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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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Can someone tell me where it was said "slavery tolerance" was "we will be happy slaves" and not "tolerance on enslaving our own people."

I took it to be like the US South prior to the 1960s, they were individualistic (don't enslave us!) but xenophobic (enslave blacks / alien slavery tolerance). A penalty to the happiness of all pops of a race if some are slaves makes more sense to me, and acts as an offset to the production boost of slavery. I can see a collectivist state enslaving some to the benefit of all and getting away with it with the general population, but not an individualist society.

Now a species trait of "servile" would be interesting, if it meant less unhappiness from being enslaved.
 
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Interesting.

A question though: can you use pops to destabilize another spacefaring empire? For example, your pops emigrates into Empire B, settling mostly on the planet outskirts, Empire B suddenly changed its policies to repress your pops, your pops have had enough and declared a rebellion to secede from Empire B and join your empire, you get a CB to help the rebellion succeed. (a close example might be Texas)

Another question: If you are a fanatic militarist with a population growth boom, do you get a "Lebensraum" CB against other Empire?

Final question: Talking about migration of pops, will there be assimilation of pops (specifically the Ethos of pops), or are they confined to the same Ethos until their death?

Great DD BTW.
 
Next week, we’re aiming for a more cheerful dev diary about sound and music!
Yay!! I was thinking you wouldn't bother with that kind of DD, but I was wrong! I look forward to next week! :D

So later on in the game, can different alien races live on the same planet?
And did I read correctly that your pops can also (if allowed) travel to other empires?
 
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:-/

Guys, collectivists/individualists don't represent communism/capitalism or left-wing/right-wing politics. Left wing and right wing politics can both be collectivist or individualist. A fascist police state is a right wing collectivist, a centre-right democracy with wide rights is individualist. A communist-stalinist dictatorship is collectivist, a social democratic welfare state is individualistic.

It's authoritarianism vs anti-authoritarianism.

Then they should just call it that instead of something utterly innapropriate.
 
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Don't know if this has been asked somewhere, but I'm on a smartphone with a poor connection and I don't have the patience to wade through all the comments - so sorry if I'm playing the parrot.

Will we only be able to have a uniform policy regarding all xenos or will be be able to form specific rules for specific species? I would assume that this could be done by interacting with each and every POP of a species but it would be nice if you could tier your society by policy.
 
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.

I too, agree, that any humans societies can't be count Collectivist in Stellaris. Even "Utopian" Communism, is about balance between society and individual - society give individual everything to fulfill his needs, while individual is trying to be of best service to society while doing that he want and is best at.

Have to disagree with this.

I think you guys are looking at this from a very Western, 21st century perspective. The idea that a group is superior to, and has more important and pressing needs than, a individual is a very common philosophy throughout human history.

Collectivism in this sense, the very broad ideological alignment that Stellaris uses, includes not only the idea that individuals are subservient to the state, but also to their family, their community, their religion, etc.


The conflict of Collectivism vs. Individualism (as I see it) then goes something like this:

-Collectivist societies believe that individuals exist primarily to serve groups (community, family, country, religion, race), and that individuals are primarily defined by the groups that they belong in.

-Individualist societies believe that groups exist primarily to serve individuals (country defending citizens, family raising children), and that groups are ultimately collections of individuals that could theoretically be disolved (a country is made up of private citizens, a family can be split apart).

One example of a historical collective society would be a traditional, rural Jewish community: individuals are defined by being members of their faith, their village, and their family; marriages are arranged, not only by the families involved but also by the village matchmaker; children are considered extensions of their parents until adulthood, and even then they are expected to stay in the village they were born in (or possibly move to a neighboring one, usually via an arranged marriage); interactions with people outside the faith are limited, and marrying outside the faith or otherwise leaving it means exile from the community (and family).

Many non-Western societies could be considered collectivist: traditional Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, African, and Native American societies would all fit to some extent.

Fanatic collectivism would be something different: that would be something more like a daydream of Mao, Stalin or Pol Pot, in which people ONLY exist to serve the needs of the collective, and have little to no value as individuals. This would be much rarer in human history, but arguably not unheard of. (It's "arguably" just because it's hard to find a society that follows this across all levels; slaves and other very low social classes would fit, but to have a nation of nothing but slaves would be contradictory to human ideas of hierarchy; it could theoretically happen to some extent in a very religious society, however, in which everyone is a "slave to God;" in any case the top of the hierarchy would have to be an entity at least somewhat outside of society/physical existence: a diety, an idea, a semi-divine (and therefore, semi-human) ruler, etc. For a non-human example, an alien hivemind structured as an ant/bee colony would be led by its queen, an entity which is part living thing and part living symbol of its nation; it is the state, and the entirety of the population exists to serve that state.)

This has gotten very long but for one last quick example, an individualistic society: the United States, spefically of the 21st century. The government exists to protect the rights and lives of its citizens (the fact that "rights" is anywhere near "lives" in importance is a hallmark of an individualistic society), children are expected to move out upon reaching adulthood (which is decided by numerical age, not marriage or a ceremonial coming of age), individuals generally have few duties to their communities outside of paying taxes and providing for their children (who are often completely optional to have), individuals may practice a variety of religions or none at all, and are allowed (and encouraged) to criticize the government. Freedom is idealized, few people vote, and individual wealth is the cultural goal.

Hope that clears thing up a bit. Also as an aside, I don't think anything is wrong with using the term "collectivism" in this setting, as it does describe the idea quite nicely.
 
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:-/

Guys, collectivists/individualists don't represent communism/capitalism or left-wing/right-wing politics. Left wing and right wing politics can both be collectivist or individualist. A fascist police state is a right wing collectivist, a centre-right democracy with wide rights is individualist. A communist-stalinist dictatorship is collectivist, a social democratic welfare state is individualistic.

