Though this would be an interesting game mechanic, like others have stated, it would just be far too complicated to engineer into the game, and furthermore, you'd think that racism/specism would be mostly solved by the time a certain civilization has reached the space age and already has a sizable population of another species on their planet. 

On top of that, I think most of us agree we would rather not invite real world problems directly into a Videogame, which as a form of entertainment, is meant to escape from real problems. No one wants to leave the toxic news of today, which is full of racial tension and the problems that are caused by it, and go into a videogame that is depicting that exact same thing, it would just be a kind of "turn-off" to the game. 

There are quests and some game mechanics (such as laws) that do depict some specism, but it's very small and generally limited to either the Religious or Militarist political ideology and are less about specism, and are more about the "UE is better than the Lumeran Republic" regardless of what species is inside of the empire. 

And regarding Horatios Gene Splicing; the population Units don't represent set amounts of people. Like 1 pop unit does not equal a billion people. This is clear from the fact that Vaulters/Sisters of Mercy are in the thousands in the beginning, but have the same pop caps as the UE who's Raians/Hissho are in the millions. 

So it's more likely that Horatio isn't committing mass genocide and the population unit cost per gene splicing is just a game mechanic so that the gene splicing isn't super easy to use and doesn't snowball/become OP. 

I agree with the idea of adding some diseases

For example in ES1 there were two endless viruses that would decimate your population (one that had no choice in it and one where you could choose to throw your dead and infected on the other empire's worlds or something)

As for racism, it seems logical but I think it's not fun to add something of the sort, maybe add more probability to political crisis when accepting/assimilating new minor/major civilizations, but digging too much into that wouldn't be fun, imho. 

AlmondBrown wrote:

All that is needed is one new Tech. Call it, "Join the Inter-Galactic-Net" and Bingo. Rasicm, Hate and Salt in very large amounts and on a hourly basis. The young aliens will drink it like "Cool-Aid". LOL! ;)

You forgot the memes

I wonder what kind of endless memes could be in this universe...

" when your haroshem leaders orders you to migrate to Husk" *insert a worried haroshem pic* or something of the sort I guess...

Mavros and Sophons would spam the hell out of that I bet

I really like the more... enlightented system that Age of Wonders 3 used.  In prior AoW games, each fantasy race had a particular alignment (i.e. good + evil) and also certain races just didn't like certain other races (e.g. elves vs. dwarves, dwarves vs. orcs, etc.).  

In AoW3 they adopted a different approach.  Each race's attitude towards you, and their happiness within your empire, was based on how well that race was treated by you globally.  If you violently conqured a bunch of halflings, even after absorbing them into your empire, halflings everywhere will like you less and be more difficult to work with. It made you think how you played.  You still have to think about race relations, but it was more about your actions as a player rahter than someone's opinion on how racism in a fantasy context would play out.

There is a simplified cultural shock in the game. The minor faction that you assimilate will have a political position that is probably different from your main faction.

This is simply ignored because they are few in numbers when trying to influence elections. But sometimes they can make a surprise and your leader is suddenly ejected from the office in favor of their favorite political party.

I just want an easy way to keep Cravers off my planets. Any other races I have no issues with - they either become essence, new patriots or get Horatiofied :)

BarbeQ wrote:

There are already some events regarding the topic of racism. Istn't there one with a bunch of horatios making trouble because they don't want to sit on planets with other 'inferior' species. One solution to this is having a number of sole-horatio planets. Please correct me, if I do remember it wrong.

But I think it could be interesting to have some more events handling inter-species stuff (positive and negative ones). But they should then go beyond a simple +/- X approval for N turns. IMHO, such events can greatly contribute to make the galaxy feel alive.

Yes that quest does exist.

Another is about an alien officer who is facing discrimination due to racism and you are given the choice to either keep him or remove him. 

I am fine with quests and events tackling this, but as a mechanic I think it would add unnecessary complexity and as others have mentioned, little thematic pertinence to the game and its overall ambience. 

