[Dakka]

Yay! Now all we need are nomads that can strip planets of all their resources and I can finally do Tyranids
The shadow of the warp is coming! Consuming mind, body, and soul!

 

[Tavior]

I think the issue is that the Hive Mind is interstellar here; a "traditional" hive mind would collapse if it was spacefaring, because it's been disconnected from the means it uses to keep in contact with the individual segments of its consciousness. Psionics provides a good excuse for cohesive consciousness across planets.

There are other way to deal with interstellar distance to a Hive Mind. They don't have to be exclusive to Psi only.

You could deal with distance between Hive Mind clusters by having both running in parallel, as far to deciding what to do with local issues, and collectively come together to make decide to go to war and other high level issues.

A good analogy would be to have distributed computing power, also known as cloud computing, where a single program is being run across multiple devices and all come together to present a coherent result.

 

[Kayden_II]

Dictatorial: Rulers are elected but rule for life.

Imperial: Rulers rule for life and are succeeded by appointed heirs on death.

Just a little Issue ...
I would use different Colours: Red for the dictatorial and Purple for the imperial One, because Red fits into the Green-Yellow-Red-Axis and Purple is the associated Colour for Royalty.

 

[REgentle]

I was drawing up a plan to try out fanatic militarist xenophiles for my first go-round when I got around to catching stellaris on a sale, playing as "the federation's unequaled sword and shield" and stuff. Civics and everything sound very cool, generally (albeit I might miss the tiny bits of unique identity that can be gleaned from particular government forms, as in having "being an advanced military republic" as the reason I have the most valorous army in the galaxy, as planned). I do hope I'll be able to find a way to turn the tables on those "purifier" zealots, though.
(Admittedly, something that immediately comes to mind is "the ability to make friends." )

 

[wthree]

While I do like the concept of civics, I'm really disappointed by two things:

1) Syncretic evolution - While the Syncretic evolution trait might be pretty neat, as the boni from strong and proles (+extra traits?) is pretty neat, the fact they are completely random is severely disappointing. It basically just means I would have to do more restarts to get a situation I like.
2) Meanwhile Mechanist just seems completely useless, it means taking a massive hit to early production while you build up an energy surplus (which could be disastrous if you dont have a lot of potential energy mines nearby), just so you can get some pops that give a very minor bonus to food and minerals? The robot tech is already easily accessible very early on, so It honestly seems like it might be more of a burden than a bonus. I can tell you now, that even though I love playing with synthetics, I would never once play with this civic.
3) Hive Minds - Essentially, playing a Hive Mind is just like playing Stellaris on release. While I think its good that internal politics should be gone in a Hive Mind, the fact that you would have almost no control over anything is a bit disappointing, and it seems like you are pigeon-holed into a very specific and narrow type of hive mind. Please, please, please allow multiple types of purging if only for the sake of sanity.

Overall, while I have been very excited about Utopia, this developer diary was the first one that was actually flat out disappointing.

 

[jmiles2irvine]

Two things...

Can I make a fanatic purifier hive mind? Or will I have to mod?

Does being attacked by a fanatic purifier give other civics special options? I'm thinking something along the lines of
a special "The universe isn't big enough for the both of us" CB that basically allows total war.

 

[Wise Strategist]

Nice!

I'm especially like the the concept of the "Syncretic Evolution" civic. Any chance we could see this expanded into one or both of the following:

1. Give us the ability to custom design the minority species.

2. Rework it or add a similar civic that allows us to create and chose a limited number of minority species, allowing you to start the game as a multi-species civilization.

 

[Ixal]

I do hope the synt ascension also allows you to form a hive mind (as option). The Borg are simply too much of a Sci Fi trope to not represent them in Stellaris.

 

[Taritu]

Mechanists seems like a very weak pick, since it will only provide technologies you could have researched anyway and a few robots (which you could build later), while permanently taking up a slot which could otherwise be used for benefits which never expire. Even as a roleplaying matter I can't imagine ever taking it.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Yes.

1.In my opinion rule over another hive-mind species from an hive-mind one shouldn need at least some processing, maybe a special research.

2. Also, what happen if in my empire I have hive-mind species as non hive-mind?

So long as they have the same portrait and name, they would see each other as the same species.

