Stellaris Dev Diary #194: Intel

[Industrious81]

I think the big question that no one is asking is this.

Can the AI handle another mechanic? History tells us no, but i'm interested to see if this idea will actually be integrated or if it is just kind of thrown on top of the entire mess.

 

[DaveC78]

I agree with some of the posters that home-world location should be hidden at low intel. Or there should be a way of letting players determine how secretive they want to be. As an enigmatic secretive isolationist I would not like to reveal my home-world location to just anyone. On the other hand as a militarist society with a powerful navy I want to flaunt my military power to warn off my neighbors. Increased secrecy could be balanced with increased distrust by your neighbors, damaging relations. On the other hand revealing information could generate more trust. Will certain bits of intel be tradeable?

 

[Ikael]

Wow, I cannot believe that Paradox implemented an almost a 1:1 vision of the ideas that I had in order to extend the exploration phase O_O that's freaking amazing! And even more in-depth than I thought. It is quite smart to divide intel between types, there are a lot of possibilities here.

That being said, here are some musings about this new info:

- It would make sense to unlock certain diplomatic options behind intel levels. I mean, how are you going to sign a peace treaty if you don't even know to speak the alien language? How are you going to make another empire join your federation if you know nothing about its inner workings or political system? The same would go for spy missions: It would be strange to be able to assassinate their leader if you don't even know where their home planet is or which type of government they have.

- That being said, I am a bit concerned regarding the whole "intel decay". There ought to be some way to have a constant stream of updated info of one empire or another, rather than repeat ad Infinitum intel-gathering missions with spies. Perhaps some treaties like open borders or cultural exchanges would do the trick.

- Yes, empire names, contact screen, and logo sizes should be as opaque as possible if you don't have any intel about them. Hell, even things like habitability preference should be opaque until you investigate. No "Voor remnant" or "fanatic purifiers" background screen. Get just an "unknown empire 1" nondescript name, and pitch-black background screen. If we are going mysterious and scary, we might as well go all way in!

- I really, really can't wait to know more about the internal politics rework that this update will bring. I mean, we all know that leaders and factions in their current states are simply not fleshed out to warrant a full-blown espionage system. Also hoping for some kind of soft power mechanic besides this one, too *looks at spirituals and their lack of religion*

- One of the best things that can come out of this is that this is another way of differentiating different empires. As for how it could go:

Xenophobes: Bad at gathering external info (navel-gazing is a handicap after all)
Xenophiles: Great at gathering information about the external world and exploration in general
Pacifists: Great at espionage and soft power mechanics (if there are any other of those beyond espionage, which I very much hope so)
Inwards perfectionists & authoritarians: Great at concealing your own intel and countering foreign influence and spies
Hiveminds: Bad at espionage, great at counter-espionage, even better than authoritarians, hell, they should be almost invulnerable to it
Psionics: Masters of all things undercover. I mean they need to be good at something, anything

 

[Troyen]

I don't think just having positions listed would really solve it, since people could still use it as a scummy way of finding out more information. For example, if I knew an empire's economy and technology were equivalent to mine, but did not have intel on their military, I could figure out roughly how good their military is by looking at their rank compared to mine.

Are you talking about the Contact Screen (where you can sort by relative power) or the Situation Log? Your victory score in the Situation Log lists Economic Strength, Technology Level, Number of Systems, Number of Colonies, Number of Pops, Subject Empires, Federation, Crisis Ships Killed, and Relics Collected - no direct fleet totals.

I don't think it would be harmful to show each empire you've discovered's rank and total score. If they want to hide the details, that's fine, but not allowing the player to know if they're going to win the game or not is taking the obfuscation too far. The victory score is the long-term game goal (for people playing a full game) and removing that would have detrimental effects on the gameplay.

In a similar vein, I don't see how the Galactic Council or Senate voting would work without knowing total Diplomatic Weight. If the modifiers and details were hidden, that's one thing and it's okay to make educated guesses about where those components are coming from. But not even knowing if your proposal is winning or by how much would negate the limited diplomatic negotiations available (favors, relationships) and make it harder to maneuver onto the senate.

They haven't yet announced how we get intel, but given intel can go stale, it's implied you have to choose where you get intel from. If the answer to "am I winning the game" relies on rotating envoys through two dozen empires on a large galaxy to get updated score thresholds or council voting estimates, that seems like awful tedious micromanagement.

Instead of trying to obfuscate every possible detail, it'd be better to focus on the major impactful stuff, like fleet strength and borders.

