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Stellaris Dev Diary #241 - Unity Open Beta and the Dev Clash

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

Hi everyone!

We’re two weeks into the Stellaris Dev Clash, which is being played on the Stellaris 3.3 “Libra” Unity Open Beta branch.

Since we initially put it up, there have been over 216,000 games played in the Open Beta, and we’ve gathered fantastic amounts of feedback from the community - some of which was taken into account during the first update to the Open Beta, and more adjustments will be coming before the actual 3.3 release.

The first update included the following changes:
###################
# Feature
###################
  • Unity Ambitions and Campaigns now function like Toggled Edicts and last until canceled with upkeep rather than costs.
  • Planetary ascension now also reduces the effects of empire sprawl from that planet

###################
# Balance
###################
  • Empire Sprawl has no effects (except for edict costs) under 100 rather than 50.
  • Removed Machine Intelligence increased size penalties, replaced with -15% size from pops and +50% size from colonies.
  • Megastructures no longer have a unity upkeep.
  • Increased Unity production of Bio-Trophies from 1 to 3.
  • Reduced the costs of higher tier edicts and campaigns.
  • Leaders have a base cost of 100 unity and cost 50 additional unity for every owned leader, this value starts increasing once you own more than 6 leaders.
  • Reverted Citizen Service, it now provides unity just like it used to.
  • Distinguished Admiralty now gain +2 starting level to their Admirals and Generals.
  • Zombies are now less likely to seek jobs that produce resources.
  • Servile pops should no longer retain the trait if they become zombies.
  • Spiritualists are no longer allowed to take Byzantine Bureaucracy since they don't have Bureaucrats.
  • Trade value is now affected by AI difficulty bonus. This will make non hive mind empires more competitive on higher difficulty settings compared to hive mind AI empires.

###################
# AI
###################
  • AI can now create more specialized planets by switching place of buildings on two different planets with each other
  • AI is now much more likely to pick cheaper research options when all else equals
  • AI will now favor the trade policy which generates consumer goods over the default wealth creation policy
  • Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes try to replace one lost science ship with an excessively high number thereof.
  • Fixed an issue where repeatable tech were getting an extra chance to be researched as if they were rare techs
  • Fixed several issues where AI would get stuck and not build any modules or upgrade any starbases when there were open module slots which were unable to be filled according to the AI's starbase template
  • Improved AI construction ship behaviour, construction ships will now prioritize tasks that are close to them and avoid going to another system that already has a construction ship in it. Heavily increased priority of building starbases in systems with planets.
  • Reduces AI willingness to take a lot of planets with very low habitability

###################
# UI
###################
  • Added a textbox for Cost in Edicts UI. Also rearranged neighboring elements to align better.
  • Added column for upkeep (entry as well as sort button) in Leader recruitment UI.
  • Hid Empire Sprawl impact from top of Edicts UI. Put Edict Fund in its place to keep neat alignment.
  • Improved legibility of approximate job output indicators on districts and buildings, and made those on buildings also show country modifiers
  • Optimized elements for leader upkeep and age to fit localization better and avoid UI overlaps.
  • Technologies which let you clear blockers now give a tooltip which says how many such blockers are on your colonies

###################
# Bugfix
###################
  • Ascension Tiers on planets are set to 0 whenever a planet changes owner
  • Bio-Trophies now cost Unity to resettle instead of Influence.
  • Fixed modifiers for Police State civic
  • "Synths Scuttle Starbase" now refers to the starbase orbiting a star, rather than a planet.
  • Fixes to grammar and punctuation.
  • Added a missing line break in the Take Point button's tooltip
  • Added missing description for "Precognitive Interface" and "Psi Jump Drive" components in the Technology menu
  • Added missing description for "The Sentinels" planetary feature.
  • Added missing galaxy settings tooltips to the galaxy creation screen, both in Multiplayer and in single player.
  • Added missing header in the description of "Omega Theory" technology
  • Added missing header in tooltip description of "Defense Platform" and "Habitat".
  • Added missing information about required DLC for the corporate authority
  • Rogue Servitors now have access to the correct Unity producing buildings.
  • Clarified the tooltip for automatic development for when you had it turned on or not
  • Deluging primitives now removes the observation outpost
  • Fixed "Tebri" and "Tebiron" (prescripted empire planet and system names) being untranslated in Chinese
  • Fixed Criminal Heritage Galactic Emperors
  • Fixed Curators retelling the wrong info when asking again about the Scavenger's origins
  • Fixed Memorialists seeing that some techs unlocked buildings they could not build
  • Fixed Planetary Unification tech description overflowing the box
  • Fixed Sociocultural History tech showing it unlocked the Bounty Sacrifice twice
  • Fixed a Galcom resolution tooltip saying that the empire was already supporting the resolution when in fact it was meant to say it was already opposing it
  • Fixed a bug where you could end up with multiple Zroni homeworld systems
  • Fixed a bunch of issues in various federation law acceptance tooltips (several had missing or hard to interpret and ugly information)
  • Fixed a missing species name in event The Dragon has Landed
  • Fixed an issue where scientists would only get expertise traits based on the fields they were not actively working on
  • Fixed an unlocalised tooltip in non-English versions of the game when hovering over a megastructure's effects
  • Fixed incorrect description of traits "Inspired Researcher" and "Inspired Surveyor"
  • Fixed leader sorting by cost in the leader view sorting by energy instead of unity
  • Fixed some spacing issues in the localisation of the fire event effect in foreign languages
  • Fixed species modification planetary trait list sometimes overflowing
  • Fixed the tooltip of Integrated Preservation tradition
  • Fixed the tooltip of Open Border policies sometimes helpfully telling you that your country was default (in a way that isn't translated to other languages)
  • Fixed various living standards incorrectly providing unity instead of a happiness penalty for unemployed pops.
  • Fixed wrong color of font used in the Alien Box event in Brazilian Portuguese
  • Fixing missing line break for the alert about Necrophyte Shortages in Chinese
  • Life-Seeded Permanent Employment Megacorps will no longer all be zombies.
  • Posthumous Employment Centers can now be seen even if you can't build them yet.
  • Revolts in systems with enclave stations will no longer be granted ownership of the enclave station (it will remain in the hands of the enclave)
  • Sacrifices now have a unity cost.
  • The Caravaneers will no longer turn Gestalt Rulers psionic.
  • The Materialist faction is now happy that you discovered the secrets of the precursors even if those precursors are the Baol or the Zroni.
  • The project for reanimating Hrozgar now uses the correct art.
  • Void Dwellers no longer start with a broken Posthumous Employment Center.
  • Zombies can no longer colonize planets.

