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[Dunamisdeos]

It absolutely does weight opposing ethics.

Which I hate.

[E. Albright]

I believe Cruxador's point is that xenophobe corps generated because of weighting towards opposing ethics will be less effective than non-xenophobe corps or xenophobe non-corps while still being annoyingly samey.

[Loud Whispers]

It absolutely does weight opposing ethics.

Which I hate.

It gets especially annoying when you play a xenophile empire and literally no one wants to be your friend because everyone is an isolationist or purger

[E. Albright]

One hopes they revise these particular sloppy artificial-difficulty kludges. If they don't all those neat forthcoming Federation mechanics sound like they'll be an exercise in frustration and/or voyeurism.

[forsaken1111]

My most successful federation run was a game where I was surrounded by xenophiles and purifiers. A series of liberation wars ended with me carving half a dozen small friendly empires sharing my ethics off of those large enemy empires and then federating with them all to continue the process.

[Telgin]

That's certainly an effective way to do it, but it's an example of a mechanic that I'd like to see improved.  I always thought it was weird that you could carve off a section of another empire, completely change its ethics, and there were no consequences for it.  I once did that to a spiritualist awakened empire and converted them to materialists, and there was no instability or anything in said empire from doing a 180 on its core beliefs.

I assume that the pops are supposed to remain spiritualists and generate problems from being so unhappy, but if that's working then it didn't manifest in any tangible way.

[Dunamisdeos]

IME that's literally the only way to do it.

Anytime I play Xenophile, or really, anything that isn't a warmongering purge/conquering type, I get nothing but xenophiles or materialistic/spiritualist opposition. Almost across the entire galaxy.

Only way to make any friends is to carve out chunks of neighboring empires and install friends oneself. Defeats the purpose of that playstyle entirely.

[scourge728]

I played a Xenophile and just kind of was warmonger instead

[MrRoboto75]

I played a Xenophile and just kind of was warmonger instead

Love xenos because they are so much fun to punch

[Rolan7]

Ah, yes... punch...
*Sweating Blorg*

I played a Xenophile and just kind of was warmonger instead

Yeah there's no contradiction there at all!  Blorg are a perfect example of that
Xenophiles value species diversity.  Warfare is a very efficient way of acquiring more species diversity.

It could still be considered a "nice" trait since they feel a need to give those other species rights.  A lot like egalitarian.  Pacifist *sounds* nice, but it's mostly about anti-expansionism.  Hence their Isolationist/Prosperity factions.  Which, to be fair, call for extended peace or defensive-war policy.

I like how the ethics interact and don't ever feel redundant.  Though the almost-total ethics disconnect between space warfare and treatment of xenos is maybe a little strange.  At least it's not the understated atrocity of older 4X like the original Master of Orion or old (os/2) Galciv, where all planetary combat was complete, utter, instantly-resolved total war and population purging.  System limitations of course.  It's still uncomfortable, in retrospect, how easily I accepted and rationalized such mechanics when I was new to 4X.
Edit: And now I'm thinking about what ethics are "good" or "evil", or which I even agree with the most.  Egalitarian is probably the easiest case.  Xenophile is up there, especially for me at least.  Most people probably agree with those.

Spiritualist/Materialist is interesting because it's not just a religion thing, or doesn't have to be.  Aaaand then I wrote a bunch of increasingly off-topic theology stuff over here.

[Sirus]

Boy, you're not kidding. Millions and billions of virtual citizens being slaughtered every single turn, in some cases. Planetary populations getting wiped to the last man, woman, and child.

[Egan_BW]

Should xenophiles automatically want to give equal rights to other species? Just from the word it sound like "wants to live in proximity to aliens" rather than "wants aliens to have rights". If they get rights, they might decide to move away, and we will be all alone!
But then, the way stellaris works xenophobes are perfectly happy with seeing filthy aliens in their daily lives, so long as they're subjugated. Doesn't this have hella overlap with authoritarianism / egalitarianism?

If I'm really super thrilled about aliens and want to be near them by any means, ethics and morality be damned, am I a xenophobe? Fanatic xenophile authoritarian? Militarist?

(Never actually played this game btw lmao)

[Telgin]

Xenophiles are explicitly okay with having sapient aliens in zoos / as pets, if the fallen empires are any indicator, so by itself that means xenophilia isn't equal rights to aliens.  That would be a combination of xenophilia and egalitarianism.

It's hard to pin any specific ethos as evil in Stellaris terms, but xenophobia, authoritarianism and militarism are usually going to lean in that direction.  I've played benevolent kings that ran xenophobic empires that wanted to just be left alone, and I wouldn't call them evil, so clearly those ethics aren't evil in and of themselves, but it is at least the part of the diagram where the empires that enslave and eat sapient aliens reside.

[Rolan7]

(Never actually played this game btw lmao)

Yeah that's alright, you seem to understand the ethic dynamics just fine XD!

I will argue in defense of xenophiles giving equal rights to other species...

Well first off, you're right.  As I established, Xenophiles just want other species living with you on your planets.  Which is such a pure nice thing

But I will argue that any such society would necessarily give equal rights to such xenos!  Here I go:
They're so different and great and I want to (with their consent) hug them all and poke their various exhalation holes and flanges and membranes-
What entity is worthy of rights?  One like us?  That's far too arbitrary.
If our morality is to have any lasting meaning, it must include those who are different than us.  Anything else is clannish warfare, smoke in a pan.
The lasting morality is to enfold all thinking beings into one concordance of sentience.  To live, both individually and communally, and hopefully discover (through meme or individual) some true solution to the coldness of the galaxy.

Xenophiles are explicitly okay with having sapient aliens in zoos / as pets, if the fallen empires are any indicator, so by itself that means xenophilia isn't equal rights to aliens.  That would be a combination of xenophilia and egalitarianism.

It's hard to pin any specific ethos as evil in Stellaris terms, but xenophobia, authoritarianism and militarism are usually going to lean in that direction.  I've played benevolent kings that ran xenophobic empires that wanted to just be left alone, and I wouldn't call them evil, so clearly those ethics aren't evil in and of themselves, but it is at least the part of the diagram where the empires that enslave and eat sapient aliens reside.

Fallen Empires are an edge case, but even so - they have valued the input of those sapients for countless years.  Preserving them through The Cycle.
Other than that, in-game Xenophiles cannot purge/displace xenos.
(I was going to say that they can't enslave xenos, which is technically true, but it's not actually possible unless enabled by certain ethics.  Not default.)
Edit: ethics, not civics, enable slavery.  Mistyped

[Egan_BW]

Yeah, but that still sounds like xenophile-egalitarian to me. What of the xenophile-authoritarian?
I suppose you could have xenophile-authoritarian-militarists, who want to raid alien empires to capture exotic slaves to work in the aristocrats mansions. They just wouldn't feel particularly queasy about poor people of their own species being enslaved by other xenophile-authoritarian empires, because what are you a xenophobe it's just poor people what do we care if they go away to live on the tentacle demon farm.