I have been getting into Stellaris and noticed that each new save has empires with similar ethics. On my most recent play as a megacorp, nearly all empires were xenophobic or militarist. On the other hand nearly all empires were democratic when I was also democratic.
How are ethics actually assigned?
Edit: More detailed response by PDX_eladrin: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/please-remove-megacorp-anti-player-bias.1688921/#post-29705503
Sometimes I think it isn't random at all, because I hardly ever get what I want in this game.
Pacifist xenophiles? Surrounded by militarist xenophobes.
Militarist xenophobes? Alone on my side of the galaxy.
Militarist imperialists? Sorrounded by hive minds.
Short-fused militarists? Palsy-walsy galaxy.
Crime syndicate? Lots of rival crime syndicates!
I might be coincidence, or a perception bias on my part, but maybe the game is trying to make itself harder according to what I choose.
Be careful what you wish for.
I had a game where I played pacifist, and lo and behold, the entire galaxy was either pacifist or xenophile. By 2300, everyone was holding hands and singing kumbaya in one massive federation, even the Xenophile Awakened Empire eventually joined. Most boring run I've ever had...
Until Cetana showed up. For those who don't know, Cetana will declare war on all FEs and their allies, and will not progress her situation until they are all defeated. As I was not in the federation at the time, there was nothing I could do, as Cetana slowly gobbled up the entire rest of the galaxy (since you can't attack Cetana until a certain point in her quest chain). Still boring, but it was an interesting interaction.
I agree with this. My first militarist dictatorship started surrounded by hiveminds with everyone else on the opposite side of the galaxy. They tried invading me so much I had to push production like I was pacifists
Ethics are for the most part randomly assigned. The only ethics that are not randomly assigned are for empires you force spawn in or allow to spawn in instead of a randomly generated empire. You are most likely experiencing observation bias. If you were to play 100 games and record what ethics your neighbor had, it would be random.
With a bias toward "aggressive" ones.(they have different weigth to be chosen )
Oh no way I had no idea they had a weight. Thats interesting ty for letting me know
https://stellaris.fandom.com/wiki/Ethics_modding
I think you have to look for modding to find that information. (It took me a moment to find it again, maybe would have been faster to look in the game files, when I would have been on the pc)
(And sorry that it is fandom, it was the first source I found)
According to the wiki, the vanilla random_weight values (higher = more likely for random AI empires) are as follows:
Gestalt Consciousness: 100 per installed DLC (Utopia and/or Synthetic Dawn, so 100 with one DLC or 200 with both).
The code is intended to give a spread of ethics. Whether or not this works properly is another question. I did notice that my Spiritualist Authoritarian game was a little weighted towards Materialists, but Auth and Egal felt even. It is also worth noting that AIs will change their ethics if their pops demand it. So said Auth Spritualist game eventually had the universe split between my vassals which eventually matched my ethics, and my Rival's vassals who opposed me. So if one empire starts running the game you might notice it starts rebuilding everyone else in it's image.
Once I decided to create an empire focused on abducting pops and enslaving them. I had 4 direct neighbors, and they were all great and powerful hive minds. Wow.
From my experience the AI empires are randomly chosen from a list of pre generated empires. You can add the empires you create to the list of possible AI empires, there is a button next to the empire in the screen where you choose what empire to play as.
Preset empires have a chance of spawning that's about the same as an empire on your list randomly spawnin, and very rarely can be Fallen Empires if they have one of that FE's ethics, fanatic or not. The vast majority of AI empires are fully random.
Is there any way to insurance those odds?
You can force a custom AI empire to spawn. You have no control over Fallen Empires whatsoever other than the number that are able to spawn.
Can I make it so the pre generated empires spawn and also any thay aren't forced?
Yeah you can, just try editing the template and it saves a duplicate like a custom empire.