games

Yeah, so that axis in Stellaris should be materialist-idealist but after the absolute shitshow with collectivism-individualism and its subsequent renaming to authoritarianism-egalitarianism no wonder PDX didn't even tried.

My most recent game was a Hive Mind. I think I assimilated some 75% of the galaxy, getting right to the endgame crisis before the most recent update dropped. I've kind of lost interest in the save, partially because I played with Gigastructural Engineering and that updated with Machine Age as I was playing, so the save file is a little borked. Looking forward to playing with the Cosmic Storms and the upcoming Grand Archive, though.

I think I crushed two Fanatic Purifiers and assimilated the Great Khan, so you're welcome, the rest of the galaxy.

I think one thing Crusader Kings and Europa did better was building out these elaborate social relationships between aristocrats that prefigured the coalition of fiefdoms and confederacies of principalities that would eventually congeal into kingdoms, states, and empires.

One of the things a socialist revolution does is decapitate the monarchies that share all these ties back to the coalition states. French laborers and merchants guillotining the king and queen weren't just killing their own heads of state, but the immediate family of neighboring Austria. Literally the Holy Roman Emperor's kid sister. It wasn't just France toying with a new economic model, but the French government converting - practically overnight - from a close political ally to the seat of a nest of villainous assassins. It wasn't until the Napoleonic dynasty made inroads with European peers that tensions between France and the surrounding territories settled.

Similarly, the murder of the Tsar's family in Russia brought enormous shame on his immediate family in Britain. Not to mention the smattering of German, French, and Eastern European aristocrats who were on close terms with the Romanovs prior to the war. Governments to the east - in neighboring Turkey, Iran, China, India, Korea, and Japan - who either had no relation or retained an active beef with the European monarchies were significantly more sanguine at the shift in management.

Meanwhile, the Americans under FDR were relatively conciliatory and amicable to the Stalin government. Roosevelt's family formed bonds with Russian Revolutionaries of note. Much of the American press wasn't particularly fond of European aristocracy. And so relations thrived until the end of the war and the resurgence of Red Scare politics. And the US was at least somewhat amicable to a Cuban revolution against Batista, right up until Fidel began threatening the American aristocracy of Jewish/Italian mafia cartels and agricultural land baronies.

I don't think it is necessarily a given that Socialist and Capitalist economies can't intertwine. Certainly, the US and Russia managed it during detente (my extremely capitalist father made a number of trips to Russia while working for a US based conglomerate in order to build out their O&G infrastructure). And the US and China have been co-mingling for over 60 years, despite efforts to wedge them apart. But the movements that create socialist governments ex nihilo can cause a degree of family drama at the highest reaches of the state that can pollute diplomatic policy for generations to come.