I think I've found a way to rebalance unity, perks and techs.

[Cat_Fuzz]

UPDATE:

I've released the alpha here:

Unit_Tech Dependence

Would be great to get your thoughts on it, or feedback on any potential issues / suggestions.



ORIGINAL POST BELOW:

I've spent today crafting a mod that tries to readdress the balance between traditions and tech, and so far it seems to be working well.

The TL;DR is I've locked all techs related to bonuses in each tech tree (and some thematic ones) to only become available for research once the tradition is fully adopted, along with tying certain ascension perks to particular tradition trees to balance out the tradition tree selection.

In detail, each tree is associated with related tech from tier 2 onwards (with some minor exceptions). For example, all tier 2 tech related to research in all three tech trees now must have the discovery tree fully unlocked before they appear as a tech card to chose from. Likewise tier 2 tech relating to colonisation, empire management, admin and starbase cap are tied to completing the Expansion tree.

In addition, ascension perks are tied to completed trees, so with Expansion, you have 'Interstellar Dominion', 'Imperial Perogative' and 'Grasp the Void' as the only available perks if this is your first completed tree, with others unlocked as more trees are completed.

What this does is restrict what areas of tech are available to you over the entire course of the game, and makes choosing which traditions you complete first have more weight with your overall strategy.

What's more, the AI has these same restrictions also, so empires are more distinct as time goes on, and perks can radically alter a neighbouring empires composition as they acquire new trees.

Discovery is an interesting one, as it gives you access to research techs in all fields, and is generally useful, but you then put yourself behind in other useful techs, like upgraded alloys and CG (Prosperity, which only unlocks Arcology projects, a mid/late game perk), and having access to tech boosts without knowing other useful tech may not work for you.

I'm still playtesting this before I release it, but it does make for an interesting rebalance of tech and unity, which radically changed from 2.6 onwards, and does make it feel like there's more strategy on offer, with the added bonus of making empires more distinct.

EDIT: For those interested, here are the tradition trees and their unlocks:

EXPANSION:
• Empire Management (excl Production and Bliss) Society
• Bureaucracy Society
• Self-Aware Colony Physics
• Starbase Society

PERKS:
Imperial Perogative
Interstellar Dominion
Grasp the Void

DOMINATION:
• Advanced Tile Blocker Society
• Social Engineering Society
• Leader Enhancement Society
• World Designation Society
• Districts Engineering

PERKS:
Executive Vigor
Mastery of Nature

PROSPERITY:
• Empire Management (Production) Society
• Industry (excl. Strat. Res.) Physics
• Industry Engineering
• Mining Engineering
• Planetary Construction Engineering

PERKS:
Arcology Project
Hive Worlds
Machine Worlds

HARMONY:
• Empire Management (Bliss) Society
• Amenities Society
• Unity Society

PERKS:
One Vision
Shared Destiny

SUPREMACY:
• Army Organisation Society
• Campaigns Society
• Fleet Organization Society
• Ship Upgrades Engineering

PERKS:
Eternal Vigilance
Galactic Force Projection
Galactic Contenders

DIPLOMACY:
• Trade Society
• Diplomacy Society
• Habitability Society

PERKS:
Universal Transactions
Xeno-Compatibility
Defenders of the Galaxy

DISCOVERY:
• Meta-Research Society
• Research Physics
• Exploration Physics
• Research Engineering

PERKS:
Technological Ascendancy
Transcendent Learning
Enigmatic Engineering

MISCELLANEOUS PERKS:
Voidborne
Consecrated Worlds
Nihilistic Aquisition
World Shaper
Master Builders
Colossus
Galactic Wonders
3x Ascenion Paths (Bio, Psi, Syn)

 

[arosenberger14]

It's a good idea, I've always wished there were more branching tech routes you could go down to shape your empire! now if only it wasn't trivial to fill out both the tech tree and all traditions by mid-game...

 

[Spaceception]

This is a neat concept, I'd like to try it out. It sounds like a good way to differentiate traditions while keeping a vanilla feel. Something I like about Traditional thinking, and Traditions+ (though I've only looked at that one so far).

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

It's a good idea, I've always wished there were more branching tech routes you could go down to shape your empire! now if only it wasn't trivial to fill out both the tech tree and all traditions by mid-game...

Cheers both! Funnily enough I'm in the process of finding the sweet spot in terms of additional tradition cost, plus one or two techs not quite working properly.

 

[Altruist]

Am I overlooking them or could it be that a few perks are missing? For example: Eng.Evolution, Evol.Mastery.

