No point to Authoritarian.

[Snoipah]

Ignoring the slavery factor altogether because xenophobe has that too, there is no point.

Before 2.2 they were one of the best ethics to choose for a strong economy, however now it's not so much. The stratofied economy lowers stability, which lowers resource production. Non fanatic workers get a 10% bonus that brings them to equal what it was before if looking at the starting game numbers, but specialists still take a hit to their production. You also end up having to waste a slot for a enforcer building on exceptionally worker heavy planets.

Fanatical authoritarian's 20% bonus is a little better, but every single other ethic gives better stuff.

The only way I can see a point in being authoritarian is if you turn off stratified economy to prevent the stability loss, after you conquer a alien race to enslave so the faction won't be unhappy. I haven't gone past 2250 as authoritarian yet but it feels like any other perk would be better. Give workers even less political power or make the worker 10%/20% bonus apply to all resource production.

 

[Promethian]

Do you live in opposite land? Everything you said here is dead wrong to the point of being opposite of true.

 

[Snoipah]

Do you live in opposite land? Everything you said here is dead wrong to the point of being opposite of true.

 

[Xaelyn]

Isn't it a 5 and 10% bonus?

Stratified is 'broken' because there are hidden caps and floors on political powers impact on happiness/stability. You look at the tooltip and think that one happy ruler should counteract 10 or more unhappy workers, but they only really counteract 3 or 4 because +100% political power is actually the ceiling for a happy pop. The planet happiness tooltip also lies and makes it seem like it works, but if you do the math you realize that your planets happiness is way lower than it should be.

 

[Snoipah]

Isn't it a 5 and 10% bonus

It's late, sorry.

 

[Nussor]

But hey, they need less consumer goods.
What is easily underestimated, though, is the penalty to government ethics attraction from unhappy pops, and that will eventually become a problem for exploitative playstiles - which is kinda plausible, but exaggerated and suboptimal from a gameplay perspective. When I play as UN of E I usually have exceptional stability, happiness and faction approval (= Influence). Basically everyone stays Xenophile and Egalitarian forever.

 

[tobias.mb]

Stratified Conditions still save you plenty consumer goods though. Workers needing only .1 CG is a huge advantage, particularly because that way clerks under consumer benefits actually generate a healthy surplus of CG.
For stability, you need to bring it up by creating more ruler jobs. Nobles (aristocratic elite civic) are best for this, since they also generate stability directly as well.

It was already mentioned, that it is bugged, but that's still generally what you want to do. Also iirc isn't stratified only -10% happiness compared to decent conditions? And that's only on workers, who matter less under stratified. Pretty sure something else is going on in your screenshot (like faction happiness)

 

[lief1]

you aren't factoring in the decreased mineral upkeep from reduced consumer goods for stratified economy compared to descent.

 

[Surimi]

You're ignoring that stratified economy reduces consumer goods consumption for the lower classes, particularly non-enslaved workers, which is its main purpose. Obviously, if you wanted to maximize stability you'd put everyone on Utopian Abundance, but that wouldn't be cost effective.

You do have to be extremely careful of unemployment in the ruler class, though.

 

[Azhcristokos]

-10% happiness is not that severe and Aristocratic Elite eliminates this problem should it surface; spiritualist is also helpful here. Additional influence (.5/1 for normal and fanatic respectively) is great since that is one of the major limiting factors on expansion early on. The worker output is minor but not useless. As everyone else has mentioned, reduced consumer goods upkeep is great.

I've been much more successful with my authoritarian runs lately, which is odd because in the past I never played with it.

 

[Nin6]

Ignoring the slavery factor altogether because xenophobe has that too, there is no point.

Before 2.2 they were one of the best ethics to choose for a strong economy, however now it's not so much. The stratofied economy lowers stability, which lowers resource production. Non fanatic workers get a 10% bonus that brings them to equal what it was before if looking at the starting game numbers, but specialists still take a hit to their production. You also end up having to waste a slot for a enforcer building on exceptionally worker heavy planets.

Fanatical authoritarian's 20% bonus is a little better, but every single other ethic gives better stuff.