 

[Troyen]

- It would make sense to unlock certain diplomatic options behind intel levels. I mean, how are you going to sign a peace treaty if you don't even know to speak the alien language? How are you going to make another empire join your federation if you know nothing about its inner workings or political system?

Deciphering their alien language is already covered by first contact, not the intel system.

Since trust is a way to get intel, presumably you work your way up to a federation through the various pacts you can sign, which in turn provide you intel, so it already sounds like it's tied in.

But a lot of diplomatic restrictions are already gated by opinion and envoys. I don't think we need an additional intel check to gate diplomatic options when it can be covered largely by what exists. Otherwise it would just make diplomacy even more restricted and discouraged than it is today.

- That being said, I am a bit concerned regarding the whole "intel decay". There ought to be some way to have a constant stream of updated info of one empire or another, rather than repeat ad Infinitum intel-gathering missions with spies. Perhaps some treaties like open borders or cultural exchanges would do the trick.

Yeah, I'm worried about mid-game and late-game micro. Hopefully there's a balance where you interact with the system but don't have to constantly juggle envoys or spies like you do pops and building slots in today's game.

 

[kwheeler]

Has there been a polity in history which has granted permanent residence to foreigners more readily than temporary visitation rights?


Has there been a polity in history which has forbidden legal commercial or scientific travellers from visiting tourist attractions or attending local entertainments? Apart from bona fide quarantine measures, that is.

Historically? Absolutely. Many human cultures have forbidden trade or travel or cultural "contamination" on massive scales. Japan for 220 years had a strict isolationist policy that wasn't broken until the Perry expedition.

Ming China had the Haijin (海禁) or sea ban, which forbade maritime trading with and coastal visitation by non-Chinese sailors. The early Qing dynasty followed suit, and also in various decades banned their citizens from having contact with or talking to non-Chinese peoples. These rules were often subverted or ignored in provincial areas, but the rules were there.

The Sentinelese Islanders are notoriously unlikely to do the trade and diplomacy thing. The cultures of Papua New Guinea included head-hunting tribes that appear to have never engaged in trade or built embassies with surrounding islands.

This is just within the singular human species. I imagine it would probably be even worse with isolationist alien species. Intelligent termites might be even more vigorous about protecting their nest worlds from alien cultures. Intelligent sessile species may have evolved in conditions in which they might not even have ideas of travel, diplomacy, or trade as we would know it, so establishing trade and contact might be even more difficult.

 

[DanielPrates]

If the concept (or mechanic) of COUNTERINTEL is being considered, it would be interesting if you could exaggerate the intel you emanate to others. You know, the other side of the coin. If a rival must have decent intel to know how strong my navy is, then perhaps it would make sense to have a counterintel mechanic to fight it off, making it seem my navy is larger than it really is. But then again, that would only make sense if from now on the AI's willingness to go to war considers comparative strenght but also how solid is the intel on the adversary.

 

[DanielPrates]

Boy, this new intel issue promises to be a game-changer. It will go a long way to make the game more interesting (or LESS BORING, depending on how you look at it).

 

[Katsue]

Historically? Absolutely. Many human cultures have forbidden trade or travel or cultural "contamination" on massive scales. Japan for 220 years had a strict isolationist policy that wasn't broken until the Perry expedition.

Ming China had the Haijin (海禁) or sea ban, which forbid maritime trading with and coastal visitation by non-Chinese sailors. The early Qing dynasty followed suit, and also in various decades banned their citizens from having contact with or talking to non-Chinese peoples. These rules were often subverted or ignored in provincial areas, but the rules were there.

The Sentinelese Islanders are notoriously unlikely to do the trade and diplomacy thing. The cultures of Papua New Guinea included head-hunting tribes that appear to have never engaged in trade or built embassies with surrounding islands.

All of your examples are of societies that forbid foreign permanent residence, and forbid commercial and scientific travel by foreigners (or, in the case of Edo-period Japan and Ming China, heavily restrict it). They are not examples of societies that permit large-scale foreign permanent residence, large-scale foreign commercial traffic, or large-scale foreign scientific cooperation, i.e. Stellaris-style Migration Treaties, Commercial Pacts and Research Agreements.

 

[Rantanplan...]

Sounds great. I'm looking forward

 

[goodcigar]

This look nice. I like Espionage system in Galactic Civilization 3.

 

[Druplesnubb]

It may require you to also have the Intel to make such claims or demands (vassalization etc. as well). Final design is still to be determined.

