Stellaris Dev Diary #219 - Selectable Traditions

[Caligula Caesar]

Incidentally, modders might be interested to know that the script for making a new tradition tree is much less painful now (in fact, I'd even go so far as to say "painless" and "simple"), though on the other hand existing tradition mods will need to do a fair share of updating.

For instance, the tooltips for various aspects of the tradition trees are now auto-generated instead of you having to write it all yourself, and the icons don't need to be specified in the UI files anymore. Basically, it's much better all-round!

 

[Alfray Stryke]

HOWEVER, the habitat trade district is being forgotten about again it seems

It applies to both habitat and ringworld trade/commercial districts in addition to the buildings.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

You mean all these commercial buildings will also give me Merchants in addition to Clerks?

Here's the in-game tooltip:

 

[Caligula Caesar]

Any chance of an example file section or two to give us a head start updating mods? It’s a free feature after all?

Please?

I don't see why not. Here's an example:

tradition_discovery = {
    desc = {
        trigger = { is_regular_empire = yes }
        text =  tradition_discovery_desc
    }
    desc = {
        trigger = { is_hive_empire = yes }
        text =  tradition_discovery_hive_desc
    }
    desc = {
        trigger = { is_machine_empire = yes }
        text =  tradition_discovery_machine_desc
    }
    tree_template = "tree_11_111"
    adoption_bonus = "tr_discovery_adopt"
    finish_bonus = "tr_discovery_finish"
    traditions = {
        "tr_discovery_to_boldly_go"
        "tr_discovery_databank_uplinks"
        "tr_discovery_science_division"
        "tr_discovery_polytechnic_education"
        "tr_discovery_faith_in_science"
    }
    potential = {
        always = yes #country scope triggers
    }
    ai_weight = {
        factor = 10
        modifier = {
            factor = 5
            years_passed < 10
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 2
            has_ethic = ethic_materialist
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 3
            has_ethic = ethic_fanatic_materialist
        }
    }
}

That's a tradition tree. No swaps in there allowed anymore, I think. Traditions themselves are pretty similar. The locs are also similar but you can and should delete a whole lot for it to look right, you'll see immediately what I mean.

"tree_11_111" is this in the gui file, and is used as a set template for a 2:3 shaped tradition tree (so you can have 15 tradition trees just using the same gui layout by specifying it in the tree, if you so please):

containerWindowType = {
        name = "tree_11_111"
        position = { x = 0 y = @three_layer_tree_h }
        iconType = {
            name = "arrow_1"
            spriteType = "GFX_arrow_single"
            position = { x = 112 y = 100 }
        }
        iconType = {
            name = "arrow_2"
            spriteType = "GFX_arrow_single"
            position = { x = 182 y = 100 }
        }
        iconType = {
            name = "arrow_3"
            spriteType = "GFX_arrow_single"
            position = { x = 182 y = 170 }
        }
        containerWindowType = {
            name = "tree_11_111_tradition_1"
            position = { x = 96 y = 55 }
        }
        containerWindowType = {
            name = "tree_11_111_tradition_2"
            position = { x = 96 y = 125 }
        }
        containerWindowType = {
            name = "tree_11_111_tradition_3"
            position = { x = 166 y = 55 }
        }
        containerWindowType = {
            name = "tree_11_111_tradition_4"
            position = { x = 166 y = 125 }
        }
        containerWindowType = {
            name = "tree_11_111_tradition_5"
            position = { x = 166 y = 195 }
        }
    }

 

[grekulf]

Alright. I'm back today (got knocked out by 2nd dose yesterday), and I'm going to try to respond to some of your comments and make some changes according to the feedback.

1st of all some of you mentioned that you felt like Unyielding was out of place for Nemesis, and I don't disagree. We will shift it over to Apocalypse where it might feel like it fits better.

But Hiveminds still get additional Synapse Drones, right? I hope you didn't remove those, because it made this Tradition quite good.

No, it was changed to be +5 stability for all empires. Synapse Drones don't really fit as much in Prosperity, it would make more sense in Synchronizity.

• Finisher: no longer provides +1 monthly influence, but rather increases +10% ruler output for regular empires, or +10% admin cap for gestalts

That one is pretty sad. Getting more influence was good. It reflected the empire being more dominating and doing stuff around. +10% ruler output for regular empires, or +10% admin cap for gestalts feels like a bad trade. +1 influence per month was way better

Agreed that it could be a bit stronger. Changed it to +20% Admin Cap for all empires.

Is taking insider trading as the host empire still a mean to increase by one the number of branch offices buildings ? Because I can't see why a non trade focused empire would ever take mercantile and thus, it would indirectly nerf megacorporation that would never see their clients taking insider trading. Maybe trans stellar company (from properity tree) OR insider trading could unlock the building slot ?

It was also a point of concern we came across. The +1 branch office buildings that used to be in Prosperity was actually only applied to the target country, so it did nothing for the megacorp itself. It felt very strange to have a bonus in a tradition that gave nothing to yourself, but rather gave a bonus to a third party. We've changed so that the captital building now unlocks the 4th slot, instead of the Prosperity tree. We probably want to find a better solution later down the line, but for now that was removed due to it being odd to get a "bonus" that didn't apply to you.

