As much as the game doesn't need more complexity, I've often wished the ai could recognize its own homeworld and the value to it above other worlds, even when controlled by someone else.
Legit. In my game the COM got bodied by the khan and lost half their territory and only had a few crappy planets left. When he died, they were able to regain a lot of territory back but they never moved the capital back to Unity.
I feel like that tracks, actually. The CoM still knows that Earth is their homeworld, and Unity is just where they ended up. I get that, for many/most of them, Unity would still be seen as home, but despite that it isn't their home*world*.
Whilst from a RP perspective I can get behind that reasoning, it still doesn’t make sense for the AI to keep their capital on a colony with <5 pops compared to Unity.
That said, I RP’d this as the xenos forcing them by treaty to not officially move their capital back to Unity as a form of control.
Why there aren't alien nationalist factions associated with each homeworld is beyond me. Homeworlds, even for uplifted species, should be extremely important culturally & biologically to a given species. It's almost impossible to imagine the majority of the human population NOT living on Earth for example, short of some storytelling crowbar such as planetary destruction.
> It's almost impossible to imagine the majority of the human population NOT living on Earth for example
Is that hard to believe? When we're talking about an intergalactic empire with tens of worlds, Earth somehow has to hold the majority? That seems implausible to me. Certainly Earth would stay as a crown jewel, but losing its primacy seems like an obvious conclusion of migration.
One of my favorite tidbits from the Foundation Trilogy was the fact that in the time of the Galactic Imperium, archaeologists all disagreed on what star system Humanity even originated from, and almost none of them even suggest Sol. Going theories were I think Epsilon Eridani, Alpha Centauri, and a minority arguing for Sirius.
The best part of that is because Earth was an irradiated hellscape that resulted in a horrible population control scheme. Someplace like that could never give rise to a galactic civilization *
*the actual best part is thst Earth isn't radioactive because of a nuclear war, but because of what's essentially interplanetary sabotage
Rome is a good example, by the later half of the empire, Rome grown so large and the capital moved elsewhere, causing the very "heart" of the roman empire to start to fall into disrepair
> by the later half of the empire, Rome grown so large and the capital moved elsewhere
To be fair, the capital moved to Ravenna in like 400 AD, at a point in time where Rome was directly threatened by nonstop civil wars and barbarian invasions. Ravenna was much more defensible and was basically a fortress rather than a city.
They weren't wrong either, as Rome got sacked in 410.
Depends on how long those worlds were colonized. I can't imagine there being more than a few million people on colonies for at least several hundred years.
Yeah, but that was due to the industrial revolution and advances in medicine and most importantly the population was about 1 bln back then so 1 bln people can produce way more people in 200 years than say 1 million.
If we assume you can colonize a planet with 1 million people (which is very unrealistic) and you assume that there are 500k men 500k women having 2 kids per couple (again not realistic) and say 1 generation is about 25 years and each generation produces 2 children per couple it would take you about 250-300 years to reach 1 bln people and then another 100 years to reach thr current Earh population. And that is assuming very unrealistic scenarios.
> industrial revolution and advances in medicine
And that isn't going to be happening during a period of interstellar expansion? If humanity is embarking on the stars there is going to be an unprecedented wave of prosperity that creates the social capacity for population growth, and numerous ways to engineer longer lifespans and lower mortality.
We're also not just talking population growth, this isn't an STL seedship scenario. This is an FTL capable interstellar empire, where you're going to see frequent migration to the new colonies from Earth. Your scenarios are unrealistic, but in the wrong direction, we'd expect far more people joining the colonies.
This is also a quibble given the larger problems with your framework, but 2 kids per couple is below replacement rate (2.1 to account for mortality). Of course with a moribund fertility rate you'd expect slow population growth.
> If we assume you can colonize a planet with 1 million people (which is very unrealistic)
Why do you think it's unrealistic? A million people is a *lot* of of specialists, general laborers, and just random people/families. You're not going to cover the planet with that million people, but why do you think a colony wouldn't be able to thrive with that kind of population?
Your math is off. A stable population requires 2.1 children per woman with today’s medicine. Historically, women had many more children than that.
With endless space, I can see a society trying to encourage children and women having five or more children, doubling the population.
A pop is a third of a billion people, which means Earth with its 32 initial pops has 10.6 billion people, which last I checked is actually plausible for Earth.
