Why do specialist slaves benefit from worker bonuses?

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Interesting stuff. Perhaps a simpler solution would be to instead look at the political power of the Ruler class for Stratified society and knock it down a peg. Right now it's set at 10x per pop which really makes it overwhelming. If ruler class wasn't dominating the approval rating average quite as much, it would leave more space for unhappy slaves to impact stability.
With #pops being halved, or more in some cases, we'll see what the figures look like with 3.0 (watch how they dont end up changing PP at all lol). But harmonising living standards arbitrarily will end up just shifting people from one standard to another without making unhappy pops more deadly. It makes more sense to actually make planets dynamic - by tying PP to things like happiness.
I also still like the idea of adding a happiness cap to slaves and reducing the impact of happiness they get from excess amenities to 75%.
I personally don't think excess amenities should boost pop happiness at all. You can only go to one cinema at a time, or ride one rollercoaster at a time.
If anything, excess amenities should be used to drive pop-immigration stats (a topic for another day perhaps).​
Dynamic amenities consumption scaling upwards with happiness corrects the... frankly illogical system of extra amenities boosting all pops happiness universally, like it's some kind of inconsumable public good.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
To make everyone switch to academic privilege instead?

They used not to get any, same as residents. No idea why this was changed, not like slaves need any happiness to begin with.
Academic privilege is only available to materialists, but I wouldn't be against knocking their ruler PP down a peg too if it's a problem. 9x instead of 10x.

The big problem right now is that slaves job output is too high. There are lots of reasons why this is the case, but one glaring problem is that they are both too easy to make happy and have too minor an impact on Approval rating/stability even when they are unhappy.

How we address this problem is up for debate, but I think the problem itself is rather blatant.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Egypt was not a slave society, it's far more complex than that. The pyramid workers were paid. In fact, the first recorded strike in human history was on the pyramid construction site in ancient Egypt. So no. It is 100% impossible not just for slave societies, but any class society (as in not Utopian Abundance or at least Shared Burdens or Comrade Servitors) to have 100% stability. So long as there is a ruling class living like literal gods since you picked Egypt, there will be people who wish to bring them down. And in Egypt, there was also the backstabbing over how many gods should there be. So yeah, not stable societies. Stable looking because the timescale of social upheavels was far slower before capitalism and before radio, television, and finally the internet. But over their long sloth-like existences, pre-capitalist societies had explosive class struggles.

100% stability should be 100% impossible for slave societies, hell even for anything with disparity between the pop classes of any sort. 100% happiness for the slave owner class is realistic, but for the slaves it is 100% not. There should be a cap. Or stability bonuses should continue boosting for utopians the higher their amenities go, with no cap. The consumer goods costs for people reaching 200-300 amenities per planet are astronomical, give us something for roleplaying utopian abundance RIGHT please.

From a gameplay perspective I agree that maxing out pop happiness should provide some nicer bonuses than what stability currently provides alone, but I disagree that capping stability arbitrarily is a good way to do it - especially not based on just living conditions (which would severely nerf other sources of happiness).

Fluff wise, authoritarians should be more far more stable than places where people have actual rights and power - the one of the points of actual rights is to make it easier and safer to destabilize the government (reaching its natural conclusion with a democracy, where governments are deposed so regularly that we have scheduled dates to decide whether to depose the government or give it another few years). It also makes sense that authoritarians are able to get more work out of their pops - it's far easier to work people to the bone when they don't have a say in how hard you work them; as you say - if you start paying your skilled workers, they start to feel like they have the option of not working.

Personally I think the way I'd do it would be to make it so that happy pops had a significant boost to unity (ideally multiplicative with other bonuses - something like
Output = Base value * (1+bonuses) * (happiness-50/100)
and moderate boost to science generation (and other similar 'intangibles' jobs). Pair that with making unity more useful and you have a reward for keeping pops happy which feels like it makes sense (rather than having scientists be arbitrarily better because they have crippling debts they have no realistic chance of paying back).
 
Last edited:
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
From a gameplay perspective I agree that maxing out pop happiness should provide some nicer bonuses than what stability currently provides alone, but I disagree that capping stability arbitrarily is a good way to do it - especially not based on just living conditions (which would severely nerf other sources of happiness).

Fluff wise, authoritarians should be more far more stable than places where people have actual rights and power - the one of the points of actual rights is to make it easier and safer to destabilize the government (reaching its natural conclusion with a democracy, where governments are deposed so regularly that we have scheduled dates to decide whether to depose the government or give it another few years). It also makes sense that authoritarians are able to get more work out of their pops - it's far easier to work people to the bone when they don't have a say in how hard you work them; as you say - if you start paying your skilled workers, they start to feel like they have the option of not working.

