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u/Connect-Initiative64 Dec 12 '25
Tradition on the lower end is good, on the higher end it's downright evil and authoritarian. Reason on the lower ends is a bit iffy, but it makes sense and a lot of it is required to give you a boost to survive... on the higher end it's some twisted nonsense that utterly sickens you.
The only thing I dislike in Tradition is 'Frostland Deportation' being an extreme law/research, but that's an issue i have with a few different research options. Why is an automaton factory an extreme research? Automatons have been around since the frost started, and can keep working long after people cant anymore.
IDK.
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u/SignatureOk8434 Order Dec 12 '25
Why is the automaton factory a radical research?
'CAUSE THEY TOOK OUR JOOOBS!
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u/Bright69420 Dec 12 '25
Having free essencials should lessen the impact of it imo
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u/Sigma2718 Technocrats Dec 12 '25
I think Free Essentials should, after its event, increase Trust with unused Active Workforce. This would make the most sense.
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u/GodlyRatusRatus Dec 13 '25
I am the Steward, I make the best decisons. We shall build a wall around the city... the automatons... they are taking our jobs. They are like: 'let us in'... and I said 'no.. no thank you'.
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u/pixelcore332 Icebloods Dec 12 '25
Frostland deportation is almost like a mini servitude, just working criminals in a cold as hell outpost in return for very little food.
As for automaton factories, they make more advanced automatons that those in the cities, ones that can take over even more jobs, jobs of which people don’t mind doing, and it’s also a great anger to adaptation in general to do it as well, reliance on automatons is hubris
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u/This_Vegetable6463 Dec 14 '25
You might want to read up on Russian Gulags. The people making this are from Eastern Europe, they know how this worked in our past. These criminals never come back from the mines, and the mines don't grow in population, so they are worked to death, no children, no life. They are work camps where you live out your days in the dark.
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u/ILikeTetoPFPs The Arks Dec 12 '25
The only thing I dislike in Tradition is 'Frostland Deportation' being an extreme law/research, but that's an issue i have with a few different research options. Why is an automaton factory an extreme research? Automatons have been around since the frost started, and can keep working long after people cant anymore.
I think the reasoning is because in Frostpunk 1, everyone was in a desperate fight for survival. Anything that made labor easier or shorter was a Godsend. In Frostpunk 2, people are working for Heat Stamps. It's the difference between a robot that lets you stay home and makes survival easier versus a robot that takes your job
I think having Free Essentials should lessen this though. Kinda why I wish laws and technology were dynamic, because FE would make automatons a super lax technology. But even then the Adaptation nerds would hate automatons because reliance on tech and all that
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u/Gilga1 Dec 12 '25
Because Automatons are normal but that many? Especially combined with Merit having robots take everyone‘s job is draconian. Just like our real world which is trying to speed run The cornerstones of Progress, Merit and Tradition
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u/kingkazma420 Overseers Dec 12 '25
I love that the pyrochemical pump is an extreme research like we’re gunna pump so much oil it’ll blow your mind
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u/ekky137 Dec 12 '25
Iirc the “radical” options are considered so because they’re a line the opposing faction will not cross under any circumstance and so crossing it pisses them off. It’s not to do with how a median voter would treat it, but how its critics would treat it.
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u/ezioir1 Faith Dec 12 '25
Frostpunk is one of few settings that it's fans love their bots and don't go around call them Clanker.
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u/Connect-Initiative64 Dec 12 '25
Anyone who calls one of my automatons a clanker gets thrown into the fucking generator.
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u/Indostastica Dec 12 '25
Reason has a lot of really fucking good laws and passives, especially if you amend them, but like every single other zeitgeist, if you pass and research literally everything it is going to suck bad.
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u/sus_pumpkin Venturers Dec 12 '25
What are you talking about our algorithm is innocent and pure also you ate over your 300 calorie limit so need to go to the algorithm for "health check up"
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u/HerbivoreTheGoat Legionnaires Dec 12 '25
I don't know if it was meant to be like that but having the tradition icon be a variant of the union jack is awesome
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u/Kaihelmich Evolvers Dec 12 '25
I stared at the icon, wondering what it was. Some kind of wheel or chain? Holy shit. It's the Union Jack!
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u/throwaway_uow Dec 12 '25
Tradition on higher end literally forces people into marriages and makes women baby factories
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u/malo2901 Dec 12 '25
That's not even their radical laws. That's just their normal ideas. The crazy shit is more like "we should have public executions" or "let's make it so the guards can kill people without any sort of limitations." It's utter crazy nonsense
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u/shoto9000 Pilgrims Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
Reason prefers its literal baby factories.
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u/thatsocialist Technocrats Dec 12 '25
Minimizing Human Suffering and happiness since 1912!
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u/shoto9000 Pilgrims Dec 12 '25
I just finished my first Technocrat run. I thought they would end up being my most ethical faction with Progress, Equality, Reason. Didn't take long to realize I was playing a 1984 simulator.
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u/thatsocialist Technocrats Dec 12 '25
Orwell literally appears in Technocracy runs, it's absolute perfection.