Maybe you can automatically declare rivalry with empires you have no intel on? Intentionally keeping yourself in the dark in order to rile up the population over an imagined enemy rather than uncovering the less threatening truth actually seems rather on point flavorwise (though maybe it should be restricted to xenophobic empires?)

 

[Pale Blue]

Rock, paper, scissors time.

I dont gt what you are trying to say here? Are you implying this will lead to a rock/paper/scissor balance or do you want one?

In my opinion rock/paper/scissor is a boring and far too simple balance vision for a grand strategy game.

 

[semisweet]

The categories seem great, but the intel value seems a little clunky as it unnecessarily ties different levels of categories together. For example by default you would always have low military intel when you have medium government intel. I'm going to play dev for a moment since it's fun. Here's what I would suggest:

1) Make intel a value that's separate for each category. Government, diplomacy, economy, technology, and military each have individual intel 0-100. This will allow you to increase one quicker in one game than in another. For example a trade agreement may increase your economic intel more than the others. Similarly assigning a diplomat may raise government and diplomacy intel more than the others.

2) Be more granular and comprehensive with intel. There appears to be a lot of information on there that could still be hidden. For example diplomatic power could be hidden until you have 40 intel on economy, technology, and military. Government type and ruler traits could be hidden until you have 20 diplomacy and AI personality until you have 40. Attitude could be hidden until you have 20 diplomacy intel and diplomatic stance until you have 40. Planets could be hidden until you have 20 intel on economy and pops until you have 40 intel on economy.

Breaking things up more like this would allow for more mystery and give modders more to play with.

Hello everyone!

Last week we started talking about some of the changes we’re making to establishing first contact, and as promised, today we will continue talking about how you can learn more about alien empires.

All of the things we are talking about today is work in progress and may not accurately reflect the finished product. That said, we still want to hear your thoughts and read your feedback!

Background
It always felt like there was so much missing potential when it came to learning more about alien civilizations in the game. We didn’t like that you had so much information as soon as you established communication with an alien empire – all of their borders would be revealed, and the diplomatic window would reveal most of the other information. We aim to change a lot of that.

We want alien civilizations to feel more mysterious and unknown. We want the experience of learning more about alien empires to be an equally important and fun aspect of exploration.

Fog of War
As we briefly showed last week, we are making some changes to fog of war, and what type of information you will be getting about other empires.

You will no longer see all of the systems and borders occupied by the empire you have recently contacted, but it will now instead be tied to how much Intel you have. This really makes alien empires feel way more mysterious, which is something that we really like.

View attachment 658442
The information on the empire to the galactic south-east is very limited. We can see their homeworld and the borders explored by our science ship.

View attachment 658443
The galaxy as seen from the yellow empire in the top-right. There are a bunch of empires that we know very little about, and there are still more that are undiscovered.​

Intel
Like mentioned above, our primary objective is to make alien empires feel more mysterious and unknown. We wanted to hide information and allow you to learn more about other empires as you gain more Intel on them. Our goal is to make the Intel game a part of the exploration aspect of Stellaris.

View attachment 658450
An alien empire recently established communications with us. Friends..?​

Let’s take a look at how we have designed the Intel game to work.

First off there is Intel, which is a value between 0 and 100. You have a current Intel value, and you have a “target” Intel value, up to which it can grow. You usually have an Intel floor, which is the lowest value it can be, depending on a couple of factors such as:

• Diplomatic Pacts (Research Agreements, Commercial Pacts etc.)
• Trust
• REDACTED (doesn’t look like anything to you)

View attachment 658444
Depending on things like diplomatic pacts, trust or other things, your Intel will grow over time.​

Intel Categories
Information is split between different Intel Categories, such as Government, Military, Diplomatic, Economic, Technology. Categories can have different Intel Levels as well, ranging from None to Full. The Intel categories and their levels are what determines what information you have access to. Here are some examples:

• Low Government Intel (Intel: 10) would reveal basic things like empire name, authority, ethics, capital location.
• Low Military Intel (Intel: 40) would reveal starbases and relative military power.
• Medium Government Intel (Intel: 40) would reveal civics and origin.
• Medium Diplomacy Intel (Intel: 50) would reveal the opinion breakdown and let us see which diplomatic pacts they have with other empires.

The Intel you have on another empire heavily influences the Intel Categories, but it is not the only driving factor. It is also possible to have a higher Intel level in a certain category than what you would normally get from your level of Intel. One such example is Intel Reports, and we’ll talk about some other examples in future dev diaries.

