Stellaris Dev Diary #260 - Summer Culture

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Alfray Stryke

Stellaris Game Designer
Paradox Staff
QA
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Feb 21, 2014
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Hey folks, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer/winter break (depending on your hemisphere). I’ve found some time between my other summer experiments and the work we’re doing for 3.5 “Fornax” to dive into the feedback/suggestions lists. Since Eladrin is still away, you’re getting another sneak preview of what I’ve been working on.

One of the frequent requests from the Unity rework that was part of the 3.3 “Libra” patch earlier this year was for us to return Culture Workers to the game. Currently, they exist only as jobs provided by some event buildings, but many in the Community felt we removed some flavor/roleplay aspect when we removed them.

Over summer, I’ve been experimenting with potentially adding them back in. For context, in the current version of the game Culture Workers are a Specialist job that belongs to their own economic category, produce 3 Unity and 3 Society Research with an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods.

Let’s have a look at an Autochthon Monument constructed by the UNE shortly after the start of the game.

1658126587496.png

Showing the Culture Workers with some unusual modifiers

To start with, the monument is retaining the Unity from Jobs modifier and the passive Unity production per Ascension Perk, but additionally provides 2/4/6 Culture Worker jobs per tier of the monument. The same applies to the Corporate version of the monument.

The sharp-eyed might notice that there’s some odd modifiers being given: Worker Happiness? Pop Upkeep Reduction? What, might you ask, has happened?

In this experiment, we’re looking at Culture Workers having an output that depends on the Ethics of your empire. After all, what influences your culture the most if not your ethics?

These are the ethics-based modifiers we’re currently testing and whether their effects are Empire-wide or only affecting the planet that the building has been constructed on:
  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet)
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet)
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire)
  • Pacifist: -2.5% Crime (Planet)
  • Egalitarian: +2.5% Worker Happiness (Planet)
  • Authoritarian: +5 Ruler Political Power (Planet)
  • Xenophobe: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet)

These modifiers are provided by both Culture Workers and Death Chroniclers (as their job-swap with the Memorialist civic) and are doubled in the case of Fanatic ethics. They are intended to be a small buff/addition to the job, with the Unity production from both the jobs and the building being the primary draw.

Additionally, Culture Workers/Death Chroniclers now belong in the Administrator category, in the Culture Worker sub-category meaning they’ll benefit from multiplicative bonuses to Administrator output (such as those provided by the Unification or Ecclesiastical planetary designations). They produce a base of 4 Unity and +10% Government Ethics Attraction (+2.5% Stability for Death Chroniclers) with 3 Consumer Goods upkeep.

There’s also been some discussion around having Resort Worlds add Culture Workers, and if I find time I’ll be looking into that as well.

To ensure that hive-minds and machine intelligences don’t feel left out, Sensorium/Simulation Sites now provide 2/4/6 Evaluator jobs per tier of the building. These now provide 4 Unity and 3 Amenities in exchange for an upkeep of 2 Energy.

1658126626613.png

A hive-mind sensorium site providing 2 evaluator jobs.

Chronicle Drones provide the same Unity and Amenities output but give an additional +2.5% Stability in exchange for slightly higher upkeep (and that upkeep being based off of the upkeep cost of the pop working the job). Like their individualist equivalents, these jobs both now belong to the Evaluator sub-category of the Administrators jobs.

I’m not sure if we’ll have another surprise dev diary over summer, but our normal schedule should resume once Eladrin’s back and we’ll start delving into 3.5. Regardless I’ll be keeping a close eye on this thread for your thoughts, suggestions and any feedback.
 
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Appreciate the feedback. As stated, we're not wanting the ethics-based modifiers to be the main draw of the job (that's the unity production), but I'll look at changing up the modifiers for some of these. To answer a few queries:
  • Research on these jobs is something we want to avoid.
  • The crime reduction functions in the same way as enforcers, as a direct reduction to the value, not a multiplier.
 
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Well there's a lot of feedback, so I won't be able to answer every point individually, but I do appreciate the discussions that have happened since yesterday.

I'm looking at changing some of the modifiers around - moving edict funds to authoritarians is a far better fit than xenophobes for example. Some other ideas I have in my notebook that I'm considering are: housing usage reduction (egalitarian) and trade value from living standards (pacifist).
 
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We've made some changes from the modifiers listed in the original dev diary for our current internal testing, due to the feedback provided:
  • Pacifist: +2.5% Trade Value from Lifestyle (Planet)
  • Egalitarian: -2.5% Housing Usage (Planet)
  • Authoritarian: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  • Xenophobe: +2.5% Citizen Happiness (Planet)
Current thinking is that the Pacifist and Xenophile modifiers might be the most powerful, but since those ethics often limit your playstyle in other ways, this should make them slightly more interesting. Another goal here is to try and make sure none of the Culture Worker modifiers overlap with modifiers directly given by the ethics.
 
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I'm calling it, the new meta is Fanatic Militarist + Materialist; Byzantine Bureaucracy now solid S tier auto pick
You pay: 3 consumer goods
You get: 2 naval capacity (worth 0.33 pop), 2 amenity (worth 0.2 pop), 4+1 unity and 1 stability
It's really just 50% better Bureaucrat that's worth spamming on every planet for these two ethics.

Nice, no more admin worlds, not worth a dime.

Unfortunately, the bonuses from Byzantine Bureaucracy won't apply to Culture Workers.
 
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that everyone else already gets 10% worker happiness, more unity

They don't. Worker happiness was present as the Egalitarian-ethics bonus (but I've since swapped it to housing usage reduction.

All four jobs (culture workers, death chroniclers, evalutaors and chronicle drones) have a base unity output of 4 before any other modifiers. The differences in the screenshots in the DD are due to technologies and other such bonuses.


  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet) => I really don't think that extra amenities fit materialism at all
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet) => Temathic & powerful at the same time. I like it!
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire) => A bit weak. Perhaps +2 would be better?
  • Pacifist: +2.5% Trade Value from Lifestyle (Planet) => I love how this combines with Utopian builds, and it is powerful to boot
  • Egalitarian: -2.5% Housing Usage (Planet) => Cool & thematically appropriate
  • Authoritarian: +3 Edict Fund (Empire) => Edict funds bonuses are a much better fit for authoritarians than xenophobes, yep
  • Xenophobe: +2.5% Citizen Happiness (Planet) => Wow, that's... quite powerful. Also not entirely sure about its relationship with the xenophobe ethic
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet) => A bit like the previous one, I don't understand what it has to do with xenophiles, but it is quite powerful nonetheless

The exact numbers (and modifiers) are still being looked at and reconsidered, so there might be more changes to these in the final version. Thanks for the feedback!
 
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