Stratified Economy for Authoritarians is -20% when failed and +20% when fulfilled.
Either Pop Controls or Migration Controls is -30% for egalitarians (can't recall which).
Xenophobic Egalitarians
- Thread starter beckermt
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Stratified Economy for Authoritarians is -20% when failed and +20% when fulfilled.
Either Pop Controls or Migration Controls is -30% for egalitarians (can't recall which).
That is the faction approval value which does not transalate directly into pop happiness anymore. Mouse over the approval value to see its effect on happiness.
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I think the whole concept is inherently contradictory though. Look at the US in the mid 1800s. Not to put too fine a point on it but the contradiction of being a republic based on the ideas of freedom and equality and liberty being built by slaves stolen from a foreign land and kept enslaved through the generations led to a huge civil war.
I can think of two solutions.
First, there should be less overlap and synergy in the egal+phile and auth+phobe pairs. As others have said, do like the xenophobe faction and make two distict egal and auth factions. An egal faction that wants equality between primary species pops only, and an auth faction that wants the best and brightest to rule with an iron fist, regardless of species.
Second (and my prefered solution) would be to script a mid-game crisis for an egal+phobe or auth+phile empire where the contradiction leads to a series of House Divided events that can culminate in secession or a civil war.
That contradiction is a huge appeal in my eyes. While a system like this is bound to fail in our universe, I see nothing against it working in fiction. Even though if it would lead to race full of hypocrites but that would be their "Hat"
Yes, basically the same mechanic that divides the xenophobe factions.
While an interessting concept, rather than a mid-game crisis, I would like to see this implemented in an update regarding internal politics.
In relation to Stellaris the US in the 1800 was NOT egalitarian.
People of the same race was enslaved which requires Authoritarian.
Which also lines up finely with the inherent hypocrisy of the "we're all free, except the slaves"
1800 US would probably be Authoritarian, Xenophobe and Militaristic.
And it was definitively an oligarchy. (still is but that's another can of worms.)
The US was founded along the principle that contrary to the prevailing political theories of the day, a state did not need a monarchy or a nobility to either survive or prevent becoming a secondary power in another's sphere of influence. I would argue that the total rejection of a monarchy and a social class-stratified society and aristocracy makes it egalitarian.
Regarding enslaving of the same race, I would argue that the racial divide between people in history can be abstracted into the species divide between sentients in Stellaris. Xenoism is the futuristic racism. Applying this backwards and arguing that since people enslaved other people it must be (to relate to the game) authoritarian is fallacious. The enslavers didn't consider the enslaved people like themselves. They considered them lesser.
Your description of 1800s US as militaristic is patently wrong. The Founding Fathers had a deep mistrust of standing armies and navies. The US had only a token standing army and no professional officer corps for most of its history. Decentralised State Militias were relied upon for local defense. Although the US could raise large volunteer forces when required there was rarely ever any need, as the US didn't engage in expansionist military action for the majority of the century. Even during the Civil War, the regulars of the actual standing army were dwarfed in numbers by the volunteers mobilised. Notably these were volunteers. There was no mechanism for levying, conscripting, or otherwise drafting troops until the First World War.
The idea of the early US being authoritarian is also pretty absurd. The executive held almost no power and figurehead levels of prestige. The first-among-equals was still one of the equals, as much as citizen as the lowest free man.
So I would argue the evolution of the early US in terms of Stellaris ethics as such:
- 1780s-1850s - Egalitarian + Xenophobe + Pacifist - A slaveholding republic in while all free men are nominally equal, with no significant standing army
- 1850s-1860s - Fanatic Egalitarian + Pacifist - Abolitionist movement grows and pushes for an end to slavery, eventually succeeding
- 1860s-1880s - Fanatic Egalitarian + Xenophile - Migration from Europe and China reaches peaks, suffrage expanded to all men, military expansion and aggression begins
- 1880s-1910s - Fanatic Egalitarian + Militarist - The US ramps up foreign military actions, immigration is severely reduced
- 1910s-1950s - Egalitarian + Fanatic Militarist - The Executive Branch of Government begins to strengthen and the Draft is introduced. The US intervenes in the World Wars, most notably the second, and takes a leading role in the Cold War.
While much of what you're saying is correct, there are a few places where you missed the target.
- The US did engage in aggressive military expansion during the early 1800s, most notably in the Mexican-American War.
- There was a draft system during the Civil War, though it was not nearly as large-scale as the 20th century version.
- While the 1860s to 1880s did see a great amount of immigration, it also saw a massive amount of racist anti-immigrant sentiment, so describing the US as xenophilic in that time seems questionable.