Well, it certainly looks highly interesting...
and needs a hell of a lot play-testing for fine-tuning
but that's ok.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Am I overlooking them or could it be that a few perks are missing? For example: Eng.Evolution, Evol.Mastery.

Well, it certainly looks highly interesting...
and needs a hell of a lot play-testing for fine-tuning
but that's ok.

Nice catch! These are in the Misc Perks category (aka are not tied to a tradition tree)

 

[Eladrin]

Very neat concept.

 

[Archael90]

Its good idea, but needs some tweaks. Like more traditions so not all could be taken, and thus not all thechs would be researched.
But i like it.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Its good idea, but needs some tweaks. Like more traditions so not all could be taken, and thus not all thechs would be researched.
But i like it.

I think it's okay to unlock all traditions after some time, but agree it's too quick right now. Remember with this system, tech is now dependent on unlocked tradition trees, so you wouldn't want to entirely lock out these for some empires. The aim is to determine what is unlocked and when.

I like to keep it vanilla also and not add anything new, so I'm trying to balance the unity progression so that it would take around 50 years after the end game crisis shows up to get all traditions with an average unity build.

Very neat concept.

Thanks!
(Senpai noticed me!)

 

[KingAlamar]

This idea isn't original HOWEVER your proposal seems to be a cut above some of the other proposals that I've seen. In Isolation I would support your proposal HOWEVER this would likely create some issues IMHO -- specifically it would REDUCE the variability that you take Tradition Trees even more than what we have today.

With the above example I can pretty much GUARANTEE a near exact order that I'd take everything with even less variability than I have now to take things just because I either NEED certain techs OR APs -- at least with the way I play the game.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Remember with this system, tech is now dependent on unlocked tradition trees, so you wouldn't want to entirely lock out these for some empires.

No, that's... that's exactly what we want.

Making empires meaningfully different requires they not all eventually have the same capabilities. "What order they unlock techs in" doesn't actually matter much in that regard, it's far more impactful if they just straight up can't unlock certain techs.

 

[prometheusdown]

I've spent today crafting a mod that tries to readdress the balance between traditions and tech, and so far it seems to be working well.

The TL;DR is I've locked all techs related to bonuses in each tech tree (and some thematic ones) to only become available for research once the tradition is fully adopted, along with tying certain ascension perks to particular tradition trees to balance out the tradition tree selection.

In detail, each tree is associated with related tech from tier 2 onwards (with some minor exceptions). For example, all tier 2 tech related to research in all three tech trees now must have the discovery tree fully unlocked before they appear as a tech card to chose from. Likewise tier 2 tech relating to colonisation, empire management, admin and starbase cap are tied to completing the Expansion tree.

In addition, ascension perks are tied to completed trees, so with Expansion, you have 'Interstellar Dominion', 'Imperial Perogative' and 'Grasp the Void' as the only available perks if this is your first completed tree, with others unlocked as more trees are completed.

What this does is restrict what areas of tech are available to you over the entire course of the game, and makes choosing which traditions you complete first have more weight with your overall strategy.

What's more, the AI has these same restrictions also, so empires are more distinct as time goes on, and perks can radically alter a neighbouring empires composition as they acquire new trees.

Discovery is an interesting one, as it gives you access to research techs in all fields, and is generally useful, but you then put yourself behind in other useful techs, like upgraded alloys and CG (Prosperity, which only unlocks Arcology projects, a mid/late game perk), and having access to tech boosts without knowing other useful tech may not work for you.

I'm still playtesting this before I release it, but it does make for an interesting rebalance of tech and unity, which radically changed from 2.6 onwards, and does make it feel like there's more strategy on offer, with the added bonus of making empires more distinct.

EDIT: For those interested, here are the tradition trees and their unlocks:

EXPANSION:
• Empire Management (excl Production and Bliss) Society
• Bureaucracy Society
• Self-Aware Colony Physics
• Starbase Society

PERKS:
Imperial Perogative
Interstellar Dominion
Grasp the Void

DOMINATION:
• Advanced Tile Blocker Society
• Social Engineering Society
• Leader Enhancement Society
• World Designation Society
• Districts Engineering

PERKS:
Executive Vigor
Mastery of Nature

PROSPERITY:
• Empire Management (Production) Society
• Industry (excl. Strat. Res.) Physics
• Industry Engineering
• Mining Engineering
• Planetary Construction Engineering

