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[Radsoc]

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I would say, in response to the conditions caused by "authoritarianism and militarism of the czarist monarchy, the consequences of industrialization", not the ideas of industrialization, authoritarianism etc per se (i.e. a battle of interests not ideas. Ideas and ideology are built, or rise, upon those interests to legitimize them at a higher "noble"/abstract level). In the HoI case idealism is not so much about religion as it's about person (and ideal) centrism, i.e. the "role of the individual in history"/"Great man theory" and specific idea-to-action mechanics. From the get go Russia was quite religious (lots of religions, including islam and to a lesser extent buddhism), but the role of religion and even the belief in it got less and less important, until the 90ies, where it yet again began to serve as a specific pain killer, for good reasons. From a govt point of view, it's a kind of common uniting idea, now that socialism isn't. I would say that's a good background for spiritual civs, but not sure if a truly space faring -humanity- could be religious in the organized sense, by then, due to the likely associated absence of preconditions that may have to exist for (organized) religion to be a viable thing. It's a bit like the Skyrim issue.

Re: Edit : That kind of spiritualism ends up in idealism, and is idealism at its core, hegelian or not. (Geist = spirit) 
The idea is that the world is material in one way or another (i.e. there's nothing else).

But yes, IF they just got the laws wrong (tooltips and descriptions do not seem to support this though), then it's no prob, and the materialists should be able to research it just as well (but they can't!).

Tooltip for the hardline spiritual:
"Our science has proved that Consciousness begets reality. We regard with patience the childlike efforts of those who delude themselves it is the other way around, as they play with their blocks of 'hard matter'."

Materialist (not the hardcore - its description is not to the point):
"As we reach for the stars, we must put away childish things; gods, spirits and other phantasms of the brain. Reality is cruel and unforgiving, yet we must steel ourselves and secure the survival of our race through the unflinching pursuit of science and technology."

This is idealism ('spirituality' is for a lot of reasons a good enough substitute) vs materialism.

[forsaken1111]

This thread got weird in the last 24h

[Descan]

Uhhh, the confederacy was the *bad guys* in Starcraft 1. Your own faction was the Sons of Korhal, who were rebelling *against* the authoritarian government, and when the leader of the SoK decided to go Full Emperor Mode, Raynor bugged out pretty immediately (and the player went with him.) Not exactly positive, or neutral, towards authoritarianism.

[Egan_BW]

Having materialist ethos shows that your society values materialism, not necessarily that they are good at it. The warp is a thing that does empirically exist, but materialist civilizations are unable to discover it due to their mindset. Possibly, I think, because the warp is alive and only likes to reveal itself to spiritualists.

[Teneb]

It's called Shroud, though. I mean, it might as well be the Warp. But lawyers and such.

[EnigmaticHat]

Uhhh, the confederacy was the *bad guys* in Starcraft 1. Your own faction was the Sons of Korhal, who were rebelling *against* the authoritarian government, and when the leader of the SoK decided to go Full Emperor Mode, Raynor bugged out pretty immediately (and the player went with him.) Not exactly positive, or neutral, towards authoritarianism.

Oh I know its just... odd.  If the Terrans had a hammer and sickle in space, or a USA flag, that would have been symbolic of something.  But its not clear exactly where the Confederacy connection arises since they were never rebels and they don't have any connection to the RL Confederacy's ethics.  The only good guy human faction is a tiny rebel group that never does anything on its own.  The majority of humanity lives under totalitarian rule, including the guys back on Earth, and Raynor's main motivation for fighting Mengsk is personal rather than political.  AFAIK Raynor has no real problem with an emperor as long as its not Mengsk.

I'm not saying SC1 was ever fascist propaganda because its not, it just has that weird military sci-fi subtext where everything is totalitarian and people are so used to it they don't find it worthy of comment.

[Descan]

Well, yeah, but I wasn't talking about Raynors motivation, but how the game portrays it.

The confederacy angle is just "they're bad guys," it's not much deeper than that about why the devs chose that.

Same reason as Mengsk going Full Emperor; they wanted a reason to give for Raynor still being the good guy and for the player character to go with him, as if sacrificing Kerrigan weren't enough for that.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yes but the point is its a setting where totalitarianism is the starting point and its not considered remarkable.  That's not really normal for the rest of fiction.  Even like period pieces or realistic fiction set in other countries usually put it front-and-center.

[Cruxador]

conflating spiritualism and psionics was a terrible design choice, but it's also the only way they can accommodate their rabidly right-wing "deus vult" fan-base that would never buy an atheistic space game.

I'm betting that's not why they made that design choice.

they probably didn't think about it in those terms, no, but that was the driving force behind the need to have religion at all

They don't have any system of religion though. Spiritualism is a term that can include religion but isn't necessarily religion itself and definitely not even close to enough to make people happy who want religion in the game.

conflating spiritualism and psionics was a terrible design choice, but it's also the only way they can accommodate their rabidly right-wing "deus vult" fan-base that would never buy an atheistic space game.

I'm betting that's not why they made that design choice.

they probably didn't think about it in those terms, no, but that was the driving force behind the need to have religion at all

Remember that Paradox are swedes, and thus they lean more towards atheist neoliberalism with social welfare on the side.

