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[Egan_BW]

Yup, I think fanatic xenophiles would be just dandy with that arrangement.

[Baffler]

Maybe the squid people in birdland consider birdland to be... the bird's land. They have no ambition of taking on important roles because they feel their interests are adequately represented by squidland's diplomats and the bird himself, and want to preserve birdland's alien character.

[Loud Whispers]

-snip-

Sounds actually worse than apartheid numbers, but they're not actually living apart - thus it's not apartheid. Doesn't actually seem to be anything wrong there since all the pops are cool with it, just look at human analogues for example. In the West we have loads of Jewish leaders and are hardly chafing at our conditions, quite the contrary. Or another analogue, that of Muslim rule in India over a far greater majority of Hindus, when the Mughals weren't in their "kill infidels" stage everything was splendid and you'd hardly find anyone taking issue with that either.

I think it would most likely be that the avians would be molluscaboos with political power, but since all the jobs in the avian empire are done by molluscoids, pretty much all the economic power would be held by molluscoids. Any trouble that would arise would be the issue of molluscoids bribing avian leaders in order to gain political influence over their affairs, leading potentially to severe corruption issues. Yet demographically, ethically and culturally, it would otherwise be pretty chill, especially since they all share the same ethos and are determined to treasure one another. Alternatively the squids could start feeling squid guilt and lobby for preferential treatment of avians

I think a more interesting question is whether it's right to liberate pops who live in foreign Empires and are actually happier as slaves than free men. As a democratic crusader I found that answer quite easy, freedom is the only way, freedom isn't free - the price of blood and work is worth the life of freedom. Pops who were unused to having to feed themselves and make their own decisions would learn soon enough. Yet as a hive mind of cockroaches being attacked by democratic crusading xenos, I wondered why they were so keen on liberating our planets when our ant people hated every moment of freedom and would rather destroy their own farms and starve to death than to live under freedom. Dunno.

Also in my stellaris run I found Klaggians, a race of tundra space mammals who looked like humans. They were run by a space oligarchy of merged corporations, and upon contact with the humans of earth, began commercializing and fetishizing the commonwealth of man, resulting in this monstrosity:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Whole planets of determined humanaboos genetically engineered themselves to be more like humans. The ultra-klaggians, formed after watching too much ultra-man.
Not even god can save us from this grimdark humanaboo future

Speaking of which, I'm thinking how I can post an AAR without cluttering the thread with a series of walls of text. It's quite a lot

[Hanzoku]

Start a new thread in the Play With Your Buddies subforum here, and post a link to this thread.

[IronyOwl]

Make Birdland Great Again. Clearly.

Vote Donald Duck 2216!

You're not gonna believe this, but their home system is named Yump.

with the flying birds better qualified leaders due to their ability to fly and move around faster

I reject this vile aerocracy and insist that only aquacracy can bring true peace and prosperity to the stars.

and want to preserve birdland's alien character.

Now this I find pretty fascinating. It's like living in a theme park!

Sounds actually worse than apartheid numbers, but they're not actually living apart - thus it's not apartheid. Doesn't actually seem to be anything wrong there since all the pops are cool with it, just look at human analogues for example. In the West we have loads of Jewish leaders and are hardly chafing at our conditions, quite the contrary. Or another analogue, that of Muslim rule in India over a far greater majority of Hindus, when the Mughals weren't in their "kill infidels" stage everything was splendid and you'd hardly find anyone taking issue with that either.

I think it would most likely be that the avians would be molluscaboos with political power, but since all the jobs in the avian empire are done by molluscoids, pretty much all the economic power would be held by molluscoids. Any trouble that would arise would be the issue of molluscoids bribing avian leaders in order to gain political influence over their affairs, leading potentially to severe corruption issues. Yet demographically, ethically and culturally, it would otherwise be pretty chill, especially since they all share the same ethos and are determined to treasure one another. Alternatively the squids could start feeling squid guilt and lobby for preferential treatment of avians

Interesting. I like the idea that they're boos for each other.


On that note, the situation has... progressed? There are now 23 molluscs and 0 birds living in birdland, other than a now-frozen pop in growth and enough spares to handle leadership. 19 birds call the various squidworlds home, meanwhile (while 6 more grow? species list says 25, but no known empires have any but mine).

I'm leaning towards mutual booship combined with a sort of royal family vibe, only they presumably actually do things.

I think a more interesting question is whether it's right to liberate pops who live in foreign Empires and are actually happier as slaves than free men. As a democratic crusader I found that answer quite easy, freedom is the only way, freedom isn't free - the price of blood and work is worth the life of freedom. Pops who were unused to having to feed themselves and make their own decisions would learn soon enough. Yet as a hive mind of cockroaches being attacked by democratic crusading xenos, I wondered why they were so keen on liberating our planets when our ant people hated every moment of freedom and would rather destroy their own farms and starve to death than to live under freedom. Dunno.

The cool kids were doing it first, so I couldn't resist MULTICULTURALING the last two worlds of the nearby fanatical purifiers (one of which is 5% habitability for them and therefore held onto through pure spite). But I finally understand America's dilemma, looking at all those juicy xenophobic isolationists and evangelizing zealots and such that it'd just be so easy to conquer and puppet into friendly neighborhood federation builders.