PERKS:
Arcology Project
Hive Worlds
Machine Worlds

HARMONY:
• Empire Management (Bliss) Society
• Amenities Society
• Unity Society

PERKS:
One Vision
Shared Destiny

SUPREMACY:
• Army Organisation Society
• Campaigns Society
• Fleet Organization Society
• Ship Upgrades Engineering

PERKS:
Eternal Vigilance
Galactic Force Projection
Galactic Contenders

DIPLOMACY:
• Trade Society
• Diplomacy Society
• Habitability Society

PERKS:
Universal Transactions
Xeno-Compatibility
Defenders of the Galaxy

DISCOVERY:
• Meta-Research Society
• Research Physics
• Exploration Physics
• Research Engineering

PERKS:
Technological Ascendancy
Transcendent Learning
Enigmatic Engineering

MISCELLANEOUS PERKS:
Voidborne
Consecrated Worlds
Nihilistic Aquisition
World Shaper
Master Builders
Colossus
Galactic Wonders
3x Ascenion Paths (Bio, Psi, Syn)

I like the concept of locking tech and accession perks behind tradition trees. Imo though you can go even further. Rework the trees to be more powerful, but increase their unity costs and limit the number of trees an empire can take. Instead of eventually taking all 8 you could take, say, 4 trees. That would help in roleplaying and make different empires feel different.

I know you don't like the idea of locking portions of the tech tree, but imo it's a good idea that will make different empires feel more different. It also makes sense thematically. If an empire wasn't focused on prosperity it makes sense they wouldn't do as much research into extracting more energy and minerals as more prosperity focused empire. You would have to make the more powerful trees very powerful because they would have to compensate for the lost tradition trees and the lost tech.

Good idea overall though. Unity as an abstract resource needed to be more important and I think this solves that very well. It forces everyone, including materialistic empires to actually care about how unified their empire is. It also rewards unified focused empires.

 

[Gilbert95]

This is interesting. Where do tradition swps fit in, like Adaptability in place of Diplomacy?

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

This is interesting. Where do tradition swps fit in, like Adaptability in place of Diplomacy?

Their trees mostly deal with tech that is a swap for regular empires, differences being the last two habitability techs are now exclusively for adaptability trees, along with tomb world habitability, and versatility is locking off the robomodding techs for machine empires.

This idea isn't original HOWEVER your proposal seems to be a cut above some of the other proposals that I've seen. In Isolation I would support your proposal HOWEVER this would likely create some issues IMHO -- specifically it would REDUCE the variability that you take Tradition Trees even more than what we have today.

With the above example I can pretty much GUARANTEE a near exact order that I'd take everything with even less variability than I have now to take things just because I either NEED certain techs OR APs -- at least with the way I play the game.

I'll guess that discovery, supremacy and prosperity will be first, right?

I think this is still true now because these are tied to the most important techs, research, war and growth respectively.

One thing that has happened with this however is that some techs have a soft lock on them. Take Arcologies. They are unlocked through the prosperity tree, but they require the 'Anti-Gravity Engineering', which is currently locked behind domination. There's a few cases like this and so far they add nicely to the theme of this.

No, that's... that's exactly what we want.

Making empires meaningfully different requires they not all eventually have the same capabilities. "What order they unlock techs in" doesn't actually matter much in that regard, it's far more impactful if they just straight up can't unlock certain techs.

I know what you mean and to be fair, I'm still testing things out. My fear with entirely locking features is due to the AI. If an AI doesn't unlock say Supremacy in the first three trees, it's going to be pretty disadvantaged than those who do if unity costs are scaled to make accessing all of them impossible. Plus at the minute, unity costs have been changed so they are roughly completed a little after end game year. Bear in mind that techs unlocked by trees are only available after they are fully unlocked, meaning some tier 2 techs can only BEGIN to be researched after 2400.

But if people are okay with these sorts of imbalances, I can try another version where more unity is required for traditions and see how it plays out.

@prometheusdown I've increased unity costs already so that only Unity focused empires like fanatic spiritualist can get to all tree unlocks before the end game year.

 

[KingAlamar]

One thing that has happened with this however is that some techs have a soft lock on them. Take Arcologies. They are unlocked through the prosperity tree, but they require the 'Anti-Gravity Engineering', which is currently locked behind domination. There's a few cases like this and so far they add nicely to the theme of this.

That's actually one of the EXACT problems I was thinking of when reviewing your proposal and what I don't like as it further reduces the variability of how I would like to play the game.