I disagree with your first point. I would say that the late 1840s more constitute the mid-1800s than early. Also, there was a great deal of internal and political opposition to the Mexican-American War, including famously by then-Congressman Abraham Lincoln. President Polk argued that the war was defensive, and in response to Mexican aggression against US citizens. Many argued that is was unconstitutional. While it was a war that resulted in large expansion, I wouldn't called it an aggressive expansionist war. By and large the political establishment was still anti-war throughout.
Your other points, I will concede. Regarding the latter, the ethics system isn't perfect. I just needed something to fill the third point. I would argue that the US, at least compared to the rest of the world at the time, was by far the most welcoming of migrants and the most ready to offer land and citizenship to foreign nationals.
It's also completely ignoring the fact that there were in fact white slaves in the US as well.
So even if we racially divide along colours, we need authoritarians running slaver guilds to represent what was actually happening.
Egalitarian in stellaris by definition locks out this option, and that was what I was saying. I wasn't trying to compare the US to contemporary states, but translate the reality of their situation to stellaris terms.
The fact that same species slaves requires authoritarianism means that US in stellaris terms have no other option up to the point where slavery is fully abolished.
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I'm pretty happy ignoring it. "White slavery" was done through indentured servitude. Poor Europeans who couldn't afford passage to the colonies would seek a master in the Americas and sign over their service by contract for periods of 3-5 years (with the option to extend service upon completion of the contract) after which they would be free and granted money and land to start their lives in the New World in earnest. Indentured Servants suffered nowhere near the abuses or conditions that actual slaves did.
~50% of Europeans who travelled to the Americas did so as indentured servants.
100% of Africans who were transported to the Americas were captured and taken as slaves.
I'd be careful with the "white slavery" claims if I were you. It's mostly brought up by White Supremacist revisionists trying to downplay the impact and horror of the slave trade.
Not being American myself, it looks quite funny that Civil War is described as pro/against slavery so many times. Might be that it ended as such, but it started as result of a shift of power from the states to the central government, where tariffs and taxation played higher role than abolitionism. Yet even after slaves got their freedom, they were not considered equal for over a century.
I like WhapXI's little post with very solid references, but must add that for first century at least, different US states had completely different set of economic and social policies on almost everything starting from immigration and religion and ending with taxes and jingoism.
I like WhapXI's little post with very solid references, but must add that for first century at least, different US states had completely different set of economic and social policies on almost everything starting from immigration and religion and ending with taxes and jingoism.
Ok, then go play an egalitarian game and have just 1 pop as an indentured slave. With those numbers slaver guilds and 40% seems suddenly really fitting in stellaris terms.
Creating this sort of effect is why I think Egalitarian factions' unhappiness with regards to slavery should scale, so that slaver egalitarian societies fracture over time, not right away. And, no, all opposition to slavery in antebellum America would not be classified as Xenophille. The abolitionists certainly, but plenty of people in the free soil movement were some mix of disliking slavery because it competed with free white labor, people who wanted to free the slaves and then ship them back to Africa, and people who though that blacks were inherently inferior to whites, but still deserved some level of freedom.
I think this demonstrates the different options I think Phobe/Egal empires should have:
- Xeno-slavery: The most economically productive option, but creates a growing political problem with egalitarian factions. Should also probably create ethics divergence towards Authoritarian. Xenophobes are completely happy with this arrangement.
- No alien population: Through isolationism or displacement (or I suppose purging, but I feel like egals should have a problem with that) this empire has no alien pops. Least economically productive, but both the Egalitarian and Xenophobe factions are happy with this.
- Second-class free xenos: Xeno populations in the empire have residency species rights and probably other restrictions. Egalitarians are content with this, but xenophobes are less happy (I would giving them scaling unhappiness for the number of free xenos in the empire). In addition, will create xenophile attraction.
I think a third solution (which is my preferred) would be to include more cross-axis friction between ethics, so that egal/phobe isn't unique. Make spiritualists disapprove of applying eugenics (capacity boosters), materialists disapprove of restricting primitive studies, etc. If everyone has to weigh conflicts between factions, the political game will be more interesting in general, and egal/phobe will be less gimped.
GREATEST POST OF ALL TIME. Couldnt stop chuckling for like twenty damn minutes.
This is false.
The South seceded to defend slavery and built their system around supporting it.
The CSA's Vice President Alexander H. Stephens explained their motivations clearly in the Cornerstone speech:
The idea that the war began over tariffs and centralization is nothing but revisionism pushed by neo-confederates and their sympathizers to whitewash the Confederacy and pretend it was something other than a vehicle for White Supremacy.
While I understand the impulse here, that logically, the policies of these two ethos are somewhat opposed, I cannot support the idea that they should be pushed toward civil war and dissolution.