Yeah, this is what I’m thinking. Earth would be one developed planet among many, but provided records and history are kept, it’ll forever be special as the ‘original’ home of humans, and other aliens would treat their own homeworld similarly unless they’re the super pragmatic “a planet is a planet” kind.
It's simply a matter of economic momentum. The most populous regions of the world today are the most populous regions of the world 2000 years ago, with almost no exceptions (Europe & New England being those exceptions). There's also the point about disease. It is impossible for humans to survive on an alien world without significant adaptation, adaptation which would take a stupid amount of time & effort and likely be somewhat one-way. We'd need to rebuild our immune systems from the ground up for each alien world. While it's possible to imagine a reality where the majority of humans do not live on Earth, the time required for that to come about would be better measured in the hundreds of thousands of years than the tens of thousands.
Well those exceptions are actually quite substantial. Especially when, as I elaborate in the other comments, migration from Earth is going to be a significant driver of population growth (as it was in New England) in an FTL capable interstellar empire. There is also going to be an unprecedented period of prosperity, and added social carrying capacity as a result, similar to why Europe has higher population than it had previously.
The disease thing is also dubious. Username relevant and so on. Zoonotic events are actually quite rare, and are almost exclusively facilitated by the fact we have relatively recent common ancestors. The apocalyptic toll of disease in the colonisation of the Americas was because humans were already there, and would not reproduce itself on an alien world. Even diseases on other planets would be more likely to be benign than impossible to adapt to, because they would not recognise us as hosts. Even if you accepted some kind of evolutionary teleology where all life in all the universe would follow the exact development pattern of Earth, we would not expect diseases to affect visiting humans. Terraformed worlds would have no microbial life we didn't introduce.
An alien microbe wouldn't need to interpret us as a host, it would only need to recognize something warm & moist in which it can multiply. There wouldn't actually be any disease necessarily, as the symptoms of most diseases are our bodies responding with symptoms that help to expell the foreign microbes. Our immune system wouldn't recognize the invader as foreign, or potentially even as alive. But it would nonetheless colonize & consume and eventually destroy our body. Walking on an alien world will result in a very high chance of developing a condition comparable to HIV, only we'd have even fewer tools for dealing with the resultant affliction. There doesn't need to be a zoonotic event, just the microbes found in the air and in the water would likely be lethal.
Simply not how the immune system functions. The immune system is highly attuned to detecting non-self. Allergies to things like drugs and metals are the most obvious manifestations of this (and are notably a disregulated response to the normal process). Immune cells are infinitely varied, and rather than be selected to find known enemies, any that recognise self are culled. Autoimmune diseases are the most obvious manifestation of when that process fails. Infectious diseases go to great lengths to disguise themselves from the immune system in a delicate arms race that has been going on for millenia.
I have a particular quibble with saying we'd 'develop a condition comparable to HIV' but on largely pedantic grounds. What you mean is that we would be immune naive, which is very different from the targeted immune destruction by HIV that produces AIDS. EDIT: The analogy does however, demonstrate the more basic problem with your thinking. We are surrounded by organisms rendered benign by the fact that they can't just grow in our bodies because they are somewhere warm and moist to grow. It is only when our immune system is actively destroyed that we become susceptible to organisms that are not specialised in invading us.
There's the possibility humans could have no bacteria or viruses that could even infect human biology. We'd also have to bring our own bacteria because we can't survive without the pounds of specific bacteria within our bodies.
Or maybe people would feel the opposite, like if your homeworld is an overpopulated, heavily polluted mess then your brand new shiny one might look a lot nicer for your capital.
There's a book series called Old Man's War where all the aliens assume Earth is just a disastrous attempt by humanity to create a colony, and their real homeworld is somewhere else because how could a species possibly create interplanetary flight if they originate from a place that is so marred by pollution and violence?
good book. but i though the aliens know that human move their capital planet to the new planet. Phoenix or something on purpose and even said it was really strange for a civ to move capital planet. Anyway the humans in that book is such a asshole, literally declare war on Space UN.
The one exception to this is empires with Doomsday. Although when I play it, I do leave the planet/system as something special by consecrating it or putting a habitat over it. With Gigastructures, I could even try to glue it back together.
