Something I've noticed playing as a Pacifist for the first time

[VoiD]

There are no real incentives for actually seeking peace, it's just a handicap on what you can do and a limitation on your ability to capture new systems.

Regular pacifist can still work with ideology wars+federations or vassalage, but fanatic pacifist is just a horrible trait.

The other side, militarist, gives you some military bonuses, which are great by themselves, and the rewards for waging wars are self evident, you get what you can take.

Shouldn't there be an actual incentive/bonus for being or seeking peace as a pacifist? Like getting 2x the base ideology bonuses while you're at peace? As a pacifist vassal leeching my overlord's resources through a vassal contract there are no downsides to being in a perpetual war, I can just keep declaring nonsense wars to keep my overlord busy forever, it shouldn't work like this.

[yuzhonglu]

Make a galaxy with 10 purifiers and be the pacifist. Works reasonably well.

[EleventhStar]

fanatic is pretty bad yeah.

but regular pacifist is great, making claims is expensive, subjugation wars are free. the economic benefits from pacifist aren't half bad while the militarist benefits is just a few extra repeatable techs.

and as long as there is no alternative to war, what else can you do? you just can't peacefully influence other empires much at all.

the only annoying part for me is getting fallen empires to declare war on you.

[Tiasmoon]

You can declare war on the caretakers atleast, since they are a gestalt.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

fanatic is pretty bad yeah.

but regular pacifist is great, making claims is expensive, subjugation wars are free. the economic benefits from pacifist aren't half bad while the militarist benefits is just a few extra repeatable techs.

and as long as there is no alternative to war, what else can you do? you just can't peacefully influence other empires much at all.

the only annoying part for me is getting fallen empires to declare war on you.

That's true but, in current day stellaris there are just so many ways to get access to a total war casus belli on every kind of empire that this really is only a limitation to your first 40 years, and not a very big one either, since you can still claim and take good systems anyway and your enemies shouldn't be too large at that stage.

Later on you can simply declare a TW on somebody, steal the pops then just release the new systems as a loyal vassal for even better results =/

[Gato Gordo]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

the only annoying part for me is getting fallen empires to declare war on you.

usually an insult is enough

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Gato Gordo:

usually an insult is enough

yeah they will eventually declare war, it's just a hassle having to wait around for it.

[HappySack]

The idea is that pacifists are supposed to scale better in the mid to late game with the bonuses but it's not the most well thought out idea since there's too much overlap with the middle axis between authoritarian and egalitarian, as well as the research bonus from materialists.

As a buff maybe they could add another bonus to pacifists, either a buff to defensive platforms or an increase to firing rate from defensive actions either in home territory or defensive wars for example.

[mss73055]

You have to make use of vassals to drag you into wars. Pacifists do fine even when your vassals drag you into wars non-stop.

The cut on empire sprawl is amazing. You don't need many systems, you need pops. When the next war happens you pop raid at your heart's desire. And your vassals will get the planets with 2 pops left and 100% devastation.

Ultra pacifist, authoritarian, synthetic ascension.

[VoiD]

Well yeah, it seems like every ethics kinda gets one kind of advantage.


Materialism for research
Spiritualism for unity
Militarism for combat (and the spoils of war)
Xenophobe for slavery and growing their main pops
Xenophile for diplomacy
Egalitarian for productivity at the cost of control
Authoritarian for Slavery and slave boosts

And then there are pacifists, just for handicaps.
Fanatic pacifists for even more handicaps.

I mean, they get a stat bonus, sure, but everybody from every ideology get stat bonuses too and often no handicaps associated with them.

Just feels like instead of not being allowed to do stuff, they should be rewarded for doing certain things instead, like everyone else.

Imagine if spiritualists couldn't make researchers, or materialists couldn't make bureaucrats or priests, that's kinda what pacifist feels like.

Edit: Actually Xenophile is a bit on the management handicaps side too, but at least you're rewarded for seeking out diplomacy and it's easier to make people vote for you or for your ideas.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by mss73055:

You have to make use of vassals to drag you into wars. Pacifists do fine even when your vassals drag you into wars non-stop.

The cut on empire sprawl is amazing. You don't need many systems, you need pops. When the next war happens you pop raid at your heart's desire. And your vassals will get the planets with 2 pops left and 100% devastation.

Ultra pacifist, authoritarian, synthetic ascension.

That makes sense, but it's just odd that there is no real reason to seek peace as a pacifist doesn't it? Shouldn't they thrive off peace instead of gaming the system to seek war?

Also, I agree, -sprawl is great in the current version of the game, so it's not a bad bonus, it's just that everybody have their own bonuses too and none of them are bad either, plus it's a bit harder to get pops when you can't do conquest.

Maybe if you get nihilistic acquisition but, then again, kinda weird to see pacifists doing that, it feels like this ethic isn't really well designed.

Edit: Actually, there is an indirect way to thrive off peace, and that is offering yourself as a vassal for a fat contract and tons of bonuses, since you're not the best at expanding anyway, you can nearly double your research and just techrush for 100 years instead without wasting resources on military and enjoying the free protection, but it's not something only pacifists can do.

[mss73055]

+10 stability +10 happiness compensates for anything :)
Authoritarian offers another +5 stability as an edict.

You don't exactly want slaves, you want resettlement. The research ringworld is going to get topped. And then another one.

If you got many species your main faction will be xenophile. And they're 100% happy no matter your ethics. After you do synthetics your main faction is materialist. And again they're 100% happy despite your ethics being different.

My last attempt ended with 40k research and just +86% tech cost.
3k pops pushed into 2 sectors.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by VoiD:

That makes sense, but it's just odd that there is no real reason to seek peace as a pacifist doesn't it? Shouldn't they thrive off peace instead of gaming the system to seek war?

the game is all about war, so ofc they shouldn't strive for peace.

i used to have some hope they would make real alternatives to war, but here we are after a megacorp, federation, space UN, vassal and espionage DLC and there still is no way to peacefully, diplomatically or economically influence another empire in a way even remotely close to what war can do.

[videomike_Ultimate_Plushie]

Originally posted by mss73055:

You have to make use of vassals to drag you into wars. Pacifists do fine even when your vassals drag you into wars non-stop.

The cut on empire sprawl is amazing. You don't need many systems, you need pops. When the next war happens you pop raid at your heart's desire. And your vassals will get the planets with 2 pops left and 100% devastation.

Ultra pacifist, authoritarian, synthetic ascension.

Interesting idea how to do that. I, not sure why it never came to me.

[ScreamCon]

Pacifist gives you a solid upfront reward. Your bonus for less war measures literally is the ethic stat showed at game start. As pacifist you also get peace parade edict which is now more or less shot into the ground due to the increasing edict cost. I'd say the ethic could use a revisit balance wise but that's just my thought.

It has good anti sprawl bonus from pops and stability bonus, but otherwise is pretty weak to conquering empires. This means as fanatic variant you can lose if the faction on the other side of galaxy achieves size to war.

I want to note pacifist faction gets a boost the longer you stay at peace for.

If you cannot war gaining territory can only be done via your federation members. Since ai won't sell systems to you. Getting them to instantiate the war and putting claims on systems. Note this will cause frustration overtime with your members meaning you would eventually need to backstab them. . . via getting them to declare on you. . .

Regular pacifist I play often and you don't need fanatic variant for civic picks.

[Sedmeister]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

making claims is expensive

I don't often play as pacifist. Only when I'm in a RP mood.

I didn't realise pacifists could make claims. How do you do that as pacifist?