Stellaris Dev Diary #177 - Edict Rework

[M@ni@c]

Prediction: everyone will always be using Nutritional Plentitude. And with the exception of "Map the Stars", no one is ever going to switch edicts once picked.

 

[Agamidae]

So does Map the Stars also have a negative now? Does every edict?
Since there's not much to talk about in this diary, can't you just post every updated edict?

Paying to disable an edict feels.... uh... punishing.

 

[LordRegent303]

I like the concept overall, but a whopping 25% Empire Sprawl penalty for one additional edict seems a bit extreme. Hope the numbers aren't final yet!

 

[Ancillary]

Pop Growth is problematic, so we have made some changes in the upcoming patch that will reduce Pop Growth from different sources across the board (more on that later).

I'm hoping any such change is more than just some general nerf. I thought the problem with pop growth wasn't that it was too fast, but that there was only one good way to obtain it: aggressive expansion and acquiring as many colonies as quickly as possible.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

Will the other authorities (democratic, oligarchic, corporate) also get some bonus associated with them?

Maybe those governments needed a soft nerf. They have access to some of the best civics already.

 

[Pancakelord]

An example of two different Edicts. Red: toggled - lasts until cancelled and uses Edict Capacity. Blue: temporary - lasts for 10 years and does not use Edict Capacity.

Maybe I'm looking at this backwards... but the gavel makes me think of a court judgment - i.e. a one-time event whilst the clock face makes me think of an on-going process... so backwards from how it actually works lol.
An Infinity symbol [∞] would be more useful than a gavel in showing that edict is perpetual IMO.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

This has probably come up earlier in the thread, but wouldn't it be preferable to have a monthly influence cost per edict, for however long it's active, rather than a one-time influence cost whenever you change it, if the goal is to be something you want players to change instead of mashing the button every 10 years? If I am paying influence every time I want to change an edict, I probably will be super-reluctant to change them situationally, whereas I might switch as needed if the monthly cost is the same (as long as I run the same number of edicts).

The entire idea of issuing an edict is that you commit the empire to focusing on a certain approach for quite some time. It isn't fixed policy, and it isn't "what is the empire going to do next week" - it is something in between.

The problem with your approach is that if edicts only have an ongoing cost, then issuing an edict becomes something to toggle on and off at need with no long term consequences. "These 19 days we are REALLY focusing hard on mapping the stars so we get a bonus to that, but now the ships have to travel to next system, so let me disable that edict and get a bonus to energy production on month-end instead because we are REALLY focusing hard on energy production, and then I'll just toggle mapping the stars on and energy production off once ships arrive at next system" to take just one obvious example.

Even worse, it becomes something to micromanage obsessively if you want to optimize your gameplay by only having edicts active on month end if they are needed to be active at that point for you to benefit; in all other cases you'd be better turning them off immediately before month end to save you the upkeep cost, then turning them on once the month has ticked.

Or to put it another way, to work well enabling or disabling an edict needs to be a meaningful choice that has a substantial opportunity cost.

This is achieved most easily be a) Have an up front cost or b) Lock you into that edict for a period of time that is substantial. Either of these approaches can be combined with paying a monthly upkeep cost.

 

[Spaceception]

It's cool that this is a soft cap. From the reactions I saw, it seems others thought it was a hard cap. I wondered that too. And I was going to ask if there were "several" different kinds of edicts due to the rough power levels of them, but it seems I don't need to

Instead, can I ask that we get a "Liberator" stance for Pacifists in place of "Belligerent/Supremacist"? And that they get a faction that accommodates this?

EDIT

Industrial subsidies.

So does this mean that the Industrial policy is no more too?

 

[A2ch0n]

Pop Growth is problematic, so we have made some changes in the upcoming patch that will reduce Pop Growth from different sources across the board (more on that later)

I'm really looking forward to this i hope there will be someday a new mechanic, maybe one unrelated to the number of planets you own

 

[Lord_Gong]

I don't know this sounds pretty unnecessary to me.
What was wrong with the edit system?

 

[MGoods]

Is there any chance of some kind of "continue" option for campaigns, timed edicts and planetary decisions? Re-buying them once they expire can get tedious if doing so is a no-brainer, so having them convert to a monthly cost once that happens would be better.

 

[RainThorns]

It's easier to have a permanent bonus and cost associated and balance your economy around it than to change said bonus and affect your economy in various ways. And that means people will rarely if at all change edicts, barring some cost of opportunity situations, expired usefulness or one in a game emergency.

 

[fodazd]

Will the other authorities (democratic, oligarchic, corporate) also get some bonus associated with them?

 

[DrNukeLear]

For every toggled and active Edict above the Edict Capacity, your Empire Sprawl will be increased by +25%.

By default, an empire will start with an Edict Capacity of 2

I give three orders and my empire produces 25% more paperwork...

Not all Edicts will use Edict Capacity, but rather only the ones that last until cancelled will. Edicts that can be toggled will have an Activation Cost and a Deactivation Cost, which is usually Influence.

I give an order and spend domestic political capital to get it to happen and then I have to spend more political capital to convince the government to stop doing what it didn’t want to do in the first place...

In the words of Han Solo “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”.

 

[BrokenSky]

Pop Growth is problematic, so we have made some changes in the upcoming patch that will reduce Pop Growth from different sources across the board (more on that later). Food Policies are no more, and the popular Nutritional Plenitude is now a toggled Edict instead.

I feel like this suggests a complete failure to understand the problem with pop growth. If anything, flat nerfs to pop-growth bonuses alone is only going to make the problem worse.
As far as I've seen, the problems are that pop growth is tied too hard to the +3%pops/month/planet and the +2%pops/month/robot assembly plant.
The bonuses from things like nutritional plenitude and other flat growth speed +X% bonuses is basically a complete non-issue. (well technically they could be buffed to bring them in line with things like the robot plant, for example if the gene clinic gave +50% growth speed or +1 base pop growth / month or something similar, but at that point it's become obvious how silly the system was).

 

[Ancillary]

Maybe those governments needed a soft nerf. They have access to some of the best civics already.

The words "democratic" and "nerf" shouldn't exist in the same sentence. Or even the same paragraph.

 

[ArchibaldAufHall]

Now that some of the edicts are able to be toggled, have you maybe considered to have the effects of those edicts scale the longer they are in effect, it would mean they build up from a small bonus to the whole bonus over time.

 

[Tim_Ward]

I think continuous edicts should cost influence upkeep rather than up front, otherwise the game is sort of encouraging you to never really switch them. You can put something powerful like research subsidies on that the start and just leave it on for the whole game and just get tremendous value out of it.

 

[DrNukeLear]

While you're working on these mechanics anyway, please consider changing the rest as well. Especially for unity ambitions I would very much prefer these were also active until cancelled with a monthly unity cost instead of an upfront cost. That would be much easier to budget and avoid the problem of having just spent unity on a tradition, when you have to renew the ambition.
It would also make the unity overflow issue less problematic, since you wouldn't need stored unity anyway.

I’d say a tradition/unity overhaul was more important than edicts myself.