I'm currently on my 3rd match as the Lumeris, expanding through most of the galaxy, establishing trade routes, etc. So far I've only been in one Cold War and one short War which have mainly involved destroying a snooping Craver fleet or two, destroying a few scouts, and obliterating a Voldani invasion fleet before pelting their Ark once. All of my other activity has been geared towards trade and infrastructure, and none of my population leans towards Militarism.

Regardless, the Militarists have held majority in the Senate for the past 2 terms and are on their way to securing a 3rd term as the majority. It seems no matter how much I try to stay peaceful, the combination of an AI declaring war and building up enough of a defensive fleet to have a full flotilla at each of my 3 main systems always bumps the Militarists above 50% while I struggle to keep the Pacifists politically relevant.

Has anyone else playing non-militant factions (Lumeris & Sophons) noticed the Militarists consistently gaining the majority each match? Do you think support for the Militarist party currently increases too fast?

I have this problem too and it is inevitable really when building fleets for defense (which is mandatory) increases your militarist faction. I have been having this problem in my games to the point that all other parties are insignificant. Militarist are a large majority and every other party is so closely matched that any one of them could take the second seat.

What if the militarist faction increase when building ships was removed, but actions like commencing battle, declaring war and invading got their militarist gains increased. Maybe that way militarism would be less common but still attainable for those who want it.

Syrenion wrote:
In my opinion militarist influence growth should be more nuanced. Especially for the case of "defensive" military actions. By that I mean that it should be less militarist if I build fleets after having been declared war on or focus on military as a reaction. Now this of course would be in conflict with their vision (which I also quite liked) of the obvious reaction of a populace leaning strongly towards militarism when their systems is constantly under siege or a hotspot for space conflict. However, I still think that, at the moment, this increase is way too strong, especially since the other options are hardly as powerful (religious seems to be one of the most challenging ones to increase). Also, I guess, at the moment there are simply not that many viable options to fend off early enemy aggression or avoid conflict altogether. The best strategy, at the moment is still to have at least some form of standing army/fleet in order to survive the first third of the game or at least make it significantly easier. I suspect though, that this might change as soon as the game gets updated and more features added. Still, military growth at the moment is in fact scary and should be investigated at the least.

That would be interesting. Perhaps even implement a distinction between offensive and defensive fleets (add defensive versions of hulls perhaps?) and limit the actions that a defensive fleet can take. A defensive fleet would not be able to attack enemy systems, just defend your own. Maybe they could make your systems stronger against ground invasions somehow too. Speaking of invasions, am I the only one that finds it odd that defensive improvements for systems give a militarist increase? I understand they are for a military purpose, but I would think pacifists would find them much more necessary than a militarist empire with huge fleets anyway.

By the way, it occurred to me that militarist increases naturally over time because ships can be built endlessly while improvements cannot. You run out of stuff to build pretty fast if you just want to increase one faction, even across several systems. I'm not sure exactly how the mechanic works for political faction increases with improvements, but if it is a one-time increase this becomes negligible very fast. If this is not already in the game, improvements should have a passive political "yield" over time. Maybe not shown explicitly to the player, but at least specializing your systems in one yield over others should create predictable political results for that system. To do it, you would have to give up other yields since building those improvements would dilute the political gain you are trying to achieve.

I'm definitely with you. It really feels far too easy to have a senate just completely dominated by militarists. I found this to be the case even when I researched no military tech and ran my systems out of non-military things to build (in other words, as a pacifist and industrialist as I think was possible) and building a fairly minimal anti-pirate fleet still turned my senate strongly militarist. It's possible that it just needs some numbers tweaking. 

Ecologist was actually the more frustrating one - I was playing Lumeris and built something like 2-3 : 1  ratio of exploration ships to military ships and the ecologists didn't get a single seat.

I definitely agree with allot of the posts.

I also voted yes. Military political power grew to overtake all others in my ~50 turn sophon game because i was declared war on by 1 faction around turn 30 and another around turn 45, though I only took one of their systems in total and fought maybe 5-10 ship battles.

Thats hardly anything, and now my sophons are militarists.....

Militarists should not gain influence for wars - the game is based on war.

Makes absolutely no sense. You are basically designing it so that we cant defend ourselves, or we lose our political favor.

Defensive wars should not produce ANY militarism for sure - and even offensive wars should only very slowly do so.

I Agree

At least a second (maybe random?) party should be unlocked at the start. It's always so strange (especially with a democracy) when your people vote but only have one party to choose from!

And yes military shouldn't level that much upon building ships... early on you build explorer ships (not really a military action) and later on you have to build some defenses (both fleet and improvements) that are especially important if you DON'T want to be an aggressor but defend your worlds.

How are you guys so lucky? My cravers have been taken over by scientists. I built loads of ships but there are scientists everywhere, ruining my happiness with their sciencing all over the place.