Stellaris Dev Diary #219 - Selectable Traditions

[NilsFabian]

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!

So in addition to an easier moddability we can expect every new DLC come with an additional Tradition path?
This would really be cool if new mechanics would be tied directly into additional traditions.

 

[Olterin]

I am more hyped about the fact that you can select trees than about the specific changes, since this does open up the (UI) avenue of "advanced" tradition trees. These would be sporting prerequisites (such as other tradition trees having been finished, and/or specific Ascension Perks having been picked), but also be more powerful.

In any case, being able to specialize your empire in this way is nice, even a first step in that direction is welcome - I just hope there is more to come!

Concerning specifics:
-the Mercantile tree looks to be pretty solid, making clerks produce 5 base trade value plus 2 amenities, and further stacking 20% trade output on top. This might actually make them not terrible, since those clerks (and merchants added by the commercial zone) will now actually be able to feed themselves with consumer goods and then some. HOWEVER, the habitat trade district is being forgotten about again it seems - it will be entirely not worth building at all, ever, compared to the commercial zone building, because it provides zero merchant jobs.

- the Unyielding tree: the extra starbases it adds scale rather poorly by galaxy size. +2 might be fine for some sizes, absolutely amazing for smaller ones than that, and it is pretty 'meh' for the largest of galaxies. Would it be technically possible to make that a +% starbase cap increase instead (or a mix of the two)?

-Domination is being nerfed yet again, though I do see the value in it no longer affecting Crime directly. It's just that it will no longer affect crime directly anyway, because who is going to ever pick it? Compared to the other traditions on offer here it does not provide any sufficiently transformative or powerful effects to be seriously considered as a pick, if I'm not missing anything. This is assuming that the 10% ruler output still only affects actual resources produced, thus not affecting amenities provided by the rulers, and even then it's a bit dubious outside of specific builds. +10% admin cap for gestalts is absolutely amazing, however, and miles above what non-gestalts get.

-the Supremacy +20 naval cap is ... underwhelming. Sure, it's great to get that early rush out, but it greatly loses value when naval capacities reach the upper hundreds. +10 and +10% would be much more significant, covering all stretches of the game while also not just instantly doubling someone's starting naval cap as soon as this is picked. (Though granted, a super-early rush isn't exactly easy to pull off anymore under most circumstances, so perhaps not as concerning as I perceive this to be)

 

[Hero Of Olympus]

The biggest problem in-game balance is that Traditions are just way too marginal compared to tech. I don't say that they should be same level bonuses but they have to be impactful and made a worth investment.

 

[Sir Mechauzur]

Hey are there gonna be different ones for gestalts.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

• Adoption: Starbase Cap +2 and Starbase Upgrade Speed +50%
• (1) Resistance is Frugal: Stronghold buildings now produce 3 Unity and Defense Army Health is increased by +33%
• (2) Never Surrender: reduces Planet Bombardment Damage by -25%, war exhaustion by -25% and increases hostile claim costs by +25%
• (3) Bulwark of Harmony: moved from Harmony Traditions, effects are as before
• (4) Fortress Doctrine: increases the Hit Points and Damage of Starbases and Defensive Platforms by 33%, and reduces the upkeep cost of starbases by -20%
• (5) Defense in Depth: increases Starbase Cap by +2 and reduces Starbase upgrade cost by -50%. In addition, owners of Nemesis will also increase Hostile Operation Difficulty by +4 for the Sabotage Starbase Operation.
• Finisher: Max Defensive Platforms +50%

Unyielding Tree

Adoption: I think this is fine.

Resistance is Frugal: Unity boosting effects in flat numbers are often "empty traditions", because a player who is playing well tends to have an overabundance of unity from sources like Holotheatres and capital buildings. (On that note, the AI REALLY needs to have the ability to build those re-enabled; its crippling to them that they can't right now.). That said, as Strongholds can be spammed (in the long term) to a far greater extend that things like Embassies, this is considerably stronger than the Unity from Embassy tradition that is being added [which is honestly so weak I'd never pick it except to get the Diplomacy finisher effect]. The Defense Army Health modifier is nice, except that Armies are kind of in a bad spot right now where they're mostly an irrelevancy, unfortunately; space combat is too dominant.

Never Surrender may be frustrating to play against (having to pay more for our claims against them). Planetary Bombardment is unfortunately kind of a dead mechanic in that its almost always better to just invade the planet immediately, as waiting to bombard just lets Attrition towards War Exhaustion to have more time to build up. The reduced War Exhaustion is actually kind of nice.

Bulwark of Harmony is fine.

