Xenophiles are the Worst at Integrating Species

[moglus]

AI also can not be collectivism/xenophobe,

I know all the rest you said, that right there is literally the only problem. But it is quite a significant one if you're trying to play a multi-species xenophile empire, and then RNG screws you right over by giving you only collectivist or xenophobes for neighbors. Which seems to happen quite a lot for some reason.

 

[Inkidu]

I don't mind it so much for primatives on the edge of my empire. When they're right in the middle though, yeah, I'd rather just skip the step where they become their own empire and integrate them directly. It's good to hear that protectorates will be able to integrate now, that will at least speed up the process.

That said, I don't mind that xenophiles have to go through a slower, more peaceful integration process in principle. If anything, the issue is that the harsher methods don't create more problems for the empire after integration. Hopefully unrest and the new ethics system will change this for the better.

I don't mind if it takes longer, if it's more rewarding. It takes the same general resource cost to uplift, and then assimilate. The problem is you're not getting rewards. You invest massive amounts of time, energy, and sociology into uplifting a race peacefully, and it has the potential to never pay off. All the while you can achieve the same results more quickly, efficiently, and with manageable unrest.

 

[Cagliostro]

Protectorates are *far* from lame, but in fact are a great source of influence which you can use to integrate all the vassals you diplovassalize after liberation wars.

Also, I don't believe I've ever seen a protectorate go more than 50 years before becoming a vassal.

The only problem I have with it is that it causes all these false 'disputed' areas which allow random empires to drop frontier outposts in the middle of your territory.

Also, anyone who thinks the game 'favors' purging has never really tried the diplomatic part of the game. It's far easier to grab lots of wrong-species wrong-ethics pops from other empires (and use them to settle worlds of all kinds) and rely on allies and vassals to help you than to fight total war the whole way through. Rebellion is not a meaningful threat, especially if you have influence to burn (from, say, a dozen protectorates).

 

[Avian Overlord]

Also, anyone who thinks the game 'favors' purging has never really tried the diplomatic part of the game. It's far easier to grab lots of wrong-species wrong-ethics pops from other empires (and use them to settle worlds of all kinds) and rely on allies and vassals to help you than to fight total war the whole way through. Rebellion is not a meaningful threat, especially if you have influence to burn (from, say, a dozen protectorates).

<Insert tedious 40K reference here>

 

[Inkidu]

Protectorates are *far* from lame, but in fact are a great source of influence which you can use to integrate all the vassals you diplovassalize after liberation wars.

Also, I don't believe I've ever seen a protectorate go more than 50 years before becoming a vassal.

The only problem I have with it is that it causes all these false 'disputed' areas which allow random empires to drop frontier outposts in the middle of your territory.

Also, anyone who thinks the game 'favors' purging has never really tried the diplomatic part of the game. It's far easier to grab lots of wrong-species wrong-ethics pops from other empires (and use them to settle worlds of all kinds) and rely on allies and vassals to help you than to fight total war the whole way through. Rebellion is not a meaningful threat, especially if you have influence to burn (from, say, a dozen protectorates).

I had one in my most recent game that last a century and was still going strong before I gave up in disgust. They never vassalized.

Playing a xenophile empire is a lot of busy chore-work, and seeing as I play almost exclusively as the UNoE most games, I don't really think I can be accused of not trying diplomacy. Lib wars are all well and good, but if you're playing pacifist you lose that option (hopefully Banks and Utopia would help that) as well. There are a lot of issues trying to play a xenophile empire, and I've had really peaceful results from more bloodthirsty games, and they didn't take half as long. So, there's a "what's the point" kind of thing going on here.

 

[Cagliostro]

I had one in my most recent game that last a century and was still going strong before I gave up in disgust. They never vassalized.

Playing a xenophile empire is a lot of busy chore-work, and seeing as I play almost exclusively as the UNoE most games, I don't really think I can be accused of not trying diplomacy. Lib wars are all well and good, but if you're playing pacifist you lose that option (hopefully Banks and Utopia would help that) as well. There are a lot of issues trying to play a xenophile empire, and I've had really peaceful results from more bloodthirsty games, and they didn't take half as long. So, there's a "what's the point" kind of thing going on here.

Especially in the mid-game influence becomes very useful for spreading to farther areas and to place outposts to physically exert space. Getting four or five influence income from protectorates is *incredibly* useful for colonizing unused parts of the galaxy and for pushing borders with people you aren't ready to outright war with.

There isn't that much chore-work involved after setting up the outpost and clicking on it to advance the culture, really. I mean, there is no particular reason you need to ever need to annex even after they become vassals. They are each one planet. Only border cleaning really makes a difference that way, unless you want to use their species for colonization or something (but even then a migration treaty will do the trick).

The fact that you think protectorates are useless suggests you don't feel the need for influence in a meaningful fashion. The only method I can think of which doesn't require influence is outright conquest.