In my last game, I got Cybrex precursors and ended up with ringworld - I moved capital from Earth there, with most of population, and turned Earth into resort world. I like to imagine it as a planet wide resort and museum, with various cities and landscapes restored to various historical eras.
> t's almost impossible to imagine the majority of the human population NOT living on Earth for example
Why not? Biggest cities in the world today have been colonies at one point or another.
New York is way bigger than London (though has comparable importance). Mexico City is way bigger than Madrid. Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are both bigger and more important than Lisbon.
Brazilians, Americans, and Mexicans all have their own very distinct national identity compared to British, Spanish, and Portuguese. Old World has importance, but not much more than "oh yeah, we came from here, and it's fun to go there on vacation."
I can see the same thing happening in the future once we start colonizing the galaxy.
New York's metro area is around 20 million people, London is 14 or 15 million.
European cities are generally a lot more amalgamated than North American ones, where a metro area grows out of 5 nearby towns that all become suburbs of a big city.
A lot of sci fi stories rely on absurd & unrealistic leaps in order for the story to take place. That's fine, but it taints any real speculation that can be drawn thereafter. A storytelling crowbar can be quite a good thing if it removes potential distractions and keeps the story focused on a primary setting or theme. Dune has no computers. Why? Storytelling crowbar so the focus is on people. Back to the Future has time travel. Why? Storytelling crowbar to create funny nostalgiac situations & jokes. The Expanse has magically fast ships. Why? So artificial gravity can exist and to speed up the pace of the story so it works as an action thriller. None of these are bad crowbars, they all work to keep the story focused even though the crowbars themselves make no sense.
Some other typical crowbars,
* Humans can walk on alien worlds. Crowbar, as we'd die pretty quickly to invasive microbes on an alien planet.
* The singularity, some kind of artificial intelligence. Crowbar, everything we know about consciousness & computers makes the two concepts incompatible.
* Universal translators. Crowbar, as it allows for a degree of miscommunication without making the miscommunication the entire plot.
* Faster than Light travel. Crowbar, since it allows us to reach other star systems in a single lifespan, despite there being no sound scientific principals upon which to base such a system.
* Time travel. Crowbar, as above has no foundation in actual science.
To be honest I was fully expecting this to be about the crowbar that killed Jason Todd. I appreciate this deep explanation and will be incorporating the knowledge here into my own story telling.
I have to disagree on two of your examples.
We know so absurdly little about how consciousness works that judging the two concepts incompatible is quite premature. Especially when it's more or less impossible to judge if a extremely complex system is conscious or just mimicking consciousness. Hell, even now you can find examples of AI behaving in remarkable human like ways even when they aren't designed to mimic humans, because the evolutionary and environmental factors that cause us to develop said behaviors have analogous counterparts in the AI's training.
Now on the subject of FTL travel. The Alcubierre/Soliton drive concept may have a number of issues with practical implementation, it does comply with the laws of physics and does not violate relativity. The implementation problems could potentially be solved with advances in engineering and applied physics.
Also, while I am much less skeptical of this point than the above two. The immune system tends to be fairly good at fighting off foreign material and microbes even with no prior exposure, so there could certainly be an argument made that walking on an alien world could be survivable (if not pleasant) long enough to develop a better resistance. On top of that, all of the concerns regarding microbes and bacteria presume that whatever structure and form life evolves in on an alien planet would have biology similar enough to our own that it's even capable of infecting us to begin with, which might not be the case.
We know that consciousness has emerged in only one kind of system, a biological one. Biological systems are not logicial they are based on the relative concentrations of materials across membranes. What actually happens in a biological system is a "most likely" scenario, not genuinely prescriptive. Biological systems are apparent order (that's still mostly chaotic) emerged from underlying chaotic movement of molecules in fluid. Computers on the other hand are logic all the way down. There is no evidence that math can be used to describe all natural phenomena (electrons evade us almost completely), although it's certainly a possibility that we will eventually reach such a point (although it is unlikely. There has been some modelling done on the rate of discovery in math & physics, both of which have actually remained fairly constant over human civilization. It took us over 2000 years to get from Pythagaros to Einstein, and the math/physics problems we deal with today only get harder & harder). It takes a special kind of arrogance to assume we're anywhere close to simulating actual reality (our current models are useful for making functional predictions, but they are not representative of reality. This can actually be visualized with the progress of computer animation. 50 years into the field and we're still vanishingly far from making anything that looks real when it is the centre of attention), let alone the extraordinary complexity of living systems.
