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Stellaris Dev Diary #26 - Migration, Slavery & Purges

Hi folks!

It has been a very busy week for yours truly, with a load of press demos and, of course, the grand Paradox press conference in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the rest of the team has been hard at work finishing up the revised start-up screens, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today… Instead, through the confused haze of my jet lag, I thought I’d say a few words about how to manage your population in Stellaris! As you might recall from the dev diary on Policies and Edicts, your initial choice of Empire ethos will heavily affect what you can and cannot do and what your initial population will tend to frown upon. Three of the more interesting Policies concern Migration, Slavery and Purges.

stellaris_dev_diary_26_01_20160321_policies.jpg


Let’s begin with Migration. There are two ways in which Pops can move between planets; spontaneous migration or resettlement. If you are playing a Fanatic Individualist empire, you must allow at least your founding species Pops to move freely as they like (there is an option to disallow alien Pops from migrating - not popular with Xenophiles.) Pops who are allowed to migrate will tend to move to planets they like better than the one they currently live on. This is not just a matter of the Planet Class, but also things like whether the planet has Slaves (which Decadent Pops like), if there are alien Pops on the planet (which Xenophobes dislike and Xenophiles like), and whether the planet lies within a Sector or the core worlds (dissidents and aliens tend to move to Sectors to live with like-minded individuals.) If another Empire is granting you migration access, your Pops will also consider migrating to their planets.

Now, unless you are playing an Individualist Empire, you can also enact a Policy to allow the forcible resettlement of Pops. This will allow you to simply move Pops between planets; at a hefty cost, of course. There is one more way to control migration; fanatic Xenophobes can enact planetary Edicts to strongly discourage xeno immigration. In the same way, fanatic Xenophiles can strongly encourage it...

stellaris_dev_diary_26_02_20160321_resettlement.jpg


So that’s basically how migration works. Next, we have Slavery. Like the migration Policies, you have three options; allow it for all Pops, xenos only, or not at all. Fanatic Individualists cannot play with Slavery unless the founding species has the Decadent trait, and only Xenophobes can limit Slavery to aliens. Why use slaves? Well, reprehensible as it is, enslaved Pops are harder workers (but poorer scientists.) Of course, slaves can - and will - join Slave Factions, although Collectivist slaves are more accepting of their lot, for the Greater Good.

Finally, let’s talk Purges, which is simply a way of getting rid of troublesome Pops… permanently. Naturally, this is something that both your own population and other Empires tend to react to rather emphatically.

That’ll have to do for now. Next week, we’re aiming for a more cheerful dev diary about sound and music!
 
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I remember seeing that a Despotic Hegemon has the perk of being able to create an "elite assault army." My question would be: can we form that army out of enslaved pops?
 
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The map of planet tiles looks really odd on second screenshot, due to its irregular shape.
Could this:
..0.0
00000
.0000
.0000
.0000

Look more like this?:
00000
00000
00000
0000.
.....
 
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I'm not convinced about the collectivists accepting slavery either. To take an example from SF, the Narn in Babylon 5 certainly are collectivist, but they are fiercely anti-slavery as well. Historically, one could argue that many slave revolts were built on collectivist ideologies (take, however, dramatized by the sources, Spartacus), as 'individualists' would be happy with personal manumission.
I get the impression that people have read Ayn Rand too much.

You don't have to accept slavery as collectivist.

But you have to understand that the collectivist represent a utilitarian view of "what is best for the nation as a whole" rather than "What will afford people the most rights and best life?".

Individualism represents respect for liberal freedoms, even at the cost of losing control over the population.

Collectivism does not represent communism or socialism, maybe at best Stalinist communism, nor does individualism represent conservatism (which can indeed be collectivist) or fascism (which certainly is collectivist "The country/ethic group is unity!" and at the same time xenophobic "damn the strangers!").
 
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Collectivists as they are in game generally accept slavery, they just don't necessarily call it slavery.
Lets say you are collectivist materialist empire, but a group of your pops is unhappy with it due to being spiritual individualists.
So you send them to "re-education facilities". It isn't called slavery, selling and buying sentients is technically illegal, but end-effect is the same.
 
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In Stellaris speak 'Fanatic Collectivist' essentially means 'Hive Mind' though right, not social collectivism? Or is there a separate trait for that?

Moral ambiguity aside, seems to me like having a tiered society with your primary pop as the leaders and scientists has no real downsides internally so long as you can find nice servile and collectivist races to enslave... Issues occur when you start attacking individualists, so solution would be simply to purge all individualists that are not your primary pop, diplomacy be damned!

The great genocidal Duck Empire shall rise. If you stare into the abyss, the abyss quacks back.
 