###################
# Modding
###################
  • Added error logging for when a window uses a scroll bar but does not have a background
  • Enabled the use of the "distance" trigger in script maths (e.g. export_trigger_value_to_variable)
  • Fixed a tooltip crash from firing a nonexistent event
  • Renamed election cost modifier country_election_influence_cost_mult to country_election_cost_mult to not reference influence, as it now costs unity.
  • You can now use script values in ships' empire_limit

Some additional changes and fixes that we've made based on the Open Beta and will be in the release to live include:
###################
# Balance
###################
  • Edicts can now have a cooldown before they can be manually disabled, but are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep.
  • AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now.
  • Leaders now only stay in the active pool for 1 year, hire them quickly before they leave!
  • Telepaths now give +5% planetary output and get bonuses from planet administrator modifiers
  • Empire Size effects on edicts, campaigns, and ambitions now directly affect the base costs of these, so bonuses like Spiritualist ethic's cost reductions now reduce costs and upkeep by the full percentages.
  • Increased Spiritualist discounts on edict cost and upkeep to -10%/-20% from -5%/-10%. Cutthroat Politics now grants -20% edict upkeep.
  • Reduced campaign costs and ambitions costs significantly, re-added Edict Cost Reduction to spiritualists for Unity Ambitions and Sacrifices
  • Removed the penalty to trade value from low habitability due to it not working properly with pops that were of a species other than the empire founding species

###################
# AI
###################
  • AI will no longer instantly buy ever single slave pop on the slave market.
  • AI empires are now more likely to pick the mind over matter ascension perk when available
  • AI empires are now much more likely to finish their ascension path
  • AI will no longer destroy superfluous buildings and districts during a temporary occupation of a planet.
  • Added AI budgeting for habitats
  • Fixed Lithoid Tree of Life food building and destruction loop
  • Fixed an issue where the AI would not budget to use ship boost edicts
  • Life Seeded AIs now always want the World Shaper ascension perk
  • Updated AI tradition tree selection to align better with the current state of the game
  • The Ship Auto Designer will no longer add a nanite repair system module when the empire does not have access to nanites

###################
# UI
###################
  • Clicking the fleet size icon in the top bar now opens the fleet manager

###################
# Stability
###################
  • Fixed a crash that would occur if a timed modifier element in the expansion planner was hovered after the modifier expired

###################
# Bugfix
###################
  • Fixed Shared Burdens not providing unity for unemployed pops
  • Reduced Unity gained from the Trade League trade policy.
  • Scientists assigned to research can now gain new traits.
  • Colony designations that increase unity from Administrator jobs now have weighting for spiritualist, hive and machine empires.
  • Tidied up the tooltips for various civics
  • Rogue Servitors can now upgrade their Simulation Centers
  • Blocked ascension tier upgrade on unowned planets
  • Chronicle Drones now care about photosynthesis
  • Citizen Service Soldiers now produce their unity.
  • Do not resume a save if the required dlcs are not available
  • Edicts are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep. Activating an edict now requires one months upkeep cost worth of stockpiled resources.
  • Enhanced the memory of Memorialist Hive Minds (they can now correctly build the special Memorialist buildings)
  • Fixed Defense Grid Supercomputer not immediately applying its effect upon construction
  • Fixed a bug where system wide auras sometimes persisted after leaving a system
  • Fixed an issue where a ghost Unbidden Portal would continue spawning ships
  • Fixed clicking top bar influence icon opening the edicts view
  • Fixed expired timed modifiers being visible in the expansion planner
  • Fixed it being possible to get unlocalised "Greetings!" in other languages when you opened diplomatic interactions with other empires for the first time
  • Fixed it being possible to upgrade the ascension tier of planets not owned by the player
  • Fixed looping checkbox clicked audio in the Apply Species Template view
  • Fixed missing localization for PLANET_ASCENSION_TIER_EFFECT_DESC in the tooltip for planetary designation
  • Fixed order of Galaxy Size options in galaxy setup not being ordered based on the number of stars
  • Fixed reinforcements not arriving to the target fleet and instead showing up at the station when an evasive path was needed in order to get to the target fleet
  • Fixed reinforcements not using evasive path
  • Fixed some building requirements
  • Fixed some faction demands
  • Fixed trade UI showing negative values for Collection Range and Protection Range under some circumstances
  • Fixed unlocalised text "UNKOWN_ORDERS" in a certain tooltip in the fleet interface
  • From Beta: Chronicle Drone and Death Chronicles now have the same production.
  • From Beta: Chronicle Drones are now Administrators
  • Great Khan will no longer turn hostile towards their own satrapies
  • Masters Writing of War and Politics now also cost unity.
  • Nanite repair system will no longer be picked by the ship auto design if you do not have nanite income
  • Removed references to edicts and factions from influence tooltip
  • Station modifier applying on building/module construction
  • Taking "The Flesh is Weak" no longer makes your species lose its gender presets
  • The description for the Imperial Navigation System no longer speaks of the Community of old
  • The tooltips giving estimated job upkeep and production are now better at dealing with stuff like rogue servitors (where it would previously estimate based on an organic pop which could not work the job, sometimes giving the tooltip a food upkeep instead of a minerals one)
  • Updated tutorial screens and tooltips according to the Unity system rework.
  • Updated various job weights
  • You cannot drag and drop ships in someone else's fleet anymore

###################
# Modding
###################
  • Added resource_revenue_compare and resource_expenses_compare triggers
  • Fixed station_modifier and triggered station modifiers on starbase modules or buildings, not immediately applying their effects upon construction
  • You can now again specify that a leader made with clone_leader is an event leader (or immortal)

Thank you for all of the suggestions, opinions, bug reports, constructive criticism, and observations. While the feedback threads have closed, you can still play on the Open Beta branch. To opt-in to the Steam open beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Beta tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.

1644402592481.png


Nearly a hundred years have passed and war has broken out across the galaxy as ten teams desperately struggle to keep up with Normal Speed. (Have we mentioned that there have been performance improvements in 3.3?)