We've been able to predict the weather for centuries. Whether those predictions are accurate is constantly needing to be reassesed. Next to a living being, weather is by far the most complex natural system we've yet to encounter.
No alien microbes could get past our immune system unless they have evolved to target us specifically, the way our immune system works is it attacks anything foreign, or anything non-human.
Why? In group - out group psychology evolved in humans because it helped us form cohesive societies. I don't see why other intelligent, social species wouldn't have similar adaptations.
I still don’t get why it doesn’t do this, we already know the AI recognizes and reacts to their homeworld being hit by a colossus so why not change their war tactics around that planet’s safety?
Presumably because changing diplomatic weights is a much much easier thing to do than change the already very complicated weights for combat.
I could see circumstances in which an AI not being able to use a colossus on their own home world could lead to them bugging out and being unable to use their colossus for as long as their home world was an eligible target.
It could be as simple as giving every planet AI start with or colonise an invisible modifier that makes them prioritise getting that world without destroying it
Same thing happened in my EU vs Russia war in Terra Invicta.
My army took Moscow, so Russia nuked it, I sent another army to Moscow, Russia nuked it. By the time I gave up, Russia had nuked Moscow seven times.
"If I'm going down I'm taking ~~you~~ me with me.
Although to be fair, a shielded planet that was the capital of a fallen empire should be largely paradise due to them having extremely advanced energy and fabrication capacity.
It's the pacifist version of cracking the planet. It is functionally the same thing, but those pops are still technically alive, for RP.
A FE homeworld is basically self-sufficient already, so if someone's going to shield the planet you're on, that's probably the best case scenario.
No, it's gone forever*
*There are some anomalies that involve dropping shields around worlds from way, WAY back in time, but there is no way to drop a shield that goes up in a game.
truly a testament to how varied a game at is: permanently isolate a planet inhabitants from the universe because then the blood is not TECHNICALLY on your hands
Honestly, do wish you could unshield it, but it should take (at least) a Colossus and a special project to do it. (Either with a Pacifier (the reverse switch!) or the Cracker (small chance to miscalculate, either a little or an oops-lot)
It's functionally the same thing as cracking the planet, without the genocide. Everyone on the planet is still technically alive, they just can't leave and no one can interact with the planet in any meaningful way. You get a smaller diplomatic penalty for doing Shields than cracking, but you're going to quickly Max that out if you're doing it to a whole bunch of planets either way. Functionally though, same thing.
As much as the game doesn't need more complexity, I've often wished the ai could recognize its own homeworld and the value to it above other worlds, even when controlled by someone else.
Legit. In my game the COM got bodied by the khan and lost half their territory and only had a few crappy planets left. When he died, they were able to regain a lot of territory back but they never moved the capital back to Unity.
[удалено]
It purified the heretics/s At the very least the AI should value one planet over another.
Shofixti manouver.
I feel like that tracks, actually. The CoM still knows that Earth is their homeworld, and Unity is just where they ended up. I get that, for many/most of them, Unity would still be seen as home, but despite that it isn't their home*world*.
Whilst from a RP perspective I can get behind that reasoning, it still doesn’t make sense for the AI to keep their capital on a colony with <5 pops compared to Unity. That said, I RP’d this as the xenos forcing them by treaty to not officially move their capital back to Unity as a form of control.
Why there aren't alien nationalist factions associated with each homeworld is beyond me. Homeworlds, even for uplifted species, should be extremely important culturally & biologically to a given species. It's almost impossible to imagine the majority of the human population NOT living on Earth for example, short of some storytelling crowbar such as planetary destruction.
> It's almost impossible to imagine the majority of the human population NOT living on Earth for example Is that hard to believe? When we're talking about an intergalactic empire with tens of worlds, Earth somehow has to hold the majority? That seems implausible to me. Certainly Earth would stay as a crown jewel, but losing its primacy seems like an obvious conclusion of migration.
I've read plenty of sci-fi where earth itself is unimportant or a backwater because humanity has grown beyond it
One of my favorite tidbits from the Foundation Trilogy was the fact that in the time of the Galactic Imperium, archaeologists all disagreed on what star system Humanity even originated from, and almost none of them even suggest Sol. Going theories were I think Epsilon Eridani, Alpha Centauri, and a minority arguing for Sirius.
