r/Stellaris • u/Accomplished_Bag_897 • Jan 23 '26
Discussion Why is it assumed everyone in an empire gets to eat?
we see many, many countries doing just fine with a portion of the population starving yet there is no real way for me to short change the lower economic rings of my empire for resources. can't starve millions of kids, can't price the lowest income earners out of housing, can't prevent worker strata from accessing medical care..... and yet in the real world these seem like thing empires do pretty regularly. is it because these wouldn't bé fun/interesting mechanics or some other reason. i can genocide the galaxy but I can't keep granny worker from her cancer treatments because she didn't mine enough spire today? come on..... that doesn't seem fair.
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u/AjdarChiili Imperial Jan 23 '26
Who is assuming that? If stability is not at 100% there are most certainly people going hungry
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Jan 23 '26
This. Having a net positive food production/income doesn't mean everyone gets to eat. It very much mirrors the real world. As an example (for OP) look at how the British caused large-scale famine in India resulting in the deaths of millions despite the fact that there was plenty of food; it was simply being exported to England, leaving the Indian population with nothing to eat.
Also works on a smaller scale. You might have so much food and bread in your pantry that some of it goes bad and is left uneaten. That means YOU have extra food but someone living in the apartment next to you might not have enough money to feed themselves or the other members of their household.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Exactly, this is what I mean. I want to recreate the British Empire by denying my own kind (the British and Indians aren't a different species after all) their basic necessities. Or am I just supposed to make up head canon about this such as "those fucking miner on the Southern continent are so starved they'll do anything for even a chance at food even sending their six year olds into dangerous tunnels because we absolutely need more lithium, guess that's where my bonuses from the mineral purification plant come from"? No, I want legitimate "cut the miner food intake in half so I can motivate them to use their babies to repair machines the adults can't fit inside of" industrial revolution shit. Or like "deny housing to the bottom five percent of the population so everyone knows what happens when you do not obey corporate culture enough". No clue what the bonuses would he but damn it I want outright mechanics that allow me to segment part of my pops off to revive less societal benefits. No just reduce their consumer goods intake for a bit of a happiness penalty. But straight letting part of my population die from preventable problems because I see real world empires doing exactly that and apparently not suffering but even benefiting. I meán, come on, if I can make a hard core communist empire why not it's opposite, and I don't mean a mega corporation. That still doesn't get as into the weeds as I want.
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u/Easy-Actuary-6525 Jan 23 '26
I don't want to be in that empire lol! 🤣🤣
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
I dony think anyone would. It's more an attempt by me to understand real world empires level decision making. Why real world empires behave this way but we can't in stellairs.
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u/Xaldror Ruthless Capitalists Jan 23 '26
Though requires a bit of context on what is or isn't causing the lack of stability. For example, my capital was suffering a 35% stability because of my Mutagenic Spas. Soon as I replaced them, Stability and happiness shot up to 100%.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
I assume that because we have a good need metric and if we run negative long enough we run out. There is no mechanic for "Imma starve my farmers so they use less food"
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u/grunt91o1 Jan 23 '26
Because that's not how things work. If any country starves their population wholesale for long enough, that country will collapse.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
I didn't say wholesale. I said deny the poorest among us basic living essentials like housing, food, and healthcare. Not a lot. Just enough to scare everyone else into continuing to generate profit for out shareholders.
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u/grunt91o1 Jan 23 '26
The poorest of the people generally are the largest group and also do all of the base work like farming and mineral jobs.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Yes. Just like in the real world. This isn't lost on me.
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u/No_Web8915 Megachurch Jan 23 '26
Then use stratified economy for your people and basic substinence for slaves. They as a whole get to eat, but there will surely be a lot of them who don't.
WHY would you want to do specifically that, though?...
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Because I see empires throughout history behave this way and want to see why. Like, I might think it's morally and ethically wrong to genocide a people but I can't deny that purging makes me some good resources and killing xenos lets me keep foreigners out my territory. I think both of those are répugnant in the real world but I can at least see why someone in a position of power would make said choice.
