Hi folks!

Today, we moved into our brand new offices so things have been a little hectic in Paradox land. The new building is great, but I will always miss the spectacular view of Stockholm from the 24th floor of "Skrapan"...

No rest for the wicked though, so let's talk a bit about the role that characters play in Stellaris. First off, this game is not character based like Crusader Kings, so do not expect a complex web of rivalries and friendships to develop between rulers and leaders with dynamic portraits and genetics. In Stellaris, the real stars of the show are the Pops, with characters acting more like the advisors, generals and admirals in Europa Universalis (though they do have certain personality traits that can affect what options they get in scripted events, for example.) With that out of the way, let's examine the different types of characters:

Scientists can be put in charge of one of the three research departments (Physics, Society or Engineering.) They can also be assigned to captain the Science Ships you use to explore the galaxy. These are all topics for upcoming dev diaries... Suffice it to say that their skill levels and personalities will have clear effects on their tasks. They are also valid ruler candidates in technocratic societies (government types).

Governors can either lord it over a single planet or an entire sector (more on sectors later). They are a very useful way of keeping the populace happy, or increasing the efficiency of a rich and powerful planet even more. Governors are valid ruler candidates under many government types.

Admirals, though they are not mandatory, can give a clear edge to your military fleets, which is pretty straightforward. They are valid ruler candidates in militaristic societies.

Generals lead your armies in defense of your planets against invasion, or when invading the planets of your enemies. Like Admirals, they are valid ruler candidates in militaristic societies.

Rulers give bonuses to entire empires, and, since other leader types can be elected ruler, they typically have a secondary skillset as well. Ruler type characters can also lead Factions; such characters are not recruited by you and cannot be ordered around. Factions and their leaders are, again, something we'll cover in detail later on.

Most leader types are recruited using Influence (a type of diplomatic "currency" in the game) and there is a cap on the total number of leaders you can employ, so you will need to weigh your need for Admirals against that for competent Governors, etc. Although all leaders tend to gain experience and become more accomplished over time, they do not live forever. The day will come when they perish and will need to be replaced…

Now, as you remember from last week’s diary, there are about a hundred different alien race portraits in the game. Thus, we initially felt that lesser leaders should not have actual portraits, because we could not possibly produce enough of them to provide the requisite variety. But then, the artists started to experiment with different backgrounds and clothes, which thankfully proved sufficient to allow all leaders to show a portrait.

The different types of leaders all use different sets of clothes. This helps increases variety, but also reinforces their role, with admirals having a militaristic uniform, governors being more casually dressed, and scientist being a bit more techy. Clothes are shared between some of the more similar species, because creating five unique apparels for each species is just an enormous amount of work. (Not all species wear clothes though; it would be odd if this was every alien race’s custom.)

I expect that humans will be by far the most popular race to play. Therefore, they are getting some special attention with different ethnicities, genders and hair styles. There is nothing stopping modders from doing the same for other races, of course! For example, the system could easily be used for other things, like an insect race where you have a multi tiered system, with one appearance for the ruler, a completely different morphology for your Pops, and a third for your leader characters...

Until next week, take care all!

 

[henzington]

Will there be tech to lengthen the life of leaders?

 

[Alexander Seil]

Actually, can we have rulers/leaders of a non-founder race? There is a suggestion in the previous DD that empires and races are not fused together. Presumably, a representative democracy ought to be able to elect an alien lizard if alien lizards come to comprise 80% of the non-slave population?

 

[misterbean]

I'm sad to inform you that the Avariel did not make it

Waterdeep can into space.

 

[Shimohi]

-diplomatic "currency"
-they do not live forever

I really hope it's not like EU4 in that regard, too much RNG.

 

[MagicMchobo]

We will construct the Golden Toilet, the Emperor will live forever!

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Can we mod specific characters into the game?

Can we make characters biologically immortal?

Because I don't know if I can enjoy this game if Mecha Hitler can't rule over his Thousand Year Reich.

 

[Velorian]

Io is the closest Galilean moon to Jupiter, and Europa is the second closest, not the other way around!!!!!!!!1111eleven!!



