I hope Stellaris has a proper balance between war/peace and genocide/uplifting.

[Guthuk Gaming]

One thing Paradox games are weak at is that war is always the answer, and without war there is almost no way to compete. While that might make sense in the time frames they were in, in a space game I hope there is a far better balance, and War/Peace will be in balance rather than one always outpowering the other. I'd also hope that genocide isn't immediately the best option for quick gains, and that uplifting is also the better option for long term gains in population for your empire.

At least in the way I'd imagine it, genocide should be the better option for full military empires (to keep your population more in line with your ideals) but it should make your empire weaker in the long term to peaceful/uplifting empires that can generate more population from uplifting, and not constantly slaughtering their men in war.

It'd also be nice if war was actually costly. Another issue Paradox games have is that they don't have enough internal gameplay, so they make war cheap and effective to keep the players occupied with, which just isn't ever how it was historically. War is expensive, and causes lots of casualties. A peaceful empire should soar past a warlike empire in development, but the warlike empire should be capable of generating development via taking it.

As a note: I fully intend to play warlike, peaceful, and inbetween empires. I'm not trying to be biased on anything. I'd just like if peaceful gameplay was actually multiplayer viable (multiplayer viable meaning actually a real choice, rather than having to intentionally inhibit yourself) for once.

 

[Harle]

Genocide and conquest should be a quick path to progress for those empires that can dominate their neighbors. That is just a reality of existence; when not kept in check, the strong will take from the weak, and grow stronger. It's not pleasant or nice, but it's just kinda mathematics. If your neighbor has a planet that can generate huge amounts of food, and you take it, then now your empire generates huge amounts of food. Same for virtually any variable you want to slot in there.

What I think may keep this in check a little, is that it will be easy for a warlike empire to focus on warfare technologies, ignoring social science, and this may lead to inefficiencies and corruption and unhappiness as the empire grows through conquest, leading to separation wars and unrest and industrial shutdowns due to unhappiness. That manner of thing. I would not be at all surprised if this is a fairly accurate description of what can happen to a nation focused on conquest and occupation. If they fail to balance conquest with social progress then they will have a tough time managing their empire from within.

And hopefully the galaxy is full of empires with long memories, and are able to recognize the worst of the war-mongers, and adjust their behavior accordingly. AI in 4X games are almost always too busy fighting amongst themselves to recognize a bigger threat. In reality, alliances between otherwise unfriendly peoples have a way of appearing overnight when a shared enemy is looming on the horizon, and I'd like to see that reaction in the NPC Empires. I'd love to see a handful of smaller empires, each sharing a border with your own much larger empire, rapidly band together into a defensive alliance to dissuade you from trying to gobble them up piecemeal. And maybe that shared fear brings them together, makes friends out of old enemies, maybe they go on to become a federation to rival your own empire.

 

[aitaituo]

One of my guiding principles in life is, "There is no problem that can not be solved by genocide." It is an ugly truth, intentionally juxtaposing sterile terminology with crimes against humanity. War, force, call it what you want. Violence is always an answer.

If you are choosing to deny that, you will and should be forced to accept it by competing powers. You may win the wars against your rivals, you may allow yourself to be destroyed to protect your ideals, but inexorably the fundamental violence of the universe will consume and destroy you in the never ending fluctuations of energy.

The peaceful path is the expensive option, even if it does pay off more overall. The benefits should make it the more desirable path, but also the more demanding. You will have to protect your pre-FTL cultures, you will have to budget for your investments, and you will have to convince your rivals that cooperation is the safer option, despite being the harder one. Or your enemies will teach that war, and life, is cheap.

More internal gameplay would be nifty, though. It sounds like they're definitely going for that approach.

 

[Meraun]

. Another issue Paradox games have is that they don't have enough internal gameplay, so they make war cheap and effective to keep the players occupied with, which just isn't ever how it was historically.

wait waht? Have we been playing the same CK II?

 

[beckermt]

wait waht? Have we been playing the same CK II?

Ah yes... conquering the entirety of Belgium and Byzantium via marriage was a glorious age for Croatia. That was a fun game.

 

[Meraun]

Ah yes... conquering the entirety of Belgium and Byzantium via marriage was a glorious age for Croatia. That was a fun game.

i guess until everyone revolted because you were a foreigner?