What happen if the species is gene modified (sometimes they change name)? I think that should exist also laws about the these kind of things.

I do hope the synt ascension also allows you to form a hive mind (as option). The Borg are simply too much of a Sci Fi trope to not represent them in Stellaris.

Agree, a non individualistic robot civilization, skynet style is a must. Maybe should exist some kind of special civic to do a robotic hive mind from start.

 

[Emraldis]

Mechanists seems like a very weak pick, since it will only provide technologies you could have researched anyway and a few robots (which you could build later), while permanently taking up a slot which could otherwise be used for benefits which never expire. Even as a roleplaying matter I can't imagine ever taking it.

It's still 2 free techs plus free robots, who have a good resource output bonus. I'd take that immediately with some of my civs.

 

[daniel8484]

Really nice! But in future expansions i do hope that we may have an option to became an "endcrisis" after a big final project in the endgame.

I would love to take the hive mind to a new level and be able to create a swarm and literally eat all the other empires. Or become so obsessed with synthetics to consider eliminate every "flawed meat species". Or even more, advance in psyonics and think that my specie are god-like creators and demand new slaves or demand more energy to maintain some psy ostentation.

 

[jazzglands]

How do the hive minds still have slums on their homeworld? That doesn't make sense, does it?

Why is there a big pile of crap on my kitchen table? I guess sometimes you just let things go.

 

[Taritu]

Hive minds and ethics.

The Buggers in Orson Scott Card's Ender series are actually aghast, horrified, to find out that they haven't been killing almost entirely drones during the war, but that everyone they killed was a person, like one of their queens.

 

[jazzglands]

It's still 2 free techs plus free robots, who have a good resource output bonus. I'd take that immediately with some of my civs.

Take it and get hella trait points for taking Nonadaptive. Keep your wimpy meat-pops on the Homeworld or in orbital habitats, and use efficient robot citizens to strip-mine those non-ideal planets.

 

[Zarpaulus]

I've wanted to create Mars from 'A Miracle of Science'. Its a hive mind, but all of its members are individuals. Not sure how I could model it here.

In the current game I'd say "Subconscious Consensus", maybe there's a civic resembling that.

To a hive mind, captive populations could be seen as simply captured organic components, and that it's completely fair and normal to devour them. It'd probably be baffled as to why the Human-mind doesn't eat its captured organic components in turn.

And killing a few thousand drones out of billions would be like taking a minor wound instead of killing.

Yeah, machinists will make for a pretty great start. But as for syncretic evolution... well, I normally hate drawing assumptions about balance for features that haven't been seen yet, but unless it means starting with more pops, I just can't imagine how it'd be worth a permanent civic.

Syncretic evolution sounds like it would encourage min-maxing your primary species traits towards "weak but smart", you could have a species with the Intelligent, Thrifty, Decadent, and Weak traits and your Empire would have bonuses to everything but food from the start.

There are other way to deal with interstellar distance to a Hive Mind. They don't have to be exclusive to Psi only.

You could deal with distance between Hive Mind clusters by having both running in parallel, as far to deciding what to do with local issues, and collectively come together to make decide to go to war and other high level issues.

A good analogy would be to have distributed computing power, also known as cloud computing, where a single program is being run across multiple devices and all come together to present a coherent result.

Maybe that could be what Governor "autonomous drones" represent, subservient hive nodes.

 

[Emraldis]

I was hoping that I could get an empire made up of groups of smaller hive minds. Like multiple anthills or beehives working together.

 

[AlleyTheToaster]

Wow, at least some Paradox games will have interestiong next expantion. Really cool.

 

[Tavior]

Maybe that could be what Governor "autonomous drones" represent, subservient hive nodes.

That is certainly one way to interpret it.

 

[indalecio248]

Hive minds and ethics.

The Buggers in Orson Scott Card's Ender series are actually aghast, horrified, to find out that they haven't been killing almost entirely drones during the war, but that everyone they killed was a person, like one of their queens.

This why Hive Minds as implemented don't make too much sense. Just any diplomatic contact should inform a Hive Mind that its not dealing with another Hive Mind, but that what it thought were drones are individuals. Now its possible that a Hive Mind may not be set up to be able to deal with Pops that aren't part of the hivemind, so it seems that the best option would be to let them to migrate off.