bee castes are nothing like human hierarchical structures so i'm not sure why it would fall under authoritarian
What if Hive Mind had an ethics cost of 2?
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yes, and happiness effects pops(so if you get upset, your entire hive would suffer from slightly less production), like i said, you could keep normal GC by just not including a 2nd ethic.
this was simply IF they decided to do this, how i think it should be designed. telling me they can already do this by roleplaying is irrelevant to how the system could be structured.
physiological castes, i don't think it really has to do with authority or hierarchy, but just the caste system. (if i understood them correctly)
I'm a big fan of this solution. I think gestalts need to be tied into the mechanics more- as it stands, they lack a lot of depth because they're rendered "special" by removing mechanics mostly- up to and including the diplomatic depth that other empires have.
Gestalts should definitely have more room to have defined "personalities", and the obvious solution to me has always been exactly this- let them take a secondary minor Ethic to define their outlook on the universe. There'd need to be some tweaks, obviously- would a Materialist Hivemind be able to use robots? What would replace that bonus (if anything) if not- but it would make them have a bit more flavour and mechanical engagement with other empires.
(I also don't buy the whole "the Hivemind is just the player!" argument, since this game encourages roleplaying and already has several modifiers for Gestalts that engage with roleplaying (see: devouring swarms, rogue servitors, driven assimilators, determined exterminators)- a Gestalt is no more the player than a normal empire is, and provided there was some mechanic to allow a Gestalt to "change its mind" over time and switch its secondary Ethic around, I don't see the problem.)
yeah but filing it under authoritarian just sounds like a misunderstanding of how eusocial animals organize
regarding the topic, it would be neat to have more specific ways of distinguishing hive minds beyond "purifier? yes/no", but using the existing ethics (or at least their names) is a poor fit
unfortunately you will not be able to pick a normal GC if added ethics will give bonuses to you. humans rarely work like this.
but as I said ealier you already can do it. so why change what is working?
besides your suggested implementation is a poor one from a gameplay perspective. what if you will change your mind?
as a normal empire you may wait til the certain faction will spawn(eventually you'll get all 8 of them) and then embrace the needed to reform your government. for example becoming xenophobe-authoritarian-militarist from fanatic pacifist xenophile(cuz you had enough of their constant conflicts and decided that they need to be stopped!)
but as a hive(even with a single ethics added) how will you change this single ethics if you decide that right now you no longer like robots, wars and enjoy xenos(right now you can switch it in a policies settings in a matter of few clicks). and since ethics change is tied to factions I will absolutely hate them as a part of the hive(cuz factions means there is someone dictating what you should\shouldn't do besides yourself. and it doesn't fit the hivemind with 1 entity(player))
True. Queen bees and ants are just egg factories, and are killed by the workers and replaced if their output drops. Buuuut...
in sci fi (when the queens are sapient and can control their pheromone output) it usually is hierarchial.
that's true, but the existing hive mind flavour in stellaris doesn't really match that trope
also i just think it would be cooler if hive mind "ethics" were described in ways more suited to what is essentially one giant intellect. instead of materialist vs. spiritualist you could have, say, curious vs. introspective.
i went beyond factions if you kept reading(including skipping happiness to specifically just stability modifiers). so they'd have their own mechanic for changing ethics, it's not that big of a hurdle if you're already designing ways for hives to have ethics.
honestly, i'm being persuaded by the larger consensus here.
they should probably just remove GC as an ethic, make some other toggle and give them specific hive mind ethics that do specific things for the hive.
my favorite part of Mass Effect 2, was when legion was in conflict, they had a vote and were coming up too even, so they ask shepard to arbitrate what should happen to the rogue geth. there's many more different ways hive minds could be represented than single minded.