Personally I think the way I'd do it would be to make it so that happy pops had a significant boost to unity (ideally multiplicative with other bonuses - something like
Output = Base value * (1+bonuses) * (happiness-50/100)
and moderate boost to science generation (and other similar 'intangibles' jobs). Pair that with making unity more useful and you have a reward for keeping pops happy which feels like it makes sense (rather than having scientists be arbitrarily better because they have crippling debts they have no realistic chance of paying back).
I don't agree with only buffing unity since unity is a very minor thing and I'd rather not wait till unity matters for abundance to matter.

And in a democracy, democratically changing the government isn't instability. A coup or refusal to recognize the democratic transition would be.

Democracies can GET unstable, but that requires a crisis to provoke it. Food, jobs, inequality, etc... Again, it's down to classes. Hence why I was discussing the greater good finishing resolution living standards, they are "classless" almost as societies, as close to it as possible in stellaris. They must easily reach and maintain 100% stability. But if these pops used to utopia abundance suddenly experience shortages and hunger and devastation etc, sure give them a hit to stability. Make democracies take big temporary hits to stability if you run out of energy, consumer goods, or food (minerals for lithoid pops), as these are essential resources that pay your wages.

And sure, slave societies can get a bonus to stability from their soldiers and enforcers, even without martial law. But they should be prone to crises. Slave escapes, protests, riots, rebellions. Every time you put one down, big temporary boost to stability. But, when enough time has passed and the slaves have forgotten the fear of the whip, rebelliousness should rise again and crises should emerge again.

And if you don't have enough enforcers and soldiers to outnumber the slave revolts on the planet? Then choosing to crack down instead of conciliate should add another hit to stability as the slaves gain confidence and become more rebellious due to your crackdown failing. Hating you even more cause you tried.

Essentially, there needs to be a mineral cost as massive in slave societies as it is in utopian societies. Having to invest in massive garrisons to keep the slaves repressed nicely balances utopians having to invest in massive holotheatres to keep the xenos happy.
 
Last edited:
I don't agree with only buffing unity since unity is a very minor thing and I'd rather not wait till unity matters for abundance to matter.

And in a democracy, democratically changing the government isn't instability. A coup or refusal to recognize the democratic transition would be.

Democracies can GET unstable, but that requires a crisis to provoke it. Food, jobs, inequality, etc... Again, it's down to classes. Hence why I was discussing the greater good finishing resolution living standards, they are "classless" almost as societies, as close to it as possible in stellaris. They must easily reach and maintain 100% stability. But if these pops used to utopia abundance suddenly experience shortages and hunger and devastation etc, sure give them a hit to stability. Make democracies take big temporary hits to stability if you run out of energy, consumer goods, or food (minerals for lithoid pops), as these are essential resources that pay your wages.

And sure, slave societies can get a bonus to stability from their soldiers and enforcers, even without martial law. But they should be prone to crises. Slave escapes, protests, riots, rebellions. Every time you put one down, big temporary boost to stability. But, when enough time has passed and the slaves have forgotten the fear of the whip, rebelliousness should rise again and crises should emerge again.

And if you don't have enough enforcers and soldiers to outnumber the slave revolts on the planet? Then choosing to crack down instead of conciliate should add another hit to stability as the slaves gain confidence and become more rebellious due to your crackdown failing. Hating you even more cause you tried.

Essentially, there needs to be a mineral cost as massive in slave societies as it is in utopian societies. Having to invest in massive garrisons to keep the slaves repressed nicely balances utopians having to invest in massive holotheatres to keep the xenos happy.

I'm sorry, but I just disagree; having Authoritarians and Egalitarians have the same downsides wouldn't be good for gameplay, nor would it be realistic. I mean they're supposed to be fundamentally different - they should have different strengths and weaknesses. Having good basic resources like minerals and low consumer upkeep is the strength of Authoritarians; their weakness should be that it's harder to get high level resources like unity and science (the problem being that because of Indentured Workers you can get the big slave bonuses on researcher and culture worker jobs).

Regarding unity being a minor thing - I agree at present it's a pretty worthless resource, but any serious rebalance of the economy needs to make it worth more anyway.
 
  • 5Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
I'm sorry, but I just disagree; having Authoritarians and Egalitarians have the same downsides wouldn't be good for gameplay
Good thing I didn't say they should. Authoritarians should use their extra minerals on soldiers. Soldiers being necessary to maintain order under slavery. Egalitarians should use their minerals on consumer goods. Consumer goods being necessary to maintain happiness under utopian abundance.

How are those the same downsides?

Currently authoritarians get to dedicate all mineral production they don't need to use on consumer goods (unlike utopians) to alloys. The two will never be balanced so long as they have that MASSIVE mineral advantage. I'm talking a savings of thousands of consumer goods a month in late game.