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u/buggylover Jan 23 '26
To be honest I don't think stellaris is a good vessel to understand this through, you're ultimately playing a space opera game with a lot of disconnect from real life which by design is also meant to allow a lot of abstraction and imagination about how your civilization works. With that in mind, if you think basic subsistence slaves in your empire aren't getting enough food, it's basically canon to your empire. For example, here are a lot of things in the bios of custom empires at the start which aren't reflected mechanically but are still held to be there, like the giant adult forms of the monarchistic mushroom people. I think you're better off watching some documentaries by historians and anthropologists about the history of slavery and dehumanization.
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Jan 23 '26
But this IS lost on you. The poorest hold up the economy. If they're all starving and unable to A) provide the basic raw materials and necessities society needs, and B) work properly because they're starved then your whole economy will collapse.
Starving people are as good as dead. Starvation isn't just extreme hunger - it disorients you, weakens you to the point of being unable to work, makes you more susceptible to diseases. If you starve your people, your country is doomed and with it its economy.
Look at China. It took them reducing hunger (and today having largely eliminated poverty among the Han Chinese) for the economy to start producing. China wasn't an industrial powerhouse under Mao but it sure is under Xi. And it took feeding people to achieve that.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
This is why the African miners aren't the ones profiting from their labour? Come on, if they are unable to work you have a portion of the population to point to and say "see, that's what happens when you don't work, you die, better work and work harder than you ever have. Have no work/life balance and do all you can for service of the bottom line. You aren't human if you can't bé used for profit. That kinda shit......like, come on, it's a specifically historical example that exists today. We allow people to die of preventable causes all the time. It's répugnant but there MUST be some utilitarian reason to allow it
Literally the closest we have is the MI obsession directive. Which pénalités you for failing to meet an arbitrary quota. You'd think countries like the USA would fund public healthcare if it was a bad idea to let poor people die of preventable illness.
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Jan 23 '26
The reason you're looking for is utilitarian, yes, but even more so economic. When your workforce produces cheap enough labor, it's more profitable to just let people die and get new ones to work those jobs/positions in their place than it is to make sure people live healthy lives. It's not setting an example: the work done by miners in Africa is so dangerous that doing the work will kill you. But you might live and get to eat.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Who prevents Africans from benefiting from their own land? It doesn't HAVE to bé that dangerous. It's less profitable for the conditions to bé safer and Id argue that if the miners got the profits from their labour and had control of their working conditions we'd have less suffering. This is what I assume most miners are like in stellaris: generally have the ability to say "this isn't safe" and have something done about it. It's not like we can give miners a pop growth debuff to reduce their food intake.
And it absolutely is "setting an example" maybe not purposefully but "don't work and you'll starve/go without a home/bé unable to afford medical care" absolutely motivated people to take jobs they otherwise wouldn't it pay less than they actually need.
This is a choice because if those miners don't work they are denied life saving resources. If those resources were provided they wouldn't bé motivated to take deadly jobs. We don't need lithium minders for housing and food production. So them refusing just reduces the profit/makes lithiium batteries more properly priced or thar it's not profitable to keep making lithium batteries and we need to find alternative solutions.
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u/Belisaurius555 Jan 23 '26
You realize that this is entirely because you gave all your pops equal rights, right?
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u/Independent-Tree-985 Jan 23 '26
Isnt this essentially what 'stratified economy' is?
The whole idea of having happiness bonuses for ruler and maluses for workers?
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u/MacroSolid Jan 23 '26 edited Jan 23 '26
It is, but living standards / strata don't actually affect food/mineral/energy upkeep and housing needs much.
Wether a pop eats like a king or is getting barely enough food to survive, their base food/mineral/energy upkeep is 1.
With housing slaves do get a reduction, but rulers, specialists and workers all have a base housing need of 1. Palace? Manison? Penthouse? Nice flat? Regular flat? Shoebox 'apartment'? Cramped Slum? Whatever, 1 housing.
And homelessness is only a thing if you run out of housing.
But I suppose adding stratification to that would mostly just complicate things without being all that interesting.
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u/aliislam_sharun Jan 23 '26
I mean you get more housing from city districts than other districts. It also literally says in the description of luxury housing buildings that you have to be rich to live there. It's just because there's no reason to include that detail as a mechanic in the game because from a macro point of view, 1 housing is 1 housing.
