Why migrants assimilate to native population?

[MatthewP]

It's not unaccepted pops merging for the simple fact that there are no unaccepted migrants, pops literally will not migrate, even internally, unless they are accepted in the target country.

If that’s right I think it’s a bug. There are separate laws for allowing non-discriminated pops vs all pops to migrate.

edit: I should add, have you checked the status of the migration laws when you saw this?

 

[Xaelyn]

If that’s right I think it’s a bug. There are separate laws for allowing non-discriminated pops vs all pops to migrate.

No Migration Controls allows them to migrate, so they can leave to somewhere that will accept them, but there is no circumstance in which they will choose to go somewhere they aren't accepted, even if the laws allow it and they would be substantially better off. It's a matter of semantics, but the law isn't lying. My understanding is that it isn't considered a bug, but I haven't seen a clear dev response on it anywhere.

 

[Nnorm]

Unaccepted migrants should assimilate into accepted culture. Like, this a whole reason why do you assimilate in the first place.

 

[MatthewP]

No Migration Controls allows them to migrate, so they can leave to somewhere that will accept them, but there is no circumstance in which they will choose to go somewhere they aren't accepted, even if the laws allow it and they would be substantially better off. It's a matter of semantics, but the law isn't lying. My understanding is that it isn't considered a bug, but I haven't seen a clear dev response on it anywhere.

I guess it’s only a bug if the devs say it is. But it’s hard come up with a good reason - gameplay or realism - why pops shouldn’t migrate from one place where they’re discriminated against to another. The point being that new mechanics shouldn’t be designed with the assumption it’ll always be this way.

Unaccepted migrants should assimilate into accepted culture. Like, this a whole reason why do you assimilate in the first place.

I think this is a source of confusion. Pop merging is not assimilation. Assimilation is its own mechanic and works as you say. Pop merging doesn’t represent assimilation. It’s a performance optimization so the game doesn’t have to track so many individual pops.

 

[Oglesby]

If we are talking about the performance enhancement that causes small Pops to merge into another Pop then I would think it would be best to change the least amount of pop 'characteristics' to get there.

If the pop that is disappearing would be discriminated against then they should be merged into a groups that is also discriminated against. If there are multiple possible targets then start looking at religion and cultural traits and pick the target with the most in common.

If we are talking the in game assimilation, then ignore me.

 

[Caewil]

I guess it’s only a bug if the devs say it is. But it’s hard come up with a good reason - gameplay or realism - why pops shouldn’t migrate from one place where they’re discriminated against to another. The point being that new mechanics shouldn’t be designed with the assumption it’ll always be this way.

I think this is a source of confusion. Pop merging is not assimilation. Assimilation is its own mechanic and works as you say. Pop merging doesn’t represent assimilation. It’s a performance optimization so the game doesn’t have to track so many individual pops.

They’d then migrate from British India to the United States then among other things. Not a desirable behaviour for the simulation.

 

[MatthewP]

They’d then migrate from British India to the United States then among other things. Not a desirable behaviour for the simulation.

Only if British India has permissive migration laws and is in the American market. TBH people coming to the US for economic opportunity in spite of discrimination is the quintessential story of immigration in this period.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Unaccepted migrants should assimilate into accepted culture. Like, this a whole reason why do you assimilate in the first place.

They can't, that's the whole point of discrimination. Think of Jim Crow America; it didn't matter how white passing you looked, if you had a Black parent or grandparent and people knew it then you would never be seen as white. A discriminated pop can't assimilate unless the group they are joining is willing to have them.

 

[lachek]

"Small pop mergers" do not consider things like accepted cultures, religions etc because it's not "assimilation" or "conversion" per se, it's simply meant to be "these pops are so small or have such a minuscule impact on the game economy they are like a larger pop's rounding error, so we may as well merge the two so we have one instead of two pops to run computations on".
In the beta, we noticed that when pops first arrive to a new place due to migration, their initial size was often so small they'd be considered one of these "rounding errors" and get gobbled up by a larger pop, only to find that a few days later their buddies would arrive with a similar size that would also get gobbled up, and so on. The full release of 1.2.3 should make it so small pops that likely arrived due to migration - either due to the presence of a mass migration target for that culture or due to being a primary culture of one of the market participants - are exempt from being merged due to small size, as they will likely accumulate more individuals over time.
Generally speaking, any observable effect due to small pop mergers - for example, entire populations simply disappearing over time - should be considered a bug or balance problem, these functions are strictly meant to be housekeeping processes that have no measurable impact on game outcome.

 

[MatthewP]

"Small pop mergers" do not consider things like accepted cultures, religions etc because it's not "assimilation" or "conversion" per se, it's simply meant to be "these pops are so small or have such a minuscule impact on the game economy they are like a larger pop's rounding error, so we may as well merge the two so we have one instead of two pops to run computations on".
In the beta, we noticed that when pops first arrive to a new place due to migration, their initial size was often so small they'd be considered one of these "rounding errors" and get gobbled up by a larger pop, only to find that a few days later their buddies would arrive with a similar size that would also get gobbled up, and so on. The full release of 1.2.3 should make it so small pops that likely arrived due to migration - either due to the presence of a mass migration target for that culture or due to being a primary culture of one of the market participants - are exempt from being merged due to small size, as they will likely accumulate more individuals over time.
Generally speaking, any observable effect due to small pop mergers - for example, entire populations simply disappearing over time - should be considered a bug or balance problem, these functions are strictly meant to be housekeeping processes that have no measurable impact on game outcome.