Intel Reports
Intel Reports allow you to gain more information in a certain category, on a timed basis. It would be, for example, possible to gain an Intel Report which lasts for 720 days and gives you a High level of Military Intel, whereas otherwise High Military Intel might require you to have 80 Intel on the empire.

Stale Intel
It is said that knowledge is power, and intel is a form of knowledge. Power usually fades, and so does Intel. It is possible to lose access to information that was previously accessible. In some cases, this information will now be displayed as stale.

View attachment 658445
Intel, now in the scent of working from home for months.​

The last information you had about the empire was that they were far weaker than you on many accounts, but perhaps they have strengthened their fleets by now? Stale Intel can also mean that you may no longer see if the borders for an empire change or not.

-------

That's it for this week! Hopefully you've gained some Intel into how the game is changing for the upcoming expansion

 

[kwheeler]

I dont gt what you are trying to say here? Are you implying this will lead to a rock/paper/scissor balance or do you want one?

In my opinion rock/paper/scissor is a boring and far too simple balance vision for a grand strategy game.

I'm saying if you end up with Psionic Ascension races unable to do espionage on Machine races, as the dude suggested, and to which I was responding, you would need to balance that somehow. Given that there are three Ascensions (Machine/Synthetic, Psionic, or Genetic), that seems to lead to a balance system in which each Ascension is stronger against one type and comparatively weaker against the other.

I make no judgment as to whether that's good or bad--only that's a very natural tendency when designers are trying to balance three possible factions.

 

[kwheeler]

All of your examples are of societies that forbid foreign permanent residence, and forbid commercial and scientific travel by foreigners (or, in the case of Edo-period Japan and Ming China, heavily restrict it). They are not examples of societies that permit large-scale foreign permanent residence, large-scale foreign commercial traffic, or large-scale foreign scientific cooperation, i.e. Stellaris-style Migration Treaties, Commercial Pacts and Research Agreements.

Yes. That is what my examples are. The original post had two questions:

(1) Has there been a polity in history which has granted permanent residence to foreigners more readily than temporary visitation rights?

(2) Has there been a polity in history which has forbidden legal commercial or scientific travellers from visiting tourist attractions or attending local entertainments? Apart from bona fide quarantine measures, that is.

I am quoting and responding to the second question. I am not addressing the first one.

 

[Shadowstrike]

This may have come up already, but perhaps "empire name", "authority" and "ethics" should be moved to mid level intel? Like it would be interesting if the mysterious empire next to you ended up being fanatical purifiers, and *not* find that out instantly. Like you could simply have "[name of species] State" on the map before that, instead of say "Voor Slaughterers".

 

[Katsue]

Yes. That is what my examples are. The original post had two questions:

(2) Has there been a polity in history which has forbidden legal commercial or scientific travellers from visiting tourist attractions or attending local entertainments? Apart from bona fide quarantine measures, that is.

I am quoting and responding to the second question. I am not addressing the first one.

But the examples you gave weren't of legal commercial or scientific travellers - they were illegal commercial or scientific travellers.

My point was simply that if somebody owns a factory in a foreign country, or is permitted to attend scientific conferences or research facilities in a foreign country, they can probably also go a restaurant or the theatre or a national monument in that country.

 

[kwheeler]

But the examples you gave weren't legal commercial or scientific travellers - they were illegal commercial or scientific travellers.

Then dismiss my point as a non sequitur if you don't think it's relevant. If a culture makes ALL external commerce and ALL visitation illegal, then it's merely meaningless semantics to say that same culture would still allow "legal" commerce or "legal" visitation, and therefore doesn't count as an example of a culture that disallows such activity.

For an analogy, suppose one is starving a prisoner to death on a forced starvation diet. The prisoner is forbidden to eat ALL foods. ALL foods are illegal.

If the captors then said, "Well, he's still allowed to eat legal foods...." that doesn't really change the fact all foods are denied him and classified as illegal.

 

[Katsue]

Then dismiss my point as a non sequitur if you don't think it's relevant. If a culture makes ALL external commerce and ALL visitation illegal, then it's merely meaningless semantics to say that same culture would still allow "legal" commerce or "legal" visitation, and therefore doesn't count as an example of a culture that disallows such activity.

Yes, your post was a non sequitur based on a misreading of my original post. The very reason I used the word "legal" was precisely in order to exclude people who are banned from entering a country.