Strange ethic shifts. Is this a bug?

[KopiG]

I was playing on my Fanatic Xenophobe + Militarist empire but when embracing the pacifist faction I became Fanatic Xenophile + Pacifist. I was pretty angry that I became Fanatic Xenophile, took me insane amount of time to shift back to Xenophobe.
See this thread about the previous happenings:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...se-how-to-shift-to-fanatic-xenophobe.1025017/

So this is how it happened in this order:
Xenophobe + Fanatic Pacifist ->(embraced militarists) Fanatic Xenophobe + Militarist ->(embraced pacifists) Fanatic Xenophile + Pacifist
So how the hell did I lose my Xenophobe ethics and gained Fanatic Xenophile which I absolutely did not want?

 

[Grubsnik]

I'm guessing this is the order of things happening:

1. You embrace pacifism, causing the least supported ethic to be consumed, that happens to be fan. xenophobe, your intermediate ethics become militarist, xenophobe and pacifist
   
2. Game checks if you have any violations of ethics. You do, can't have pacifist and militarist at the same time. So militarist gets dropped.
3. Then it assigns the freed ethic point where there is the strongest support, which happens to be xenophile. This means your ethics are pacifist, xenophile and xenophobe.
4. Game checks again if you have any violations of ethics. You do, can't be a phile and phobe at the same time. Checks which one is strongest, xenophile, then drops xenophope.
   
5. Then it assigns the free ethic point to the strongest ethic in your empire, which is, not surprisingly, still xenophile.

And bobs your uncle.

Not say it's a good way of doing it, but I've seen it happen consistently.

 

[The Founder]

If you ever run under or over the required number of Ethics, the System will make it up by picking the "most supported" ethic to make up the difference.
That is how you got from Xenophobe + Fanatic Pacifist too Fanatic Xenophobe + Miltiarist.

That you switcehd all the way to fanactic Xenophile does indeed seem like a bug. When you switched from Fanatic Pacifist to Militarist, there was a trait point to few.
It should have done a in-place replacement of militarist to pacifist.
I agree this does sound like a bug.

• You embrace pacifism, causing the least supported ethic to be consumed, that happens to be fan. xenophobe, your intermediate ethics become militarist, xenophobe and pacifist

• Game checks if you have any violations of ethics. You do, can't have pacifist and militarist at the same time. So militarist gets dropped.

• Then it assigns the freed ethic point where there is the strongest support, which happens to be xenophile. This means your ethics are pacifist, xenophile and xenophobe.

• Game checks again if you have any violations of ethics. You do, can't be a phile and phobe at the same time. Checks which one is strongest, xenophile, then drops xenophope.

• Then it assigns the free ethic point to the strongest ethic in your empire, which is, not surprisingly, still xenophile.

The game does have proper tracking of the "Axis" for each Ethic. on the Xen axis:
Fanatic Xenophobe - 0
Xenophobe - 1
Fanatic Xenophile - 4
Xenophile - 3

For example, trying to go from Fanatic Materialist (4 SPI), Authoritarian (1 COL), to Fanatic Materialsit (4 SPI)/Pacifist(3 MIL) is ended up:
Embracing Pacfist:
Materialist (SPI 3), Authoritarian (1 Col), Pacifist (3 MIL).
Embracing Materialsit:
Fanatic Materialist (4 SPI), Pacifist (3 MIL).


It looks like a properly made enumeration (with 2 being there for "neutral" in the axis and not displayed). However that would require a underflow when it did the change:
It somehow went from 0 to 4 (or 256 depending how the code works in this part).

Could also ahve to do with this part at the start of the file (but it predates Ethic changes and I never figured out what it does - my guess was Diplomatic Opinion, but those seem actually more hardcoded in the Opinion File):

ethic_categories = {
    col = {
        opinions = { 1 1 1 1 1 }
    }
   
    xen = {
        opinions = { 0 0 1 1 1 }
    }
   
    mil = {
        opinions = { 1 1 1 1 1 }
    }
   
    spi = {
        opinions = { 1 1 1 1 1 }
    }
}

It defintely looks like a bug/unintended behavior.
I would be very intersted wich value is written into the savegame file. So I would definitely add those to the bug report.
If this is not a Ironman game, you can propably modify the value in the savegame.

 

[KopiG]

Then it assigns the freed ethic point where there is the strongest support, which happens to be xenophile. This means your ethics are pacifist, xenophile and xenophobe.

Thank you for the reply.
This is what I have problem with. Why does it automatically replace and choose the most supported one? I have not touched Xenophobe ethic. The game shouldnt either. In this case what the game should do I think is to allocate that 1 extra point to the most supported governing ethics. So in my case I either go Fanatic Xenophobe OR Fanatic Pacifist, but no way the game should shift my Xenophobe ethics to Fanatic Xenophile.

 

[The Founder]

I have not touched Xenophobe ethic. The game shouldnt either. In this case what the game should do I think is to allocate that 1 extra point to the most supported governing ethics.

It did just do that in the first case. That makes then 2nd one all the more baffling.
I think it actually wanted to shift Xenophobia one step up. But overflowed into Xenophilia instead.

 

[KopiG]

It did just do that in the first case. That makes then 2nd one all the more baffling.
I think it actually wanted to shift Xenophobia one step up. But overflowed into Xenophilia instead.

Yeah it very much seems to me it is a bug. Should I report it? I think I should, would want this fixed in 1.6.2 imo as this is kinda bad I think.
Took me 30 years while being in a defensive war (gives major xenophobe support, was lucky) to shift back my ethics, was a pain in the ass. What if I didnt get a defensive war? I would be stuck forever with the stupid Xenophile ethic. Why? because of this:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ith-multiple-but-same-ethic-factions.1025483/

 

[extrapancake]

You should better manipulate circumstances so your people dont end up xeno lovers, or play hivemind so they dont have opinions. I like the internal struggle between the player and their pops.

 

[The Founder]

You should better manipulate circumstances so your people dont end up xeno lovers, or play hivemind so they dont have opinions. I like the internal struggle between the player and their pops.

That case is beyond "internal struggle". That is clearly a bug.

I could not go from Fanatic Xenophobe to Fanatic Xenophile if I wanted too.
I would ahve to use two steps (one Xenophile, one Fanatic Xenophile). Possibly 3 (the rnadom Ethic added by the first shift).