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this will make buyers of Utopia and Synthetic Dawn quite upset. cuz it's the main reason to buy these dlc for some people
this also already implemented in 2.2
it's called deviancy. where your "crime" produce rogue drones.
fixing what is working is a bad thing. especially when you don't really want to fix it in the first place. I have a strong feeling that you don't really want to ruin the hivemind for a hivemind lovers. or to change existing hivemind. what I think you really want is that paradox will implement a new type of hivemind (like for example bio non-gestalt hive mentioned above) that'll have feels\ethics\factions and other crap that doesn't belong to existing types of hiveminds already implemented
Naked mole rats get into bloody struggles of succession, and the queen's spine lengthens as she has more and more pups, while other female NMRs are somehow kept from entering puberty. They're not really a good example of what you mean. (There are a whole bunch of articles about a recent NMR succession war at the Smithsonian National Zoo if you're interested in the subject, btw--it's cool stuff.)
In any case, equality of physical form isn't what the egalitarian civic is about, especially when all of those forms are shared by one mind.
That says nothing about their overall inclinations, just their inclinations towards you specifically.
If they have a beneficial attitude towards me, that doesn't mean they're a good guy, it just means that we're probably not neighbours and he's probably not going to eat me yet. All hive minds currently function the same, which I'll get into very shortly...
Overall inclinations is basically their AI personality: like Democratic Crusaders, Ruthless Capitalists, Erudite Explorers, Federation Builders... Their overall behavior tends to differ: You can expect your Fed Builders to throw a big permanent fed party with the other Fed Builders, Spiritual Seekers and Harmonious Collectives and Migratory Flocks tend not to start things and be good neighbours, Hegemonic Imperialists and Slaving Despots are less so unless you go out of your way to get them really like you and sign a NAP (and that's still no guarantee).
Normal empires have 17 personalities.
Hive minds have 2. Machines have 4. All of the extra ones are locked behind civics.
Hive minds are so predictable it's boring. You encounter them, and they make mediocre if slightly threatening neighbours for a while, then when they can't expand anymore they morph into little angry wolverines and try to eat everybody. If they're a Devouring Swarm they switch it up a bit and go straight to the eating everyone bit.
Robots have a bit more to go off of, but not that much. The basic machine intelligence is the closest thing to a "generic" empire, not super aggressive but not pacifistic either, they engage in diplomacy but will go to war if they like. But they're usually picked on because normal empires just don't like them (-30 penalty for being machine intelligence unless the empire is materialist), so they're probably just going to be doing the war thing. The remainder of the 3 personalities are extremities that can be summed up as: Make the Bios Us (DA), Make the Bios Dead (DE), Make the Bios Safe & Comfy (RS).
Hive minds and Machine Intelligences lose out on a lot of customizability by having the Gestalt ethic taking up all 3 points: Unless you pick a game-changer civic, all the gestalts feel the same. To put it another way, I can easily make a couple dozen custom empires and have them sufficiently differentiated from each other, but I can't do the same for even three hive minds. If I try, I get one Hive Mind, one Devouring Swarm, and a palette swap. And even if I fluff them as a peaceful or socially curious hive mind and play accordingly, my AI neighbours will still act the same and try to make my peaceful run as annoying as possible. Of course, if it spawns randomly as an AI empire the gestalt will act out-of-character of my self-applied fluff and revert back to the sleeping wolverine personality that all other hive minds have.
Same with Machine Intelligences. Maybe I make a Machine Empire that started out as a collaborative project of a U.N.-like entity whose species later offed itself but still wants to fulfill their vision in the galaxy by creating a League of Metal to protect robotic interests everywhere. Maybe not even just robots, but all sentient life in the galaxy. Or maybe a different machine intelligence that's curious as to how biological life works and wants to learn more about it and later even come as close to "life" as it can (Ascension paths for Machines is something I'd love to see but that's for a different thread). Or maybe I want warbots that were made by Roboticist Klingons that ended up offing themselves somehow but still kept their aggressive programming: Not driven exterminators mind you, war profiteering's just good for business. Problem is AI will react the same to me regardless, and if the AI ends up controlling them as a random empire spawn they'll go "off-script".
