Stellaris Dev Diary #55 - Unity and Traditions

[purplegamer]

This sounds awesome!

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Im pretty sure the intent is to not be able to get every tradition except for very rare situations

Yeah.

My feeling is that they're probably something you can turn on and off- they'd need to be for the "use them to encourage a shift in empire-wide ethos" mechanic- and that different trees are in places mutually exclusive. Taking the Purity Traditions about enslaving aliens will go down fine if you have a lot of xenophobe pops, but if you then also take the xenophile-friendly Traditions from another tree, those same pops are going to be upset and probably cancel out whatever bonus you'd be getting.

It's entirely possible that by the late game, every empire could theoretically have every Tradition unlocked- but they can't use them all at once, they'd need to specialize in the ones that benefit their empire and don't turn it against itself.

 

[Fawks]

An early version of the Traditions was accidentally translated and included in the 1.4 Russian translation. Since nothing there is final I don't want this thread to descend into a bunch of arguments about the balance of numbers that are likely to change anyway, so I banned discussion of it here. You can look up the info on the Stellaris reddit if you want to check it out for yourself.

I can get behind this. It would have perhaps been better to lead with a post like the one above than a direct threat in all caps, though. :/

EDIT: Just tossing in my 2 cents - Traditions seem cool and I'm looking forward to them. I personally don't mind that they seem lifted from Civ, if anything even more good mechanics could be lifted from other games to make Stellaris better: use what works, regardless of where the ideas came from. (I also agree with the others here that Civ lifted some stuff from your games recently, and fair is fair o_0 )

 

[fizikus]

Nice mechanic! However, why not use the EU4 system, where at start each empire would get a random set of national ideas, that can be acquired by unlocking these traditions? That would help roleplaying, diversity, etc

 

[cybrxkhan]

Yes, of course.

Thank you!

 

[Te. Kenzo]

It's similar to EUIV ideas, also how this should favourite tall empires? It's good to don't use precious resource slots to build unity monuments? Also if I have a tradition for expansionism, instead to be taller it's not better to burn my rivals colonizing more quickly?

 

[OBRkenobi]

The hype is real!

 

[Orinsul]

Will they be reversible at a cost? Like in EU3 or permanent like EU4?

 

[Tvarog]

I hope it will be grate mid-game mechanics, because now mid-game is a little bit booring. Building some back story if well implemented could do miracles.

 

[runrun]

"Unity" is the resource that lets you buy traditions. It isn't a tradition itself. You accumulate Unity over time, with a few ways to increase it based on structures and certain unlocked Traditions. You can unlock traditions by spending Unity, and the cost to unlock traditions increases based on multiple factors- including how far you've spread yourself across the galaxy (because a larger empire is less unified).

Individualistic conception of things. The gaia civilization by isaac asimov forms a totally unified "galaxia".
gaia is one, gaia is everything. gaia is peaceful. no purge, no war to conquer galaxy
My only regret in this game is to not be able to extand psionism to built an empire like that.
psionism is like stargate, it s a discovery. i see it like a trait like 2nd fundation.

 

[CaptainBinary]

Ascension Perks, Oooo tantalizing.

 

[jose2534]

@Wiz I have a question:

Is there any other ways to burn unity rather than purchasing traditions?
Because I can see a moment way in the late game when an empire, AI or player controlled, has so much Unity that has to expend it in a tradition or just have it there doing nothing, and lets suppose that that tradition is of the opposite ethos, obviously I will not want, nor the AI, unlock that. Or are we going to have an AI empire that goes buying all the traditions until there is nothing in the late game? Having because of these some Fanatic Xenophiles that, suddenly, go on and complete the "Purity" traditions because there was no other way to expend the new resource.
Or are we going to have some sort of "edicts" to burn the excess of unity, or it is going to be in the red more often than in the green? (I like the idea of being a heavy unity producer, a really concentrated spiritualist nation for example)
Or is there going to be a really big difference in price after each tradition is purchase, making it almost impossible to complete a third or four tradition?
Thank you for your time and keep up with the good work

 

[Daimonin]

@Wiz A question on the pop ethos change for 1.5

Yeah I know this subject was the previous diary, but this one is current so:
Will the populations ethos drift take into consideration neighboring empires? Example, if I drop a colony very far from my own militaristic empires core, but right next to a pacifist empires home planet, will the pops in that colony be "pulled" towards the pacifist ethos, since the pacifist empire is much closer to them then the rest of mine?