The Dev Clash teams were revealed here, and you can view the first two sessions here:
Session 1 - The Act
Session 2 - The Heart

Join us for Session 3 (and beyond) every Monday at 1500 CET (UTC + 1) on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!

We’ve gathered statements from the Empires:


Tag_team1.png

Having heard that there were a bunch of cyborgs nearby, Heavy Metal, Inc. Party Fleets™ completed a complementary grand tour through the periphery of QA Core space to bring the noise to the local Jira-Goblins. We made a quick pilgrimage over to the black hole they had (because it's cool!), then on the way home ended up doing an impromptu encore tour (with a surprise stop at their homeworld!) when they asked for more.

Pour one out for our little Groupies. They wanted to be free, but the pyrotechnics show near the Dashboard seem to have given the QA Core a taste of the party life, and people say they're planning on a bash so huge it'll blow up the galaxy.

Metal.

Tag_team2.png

Qua|ity Assur@nc£ C0re §t@tus:
> Intr0duct|on of Me7al(tm) to Jirα-G0b|ins
> Prιmary Qu4|ity Assur@nc£ algorithms corRupt£d
> Reboot to firmware engaged
> Restoring from Backup
> Backup not found...
> Attempting repair of primary algorithms
> Repair Completed Failed Successfully
> ®u¦7is_ A§su®anc£ C0re boot sequence engaged
> Crisis Assurance Core θn|in3


Tag_team3.png

We are pleased that you can join us for our latest earnings call. Profits are steadily climbing with the acquisition of new Platypi Doughnuts, and we are making progress on forming the Great Galactic Torus. As you no doubt remember, our projected profits for completing the Great Torus is enough to purchase the three closest galaxies, which would allow us to spread the beauty and bounty of our Doughnuts throughout the universe.

Tag_team4.png

We remind all of our organic friends to remain in their safety cocoon at all times. (If you do not have a safety cocoon, you will be provided with one shortly.)

Thanks to Witch_Streamer for the image.

Tag_team5.png
We in the Horticulturist Commonality are very pleased with how things are starting to look in our own garden now, never before have we seen so much immense beauty outside of our home Protea. We are also overjoyed that we have found new fluttering friends that share our passion for gardening! Together with the Rhopalocerans of the Great Cocoon, our gardening projects will reach a much larger scale through the newly established Gardeners of the Galaxy. We hope that we will find the rest of the civilizations in the galaxy to be just as cooperative with letting us tend to their planets. After all, who would wish for anything but perfection and beauty?

However, it has been difficult getting through to our neighbors, the Church of Gainz, as they seem to refuse our envoys' attempts of diplomacy. We will look into other ways to tend to the planets that they have within their borders. We have also heard unpleasant things about the Human Game Developers and the Quality Assurance Core, that we will need to look closer into. Whether you are biological beings or machines, we seek to eventually open everyone's eyes to the beautiful potential of the galaxy.

Tag_team6.png

Blessed are the gains, when one may reap the rewards of physical labour and enjoy the rewards afterwards! Though they (power-)walk a different path from us: we of the Strict Observance of Our Lady Trappistine are grateful to have found new friends in our neighbours, the Church of Gainz. So too do we wish the Doughnut Corporation well — may your quest for the divine torus be a peaceful and nourishing one.

It has been especially pleasing to see our produce so warmly received at the other end of the galaxy: eat, drink and be merry, Human Game Developers! As it is written upon our scripture-ledgers, so shall it be: all who dwell within this galaxy shall be enriched by Our Lady's offerings. We work, that the future of our galaxy may be safely assured through acts of divine merriment and gluttonous joy. [Bing, bing!]

Tag_team7.png

Peaceful nations of the galaxy, you might have seen we've conquered a bunch of systems despite our declared peaceful politics. You see, we are pacifists by our nature, and this is why we started to PANIC when our federation decided to start a war and we made a lot of hurried actions.

Now, when there is a huge not-that-friendly looking federation has formed just next to us we are NOT PANICKING AT ALL and would like to apologize for any hostilities in the past. Also, our beautiful ocean worlds are very machine-friendly and will not cause any corrosion to their metal housings!

Let's make some high-quality friendships now and forever.

Tag_team8.png

The most beautiful aspect of Humanity is what we can accomplish together. With the recent creation of the United Human Game Developers Federation we, The Humans, will together with the ASU and the QA Core strive to create the most perfected Product on the market for all Humans to enjoy. We welcome all Customers to witness as we enter the Galaxy into a new era of prosperity, peace and safety.

All customers that preorders our new product will receive an invitation to enjoy our beta program on our newly repaired Ringworld Segment “Also Also Earth”. Here all Humans can enjoy the perfected experience brought to you by us, The Human Game Developers.

By Humans, For Humans.


Tag_team9.png

The Church of Gainz was suddenly and deliberately attacked by a neighboring nation with which we've been in peace with. Although tensions had been rising, the aggression of our neighbor truly shows the vileness and unhinged hostility that they are capable of. This will be remembered as a day of infamy, one to be recorded in the annals of the Swolephin people, and not soon forgotten.

Tag_team10.png

The Rhopalocerans have discovered their true calling: gardening. As members of the Gardeners of the Galaxy alongside the delightful Horticulturist Commonality, we adhere to a simple motto: all planets will be rendered beautiful. Unfortunately, it seems like some planets will have to be pruned... alongside the mechanical infestation that inhabits them.



Will The Groupies be avenged? Are the QA Core going to succeed in "clearing the bug database"? Can the Human Game Developers be stopped? Can the vision of the Great Torus be fulfilled?

So, who are you rooting for? And why is it Heavy Metal, Inc.?

See you next week!
 
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If I can have one more suggestion:

Please give us (or change some of the already existing "+max level for leaders") technology/tradition/edict that will allow us to hire leader with higher base level. So I won't have to employ a lvl 1 scientist/governor 150 years into the game, because previous one died of old age, and instead hire a lvl 3 scientist/governor for example.
I really feel like this is what capacity booster and selected lineages should do. It already makes leaders way more expensive it just makes way more sense than a useless +10/+20 leader lifespan and level cap
 
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So as we say, these are good, but...

Well, we could always want more, but a lot of these are really good.
  • Edicts can now have a cooldown before they can be manually disabled, but are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep.
Question- does 'can not sustain upkeep' mean a monthly negative, or a total balance?