My Heir and the 3 next in line died, leave the throne for a Cousin wich was married to his Cousin, both were gay, Crazy and cruel. He also had the trait "dumb" Leaving him with like 3 Points in Diplomacy... I dont think Burgund has ever seen taht many Civil wars in one reign...

 

[Knotz]

I like the idea of uplifting/infiltrating pre-space species a whole lot more than just blowing them up because just blowing them up seems boring in comparison. If I uplift them I get access to their resources, population boost and maybe I can genetically modify them to make them super soldiers for their great benefactors. It also just seems like the more politically savvy thing to do. These are specifically about pre-space flight races though. I might exterminate an entire race of space flying ones but only if they're genocidal themselves, ie to dangerous to let live.

I feel like if you're going to make war monger your primary defining trait their should be consequences, borders should close which should effect your economy, no one wants to communicate with you so your technological advancement takes a bit of a blow cuz there's no longer an exchange of ideas or inventions, a lot of your best and brightest go directly into the military which might effect social advancement, never ending war leads to unhappy citizens etc.

 

[beckermt]

i guess until everyone revolted because you were a foreigner?

My Heir and the 3 next in line died, leave the throne for a Cousin wich was married to his Cousin, both were gay, Crazy and cruel. He also had the trait "dumb" Leaving him with like 3 Points in Diplomacy... I dont think Burgund has ever seen taht many Civil wars in one reign...

I think I ended up sending my heir out to gain Byzantine culture and then propogated that culture backwards onto Croatia. Given the scant culture mechanics, that made more sense than trying to spread croatian culture to the whole empire.

Having your empire crumble because it's accidentally ruled by an idiot can be quite a challenge!

Back to sort of on topic:
IIRC, terraforming is pretty difficult. A series of uplifted species into your empire/federation/whatever would certainly expand the amount of worlds you could populate effectively, without terraforming. That seems like a big boost.

 

[Okawoa]

Soft power would be nice to model. If we think about Japan, they gained allot of soft-power in the world by leading brands such as Sony or Anime cartoons. If anyone invaded Japan they could bring that soft power to encourage peace-protests and peace-talks. Here is an example:

"Our culture has invented an entertaining form of space-broadcasts that attract the marvel of ---------, -------- and -------. Even sentient beings far from us relate to the storylines streamed nightly. Catchphrases from the productions have even inflitrated their youth. We have an unlikely, valuable, cultural asset." +0.20 gold, improved relations.

"War between -------- and -------- has forced the space-broadcasts to discontinue. The wider population is looking forward to the next episode broadcast from *foreignspacecapital*. Massive public symphathy has be given to the -----.
a) Drats now we will never know!
b) Why not focus on pottery?
c) Protest to the -------- embassay".

ALSO Space U.N.

 

[Krajzen]

One of my guiding principles in life is, "There is no problem that can not be solved by genocide." It is an ugly truth, intentionally juxtaposing sterile terminology with crimes against humanity. War, force, call it what you want. Violence is always an answer.

I have no idea if you are speaking seriously, sarcastically, in the context of a video game, cynically, scientifically (???) or what so I'll just respond as I want

Genocide is not equal to war and war is not equal to force I am a pacifist and I agree that sometimes an organized violence is needed to stop hostile organized violence (Einstein, pacifist, said something like that as WW2 erupted; as much as I am humanist/pacifist, I have also extremely agressive attitude against Daesh because those specimens really beg civilized world to exterminate them ruthlessly) but I cannot think of any occasion I would justify genocide/killing unarmed civilians.

Even speaking from a purely material side I don't think genocides are ever useful. Nazis would benefit greatly from not massacring Soviet civilians (who initially greeted them cheerfully - at least in western republics) and allying with them against Stalin, Nazis would probably get a nuclear weaponry if not their expulsion of Jewish intellectual elite... Meanwhile Soviet genocides weakened their demographic potential greatly, which had a significant impact on their 1941 catastrophe, as well as post - war desperate attempts to overtake US economy. Genocide drains resources, ruins relations and 'destroys valuable assets'; violence breeds violence and retaliation etc.

