Stellaris Dev Diary #29 - Pop Factions & Elections

[kaspar42]

Why would electing a pro-border security candidate reduce the cost of building border defence?
It's not like electing Trump would drive down the cost of border walls...

 

[Bladrov XII]

Of course, no-one can role play anything, if someone makes a space slaver empire that must actually be their true hidden desires.
/s

Next thing you know people'll say everyone who goes on a murder spree in GTA actually have homicidal & maniacal tendencies.

I think you give the players who dream of genocide and unfettered murder sprees too much credit. It's not so much role-playing to explore the miserable depths of human depravity, which is what an emotionally stable adult might do, but power fantasies, as you suggested, bringing their hidden desires to the surface.

The zombie phenomenon, for instance, I'd like to use as an example. It's the depraved lust for killing and maiming and murder without all the pesky ethical baggage of performing these acts on living people.

 

[M. Pif Paf]

If I may, I would like to reask a question because I think the relation between pops and elections is not clear: are the pops actually voting for the different candidates? Because that's not what the election screen seems to show. What would be the consequences of giving or not some pops the right to vote?

 

[chopak]

Does the player have any direct control over Election outcomes? Yes, you can spend Influence in order to campaign for the candidate of your choice, but it’s not a sure thing, and the cost can be prohibitive if the candidate enjoys little popular support.

Why the random outcome? If you spend influence you should be guaranteed that your candidate win.
I like the increased cost for less popular candidates increasing even to prohibitive, though.

 

[Milten]

I think you give the players who dream of genocide and unfettered murder sprees too much credit. It's not so much role-playing to explore the miserable depths of human depravity, which is what an emotionally stable adult might do, but power fantasies, as you suggested, bringing their hidden desires to the surface.

Guess I'll have to stop clinging on my atheism and accept that I'm actually hardcore Zoroastrian with passion for Holy Wars.

 

[Invictus5966]

Sorry if I missed it but I did a search and didn't find anything...

With the different government types, does your population happiness get effected by different factors?
IE Does democratic government types pop have the same or different happiness factors then a war monger type?

 

[NakedBeast]

*Intent to create a mod with an empty galaxy devoid of other intelligent life forms, but full of full of new xenoarcheology events, to be played by a decadent and rapidly expanding humanity prone to internal divisions and conflicts intensifies*

I think it might be done in vanilla if number of alien empires can be set to zero. But only if there would be no primitive species who may become spacefaring on their own. So that thing would need to be modded in. I think it could be easily done in notepad by deleting event of primitives become empire or make mean time to happen so big it virtually never happens.

 

[patrikn]

Why would electing a pro-border security candidate reduce the cost of building border defence?
It's not like electing Trump would drive down the cost of border walls...

Yes it will since he will make Mexico pay for it

 

[ahhheygao]

I think it might be done in vanilla if number of alien empires can be set to zero. But only if there would be no primitive species who may become spacefaring on their own. So that thing would need to be modded in. I think it could be easily done in notepad by deleting event of primitives become empire or make mean time to happen so big it virtually never happens.

Disabling pre-FTL primitive civilizations will most likely be something you can modify easily in the common/defines.lua file.

 

[NakedBeast]

All of WH40k lore is also, basically, Imperial propaganda. The Tau Empire seem a perfectly good alternative the Fanatic Spiritualist space gulag.

Actually it is Tau who were mentioned to practice space gulag as their regular policy. Tau live in strict collectivistic society and every tau is subject to strict caste rules and hierarcy to the point of children being raised by caste and actually born between parents chosen for mating and producing offspring like in 1984. Other races are befriended in attempt to assimilate them into tau society and given various treatment, but the goal is always total control. They succeded in it in case of Vespid and practice it to various degrees of success with humans. The only aliens who are big part of empire and yet govern themselves mostly are Kroot, because tau are currently largely dependant on them. But they were mentioned to run secret factories on their home world in preparation for eventual war with tau or to discourage them from it.
Thing about Imperium is that its vastly varied in terms of quality of life. And on average it is more about feudal aristocracy and imperial adeptuses elite being above everyone else, not totalitarian society. Being poor peasant who might be abused or killed randomly by some feudal lord or drafted into guard forcefully is still not the same as being controlled all the time.