Fortress Doctrine - with how weak Defensive Platforms are in the current meta, I think you could easily make this 50% instead of 33% and they'd still be of questionable value, but at least better now. I would also advise increasing the upkeep reduction and making sure it applies to defensive platforms as well.

Defense in Depth: I like this, especially for making it easier to afford Citadels.

Finisher: Defensive Platforms still have a lot of problems, so to incentivize us to make more use of them I would heavily recommend adding on an additional buff to Hit Points and Damage OR an additional reduction in upkeep cost.

 

[tribnia]

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?

 

[Mik_C]

I have a suggestion regarding federations: as al alternative to ethics/goverment it would be nice that if you have a tradition tree related to a federation type you gain access to it.

For example, if you aren't a megacorp nor have merchant guild but have completed the Mercantile tradition tree you can create a trade league.

Federation type - Tradition tree
Trade League - Mercantile
Martial Aliance - Supremacy
Research Cooperative - Discovery
Hegemony - Domination

Edit: I think you should still have the Diplomacy perk that enables you to create federations, the idea is to only make more options available.

 

[wisecat]

More variety and more paths to success are always very welcome!

1. Do I understand correctly that a player take only 7 Tradition pathways at any given playthrough? Or will the next one's just not give Ascension perks?
2. The Unyielding nr. 2 (Never Surrender) - does it also decrease the effect of "Raiding" type of bombardment - i.e. does it make it harder to abduct pops?
3. The Unyielding Finisher effect may be a bit OP IMO.
4. Merkantile tree - have you considered giving those who go this way some bonus in relations with Caravaneers (cheaper / better deals) and/or Trader Enclaves (maybe extra Reliquarium to open).

 

[qer]

It would be nice to get in the unyielding traditions the old multi sections defense plataforms. Current defense plataforms are too weak anyways, and having a counter to battleships in Hp points would be nice.

 

[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.

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

Can we take all 2 of the red war traditions or when we take Supremacy is Unyielding locked?

 

[MathyM]

That is a good general direction, but the main issue with traditions stays the same. They are far far too weak compared to tech. That is one of the reasons spiritualist are so weak. They are supposed to be good at unity and traditions but the benefits from investing in unity and trying to rush traditions is not existent. Coupled with the tech requirement that most desirable ascension perks have you can't even utilize the main strength of a tradition rush, because you are lacking the tech to adopt ascension perks.

Came here to post this. I appreciate the changes, but the buffs were far from significantly game-changing for spiritualists. I still don’t feel compelled to invest in Unity production.

Also, will admin cap remain the same?

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

• Adoption: +1 Codebreaking
• (1) Information Security: +1 Encryption
• (2) Operational Security: +1 Codebreaking, +2 Operation Skill
• (3) Non-Disclosure Agreements: Hostile Operation Difficulty is +1, and Hostile Operation Cost and Upkeep is increased by +50%
• (4) Double Agents: Whenever a Hostile Operation targeting us fails, we gain 10 Intel on the offending empire
• (5) Shadow Recruits: increases Infiltration Speed by +50%
• Finisher: Successful Operations refund half of their cost on Infiltration Level

Subterfuge Traditions:

First thought - the +1 Codebreaking and +1 Encryption traditions feel rather weak on their own, because (if I remember correctly) they are outcompeted by techs that give you +2, and Unity and Tech compete for building slots and specialists for production. I will be suggesting buffs.

More specific thoughts:

Adoption: How about the adoption effect be "+1 Codebreaking, +1 Encryption". This makes it like one of the +2 techs, but differentiated in that its split between both.

Information Security: Operation Security currently seems better than this one, as it has an additional effect (+2 Operation Skill). I would therefore add some additional and flavorful effect to this one to make them more balanced with each other.

Operation Security: This feels fine. +1 Codebreaking on its own would feel too weak, but the Operation skill bonus makes it fine in my option.

Non-Disclosure Agreements - it would feel mildly annoying to play against that, but it is a nice protective factor and its something reasonable that a nation would want to make annoying for their enemies - kind of the point, as its a preventative measure. This is thus honestly fine.

Double Agents - interesting, and a cool alternate way of gaining intellect.

Shadow Recruits - A nice buff that allows for getting to more operations faster.

Finisher - Same

Final Thoughts - that said, something seems missing here, though I'm not sure where to put it. For example, it feels like there should be an "Operation Success Rate" buff in this tree, but there isn't a direct one. It also feels like that a Subterfuge nation ought to get a discount on using Operations to more heavily incentivize them, but they currently don't. Maybe they can be worked in somewhere?

