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Stellaris Dev Diary #55 - Unity and Traditions

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we'll be talking about a new feature coming in the 1.5 'Banks' update called Traditions and Unity. As before, I can't talk about when Banks will be coming out, only that it's a while away and we have quite a few dev diaries to go through before we get there :)

Traditions and Unity
One thing we have mentioned as a big priority for Stellaris is adding more empire customization and more ability to roleplay diverse empires. We have also talked about our desire to allow for the existance of 'tall' empires. Traditions and Unity is a feature that aims to tackle both these topics by adding 7 new Tradition trees and a resource called Unity that is used to unlock them. 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. Unity is spent on adopting Tradition trees and purchasing individual Traditions. Each Tradition tree has a starter bonus, five unlockable bonuses and a finisher bonus that is gained once the entire tree is filled out.
2016_12_15_4.png


The seven Tradition trees are as follows:
Expansion: Focuses on growth through rapid colonization.
Domination: Focuses on maintaining control over your population and subjects.
Prosperity: Focuses on economic growth.
Harmony: Focuses on maintaining a happy and diverse population.
Supremacy: Focuses on growth through military conquest.
Purity: Focuses on strength through homogenity and dominion over other species.
Exploration: Focuses on exploration and scientific discovery.
2016_12_15_3.png


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 Traditions further, though these effects can be offset or even canceled out entirely by adopting the right Traditions for the empire you intend to build. Overall, small harmonious empires will unlock Traditions more quickly than large, expansionistic ones. 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.

You may have noticed a certain part of the Traditions screen that I have not yet mentioned in this dev diary. That's because it's actually the subject of the next dev diary! However, since the Christmas holidays are coming up, most of the Stellaris team will be away, so dev diaries will be on hiatus until January 12th. Tune back in then to find out all about the Ascension Perks and how you can use them to build the empire of your dreams.
 
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One of my concerns about traditions, based mostly on how Social Policies in Civ 5 played, is that, if you stayed small your nation would develop it's own unique flavour at a reasonable pace, but if you expanded you mostly stayed just another bland conqueror.

Ideally you don't want expanding to result in faster unity gain, it already does that for other resources, but I'm hoping that they get the balance right and that I don't have to worry about reaching a point where I'm gaining 1 tradition every century.
 
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Well, things are constantly changing during development, so it's hard to balance stuff before the whole thing is completed.
During my past few test games (usually done at home in my private time - yes, it's that much fun) both unity cost and unity gain fluctuated wildly. But rest assured, that we have a close eye on the pacing.
:)
 
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grekulf said:
What do you mean? That does not sound true. Unity resource works like designed, but a specific tradition tree was replaced and its concepts will be reused elsewhere.
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I'm very sorry. I wrote Unity, instead of Purity (one of the Traditions Tree in this DD). Should never write and listen to Stream at the same time. Again, sorry for misleading.
 
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akunohana said:
Indeed. We can't even figure out a decent food distribution on our own measly size 16 starter planet now. Why would it become easier over several planets?
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However large a planet may be, it is still just one point on a delivery route. Distribution on the planet itself would be up to the locals.
 
Ok, Traditions are fine, but I would rethink the Issue, that You have the Ability to unlock ALL Traditions, because It makes the "Customization" of an Empire a little Bit pointless ? ...

A possible Suggestion: "Upgradeable" Traditions, but with "Restrictions" ...
Currently, You have 35 different Traditions (7 (Tradition-Trees) * 5 (Traditions in each Tradition-Tree)) ...
Suggestion-Part 01: Each Tradition could have (for Example) 3 Levels (with better Modifiers), so that We have 105 Possibilities to unlock or to "upgrade" the Traditions ...
Suggestion-Part 02: You have the Permission/"Restriction" to unlock or to "upgrade" the Traditions (for Example) 30 Times ...
That gives You the Possibility to have (for Example) 2 (full) Tradition-Trees in Level 3, or 3 Tradition-Trees in Level 2, or 6 Tradition-Trees in Level 1 ...
That feels More like "Customization" or Not ?