Specifically with my playstyle [in the current game] I like to run "small" empires and then leverage Arcologies pretty early so I can build up a large enough fleet to be ready for the Khan. Basically I don't care much for the "fine-detailed-planet-management" play loop we currently have so I try to keep the number of planets I manage to a relatively small number [7-10]. Without allowances for that play style I would likely quit the game if other significant changes weren't made.

Note: The above playstyle also keeps both unity and tech progression somewhat "reasonable" as you likely won't have enough of anything to completely wreck the game.

So while I like your thoughts in isolation I don't like how things would unfold if your ideas were dropped in without making SIGNIFICANT changes in other areas.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

That's actually one of the EXACT problems I was thinking of when reviewing your proposal and what I don't like as it further reduces the variability of how I would like to play the game.

Specifically with my playstyle [in the current game] I like to run "small" empires and then leverage Arcologies pretty early so I can build up a large enough fleet to be ready for the Khan. Basically I don't care much for the "fine-detailed-planet-management" play loop we currently have so I try to keep the number of planets I manage to a relatively small number [7-10]. Without allowances for that play style I would likely quit the game if other significant changes weren't made.

Note: The above playstyle also keeps both unity and tech progression somewhat "reasonable" as you likely won't have enough of anything to completely wreck the game.

So while I like your thoughts in isolation I don't like how things would unfold if your ideas were dropped in without making SIGNIFICANT changes in other areas.

I see your point and it's possible that this could screw with it a bit, but without knowing specific details to your playstyle, I would rush the domination tree, followed by prosperity and then the discovery tree.

Domination would give you access to the 'Anti Grav' tech that's required to use Arcologies. By the time your closer to researching this, you will have the Prosperity tree unlocked, giving you access to Arcologies. Discovery would then unlock engineering research bonus tech to get closer to getting anti-Grav if you've been unlucky with your tech draws.

It would mean sacrificing other perks you may otherwise use to make up shortfalls elsewhere, but you would be significantly ahead of everyone else in getting Arcologies if others didn't follow a similar path

I may need to playtest this myself to see if it works well, but I may have an alpha ready by the time I get around to it, so you could try it yourself!

 

[Archael90]

I like the concept of locking tech and accession perks behind tradition trees. Imo though you can go even further. Rework the trees to be more powerful, but increase their unity costs and limit the number of trees an empire can take. Instead of eventually taking all 8 you could take, say, 4 trees. That would help in roleplaying and make different empires feel different.

I know you don't like the idea of locking portions of the tech tree, but imo it's a good idea that will make different empires feel more different. It also makes sense thematically. If an empire wasn't focused on prosperity it makes sense they wouldn't do as much research into extracting more energy and minerals as more prosperity focused empire. You would have to make the more powerful trees very powerful because they would have to compensate for the lost tradition trees and the lost tech.

Good idea overall though. Unity as an abstract resource needed to be more important and I think this solves that very well. It forces everyone, including materialistic empires to actually care about how unified their empire is. It also rewards unified focused empires.

Not limmiting traditions we can take, but increasing number of traditions we can choose from.
(+ we need some more unity sinks through the entire game, e.g. special traditions abilities that drains our unity)

 

[Altruist]

I'll guess that discovery, supremacy and prosperity will be first, right?

Without seeing all of it and in dependence of what design I'd be playing and the game situation... to be honest... not sure.
I was serious when I said it would need quite some playtesting and finetuning and... well, learning the new mechanics.
In the best case there is no strict priorities of traditions but a true strategic choice which can counter another choice which can counter another choice... strength should always go along with weaknesses.

One thing that has happened with this however is that some techs have a soft lock on them. Take Arcologies. They are unlocked through the prosperity tree, but they require the 'Anti-Gravity Engineering', which is currently locked behind domination. There's a few cases like this and so far they add nicely to the theme of this.

My suggestion would be to introduce it as you had planned it.
Finetuning it.
And then looking it over...

• does it, indeed, lead to greater (competetive) empire variety
• does it allow strategic depth and width (hopefully more than now)
• is there, perhaps, even an option, to bring in tall styles again
• is it fun to play
• in case some strategic choices or specific game styles are hindered AND there is a good reason to keep or allow them:
  • specific techs could be either freed from locks
  • or another option would be to allocate a price to techs which are researched before all conditions are met (some techs could be given a pre-tech called "Fundamental Research in..." which unlocks a specific important tech for research)
  • or unlocking some tech trees could also go along with some traits, origins etc. (or vice versa locking some techs or traditions for the whole game)

As one can see, as soon as we start about thinking how to connect tech and traditions (and more radical than a simple 25% bonus for drawing a tech card) it opens a full new set of ideas how to also connect it with traits and origins which, altogether, would serve as a great multiplier to the possible variety of strats, roleplay and empire identities.