 

[Inkidu]

It's just not hard to make that much influence. Even if you go war-side you still get rivalries which bolster that up. Influence has its uses, but it's not something protectorates give you an overabundance for, especially when they're not expanding your borders, and causing a few other niggling problems. The point of the original post was to point out how hard it is for the xenophile ethos to actually do what it's supposed to do and integrate alien races. Even if you put a high focus on having tons of protectorates. Lib wars will always provide you more, but having citizens that can colonize worlds you can't touch. Sure migration is nice, but shifting political landscapes have closed off a few of those.

More importantly, you have to have a planet they can inhabit, which either means you've got a matching preference (not that likely in my luck), you have droids, (can say goodbye if you wanted a religious combine), or manage to have a species with the irradiated perk on a planet that you uplift.

It's just strange that Xenophiles have to go through a ton of work to do what they're supposed to be good at, whereas other ethos seem to have a much easier time doing what Xenophiles should be able to do.

(Also anyone notice the lack of pre-sentients and the long time uplifting them. I mean sure, it's realistic, but it probably shouldn't take ten years, especially if you have a tech designed specifically to do it, but that's a lesser gripe.)

 

[Cagliostro]

Personally in my last game I used my abundance of influence to colonize every empty spot in the galaxy (hmm, 950 influence? no problem) and push several empires from several directions. With a bunch of mid-sized vassals from liberation wars, my vassal swarm tended to automatically swat invasions, so that i could basically ignore enemy fleets entirely.

Maybe you're playing in a smaller galaxy? I play Huge, so distance is a serious concern.

Anyhow, there are certainly things that can be improved about the uplift-integration mechanic. But protectorates being useless is really not one of them.

 

[Cagliostro]

As to having lots of species, by the end of my last game I had 12% of my original species in the empire - not because of deliberate work, but because of basically ignoring stuff and letting people do what they wanted. Every time I got anyone in my own empire cranky, I pressed the suppress button and forgot about them entirely (with unlimited influence who cares). The only part of my game that felt like unnecessary work was declaring lots of small liberation wars and then having to wait till the month tick to get them to vassalize (because of the 'distance' bug). Nobody in the galaxy really disliked me - I was even often able to diplovassalize people that I just carved up in a war.

 

[Inkidu]

Personally in my last game I used my abundance of influence to colonize every empty spot in the galaxy (hmm, 950 influence? no problem) and push several empires from several directions. With a bunch of mid-sized vassals from liberation wars, my vassal swarm tended to automatically swat invasions, so that i could basically ignore enemy fleets entirely.

Maybe you're playing in a smaller galaxy? I play Huge, so distance is a serious concern.

Anyhow, there are certainly things that can be improved about the uplift-integration mechanic. But protectorates being useless is really not one of them.

They're useless for their intended purpose, because I don't think the lib-war-protectorate spam was the original intent of the mechanic. I'm sure it was just a nice way for you to build up influence in prep for the induction into your empire, or offset some of the resource loss via edicts. As they sit, they're kind of this annoying middle-man that sinks a lot of your time waiting for them to vasselize, especially if their species would make a good pop to have.

Because God knows you don't have a lot of time or incentive to genetically uplift or modify your own speices. I tried that once and it neutered my sociology for the next century, and that was one planet worth of people.

 

[Cagliostro]

They're useless for their intended purpose, because I don't think the lib-war-protectorate spam was the original intent of the mechanic.

I actually disagree - I think that the protectorate influence is kind of the reward you reap for helping a lesser species, which is a keystone of xenophile strategy - kind of the counterpoint to rivalry influence.

 

[Inkidu]

I actually disagree - I think that the protectorate influence is kind of the reward you reap for helping a lesser species, which is a keystone of xenophile strategy - kind of the counterpoint to rivalry influence.

Fair point, but the balance favors rivalries while the unbalance of the game lets you cheese protectorates.

Rivalries have:

Limits on number of active rivalries, a lesser increase in monthly influence, and they still have the function or ticking off your rival and pushing you two closer to the war you need to expand.

Meanwhile:

Protectorates have a bigger chance for influence, no limit as far as I've found, and they still get you to expand without having to assimilate (the war element of the xenophile hat). They hold up a lot of your monthly in the up-lift, but seeing as you don't have to actually vassalize or uplift to get where you want there's an issue where time is all you pay (and that's more luck driven than anything). So it seems to require less effort than war by you reckoning. So let's hope some stuff gets balanced because I'm still not sure it's working as intended.

 

[Foefaller]

I've found that on higher difficulties, the liberate->vassalize->integrate strategy of taking over the galaxy does not work very well as a conquest tool, at least until you get to at least double-digit systems under your control... Which is arguably around the same point where galactic politics has advanced to the point where pretty much everyone knows who their friends and enemies are, and tip-toeing around direct conquest to keep everyone happy is no longer an issue.