By the way, violence is an answer to what? Because in modern era wars got so expensive and so unpopular it is very hard to gain anything from them. Even a notion of wars 'accelerating an economy' and 'helping to develop a technology' are regarded as myth by a growing number of economists (definitely The Economist mentioned something like that, although I have read about the subject in various other sources). Even Sun Tzu has mentioned “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.” Since WW2 the world has become more peaceful than ever before (hell, even 20th century with all its atrocities was - in a context of population boom - less violent than centuries before it) and the vast majority of wars are civil/internal conflicts. Currently wars are the domain of Third World failed states, autocracies on the edge of First World (Donbas conflict - though even it was extremely civilized compared to historical 'standards') and backward fundamentalism.

In fact, out of 7 300 000 000 people living on the planet currently, just 500 000 global deaths (1% of total deaths) are homicides, and just 100 000 are war deaths (and something like 3/4 of them are concentrated in one particular, least civilized, part of the Middle East). Unless we experience a sudden global cataclysm (even nukes decreased by 80% from the cold war peak, and keep being disarmed...) the trend is for humanity to become more and more peaceful, especially as we are experiencing social revolution as deep as Industrial or Neolithic ones.

---------------------------------
Now don't get me wrong, I love conquering and destroying stuff in a video games and I'm certainly going to play fanatical xenophobic race in Stellaris at least once but well, this is fiction and entertainment.

I cannot imagine 'realistic' 4X game, such as Stellaris, as all space games are projecting past history of primitive humanity on the scale of the universe and involving aliens who are suspiciously similar to humans (and I view insectoid hive minds as similar and unimaginative), as nobody can predict how the world will look in a decade, not to mention 200 years and entirely different 'setting'. Space empire building as understood by 4X games will not happen because of physics and Unknown Progress, so discussions what would make sociological sense in Stellaris are IMO pointless. Your argument 'genocide always pays better' may be as wrong for the 'realistic space empire building' as my pacifist optimism, we simply cannot imagine 2200 galactic expansion or societies. Ultimately what matters in Stellaris is the gameplay and 'pacifist' option should be as viable as 'genocidal' one.

 

[Tim_Ward]

There's an awful lot of edginess in this thread. I momentarily thought I'd accidentally gone to Reddit instead of the Paradox forums.

PDS are a company mainly known for making games which attempt to model the complex politics and diplomacy of history, not just wars and armies, and yet there's a bunch of people going "just start a war, amirite, that never goes wrong in unexpected ways"?

Genocide and conquest should be a quick path to progress for those empires that can dominate their neighbors. That is just a reality of existence; when not kept in check, the strong will take from the weak, and grow stronger. It's not pleasant or nice, but it's just kinda mathematics. If your neighbor has a planet that can generate huge amounts of food, and you take it, then now your empire generates huge amounts of food. Same for virtually any variable you want to slot in there.

There was a guy running a major European country in the 30s who thought that way. Turned out, the world's a lot more complicated than that and his rule didn't see out the end of the 40s. Perhaps that's because if you go round acting like a massive, raging psychopath, everyone else will see you as an intolerable threat and end you as quickly as possible?

One of my guiding principles in life is, "There is no problem that can not be solved by genocide." It is an ugly truth, intentionally juxtaposing sterile terminology with crimes against humanity. War, force, call it what you want. Violence is always an answer.

To paraphrase an old programmers joke:

An empire had problem. "I know", said the Emperor, "I'll start a war". Now the empire has two problems.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

Simple: violent empires start becoming a target for coalition, embargo, and domestic conflict. Genocidal empires also become so consumed by their murder that they make stupid economic or scientific moves, like maybe working on a late-game "danger" tech that involves a superweapon that could cause the galaxy to collapse or something.

 

[Sonereal]

Clearly we should adopt the Hierarchy of Foreigness.

 

[favonius]

Knowing that:

• Terraforming is expensive and may require certain technologies.
• You cannot colonize planets outside of types suitable for your species without certain technologies.

And assuming that:

• Ground troops draw from POPs similar to Vic2.
• Slave worlds require troops stationed at them.

Taking these 4 things into account it seems that overly aggressive empires could run into problems pretty fast.