So no, just LARPing isn't a solution.
I don't think just adding more civics to fill such roles is the best way to handle it either. Civics are usually either minor or moderate impact fluff pieces that are either stand-alone (ex: Cutthroat Politics, Environmentalist) or connected in some way to your empire's traits as a whole (ex: Exalted Priesthood, Aristocratic Elite, Mechanist) or true game changers (Inward Perfection, Fanatical Purifier).
Gestalt's stand-alone generic civics are fairly fleshed out for now, Gestalts have a few very-important game changers, what they're missing is the empire trait-specific civics. And the biggest reason they lack those trait and ethic-specific civics is because they lack, well, ethics. A hive mind is a hive mind is a hive mind. Unless it's a swarm. Then a swarm is a swarm is a swarm. The AI plays them all identically and unless the player goes way out of the way to do things differently, they play identically too.
(Even Fanatical Purifiers have more leeway than hive minds, you can make them regular Space Jerk flavor with the Militarist ethic or you can give them a pinch of Deus Vult with the spiritualist trait and purge the xenos in the name of Starship Trooper's God Bug or whatever. You can also use some of the more interesting civics along with them as well like Post-Apocalyptic.)
Compare to the recent Megacorps: They have one Game Changer (Criminal Heritage), some generic civics (trading posts, brand loyalty) and a few empire-specific civics (Gospel of the Masses, Indentured Assets, Naval Contractors). You may not be able to differentiate a Megacorp as much as a regular empire, but it's still a good amount, and it's way more so than the Gestalts.
Gestalts could, and I argue should, be able to make use of ethics. Hive minds should also have an expanded list of AI personalities to build off from so the AI actually plays them differently. But I also think Gestalt should only cost 1 point, like 3 as it is now, or 2 as has been suggested, to make it more flexible. A hive mind, as it is in Stellaris, is a single-minded, that doesn't mean all hive minds should have the same outlook as they do right now.
I think there are criminal megacorp. criminal cult megacorp and just megacorp (plus personalities added to them if we're talking about ai).
hives are either swarm or not. no personality will change them.
machines are normal, assimilators, servitors and exterminators.
and purifiers are only spiritualistic or not iirc.
there are definitely mods that add personalities to other empires. same could be made for hives if you need(and probably already done). but it's all about werghts so nothing will really change drastically.
that'll definitely ruin the hiveminds. they may be weak\strong mechanically (depending on what version of the game you'll look at), but they all share one thing: they are perfect. you can take a hive and shape it into anything you want. according to your vision(in the limitations of the mechanist. so no turning from genocidal mid-game or developing a 2nd conflicting personality that'll stay a part of the hive(though technically it can be made through releasing the vassal). no factions. no ethics. no tutorial. no cooldown on demotions. etc.
Also I really doubt that ai is changing policies more then once per game. and that means that basically every pacifist\militarist\spiri…[insert ethics] + chosen personality is the same. every time you'll encounter them in your game.
at this point it's like you're not really reading what i put down, because none of this was even really about what I said.
i agree, any ethic out how the hive tries to control it's pops physiology, should be about whether it focuses a lot of resources into key pops or spreads them evenly, the neutral option taking a more even approach. basically better workers or better leaders, imo.
there's also "free traders"(friendly) "ruthless conglomerate"(hegemonic imperialists of megacorps) and megacorp(normal) if i'm remembering correctly. along with the others you mentioned.
I was kind of averse to the idea at first but then I really thought about it and asked myself what differentiates hive minds from each other...and the answer is that there is only one thing: the Devouring Swarm civic. Two hive minds without it are basically the exact same and two devouring swarms act the same as well.
I echo the need for more civics for the gestalt consciousnesses. Honestly, I think the Corporate authority could do with more civics too.
I echo the need for more civics for the gestalt consciousnesses. Honestly, I think the Corporate authority could do with more civics too.