Mainly because the AI is much better at keeping up with you on the tech side of things (sometimes better depending on how high the difficulty is), so you won't get enough of a power discrepancy between you and that newly formed empire to instantly get a new vassal unless you're keeping it to only one or two worlds at a time- significantly less new territory than if you just directly conquered and dealt with the unrest and threat modifiers. It's often more of a Liberate->break independence guarantee->war to vassalize 10 years later->integrate and hope your fed doesn't try to make them an associate in the meantime because repeatedly voting them down can piss them off enough to try to kick you out.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

Vassal -> Protectorate is based on tech... you want them to stay small with enough labs that they don't get too high tech costs. If they expand their tech rate slows as they fill up their immature worlds with obsolete garbage infrastructure.

What "labs"? Have you seen what protectorates do to their worlds?

 

[Cagliostro]

Well, the real limit on protectorates is being able to place the observer station in the first place. Which generally requires influence or conquest.

It is entirely possible that it isn't balanced properly, but I do think it is intentional that protectorates work the way they do. I think the *idea*, whether or not it is successful, is that each path will give you routes of securing the stuff you need. I mostly disagree that xenophilia is not working, though - I think a much better case can be made for pacifism not working.

I think the priority should be, from a dev standpoint,

a) making sure that there's a game that each kind of race can profitably play
b) making sure that that game is entertaining for at least *some* people
c) making sure that the various games are not wildly unbalanced.

Xenophilia is at least already totally feasible for a multi-culti empire. I have done so already, and I imagine others have as well.

I agree that protectorates are *better* at influence-gathering than rivalries, which was kind of my point. It may need fine-tuning, but perhaps that's, say, the strategy one should play for higher influence. Note, though, that a xenophobe could also uplift, integrate, and then eat them.

 

[AmpsterMan]

Migration is an important facet of the Xenophile. How does one induce migrations? I wasn't my new planets to get a bunch of colonists.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

I agree, it can pretty rediculous what hoops Xenophiles have to jump through to integrate their alien neighbors, especially as you talk about primitives. It's even more ridiculous if you are a Xenophilic Militaristic species, i.e the people who should be enforcing alien tolerance with an iron fist.

I generally don't like restrictions based on ethics, though the flavor might change with the new political parties mechanic. However, I'd rather all ethos' be allowed to perform any activity, but have consequential events that question their choice.

Realistically, a xenophiles, ESPECIALLY xenophile militarists, should bringing the hurt on to xenophobic primitives (i.e aliens invade during WWII SPECIFICALLY to defeat Nazi Germany). Xenophiles should be able to infiltrate administrations to encourage pro-tolerance sentiment (think DIMA from Fallout 4 Far Harbor). However, somes choices WOULD realistically be dubious for a xenophile species. Rather than restricting a xenophile's ability to infiltrate or conquer, events could pop up like "Our recent conquest of [Planet] has been met with mixed opinions back home, with people arguing that we are no different from the errant souls we attempted to 'liberate'" and give the player the choice to say "yes, this is wrong (change law to not be allowed to invade or infiltrate primitives to please the population with a loss of influence)", or "Evil prevails when those who can don't act! (anger population, gain influence, and encourage militarism if one isn't militarist already)".

Xenophile militarists should not find any moral debate involving "liberating" primitives as long as they get treated like equals afterwards, though I'd imagine them still being upset with invading a "nice" race (fellow xenophile or pacifist), and using heavy bombardment (fearing collateral damage against innocent lives when their targets are very particular; light bombardment is fair game). Neighboring races can still dislike you for invading a primitive, because there are many reasons to (fanatic purifiers hate xenophiles consolidating power, pacifists believe inaction is better than violence regardless of how righteous it is, individualists believe space nazis deserve independence and life as much as space buddhists, etc.).

In regards to infiltration, there should be no moral qualms with infiltration just based on how vague the concept is. I mean, yes, it is specific in that you infiltrate the administration, but xenophiles should be pulling that off to encourage tolerant leaders to get in power ahead of the perceived "hatemongers". Indoctrination BETTER be an option for Xenophiles, because it makes no sense for xenophiles to not be able to proselytize their belief in tolerance and equality.

 

[Zaltys]

I had one in my most recent game that last a century and was still going strong before I gave up in disgust. They never vassalized.

I had several that lasted over three centuries in my latest ironman, at which point the game ended. No idea how close they were to vassalizing.

I don't understand how they could possibly catch up in just fifty years. I own a large chunk of the galaxy with systems full of research bonuses, whereas protectorates have at most couple of system bonuses and they colonize every crappy planet within their border range which ruins their research ratio.

 

[Trithemius]

What "labs"? Have you seen what protectorates do to their worlds?

Hiking their tech costs is still not a great plan if you want to integrate them ever.

 

[BarskiPatzow]

Spiritualists are best at integrating, because of ED bonuses. Xenophiles have no way of dealing with anything, can't purge, can't make people like them more....