There are already some events regarding the topic of racism. Istn't there one with a bunch of horatios making trouble because they don't want to sit on planets with other 'inferior' species. One solution to this is having a number of sole-horatio planets. Please correct me, if I do remember it wrong.

But I think it could be interesting to have some more events handling inter-species stuff (positive and negative ones). But they should then go beyond a simple +/- X approval for N turns. IMHO, such events can greatly contribute to make the galaxy feel alive.

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

About cultural and racial conflicts, honnestly i just wish that in million years, when we will able to travel across the stars and stuff like that, we will leave those shitty debates about races and national identities behind us. This subject is daily pissing me off, and i personnaly hope i will never have to deal with it in a game, because i think i will vomit on my keyboard. So, i like the idea to make the game more realistic, but please, not about this.

About disease and stuff, that's an idea, but i guess medecine is very evolved in endless space societies, and they mught have the means to deal with diseases traveling trough space.

This is the best answer.

It does sound like an interesting idea. I'd be all for it, but the population management would have to change a lot to give us better tools to manage the said populations. They could also have some interesting laws to go on with it.
Honestly, we should have more tools to manage populations since I don't care to have 1 or 3 one some pointless species in my empire taking space from getting that population bonus for another species.

Hi there,

So one of the issue I have with the game mechanic, is that the species on the planets are just status numbers. 

As a German, I know there's a lot of conflict in culture when a foreign culture comes to your country and I mean a hell of a lot. 

In ES it's like oh, look horatio just entered the system, I'm sure they're all cool and stuff. You only have the racism effects when playing cravers, because other cultures don't like being slaves, but I think there should be at least some kind of culture conflict or racism when it comes to different human culture, like pilgrims and imperials.

There's just no way they're gonna be all cool when another culture comes into their space. But it's like there's no real effect on this in game.

Also there're no diseases, which is kind of unimmersive, because if you remember, when europeans first set foot in america, lots of native americans died from the european diseases they weren't immune of. When the kalgeros come to an human empire, there should be a chance of a disease outbreak, it would make green improvements that much more viable. 

Yeah you have the refugee quest, which kind of deals with cultural conflicts, but in such a huge scenario that basically always deals with minor cultures how to influence them, there's a strategic lack to it, I think.

P.S. I'm not done with drawing a new landing sequence for kyros yet, searching a new job takes much of my time sorry :)

Yes, the system is simpflified. It plays nice, though. I agree with OP's points and I think some more random events related to what is happening in the game (Storyteller-mode) would be nice. 

As it now is we often get +/-industry/food/science/etcpp. 

We need a new plague.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:

I think this is a level of complexity that ends up adding 'too much noise' and unnecessary management.

The differences in various peoples is already reflected to a large extent by political orientation and I think for the purposes of a space 4x game that is sufficient. 

While I enjoy the population mechanics of games such as Victoria 2, I think that this is a tad bit out of scope for the game. At most I think there should be population events if conditions are met, the same way you get population events when aquiring certain major pops. 

On the flip side, I would like to see more population management options and feedback besides just using the space ports. Pops don't react to being forced to live and work on another planet, and don't complain about being forced to travel to another system (or sit forever in a space dock). 

I think this is a level of complexity that ends up adding 'too much noise' and unnecessary management.

The differences in various peoples is already reflected to a large extent by political orientation and I think for the purposes of a space 4x game that is sufficient. 

About cultural and racial conflicts, honnestly i just wish that in million years, when we will able to travel across the stars and stuff like that, we will leave those shitty debates about races and national identities behind us. This subject is daily pissing me off, and i personnaly hope i will never have to deal with it in a game, because i think i will vomit on my keyboard. So, i like the idea to make the game more realistic, but please, not about this.

About disease and stuff, that's an idea, but i guess medecine is very evolved in endless space societies, and they mught have the means to deal with diseases traveling trough space.