  • Leaders now only stay in the active pool for 1 year, hire them quickly before they leave!

This is a good answer for leader cycling tension if it's easier to just wait for an answer. Escalating unity hire cost will have to be re-assessed in light of this.

Something I'm not clear on is if the leader cost will go down as you lose leaders and go below 6, or if it just goes up.


  • Telepaths now give +5% planetary output and get bonuses from planet administrator modifiers

This is potentially huge for the overall balance of Psionic builds. However, will this bonus from planet administrators provide equivalent boosts to trade values as well?

(And if not, could it, since Psionic currently already synergizes with trade builds from stability?)

  • Empire Size effects on edicts, campaigns, and ambitions now directly affect the base costs of these, so bonuses like Spiritualist ethic's cost reductions now reduce costs and upkeep by the full percentages.
  • Increased Spiritualist discounts on edict cost and upkeep to -10%/-20% from -5%/-10%. Cutthroat Politics now grants -20% edict upkeep.
  • Reduced campaign costs and ambitions costs significantly, re-added Edict Cost Reduction to spiritualists for Unity Ambitions and Sacrifices
Hopefully these will play well. Edict funds have potential, but the scaling cost is decisive.

  • Removed the penalty to trade value from low habitability due to it not working properly with pops that were of a species other than the empire founding species

This is a great asset for a Trade build as a low-sprawl size alternative to resource districts jobs. Not only good for low-habitability worlds, but making the most of a jobs-per-district sprawl consideration.

Much appreciated.




Hopefully there's more to come- including the Megacorp sprawl dynamic- but glad to see changes are being made on feedback.
 
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Good stuff!

Hopefully "AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now" applies when playing a Megacorp too? IIRC the chance of spawning AI Megacorps was increased for that case. Rationale being to make the game more interesting, practice being that among gestalts, megacorps and purifiers it was hard to find an AI empire that could accept a branch office.
 
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Hi everyone!

We’re two weeks into the Stellaris Dev Clash, which is being played on the Stellaris 3.3 “Libra” Unity Open Beta branch.

Since we initially put it up, there have been over 216,000 games played in the Open Beta, and we’ve gathered fantastic amounts of feedback from the community - some of which was taken into account during the first update to the Open Beta, and more adjustments will be coming before the actual 3.3 release.

The first update included the following changes:
###################
# Feature
###################
  • Unity Ambitions and Campaigns now function like Toggled Edicts and last until canceled with upkeep rather than costs.
  • Planetary ascension now also reduces the effects of empire sprawl from that planet

###################
# Balance
###################
  • Empire Sprawl has no effects (except for edict costs) under 100 rather than 50.
  • Removed Machine Intelligence increased size penalties, replaced with -15% size from pops and +50% size from colonies.
  • Megastructures no longer have a unity upkeep.
  • Increased Unity production of Bio-Trophies from 1 to 3.
  • Reduced the costs of higher tier edicts and campaigns.
  • Leaders have a base cost of 100 unity and cost 50 additional unity for every owned leader, this value starts increasing once you own more than 6 leaders.
  • Reverted Citizen Service, it now provides unity just like it used to.
  • Distinguished Admiralty now gain +2 starting level to their Admirals and Generals.
  • Zombies are now less likely to seek jobs that produce resources.
  • Servile pops should no longer retain the trait if they become zombies.
  • Spiritualists are no longer allowed to take Byzantine Bureaucracy since they don't have Bureaucrats.
  • Trade value is now affected by AI difficulty bonus. This will make non hive mind empires more competitive on higher difficulty settings compared to hive mind AI empires.

###################
# AI
###################
  • AI can now create more specialized planets by switching place of buildings on two different planets with each other
  • AI is now much more likely to pick cheaper research options when all else equals
  • AI will now favor the trade policy which generates consumer goods over the default wealth creation policy
  • Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes try to replace one lost science ship with an excessively high number thereof.
  • Fixed an issue where repeatable tech were getting an extra chance to be researched as if they were rare techs
  • Fixed several issues where AI would get stuck and not build any modules or upgrade any starbases when there were open module slots which were unable to be filled according to the AI's starbase template
  • Improved AI construction ship behaviour, construction ships will now prioritize tasks that are close to them and avoid going to another system that already has a construction ship in it. Heavily increased priority of building starbases in systems with planets.
  • Reduces AI willingness to take a lot of planets with very low habitability

###################
# UI
###################
  • Added a textbox for Cost in Edicts UI. Also rearranged neighboring elements to align better.
  • Added column for upkeep (entry as well as sort button) in Leader recruitment UI.
  • Hid Empire Sprawl impact from top of Edicts UI. Put Edict Fund in its place to keep neat alignment.
  • Improved legibility of approximate job output indicators on districts and buildings, and made those on buildings also show country modifiers
  • Optimized elements for leader upkeep and age to fit localization better and avoid UI overlaps.
  • Technologies which let you clear blockers now give a tooltip which says how many such blockers are on your colonies