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These remarks would perhaps be valid if it had repercussions on the policies of the empire, but the current game mechanic implies that 'collectivist' pops are not bothered so much by being enslaved. They could be serving individualist xenophobes and, according to the game, think: "Oh well, I guess the majority of the population being subservient to a small elite really is the best for the collective." It doesn't really make sense. Like myrsl0ken said, that is belief in hierarchy, and has nothing to do with collectivism.
It actually represent more what Ayn Rand supposes everyone but entrepreneurs should think. And we wouldn't really call that kind of distopia collectivist, now would we?
 
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Why is that exactly? I know Paradox games are not for everyone, but I hardly see how the age of a person has anything to do with it. Hell I would expect older people to be generally more interested in the historical settings of other paradox games, not less.
Or do you just mean that your friends are just not that into grand strategy games and it's the first game you can recommend them because they like 4x-games set in space?

Being old has nothing to do with it, having the time to play a game that requires 400h of your time is. However, they might make an exception for a 4x executed correctly that will remind them of the good old days when they were playing such games. While they don't seem willing to make an exception for HoI4, even though it is very appealing, they seem much more willing to try out Stellaris.

As for grand strategy titles, no one can pass on an opportunity to play as benevolent dictator conqueror of the entire known world in any setting especially in a game you can play at your own pace, but it requires actual available time. The setting makes all the difference, apparently.
 
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You don't have to accept slavery as collectivist.

But you have to understand that the collectivist represent a utilitarian view of "what is best for the nation as a whole" rather than "What will afford people the most rights and best life?".

Individualism represents respect for liberal freedoms, even at the cost of losing control over the population. It does not represent communism or socialism, maybe at best Stalinist communism, nor does individualism represent conservatism (which can indeed be collectivist) or fascism (which certainly is collectivist "The country/ethic group is unity!" and at the same time xenophobic "damn the strangers!").

This don't make sense - if some society is collectivist, meaning society needs are far more important than individual needs then that kind of slavery we are talking about? Population gladly do anything asked from it without any forceful action involved. They be happy to - be it forceful migration, working on Uranium mines or sparring with Space Amoeba with bare hands.
 
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I'm a little disappointed about the Purges. I expected them to be more like, you know, the film called The Purge or that Purge World from Rick and Morty.
 
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Does the Collectivist 'Slavery Tolerance' contain the Xenophobe's 'Alien Slavery Tolerance' or are they separate?
Will my Fanatic Collectivists complain about aliens getting enslaved? (not counting the inherent xenophobia, only talking about the enslavement part)
 
This don't make sense - if some society is collectivist, meaning society needs are far more important than individual needs then that kind of slavery we are talking about? Population gladly do anything asked from it without any forceful action involved. They be happy to - be it forceful migration, working on Uranium mines or sparring with Space Amoeba with bare hands.

They accept themselves being made to submit for the greater good of the state. Doomdark did say that collectivists don't react as strongly to slavery being done to them. Keep in mind that's it's a relative thing, they might be a little angry at being seperated from their family and then made to mine salt on the lava planet, just not as much as an individualist would.

People have argued that some human civilizations have been collectivist. I largely disagree with this, and assert that some human civilizations have been non-individualist, but never outright collectivist in the Stellaris context.
 
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Are there CBs in this game? I noticed in the War & Peace dev diary, CBs were actually never mentioned. It just said you need to declare your wargoals at the start of a war.

Do you need a CB to declare war without penalties in this game?
My understanding is that it is like CK2, where you can only enforce war goals that you have a CB for, I suppose you could declare war without a CB, but you wouldn't be able to do anything with the war.
 
"In Stellaris speak 'Fanatic Collectivist' essentially means 'Hive Mind' though right, not social collectivism?" Actually it should be social collectivism, because the Ethos are political stances of your nation and a hive mind would be a genetical trait (or created through technology).
 
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I wonder if democracy government with xenophile trait is allowed to use purge when they are really pissed off, like after a pearl harbor in space, an unsuccessful holocaust against them, or when encounter mind-control parasite.
 
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These remarks would perhaps be valid if it had repercussions on the policies of the empire, but the current game mechanic implies that 'collectivist' pops are not bothered so much by being enslaved. They could be serving individualist xenophobes and, according to the game, think: "Oh well, I guess the majority of the population being subservient to a small elite really is the best for the collective." It doesn't really make sense. Like myrsl0ken said, that is belief in hierarchy, and has nothing to do with collectivism.
It actually represent more what Ayn Rand supposes everyone but entrepreneurs should think. And we wouldn't really call that kind of distopia collectivist, now would we?

True that, it is pop trait not empire's. Actually collectivist slaves should have a higher chance to organize and rebel than individualist XD I mean nothing speaks about willingness to accept slavery like trait described with words "We stand truly equal".
 
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