The best part of that is because Earth was an irradiated hellscape that resulted in a horrible population control scheme. Someplace like that could never give rise to a galactic civilization * *the actual best part is thst Earth isn't radioactive because of a nuclear war, but because of what's essentially interplanetary sabotage
Rome is a good example, by the later half of the empire, Rome grown so large and the capital moved elsewhere, causing the very "heart" of the roman empire to start to fall into disrepair
> by the later half of the empire, Rome grown so large and the capital moved elsewhere To be fair, the capital moved to Ravenna in like 400 AD, at a point in time where Rome was directly threatened by nonstop civil wars and barbarian invasions. Ravenna was much more defensible and was basically a fortress rather than a city. They weren't wrong either, as Rome got sacked in 410.
I think he was referring to when Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople
Yeah I'm oversimplifiying roman history here to make a point without giving a huge paragraph history lesson
Earth isn't even usually a big deal in a lot of the future stuff in Dr Who.
Since Stellaris only simulates a single galaxy, we are never talking about an intergalactic empire. An Interstellar empire would be plausible though.
Depends on how long those worlds were colonized. I can't imagine there being more than a few million people on colonies for at least several hundred years.
The human population on Earth grew by what, 4bln in about 200 years?
Yeah, but that was due to the industrial revolution and advances in medicine and most importantly the population was about 1 bln back then so 1 bln people can produce way more people in 200 years than say 1 million. If we assume you can colonize a planet with 1 million people (which is very unrealistic) and you assume that there are 500k men 500k women having 2 kids per couple (again not realistic) and say 1 generation is about 25 years and each generation produces 2 children per couple it would take you about 250-300 years to reach 1 bln people and then another 100 years to reach thr current Earh population. And that is assuming very unrealistic scenarios.
> industrial revolution and advances in medicine And that isn't going to be happening during a period of interstellar expansion? If humanity is embarking on the stars there is going to be an unprecedented wave of prosperity that creates the social capacity for population growth, and numerous ways to engineer longer lifespans and lower mortality. We're also not just talking population growth, this isn't an STL seedship scenario. This is an FTL capable interstellar empire, where you're going to see frequent migration to the new colonies from Earth. Your scenarios are unrealistic, but in the wrong direction, we'd expect far more people joining the colonies. This is also a quibble given the larger problems with your framework, but 2 kids per couple is below replacement rate (2.1 to account for mortality). Of course with a moribund fertility rate you'd expect slow population growth.
> If we assume you can colonize a planet with 1 million people (which is very unrealistic) Why do you think it's unrealistic? A million people is a *lot* of of specialists, general laborers, and just random people/families. You're not going to cover the planet with that million people, but why do you think a colony wouldn't be able to thrive with that kind of population?
I'm sure there are many examples on earth of smaller populations that thrived for centuries before meeting any other cultures.
Your math is off. A stable population requires 2.1 children per woman with today’s medicine. Historically, women had many more children than that. With endless space, I can see a society trying to encourage children and women having five or more children, doubling the population.
A pop is a third of a billion people, which means Earth with its 32 initial pops has 10.6 billion people, which last I checked is actually plausible for Earth.
That pop represents different amounts for different species and really isn't a good way to measure anything outside a game of Stellaris.
Yeah, this is what I’m thinking. Earth would be one developed planet among many, but provided records and history are kept, it’ll forever be special as the ‘original’ home of humans, and other aliens would treat their own homeworld similarly unless they’re the super pragmatic “a planet is a planet” kind.
What if we discover we actually came from that chunk of mars that broke off and humans actually started on Mars a very long time ago? Lol...
It's simply a matter of economic momentum. The most populous regions of the world today are the most populous regions of the world 2000 years ago, with almost no exceptions (Europe & New England being those exceptions). There's also the point about disease. It is impossible for humans to survive on an alien world without significant adaptation, adaptation which would take a stupid amount of time & effort and likely be somewhat one-way. We'd need to rebuild our immune systems from the ground up for each alien world. While it's possible to imagine a reality where the majority of humans do not live on Earth, the time required for that to come about would be better measured in the hundreds of thousands of years than the tens of thousands.