###################
# Bugfix
###################
  • Ascension Tiers on planets are set to 0 whenever a planet changes owner
  • Bio-Trophies now cost Unity to resettle instead of Influence.
  • Fixed modifiers for Police State civic
  • "Synths Scuttle Starbase" now refers to the starbase orbiting a star, rather than a planet.
  • Fixes to grammar and punctuation.
  • Added a missing line break in the Take Point button's tooltip
  • Added missing description for "Precognitive Interface" and "Psi Jump Drive" components in the Technology menu
  • Added missing description for "The Sentinels" planetary feature.
  • Added missing galaxy settings tooltips to the galaxy creation screen, both in Multiplayer and in single player.
  • Added missing header in the description of "Omega Theory" technology
  • Added missing header in tooltip description of "Defense Platform" and "Habitat".
  • Added missing information about required DLC for the corporate authority
  • Rogue Servitors now have access to the correct Unity producing buildings.
  • Clarified the tooltip for automatic development for when you had it turned on or not
  • Deluging primitives now removes the observation outpost
  • Fixed "Tebri" and "Tebiron" (prescripted empire planet and system names) being untranslated in Chinese
  • Fixed Criminal Heritage Galactic Emperors
  • Fixed Curators retelling the wrong info when asking again about the Scavenger's origins
  • Fixed Memorialists seeing that some techs unlocked buildings they could not build
  • Fixed Planetary Unification tech description overflowing the box
  • Fixed Sociocultural History tech showing it unlocked the Bounty Sacrifice twice
  • Fixed a Galcom resolution tooltip saying that the empire was already supporting the resolution when in fact it was meant to say it was already opposing it
  • Fixed a bug where you could end up with multiple Zroni homeworld systems
  • Fixed a bunch of issues in various federation law acceptance tooltips (several had missing or hard to interpret and ugly information)
  • Fixed a missing species name in event The Dragon has Landed
  • Fixed an issue where scientists would only get expertise traits based on the fields they were not actively working on
  • Fixed an unlocalised tooltip in non-English versions of the game when hovering over a megastructure's effects
  • Fixed incorrect description of traits "Inspired Researcher" and "Inspired Surveyor"
  • Fixed leader sorting by cost in the leader view sorting by energy instead of unity
  • Fixed some spacing issues in the localisation of the fire event effect in foreign languages
  • Fixed species modification planetary trait list sometimes overflowing
  • Fixed the tooltip of Integrated Preservation tradition
  • Fixed the tooltip of Open Border policies sometimes helpfully telling you that your country was default (in a way that isn't translated to other languages)
  • Fixed various living standards incorrectly providing unity instead of a happiness penalty for unemployed pops.
  • Fixed wrong color of font used in the Alien Box event in Brazilian Portuguese
  • Fixing missing line break for the alert about Necrophyte Shortages in Chinese
  • Life-Seeded Permanent Employment Megacorps will no longer all be zombies.
  • Posthumous Employment Centers can now be seen even if you can't build them yet.
  • Revolts in systems with enclave stations will no longer be granted ownership of the enclave station (it will remain in the hands of the enclave)
  • Sacrifices now have a unity cost.
  • The Caravaneers will no longer turn Gestalt Rulers psionic.
  • The Materialist faction is now happy that you discovered the secrets of the precursors even if those precursors are the Baol or the Zroni.
  • The project for reanimating Hrozgar now uses the correct art.
  • Void Dwellers no longer start with a broken Posthumous Employment Center.
  • Zombies can no longer colonize planets.

###################
# Modding
###################
  • Added error logging for when a window uses a scroll bar but does not have a background
  • Enabled the use of the "distance" trigger in script maths (e.g. export_trigger_value_to_variable)
  • Fixed a tooltip crash from firing a nonexistent event
  • Renamed election cost modifier country_election_influence_cost_mult to country_election_cost_mult to not reference influence, as it now costs unity.
  • You can now use script values in ships' empire_limit

Some additional changes and fixes that we've made based on the Open Beta and will be in the release to live include:
###################
# Balance
###################
  • Edicts can now have a cooldown before they can be manually disabled, but are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep.
  • AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now.
  • Leaders now only stay in the active pool for 1 year, hire them quickly before they leave!
  • Telepaths now give +5% planetary output and get bonuses from planet administrator modifiers
  • Empire Size effects on edicts, campaigns, and ambitions now directly affect the base costs of these, so bonuses like Spiritualist ethic's cost reductions now reduce costs and upkeep by the full percentages.
  • Increased Spiritualist discounts on edict cost and upkeep to -10%/-20% from -5%/-10%. Cutthroat Politics now grants -20% edict upkeep.
  • Reduced campaign costs and ambitions costs significantly, re-added Edict Cost Reduction to spiritualists for Unity Ambitions and Sacrifices
  • Removed the penalty to trade value from low habitability due to it not working properly with pops that were of a species other than the empire founding species

###################
# AI
###################
  • AI will no longer instantly buy ever single slave pop on the slave market.
  • AI empires are now more likely to pick the mind over matter ascension perk when available
  • AI empires are now much more likely to finish their ascension path
  • AI will no longer destroy superfluous buildings and districts during a temporary occupation of a planet.
  • Added AI budgeting for habitats
  • Fixed Lithoid Tree of Life food building and destruction loop
  • Fixed an issue where the AI would not budget to use ship boost edicts
  • Life Seeded AIs now always want the World Shaper ascension perk
  • Updated AI tradition tree selection to align better with the current state of the game
  • The Ship Auto Designer will no longer add a nanite repair system module when the empire does not have access to nanites

###################
# UI
###################
  • Clicking the fleet size icon in the top bar now opens the fleet manager

###################
# Stability
###################
  • Fixed a crash that would occur if a timed modifier element in the expansion planner was hovered after the modifier expired

###################
# Bugfix
###################
  • Fixed Shared Burdens not providing unity for unemployed pops
  • Reduced Unity gained from the Trade League trade policy.
  • Scientists assigned to research can now gain new traits.
  • Colony designations that increase unity from Administrator jobs now have weighting for spiritualist, hive and machine empires.
  • Tidied up the tooltips for various civics
  • Rogue Servitors can now upgrade their Simulation Centers
  • Blocked ascension tier upgrade on unowned planets
  • Chronicle Drones now care about photosynthesis
  • Citizen Service Soldiers now produce their unity.
  • Do not resume a save if the required dlcs are not available
  • Edicts are now cancelled if an empire can not sustain the upkeep. Activating an edict now requires one months upkeep cost worth of stockpiled resources.
  • Enhanced the memory of Memorialist Hive Minds (they can now correctly build the special Memorialist buildings)
  • Fixed Defense Grid Supercomputer not immediately applying its effect upon construction
  • Fixed a bug where system wide auras sometimes persisted after leaving a system
  • Fixed an issue where a ghost Unbidden Portal would continue spawning ships
  • Fixed clicking top bar influence icon opening the edicts view
  • Fixed expired timed modifiers being visible in the expansion planner
  • Fixed it being possible to get unlocalised "Greetings!" in other languages when you opened diplomatic interactions with other empires for the first time
  • Fixed it being possible to upgrade the ascension tier of planets not owned by the player
  • Fixed looping checkbox clicked audio in the Apply Species Template view
  • Fixed missing localization for PLANET_ASCENSION_TIER_EFFECT_DESC in the tooltip for planetary designation
  • Fixed order of Galaxy Size options in galaxy setup not being ordered based on the number of stars
  • Fixed reinforcements not arriving to the target fleet and instead showing up at the station when an evasive path was needed in order to get to the target fleet
  • Fixed reinforcements not using evasive path
  • Fixed some building requirements
  • Fixed some faction demands
  • Fixed trade UI showing negative values for Collection Range and Protection Range under some circumstances
  • Fixed unlocalised text "UNKOWN_ORDERS" in a certain tooltip in the fleet interface
  • From Beta: Chronicle Drone and Death Chronicles now have the same production.
  • From Beta: Chronicle Drones are now Administrators
  • Great Khan will no longer turn hostile towards their own satrapies
  • Masters Writing of War and Politics now also cost unity.
  • Nanite repair system will no longer be picked by the ship auto design if you do not have nanite income
  • Removed references to edicts and factions from influence tooltip
  • Station modifier applying on building/module construction
  • Taking "The Flesh is Weak" no longer makes your species lose its gender presets
  • The description for the Imperial Navigation System no longer speaks of the Community of old
  • The tooltips giving estimated job upkeep and production are now better at dealing with stuff like rogue servitors (where it would previously estimate based on an organic pop which could not work the job, sometimes giving the tooltip a food upkeep instead of a minerals one)
  • Updated tutorial screens and tooltips according to the Unity system rework.
  • Updated various job weights
  • You cannot drag and drop ships in someone else's fleet anymore