 

[NakedBeast]

Got some good quote about warhammer that can be useful for modding or just as info for someone interested.

This is because the Space Marines, the Imperium and Warhammer40k as a whole are concepts that are heavily inspired by Human history, dating from the earliest written records to the twentieth century. The intellectual freedom of the author, in this case GW, allows them to utilize these historic examples, place them in a futuristic setting, hand-pick which black-and-white aspects they want to use, and leave out the undefined grey areas. The result is a sci-fi universe that encompasses something for everyone. No matter what period of human history you find appealing, there will be an equivalent in this setting. In your case, it is the Space Marines, whose historic equivalents are the medieval knights, more specifically the crusaders, and the chivalric ideal image of a knight. The organization that best mirrors them is that of the Knights Templar, as all historical aspects, from faith to their role as an elite fighting force, to their subsequent betrayal by power figures found it's way into the image of the Space Marine, although the Warhammer version is much brighter in some cases. There are lore fragments from WH40K rulebooks that speak of Ecclesiarchal cardinals finding chapters wanting, and ordering them to embark on crusades into the eye of terror, which is pretty comparable to the fate of the Knights Templar in France. In the case of the Space Marines however, we see that the story goes on to tell of Space Marines surviving those crusades to return and slay these religious authority figures for their heretical betrayal. On the opposing side of the spectrum, we find the Chaos Space Marines, WH40k's rendition of the black knight, the antithesis of knightly virtues. For me, it is the Imperial Guard, which invokes mankind's collective memory of all theatres of world war 1 and world war 2. Every single army in WH40k can be compared to a historical equivalent, and every society shares a resemblance to one as well. The Imperium in particular manages to capture pre-rennaisance medieval Europe and the Roman empire very clearly, but we can also find parallels to other eras that are less clear cut, like the collapse of human society prior to the dark age of technology caused by warp storms to the 1200 BC simultaneous collapse of Mycenean Greece, the Egyptian New Era realm, the Hittite Empire and the Assyrian Empire. tl;dr: Anyone that loves History, or badass dudes in power armour, laser rifles, explosions, flying tanks, jetpacks and chainsaws can not help but love Warhammer 40k.


When it comes to the Tau, one can see fairly strong ties to Oriental cultures, more specifically Japan. A few indications for that connection is firstly the use of mecha suits, their voice acting in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, but there is one other connection, that is slightly less clear. When one looks at real life history, it becomes fairly obvious that no one really expected the Japanese empire to become a threat to the overseas possessions of western nations. Some understood this better than others, but in any case the magnitude of the threat was misunderstood. One reason for this is ofcourse the fact that the western powers considered themselves slightly superior, although this notion had already started declining, but another reason is that Japan industrialized relatively late, and did so practically unnoticed. In 1853 an American naval squadron under the command of Matthew Perry forced Japan to open it's ports to foreign merchants. An indirect consequence was the fall of the shogunate in 1868. In 1871, Samurai officials were sent to Western europe to learn about western politics, economy and technology(One of the Samurai class' last contributions to Japanese history, in fact), and by 1900 Japan was an industrial nation, although it still depended on western imports to keep it's economy running. These political, economic and technological changes went unnoticed by most of the world, and as a result, Japan was able to perform very impressive military feats during the second world war, until the turning point at the Battle of Midway, which cost their navy too many carriers. The Tau are similar to this because they too went from a bunch of (in the eyes of the Adeptus Mechanicus Explorers) primitive savages living on a single planet to a highly advanced empire(The lore states that a warp storm enveloped their planet, and that they emerged as gundam users, pretty much). In fact, their battlefield technology surpasses the Imperium of man, but their crucial weakness is that the Tau Empire does not have access to interstellar flight(A major logistics problem during an interstellar war) and does not have access to the same kind of reserves that the Imperium can bring to bear. The rulebook simply offers us the explanation that the Imperium is too invested in fending off hive fleets and the current Black Crusade to give much of a fuck about the Tau. If the timeline of WH40k ever progresses(Which it probably won't) it will be interesting to see whether the Tyranids or the Imperium gets to them first.

The Tyranids have a shorter explanation. They have no historical counterpart in human history, and their main inspiration were the creatures from the movie Aliens. A marvelous addition nonetheless.