 

[mergele]

A cliffhanger on a DD, really?

 

[Xoatl]

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.

I have to say that traditions should be restricted based on governing ethics. But your governing ethics may change over time based on who gets into power and possibly as a result of powerful factions (CK2 style where factions with a certain degree of relative strength ask for a shift in one of the three slots of governing ethics, this too would be restricted by your government type, so certain factions would be more likely to start a rebellion for government change in order to continue shifting the ethics change they want). This way if your xenophile government (with harmony traditions) changes to xenophobe the new xenophobe POPs get a happiness penalty for having harmony traditions unlocked. However you can refund all of the Harmony levels (and lock harmony again) for some of the unity points. There would be traditions that are open because of an absence of an ethic that may change fairly early in the game as a result. This would leave it open for the player and possibly the AI if they can evaluate the pros/cons correctly. So you might want to keep the harmony traditions your empire picked up before it became a xenophobe slaver because you have several integrated species you want to keep happy despite the happiness penalty to other POPs. Or you could choose to refund them and go for other traditions.

It's a tough call though, I feel the direct rip of social policies is shallow and lacking something. Perhaps it should be based on actions, enslaving alien POPs give a small unity discount on domination traditions. The active traditions may also influence ethic changes, avoiding some tradition choices and going deeper in others would lower or boost ethic attractions.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I have to say that traditions should be restricted based on governing ethics.

As per the OP:

Which Traditions you unlock also has a significant impact on the ethics of your population, and so can be a useful tool to either strengthen your existing empire ethics or further a planned empire-wide shift towards a different set of ethics altogether.

Which implies you can take Traditions counter to your populace's ethics. It'll just make them really unhappy until they're made to change those ethics based on all influencing factors- so from what we know, you could have a VERY strongly pacifist empire, and taking warmonger Traditions might not be enough to push those pacifist pops over, but taking the Traditions as part of a larger effort to encourage the pops to shift would be viable.

 

[I am Sovereign]

Will they be reversible at a cost? Like in EU3 or permanent like EU4?

Good question.
I hope @Wiz will answer it.

I would like to see them reversible for some high costs of course.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Wiz . A quality addition imo (although I wouldn't say it was ripped from Civ 5 - while obviously related to similar ideas in other games (not a bad thing at all), they look a bit more like EU4 idea groups to me in terms of how they work (although still not the same, even with no knowledge of how the Ascension Perks work). Lots of potential for these - if they work well, having more than seven could be a good thing.

There are other things to life than work. Even when your job is as great as mine.

It's our fault for being fans of a game developer living in an Egalitarian, rather than Authoritarian, nation . Hope you all have a great break, it's been a pretty big 2016 at Paradox!

 

[Gornova]

May I suggest a "Knowledge tradition" ? Feels like playing Psilon from Moo2

This tradition will focus a race only on technological/social/engineering advancement separated from exploration

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The same Wiz that also said this, I assume?


The fact is that you're arguing from a baseless set of assumptions, namely that empire size is the only/most significant factor in unlocking traditions, with *no* knowledge on the actual balance of it. A large empire doing lots of whatever Supremacy actions increase their Unity gain may very well be able to keep up with or surpass a small isolationistic empire. Hell, as far as we know the very first Tradition in the Supremacy tree might as well remove the cost increase for planet size or pop size or whatever metric they've decided to use to measure empire size. The phrase you quoted is talking about "overall", and in that case it is just fine.

While size won't be the only factor, if a large empire can get more unity than a small empire than the system has pretty much failed in its goals.