If you ever forget the order, it's easy to tell based on their physical properties. Io is so volcanic because its proximity to Jupiter creates internal tidal forces that keep its interior hot. Europa also experiences tidal forces, but to a much lesser degree as it's farther out, so they only warm up the moon enough to create a subsurface ocean, rather than magma.

You can read more about the Galilean moons here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons

Whoops..

 

[aitaituo]

The romans subjects and citizens were of different ethnicities, but the ruling class was the white roman aristocracy. Same thing with the British empire: they had territories all over the world but the british nobility were the "leaders".
I only want the portraits and the other settings to be consistent with this, but for now doesn't seem to be much depth in the empire options.

It's quite a bit more complicated than the ethnic composition of the Patricians, who were not always even Italians at any rate. There were numerous provincial, bureaucratic, and military offices filled by non-Roman subject peoples (peregrini), by Roman citizens of foreign ancestry, and eventually by flatout foreign nationals. This doesn't include lesser polities that were subsumed as municipia, socii, foederati, laeti, or other treaty, which were generally run by locals. Later in the Empire, it was not unusual for citizens of non-Roman ancestry to hold the highest offices including the Emperorship itself.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Doomdark, the game continues to look brilliant . Quick question if easy/appropriate to answer - Is there some kind of scaling of leader availability with size of empire as well as tech?

 

[TheDungen]

They're fine movies, I just don't think they're Star Trek movies.

Exactly my point

Depends on what you mean by white. They were at least as white as modern Greeks. As Scandinavians? Probably not.

Well actually if the romans were italians (as in the tribal people) rather than etruscans (this seems likely considering the ligual group of latin) their closest relatives on the indoeuropean tree would not be greeks but celts. Now they'd probably been mixing with greeks and etruscans (though truth is we have no idea what they looked like) for centuries or even millenia since the celtoitalian tribes split into celtic and italanians so again it's hard to say.
But it's not impossible that it's roman imperialism around the midditerrean that is responsible for the modern complextion of the italians, and the first romans may have been significantly more north (or rather west) european in appearence.

It should be noted that amongst european indoeuropean peoples the greeks are the odd ones out, scientists are of diffrent minds if they migrated t greece south from europe or west from asia minor. The latter which would make the ancestors of the greeks more closely related to the persians and even indians than to other europeans, of curse later mixing not withstnading (The indian indoeuropeans mixed with whomever lived in their parts of india before them, the persians with previous peoples in persia, the europeans with the earlier europeans and the greek regardless which branch they hail from mixed with both the persian and european branches of the indoeuropean peoples to such an extent that any attmpts to track this gentically today is almost impossible, and aside from understanding how people migrated there's really little point in it).

 

[kreissig]

Exactly my point


Well actually if the romans were italians (as in the tribal people) rather than etruscans (this seems likely considering the ligual group of latin) their closest relatives on the indoeuropean tree would not be greeks but celts. Now they'd probably been mixing with greeks and etruscans (though truth is we have no idea what they looked like) for centuries or even millenia since the celtoitalian tribes split into celtic and italanians so again it's hard to say.
But it's not impossible that it's roman imperialism around the midditerrean that is responsible for the modern complextion of the italians, and the first romans may have been significantly more north (or rather west) european in appearence.

It should be noted that amongst european indoeuropean peoples the greeks are the odd ones out, scientists are of diffrent minds if they migrated t greece south from europe or west from asia minor. The latter which would make them closer relted to the persians and even indians than to other europeans, of curse later mixing not withstnading (The indian indoeuropeans mixed with whomever lived in their parts of india, the persians with previous peoples in persia, the europeans with the earlier europeans and th greek regardless which branch they hail from mixed with both the persian and european branches of the indoeuropean peoples to such an extent that any attmpts to track this gentically today is almost impossible, and aside from understanding how people migrated there's really little point in it).

Excellent points made. I would add though that written evidence suggests what a few Romans and Greeks "looked like" (famous ones), texts that describe blonde and red hair. The point being that we are not totally in the dark.

Addendum: Sources can be found by those who seek them. I will not provide them, as I am not publishing here.

 

[Ashantai]

I'm sad to inform you that the Avariel did not make it

So no space elves?