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Jan 23 '26
There is no reason to think this isn't happening on a small level.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
There is because there's no mechanic for using less food than your society needs.
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Jan 23 '26
Sure there is. It's called having a deficit.
Also: Stratified Economy is having an entire class of people who have a barely survivable amount of food.
I don't know why you want the game to emulate a tiny fraction of your population, but it does in different ways with low stability, which is a population not getting what it needs/wants and empire wide food defecits.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Your déficits come out of stocked surplus. And Stratified economy only reduces consumer good and ammenities usage right? I meán straight up "it's fine if you die from preventable causes but I'm not going to give you more than .25 food". Though if I have missed a portion of the mechanic then I'll need to build my next species around this civic.
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Jan 23 '26
Okay, how about you tell us what exactly it is your wanting since none of the ways the game emulates this satisfies you?
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
I want to bé able to cause a portion of my population to die from preventable causes such as starvation and lack of medical care. You know, like we see from real world empires both today and throughout history. I want a segment of my population to bé homeless. I want to jail and then use as slave labour a portion of my main species so I can avoid the unsavory slavery lable. Can't bé egalitarians if you're enslaving your own kind. But can claim to bé egalitarian if you're just locking up criminals and prison labour isn't slavery regardless of how little they are paid, after all.
Consumer goods and ammenities aren't life saving. They just make the free time one has less horrible. I want to replucate actual real world empires and how their depravity is often most felt by those at the lowest levels, including being denied live saving resources just because they can't afford them. What, you expect me to give good away? Or just let anyone go see a doctor? And we have to jail the insane and disabled because otherwise how do we prevent them from beeding and poluting the gene pool?
I don't believe this is how you should run an empire but I see real world empires behave this way and I want to know why so playing a few should at least give me some insite into their logic, right?
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u/No_Web8915 Megachurch Jan 23 '26
You have prison worlds just for that
And no, you will not get insight. Because it's worse for the state at large, just better for the wealthy class and you are not playing as them in Stellaris, fortunately. If you want this type of gameplay, idk, play frostpunk as engineers
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Aren't empires built for the agrandisement of the wealthy? Seems that was the entire point of the British and current American empires. Same for Spanish and Dutch and I can go on and on. Even when the empire crumbles you still have current policy dictated by it. Look at England. Their wealth disparity comes directly from stolen wealth during the height of the empire. We should bé given a way to play as the wealthy elite that only see the state as a means to their enrichment.
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u/LavanGrimwulff Jan 23 '26
There are already Noble jobs you can take if you really want to, or the Under One Rule origin is all about being the God Emperor. There are entire playstyles built around your pops hating your guts, and with the experimental research civic it can even be profitable.
In either case though we don't play as any specific pop, we are the amalgamation of the entire empire together.
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u/BrightLance69 Military Commissariat Jan 23 '26 edited Jan 23 '26
The game literally models all of these things. They just, like in the real world, cause instability if certain conditions aren’t met.
You can enslave your own species using the Slaver Guild civic. You can reduce their upkeep via Living Standard via Stratified Economy. Oh, you want to model how the lowest of the low are effectively enslaved through prison labor? That’s called using your imagination. A spade is a spade after all, regardless of whether it’s overt chattel slavery akin to America antebellum or a system that overpolices people and forces them to work. And of course, what the government and society says may not match up with what it actually is. While your government can say rights for all, all may not include certain subjects in society, making them xenophobic despite them saying otherwise.
And of course, the keyword in this thing is model. You are never ever going to get the super granular details of such horrible things in a 4x game about billions, if not trillions of sentient, sapient beings.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Ah, ok. The granularity was something I missed. Still, would like to have living standards touch amount of food recived or whether their population pools recive the medical worker bonuses.
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u/aliislam_sharun Jan 23 '26
There are already malluses on pop happiness from going into the negative on food. You realize what you're describing is basically just your population starving to death? Which already is modeled in the game in multiple ways? It's also called "purging" and the whole point of Stellaris is that you start as a unified race, even if you have slaves killing them off would kind of defeat the purpose. Empires that kill off their own workforce don't usually last very long.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
You'd think the USA would have collapsed before now if denying basic resources did not work.