If you take the exterminatus route you'll end up being forced to research terraforming or colonizing technologies in order to make use of your conquered worlds. On top of that you're going end up sending valuable manpower to colonize those worlds.

If instead you decide to enslave your conquered worlds you'll have to spend the resources and manpower (POPs) to train and equip new colonial troops for your slave worlds. I could also see a large slave empire running into some serious problems if it gets embroiled in a costly drawn out war. Revolts in the slave worlds killing of colonial troops could end up eating away at manpower and industry that could be better spent on the front line.

And in both cases you're still going to run into federations of unconquered races forming against you. (At least I hope so) I'm making a lot of assumptions here but I don't think anything outrageous. Paradox has already done the troops 'costing' POPs and many 4x space games already have garrisons and require population to be spent on colonization ships.

 

[aitaituo]

By the way, violence is an answer to what? Because in modern era wars got so expensive and so unpopular it is very hard to gain anything from them. Even a notion of wars 'accelerating an economy' and 'helping to develop a technology' are regarded as myth by a growing number of economists (definitely The Economist mentioned something like that, although I have read about the subject in various other sources). Even Sun Tzu has mentioned “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.” Since WW2 the world has become more peaceful than ever before (hell, even 20th century with all its atrocities was - in a context of population boom - less violent than centuries before it) and the vast majority of wars are civil/internal conflicts. Currently wars are the domain of Third World failed states, autocracies on the edge of First World (Donbas conflict - though even it was extremely civilized compared to historical 'standards') and backward fundamentalism.

In fact, out of 7 300 000 000 people living on the planet currently, just 500 000 global deaths (1% of total deaths) are homicides, and just 100 000 are war deaths (and something like 3/4 of them are concentrated in one particular, least civilized, part of the Middle East). Unless we experience a sudden global cataclysm (even nukes decreased by 80% from the cold war peak, and keep being disarmed...) the trend is for humanity to become more and more peaceful, especially as we are experiencing social revolution as deep as Industrial or Neolithic ones.

Human on human violence is at an all time low as far as anyone can reckon, which is a good thing. Overall, we have overcome the tragedy of the commons when it comes to self-interested violence and coercion via violence to others within the targeted group to social-interested non-violent cooperation or arbitration in direct conflicts of interest. It is worth noting that the state model of government, used practically everywhere nowadays, relies primarily on the mere threat of violence to coerce the rule of law. This is obviously pretty great, with few downsides.

Materially, however, all human civilization is built on force. We quite literally rip hills apart then smash the bits together to make useful things and tear off chunks of the ocean floor to build islands (Looking at you, China). I do not mean this as some hippy-dippy nature is a person crap. I mean nearly all of our activities involve breaking th

On an ad hominem note, "least civilized"? Why do pacifists so often rely on depersonalization, chauvinism, and alleged moral superiority? Those are, without exaggeration, the basic ingredients for terrorism, though also for most forms of memetic annihilation.

There's an awful lot of edginess in this thread. I momentarily thought I'd accidentally gone to Reddit instead of the Paradox forums.

I have been appropriately shamed and shall abandon my deference for the fundamental violence of the universe forthwith. In my last act as such, I would like to commend the caloric efficiency with which you destroyed a significant percentage of my brain's operations and reformatted them to a more civilized mode of operation.

 

[Duke of Awesome]

I think genocide is wrong, because groups of humans can't really be shown to be inferior to other groups of humans.

What a bold statement.

 

[Haldan]

Simple as this, everything as indirect and direct effects, and consequences. Nothing is really the good answer - this is all up to the personal ethics of your species.

 

[beckermt]

There was a guy running a major European country in the 30s who thought that way. Turned out, the world's a lot more complicated than that and his rule didn't see out the end of the 40s. Perhaps that's because if you go round acting like a massive, raging psychopath, everyone else will see you as an intolerable threat and end you as quickly as possible?

Hitler did bad things, but saying that the decline of the Third Reich was inevitable is pretty naive. There were a lot of mistakes made by Germany during that time (e.g. the betrayal and winter invasion of Russia) as well as a tendency toward inaction by some potential Allied powers that could have significantly affected the outcome of WW2. Had Japan not wildly underestimated the response of the USA to Pearl Harbor, they probably wouldn't have attacked and subsequently the USA wouldn't have gotten involved in Europe.

Now, this is all speculation, and all is well that ends well, but I for one think it was a close thing. And the lesson we can learn from that is the we need to be aggressively (note: this doesn't mean violently) discouraging unacceptable behavior. We must be vigilant!

(Boy, that sounds super nationalistic. Whoops.)

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

I had a long argument but let me summarize it like this:

CK2 doesn't allow you to do tyrannical actions very often, and they have severe penalties. Why? Well partly because of historical reasons, but mostly because in a game about managing vassals, if they made it too easy to bypass vassal management it would defeat the entire premise of the game. If they allowed you to constantly imprison or execute anyone that dared to annoy you the game would be a tyranny simulator. So it puts in harsh penalties to bypassing the vassal management to encourage proper use of the game (and lets be honest, there's not a lot of historical examples of tyrants working out well...)

So in that same idea, if they allowed genocidal military fascists to rule the galaxy Stellaris would by allowing people to bypass the entire diplomatic, population management, and sci-fi exploration aspects of the game. If every encounter with an enemy ended with "murder then genocide" and worse yet ENCOURAGED ITS USE the game would end up being VERY shallow. Doing the difficult approach of peaceful negotiations, subterfuge, espionage, uplifting, etc. would not be rewarding, and then would actually be a newbie trap.

The problem becomes that if the easy solution is to subvert the game's mechanics then it actually dumbs down the game. If every troublesome vassal in CK2 could be dealt with by imprison->execute then the game would become actually rather simple and boring. Likewise, if every planet or conquest ends in you genociding the population and actually being rewarding for taking the easy way out then Stellaris will end up a very shallow game.

Also, the edge-masters really sharpened their edge for this thread. Holy crap, some of you just need to go play Tropico and get it out of your systems.

 

[moglus]

Honestly i always found the whole "war is a quick cashgrab, and that's a-okay" attitude, that we so often see with paradox games, deeply flawed. War is not a quick and inexpensive cashgrab, especially not in a sci-fi setting, peace and trade are much more likely to be a positive "instant gain" than a war is. lets look at my reasoning behind this:

1. In order to win the war (or even wage it to begin with) you need a superior military force, something that does not just appear out of thin air, think for a second about the mindbogglingly huge industrial capacity that you need to:
   a) Create a war fleet of FTL-capable warships
   b) Create an FTL-capable transport fleet to transport hundreds of thousands of troops (your pops) to an extraterrestrial hostile planet
   c) Produce the supplies(food, meds, weapons, gear) to keep your soldiers alive both on the journey to the target planet, and during your military invasion of an extraterrestrial planet with different atmospheric and gravitational conditions, and a hostile population that has the home-field defensive advantage, and if you win, the supplies to support your troops during their hostile occupation of another planet whose population despises you.
   d) If you decide to deal with the hostile natives through genocide then you have won nothing but a lot of empty land with destroyed infrastructure, and if you wish to utilize it then you have to effectively colonize it (meaning that you could just as well have colonized an uninhabited planet to begin with)
   
   
2. Now realize that in order to produce all of the above necessary items, a huge part of your industry/production capacity needs to operate on a net loss, they will not be generating any tangible income and will only drain resources at a large cost. If instead they had produced goods for trade, or been used to develop additional infrastructure then you would already be reaping the positive benefits at this point
   
   
3. And lets not forget to address the whole "the strong take what they need, it's the natural order of reality" bullshit, if a caveman bashes your skull in and takes your tablet/smartphone, will he know how to use it? no of course not, so backwards militarist empires being able to just "take tech from weaker civs" make no sense at all, what tech they have or don't have is completely irrelevant if they have no clue about what it is or it's possible practical applications.

War is, in reality, not the quick and easy way to gain things. War should be something you actually have to consider whether or not is worth it IN THE LONG RUN. Because war/planetary-occupation should be a resource drain with a long-term payout instead of a quick cashgrab, peacefully colonizing/researching/trading/diplomacy is much more likely to give you quick gains at a lower cost than conquest and the unrest that follows hostile military occupation of foreign planets whose population despises you and therefor is much lest like to be productive and obedient citizens/workers.