So i am absolutely required to have something to deal with Ethics Divergence now?

[Catman115]

So i decided to make a species that didn't have any ethics divergence reduction modifiers. Just to try out a different play style. Upon colonizing the first planets that start near you i see this:

I'm pretty sure people have complained about this before but...just wow. Literally one jump from the capital and already suffering from ED. ONE JUMP! So i absolutely must have either conformist or be a theocratic monarchy to expand beyond my initial planet? This is absurd.

 

[rcasale]

So i decided to make a species that didn't have any ethics divergence reduction modifiers. Just to try out a different play style. Upon colonizing the first planets that start near you i see this:
View attachment 234591
I'm pretty sure people have complained about this before but...just wow. Literally one jump from the capital and already suffering from ED. ONE JUMP! So i absolutely must have either conformist or be a theocratic monarchy to expand beyond my initial planet? This is absurd.

I'm not sure 1.2% ED is anything to be concerned about. It's low, because it's only one jump. What really matters is if that 1.2% translates to unreasonable amounts of divergence. I haven't usually payed much attention to ED unless it gets into the double digits.

 

[nfmarque]

With fanatic individualist you ignore divergence. Any problems your pops have with the government will be reduced by 60%.

 

[Catman115]

I'm not sure 1.2% ED is anything to be concerned about. It's low, because it's only one jump. What really matters is if that 1.2% translates to unreasonable amounts of divergence. I haven't usually payed much attention to ED unless it gets into the double digits.

I used to agree with this line of thought until i saw what 1.0%~2.5% ED actually did to one or two of my other planets a while back. My POPs all started jumping into factions, which blessedly are toothless and useless right now, but i am hearing that factions are going to receive a massive overhaul in Banks, which means that unless i take an ED reduction trait/government, once the new patch is out i literally will be dealing with factions on every world that isn't my capital. That is silly to the extreme.

 

[Catman115]

With fanatic individualist you ignore divergence. Any problems your pops have with the government will be reduced by 60%.

Still have the problem of that Fanatic Ethic destroying itself. I find that when ED comes into play it targets that fanatic ethos first, and once that ethic is gone from the POP it then starts having problems with the government. Its the same problem as when Individualist had the direct ED penalty, it converts itself out of existence. It just happens slower now.

 

[GothicEmperor]

Well yeah, it doesn't work all that well. It's why they're going to overhaul much of the Ethic system come next patch.

 

[terrycloth]

So i decided to make a species that didn't have any ethics divergence reduction modifiers. Just to try out a different play style. Upon colonizing the first planets that start near you i see this:
View attachment 234591
I'm pretty sure people have complained about this before but...just wow. Literally one jump from the capital and already suffering from ED. ONE JUMP! So i absolutely must have either conformist or be a theocratic monarchy to expand beyond my initial planet? This is absurd.

1.2%. OH NO! Only like 800 years before a pop changes its ethics by one step!

If you don't have any ED modifiers then you're not collectivist so it shouldn't matter. Just change any policies that are really ticking people off. Don't enslave or purge. Be nicer about bombardment and how you deal with primitives.

And I just noticed that you're FI so it *really* doesn't matter. Unless you were planning to use Xenophobe to cleanse the galaxy, I guess. That might tick people off since non-xenophobic individualists really hate slavery and purges.

 

[Blackplant]

I used to agree with this line of thought until i saw what 1.0%~2.5% ED actually did to one or two of my other planets a while back. My POPs all started jumping into factions, which blessedly are toothless and useless right now, but i am hearing that factions are going to receive a massive overhaul in Banks, which means that unless i take an ED reduction trait/government, once the new patch is out i literally will be dealing with factions on every world that isn't my capital. That is silly to the extreme.

Ethics Divergence as it is right now won't even exist in Banks. Yes, there will be more powerful factions, but you can also do mroe to adjust your government to them and not all factions will have negative effects.

 

[Ezumiyr]

Ethics Divergence as it is right now won't even exist in Banks. Yes, there will be more powerful factions, but you can also do mroe to adjust your government to them and not all factions will have negative effects.

Exactly. There's no point to complain about ethic divergence in the current version. Even if you're right - and the fact that the devs are changing the mechanics prove it, so it's even more pointless to disagree with you, by the way. Currently, playing a fanatic individualist empire with no protection against ethic divergence is really annoying. You need to keep armies on some planets and to spend influence to keep them quiet. And it's not fun, because it just leads to angry rebels, not to diverse empires like it should.

But if you're still looking for a way to counter ethic divergence, try this if you haven't already:
- try to have as much influence as possible (protectorates are useful), so you can use it for the most problematic factions.
- unlock policies that please your people
- research buildings that increase happiness and ethic convergence
- don't grow too fast, try to vassalize other empires, or maybe purge them if they're too big (but I wouldn't advise it, the diplomatic penalty will be to big and you'd gain nothing).

You're also not supposed to play as a big hegemonic empire with those ethics, but rather as a powerful but little empire with slave planets (populated by alien slaves) and vassals. The good thing about angry slaves is that they are all gathered into the same faction, as opposed to free citizens who get one faction per planet (or more). If you don't want alien slaves, purge them, but you should probably build robots if you want to expand.

 

[Catman115]

1.2%. OH NO! Only like 800 years before a pop changes its ethics by one step!