It's authoritarianism vs anti-authoritarianism.

So the Turians from Mass effect are neutral, even though both their general culture and the Government are obviously collectivists. They still have wide rights. The codex flat out says " So long as one completes his duties, and does not prevent others from completing theirs, nothing is forbidden." They are a militaristic Meritocracy society, but they do have plenty of rights that wouldn't exist under fascisim or stalinism.

The conflict of Collectivism vs. Individualism (as I see it) then goes something like this:

-Collectivist societies believe that individuals exist primarily to serve groups (community, family, country, religion, race), and that individuals are primarily defined by the groups that they belong in.

-Individualist societies believe that groups exist primarily to serve individuals (country defending citizens, family raising children), and that groups are ultimately collections of individuals that could theoretically be disolved (a country is made up of private citizens, a family can be split apart).

That is how I see it as well. Neither is good or bad when phrased this way instead of how others have been phrasing it. :)
 
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Is there a situation in which a pop could move to another empire's planet - i.e. Could a blog move to a human planet ..... Probably causing all the local human pop to want to move to another world ?
 
So the Turians are neutral, even though both their general culture and the Government are obviously collectivists. They still have wide rights. The codex flat out says " So long as one completes his duties, and does not prevent others from completing theirs, nothing is forbidden." They are a militaristic Meritocracy society, but they do have plenty of rights that wouldn't exist under fascisim or stalinism.

Arguably either neutral or non fanatical collectivists, you could argue both reasonably, but yeah on deeper thought I would personally say the Turians are neutral in the context of Stellaris. The bonuses of Stellaris and implied meaning just do not fit well with the sort of collectivism they do have.
 
:-/

Guys, collectivists/individualists don't represent communism/capitalism or left-wing/right-wing politics. Left wing and right wing politics can both be collectivist or individualist. A fascist police state is a right wing collectivist, a centre-right democracy with wide rights is individualist. A communist-stalinist dictatorship is collectivist, a social democratic welfare state is individualistic.

It's authoritarianism vs anti-authoritarianism.
I disagree wholeheartedly. A social democratic welfare state by its very nature follows the "It takes a village" policy. It thus must be considered collectivist. Even if people can vote, they vote primarily on the principle of what is good for the community as a whole, at least when the system is acted out in its ideal form. Also a fascist police state could not be listed off as right-wing, as when you look at their economic policies you see a lot of liberal ideas popping up. Socially they are a bit more complex. Though they are typically thrown to the right because of their nationalist ideologies, even in that aspect you'll see quite a few liberal leanings. If fascism is anywhere on the political spectrum, which I would argue that they are not by our standards, then they would most likely be in the center, leaning slightly to the left.

That said, what I would agree with is your point that the two ethos do not represent left-wing or right wing politics, as those are a fair bit more complex than the individual vs the collective. They do however have a lot to do with communism/socialism and capitalism. Communism/socialism follow the aforementioned "it takes a village" principles, while capitalism is the epitome of economic individuality.
 
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You are probably giving them something else in return for the duration of the treaty, like military access, or allowing their Pops to migrate into your empire, or something else entirely.

Oh, what more do I gain? Mainly cheaper war score costs for taking planets where my Pops live, and easier integration into my empire when the time comes.

Like real migration maybe the idea is also, remove problematic people from your empires.
 

Good post, it seems to me a lot of the current discussion about collectivism and individualism revolves around modern, Western ideas about politics, but for me from a historical/anthropological perspective, and also a personal one (as a second-generation Asian-American), collectivism vs. individualism has more to do with the differences you've outlined above. I would argue that even many of these non-Western regions today are collectivist to a degree, or at least more so than the US or Europe. As such, one could use the stable Asian democratic states as examples of how collectivist cultures are not incompatible with democracies. Heck, one could even argue that non-Western immigrants and their descendants in the US are more collectivist - or at least less individualistic - compared to the US ideal (or, heck, I've even heard lower-class Americans, regardless of race/ethnicity/cultural origins, tend to be more collectivist/less individualist if only out of necessity). Which is why collectivism blocking out democracy is really my main beef with the way collectivism vs. individualism works in game. If I could choose, I'd have fanatic collectivism and fanatic individualism block out democracy, but the moderate collectivism and individualism should be fine with it.
 
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I disagree wholeheartedly. A social democratic welfare state by its very nature follows the "It takes a village" policy. It thus must be considered collectivist. Even if people can vote, they vote primarily on the principle of what is good for the community as a whole, at least when the system is acted out in its ideal form. Also a fascist police state could not be listed off as right-wing, as when you look at their economic policies you see a lot of liberal ideas popping up. Socially they are a bit more complex. Though they are typically thrown to the right because of their nationalist ideologies, even in that aspect you'll see quite a few liberal leanings. If fascism is anywhere on the political spectrum, which I would argue that they are not by our standards, then they would most likely be in the center, leaning slightly to the left.

That said, what I would agree with is your point that the two ethos do not represent left-wing or right wing politics, as those are a fair bit more complex than the individual vs the collective. They do however have a lot to do with communism/socialism and capitalism. Communism/socialism follow the aforementioned "it takes a village" principles, while capitalism is the epitome of economic individuality.

The problem isn't so much what people would define individualism or collectivism as, but rather what they mean in the game.

In Stellaris, even moderately collectivist people *can't* be democratic. They can't represent social democracy (or rather a state where such parties would win elections) because such a democratic rule would require elections in the first place. Democracies as they existed in the 19th and 20th centuries could not be allowed either.
 
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