###################
# Modding
###################
  • Added resource_revenue_compare and resource_expenses_compare triggers
  • Fixed station_modifier and triggered station modifiers on starbase modules or buildings, not immediately applying their effects upon construction
  • You can now again specify that a leader made with clone_leader is an event leader (or immortal)

Thank you for all of the suggestions, opinions, bug reports, constructive criticism, and observations. While the feedback threads have closed, you can still play on the Open Beta branch. To opt-in to the Steam open beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Beta tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.

View attachment 804336

Nearly a hundred years have passed and war has broken out across the galaxy as ten teams desperately struggle to keep up with Normal Speed. (Have we mentioned that there have been performance improvements in 3.3?)

The Dev Clash teams were revealed here, and you can view the first two sessions here:
Session 1 - The Act
Session 2 - The Heart

Join us for Session 3 (and beyond) every Monday at 1500 CET (UTC + 1) on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!

We’ve gathered statements from the Empires:


View attachment 804355
Having heard that there were a bunch of cyborgs nearby, Heavy Metal, Inc. Party Fleets™ completed a complementary grand tour through the periphery of QA Core space to bring the noise to the local Jira-Goblins. We made a quick pilgrimage over to the black hole they had (because it's cool!), then on the way home ended up doing an impromptu encore tour (with a surprise stop at their homeworld!) when they asked for more.

Pour one out for our little Groupies. They wanted to be free, but the pyrotechnics show near the Dashboard seem to have given the QA Core a taste of the party life, and people say they're planning on a bash so huge it'll blow up the galaxy.

Metal.

View attachment 804356
Qua|ity Assur@nc£ C0re §t@tus:
> Intr0duct|on of Me7al(tm) to Jirα-G0b|ins
> Prιmary Qu4|ity Assur@nc£ algorithms corRupt£d
> Reboot to firmware engaged
> Restoring from Backup
> Backup not found...
> Attempting repair of primary algorithms
> Repair Completed Failed Successfully
> ®u¦7is_ A§su®anc£ C0re boot sequence engaged
> Crisis Assurance Core θn|in3


View attachment 804357
We are pleased that you can join us for our latest earnings call. Profits are steadily climbing with the acquisition of new Platypi Doughnuts, and we are making progress on forming the Great Galactic Torus. As you no doubt remember, our projected profits for completing the Great Torus is enough to purchase the three closest galaxies, which would allow us to spread the beauty and bounty of our Doughnuts throughout the universe.

View attachment 804358
View attachment 804507
Thanks to Witch_Streamer for the image.

View attachment 804359We in the Horticulturist Commonality are very pleased with how things are starting to look in our own garden now, never before have we seen so much immense beauty outside of our home Protea. We are also overjoyed that we have found new fluttering friends that share our passion for gardening! Together with the Rhopalocerans of the Great Cocoon, our gardening projects will reach a much larger scale through the newly established Gardeners of the Galaxy. We hope that we will find the rest of the civilizations in the galaxy to be just as cooperative with letting us tend to their planets. After all, who would wish for anything but perfection and beauty?

However, it has been difficult getting through to our neighbors, the Church of Gainz, as they seem to refuse our envoys' attempts of diplomacy. We will look into other ways to tend to the planets that they have within their borders. We have also heard unpleasant things about the Human Game Developers and the Quality Assurance Core, that we will need to look closer into. Whether you are biological beings or machines, we seek to eventually open everyone's eyes to the beautiful potential of the galaxy.

View attachment 804360
Blessed are the gains, when one may reap the rewards of physical labour and enjoy the rewards afterwards! Though they (power-)walk a different path from us: we of the Strict Observance of Our Lady Trappistine are grateful to have found new friends in our neighbours, the Church of Gainz. So too do we wish the Doughnut Corporation well — may your quest for the divine torus be a peaceful and nourishing one.

It has been especially pleasing to see our produce so warmly received at the other end of the galaxy: eat, drink and be merry, Human Game Developers! As it is written upon our scripture-ledgers, so shall it be: all who dwell within this galaxy shall be enriched by Our Lady's offerings. We work, that the future of our galaxy may be safely assured through acts of divine merriment and gluttonous joy. [Bing, bing!]

View attachment 804361
Peaceful nations of the galaxy, you might have seen we've conquered a bunch of systems despite our declared peaceful politics. You see, we are pacifists by our nature, and this is why we started to PANIC when our federation decided to start a war and we made a lot of hurried actions.

Now, when there is a huge not-that-friendly looking federation has formed just next to us we are NOT PANICKING AT ALL and would like to apologize for any hostilities in the past. Also, our beautiful ocean worlds are very machine-friendly and will not cause any corrosion to their metal housings!

Let's make some high-quality friendships now and forever.

View attachment 804362
The most beautiful aspect of Humanity is what we can accomplish together. With the recent creation of the United Human Game Developers Federation we, The Humans, will together with the ASU and the QA Core strive to create the most perfected Product on the market for all Humans to enjoy. We welcome all Customers to witness as we enter the Galaxy into a new era of prosperity, peace and safety.