Orks are very strongly based on the stereotypical image of "The barbarian" that we have inherited from the Greeks and Romans. Basically a bunch of foreign tribes that they can not comprehend the motivations and methods of, who tend to form large hordes. The notable difference is that historical barbarian hordes were more of an armed refugee collumn. For instance, most of the hostile tribes that invaded the Western Roman Empire did so because their other option was being massacred by the Huns. The Orks actually stay closer to the Barbarian stereotype created by the Romans, that they are simply wild savages looking for a fight. If one compares these two images, one starts to see a relation: http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/170895/5315238/1263072461923/bad_posture_2.gif?token=GKb1yy6HGQEuqNYPQFrQ9X/acm0= http://img03.deviantart.net/5e6a/i/2013/289/c/2/warhammer_40k__ork_boyz_by_thomaswievegg-d6qp7ry.jpg Notice the similarities between the slumped posture? Where the Space Marines are an incarnation of the stereotype of knightly orders, the Orks are an incarnation of the stereotypical barbarian whose life was centered around fighting and looting. Again, Games Workshop focuses mainly on the black and white aspects, and leaves out the grey ones.

The Necrons are the WH40k incarnation of the Tomb Kings from WH Fantasy, which drew it's inspiration from ancient Egypt.

The Eldar are technically an incarnation of the High Elves from WH Fantasy, however, their history and culture would indicate that their inspiration came from a combination of what we know about the Hittites, Assyrians, Akkadians and Babylonians. Technically, the Eldar were the first race to have an Empire in WH40k, which puts them in the same category as the Akkadians on our planet. The Eldar were also one of the first races to fight the Necrons. If we assume the Necrons to be Egyptians, then one could draw a parallel to the Hittites. Their culture and religion also has a few resemblances to Assyria and Babylon. In any case, I would not draw such a strong parallel between them as I would with the Imperium and Western Europe in the dark ages, as the connections are not as clear-cut. in any case, I would search for what inspired the WH40k Eldar in pre 1200 BC mesopotamia.

The Dark Eldar are a tad harder to explain, but we know that raids by folks known as the "Sea Peoples" caused the complete destruction of many cities in the middle-east, such as the City of Ugarit, which was literally destroyed by a raid whilst they were baking clay tablets to warn neighbouring cities and nations of an incoming invasion from the sea. Many historians also point to these "Sea peoples" as a possible cause for the collapse of Mycenean Greece, which caused a dark age in Greece between 1200bc-900bc until the classical period began. Games Workshop probably did not base the Dark Eldar on these guys, but there are a few striking similarities. So yes, if I do in-depth research into a WH40k faction I can definately draw a parallel to some long-gone kingdom or empire, but it is most clearly visible when you look at the Tau and the Imperium.

The Imperium itself is a bit of an odd one, because it appears to have elements of many different eras in Roman history. The Emperor-veneration cult definately stems from the Roman Imperial era, but then you have the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition, which would represent the Papacy and the IRL inquisition, which didn't form until after the Western Roman Empire fell. The Space Marines we've discussed beforehand, and the only historical equivalents for the Imperial guard are seen during WW1 and WW2. I specifically place them in that period because they are mass armies led by a General with a Staff. Not the walking instrument, but an actual general staff. This is something we do not see in a Space Marine chapter, for instance, where each force is led by a force commander, and you have a chapter master at the head. In terms of organization, the Imperial guard as a fighting force has a much stronger resemblance to the armies that took to the field in 1918. I say 1918 specifically because Artillery did not play a major role in the earliest battles, and Tanks didn't really make an appearance until the second half of the war. By 1918 however, Imperial Germany can see all the characteristics in the opposing Western Allies that we know from the IG in WH40k. Mass infantry formations, concentrated usage of tanks, overwhelming use of artillery and the prospect of unlimited reinforcements(in the form of the Americans), complete control of the sea(space in case of WH40k, courtesy of the Imperial Navy) to prevent supplies or friendly forces from arriving and the prospect of suffering a defeat through attrition. I add World War 2 to the list as well, because while World War 1 comes close to what we are used to from the Imperial Guard, it is the Red Army as seen between 1943 and 1945 that truly comes the closest to the IG. Ofcourse the main beauty of the Imperial Guard is that there is literally a regiment or planet to represent every single military force in History from the US troops in Vietnam(Catachan) down to the Huns(Attilan Rough Riders).