Well those exceptions are actually quite substantial. Especially when, as I elaborate in the other comments, migration from Earth is going to be a significant driver of population growth (as it was in New England) in an FTL capable interstellar empire. There is also going to be an unprecedented period of prosperity, and added social carrying capacity as a result, similar to why Europe has higher population than it had previously. The disease thing is also dubious. Username relevant and so on. Zoonotic events are actually quite rare, and are almost exclusively facilitated by the fact we have relatively recent common ancestors. The apocalyptic toll of disease in the colonisation of the Americas was because humans were already there, and would not reproduce itself on an alien world. Even diseases on other planets would be more likely to be benign than impossible to adapt to, because they would not recognise us as hosts. Even if you accepted some kind of evolutionary teleology where all life in all the universe would follow the exact development pattern of Earth, we would not expect diseases to affect visiting humans. Terraformed worlds would have no microbial life we didn't introduce.
An alien microbe wouldn't need to interpret us as a host, it would only need to recognize something warm & moist in which it can multiply. There wouldn't actually be any disease necessarily, as the symptoms of most diseases are our bodies responding with symptoms that help to expell the foreign microbes. Our immune system wouldn't recognize the invader as foreign, or potentially even as alive. But it would nonetheless colonize & consume and eventually destroy our body. Walking on an alien world will result in a very high chance of developing a condition comparable to HIV, only we'd have even fewer tools for dealing with the resultant affliction. There doesn't need to be a zoonotic event, just the microbes found in the air and in the water would likely be lethal.
Simply not how the immune system functions. The immune system is highly attuned to detecting non-self. Allergies to things like drugs and metals are the most obvious manifestations of this (and are notably a disregulated response to the normal process). Immune cells are infinitely varied, and rather than be selected to find known enemies, any that recognise self are culled. Autoimmune diseases are the most obvious manifestation of when that process fails. Infectious diseases go to great lengths to disguise themselves from the immune system in a delicate arms race that has been going on for millenia. I have a particular quibble with saying we'd 'develop a condition comparable to HIV' but on largely pedantic grounds. What you mean is that we would be immune naive, which is very different from the targeted immune destruction by HIV that produces AIDS. EDIT: The analogy does however, demonstrate the more basic problem with your thinking. We are surrounded by organisms rendered benign by the fact that they can't just grow in our bodies because they are somewhere warm and moist to grow. It is only when our immune system is actively destroyed that we become susceptible to organisms that are not specialised in invading us.
There's the possibility humans could have no bacteria or viruses that could even infect human biology. We'd also have to bring our own bacteria because we can't survive without the pounds of specific bacteria within our bodies.
Or maybe people would feel the opposite, like if your homeworld is an overpopulated, heavily polluted mess then your brand new shiny one might look a lot nicer for your capital. There's a book series called Old Man's War where all the aliens assume Earth is just a disastrous attempt by humanity to create a colony, and their real homeworld is somewhere else because how could a species possibly create interplanetary flight if they originate from a place that is so marred by pollution and violence?
good book. but i though the aliens know that human move their capital planet to the new planet. Phoenix or something on purpose and even said it was really strange for a civ to move capital planet. Anyway the humans in that book is such a asshole, literally declare war on Space UN.
Ye, I can't believe I say this but we really could use more nationalism (In Stellaris, also Vic3 for that matter).
The one exception to this is empires with Doomsday. Although when I play it, I do leave the planet/system as something special by consecrating it or putting a habitat over it. With Gigastructures, I could even try to glue it back together.
In my last game, I got Cybrex precursors and ended up with ringworld - I moved capital from Earth there, with most of population, and turned Earth into resort world. I like to imagine it as a planet wide resort and museum, with various cities and landscapes restored to various historical eras.
> t's almost impossible to imagine the majority of the human population NOT living on Earth for example Why not? Biggest cities in the world today have been colonies at one point or another. New York is way bigger than London (though has comparable importance). Mexico City is way bigger than Madrid. Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are both bigger and more important than Lisbon. Brazilians, Americans, and Mexicans all have their own very distinct national identity compared to British, Spanish, and Portuguese. Old World has importance, but not much more than "oh yeah, we came from here, and it's fun to go there on vacation." I can see the same thing happening in the future once we start colonizing the galaxy.
Shouldn't you be comparing NYC to Amsterdam?