All customers that preorders our new product will receive an invitation to enjoy our beta program on our newly repaired Ringworld Segment “Also Also Earth”. Here all Humans can enjoy the perfected experience brought to you by us, The Human Game Developers.

By Humans, For Humans.


View attachment 804363
The Church of Gainz was suddenly and deliberately attacked by a neighboring nation with which we've been in peace with. Although tensions had been rising, the aggression of our neighbor truly shows the vileness and unhinged hostility that they are capable of. This will be remembered as a day of infamy, one to be recorded in the annals of the Swolephin people, and not soon forgotten.

View attachment 804365
The Rhopalocerans have discovered their true calling: gardening. As members of the Gardeners of the Galaxy alongside the delightful Horticulturist Commonality, we adhere to a simple motto: all planets will be rendered beautiful. Unfortunately, it seems like some planets will have to be pruned... alongside the mechanical infestation that inhabits them.



Will The Groupies be avenged? Are the QA Core going to succeed in "clearing the bug database"? Can the Human Game Developers be stopped? Can the vision of the Great Torus be fulfilled?

So, who are you rooting for? And why is it Heavy Metal, Inc.?

See you next week!
Overall great changes, i love how sprawl works now, how AI has been improved, love direction Stellaris went, tho some adjustments could be applied ;)
One thing bothers me tho:
Spiritualists are still screwed? Even tho unity change should became a buff for spiritualists it changes nothing since their unity output is the same as regular empires, and even worse - "death cult" civic has became worse than regular spiritualists since i havn't seen any changes to priests and death prriests unity output?
If so, then well done! You really hate spiritualists do you? Yet even so, i will play spiritualists with death cult civic for roleplay reasons, but without building sacrificial temple buildings, and without actually using anything from that civic.
 
does 'can not sustain upkeep' mean a monthly negative, or a total balance?
Running entirely out of your Unity (or other resource) stockpile and going into an actual deficit.

Something I'm not clear on is if the leader cost will go down as you lose leaders and go below 6, or if it just goes up.
Leader costs are based on the number of leaders you currently have in your empire. It goes up and down as the number of leaders does. (There's just a minimum cost below a certain point.)

Hopefully "AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now" applies when playing a Megacorp too?
Yes.

Even tho unity change should became a buff for spiritualists it changes nothing since their unity output is the same as regular empires
One of the 3.3.1 changes has significant effect, where they now get their entire bonuses to Unity Cost and Upkeep reductions.
 
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Hm, upon further consideration, does the change to how Sprawl affects edict costs (I'd love to quote that passage, but for some reason quoting in dev diary threads is especially painful to do) mean that the Spiritualist cost and upkeep modifiers stack multiplicatively, rather than additively, with how Sprawl affects those? If so, that's great news! Now, if only the +unity% from the ethos were also multiplicative instead of getting drowned out in a sea of +unity% modifiers to jobs and factions ...
 
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I absolutely love the changes!
Hoping similar level of improvement will be done to ground combat, as it stands it is most cumbersome and underdeveloped part of the game.
Just let the fleets invade along with bombing or something.
 
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One of the 3.3.1 changes has significant effect, where they now get their entire bonuses to Unity Cost and Upkeep reductions.
Yet none of this makes any real change. Xenophiles have bonus to trade value which may increase unity production from trade, egalitarians have increased unity generation from factions.
Spiritualists got nothing unique and nothing that boosts THEM, particulary THEM compared to other ethics. Their flavour - temples, are just reskins... and really - this edict reduction, and unity bonus is enough to compensate for lack of robots? temples was designed to be compensation for robots, and now temples means nothing, as i have said - are reskins for other ethics unity buildings. So still - spiritualists are screwd, and death cult even more.
 
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  • AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now.
  • Leaders now only stay in the active pool for 1 year, hire them quickly before they leave!
  • Telepaths now give +5% planetary output and get bonuses from planet administrator modifiers
  • Empire Size effects on edicts, campaigns, and ambitions now directly affect the base costs of these, so bonuses like Spiritualist ethic's cost reductions now reduce costs and upkeep by the full percentages.
nice-smack.gif


... But no other changes are being made to ascension levels?
They feel really disconnected right now from the rest of the game, in terms of;
  • Modding - unless on_actions have been added for them increasing/decreasing in levels in 3.3.1?
  • Graphics - they're indistinct, I was hoping an ascended planet would look a little different, or have a different designation icon (like a gold star by it or something) ... or at least have a coloured name plate or symbol next to it. [made a similar point in the feedback thread here]
  • Gameplay
    • Micro - doesnt feel great having to go back and ascend 10x, feels like a zynga farming game - and when you have many colonies (even when playing a small empire with many habitats) its hard to keep track of what's been ascended - making me mostly just do my capital and give up.
      • Maybe cut down the number of tiers but make each one more costly and more "meaty" or impactful somehow?
    • Stats wise - though they're a unity dump, they seem more geared for tall-play, but their per-planet nature makes them not all to useful for habitats as you have to ascend each one. Really only feels useful on the capital, and a few highly populated worlds like ecumenopolis or hives.
This might just be my desire for some sector love showing through, but it feels like the whole planetary ascension thing should have been applied to the capital / sector capital only - to then impart (reduced) benefits to all colonies in that entire sector: letting you build up your core worlds or spread wide and so on - To drive home the sci-fantasy of disparities between core worlds vs sector provinces vs fringe/rim worlds.
 
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I have a hundred minor suggestions and pieces of feedback I left, but I think what I'm most curious about is whether edict funds will become more useful or scale better (or at least don't scale as poorly) when taken together with your other changes.

Something I had been wondering is regarding design intention with edicts. Under the old edict cap system (3.2), any empire could be running five or six or seven edicts by the late game with the right traditions and government forms and ascension perks etc. and this wasn't really effected by Empire Size. Big Empires and small ones could both run edicts. So, what I am wondering is whether it is intended design in 3.3 that higher Empire Size is meant to run fewer edicts than small ones? And I get this impression because in 3.3.0 the function of edict fund is essentially: here's 20, 50, 100, or whatever unity which can only be spent on edicts. Empire size in 3.3.0 could easily dwarf the value of edict cap to the point edict cap only covers one or two edicts in late game. I understand that big empires can afford and employ bureaucrats/priests to get more edicts, but this also creates the situation where edicts are now being evaluated economically for their effects versus the cost of employing unity-producers, which wasn't really an issue under the old 3.2 approach to edicts.