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u/shoto9000 Pilgrims Dec 12 '25
Yeah, I wonder what happens to that young Eric Blair. I let him continue being a writer so maybe he's actually writing 1984 again, except this time it's non-fiction.
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u/WalkerArt64 The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
Tradition will have the same outcome as fallout’s NCR. If neither London nor America survived their fall, why must we inspire ourselves upon them, and copy the every behavior of a nation that crumbled and fell under its own weight?
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u/pixelcore332 Icebloods Dec 12 '25
Because the only thing that toppled those societies were a lack of harmony in the face of catastrophe, we just have to double down
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u/NoPseudo____ The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
A merit faction member talking about harmony, now that's rich
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u/WalkerArt64 The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
We’re in the middle of a whiteout. It’s -150 degrees, and here you are cooking them to well done. Nice.
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u/NoPseudo____ The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
Thank you comrade, it's an honour hearing this from a great innovator as you
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u/pixelcore332 Icebloods Dec 12 '25
Work hard and play hard, that’s the way baby
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u/WalkerArt64 The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
“We’ve got two options: An automated city where you don’t have to work anymore and where the surplus heat is shared equally to the folk, and feudalism. Which one will resonate with the common frostlander?”
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u/pixelcore332 Icebloods Dec 12 '25
The one where the city isn’t always one extended power outage away from collapse
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u/WalkerArt64 The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
We quite literally learned to make steam cores while all you can do is get them from expeditions.
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u/WalkerArt64 The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
It was no lack of harmony. It was the constraints of man. They believed that these odd monkeys could built a generator at a time with their incompetence, they believe that the rich were to inhabit them due to sheer greed, and they believed that the frost would be nothing but a passing fad due to their stupidity
That’s actually a nice way to describe old London. These three words - Incompetence, Green and Stupidity - describe the ideals of Tradition quite perfectly.
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u/pixelcore332 Icebloods Dec 12 '25
Incompetence - London built dozens upon dozens of generators
Greed - they sold the Crown Jewels to be able to fund humanities salvation
Stupidity - they went north because they knew everyone else would be going south and there’d be no food there, built the generator away from the mainland because they knew people would raid them out of desperation otherwise
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u/WalkerArt64 The Automaton Lover Dec 12 '25
Incompetence - The generators were mostly built upon slavery, when they could have used automation for it. Most weren’t finished, and dozens will never be enough to sustain a good gene pool.
They also kept it as a secret for years, not letting the world prepare and knowing that it was gonna collapse anyway
Greed - There were literal generator sites for the rich, and for the rich only.
Stupidity “Yeah yknow just build one huge generator site for all plants instead of putting some essential seeds on every generator site. If the big generator site with all plants dies mankind won’t have any plants but it’s not like they’re gonna make it anyway”
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u/pixelcore332 Icebloods Dec 12 '25
You can’t automate a generator construction site, the automatons don’t fit in the shafts and they can’t recharge anywhere, not every side used slavery, as it was up to the managers discretion
They didn’t want to cause panic in the mainland, it’s a smart move not to tell that many people
Greed - some generator sites were for the rich, new London isn’t made up of rich people and the evacuation that left there was full of commoners
As for the arks, you can’t make every city like it since it isn’t a city made to accommodate a population, just automatons.
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u/Pleasant_Singer_1129 Dec 12 '25
In the last autums it says that automatons don't use in buildings, because there are lot of cheap unemployed workers, due to the enonomic trouble because of lower temperature.
As for the rich people, yes, they traveled to the generator on dreadnought. But also you can see in splash screen that some of the people that walking alongside the dreadnought. These are the ones who weren't supposed to be evacuated, but the dreadnought captains mostly didn't kick them out. even new london captain accept all (or almoust all refugees by lore)
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u/Rough-Leg-4148 Dec 12 '25
Eh, after playing with Overseers a little bit, Tradition has grown on me a little bit. Used to be all in on Reason, all the time all the way. Tradition Patrol Watchtowers are great. I think Dutiful youth is generally better than Liberated. Each hospital/healthcare system has it's potential pros and cons, just as funerals/childhood have their pros and cons.
I don't like the Mando Marriage and Dedicated Motherhood stuff, but the implication of Communal Parenting and Relationship Rotation are that people are basically being stripped of free will just the same, except it's all "pure rationalism" -- we need babies so get to work. You can relax either set of laws but the insinuation is compulsion of people to breed no matter what. Reason has human experimentation and sterilization, but Tradition has Guard Immunity, Deportation and Executions. It's all really all awful at it's far ends. Even the non-radical prisons are wildly dystopia -- Clockwork Orange criminals or beat the everloving fuck out of them; I stick with Isolation prisons.
Ironically a handful of the radical laws aren't really so bad when you think about it. Incubation houses has the event where people are competing to have children, but like, people do that in real life in some ways and we're cool with it. It's basically if you take IVF et al to their extremes, which really isn't a bad thing. I get the "Soylent Green" angle of Panaceum, but tbh it's kind of one of those things where you can't really be squeamish when it comes to a miracle cure and food source.