The only way I can see a point in being authoritarian is if you turn off stratified economy to prevent the stability loss, after you conquer a alien race to enslave so the faction won't be unhappy. I haven't gone past 2250 as authoritarian yet but it feels like any other perk would be better. Give workers even less political power or make the worker 10%/20% bonus apply to all resource production.

Try playing fanatic egalitarian, use Utopian abundance. Then perhaps you will appreciate what stratified economy does for you. It also have very large political modifiers to your pops. As in generally your rulers and somewhat your specialists have a say in, workers not so much.

Whenever I played egalitarian, I almost always developed some sort of ethics divergence. Mostly xenophile, but also, xenophobe, basically your entire populace is more able to speak for your overall planetary stability and your influence gain.

Its a completely different game playing as an authoritarian. You have fixed amounts of influence gain from the get go, and you have to invest much less in your people. And works still give you a flat 5 or 10 percent more income.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Authoritarian ethics also give flat influence which is pretty rare bonus. Stratified society + noble aristocracy is an awesome combo to create stable planets with cheap CG upkeep.
There's also the bonus that you can play somewhat diplomatically as authoritarians, while xenophobes have problems with that. To be honest, only reason to play ANY ETHICS is because you want to, since they are not really balanced for competitive multiplayer or anything.

 

[Evaris]

Then there's also factoring in civics that synergize well with it - personally my favorite is byzantine bureaucracy, (IMO it's flat better than aristocracy) as -10% amenities use means that your overall stability is higher. Plus, two ruler jobs per planet to boost things on the stratified economy side of the stability equation, which produce more amenities to boot. While yes, nobles give more of a bonus each towards stability, you get more jobs out of byzantine, which shuffles things more towards the ruler side of the equation on your population as a whole, and you also get that housing use reduction.

Besides that, there is also the solution of going materialist in conjunction with authoritarian builds, which gives access to academic privilege, which also satisfies the needs of having a stratified economy where the authoritarian factions are concerned.

Agrarian Idyl, with it's bonus to farmers and workers in general, and abundant amenities, also pairs up well with authoritarian civilizations.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Authoritarian is great:

Bonus influence is always nice to have, and it provides a significant amount.

Worker output bonus is another nice to have, but it is decidedly minor.

Slavery, as an option, ditto.

But what makes authoritarian truly great is stratified economy.

Stratified economy is the best thing since sliced bread (err, caste system). The entire point of SE is getting a cost effective economy by sticking it to the lower classes and saving on CG costs, while maintaining political power at the top, rather than focusing on maximizing output at the cost of higher pop maintenance, and SE does so admirably.

This results in a high-influence stable society with minimal pop-fuss: Any race particularly troublesome can be enslaved, and all others will behave nicely regardless of the social strata they end up in. (Or you can ban slavery for brownie points while still benefiting from the near-slavery conditions for workers of stratified economy).

As others have said, authoritarian combos particularly nicely with spiritualist ethic (for temples and easily satisfied faction demands) and the aristocratic elite civic. Nobles are top tier ruler jobs boosting the output of every pop through increased stability.

While it isn't the only strong way to go with authoritarian (e.g. mat/aut with academic privilege deserves a shout-out too), it is a very powerful one. Who needs happy lower classes when the nobility and clergy combine forces?

 

[Pootino]

>Low stability
>Unhappiness

And here at the beginning of the game (with police state)

 

[SpectralShade]

Stratified Conditions still save you plenty consumer goods though. Workers needing only .1 CG is a huge advantage, particularly because that way clerks under consumer benefits actually generate a healthy surplus of CG.
For stability, you need to bring it up by creating more ruler jobs. Nobles (aristocratic elite civic) are best for this, since they also generate stability directly as well.

It was already mentioned, that it is bugged, but that's still generally what you want to do. Also iirc isn't stratified only -10% happiness compared to decent conditions? And that's only on workers, who matter less under stratified. Pretty sure something else is going on in your screenshot (like faction happiness)

i also note it's different govenors

 

[AlknicTeos]

stratified economy also lowers the consumer goods for workers to 0.1