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Most and least played ethics

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If a developer does read this, I have a question regarding this data:

When you look at statistics regarding traits, ethics, civics, and origins for balance purposes, do you have any way of distinguishing RP and meme runs from “this is me trying to be meta” runs?
 
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I would live to see duch statistics.
But personally i do not play militarists from Roleplay perspective. And authotritarian/egalitarian are a mess from mechanical pov (slaves automatic resettlement, priority of taking jobs, conflicts with xenophile ethic, and constant leader replacements).
 
Ripley Riley said:
I'm betting either pacifist or egalitarian are the least played while xenophile or materialist are the most played.
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I wouldn't be so sure about this two, because they have some pretty cool civics. Egalitarian - shared burdens, beacon of liberty or idealistic foundation. Pacifist - inward perfection, a civic, which creates some really cool RP builds, or agrarian idyll. Fanatic pacifism on the other side have exactly 0 reasons to be picked, so it is definitely the worst and least used one.
 
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If I were to guess, the ranking from most to least played currently (not counting gestalt) would probably be:

1. Materialist. Tech rushing has literally always been the meta, and even if you aren't minmaxing, technocratic civilizations are a popular trope.
2. Militarist. Shooty gun is fun.
3. Xenophile. Good for RP and feels like a de-facto new player pick.
4. Authoritarian. Pretty much required if you are going to be running slaves of any kind.
5. Fanatic Xenophobe: Being required for FP pushes this up a ton.
6. Xenophobe. It's another trope likely made popular by Warhammer, and is also somewhat meta.
7. Fanatic Materialist: Same reasons as above but enhanced, but limits your ethic picks.
8. Egalitarian. I might be biased but I like using this for the Specialist output.
9. Fanatic Militarist: Same reasons as above but enhanced, but limits your ethic picks.
10. Pacifist: For a long time I thought Pacifist play was boring, and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same.
11. Spiritualist: While I personally like Spiritualist play, I know there's a stigma surrounding it where it isn't very good, combined with it competing with Materialist.
12. Fanatic Xenophile: I don't know anyone except for minmaxed Megacorps who uses this.
13. Fanatic Authoritarian: The buffs are good, but it locks you out of Oligarchy, which is probably the most used government of all time.
14. Fanatic Egalitarian: I only really ever see this used for Shared Burdens.
15. Fanatic Spiritualist: I think the last time I saw this was for an Imperium of Man RP.
16. Fanatic Pacifist: I've used it, and I hated it. Not even being able to do Liberation Wars is a huge gimp.
 
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Quinzal said:
Authoritarian. Pretty much required if you are going to be running slaves of any kind.
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Not "any kind" indenture servitude mixed with social welfare living standards makes a huge mess. Slaves become unemployed instead of working as metalurgists, while high living pops that could either automatically move to other planet or produce unity, are taking job making slaves unemployed and unproductive.
Also, Picking xenophiles to authoritarian means that you cant have slaves at all (except when sacrificing one civic point).
 
Farbros said:
I wouldn't be so sure about this two, because they have some pretty cool civics. Egalitarian - shared burdens, beacon of liberty or idealistic foundation. Pacifist - inward perfection, a civic, which creates some really cool RP builds, or agrarian idyll. Fanatic pacifism on the other side have exactly 0 reasons to be picked, so it is definitely the worst and least used one.
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I forgot about inward perfection and agrarian idyll. Maybe pacifist won't be as low as I thought. I still think egalitarian will be quite low.
 
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I use to never play egalitarian and pacifist. But now it's only extreme pacifists I've never played. Egalitarians are fine, just not exciting to me lorewise unless they're commies or something weird to them.I still don't like elections though.

Extreme pacifist has its place. I make a lot of AI empires spawn with it. It's just not the gameplay I want. I don't trust the AI not to mess up the rest of the galaxy so much plus internal politics is completely lacking in game.

Xenophile is one I don't usually pick unless I'm avoiding the other ethics on the wheel because it kind of feels like a nothing ethic. But it's perfect when I want my nation to not feel like my ethics are too demanding of anything.

Xenophobe is great for specific playstyles so it's either you pick it to play that way or you don't.

Authoritarian is probably my go to because it unlocks so much to do with the species in your empire. I don't agree with them irl but I definitely feel the powwweerrr.
 
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i suspect fanatic egalitarian is more popular than people are giving it credit for. polarization in real life does end up effecting what we fantasize about in game and there's a reason the soviet alt-histories for hearts of iron 4 are so popular :p
 
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Yeah I often have some sort of Xenophile in my empires, in one run I even turned the Commonwealth of Men into a Xenophile empire :p

I just really like to have a lot of different species in my empires. Plus, even as a xenophile you can still conquer stuff.


TrotBot said:
i suspect fanatic egalitarian is more popular than people are giving it credit for. polarization in real life does end up effecting what we fantasize about in game and there's a reason the soviet alt-histories for hearts of iron 4 are so popular :p
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I'm sure there is some truth to it,though I wouldn't necessary equate egalitarian with communism, let alone soviet-style communism. And also don't forget that the Soviet Union has by now pretty much become an internet meme, that might be a factor there as well (I dunno, I don't play HoI).
And I also suspect that the fact that Stellaris is a science fiction game, potentially depicting the future of humanity might cause some people to drift towards the ethics they personally agree with.

But at the same time I also find it fun to play empires that have ethics I don't personally agree with (except fanatic purifiers and stuff like that, I don't see any fun in that, and I must admit I also haven't played much pacifist, because well...I still like to conquer stuff.)
 
Orphalesion said:
But at the same time I also find it fun to play empires that have ethics I don't personally agree with (except fanatic purifiers and stuff like that, I don't see any fun in that, and I must admit I also haven't played much pacifist, because well...I still like to conquer stuff.)
Click to expand...

*Hates FP
*Loves conquering

huh...
 
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I play pretty much anything other than egalitarian. Because I don't like the gameplay with them.

Feels wrong to play egalitarian and not have a democracy, but that's the worst authority in the entire game by far.
They do have some nice civics... but not nice enough.
They don't like pop controls of any kind, they don't like policies that improve leaders...

One thing I used to like about them was utopian abundance... but now I'd rather use decadent living standards.
The increased specialist output is nice... but small, and just not enough to compensate for the rest.


But then there are megacorps. I love materialist, yet I've never played a materialist megacorp. I'd rather play a spiritualist one and get gospel of the masses.
I really wish there would be at least some civics that depend on materialism for them.

Never played a xenophobe megacorp either. Again, no civics that depend on that. I guess I really like the synergy between civics and ethics.
 
looking at the wheel... I've had periods where I've played everything except the militarist/pacifist peg ...

For all that it probably aren't that strong (And disargees with my personal opinions) i keep coming back to Spiritual whenever i don't know what the last ethic should be
 
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