Y'know people say that but experience has told me otherwise. Ive been surprised how much even 1-2 % ED can rapidly change even a few POPs on a world, much less large swathes of the Empire. I remember a game where i had 2.2% ED on a world and literally before i could get the Planetary Administration up and running the four POPs on the planet had converted the Fanatic Materialist ethic into Spiritualist (I have to assume that the first pop converted and the rest followed/were spawned by it). This was over a period of 3 years. it took 20 years of the edict that reconverts POPs to remove it. That was one of the worst ones but it happens all of the time and i have to carefully watch my core sector planets (the ones in Sectors i don't even bother with anymore) just to make sure that i don't get issues like this anymore.

Ethics Divergence as it is right now won't even exist in Banks. Yes, there will be more powerful factions, but you can also do more to adjust your government to them and not all factions will have negative effects.

Well that's a relief.

 

[Moonshadow101]

The entire system is a garbage fire. Thankfully, it'll be gone soon.

 

[Kat Tsun]

But what will orbital mind control lasers do without ED?

 

[Shermanator]

But what will orbital mind control lasers do without ED?

Well hey, the government mind control lasers seems to be decently effective in real life at least hey hold on a minute there's this weird black van outside of my house!

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

But what will orbital mind control lasers do without ED?

Presumably, increase local attraction towards your government's Ethos.

 

[GC13]

Y'know people say that but experience has told me otherwise. Ive been surprised how much even 1-2 % ED can rapidly change even a few POPs on a world, much less large swathes of the Empire. I remember a game where i had 2.2% ED on a world and literally before i could get the Planetary Administration up and running the four POPs on the planet had converted the Fanatic Materialist ethic into Spiritualist

I've tested it quite a bit: the listed ethics divergence is ten times the annual chance to change. At 2% ethics divergence, you're looking at 350 years for half of your Pops to make a single step away from their starting ethics. Either you got really unlucky and you got a Pop switching ethics very early and then being selected as the Pop to make the next one and determine its ethics, or something else was wrong.

 

[Drakonn]

Honestly, the ability to dodge Ethics Divergence so completely with Ethos/Gov't/Traits was a bit absurd. It made Ethics Divergence itself a mostly moot point. Instead of dealing with it through buildings and edicts (and the subsequent factions) players could completely dodge this portion of the game.

Sure, you had to save influence for colonies in order to use an edict until you could upgrade to Planetary Administration and it imposed a limit on your empire making it crumble if you couldn't keep up with the consequences. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

Granted, whether the mechanics and actual gameplay of such consequences is (at this time) actually interesting and engaging to warrant NOT dodging them is another matter. Hopefully with 1.5 they'll be such and dodging them won't be needed.

 

[Sopbucket]

Yep. The nice thing about the new system is that ethics divergence will largely depend on the things that you do as a player, so if you want your population to be more xenophobic for instance, you could enslave all other species and disperse them throughout your empire. You'll also be able to embrace factions and change your empire ethics to match them if they get too powerful.

 

[Promethian]

It also appeared that factions will be a source of influence. Check one of the dev diaries and in the faction screenshot it shows the factions that were happy giving influence. It also showed a happy faction giving less than the others but it had lower pop. So working to make factions associated with the most pops happy will be important.

We can also deduce that pop happiness will probably be based on the faction they are a part of after the update. The internal politics and policy selection is going to gain a lot of depth with the update.

 

[SuiciSpai]

Upgrading the planetary building also gives a lot of ED reduction so is not a problem.

 

[terrycloth]

Y'know people say that but experience has told me otherwise. Ive been surprised how much even 1-2 % ED can rapidly change even a few POPs on a world, much less large swathes of the Empire. I remember a game where i had 2.2% ED on a world and literally before i could get the Planetary Administration up and running the four POPs on the planet had converted the Fanatic Materialist ethic into Spiritualist (I have to assume that the first pop converted and the rest followed/were spawned by it). This was over a period of 3 years. it took 20 years of the edict that reconverts POPs to remove it. That was one of the worst ones but it happens all of the time and i have to carefully watch my core sector planets (the ones in Sectors i don't even bother with anymore) just to make sure that i don't get issues like this anymore.


Well that's a relief.

I often run with positive divergence and it's rarely a problem. I've seen planets 'ruined' by having a slave race and then the imported pops that I let breed taking their ethics from the slaves for some reason, but not by divergence alone, even if it's in double digits. Some pops will diverge but either (a) I'm not a slaver and they don't end up being *too* unhappy, or (b) I am a slaver and not enough diverge that I can't just enslave the unhappy ones (or they're in a sector and their faction is diluted to impotence).

I guess over a LOT of time the slavers would eventually get overwhelmed, but negative modifiers tend to pile up for collectivists over time and it's only for the first hundred years or so that they run with positives. My non-collectivist empires usually end up with almost random ethics, but even before individualist got its bonuses, the effects of randomized ethics were manageable.

Basically, you're not forced to negate ethics divergence.That's one option. It's a good one, especially if you like your empire neat and clean.

Option two is to raise happiness.

Option three is to deal with a small penalty to production from mildly unhappy pops and change your empire's policies to suit the people instead of vice versa.

Option four is to put troops everywhere so all the revolts fail, I guess. }