Most cults tend to be hostile to non-members and close themselves off. So it would make perfect sense for Inward Perfection to go together with Death Cult.
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Why can't I be an Inward Perfectionist Death Cult?
- Thread starter currylambchop
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I'd like to know it as well. I want to play isolationist fanatics but i can't
NERD TANGENT THAT DOESNT ANSWER YOUR LARGER QUESTION: (I'm a mythology and anthropology geek, so I cant help nerding out about this
). "Cult" here doesnt mean what you're thinking. In anthropology and academic religious studies, it has nothing to do with being insular or brain-washy. TRULY. It's just the root of the word "culture" and "cultivate." So all ot describes is any religious practice, gathering, ritual, the imagery related to it, and the meanings attached to those things. So anything any religious community does together is that religion's "cultic practices." So like everything that happens in a church is cultic. So are "secular" things like football games and parades and fireworks on the 4th of July in the states. Or if you add up all the prayers and feast days and things associated with a particular saint in Catholicism (or any deity anywhere), that's the "cult of [saint name]," not due to any insider/outsider dynamic, but because its "the stuff a group does and feels around this concept."
DEATH CULT:
Means you've got rituals, gatherings, and meaning-structures centered on death/dying. A "culture" that gives death a central place/importance in life and community.
** So that would still indicate that you should be able to do both, just for a different reason that you were saying. Any cultic practices can be Inward Perfectionist. In some ways, Ancient Egypt was totally Death Cult and Inward Perfectionist. They didn't really do human sacrifice the way Death Cult does, but their religion definitely had a lot of royal thanatocentrism to it. And they weren't interested in conquering outside their culture. They just LOVED being alive and LOVED the Nile and didnt really care about anything outside it. Whenever they did conquer outside that, it was always just to make outsiders stop attacking them. "Ok FINE, we'll take the Levant, but only to provide a buffer for the next time the Hittites get stabby again." You could make a case for other civics too, obv. But that combo certainly *also* makes a lot of sense.
At the moment, I can't think of any reason D-Cult (see what I did there) and IP cant go together.
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Maybe it's a balance / mechanics issue?
Like "oh damn, stacking those bonuses would be redonk," or something? Maybe?
Inward Perfection is already a very restrictive way to play. It would take an awful lot of bonuses to make you "overpowered" compared to someone who can simply blob across the galaxy once they've achieved tech/econ superiority.
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Oh right.
Havent played Inward since the days when Admin Cap was set in stone, and it really was possible to be a tall Tech God, when you really had to choose between expansion and tech. So I tend to forget that Inward is a total death sentence these days.
Havent played Inward since the days when Admin Cap was set in stone, and it really was possible to be a tall Tech God, when you really had to choose between expansion and tech. So I tend to forget that Inward is a total death sentence these days.
You can do OK with it if you're also able to use Nihilistic Acquisition. Even so, it's something of a challenge mode. If you play with non-braindead AI (e.g StarTech) and appropriate difficulty settings, simply being unable to make federations/pacts is a pretty significant downside compared to less restrictive forms of pacifism.
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Probably the stupidest civic exclusion. I imagine they just thought it would be too powerful to stack, but Inward Perfection has never been close to meta.
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I just really like this answer!NERD TANGENT THAT DOESNT ANSWER YOUR LARGER QUESTION: (I'm a mythology and anthropology geek, so I cant help nerding out about this
"Cult" here doesnt mean what you're thinking. In anthropology and academic religious studies, it has nothing to do with being insular or brain-washy. TRULY. It's just the root of the word "culture" and "cultivate." So all ot describes is any religious practice, gathering, ritual, the imagery related to it, and the meanings attached to those things. So anything any religious community does together is that religion's "cultic practices." So like everything that happens in a church is cultic. So are "secular" things like football games and parades and fireworks on the 4th of July in the states. Or if you add up all the prayers and feast days and things associated with a particular saint in Catholicism (or any deity anywhere), that's the "cult of [saint name]," not due to any insider/outsider dynamic, but because its "the stuff a group does and feels around this concept."
DEATH CULT:
Means you've got rituals, gatherings, and meaning-structures centered on death/dying. A "culture" that gives death a central place/importance in life and community.
** So that would still indicate that you should be able to do both, just for a different reason that you were saying. Any cultic practices can be Inward Perfectionist. In some ways, Ancient Egypt was totally Death Cult and Inward Perfectionist. They didn't really do human sacrifice the way Death Cult does, but their religion definitely had a lot of royal thanatocentrism to it. And they weren't interested in conquering outside their culture. They just LOVED being alive and LOVED the Nile and didnt really care about anything outside it. Whenever they did conquer outside that, it was always just to make outsiders stop attacking them. "Ok FINE, we'll take the Levant, but only to provide a buffer for the next time the Hittites get stabby again." You could make a case for other civics too, obv. But that combo certainly *also* makes a lot of sense.
At the moment, I can't think of any reason D-Cult (see what I did there) and IP cant go together.
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Devs could certainly have thought that to be the case at some point, but like many other projected(assuming the meta state beforehand) balancing choices it was wrong.
Some of it can be blamed on later changes makeing the civics worse, ie fewer pops so each is stupidly valuable for death cult, and sprawl mechanics state making tall play irrelevant. But the fact remains this exclusion makes no logical sense at the moment.
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