So I was trying to make a spiritual hive/machine empire

[Menace]

I had this thought of creating a hive/machine empire, with the purpose of spirituality revolving around a "Machine God". It doesn't seem like I can, because if I try to choose materialistic then I can't choose the spiritual traits, and vice versa. Or, I'm just doing something wrong.

Is this not a possibility to do?

[Visi]

The traits on opposite sides are meant to be just that; opposites. You can't pick militarist if you're a pacifist, you can't pick xenophile if you're a xenophobe, etc. What you want isn't possible under normal gameplay, AFAIK.

[Razor Feather]

True hive minds and machine empires use the gestalt ethic and can never have any other ethics. Materialist and spiritualist for non gestalt empires are directly opposed ethics and are mutually exclusive. There is no way to have both. You can however get a psionic materialist empire with a bit of luck and finagling though, which may help scratch your itch for a mix of the two.

[RodHull]

No, you can rp that race for sure, but think of the race picks not just as a flavour thing they are literal as well figurative. So when it says spiritual it literally means believes in a spirit/god/lifeforce... As machines function on pure logic it would be impossible for them to believe in something which was 'spiritual' (as in not real/physical/quantifiable) also machine intelligence is gestalt so its further complicated by that.

Now it would be possible to start as a pure materialist race with mech start and beeline to become synthetic or machine modded and do something that way, or you know use mods or edits to force this style of play. But no spirituality directly opposes science in this game basically. So you cannot really be both

[Menace]

Originally posted by Visi:

The traits on opposite sides are meant to be just that; opposites. You can't pick militarist if you're a pacifist, you can't pick xenophile if you're a xenophobe, etc. What you want isn't possible under normal gameplay, AFAIK.

That makes sense, I'm sure they did that for balancing purposes.

Originally posted by Razor Feather:

True hive minds and machine empires use the gestalt ethic and can never have any other ethics. Materialist and spiritualist for non gestalt empires are directly opposed ethics and are mutually exclusive. There is no way to have both. You can however get a psionic materialist empire with a bit of luck and finagling though, which may help scratch your itch for a mix of the two.

That's for the suggestion regarding your example, I'll keep that in mind.

Originally posted by RodHull:

No, you can rp that race for sure, but think of the race picks not just as a flavour thing they are literal as well figurative. So when it says spiritual it literally means believes in a spirit/god/lifeforce... As machines function on pure logic it would be impossible for them to believe in something which was 'spiritual' (as in not real/physical/quantifiable)

Now it would be possible to start as a pure materialist race with mech start and beeline to become synthetic or machine modded and do something that way, or you know use mods or edits to force this style of play. But no spirituality directly opposes science in this game basically. So you cannot really be both

That's an interesting idea. Starting pure materialist with the mech start and go straight synth/machine from there.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Menace:

That's an interesting idea. Starting pure materialist with the mech start and go straight synth/machine from there.

If I was going to try something like that, thats how I'd approach it, whether it would work or not who knows. Also stellaris has a way of derailing your plans once a play through starts and random events start moulding you in a different direction :)

[Nightmyre]

You'll probably have an easier time going the opposite route - especially if you want to take the Psionic ascension path. Getting Psionic Theory requires quite a bit of work if you go down the materialist route, whereas getting robots as spiritualist is significantly easier.