Will some ascension perks be locked behind some other traditional trees? e.g, you can't use grasp the void without picking a supremecy tradition, or can only pick galaxy contender with domination tree?

No current plans for such changes. If we do something like that, like some people have suggested in this thread, would be to add a new AP that unlocks a new Tradition Tree. That could potentially be interesting. We'll have to see what the future brings.

So is Adaptive Economic Policies pretty much a dead trait if you're going to form a trade league?

Trade League empires get a swap called 'Federal Trade Fleets", which increases federation fleet contribution, similar to Entente Coordination.

This seems like a great time to introduce repeatable Traditions; as it stands now, you get to a point--even without building any Unity buildings--where the only use you have for Unity is just refreshing the Ambitions whenever they drop off.

Repeatable traditions is unlikely to be a thing.

How about +5 Stability AND an additional +5% production from jobs (which would effectively be a +8% bonus to production) - this would thus also make the finisher something more impressive (as it would outclass Synthetic Thought Pattern's +5% bonus) as the reward for the devotion to finish this specific tree.

Agreed, we can add a small buff like that. +5% more production sounds fine.

I was hoping for the Domination tree to get a +1 edict capacity bonus. That would have made the Domination tree a competitive option in the midgame, perhaps even the early game. Considering how few the ruler pops are, a +10 % ruler output bonus may not make any notable difference.

Edict Cap could be added to bolster Domination a bit. I think it could be added to Privy Council.


I'll update the main post to reflect some of these changes.

 

[grekulf]

There is two times +10% trade value in this tree which feels a little bit odd. Suggestion: Maybe adding a buff to trade hubs or giving +1 research in each category per 10 trade value instead.

I had originally thought about changing the conversion rates (+0.05x for example) from Trade Value, but that is also essentially just a more convoluted way of just giving you more Trade Value instead. I agree that double-dipping in the +10% Trade Value is boring, but it we had to default to that when some ideas we had fell through. We kind of ran out of time to really do anything more involved there.

It's a good point that if you have too many Tradition Trees, it can overwhelm players, especially new players, with too much choice. However I personally would like to see a few more options of tradition trees as they are such a cool part of the game. Specific permanent civics such as Driven Assimilators, Rogue Servitors and Fanatic Purifiers I think should get a unique civic tree option, as well as some Origins such as Scion, where the bigger, fancier fleet gifts from your Overlord are locked behind certain civics in your unique tree. I know that many of these options get unique civic swaps, but an entire dedicated tree I think would be very cool.

Agreed. I think adding more Traditions to the baseline would be a dangerous road to go down, in regards to Overvoice and new players. But as mentioned earlier, I think adding new trees through things like Ascension Perks or specialized empires might make more sense and won't bloat the amount of choices for all types of empires.

Yeah, I tend to agree with this. I'm not sure "Choice Overload" really applies here.

I felt a bit of Choice Overload with Hearts of Iron 4's tech tree, because there's just so many possible options. I didn't know what I needed.

With Stellaris Traditions, however, they are all fairly straightforward "concepts". When I design an Empire, I have a large choice of Traits and Civics, I know what type of Empire I am designing.

So, when I get to choose a Tradition, I know if it makes sense to pick "Expansion", "Discovery", "Supremacy". I don't really need to worry too much about the specifics, I can take it situationally just based on how it sounds.

Do I need to go to war? Supremacy.
Do I want to make friends? Diplomacy.
Do I want to focus on exploration and tech? Discovery.
Do I want to spy on others? Subterfuge.

I don't think Choice Overload applies here. You could easily double the number of tradition trees without hitting this issue.

Well, I'm not saying it applies right now, but I do think its something that we need to be aware of. If we end up with 20-30 tradition trees that are available to most empires, that would certainly make it harder for players to make a choice. Especially new players. More choices isn't necessarily better either. We want the choices we have to matter more.

@grekulf
Are you going to do anything about the Unity from Embassies tradition that lots of people were pointing out doesn't really scale very well, plus has questionable value because while it boosts unity rate taking it also means you future traditions are more expensive?

That is unlikely to change as it hard for us to change at this point due to localization. Some effects we can change without requiring new localiztion, while others we cannot easily change.

In addition we're also considering buffing Domination's Colonial Viceroys to give +0.50 monthly influence.

 

[grekulf]

You know, thinking on it, it would be kind of cool if there were ways to get small amounts of influence from many of the trees as a reward for playing your empire in a manner consistent with the theme of the tradition - kind of like Factions, but probably not as intense, and with a bonus tied to a selected tradition rather than an ethic.

Certainly cool, but it would be very difficult and time-consuming to balance properly.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

One of the big pain points I've had when looking at tradition modding was that some tradition effects aren't in the tradition; they're elsewhere. So you have something in a job or building file that has a triggered modifier based on whether the empire has a tradition. Traits and some other stuff work similarly, which can make it more painful to make targeted changes without compatibility issues.

Is this something that's gotten any attention? It would be nice if a mod that's only touching traditions could remain limited to just changing the tradition files instead of potentially having to include a bunch of files where the effects of a tradition are being set up.

Nope, there are cases where we could do that better, but in general it is inevitable that that will be necessary. For instance, if we want the tradition to grant +1 clerk job to certain buildings and +2 to some others, then we'd need to generate modifiers for every building to spawn every type of job, which is... not really a sustainable way of doing it.