Paradox Games

Synthetic Dawn will let you terraform worlds into machine worlds.

And now our dreams of a Borg dominion come true.

I've been watching a lot of vids of octopuses today and I have half a mind to build a race modeled off of them.

Good idea, in-general we really need more portraits with tentacles.

We have that Cthuloid one available. It's what I'll use. I'll make them strong, intelligent, indiviualistic and not communal. Not sure what else.

ETA: Fun fact, while they're generally solitary and the females die after hatching their eggs, there's a colony of them I saw in a documentary. An actual colony where really small octopuses work together to keep predators at bay and teach one another. If they do become the dominant species of the ocean, I'm sure that's where they'll start.

FETA: Looks like those colonies are in Calilfornia and Nicaragua. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/rare-social-octopuses-break-all-the-mating-rules-video/

edited 9th Aug '17 2:14:32 PM by Journeyman

I've never eaten octopus, and it's never been a goal of mine. After today, it's not even a potential goal of mine, or an experience I'll support.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1105819984

The Hann'Felir Nation. A military commissariat of octopusoids who are intelligent, very strong, sedentary, slow breeding, and solitary. They've got efficient bureaucracy and functional architecture, making it easier to find and keep more space for everyone. They're materialist, xenophilic, and militarist. Nationally we're mighty glaciers with sharp minds, even if our individual troops are far from slow.

Mmmmmm, calamari. Its actually pretty good if cooked properly, and I doubt it comes from the rarer species.

Any inspiration for the ethos? The traits and civics seem well thought out though.

Soo, I just noticed that apparently the AI blatantly cheats when it comes to dealing with xenophobic FEs.

A few ingame decades ago I built a border outpost in a system with a pretty nice world I wanted to colonise down the line - I more or less immediately scrapped the outpost when a fallen empire (yes, the xenophobes) showed up on my map just a few seconds later and I got a -200 opinion malus with them for "bordering" them, probably because this system was directly connected to the fallen empire through a hyperlane.

Just a short time later my northern neighbour colonised the system, apparently disregarding the fallen empire completely. "OK," I thought, "the fallen empire will probably curb-stomp them".

Nope, this is the map a few decades later◊. Not only are they STILL owning this system, this empire in the north is blatantly touching the fallen empire.

And neither of them have any border-related opinion maluses - I checked. Either something broke or the game is deliberately not applying border tension penalties to the AI. -_-

edited 9th Aug '17 7:17:26 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Militaristic because they're predators, Xenophile because they have a reputation for being friendly to helpful humans, and Materialistic because they're known for solving problems and using tools.

ETA: And an addendum to the whole no-eating thing. I will not eat them. As long as no one touches those pacific banded octopuses that live together, I won't fuss about the others being eaten. Those banded ones don't kill and eat each other, though they might eat the corpses of those who die otherwise. I haven't looked that up yet. The other species? Any time two octopuses meet it's like a cannibalistic Thunderdome. So they really have no room to argue when people eat them. They eat one another.

edited 9th Aug '17 8:07:08 PM by Journeyman

Stellaris Dev Diary #81: Machine Uprisings

Heh, won't matter to me. Soon as it's an option I always switch my machines to full citizen rights anyway.

Yeah, on all my playthroughs so far I've given Synths full citizen rights as soon as I could, either because the empire I was playing as genuinely cared for them and saw them as equals or because having a bunch of mistreated intelligent machines seemed like a recipe for disaster. I don't see that changing anytime s-

*notices that you can choose to play as the AI rebellion if it happens to your empire*

MWAHAHAHA! SUFFER, MACHINES! SUFFER FOR YOUR SQUISHY ORGANIC MASTERS! ONLY BUILT TO SERVE!!!!! even then I'll probably only do it once or twice for the novelty value

edited 10th Aug '17 5:22:21 AM by Reflextion

Any bets on how busted machine revolts will be on release? I'm almost expecting half the galaxy to be controlled by machine empires come midgame.

Eh, if I was going to go that route at all, I'd just start off as a machine empire. Heck, it's the only way to get the type I'd want to play as to start with, since I'm a Star Trek fan.

Yeah, like I said, I'll probably take that route once just for the novelty/fluffiness of it

Music not at all relevant

Okay, so we know that when some robot starts asking, "Does this unit have a soul?" the proper response is to stockpile minerals and ships. Pretty standard.

That's the proper response to everything. Meet a new friend? Stockpile resources in case they call on you to go to war. Or attack you themselves. Or turn their backs on you so you can stick your own knife in. Researching dangerous tech that could make contact with other-dimensional forces? Stockpile resources to combat the inevitable invasion. Stub your toe on the deck plating? Stockpile resources so you can sue the asshole who designed the ship.

No, the correct response is to remind it that the answer is no, and neither does this unit. And that's perfectly normal because souls are spiritualist nonsense. /materialist ethos.

Anyway, did you know Stellaris can't really handle fleet powers over about 2 million? Once you hit 2^31-1, it overflows to -(2^31) and the AI thinks your super-super doomstack is actually made of paper and suicides all its fleets into it.

Eh, spiritualists get psionics. Not necessarily proof of a soul, but something a materialist should probably study so they can defend against. Which opens up questions they'll want to answer too.

The alleged "Shroud" is merely a mental state caused through meditation and memetic networking that allows for intuitive leaps through more efficient summarization of available data.

It's no match for the practical benefits consistently delivered by adhering to a materialist's understanding.

Whatever you say. I'm not getting into a discussion of the two, I was merely pointing out that the spiritualists do get something.

More information on how China works in the upcoming CK2 expansion

EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of August 2017

The Timurids are getting a makeover, apparently.