For the moment I've taken the more reasonable approach in saying that provided you're not hurting anything too badly, your ethics are your choice and, while they make us sad, we're not going to descend like alien locusts onto your homeworlds to enact our own puppet government because we'd prefer something else. But I can certainly understand the temptation to "fix" others, both from practical and moral standpoints.

Not even god can save us from this grimdark humanaboo future

Amen. This has got to be one of the strangest AARs I've ever seen.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking how I can post an AAR without cluttering the thread with a series of walls of text. It's quite a lot

I don't mind it here, especially as the thread's a little on the quiet side otherwise. A Let's Play would be a more formal place to continue Mankind's Bizarre Adventure.

[Cruxador]

So here's a question for everyone, and I'm not gonna say LW in particular but I am gonna laugh at something.

Suppose, hypothetically, that you have some intelligent, militaristic, fanatically xenophilic birds living on an arctic world, only to be visited by beings from the stars- charismatic, sociologist, individualist, fanatically xenophilic ocean-dwelling molluscs. These benevolent squid overlords raise their new featherfriends into their own crummy little dominion on their own borders. Eventually this empire actually spreads to a few nearby worlds, migration treaties are approved, and in the end our four-eyed feathery friends control 12 Pops located among three planets.

...eleven of which are chubby molluscs, while a lone, solitary avian bravely mans the capital, a second bird pop growing at the vigorous rate of 0.1 per month. Even their two colonies are pure, 100% overlord stock. The vast majority of the galactic snowbird population dwells on the cooler tentacle worlds, where they migrated about the same time aliens were flocking to their own world.

So the thing that really got me thinking about this, though, is that the bird empire is still primary species leader only. That's some apartheid-level shit on the numbers, everyone likes each other on both a species and empire level, it's the bird's homeland and holdings but they were raised up by the molluscs... I'm not sure what that society looks like, and I'm now really, really curious. Are the birds slightly pissed that everyone else left? Are they thrilled to have so many pet aliens? Do the molluscs care that they can't rule the bird's empire too? Are there royal bird families, or do high-end government jobs have an arbitrary restriction on them? Are there bird hardliners who think it's absolutely vital that birds remain in control of birdland, and if so why? Because it's theirs? Because they have to catch up to their squishy cousins? Because their good soft friends are too figuratively soft to do what must be done?

This has become a weirdly fascinating question for me.

Sounds pretty straightforward to me. It's the bird empire so birds are in charge. It's just the basic ethnicity-based concept of what a nation means, which was popular (probably not coincidentally) in the time period that Paradox traditionally does their best work.

[Furtuka]

The War in Heaven DLC they mentioned in the new Dev Diary sounds super exciting

[LoSboccacc]

midgame isn't developed yet into anything interesting and they already want me to pay?

[IronyOwl]

midgame isn't developed yet into anything interesting and they already want me to pay?

To be fair, it's concurrent with a fair bit of patching.

This is still my general feeling, though. Splitting your time between exciting new DLC and making critical systems not suck abysmally is not my idea of benign content generation.

[forsaken1111]

midgame isn't developed yet into anything interesting and they already want me to pay?

That's your decision. This is more content for the mid/late game. More content is also coming via free patches to include more events and the other various gameplay changes they're making to smooth out the pacing.

[ZeroGravitas]

midgame isn't developed yet into anything interesting and they already want me to pay?

Yeah, I'm giving this a year or two. Or maybe a sequel. It's pretty clear they don't really know what the franchise is supposed to be about yet, given the total reworking of diplomatic relations and fallen empires. Not that it's a bad start; it's just that the way their development process works, there isn't going to be something that's worth playing for a while.

[forsaken1111]

midgame isn't developed yet into anything interesting and they already want me to pay?

Yeah, I'm giving this a year or two. Or maybe a sequel. It's pretty clear they don't really know what the franchise is supposed to be about yet, given the total reworking of diplomatic relations and fallen empires. Not that it's a bad start; it's just that the way their development process works, there isn't going to be something that's worth playing for a while.

Part of that total rework came about due to a change in the creative director of the game, so I'm hoping it is heralding some nice changes ahead. I like a lot of the new guy's ideas and he's obviously really excited about the game.

[Sirus]

The War in Heaven DLC they mentioned in the new Dev Diary sounds super exciting

This does sound pretty cool, but only if awakenings remain somewhat rare. No one is going to want Fallen Empires waking up in the fusion stage to curb stomp the galaxy - at least, not in every game.

[forsaken1111]

The War in Heaven DLC they mentioned in the new Dev Diary sounds super exciting

This does sound pretty cool, but only if awakenings remain somewhat rare. No one is going to want Fallen Empires waking up in the fusion stage to curb stomp the galaxy - at least, not in every game.

Actually it might not be a bad thing. When two of them wake up they can make you join their side. You might get to hoover up some advance debris after battles or take some worlds from enemy minor empires.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, the whole "elder race forces young ones to get in line under their rule" thing is a core space opera concept.