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Stellaris Dev Diary #102: Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we continue talking about the Apocalypse expansion and 2.0 'Cherryh' update, on the topic of Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions.

Edict Changes (Cherryh Feature)
There will be a number of changes coming to Empire and Planetary Edicts in 2.0 'Cherryh', with the aim of both making Edicts more attractive to use, and increasing the number of useful things players have to spend their pooled Influence and Energy resources on. Firstly, we have moved most of the edicts out of the Planetary Edict category, keeping only a handful of Edicts that are either about dealing with a specific short-term problem (such as Unrest-reducing edicts) or executing a long-term or permanent effect (such as Consecrated Worlds or the new Land Clearance edict given by Mastery of Nature). Instead, a number of these edicts have become Empire Edicts.
2018_01_25_1.png


Empire Edicts have also been changed to work in the same way as Planetary Edicts, with an upfront cost and a duration rather than a monthly cost. The reason for this is that we wanted to ensure players always have a use for their pooled influence - an empire that is not using that influence on expanding through Starbases or Claims will be able to boost their empire in a variety of ways, including powerful resource-boosting edicts such as Production Targets and Capacity Overload. We decided to move away from the monthly cost because players tend to shy away from monthly costs that bring them into a negative balance, even if they are consistantly hitting their stockpile cap, and so ended up using Empire Edicts far less than they could actually afford to.

To make managing and renewing Edicts less of a hassle, we have added a message when an Edict (Empire or Planetary) expires.
2018_01_25_4.png


Campaigns (Cherryh Feature)
Campaigns are a new type of edict added in the Cherryh update. Campaigns are edicts that are unlocked by the Planetary Unification technology and cost energy instead of Influence. They typically have fairly situational effects, and are meant to be an additional use for stored energy.
2018_01_25_3.png


Unity Ambitions (Apocalypse Feature)
Unity Ambitions is another new type of edict added in the Apocalypse expansion. These are extremely powerful edicts that last 10 years and cost Unity to activate. You will get access to Unity Ambitions after researching the Ascension Theory society technology, and activating a Unity Ambition has a dynamic cost that is calculated in the exact same way as the cost for unlocking a new tradition (though activating an ambition will not raise the cost of future ambitions/traditions). Unity Ambitions are meant to give a use for Unity after the player has unlocked all the traditions they want to unlock, and to ensure the resource is never completely without use.
2018_01_25_2.png


That's all for today! Next week we'll continue talking about Cherryh and the Apocalypse expansion, on the topic of Civics and Ascension Perks.
 
Last edited:

Starcomet

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I like that edicts no longer have a monthly influence cost! I rarely used them because of this as I needed for influence income for other important things. This and the new unity cost for some edict is a welcome change for me personally.
 
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terrycloth

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I see a lot of interesting additions, including in fleet management,. but is there any attention to modernizing the game to address the multi-step manual hassles and same-name restriction of designing and comparing successor upgrades? As well as adding flexibility in designing and naming variants and ordering new ship construction with a queue that does not requier full materials availability for the ship at the order date. The cumbersome original design of this is a real drag on enjoying the naval side of the game.

Are there steps forward ton this I have missed?

For the latter, the fleet manager they showed off, maybe? You set how many ships you want to have in the fleet and they get automatically built somewhere -- if it can't queue them up immediately it'll probably keep trying until it has the minerals.
 

FiddleSticks96

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Why not have some traditions preclude others? It would limit the number of ascension perks you get to choose, which is probably a good thing too. By the late game empires would look even more distinct. Some would have planetkillers, but others may have gone full psionic, or full genetic engineering, or megastructures, etc. An empire that went into exploration and science and invested in planet killers would be very different from one which invested in traditions of conquest and ascended to genetic perfection which would be different from a sphere building society, etc.

And when Paradox works on diplomacy, that would get even more relevant. It would be neat to see empires use diplomacy to complement each others' strengths and weaknesses. I'm not sure if it's technically possible, but I could see a federation or alliance fighting a massive war where sphere builders supply the energy that powers the fleet of a warrior empire, etc.

This would further restrict how many Ascension Perks you can choose, since they are directly tied to completing Tradition Trees. If certain trees were mutually exclusive then we would have even less than the 8 Ascension Perk slots we have already. Don't take my perks away.
 

Sir Garnet

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For the latter, the fleet manager they showed off, maybe? You set how many ships you want to have in the fleet and they get automatically built somewhere -- if it can't queue them up immediately it'll probably keep trying until it has the minerals.

What I was focusing on is designing new ships, especially upgrade and variant designs, and being able to set "upgrade to" for each ship class without having to duplicate names. Also being able to compare stats/equip of two classes side by side with the deltas between the values calculated out to help make good choices.

This is more relevant now than before, since the combat changes promise to have fewer clean-wipe battles that can neatly eliminate a whole generation of ships. Instead, there will be more that survive, likely with damage, and deciding what to scrap, fix, or upgrade will be more common. Should not have to waste time double checking which of several identically named shiptypes s is the old version and which is the new in order to upgrade them properly (or at least accidental downgrades.) .