I'm fine with other nerfs, to tech and to unity, but the nerfs to stability, happiness, and political power, requiring soldiers to counteract it would be the best way to even things out while maintaining radically different playstyles I think.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
This is getting fixed in 3.0.

Slaves in specialist positions will no longer get worker bonuses.

1617259823188.png


Indentured Servitude is also intentionally weakened a bit - slavery based production bonuses will only apply while the pops are working in Worker strata jobs. (They'll still get the reduced amenity and housing usage from slavery, or other non-production based modifiers.)

That should make slave-Technocracies a bit less oppressive while still providing some benefits.
 
  • 22Like
  • 8Love
  • 6
Reactions:
This is getting fixed in 3.0.

Slaves in specialist positions will no longer get worker bonuses.

View attachment 699715

Indentured Servitude is also intentionally weakened a bit - slavery based production bonuses will only apply while the pops are working in Worker strata jobs. (They'll still get the reduced amenity and housing usage from slavery, or other non-production based modifiers.)

That should make slave-Technocracies a bit less oppressive while still providing some benefits.
Nice! Are there any plans to shake up pop PP with the halving-of-pop-counts? or make stability more gratifying/harder to get to 100%?
Any chances of (worker/slave) rebellions, in practice, are basically zero right now, for a few reasons (top-v-bottom strata PP, overly-abundant happiness/amenities etc).
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I guess the programmers did a mistake.

As a result, Authoriatrian + Slaver guilds + Dominion Tradition offer insane boosts to your pops. So much so, that Slaver guilds is now an S tier civic, on par with Technocracy. It should get bugfixed/nerfed.

Its already nerfed on Stefan's balance mod. And all of Stellaris should be using that balance mod or just incorporate parts of it into the base game. The game has been balanced on a dart board (stolen quote form someone here on the forums, but its true). Ever since I started playing, its been mostly buffs to Materialists/Machine empires while Hiveminds and Spiritualists got left far behind. Even after much needed nerfs to Robots and Materialists, they are straight up superiour in pop growth + pop effectiveness.

Hopefully the new pop growth model will adress this. I haven't played a single game as Spiritualists since my first game after 2.2. Playing Spiritualists is an awful feeling, knowing that you're going to get outscaled by everyone thats using Robots simply because of pop growth, and Synths > every other pop in the game (even Necroids) with their > 30% ressource output to worker and specialist jobs. The shround roulette doesn't make up for it at all, the bonus are laughable compared to what Synths get and the possible malus are not even a thing for Synths.
 
  • 4
  • 2
Reactions:
Playing Spiritualists is an awful feeling, knowing that you're going to get outscaled by everyone thats using Robots simply because of pop growth, and Synths > every other pop in the game (even Necroids) with their > 30% ressource output to worker and specialist jobs.
IMO the materialist science bonus should be replaced with -sci-job/building/district upkeep, as balancing spiritualists is as also about finding a reason to not take materialists for science (if you truly care about the numbers), as it is about losing out on robots.

Other than that, we're getting full-fledged Bio-pop assembly in 3.0, right? Maybe spiritualists should lean in to that and become the 'clone guys', in addition to the (currently rather useless) unity ethic. Necroids was already heading that way with manipulating pops, and I've seen a few cool suggestions for buffing reanimated armies by letting you create undead pops (basically biological "Droids").
 
  • 1
Reactions:
This is getting fixed in 3.0.

Slaves in specialist positions will no longer get worker bonuses.

View attachment 699715

Indentured Servitude is also intentionally weakened a bit - slavery based production bonuses will only apply while the pops are working in Worker strata jobs. (They'll still get the reduced amenity and housing usage from slavery, or other non-production based modifiers.)

That should make slave-Technocracies a bit less oppressive while still providing some benefits.

This is really great. One more thing I wish you guys would give some thought to would be the Amenity Paradox. For slaves and residents, their reduced amenity usage actually makes them more happy and productive.

Think about this:
1. Slaves/Residents have reduced amenities usage
2. This creates excess amenities which boost their happiness.
3. Boosted happiness, boosts approval rating
4. Boosted Approval rating, boosts stability
5. Boosted stability boosts Slaves/Resident's production.

Ergo: Reducing Amenities of slaves and residents make them happier and more productive.

Simple solution would be to add a -25% modifier to their excess amenities happiness bonus.
 
  • 4Haha
  • 1Like
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
This is getting fixed in 3.0.
Nice.

Eh, I'd rather they changed the tooltip than buff the slavery type.
If you read the dev post, they're actually nerfing the slavery type.

Being able to fill all jobs WITHOUT getting a pile of Worker buffs on Specialist outputs isn't really a buff, it's more of a convenience feature.
 