Have you thought about storing the proportions of the merged cultures/religions in the pop? These could be ignored for the simulation and so keep the perf benefits. But they could still be displayed in the UI and have an occasional check to see if any of the subgroups has gotten large enough to warrant its own pop. It seems like this would also address problems like the one you're describing in a systematic way.

 

[Nnorm]

They can't, that's the whole point of discrimination. Think of Jim Crow America; it didn't matter how white passing you looked, if you had a Black parent or grandparent and people knew it then you would never be seen as white. A discriminated pop can't assimilate unless the group they are joining is willing to have them.

We have heritages. It is a great oprtunity to create AfroAustralian, AfroAsian EuroAsian etc. culture groups to merge people from different groups. It is performance-wise and gameplay-wise. African or asian people assimilating en masse to unaccepted groups, because they are unaccepted themselves en masse is still a nonsene.

 

[Xaelyn]

"Small pop mergers" do not consider things like accepted cultures, religions etc because it's not "assimilation" or "conversion" per se, it's simply meant to be "these pops are so small or have such a minuscule impact on the game economy they are like a larger pop's rounding error, so we may as well merge the two so we have one instead of two pops to run computations on".
In the beta, we noticed that when pops first arrive to a new place due to migration, their initial size was often so small they'd be considered one of these "rounding errors" and get gobbled up by a larger pop, only to find that a few days later their buddies would arrive with a similar size that would also get gobbled up, and so on. The full release of 1.2.3 should make it so small pops that likely arrived due to migration - either due to the presence of a mass migration target for that culture or due to being a primary culture of one of the market participants - are exempt from being merged due to small size, as they will likely accumulate more individuals over time.
Generally speaking, any observable effect due to small pop mergers - for example, entire populations simply disappearing over time - should be considered a bug or balance problem, these functions are strictly meant to be housekeeping processes that have no measurable impact on game outcome.

Since you're here, is it considered WAD that pops will not immigrate to a place that discriminates against them even if they would be better off and the laws allow for it (No migration Controls)?

 

[TitaniumMan91]

We have heritages. It is a great oprtunity to create AfroAustralian, AfroAsian EuroAsian etc. culture groups to merge people from different groups. It is performance-wise and gameplay-wise. African or asian people assimilating en masse to unaccepted groups, because they are unaccepted themselves en masse is still a nonsene.

Creating a diaspora group is fine, I have no problem with that general idea. But that diaspora group isn't going to be accepted in the new country, it just eases performance.

I'm only talking about the mechanics of assimilation, to be clear.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

Why wouldn't they?

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Why wouldn't they?

Again, because it's not their choice. They are explicitly kept apart from the rest of society through explicit discrimination based on ethnicity/culture/heritage enforced by law and society as a whole. I can call myself American/English all I want, the moment I introduce myself as Francois or Juan or Szymon, they'll know. Even if I changed my name, all it would take is someone exposing my secret.

I get to define how I identify myself, but I don't get to decide how society identifies me.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

Again, because it's not their choice. They are explicitly kept apart from the rest of society through explicit discrimination based on ethnicity/culture/heritage enforced by law and society as a whole. I can call myself American/English all I want, the moment I introduce myself as Francois or Juan or Szymon, they'll know. Even if I changed my name, all it would take is someone exposing my secret.

I get to define how I identify myself, but I don't get to decide how society identifies me.

Your forgetting that they are the majority here. You cannot keep apart the majority from the rest of society, they just don't care.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Your forgetting that they are the majority here. You cannot keep apart the majority from the rest of society, they just don't care.

Sure you can, that describes centuries of rule in South Africa and India. I don't think you understand how bigotry and xenophobia actually work if you think the relative population numbers means the smaller group will have to let the larger one into the club of acceptability.

 

[Froonk]

We have heritages. It is a great oprtunity to create AfroAustralian, AfroAsian EuroAsian etc. culture groups to merge people from different groups. It is performance-wise and gameplay-wise. African or asian people assimilating en masse to unaccepted groups, because they are unaccepted themselves en masse is still a nonsene.

They could actually do this together with @MatthewP suggestion. Create mixed heritages and store them as a number & proportion under the bigger pop's value. So EuroAsian heritage could be represented under European heritage as a value and separate from calculations until it is large enough to matter.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

Sure you can, that describes centuries of rule in South Africa and India. I don't think you understand how bigotry and xenophobia actually work if you think the relative population numbers means the smaller group will have to let the larger one into the club of acceptability.

India is not South Africa, they are not even comparable.

Genocide is the missing element here. The ruling group very much knows that nobody cares about some minority oppressing them, so it makes an active attempt to shift demographics in it's favour by actively waging war against the majority and replacing them with settlers (not mere immigrants) from their own people, they are actively drawn to migrate by the process of genocide freeing up resources for them to claim. Otherwise the whole thing falls apart, because it doesn't effect anyone's lives whether some tiny ruling group miles away thinks they are equal to them or not and the tiny ruling group soon assimilates into the 'oppressed' group anyway; basically how the Normans ended up becoming Engliash.

The game cannot properly model Australia or South Africa for instance because it does not depict genocide. It relies on part genocides for the current viability of for instance America.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

I'm not sure you understand what genocide is, and you're still missing the point. No outgroup will be assimilated into the main body of citizens unless that main body already welcomes them, especially when they have physical characteristics that distinguish them or are thought to.