size and which is better for Hive Mind. Didn't I said a full dev cycle for Hive Mind? Oh yes I did.
I have worked with assembly VDHL language, java, python, various form of C, Unity3D for game, website front page and backend, etc.... I won't bore you with a full detail breakdown of my education/work experience.
I would be actually very surprised if they didn't even provide anything to the modding community a way to "detect" if the player is using the Hive Mind Gov form. Why would they don't?
Edit: After a bit more of thinking on it. I just realized they must already have something like "is_hive_mind_govt" in-game because otherwise how would the "first contact window" know which unique dialog to use?
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Yeah, I disagree with a full dev cycle for Hive Mind. Seriously, are there that many people clamoring to play a Hivemind that it needs an entire development cycle? What incredibly awesome new development could we have had instead of a full development cycle being spent on fleshing out this single concept?
I'm comfortable with "Hive Mind" getting about as much support and development as any other Ethos and if they want to keep tweaking and improving it throughout development, I'm happy with that. But if they stopped developing core systems to dedicate an entire development cycle to Hiveminds... man would I get bored waiting two development cycles for improvements that mattered.
If they did a full dev cycle then it would have been more or less have time to do all of that other flavor including synthetic/PSI Hive Mind. Rather than limited to just one biological ascension peak Hive Mind like it is now.