Edit:
By the Way, it's an other Possibility to play "tall" or "wide".
 
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I have a few questions about gaining unity:
In the last stellaris stream Wiz showed off (among other things) the buildings you can place on a habitat.
For unity generation there were Leisure District, Symbol of Unity and Temple. Assuming Leisure District is the default unity building for Habitats, that leaves Temples and Symbols.

Now, in the stream Wir said Temples are for Spiritualists, but Symbols of Unity are also Spiritualist only (at least right now).
Was the "Symbol of Unity" Tech changed so that everyone can get it, or do other ethos get something else instead of Temples?
Because to me that looks like Spiritualists are A LOT better at gaining unity. Or is this intended?
After all if the (current) Spiritualist Ethic Divergence is changed into something similar, it will be easier for Spiritualists to get their pops into the loyalist faction, which means their pops will probably be happier on average. And if I understand Unity correctly, more happy pops also means cheaper traditions.

Secondly, in the stream we got to see all the traditions, and I noticed, that prosperity has a tradition to generate unity from "Energy Guild" and "Energy Nexus".
Wouldn't this mean, that Prosperity (with extra unity generation), Harmony (happier pops and less ethically diverse), and expansion (reduced planets penalty and tradition adoption) are very good first picks for a tradition, simply because they make it easier to get even more traditions later on?

@Wiz is there any chance we can get a bit more information on this?

p.s. In the Starfish stream it seemed like slaver empires (i.e.authoritarian empires) are at a disadvantage, when it comes to traditions. It's obviously difficult to tell from just 1h gameplay, but looking at our own history it seems to me that authoritarian governments are more reliant on tradition than individualist free societies.
Maybe exempt slaves from the tradition cost calculations altogether?
 
Me_ said:
That's a pretty nice Civ 5 feature there.

A bit sarcastic, but I liked it in Civ 5, and I think it's a good idea.
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I liked it in Civ 5 too. A lot. I suppose in stellaris, we might have time to unlock them all.
 
Wiz said:
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we'll be talking about a new feature coming in the 1.5 'Banks' update called Traditions and Unity. As before, I can't talk about when Banks will be coming out, only that it's a while away and we have quite a few dev diaries to go through before we get there :)

Traditions and Unity
One thing we have mentioned as a big priority for Stellaris is adding more empire customization and more ability to roleplay diverse empires. We have also talked about our desire to allow for the existance of 'tall' empires. Traditions and Unity is a feature that aims to tackle both these topics by adding 7 new Tradition trees and a resource called Unity that is used to unlock them. 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. Unity is spent on adopting Tradition trees and purchasing individual Traditions. Each Tradition tree has a starter bonus, five unlockable bonuses and a finisher bonus that is gained once the entire tree is filled out.
View attachment 224377

The seven Tradition trees are as follows:
Expansion: Focuses on growth through rapid colonization.
Domination: Focuses on maintaining control over your population and subjects.
Prosperity: Focuses on economic growth.
Harmony: Focuses on maintaining a happy and diverse population.
Supremacy: Focuses on growth through military conquest.
Purity: Focuses on strength through homogenity and dominion over other species.
Exploration: Focuses on exploration and scientific discovery.
View attachment 224376

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 Traditions further, though these effects can be offset or even canceled out entirely by adopting the right Traditions for the empire you intend to build. Overall, small harmonious empires will unlock Traditions more quickly than large, expansionistic ones. 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.

You may have noticed a certain part of the Traditions screen that I have not yet mentioned in this dev diary. That's because it's actually the subject of the next dev diary! However, since the Christmas holidays are coming up, most of the Stellaris team will be away, so dev diaries will be on hiatus until January 12th. Tune back in then to find out all about the Ascension Perks and how you can use them to build the empire of your dreams.
Click to expand...
So Civ 5 culture points and policies? Great system there, great system here. Looking forward to it.
 
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