Hives only being different by being swarms or not is the problem. And no, that's false: the AI personality is what influences the behavior of the AI itself including its typical characteristics (Hives being sleeping wolverines is caused by them possessing the "Propagator" characteristic). Adding other hive personalities that's influenced at least partially by appropiate ethic choices would, by definition, change them substantially.
Mods can help but it's only a partial solution since distinct hives should really be part of the base game. And I can't achievement hunt in a modded game.
They're bland, blank slates that behave predictably and identically to each other unless the player is in charge. That isn't "perfection" by any standard.
I'd much rather have hive minds that are clearly different beyond whatever the controller chooses to endow in them during their LARP session. Partially so I can actually make a hive mind that doesn't feel like a reskin of every other hive mind, partially so I can actually RP the hive mind easier (not having every single normal AI empire react against me like I'm a menacing ticking time bomb like every other hive mind when playing as at least a semi-amenable hive would be nice, for instance), partially so I don't know exactly what I'm going to get the moment I see that yellow Hive authority.
I'm not sure what your point is with no factions, no tutorial, and no cooldown on demotions, as the hive mind's ethics/general outlook wouldn't change any of those. Lack of ethics is a definitive weakness of hives/machines: it's a vital way of customizing and "story-telling" that's completely locked away from gestalts, and their flavor suffers accordingly.
I dunno about that. When I'm not purging the galaxy of the xenos or trying to rule everything under an iron fist, it seems I get a message that "empire something-or-other has embraced faction X and became outwardly more Y" at least once every decade. I've seen a xenophilic fed builder become xenophobic, and then xenophilic again, and I wasn't paying much attention to my neighbours. So they're possibly too faction-happy with their spare influence.
I would say that it makes sense for most cases, but as stated before, Egalitarian hives don't make much sense. The unit works for the good of the whole, that is authoritarian by it's nature. As such, those two options should be disallowed, allowing for 6 hive styles, Pacifist, Militarist, Xenophile, Xenophobe, Spiritual, Materialist.
Ethos for gestalts would be interesting only after a internal politics uptade, if was possible integrate non-gestalt pops inside a gestalt without nececessarily purging, slaving or assimilating and if was possibe integrate gestalt pops inside a normal empire without deassimilation or purging I could see gameplay differences between xenophile, xenophobe, egalitarian and authoritarian gestalts.
Otherwise, choose a ethos for gestalts would be just a choose your bonus.
Otherwise, choose a ethos for gestalts would be just a choose your bonus.
Yah, that's a valid point. Without pressure from factions, the effect of ethics on gameplay is significantly reduced. Some, of course, directly impact what policies you can use, but even some of those don't apply to gestalts.
Xenophiles could still be limited to displacement, but in my head a xenophile hive mind would be less "these ants' lives have intrinsic value" and more "I want these ants to be part of me too" which makes more sense as a "biological assimilator" civic. Pacifists just have their war policies restricted. That's not particularly fun.
Of course, having certain bonuses can impact your gameplay, but for some it's just a matter of "picking the bonus that fits your gameplay", like you said. I do tend to try all the different combinations so I can be encouraged to adjust my gameplay, but with just 1 ethic point that won't be such a huge impact.
It'd mostly serve 2 purposes:
1. Reinforcing the RP in your head. And yes, that is important. The whole "you can just RP x y z" is often valid, but it's better when the game rules acknowledge your RP. Otherwise, why are you even playing a game with rules?
2. Provide AI hive minds and MEs a sensible way to have different personalities beyond the big civics, which would be cool. (I know some civics do change the "empire type" of MEs but I dunno whether their AI personalities are affected.)
Also, friendly PSA: the game refers to them as ethics, not ethoses. Ethos and ethic do mean slightly different things, and I think ethic does fit slightly better. More importantly, it's easy to pluralize, so people don't start making up fake greek pluralizations of ethos and can just say ethics