  • 4
Reactions:
Nice.


If you read the dev post, they're actually nerfing the slavery type.

Being able to fill all jobs WITHOUT getting a pile of Worker buffs on Specialist outputs isn't really a buff, it's more of a convenience feature.
I was aware of the incoming nerfs, but even with that I suspect Indentured Servitude will be a well used slavery type because ultimately researchers and metallurgists are the two jobs you are trying to maximize. Letting them take enforcer jobs, while certainly more convenient, makes Battle Thralls slavery type even more useless. I can't remember if there were any other jobs the tooltip is lying about, and the wiki doesn't say. You do have a fair point about it being mostly convenience, but I still dislike how easy it'd make it to just conquer an entire empire and then enslave them all while keeping all the important jobs running.
 
This is getting fixed in 3.0.

Slaves in specialist positions will no longer get worker bonuses.

View attachment 699715

Indentured Servitude is also intentionally weakened a bit - slavery based production bonuses will only apply while the pops are working in Worker strata jobs. (They'll still get the reduced amenity and housing usage from slavery, or other non-production based modifiers.)

That should make slave-Technocracies a bit less oppressive while still providing some benefits.
Could production bonuses for utopians running 100-300 amenities on all their worlds be uncapped or raised please? I'd like to get something out of it other than the warm fuzzy feeling all my xenos are ridiculously happy. I spend thousands of consumer goods a month making this happen late game, and I beat the authoritarians so it's not like I'm doing it at the cost of everything else for my society, but it would be nice to know it's not thousands of wasted consumer goods a month that technically do nothing at all cause my stability was already maxed ages ago.
 
  • 2Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I have played with serious Crime mods so that also makes slave population with really low happiness more expensive to control as you need more police forces to suppress them. If you have really happy population the crime still are of little consequence to you.

If you increase the crime generated by each POP by around three times as much you will feel problems with crimes on planets with very unhappy slave populations.

In my opinion Stability is not the same thing as happiness/crime and a planet could potentially be stable even with a large slave population. But unless you suppress the crime then stability should fall which you can introduce with crime events etc...
 
I can't remember if there were any other jobs the tooltip is lying about, and the wiki doesn't say.
Entertainer is another of the jobs they can't take.
Could production bonuses for utopians running 100-300 amenities on all their worlds be uncapped or raised please? I'd like to get something out of it other than the warm fuzzy feeling all my xenos are ridiculously happy. I spend thousands of consumer goods a month making this happen late game, and I beat the authoritarians so it's not like I'm doing it at the cost of everything else for my society, but it would be nice to know it's not thousands of wasted consumer goods a month that technically do nothing at all cause my stability was already maxed ages ago.
Perhaps happy Egalitarians should get some positive events, and unhappy Authoritarians should get more negative events.
 
Perhaps happy Egalitarians should get some positive events, and unhappy Authoritarians should get more negative events.
i would definitely want that as part of internal politics dynamics in future, but in the game as it is now I would want something like making it harder to get and keep stability as a slaver (and not possible to get 100%, hopefully the update already does this), while raising the bonus for 100% stability. so a 100% stability planet currently grants a 30% resource bonus. If it was impossible to reach that number as a slaver without nerve stapling or something crazy at least, then the max bonus was raised to 40% or even 50%, it would make it far more meaningful to have a literal superabundance of amenities on all worlds and things like utopian abundance.

because as it stands now, going from 90% stability to 100% stability grants like a 1% bonus? It just makes no sense cause by the time I'm at 100% stability my worlds are costing me THOUSANDS of consumer goods a month for holotheatres and leisure districts and so on. I should get an in-game reward to match my smile when I hit these roleplay goals. I just can't play without maximizing utopia, and it makes no sense that the game doesn't care when I do AND liberate the galaxy along the way.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
I think unity should be buffed by adding more traditions trees and overhauling all of the crappy d tier ascension perks and adding more tradition trees and therefore more slots. And make it so ascension perks can add research options for rarer techs like megastructures. For example reworking imeprial perogative. What of instead of +20% admin cap it gave +40% admin cap, 1 beurocrat job per 33 pops, -25% empire sprawl penalty and -50% beurcrat upkeep. And you now gain small bonuses to research speed, tradition cost and edict cost while under admin cap depending on how much max admin cap you have. However this would have dimminishing returns after around being 50 under admin cap. Or for example world shaper. What if it only required basic teraforming to unlock, But gave you cliImate restoration as a research option. And gave -50% terraforming cost, +50% teraforming speed and -10% clear blocker cost/time. imagine if all the ascension perks that were just flat modifiers were redone like this. Right now i can count on my fingers the amount of ascension perks that are actually worth taking. Hopfully this can fix that.
 
Last edited:
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions: