trying to grasp the concept of game balance (Easy:Failure)Idk, it kinda reminds me of the neoliberals pissing and shitting themselves because socialist policies were OP in Victoria 3. “Game Balance” doesn’t mean some strategies won’t be fundamentally better than others.
What I think this guy misses is that there are already tools for countering broad social dissatisfaction with your policies in Stellaris. Just crank up that consumer economy, invest a bunch of resources in entertainment and other distraction economics, and you can do all the genocide you want without real consequence. You just don’t get to ignore the outrage “for free”. You have to pacify your population just like IRL.
Tbf on release it was piss easy to play as some kind of socialist government because there was no immediate backlash of world powers declaring war on you (as it tends to happens in history) or at least sanctioning one way or another :’)
I think one thing Crusader Kings and Europa did better was building out these elaborate social relationships between aristocrats that prefigured the coalition of fiefdoms and confederacies of principalities that would eventually congeal into kingdoms, states, and empires.
One of the things a socialist revolution does is decapitate the monarchies that share all these ties back to the coalition states. French laborers and merchants guillotining the king and queen weren’t just killing their own heads of state, but the immediate family of neighboring Austria. Literally the Holy Roman Emperor’s kid sister. It wasn’t just France toying with a new economic model, but the French government converting - practically overnight - from a close political ally to the seat of a nest of villainous assassins. It wasn’t until the Napoleonic dynasty made inroads with European peers that tensions between France and the surrounding territories settled.
Similarly, the murder of the Tsar’s family in Russia brought enormous shame on his immediate family in Britain. Not to mention the smattering of German, French, and Eastern European aristocrats who were on close terms with the Romanovs prior to the war. Governments to the east - in neighboring Turkey, Iran, China, India, Korea, and Japan - who either had no relation or retained an active beef with the European monarchies were significantly more sanguine at the shift in management.
Meanwhile, the Americans under FDR were relatively conciliatory and amicable to the Stalin government. Roosevelt’s family formed bonds with Russian Revolutionaries of note. Much of the American press wasn’t particularly fond of European aristocracy. And so relations thrived until the end of the war and the resurgence of Red Scare politics. And the US was at least somewhat amicable to a Cuban revolution against Batista, right up until Fidel began threatening the American aristocracy of Jewish/Italian mafia cartels and agricultural land baronies.
I don’t think it is necessarily a given that Socialist and Capitalist economies can’t intertwine. Certainly, the US and Russia managed it during detente (my extremely capitalist father made a number of trips to Russia while working for a US based conglomerate in order to build out their O&G infrastructure). And the US and China have been co-mingling for over 60 years, despite efforts to wedge them apart. But the movements that create socialist governments ex nihilo can cause a degree of family drama at the highest reaches of the state that can pollute diplomatic policy for generations to come.
You just don’t get to ignore the outrage “for free”. You have to pacify your population just like IRL.
Yeah that’s basically what I meant. Game balance isn’t necessarily about making every single option equally viable it’s often about having at least some trade-offs so that there aren’t just one very obvious way to crush everything
I’ve been Poed. Political satire or gamer not understanding that making choices with no downsides is uninteresting in strategy.
why would Materialist empires be uncaring of genocide though?
Libs don’t know what materialism mean. For them it’s just fancy word for greed. Hell, in Poland i had to explain what it is even to some people with higher education.
yeah i’ve seen so many threads in the paradox forums of people trying to explain that it doesn’t mean that Madonna song or the Ferengi but is actually a philosophical outlook on how the universe works lol
Yeah, so that axis in Stellaris should be materialist-idealist but after the absolute shitshow with collectivism-individualism and its subsequent renaming to authoritarianism-egalitarianism no wonder PDX didn’t even tried.
Yeah that doesn’t make sense, in Stellaris the spiritualist empires often end up being Fanatic Purifiers which leads to them committing the biggest genocides. Materialist empires aren’t better per se but definitely aren’t as predisposed to genocide.
There is somewhat of a case to be made for Materialist, considering Cosmogenesis and the Synaptic Lathe. But obviously not every materialist empire goes into that. To be a fanatic purifier, you need to be Fanatically Xenophobic and either Militarist or Spiritualist. I’d expect Xenophobic empires to not care (or care significantly less), but the other two ethics are a little more debatably nebulous as to how much they’d care.
yeah my playthroughs are often pretty limited in scope because i can’t stomach playing evil imperialists for long before i burn out
i typically always play as Fanatic Egalitarian Materialists (or some close variation). basically the Culture. once i get powerful enough I start aggressively liberating the galaxy
My most recent game was a Hive Mind. I think I assimilated some 75% of the galaxy, getting right to the endgame crisis before the most recent update dropped. I’ve kind of lost interest in the save, partially because I played with Gigastructural Engineering and that updated with Machine Age as I was playing, so the save file is a little borked. Looking forward to playing with the Cosmic Storms and the upcoming Grand Archive, though.
I think I crushed two Fanatic Purifiers and assimilated the Great Khan, so you’re welcome, the rest of the galaxy.
i love Stellaris but god i wish i could run large galaxies with lots of empires into the late game without the sluggishness.
also i’ve never tried a Hive Mind. i need to RP hard to keep my interest and it seems difficult since your empire is basically just you
i really want to try Machine Age because i love the idea of non-Gesalt sapient machine empires. i’ll probably scoop up the new DLCs on sale eventually and give it another run when i get the craving
Make it a mod
