Stellaris Dev Diary #55 - Unity and Traditions

[Malecord]

Will differences in tradition account when integrating subjects / annexing planets? In addition to the regular costs/issues I mean.

 

[Gaen]

This looks actually way more like National Ideas from EU4. Which is both good and bad thing. Good because it's nice mechanics. Bad because I'm afraid a bit that all Paradox titles will eventually turn into single crazy conglomerate like EUCKVikiHoIStellaris or something :/

A Paradox take on Spore? But good = P

 

[erkkijuusto]

This feature seems like a dlc feature. Is it?

 

[iniudan]

Sweet! It just sounded like the sort of thing that would be part of a DLC

Well they need to make it part of the base game else future paid dlc cannot get to play with tradition, as dlc content got to be independant from each others, else they will find themselves with an other retinue situation like in ck2.

 

[Walshicus]

Completely moddable.

Good to hear! By completely moddable... does this mean I can restrict certain traditions to only be visible to certain empires?

 

[Darustet]

This feature seems like a dlc feature. Is it?

Everything in these DDs are free, unless specifically stated otherwise.

 

[Melabranche]

Unity is an accumulative resource that increases each month, and is primarily gained through the construction of government buildings such as monuments, mausoleums and temples.

Whot about Materialist? Or this mean I can build Research Institute on each planet? Whot about collective? Purge other (and primitive) will give me something?

The cost of unlocking a Tradition depends on the size of your empire, as well as how internally stable it is. Unhappy factions, minority species and slaves all increase the cost of adoption

1 - How much increase? Because some buildings can be build multiple times on one planet, and some are restricted to one on empire.
2 - What is the "Size"? Number of planets? Population? Percent of galaxy? Systems we have? Everything?
3 - If you give us estate from EU IV, therefore, this time give us a option to destroy them. One ruler - One (maybe two) faction max.

Overall, small harmonious empires will unlock Traditions more quickly than large, expansionistic ones.

Define "harmonious". Because, if it's mean colsed border (please make it default), neutral Collective / F. Materialist, focused on research supremacy and slowly expanding their border (by research). Purging everyone who attack them or within their border - with no repercussion (well, that empire know what they are doing when they attack those psychopath). But trading with everyone, exchanging resources for new knowlege / they open border / "buying pops" for experiments / etc. Then, for my gameplay, it will be "harmonious".
And second, expansionistic ones will get these points slower, but they got expansion and / or supremacy tradition, which if will give cost reduction, then "tall" empire will be still way back. So... Can you say that one little thing? They have cost reduction for tradisions?

ps. "Purity" - how it's work with synth?
pss. What if we have very long game, and all tradition which we want, are full, then where we will spend these points?
psss. Still wait for info about some option to expand planets / space mega structure / ringworld construction / etc

 

[Tim_Ward]

@Wiz
Will any of the traditions lock out other traditions? I couldn't imagine Harmony and Purity working together for example (outside of Beyond Earth that is!)

The Harmony description doesn't say anything about xeno-inclusion....

 

[MrChoke]

I am all for new core concepts being added to the game. But will the AI be able to effectively deal with it as well? Time and time again with games, the AI plays catch up. This one included (though I did start with 1.2). I hope the AI will not get worse when this comes out.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Oooh, looked like some interesting stuff nonetheless.

 

[Cat Crusade]

I certainly wouldn't expect it early game- but by the time you have the territory and resources to waste a few tiles, it makes total sense to me that your capital world would become the heart of your civilization's culture. Bear in mind, tombs and gardens and such are something tied to autocratic governments- the sort liable to invest in vast vanity projects and shows of their might.

I doubt you can just infinitely spam unity statues- there's probably a small set of unity-boosting structures with different in-universe purposes.

