Ethics

Version

This article has been verified for the current PC version (3.10) of the game.

**Ethics** – sometimes called *Ethos* – are the guiding principles of an empire and its people and determine an empire or pop's favored courses of action and responses to situations. Empires and individual populations don't always align ethically, and this can cause internal strife in large nations. AI empires follow the same ethics rules and their behavior is heavily dependent on the ethics they follow. Naturally, a Militarist Xenophobe alien empire will react very differently to the player than a Pacifist Xenophile. AI empires will, however, compromise on their ethics if circumstances are dire enough, for instance, if threatened with imminent conquest.

Every empire except Fallen Empires must have either three moderate ethics or one fanatic and one moderate ethic, or be  Gestalt Consciousness. Fallen Empires have only one fanatic ethic. Pops have only one moderate ethic each.

## Empire ethics

Each empire has 3 ethic points which must all be spent. Moderate ethics cost 1 point and fanatic ethics cost 2 points. Thus an empire can have either one fanatic and one moderate or three moderate ethics.  Gestalt Consciousness is the "ethic" for hive mind and machine empires without individual agency; it costs 3 ethic points and requires either the  Utopia DLC or the  Synthetic Dawn DLC.

An empire's ethics often determine which options are available for events, policies, and many other actions. As a result, ethics choices have a greater impact on game experience than simply the bonuses and maluses listed on this page.

There are 4 ethic axes present:

* The **Authoritarian-Egalitarian** axis looks at whether the empire's political power belongs in the hands of the few or the many.
* The **Materialist-Spiritualist** axis looks at whether the unknowns of the universe can be explained by science or the existence of something greater.
* The **Militarist-Pacifist** axis looks at whether the empire's military should be used offensively or strictly defensively.
* The **Xenophile-Xenophobe** axis looks at whether alien species and cultures should be embraced or distrusted.

The random weight of the  Gestalt Consciousness ethic varies depending on which DLC you own. It has a base weight of 0, which increases to 100 if you own either  Utopia or  Synthetic Dawn, and to 200 if you own both.

## Pop ethics

Each pop in an empire will embrace a single, moderate ethic, which determines the Faction a pop will eventually join. At the start of the game the population's ethics will match the empire ethics but as an empire grows its population will become more diverse in its views and wants. Each ethic has an attraction value for each pop in an empire depending on both the empire's situation and their own situation.

Over time, the ethics of the pops will drift in such a way that it roughly matches the overall attraction of that value. For example, if the materialist attraction sits at 10% for decades, it's likely that after that time, around 10% of all pops will be materialist. There is some random factor so it's likely never going to match up perfectly, but the system is built to try and go towards the mean, so the more over-represented an ethic is compared to its attraction, the more likely pops are to drift away from it and vice versa.

The following attraction factors are valid for each ethic:

* **+2** if the empire has the ethic in moderate form
* **+3** if the empire has the ethic in fanatic form
* **+2** if the empire does not have the ethic and the Faction representing it has formed
* **+1** if the leader of the Faction representing the ethic is the empire ruler
* **+2** if the empire is a subject loyal to an overlord that has the ethic

Each ethic has its own multitude of factors that will increase or lower its attraction.

## Governing ethics attraction

Governing ethics attraction is a modifier that attracts pops towards the primary ethics of an empire rather than unrelated ethics. As the factions corresponding to the governing ethics tend to have more faction approval, having pops match those ethics to join those factions is desirable. The main factor that determines governing ethics attraction is the  happiness of pops – each point of happiness above or below **50** adds the same amount of governing ethics attraction. In addition, an empire's governing ethics attraction can be affected by the following:

## Changing ethics

Empire ethics can be changed once every 10 years by embracing a  faction. Embracing a faction causes an ethic shift towards the faction's ethic – adding it or increasing it into fanatic. Whenever an empire shifts its ethics, all other empires in communication receive a notification. Other ethics are demoted or removed to maintain the total ethic points at 3, using the following rules:

 Shifting to a new ethic

An effective tactic to ensure a particular ethic has the lowest attraction, and thus will be removed, is to suppress it and promote other factions while the game is paused, shift ethics and then undo the suppression and promotions before unpausing.