Stellaris Dev Diary #237 - Reworking Unity, Part One

[StellarXe]

I love this changes!!

 

[Scomos]

Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics.

All of the goals and proposed changes look amazing! As per usual I'm hyped for the next overhaul of Stellaris.
I am very intrigued about this too. I've always found it frustrating how easy it is for players or AI to fall behind on tech, with virtually no capability of catching up, at least before the game ends. I do wonder what some of the rubber-banding mechanics will be.

The changes to Feudal Society is a nice way to spice it up, however strict restrictions on aspects such as kicking leaders does seem very inflexible and restricts choice, there should always be an alternative that doesn't involve not doing it at all. Maybe a costly influence/unity price? Or it could provoke an unruly reaction from other leaders?

 

[dannazgui]

Admin buildings are your unity producers now, and one of the uses for unity, as previously mentioned in other diaries, is to mitigate the impact of sprawl.

You don't just endure sprawl penalties, you build admin buildings to generate the unity to spend to mitigate. It's the same function, but different form, of the admin cap raising.

But Unity only makes sense for Pacificst and Spiritualists empire, doesn't it? WOn't this get in the way of Militarist and expansionists, that enjoys war?

 

[Lordlory95]

This does not necessarily mean that tall Unity focused empires will be the equal of wide Research focused ones, but they should have some things that they are good at and be more competitive in general than they are now.

I've always imagined that the highly tech focused empire are always the tall ones (much like the Fallen Empires) while the wide empires are more focused on unity, basically to keep everything togethere

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Also needed for upkeep on diplomatic agreements, for the non-genocidal maniacs among us.

True, I had forgotten this.

Still, the move of influence gain to fleets elevates warmongering further than it already does.

 

[Calvax]

I am very intrigued about this too. I've always found it frustrating how easy it is for players or AI to fall behind on tech, with virtually no capability of catching up, at least before the game ends. I do wonder what some of the rubber-banding mechanics will be.

If I had to guess it would be a percentage bonus to researching a given tech based on what % of empires have said tech. This would be a great feature, particularly for uplifted empires or primitives that make it to space on their own. It makes sense too given stellaris' worldbuilding. A young empire would get quite the boost from logging onto other empire's wikipedia and browsing the history sections.

 

[Tamwin5]

Very excited for these changes, as well as seeing how well the open beta turns out.

I’ll second @Cat_Fuzz on there potentially being a lack of things to spend influence on, at least for certain play styles. As a genocidal you can’t spend it on diplomacy or the GC, and you don’t use claims. Previously I’ve been spending it to shuffle pops around, but with that changing to unity (which makes TONS more sense, I approve), the only real things left will be habitats and relics (and relics should really use unity too imo). I think that there should be a way to spend influence on espionage, either on additional envoys or to speed up infiltration.

 

[rubert]

• Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics.

Does this include (if needed) rebalancing of the tech costs? Currently the costs scale linearly while the research point production close to exponential growth so each successive tier gets researched faster and faster. The early wars might be fought with mostly basic techs and few tier 2 components but then shortly afterwards everyone has battleships with neutron launchers etc.

This has been talked in the earlier threads as well: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...esearch-is-far-too-fast-in-this-game.1470409/

Solid looking changes on the unity and the admin cap, can't wait to try the beta.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Rather than being immune to dismissal, perhaps leaders could instead cost (more) Unity to remove from a job?

Also, it would be neat if the changes to Feudal are accompanied by Aristocratic Elite adding leader lineages:

• Employed (non-ruler) leaders dying have a 95% chance to be replaced by an heir, inheriting their job, with no Unity recruitment cost.
• Employed leaders cost (more) Unity to remove from a job.
• If possible, the heir inherits any family name (or the same name but with a ticking Roman numeral at the end; "Blackbeak Dreadwing II" and so on).