There goes all my hopes and dreams....

 

[Aleks S. I]

Anyone have any idea what "inhibition release" could refer to? Also I'm seeing the humans here have gotten into genetic engineering, which could be exciting. (Daleks anyone?) Also seeing that "space combat" is a doctrine choice is encouraging that "planetary combat" will also be one. Suggesting that planetary combat will be a viable option.

 

[Wing_008]

Well I don't know about Rome having "quite a lot" of none white emperors. In fact, I can only think of one that was definitely not white, and that would be Philip I (e.g Philip the Arab). He had a Syrian father and an unknown mother, thus he probably had a darker skin color.

I don't know where everyone gets that Septimius Severus wasn't white. Maybe people think this because he was born in North Africa. However, by Septimius' time almost half of the North African populace was of Greek or Roman descent. Septimius' mother was Roman and we only know that his father was of Punic descent. This really doesn't tell us his father's skin color since a person of "Punic" ancestry could have a skin color ranging from quite dark (think Arab) to very light (basically European). Most probably looked like modern day Jews, meaning that we would probably consider them white. We don't know Septimius's skin color, but he was perhaps only slightly darker than the average Italian.

Sorry for the off topic post, but I had never seen someone state that the Romans had quite a lot of non-white emperors.

as a Libyan, i can tell you, that by what we were taught in history, that he was born in Liptus Magna in modern day Libya, and Libya even though is an Arab nation is really a mix of ancient civilisations and native libyan inhabitants that are known today as berbers (they inhabit North Africa in general but thats not the point), and so even though his Monument in libya today doesnt really make it clear, how his skin colour was, or his facial features, its pretty much guaranteed that he was, just like everybody else at the time, a mix of Roman and North African decent from his father (with all the ethnicities relevant at the time), as well a remnant of phoenician, Greek, Numidian, Tbu which are black, and a small Arab blood as well, because libya has a small population throughout history, these small number were significant never the less, and our society was very open in the coastal cities, so people inter-married with people with other cultures.
its also noteworthy that at the time, Libya was an actual part of rome, not a protectorate or a vassal state, so there was a huge influx of immigrants going both ways, further melting the pot.
btw he was known to hold deep affection to his native city, and libya in general, and he built a massive amount of infrastructure in the region, earning the eternal love of the inhabitants of the time.
sorry for the long post, i guess i got excited that you guys mentioned my country, since you usually talk either about Germany invading England or planetary bombardment , and here a pic of him today in his dear old Libya:

 

[misterbean]

Anyone have any idea what "inhibition release" could refer to?

I think it might mean a society where people are governed by their emotions and desires, without any inhibitions set by morality.

 

[FelixG]

Well now we KNOW the game is Science Fantasy. United Nations of Earth, hah! As if the UN is anything more than a joke and could ever into space.

Awesome dev diary though! I hope we can have mono-ethnic societies for humans since they are getting so much extra work put into them. I would totally love to do a play through where the primary race is an arabic freemen dune inspired empire.

 

[TheDungen]

I think it might mean a society where people are governed by their emotions and desires, without any inhibitions set by morality.

Free love society was also along the lines I was thinking.

 

[Velorian]

Well now we KNOW the game is Science Fantasy. United Nations of Earth, hah! As if the UN is anything more than a joke and could ever into space.

Awesome dev diary though! I hope we can have mono-ethnic societies for humans since they are getting so much extra work put into them. I would totally love to do a play through where the primary race is an arabic freemen dune inspired empire.

United Nations of Earth would be the "UNE" not the "UN" we know. It'd be a different organization, probably not finalized before the threat of aliens bands people together.

 

[FelixG]

United Nations of Earth would be the "UNE" not the "UN" we know. It'd be a different organization, probably not finalized before the threat of aliens bands people together.

I cant help but feel that anyone putting together a new group would want to distance themselves as much as possible from that joke of an organization. Even if you wanted to keep the United theme there are better options.

 

[Gaussia]

So that grant brewster dude is leading the engineering reserch on bahalf of the entire Human space empire. At an age when most people havn't acctually atained their engineering degree (in our current world).