 

[Karael]

Interesting. I'd really like to see some mutually exclusive trees, where selecting one blocks off another. That would help add flavor to each empire.

 

[Losttruppen]

So what happened to the design guideline that traditions should not boost unity production? In a prior update you axed all traditions that gave unity, because they offered nothing except more unity for the next tradition. In theory you could get further traditions faster with the unity boost, but that gets counteracted by the increased unity cost the more traditions you already unlocked.
The end result is that a unity boosting tradition is a blank slot or even a negative one.

I liked that you removed these unity effects from traditions and now you reintroduce them? I urge you to rethink that and replace all unity effects with something else, both the direct ones and the indirect ones like +10% ruler output that is just another pure unity boost.


How about you reintroduce the tradition from the old adaptility tree that gave +1 mineral to farmers?

In DD #215 Grekulf mentioned changes to Unity coming after Lem, and tying it into the Administrative Capacity mechanic so Unity will have more uses.

"Unity & Empire Sprawl
Beyond Lem, we are also going to take a look at Empire Sprawl and Unity. The design for Admin Capacity was never really something that I felt worked out, and we never finished the design that was intended for it. Continuing to use Admin Cap as a mechanic also feels a bit like a dead end due to multiple reasons (ranging from design to technical), so we’re instead going to look into another solution.

I have a design for doubling down on using Unity as the resource for internal management, removing Admin Cap entirely, and to make Empire Sprawl something that you can never mitigate anymore. More sprawling empires will always suffer harsher penalties from Empire Sprawl, and we’ll instead focus on how Unity can be used internally to mitigate some of those penalties. Examples could be Edicts that have a Unity Upkeep Cost, and perhaps reduce the Research Cost Penalty induced by Empire Sprawl. Angry Pops could potentially also have a Unity Upkeep Cost, to represent the drain on your society.

Note that these ideas are very much in their infancy and very prone to change. We will probably start talking a bit more about that once Lem has been released, but I wanted to share some thoughts with you so that we could gather some initial feedback."

 

[Mik_C]

Surprised that Expansion and Discovery weren't split into new trees.

Could easily see the following:

Expansion - Focus on space based expansion. Alloy and influence cost reduction, claims cost reduction, space based resources increase.
Colonization - Focus on planetary based expansion. More pops, faster colonization etc

Discovery - Focus on anomalies, events etc
Innovation - Focus on scientists and tech advancement.

EDIT: Also if the next expansion focuses on internal politics and leaders, then that would be a good time to see specific leader changes too. Innovation would give +1 leader skill to Scientists for example.

I like the idea for variety but I think that Expansion, Colonization and Discovery would have too much one-time bonuses as the permanent bonuses are diluted between the 4 trees. The worst hit would be on Colonization and Discovery (no more planets to colonize, no more systems and anomalies to survey) while Expansion and Innovation would receive most of the bonuses that are permanent and more desirable (less maineinance, more resources, more tech).

 

[Objulen]

Something in the post is wrong. The "Defense in Depth" tradition description here mentions "In addition, owners of Nemesis..."

That makes it sound like the tree itself doesn't require Nemesis but it gets enhanced if you have it.

So during the writing of the post, they may have changed it from requiring Nemesis to not, or folded that enhancement into the basic version of the tree so that it does require Nemesis.

It doesn't look like it's limited to Nemesis on the whole. Espiange effects are limited to Nemesis, so that part of some traditions won't apply if you don't have it.

 

[LayZboy]

I never thought we'd something even more useless than the army+ civics, but there is the subterfuge tree right there. At least army+ civics can be removed later.

 

[Faesar]

I believe that the custodian initiative might be one of the best descision the team has ever made for the game. Keep up the good work. I am excited for the next DDs.

 

[Asiak]

New Tradition Trees
The reason being that we wanted to see how it felt to have the Trade Policies unlocked through this tree. It will therefore no longer be possible to convert Trade Value into Energy + Consumer Goods/Unity unless you have the (3) Adaptive Economic Policies tradition.

It's going to feel shitty, how do you think it's going to feel?

What's worse it's going to probably often feel shitty in hindsight as you need to that policy go to click it and remember oops I can't do that now.

You're taking what is and has been a basic tool, one of the few in policies that we have for the economy and gating it behind a much more costly commitment.

That is a basic tool / policy that should not require such a drastic commitment into economy when every empire has an economy. And it's not going to "feel well" for the vast majority of empires that have economies aren't mercantile focused and don't get a single policy to alter their economy.

And that influence change is a huge nerf to Domination, why? Domination already in my admittedly unscientific opinion one of the weakest least taken traditions in the game.