Kudos for a hard (but successful) year, Paradox team, and enjoy the winter break. You've earned it.
Separately- interesting implications from the teaser bits you put in.
Administrator Change:
The administrative office seems tailored to be your homeworld speciality, so depending on how the admin sprawl economy rework goes, I foresee a meta-shift in how homeworld-full-of-science will shake up vis-a-vis science lab spamming. Currently unity is one of the only things that does NOT have a planetary designation to boost efficiency, with it (and trade) only rising with stability, which is the main benefit of the capital-world designation- which, coincidentally, would collect all produced trade value without threat of piracy. Notably, the trade value per building (5) is enough for any empire to cover the upkeep of the building AND the city district that would be needed to unlock it, with a bit left over to subsidize the empire, so this is going to be something that you can build on your homeworld that doesn't require you to build as many early-game technicians to upkeep as science does.
(And while there is no unity-boosting designation, there doesn't need to be better to increase the value of Managers; Urban world reduces building and district upkeep by 10% AND boosts trade by 20%, so while you wouldn't be making more unity per pop you would be increasing their energy value.)
But I admit I'm surprised at how high the unity is- 6 unity per job is more than even the current Memorialist job (4 unity), and twice the unity of the current culture worker. While admin sprawl exponentially increases unity costs compared to tech costs (because traditions cost more per tradition unlocked, rather than techs being a modifier off of base tech requirements), which means way more unity is going to be needed, this also suggests that there will be more things to spend unity on.
Which, obviously, was already hinted at, with the idea of using unity to mitigate sprawl, but if a pop-efficient homeworld of 10 Manager buildings is producing 120 unity a month, this suggests reoccurring unity costs, more inline with unity-powered campaigns (that currently cost energy) or early-game ambitions rather than perma-edicts like the influence ones.
This in turn would produce a strategic delimma tradeoff: do you spend unity for immediate edicts, or stockpile it for ascension paths? With one use for unity being countering the tech growth penalties, you'll likely have an early and mid-game delimma of whether you use unity for maximum early assets, versus tradition tree racing.
And if you are using it for effects other than science-mitigation, then the current science meta will get drastically changed as well based on how the unity-costs (and admin sprawl penalties) scale. It may be well that +2 scientists are worth less to your science game than +2 Managers paying off the penalty, and that another +2 managers may be worth more in boosting other aspects of the economy than +2 workers. At which point, specialists- and unity producers in general- would have a bigger mid-game impact.
It really depends on how extensive the Edict system is reworked, which looks promising because-
Edicts Fund could be a very big game changer depending just how funds are spent and accumulated.
In the current system, there's a more-or-less hard cap on how many Edicts you have, which puts all edicts in direct competition no matter how strong or weak. Each one costs 1 slot, and it's generally not worthwhile to go over. This produces a relatively hard meta, where a few strong contenders compete for the same slot and weak options are never considered, and once you have an edict you never remove it due to the significant influence cost.
If Edicts have varying costs, then 'more but weaker edicts' or 'fewer but stronger' becomes a balancing factor that may open up new strategies. If say we have a flat 50 Edict Funds, and Nutritional Plentitute and Energy Subsidies both cost 30 Edict Funds, then we can pick one and get another weaker edict to fill our gap. Then, when you reach a mid-game tech or tradition or add a civic that increases your cap, you come to another decision point- maybe now you can afford both Nutritional Plentitute and Energy subsidies, and so you do the swap. Because we are balancing for Edict strength, Paradox can be a bit more flexible in giving more ways to add smaller numbers of funds than they could if they were on the Edict Slot limit.
On its own, discrete costs suggest a lot more strategic flexibility, and this could be even greater depending on how 'Edict Funds' are acquired.
Edict slots, currently, are all provided up front. But Edict Funds don't necessarily have to be. They could- you have X points you can afford, and you get them back when you dismiss a edict. In a plain reading, the +50 edict funds would literally be just that, 50 more points to trade for your edicts.
But the term 'fund' suggests a transaction. What if we buy Edict Funds through the use of Unity, and the use of Edict Funds in the teaser above was an increase to our capacity for edict funds we could hold at a time?
In this model, Edicts wouldn't be a permanent 'pay the cost and keep it forever', balanced by what number/sorting of edicts you have at a time, but be a buff system where players spend unity to buy Edict Funds, and spend the edict funds for multi-decade buffs. Eventually the buff runs out, and you either spend more unity to buy more Edict Funds or your go without the buff (including the admin sprawl penalty to science).