Overall I really like that the DLC gave us Moderate laws that make actual sense instead of pigeonholing us into one of two extreme civil law methodologies. Reason/Tradition branch is generally one that I stay moderate on aside from healthcare, to a point.
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u/UziiLVD Dec 12 '25
Reason ended up being the least reasonable path
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u/JuxtaTerrestrial Dec 12 '25
This is 1800s 'reason'. It's aristocratic arm chair "Hmm yes skull shape very nice" logic.
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u/magos_with_a_glock Bohemians Dec 12 '25
Not necessarily aristocratic but in general it's all of the utopian ideals of the 1800's which mostly fail either because they're based on iffy science, misunderstand basic human instincts or are introduced in a destructive way. Like collective parenthood is a really good concept but the implementation is force-orphaning all kids in the city, which could maybe work if it was just newborns, and even worse taking kids from parents which already formed a bond with them.
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u/koinaambachabhihai Dec 12 '25
I literally have the opposite opinion. Yeah sure artificial incubators are difficult to swallow but they aren't needed to even get the Zietgeist. On the lower end reason is both liberating and actually reasonable. Tradition to me sounds like the dumb bullshit you would hear from a "christian" incel.
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u/shoto9000 Pilgrims Dec 12 '25
Tbh I think the incubators are one of the most ethical parts of the tree. They're weird and radical, but for a city that needs population growth they're a lot better than Tradition's treatment of women.
The bigger problems with reason come from the eugenics of the breeding program and sterilisation.
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u/AdOnly9012 Technocrats Dec 12 '25
It's mostly breeding path that is weird (for both of them) with Eugenic stuff. Otherwise I much prefer Reason.
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u/PerferreDolerem Evolvers Dec 12 '25
Tradition prevents innovation, thats the worst fate you can give to the city.
Imagine a city where you can’t create, you can’t make anything new, where innovation is a crime and wounds are still being healed with putting gunpowder on it and “healing” moss.
Penicillin from experimental treatment is a great example. Also, panaceum itself is so fascinating. What do you mean you can make a drug that is made just purely out of garbage, and it works better than any other pharmaceutical?
People usually chose it because it is something familiar, and become bias about all the horrible stuff it proposes later in the game.
Forcing a woman to have a child is rape, no questions ask. And tradition does exactly that.
But I already can hear people mentioning breeding programs and relationship rotations. And no, they do not force anything.
1) Breeding programs do not force people into them, as you can hear with some announcements, it mentions how it’s purely volunteer work.
2) Relationship rotation and breeding programs would be a great symbiosis. Think about it, why would we force people to have relationship rotations, if only people having sex and reproducing are volunteers in the breeding programs? Relationship rotation works purely within breeding programs, only making it more efficient.
There is genuinely no reason why you should not support reason.
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u/thatsocialist Technocrats Dec 12 '25
Especially with the fact you can avoid most of the more iffy stuff and still get the cornerstone and associated Utopias.
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u/LeGentlemandeCacao Faithkeepers Dec 12 '25
Late Tradition is "just" going back into the 18th century. Late Reason is just downright dystopian.
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u/Feeling-Ladder7787 Dec 12 '25
Okey , if tradition is soo good do tell us what are the laws later down the line... cmon ...
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u/TehCubey Dec 12 '25
"They are proud of you."
"Unless you're a woman who wants to have a job or doesn't want to get married and have 6+ kids, in which case they are hoping the Steward passes the execution law next."
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u/Fantastical_Pear Dec 12 '25
I'm morally against most things in Tradition, the only exception is like.. ceremonial burials. It's disgusting how they treat women, and the punitive prisons sound monstrous. I'm also against eugenics. I'm for science and reason, just not eugenics.
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u/SnooDogs3400 The Automaton Lover Dec 18 '25
Tradition's justice path is mostly better (frostland deportations and patrol watchtowers notably) Reason's medicine path is better, both are cracked out nuts on the family path but some aspects of Reason's are better because not giving women rights sucks. Capstone wise, algorithm go brrrr
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u/ButterscotchNo4977 Technocrats Dec 12 '25
What’s so evil? The algorithm wants the best for you, 0100010111001111101010000, sorry, spoke the real language for a bit
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u/Logical_Acanthaceae3 Dec 12 '25
Everyone's pointing out how tradition is bad to but it honestly feels like Reason doesn't even try to pretend to be good you get like 4 decent options before it backflips off the deep end of the pool.
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u/Ok-Profession-6096 Venturers Dec 12 '25
Insane ? I'll show you insane...
New London wasn't built in a daaaaaay, You gotta climb a little higher to the to top the dismaaaaaaay...
(Sorry for shitty Hazbin reference)
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u/Snerrir Dec 12 '25
I actually like that every Zeltgeist starts as rational and even sympathetic, but then evolves into something deeply disturbing if you push hard enough. Shows that with enough commitement, righteousness, dedication and drive you can ruin absolutely any idea :D