 

[Dragatus]

@Eladrin This all sounds very good. My one point of disagreement is that you're going with Bureaucrats as Unity producing job for regular empires and scrapping Culture Workers. I would've preferred it if Culture Workers were the standard Unity job and Bureaucrats were a Culture Worker replacement job provided by the Byzantine Bureaucracy civic (much like Warrior Culture replaces Entertainers with Duelists).

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Very excited for these changes, as well as seeing how well the open beta turns out.

I’ll second @Cat_Fuzz on there potentially being a lack of things to spend influence on, at least for certain play styles. As a genocidal you can’t spend it o. Diplomacy or the GC, and you don’t use claims. Previously I’ve been spending it to shuffle pops around, but with that changing to unity (which makes TONS more sense, I approve), the only real things left will be habitats and relics (and relics should really use influence too). I think that there should be a way to spend influence on espionage, either on additional envoys or to speed up infiltration.

I do like the idea of using influence for espionage - makes way more sense as well.

Though could leaders cost unity in addition to EC?

 

[Mealya]

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.

View attachment 793472
These monuments are now planet-unique, and can be built by Spiritualist empires.

Hum. So Spiritualists don't have anymore The citadel of Faith ? Or they keep it but with no workers ? Or we now have temples, citadel of faith (like before) and memorials (with no workers) ?

 

[MK1980]

i like the idea of getting rid of the buerocrat admin capacity system. it never made much sense to add it in the first place.

i'm glad you guys are willing to admit bad decisions and undo game mechanics that didn't work out as intended.

the changes to influence and unity you outlined seem reasonable. should make unity more useful resource. good start. looking forward to trying it out and seeing where this new direction will take us.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Also needed for upkeep on diplomatic agreements, for the non-genocidal maniacs among us.

I suppose we should consider that minority of players...

 

[kviiri]

I haven't been excited for Stella DDs in a long time because I feel there's been too much attention to new additions over fixing the flaws of the game. This seems like a step in the right direction to me. I will try this out!

 

[Shaeliss]

I also fear that making influence generation modified by fleet size again places emphasis on warmongering empires, so reduces pacifist playstyles ability to compete when expanding

As a (sometimes Fanatic) Pacifist, I do not understand that concern. Every Pacifist should be familiar with the concept of "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum", and Armed Dissuasion. It is an unfortunate fact that to achieve peace, we require overwhelming firepower to discourage any direct attack on our lands. While us pacifists dislike starting wars, we are not afraid to finish them.

I would be curious about Federations on the other hand. More specifically, regarding how the Federal Navy and Projected Power interact.

 

[Peter34]

As a (sometimes Fanatic) Pacifist, I do not understand that concern. Every Pacifist should be familiar with the concept of "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum", and Armed Dissuasion. It is an unfortunate fact that to achieve peace, we require overwhelming firepower to discourage any direct attack on our lands. While us pacifists dislike starting wars, we are not afraid to finish them.

The kind of Pacifism that I practice in Stellaris is something I refer to as "Big Stick Pacifism".

Others might refer to it as "Culture-style Pacifism (post-Idiran War)".

 

[Liggi]

It'd be interesting to tie the "ability to withstand negative change" to Espionage in some way as well. Espionage is slightly toothless right now. I like the idea that an empire that chooses to focus heavily on Espionage can cause a lot of chaos for an empire that has chosen to ignore countermeasures to it.

Is this something you're considering?

 

[Bezborg]

So in Feudal Society you won't be able to change resarchers until they die? I don't know if that's worth the extra unity.

Yeah, wth happened there with the logic :/ are scientists some sort of noble titles and every researcher will have an heir or something? Clunky

 

[Peter34]

As for the idea, I think it sounds good, althoug I'm very eager to read next week about how Ascension Perk unlocking is meant to work.

Can Orrie be given advance access before the Closed Beta, so that he can create a variant of his mod UI Overhaul Dynamic for it, because it's the one QoL mod that I really, really can't see myself playing without, as in I will ignore the Closed Beta unless I get to utilize more than the 720 pixels of monitor height that Paradox assumes is all I have.