This would help explain the drastic increase in unity production. It's not a flat unity boost to power through the exponential raising of tradition cost impacted by admin sprawl, but on the expectation that you will be regularly and reliably spending unity instead of saving it for Traditions, which- in turn- are more like 'permanent edicts' that don't expire once purchased. This, too, would affect the current science meta, as by spending unity to protect science production you're not spending unity on Traditions for the economic gains to support more science or more unity, and thus science-builds become more of a 'early bloom' strategy where you can brute-force your way for the first few decades, but risk falling behind economically as other people marshal traditions rather than running ahead forever.
If we're buying Edicts with Edict Funds, and Edict Funds with Unity, this also implies some changes to the influence-economy involved, which previously was invested in a few permanent edicts. They could cut out the role of influence all together- all edicts cost unity on a rotating basis- or they could make it so you can spend influence to raise your Edict Fund capacity to hold more edicts.
Again, too many unknowns to be sure of anything, and nothing known on how admin sprawl itself will change in the new economy, but this does suggest the potential for some pretty big meta-shifts.
Depending on how much of this guestimating is accurate, some major trends we could see might be-
-Trade builds will Trade Federations will get even stronger than they already are, now that the main source of unity is also a trade-boosted building. With Managers both covering their own cost but also covering the role of scientists (by fighting admin sprawl penalties in ways TBD), you need fewer technicians to support energy-hungry urban districts and specialist buildings. With Trade Federation trade policy, you're producing both unity and the CG needed to support more unity producers. (Science Federations could mitigate this a great deal if they came with a unique bonus to compensating for science sprawl.)
-The science game as a whole will likely slow considerably. We don't know how admin penalties will still work, but I'd be surprised if the transition of 'employ more scientists to boost science growth' to 'employ more burearcrats so the scientists you currently have aren't slowed' doesn't entail a much, much slower tech game. 'Into repeatables by year 100' may be gone- or if not, be a far harder and risker/more fragile build to someone who doesn't do that, but does invest in a few fleets to smash your over-specialized specialist economy.
-Tradition tree growth may well slow down significantly as well, delaying the point at which various ascensions come online. Depending on how much unity is 'spent' on (temporary?) edicts instead of invested in traditions, and the reworked sprawl mechanics, you could see Tradition trees being much more about completing your first several early, but your last bunch late, with maximum traditions being in the mid-game second century rather than the first. This would mean that the order of traditions matters more, as you're stuck with only your first choice for longer.
-As a consequence of this and the tech and tradition slowdown, Ascension paths may rebalance. Currently the Psionic/Bio/Synthetic ascension is weighted towards the later two because you can get them early-enough for their bonuses to outweigh psionic. With them delayed, Psionic may have a wider and longer period of time being the only tradition, and thus the best one for snowballing.
-War will become more fraught for min-maxers. With less tech blooming to run away with, 'optimal' specialist economies in science/unity will have to come at the cost of alloy economies, so primitive-but-larger empires will likely be better able to win via attrition.
-District efficiency will joint pop effeciency to become an even stronger point of the meta, as pop and district-based sprawl has implications on how much unity you need to spend to maintain Edict Funds. Note that this means upkeep efficiency will become as important as direct specialist efficiency, as the number of districts a specialist requires to support them will affect science.
For specific Ethics
-Spiritualists will likely get a major boost, both due to the increase in unity production and the decrease to edict cost if that applies to Edict Fund purchases. Spiritualists would be able to have more unity to spend on edicts/edict funds/countering the effects of sprawl, and likely be able to buy more of... whatever edict funds can purchase.
-Materialist will get a decrease due to the diminishing value of science compared to admin sprawl. I predict there will be an early-game sweet spot role for them- rushing Cruisers or certain tech-rushes- but they will risk being economically outweighed if they go wide.
-Xenophiles will get a increase in wide play as the trade from beuracrats will be significant as the number scales, depending on how the beuracrats counter. Also, they can leverage good relations into a lower alloy-requirement,
-Xenophobe will likely face a decrease due to the higher costs of going wide, but it remains to be seen what they get.
-Egalitarian-Pacifist will be beneficiaries due to their living standards/stability boosting the unity and trade game.
-Militarist-Authoritarians will have a longer mid-game advantage in their ability to exploit early-game advantages to go wide. Wide itself may not be as strong as it was, but it will still be key to getting more resources/alloys.
These be my predictions for the moment. We'll see in a few months how off-base they are.