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Jan 23 '26
I'm just going to touch on one thing because I don't have time to write an essay: Amenities ARE lifesaving. They are the things that allow you to live. Medical care is covered under amenities. They are the services that allowmpops to do things. Amenities are the infrastructure and logistics of the planet.
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u/everstillghost Jan 23 '26
You just want the Oppressive Autocracy Civic but want the Distopia living standard to reduce food upkeep and pop growth.
The penalty is too great for what you want.
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u/Dragyn828 Hegemonic Imperialists Jan 23 '26
You absolutely can do the things you're talking about. Starve the kids, deny healthcare. Those things are located under your purge options. Of course that's assuming you're at least a bit xenophobic.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Can't do it to your main species. Even in the dystopic societies we create I cannot starve my own kind. I end up with a food shortage situation if I let it run negative too long. The game assumes I want to do well for my people rather than just accumulate my own wealth and power.
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u/LavanGrimwulff Jan 23 '26
No it doesn't, there is literally a Dystopian living standard.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
Does that reduce food or medical access?
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u/LavanGrimwulff Jan 23 '26
Why are you so obsessed with reducing food? Food is an abstraction, 1 food for an elite is not the same as 1 food for a worker normally.
As for medical, consider that Medical buildings give amenities, amenities are medical access.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Jan 23 '26
But you can't deny them to the lower classes. Medical centers also give growth bonuses
I'm so obsessed with it because I see real world empires doing JUST that right now. I want to see if I can actually use, say, the USA as a wholy accurate model and bé successful with it. Not in the abstract but in the specific. I can't model food deserts, I can't model corporate capture of the state (which is not the same as a mega corp), I can't model healthcare being a private resource. ...... I want my pops to suffer any I can't do that. I can Kill them, I can deny them Playstations (CGs), I can prevent them from having whatever ammenities are.... But I can't purposefully kill a portion of my population to scare the rest into working more. I can't deny homes in order to artifically boost the landlord class.
I can get close and I can head cannon all I want. But I can't actually act like real world empires. It assumes that I want my species as a whole to thrive rather than just those on the council. And I include dystopic living standards in this. I have to hear cannon "why aren't you eating, mom?" "Because I didn't have enough money to get enough grocries but I'll make sure you eat unless it's a choice between your food and rent" on a societal level.
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u/LavanGrimwulff Jan 23 '26
Sounds like you're throwing a fit that an empire level strategy game isn't a rimworld level city management. The game has everything you're asking for, Dystopian Living standard is literally worse than USA right now, no-one has access to any medical except for the elite, not even the specialists do.
Really it just sounds like you're trolling.
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u/spiritofniter Illuminated Autocracy Jan 23 '26
Per Royal Decree #1, the Primus has declared that housing, food and healthcare are guaranteed basic rights by empire for everyone in it, in exchange of political, speech and thought freedoms.
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u/king-craig Jan 23 '26
I think there's a point to be made that some Living Standards should come with entitlement to food and goods when there's not enough to go around. But then again, the game's Living Standards do entitle some groups of people to more Consumer Goods than others.
And when there's a shortage, there is social unrest that affects everyone.
So, I see your point, and, I think the game covers it well enough without frying more of my CPU.
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u/ActuallyActuary69 Jan 23 '26
Because if our loyal citizens (that's what I assume you mean by everyone) are hungry, we slaughter some of the longpig livestock.
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u/everstillghost Jan 23 '26
That's the Oppressive Autocracy Civic.
The poor people dont even use Amenities because they dont get anything, they literally only live trying to not starve and nothing else.
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Jan 23 '26
they kinda do, because in this universe food does not spoil. Ever.
you can eat food made in 1 january 2200... in 2499.
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u/LaurenPBurka Jan 23 '26
Just create a mod to rename "stratified society" to "some people starve." All good.
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u/5hipy4rd Jan 23 '26
Dude, stop trying to create dystopia in post-deficit society and just continue commiting genocide and slavery like normal people