Anyways, I have really enjoyed 3.3.0 and I hope 3.3.1 is out soon
 
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So... are edict funds going to make it into the game? We can only hope you reconsider and do not add Edict funds to the game. Its a bad system and its going to make civics even worse. Powerful early on but a lot weaker as the game progresses. And ontop of that its going to add even more techs for bonus edict funds to the game. This clutters the tech pool, which means we need even more tech, pushing players to tech rush more. The goal was to add some alternatives to tech rushing, remember?

Overall I didn't spot a ton of changes from last beta patch, which is worrying. You introduced tons of unity costs and things to spend unity on. But its still better to simply go for Tech instead of investing into unity. The current state of unity vs tech is pretty good, but it could be even better.
 
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So... are edict funds going to make it into the game? We can only hope you reconsider and do not add Edict funds to the game. Its a bad system and its going to make civics even worse. Powerful early on but a lot weaker as the game progresses. And ontop of that its going to add even more techs for bonus edict funds to the game. This clutters the tech pool, which means we need even more tech, pushing players to tech rush more. The goal was to add some alternatives to tech rushing, remember?

Overall I didn't spot a ton of changes from last beta patch, which is worrying. You introduced tons of unity costs and things to spend unity on. But its still better to simply go for Tech instead of investing into unity. The current state of unity vs tech is pretty good, but it could be even better.
Edict funds were made to make tall empires more viable since for them edict funds can cover much more edicts than for wide empires, and allow for some savings in terms of unity. Wide empires still have more production so they are still better than tall.
 
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The patch note look good and would love to play the Unity changes except i still got the .sqlite problem and the games doesn't even run since December :(
Any news about that? Please? Would like to be able to play the game again :(
 
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The changes look good, but after thinking about them, I think that we're back to "wide always wins", depending on how much the planetary ascension numbers affect empire size. You just replaced bureaucrats with ascensions, and just increased the cost!

I see how you try to push spiritualist, but to what effect? Them having better science than materialists, due to unity and sprawl? I think this doesn't make much sense both as a game mechanic and from an RP perspective...

The design needs additional dimensions to split the power of each ethic/build.

You need to refine it and add more to each ascencion path. Perhaps an entire seperate tech tree, or tradition per path.
 
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The patch note look good and would love to play the Unity changes except i still got the .sqlite problem and the games doesn't even run since December :(
Any news about that? Please? Would like to be able to play the game again :(
You are in the wrong forum/post for this.

The game has no issues running - seek tech support, re-install or check if there's something extremely weird going on with your OS/Hardware.
 
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Hey, pretty important issue I just noticed. A lot of enforcer jobs for the AI are remaining unfilled even when a planet is in complete chaos from high crime.
 
. So, what I am wondering is whether it is intended design in 3.3 that higher Empire Size is meant to run fewer edicts than small ones?

I think this is the exact goal, as a way of offering smaller empires better pop-efficiency to endure better against larger empires and have a wider window to catch back up via their own conquests/actions/options. In theory, this can let a smaller empire skip the first two energy techs in favor of an energy edict, and spend that time researching military-energy techs to catch up/counter an empire who manages an early expansion but hasn't run off with the game yet.
 
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The changes look good, but after thinking about them, I think that we're back to "wide always wins", depending on how much the planetary ascension numbers affect empire size. You just replaced bureaucrats with ascensions, and just increased the cost!

The goal was never to have 'wide doesn't win'- it is still fundamentally a 4X game that runs on a pop-based economy that grows scaling to planets. In such a system, unless you hyper-penalize wide such that wide always loses, wide has an inherent snowballing advantage.

What the unity changes do is reduce the rate at which the snowball accelerates. This is both useful in its own right- it offers other builds more viability compared to early conquest if their primary handicap is time (pop-bloom strategies), and can later be utilized in other structural changes (such as the hinted upcoming Situation dynamic, which could compromise empires that expand too quickly by war).

Similarly, it appears the goal of the Edicts and Edict fund isn't to support multiple edicts, but to give smaller empires a chance for significantly higher pop-efficiency than larger empires. This did not work due to how costs scaled, but if the costs can be balanced well enough, it can offer expanded windows for catchup/destablization of larger empires. If an empire loses its ability to afford pop-efficiency edicts when it conquers, it's pop-efficiency goes down and can create a window of vulnerability that- if other systems are introduced- can counter wide-conquest through strategies.
 
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The goal was never to have 'wide doesn't win'- it is still fundamentally a 4X game that runs on a pop-based economy that grows scaling to planets. In such a system, unless you hyper-penalize wide such that wide always loses, wide has an inherent snowballing advantage.

What the unity changes do is reduce the rate at which the snowball accelerates. This is both useful in its own right- it offers other builds more viability compared to early conquest if their primary handicap is time (pop-bloom strategies), and can later be utilized in other structural changes (such as the hinted upcoming Situation dynamic, which could compromise empires that expand too quickly by war).

Similarly, it appears the goal of the Edicts and Edict fund isn't to support multiple edicts, but to give smaller empires a chance for significantly higher pop-efficiency than larger empires. This did not work due to how costs scaled, but if the costs can be balanced well enough, it can offer expanded windows for catchup/destablization of larger empires. If an empire loses its ability to afford pop-efficiency edicts when it conquers, it's pop-efficiency goes down and can create a window of vulnerability that- if other systems are introduced- can counter wide-conquest through strategies.
What you describe would take centuries or more to happen in a game. If they made such systems more significant then I would agree. And as much I would agree, I don't want to play EU4 in space.

The idea of needing your empire to be stable and developed is a good one, but the game doesn't have this, as any pop doing such a task, reduces efficiency instead of adding efficiency. Ascension seems to be a first approach to that, but more effort/mechanics are needed.

Building a megastructure (like dyson/matter decompressor) seems to be far more powerful than enything "social" you could do, because it runs without pops and does't generate sprawl. So why would I not maximize alloys or tech? The only way to persuade me is to fire a country disaster. But this type of design (punishing) is very unpopular!

And to go against my fisrt sentence, in other PDX games you would get bonuses, based off how much of your land had cored, or how uniform your pops were within your nationality/culture/religion.
 
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