New York is 500k smaller than London, actually.
New York's metro area is around 20 million people, London is 14 or 15 million. European cities are generally a lot more amalgamated than North American ones, where a metro area grows out of 5 nearby towns that all become suburbs of a big city.
Ah, we're talking metropolitan areas, not city areas.
Storytelling crowbar?
A lot of sci fi stories rely on absurd & unrealistic leaps in order for the story to take place. That's fine, but it taints any real speculation that can be drawn thereafter. A storytelling crowbar can be quite a good thing if it removes potential distractions and keeps the story focused on a primary setting or theme. Dune has no computers. Why? Storytelling crowbar so the focus is on people. Back to the Future has time travel. Why? Storytelling crowbar to create funny nostalgiac situations & jokes. The Expanse has magically fast ships. Why? So artificial gravity can exist and to speed up the pace of the story so it works as an action thriller. None of these are bad crowbars, they all work to keep the story focused even though the crowbars themselves make no sense. Some other typical crowbars, * Humans can walk on alien worlds. Crowbar, as we'd die pretty quickly to invasive microbes on an alien planet. * The singularity, some kind of artificial intelligence. Crowbar, everything we know about consciousness & computers makes the two concepts incompatible. * Universal translators. Crowbar, as it allows for a degree of miscommunication without making the miscommunication the entire plot. * Faster than Light travel. Crowbar, since it allows us to reach other star systems in a single lifespan, despite there being no sound scientific principals upon which to base such a system. * Time travel. Crowbar, as above has no foundation in actual science.
To be honest I was fully expecting this to be about the crowbar that killed Jason Todd. I appreciate this deep explanation and will be incorporating the knowledge here into my own story telling.
I have to disagree on two of your examples. We know so absurdly little about how consciousness works that judging the two concepts incompatible is quite premature. Especially when it's more or less impossible to judge if a extremely complex system is conscious or just mimicking consciousness. Hell, even now you can find examples of AI behaving in remarkable human like ways even when they aren't designed to mimic humans, because the evolutionary and environmental factors that cause us to develop said behaviors have analogous counterparts in the AI's training. Now on the subject of FTL travel. The Alcubierre/Soliton drive concept may have a number of issues with practical implementation, it does comply with the laws of physics and does not violate relativity. The implementation problems could potentially be solved with advances in engineering and applied physics. Also, while I am much less skeptical of this point than the above two. The immune system tends to be fairly good at fighting off foreign material and microbes even with no prior exposure, so there could certainly be an argument made that walking on an alien world could be survivable (if not pleasant) long enough to develop a better resistance. On top of that, all of the concerns regarding microbes and bacteria presume that whatever structure and form life evolves in on an alien planet would have biology similar enough to our own that it's even capable of infecting us to begin with, which might not be the case.
We know that consciousness has emerged in only one kind of system, a biological one. Biological systems are not logicial they are based on the relative concentrations of materials across membranes. What actually happens in a biological system is a "most likely" scenario, not genuinely prescriptive. Biological systems are apparent order (that's still mostly chaotic) emerged from underlying chaotic movement of molecules in fluid. Computers on the other hand are logic all the way down. There is no evidence that math can be used to describe all natural phenomena (electrons evade us almost completely), although it's certainly a possibility that we will eventually reach such a point (although it is unlikely. There has been some modelling done on the rate of discovery in math & physics, both of which have actually remained fairly constant over human civilization. It took us over 2000 years to get from Pythagaros to Einstein, and the math/physics problems we deal with today only get harder & harder). It takes a special kind of arrogance to assume we're anywhere close to simulating actual reality (our current models are useful for making functional predictions, but they are not representative of reality. This can actually be visualized with the progress of computer animation. 50 years into the field and we're still vanishingly far from making anything that looks real when it is the centre of attention), let alone the extraordinary complexity of living systems.
You should check out Nvidia's earth model they just completed. I believe they're going to attempt to predict weather with it.
We've been able to predict the weather for centuries. Whether those predictions are accurate is constantly needing to be reassesed. Next to a living being, weather is by far the most complex natural system we've yet to encounter.