Cat_Fuzz, really a great idea!
Simple, like all great ideas look simple as soon as someone mentions them.
Leads directly to many ideas how to connect/unconnect other things in Stellaris.
Nevertheless not as easy to finetune (looking at Paradox, please, don't break the idea by implementing it in a hasty bad manner by adding another shallow veil, instead try to build upon and connect it with the existing foundation of tech trees, traditions, origins, traits and avoid that one can have it all but allow or rather enforce choice).

 

[Pancakelord]

What this does is restrict what areas of tech are available to you over the entire course of the game, and makes choosing which traditions you complete first have more weight with your overall strategy.

Soooo... which one is the pop growth stuff locked behind?
Because that's all that matters; a mediocre but massive economy will usually trump everything in a game all about snowballing lol.

But honestly I like the idea, it's an interesting way of balancing unity vs science output.
Spiritualists could unlock traditions faster, giving them a "head start" on certain trees, but they'd have a lower net science output.
Whilst materialists would/should unlock the trees slower - but could catch up faster with their higher science output.

If this ends up playing out well, it'd be nice if we could get a tradition-cost slider, too.

(Really, this should be added either way with how quickly traditions can be filled out).​

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Without seeing all of it and in dependence of what design I'd be playing and the game situation... to be honest... not sure.
I was serious when I said it would need quite some playtesting and finetuning and... well, learning the new mechanics.
In the best case there is no strict priorities of traditions but a true strategic choice which can counter another choice which can counter another choice... strength should always go along with weaknesses.



My suggestion would be to introduce it as you had planned it.
Finetuning it.
And then looking it over...

• does it, indeed, lead to greater (competetive) empire variety
• does it allow strategic depth and width (hopefully more than now)
• is there, perhaps, even an option, to bring in tall styles again
• is it fun to play
• in case some strategic choices or specific game styles are hindered AND there is a good reason to keep or allow them:
  • specific techs could be either freed from locks
  • or another option would be to allocate a price to techs which are researched before all conditions are met (some techs could be given a pre-tech called "Fundamental Research in..." which unlocks a specific important tech for research)
  • or unlocking some tech trees could also go along with some traits, origins etc. (or vice versa locking some techs or traditions for the whole game)

As one can see, as soon as we start about thinking how to connect tech and traditions (and more radical than a simple 25% bonus for drawing a tech card) it opens a full new set of ideas how to also connect it with traits and origins which, altogether, would serve as a great multiplier to the possible variety of strats, roleplay and empire identities.

Cat_Fuzz, really a great idea!
Simple, like all great ideas look simple as soon as someone mentions them.
Leads directly to many ideas how to connect/unconnect other things in Stellaris.
Nevertheless not as easy to finetune (looking at Paradox, please, don't break the idea by implementing it in a hasty bad manner by adding another shallow veil, instead try to build upon and connect it with the existing foundation of tech trees, traditions, origins, traits and avoid that one can have it all but allow or rather enforce choice).

Thanks for these suggestions and thoughts. I agree there's room to link other parts of the game together to create some layered empire growth, but I think before I start thinking about really getting under the hood with some of these ideas, I think I will release a public alpha of the mod to get some feedback on where it can go (and to polish up the existing concept).

Soooo... which one is the pop growth stuff locked behind?
Because that's all that matters; a mediocre but massive economy will usually trump everything in a game all about snowballing lol.

But honestly I like the idea, it's an interesting way of balancing unity vs science output.
Spiritualists could unlock traditions faster, giving them a "head start" on certain trees, but they'd have a lower net science output.
Whilst materialists would/should unlock the trees slower - but could catch up faster with their higher science output.

If this ends up playing out well, it'd be nice if we could get a tradition-cost slider, too.

(Really, this should be added either way with how quickly traditions can be filled out).​

With the exception of some ME techs, none of the pop-growth stuff is locked off (if you're referring to gene-clinics and the genetics path?).

For the most part, important techs like starbase and weapon paths, pop growth and energy/food techs remain unlocked. This is neccesary in part not to create too much imbalance between tradition picks, but also thematic relevance to the tradition itself (plus it gives you some stuff to research before you reach the locked off techs). It's anything that is directly or thematically linked to the tradition trees that are locked off.