 

[Hamiller]

Why is everybody so fixated on genocide, mass murder, purging, and oppression? I mean it's cool that it is in the game, which makes it feel realistic given all the atrocities from human history, but hell it sounds like half the people here are gonna spend their free time with virtual genocide come 9th of may, which I find.. weird?

Don't worry, I'm going to build an United Federation of Planets.




Also known as the Homo Sapiens Club.

 

[NekomimiMaiden]

I'm looking forward to scientific inquiry, exploration, and alliance-building with a spiritual pacifist xenophile space fox race. Considering Enlightened Monarchy or Peaceful Bureaucracy.

I think "democratic factions" may be slightly misleading in name; I'm guessing they're a group of people who believe an ethos and/or government change is for the better, not just towards individualism and democratic government. This might in fact be a group of powerful businessmen or landholders pushing an oligarchic hegemony, or pacifists attempting to divert the empire away from militarism.

Basically they're "voting", with their striking and infrastructure destruction and eventual revolt to enforce their view.

 

[Caspoi]

Sorry if I missed it but I did a search and didn't find anything...

With the different government types, does your population happiness get effected by different factors?
IE Does democratic government types pop have the same or different happiness factors then a war monger type?

Those two are not mutually exclusive you know.

 

[hewhoispale]

Sorry if I missed it but I did a search and didn't find anything...

With the different government types, does your population happiness get effected by different factors?
IE Does democratic government types pop have the same or different happiness factors then a war monger type?

It seems that happiness factors are based on the pop's ethics and the empire's policies. i.e. Pacifist pops have reduced happiness with policies like unrestricted bombardment. Government type effects what policies can be enacted. I would suspect that the actual government form doesn't matter. (Do you really care whether a repressive government is an republic or a dictatorship?)

 

[Invictus5966]

It seems that happiness factors are based on the pop's ethics and the empire's policies. i.e. Pacifist pops have reduced happiness with policies like unrestricted bombardment. Government type effects what policies can be enacted. I would suspect that the actual government form doesn't matter. (Do you really care whether a repressive government is an republic or a dictatorship?)

Glad to hear that.

 

[Safehold]

I think you give the players who dream of genocide and unfettered murder sprees too much credit. It's not so much role-playing to explore the miserable depths of human depravity, which is what an emotionally stable adult might do, but power fantasies, as you suggested, bringing their hidden desires to the surface.

The zombie phenomenon, for instance, I'd like to use as an example. It's the depraved lust for killing and maiming and murder without all the pesky ethical baggage of performing these acts on living people.

In the real world things are reversed to how you describe. The people with such hidden desires deal with them, whereas the people roleplaying revenge fantasies in the ME are much more prone to acting them out, especially since they start before the children are six years old.

Perhaps if Westerners were as good at role playing, they would be capable of exerting their dreams instead of restraining them. The number of serial killers using zombies as a justification, would increase, according to some people's flawed models of the verse. It has certainly taken that sub culture a long time to grow, but they are growing due to hooks into popular Western culture. There are even games about survival now. That's why the model's predictions are reversed. Normally an accurate model at least has correlation, if not causation. But when the model says that X causes Y so that Y (serial killings based on zombies) would increase, yet in reality the opposite trend happens, then the model is not only inaccurate, it's completely broken.

 

[Dunbal]

So long as Stellaris lets me bring out my latent murderous tendencies and crush dissent with an iron fist, I'm happy.

 

[Caspoi]

It seems that happiness factors are based on the pop's ethics and the empire's policies. i.e. Pacifist pops have reduced happiness with policies like unrestricted bombardment. Government type effects what policies can be enacted. I would suspect that the actual government form doesn't matter. (Do you really care whether a repressive government is an republic or a dictatorship?)

Seeing as I am on a roll republics and dictatorships are not mutually exclusive either.

 

[hewhoispale]

Seeing as I am on a roll republics and dictatorships are not mutually exclusive either.

Fair enough.

Rephrase: Do you really care whether a repressive government is a $RepresentativeGovernmentExampleString or a $NonRepresentativeGovernmentExampleString?

Better?