The reason is that there is no comparable conflict between any other pair of ethos. If you want something like this, I would say that conflict between every other ethos pair would have to be added in. It makes no sense to ONLY gimp one specific ethos pair. It unbalances the ethos system if xenophobia is the opposite of both xeophilia and also egalitarianism.
There's two possible solutions - bake issues like this into every ethos pair, or differentiate the authoritarian-egalitarian axis more clearly from the xenophobe-xenophile axis.
The reason is that there is no comparable conflict between any other pair of ethos. If you want something like this, I would say that conflict between every other ethos pair would have to be added in. It makes no sense to ONLY gimp one specific ethos pair. It unbalances the ethos system if xenophobia is the opposite of both xeophilia and also egalitarianism.
There's two possible solutions - bake issues like this into every ethos pair, or differentiate the authoritarian-egalitarian axis more clearly from the xenophobe-xenophile axis.
Ok, I think we should back out a little from real world politics, but the american civil war had a variety of elements that led to it, and yes, slavery was one of the big things from the beginning that led to it - however history, as with much of reality, is not so cut and dry, and there were a number of things, including yes, centralization and increased taxes, that led to the destabilization of the political state and the resulting war, with the ideological differences being the rallying cry - but largely not the only cause of the tensions, merely what was easier to sell the common man to lay their life down for within the popular beliefs of the day, but without the economic destabilization, there wouldn't have been sufficient unease within the populace to call them to arms.
With that down, I think that conflicting ideologies should be part of every ethics pair - AND that factions should be more varied.
Allow me to explain; I think factions should be, rather than the one-size-fits-all, directly aligned versions we have now, we should instead have factions emerged based on the ethics alignments of the population. Factions could diverge or take up different beliefs as time goes on, with different weights for gained beliefs depending on governing and population ethics. Factions would gain beliefs (and new factions would arise) based on the governing ethics attraction modifier. A very strong governing ethics draw would, for example, leave you with only a couple of factions, with fairly consistent needs to be met, and some crossover. A divergent population, meanwhile, would have conflicting needs. This would also allow factions to change based on the state of the empire and galaxy. For example, a war with a machine empire, an AI uprising, or the contingency crisis occurring would likely cause a large shift towards being anti-robot across most of your factions. On the other hand, being allied to a machine empire might even cause a spiritualist empire to allow for some automation, perhaps seeing it as a good - early enough positive intervention by a machine empire, or enigmatic caretakers, could lead to a "machine god" sort of belief structure emerging. (though, if you then went psionic ascension, you'd get more negative influence vs robots due to no shroud presence)
So I think that it would be undoubtedly good for the game, though something of a massive undertaking coming up with weight balancing and all the different possible faction stances, though in the long run it would be easy enough then to add new faction needs and event adjustments. It also would mean governing ethics attraction would actually matter, in that it wouldn't mean just fewer factions, it would mean your factions would be easier to work with.
With that down, I think that conflicting ideologies should be part of every ethics pair - AND that factions should be more varied.
Allow me to explain; I think factions should be, rather than the one-size-fits-all, directly aligned versions we have now, we should instead have factions emerged based on the ethics alignments of the population. Factions could diverge or take up different beliefs as time goes on, with different weights for gained beliefs depending on governing and population ethics. Factions would gain beliefs (and new factions would arise) based on the governing ethics attraction modifier. A very strong governing ethics draw would, for example, leave you with only a couple of factions, with fairly consistent needs to be met, and some crossover. A divergent population, meanwhile, would have conflicting needs. This would also allow factions to change based on the state of the empire and galaxy. For example, a war with a machine empire, an AI uprising, or the contingency crisis occurring would likely cause a large shift towards being anti-robot across most of your factions. On the other hand, being allied to a machine empire might even cause a spiritualist empire to allow for some automation, perhaps seeing it as a good - early enough positive intervention by a machine empire, or enigmatic caretakers, could lead to a "machine god" sort of belief structure emerging. (though, if you then went psionic ascension, you'd get more negative influence vs robots due to no shroud presence)
So I think that it would be undoubtedly good for the game, though something of a massive undertaking coming up with weight balancing and all the different possible faction stances, though in the long run it would be easy enough then to add new faction needs and event adjustments. It also would mean governing ethics attraction would actually matter, in that it wouldn't mean just fewer factions, it would mean your factions would be easier to work with.
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Yeah, right, and economical issues weren't even mentioned in the speech. I agree with @Evaris that it was part of the problem not the whole of it.
Back to discussion:
Frankly, faction system is probably one of few aspects of the game that's really constantly improving. While opposites are still hard to balance out, although possible at more or less neutral happiness levels, some combos are hard to use, Xenophobe Egalitarian being a primary example.