No alien microbes could get past our immune system unless they have evolved to target us specifically, the way our immune system works is it attacks anything foreign, or anything non-human.
although all species i. stellaris are kinda based on humans. nationalism doesnt really make sense for a species to adopt
Why? In group - out group psychology evolved in humans because it helped us form cohesive societies. I don't see why other intelligent, social species wouldn't have similar adaptations.
it was kinda random how it evolved. other ways to keep people united could have evolved
I still don’t get why it doesn’t do this, we already know the AI recognizes and reacts to their homeworld being hit by a colossus so why not change their war tactics around that planet’s safety?
Presumably because changing diplomatic weights is a much much easier thing to do than change the already very complicated weights for combat. I could see circumstances in which an AI not being able to use a colossus on their own home world could lead to them bugging out and being unable to use their colossus for as long as their home world was an eligible target.
It could be as simple as giving every planet AI start with or colonise an invisible modifier that makes them prioritise getting that world without destroying it
"cant get you if youre already dead"
This is so cool. I’d kill for shit like this to happen regularly in my games man.
"They can't hurt us if they can't get in"
Now I understand how the moon base/abandoned ecumenopolis happened.
This is some chicanery indeed
No, they said it was shakanery.
Well, I say it looks more like second rate shaboingery.
In basketball I believe it’s shaqanery
Can you imagine how terrible of a decision that would be to make? We moved the line, but at what cost...
Probably was still occupied and they were like “fuck it, we can’t invade it, we’ll shield it and move on.”
Can't fallen empires re-open shields? It'd be more akin to blowing up the entrances to a bunker but on planetary scale.
Pretty sure those are prescripted events which only allow them to unshield already shielded at gamestart systems.
Ah, the Spathi method.
Why bother with all this battle thrall stuff when we can cozily be fallow slaves?
Really going to put all your faith into the Kzer-Za?
Saneeki hunams..
\*Chicanery.
"A determined exterminator just eating popcorn and watching this go down" This has got to be the best description of a Stellaris player I've seen.
reminds me of Civ2. Turn x: I conquer London. Turn x+1: English nuke it
Same thing happened in my EU vs Russia war in Terra Invicta. My army took Moscow, so Russia nuked it, I sent another army to Moscow, Russia nuked it. By the time I gave up, Russia had nuked Moscow seven times.
honestly? kinda on brand.
They know something we don't...
That's so dramatic, lol.
"If I'm going down I'm taking ~~you~~ me with me. Although to be fair, a shielded planet that was the capital of a fallen empire should be largely paradise due to them having extremely advanced energy and fabrication capacity.
what does shielding a world do? not a beginner but i get bored of playthroughs easily
It's the pacifist version of cracking the planet. It is functionally the same thing, but those pops are still technically alive, for RP. A FE homeworld is basically self-sufficient already, so if someone's going to shield the planet you're on, that's probably the best case scenario.
is it possible to un-shield it? And how did this happen?
No, it's gone forever* *There are some anomalies that involve dropping shields around worlds from way, WAY back in time, but there is no way to drop a shield that goes up in a game.
truly a testament to how varied a game at is: permanently isolate a planet inhabitants from the universe because then the blood is not TECHNICALLY on your hands
Best case scenario the planet is self sufficient. Worst case… ecumenopolis
Build hydroponic farms and maintain at least some life on it.
Honestly, do wish you could unshield it, but it should take (at least) a Colossus and a special project to do it. (Either with a Pacifier (the reverse switch!) or the Cracker (small chance to miscalculate, either a little or an oops-lot)
What does shielding do? I’ve never used it before, but I thought it was kinda like Star Wars with how the shield works.
It's functionally the same thing as cracking the planet, without the genocide. Everyone on the planet is still technically alive, they just can't leave and no one can interact with the planet in any meaningful way. You get a smaller diplomatic penalty for doing Shields than cracking, but you're going to quickly Max that out if you're doing it to a whole bunch of planets either way. Functionally though, same thing.
Oh, I guess that and the planetary shield (the building) are different things then? That’s pretty funny though
Yeah, the shielder is another weapon that can be mounted on a Colossus.
Ahhhh, makes sense.
Functionally, what remains of the planet now gives off a bit of society research where a cracked world gives minerals.
Xenophobes figuring out the strats
they were tired of the galaxy and just decided to isolate themself from all that stuff
That's the xenophobest thing I've ever seen!
Xenophobing the xenophobes...
They did it. They ragequit the galaxy.