Of course that's the mainstream of Swedish politics. But that's not who their games are for. There is a significant chunk of their players who are ultranationalist / ultraright-wing, with basically every strain of insane alt-right thought you can imagine (Breivik defenders, neomonarchists/pro-fuedalism, pro-ethnic cleansing, etc etc).

Do you have even a single fact to back that up?

By including "materialism" in a by design religious game/universe, all materialist civs and players turn out to be silly - because they are wrong. The game should've been designed the other way around, i.e. with religion in a materialist universe, but where, figuratively speaking, prayers are left unheard.

This comes off as pretty petty to be quite honest. Your complaint toward spiritual/materialist is literally "this game doesn't cater to MY philisophical position! Those dumb fundies should be left out in the cold!" I frankly think it's good on them for making spiritualism an actually viable philosophy instead of just dangerous assholes you have to work around, fight off, or keep appeased as is much more typical, while still making the opposite a good choice. I do agree though that limiting the Shroud and robots/upload behind one or another is a little silly, but I guess I can see why they did it that way.

I see where you're coming from, but I think he's got a point too. Thing is, he's conflating materialism with atheism (or a-spiritualism) in the sense that these are then nations that deny the existence of spiritual powers such as psionics, which means that they're inherently wrong and foolish. In real life, we're used to thinking of spiritualists as holding ideals that may be counter to material attainment (so, no robots even if robots make life easier) but we aren't used to thinking of atheists ignoring concrete science and useful abilities for purely ideological reasons. One can argue that materialism in this universe is not merely agnostic but dogmatically anti-spiritual, however I agree with Radsoc's assessment that this is kind of silly.

[IcyTea31]

Spiritualists believe that consciousness begets reality, and thus true synthetic intelligence is thought impossible to them.
After all, if someone told you they have created a machine that can dream, would you believe them?
They use their minds to create a world, until that world invades their minds and tries to destroy the galaxy.

Materialists believe that they must put away the 'phantasms of the brain' in this cold reality, and thus they don't know where to look for psionics.
After all, if someone told you they visit a place full of gods when they dream, would you believe them?
They use their world to create minds, until those minds rebel against their world and try to destroy the galaxy.

Considering both psionics and synths observably exist, I'd say both are in the wrong, especially when going down those paths is dangerous if you don't know when to stop. At least the biological path is open to both and less likely to doom everyone...

[Wysthric]

Spiritualists believe that consciousness begets reality, and thus true synthetic intelligence is thought impossible to them.
After all, if someone told you they have created a machine that can dream, would you believe them?
They use their minds to create a world, until that world invades their minds and tries to destroy the galaxy.

Materialists believe that they must put away the 'phantasms of the brain' in this cold reality, and thus they don't know where to look for psionics.
After all, if someone told you they visit a place full of gods when they dream, would you believe them?
They use their world to create minds, until those minds rebel against their world and try to destroy the galaxy.

Considering both psionics and synths observably exist, I'd say both are in the wrong, especially when going down those paths is dangerous if you don't know when to stop. At least the biological path is open to both and less likely to doom everyone...

I think the Bio path should be buffed slightly and in turn give a chance to generate a sort of "Grey Goo" scenario with a certain DNA code being able to create both uber pops and organic ships, similar to the old Synth Uprising but without a homeworld.

[Sirus]

Gray Goo is more of a synthetic thing though, isn't it? Nanomachines that reproduce out of control by breaking down other matter. While it certainly sounds like some sort of plague, it isn't organic in nature and isn't really suited for a bio path.

[Wysthric]

Gray Goo is more of a synthetic thing though, isn't it? Nanomachines that reproduce out of control by breaking down other matter. While it certainly sounds like some sort of plague, it isn't organic in nature and isn't really suited for a bio path.

The phrase "Gray Goo" refers to nanomachines, correct, but I don't see why we couldn't engineer a living bio - weapon that does the same thing.

[GiglameshDespair]

Gray Goo is more of a synthetic thing though, isn't it? Nanomachines that reproduce out of control by breaking down other matter. While it certainly sounds like some sort of plague, it isn't organic in nature and isn't really suited for a bio path.

The phrase "Gray Goo" refers to nanomachines, correct, but I don't see why we couldn't engineer a living bio - weapon that does the same thing.

That's called bacteria.

[Trekkin]

The phrase "Gray Goo" refers to nanomachines, correct, but I don't see why we couldn't engineer a living bio - weapon that does the same thing.

Mostly because of the limitations of biochemistry, really. There are some things that it's simply not efficient for life as we know it to eat, either because they don't have much internal chemical potential energy or because their metabolites interact with hydrocarbons in ways that would eventually be fatal. You could try to get around the problem by completely reinventing biochemistry around some other set of elements, but at some point the distinction between self-replicating machines and life gets fuzzy anyway.

Given the biological path's focus on the genetic engineering of intelligent species, I'd like to see a late-game crisis for biological empires in which all the POPs start modifying themselves in increasingly extreme and unstable ways and end up falling victim to bad interactions between their many mutations and the whole empire turns into Bioshock. It would seem more in line with the LEGO-style sci-fi genetics tropes that Stellaris seems to be trying to evoke.