Indeed, it makes sense in the context of an autocratic regime showing off. The culprit here might be the fact that it's unclear what these monuments actually produce. Someone here likened the resource to government bureaucracy, whereas the impression I'm getting from the description is more something akin to cultural developement. Also the other buildings have some realistically quantifiable product and monuments up until this point have worked to enhance the buildings and populace involved in some aspect of production or developement. But if the monument itself produces something somehow (I'm assuming they'll still require population for maintenance) then from a gameplay point of view it becomes viable to create specialized monument planets (if for instance we get a building or edict that enhances the planetary output of all monuments) a strategy that would make sense in game but realistically cultural developement can't be mandated in this sense in a top-down fashion of "we'll build all our culturally significant landmarks here" when those arise in a more periodic and spontaneous manner.

To sum up: if this system is to represent a kind of cultural developement, it would make more sense to encourage to disseminate monuments rather than focus them to at least simulate that the different planets have a bit of their own culture to them. If it's a system of governance then yes, a government hub is pretty sci-fi like and I don't see a huge problem with it (but seriously, government control monuments covering a whole planet as efficient instracture?)

 

[GamingHUD]

How to make tall empires possible

Step 1) Reduce POP growth by a factor of about 10

There you go!

I can see this panning out exactly the same way the research penalty did. Xenophilic or extensively gene modded species could overcome this anyway.

I am quite capable to read Unity is used to unlock traditions, and you gain (as per Wiz) most of these traditions fastest by not establishing such a tradition with your actions.

It is illogical to gain a Tradition by not engaging in anything which would actually be considered a traditional behaviour. More importantly, it is not good game-designing to arbitrary penalise a player for doing well.

How do you even define a player doing well in this context?

 

[keynes2.0]

Xenophilic or extensively gene modded species could overcome this anyway.

These could easily be balanced so they wouldn't.

 

[GamingHUD]

These could easily be balanced so they wouldn't.

Multi-species growth is already fairly balanced, though.

If nothing else, rapid breeder would be a more valuable pick in such a scenario. Which wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

[Gamengervi]

Even assuming that they didn't tie Traditions to existing ethics (which they may or may not have, since Traditions are apparently one way to encourage a change of empire Ethics), we do know that enacting Traditions counter to your populace's ethics will make them unhappy.

If you're a militant xenophobe empire, enacting a bunch of pacifist or xenophile Traditions in an attempt to pacify your population will probably have the exact oppposite effect.

Eh. I might of wrote it a bit strangely, but my point was if we are allowed to adopt traditions in direct opposition to our ethoi, then why are policies restricted as such. I assumed we couldn't adopt policies opposing our ethoi because such a thing would be realistically impossible, but traditions seem to contradict this idea.

 

[jalapen0]

incredible! Love it.

 

[tanny]

try to get about 5 victories and each ethic have focus too
I guess fanatic ethic is making your empire a main victory focus
other ethic is like a small bonus to help you through your journey
traits is like starting bonus you'll get

 

[scaper12123]

I'm intrigued to find out about how traditions will be balanced between small and large empires. Will larger empires even be able to adopt some new traditions, with how long it will likely take to do so? In terms of balance that would make sense.

 

[Bholder]

My only issue is that certain traditions obviously works better for certain ethoses, but that's probably by design.

Like if you go Domination, it would be useless to you unless you can make slaves.

 

[Equinity]

On that note, the only thing I am kind of disappointed in is the lack of exclusivity. I'm not sure how long it takes to adopt one complete tree so maybe the fact that there are only five traditions per tree are alright, but the fact you can adopt every tree sort of irks me. Because of that, the choice of which tradition to adopt is only short-term. We can always grab the other option later and, if we play long enough, eventually we will adopt all the traditions. I hope that in the future we can make more difficult choices when customizing our empires

It's also true of tech choices that they are only "short-term" because if you play long enough, will research everything. But they are still very difficult choices that affect your game profoundly.

I suspect it will be balanced so that it takes a hundred or more years or so to complete a tree, increasing as you unlock more, so I think there will be plenty of hard choices to make.

Anyway, in the long run, we're all dead.