Stellaris Dev Diary #237 - Reworking Unity, Part One

[TempestM]

1. You identify the problem ("tall empires suck") and you decide to fix this by crippling wide empires. Call it what you want but making admin cap fixed is essentially screwing wide empires over. And that's really puzzling since the game encourages you to play wide (personally, my problem with tall empires is that they miss out on too much: mid-game crises, excavations, leviathans, etc).

This. The goal is "make tall empires viable" but the solution to "make wide empires unviable by sprawl penalties" instead looks underwhelming

 

[EzekielRaiden]

1. Does this mean Spiritualists will still build the Temple building sequence?
2. If yes, given the Autochthon Monument is being turned into this other building, will non-Spiritualists get a different building, or are Temples now a special distinctive perk of having Spiritualist ethics?

 

[jaredstanko]

sprawl penalty is linear! just make more science worlds, god dang it! how is this hard to grasp. an empire with more worlds can always devote a greater number of worlds to science! the penalty grows linearly, you can always keep up! the only situation where you cant involves conquering populated worlds. given how powerful conquest is, i dont see a problem with that.

in the current patch it works the same! the only difference is instead of making more scientists to achieve a similar result you had to sink budget into bureaucrats. that's it.

 

[TempestM]

sprawl penalty is linear! just make more science worlds, god dang it! how is this hard to grasp. an empire with more worlds can always devote a greater number of worlds to science! the penalty grows linearly, you can always keep up! the only situation where you cant involves conquering populated worlds. given how powerful conquest is, i dont see a problem with that.

in the current patch it works the same! the only difference is instead of making more scientists to achieve a similar result you had to sink budget into bureaucrats. that's it.

How do you know that it will have the similar result? DD says "Penalties and sprawl generation values have been significantly modified."

 

[jaredstanko]

How do you know that it will have the similar result? DD says "Penalties and sprawl generation values have been significantly modified."

significantly modified to be generally lower but ever-present was the subtext i was reading there. also the response given by the devs multiple times in this thread, that values will be tuned so wide empires will be stronger than tall empires at tech, but small empires will be able to fill certain niches.

 

[TempestM]

significantly modified to be generally lower but ever-present was the subtext i was reading there. also the response given by the devs multiple times in this thread, that values will be tuned so wide empires will be stronger than tall empires at tech, but small empires will be able to fill certain niches.

It being ever present doesn't equal to

sprawl penalty is linear! just make more science worlds, god dang it! how is this hard to grasp. an empire with more worlds can always devote a greater number of worlds to science! the penalty grows linearly, you can always keep up!

 

[jaredstanko]

It being ever present doesn't equal to

see my post at the end of page 14. its a linear penalty to a resource that is unbounded. as long as your empire is growing organically, you should be able to outpace it. that is the dev intent, and thats how it works with bureaucracy right now. the only change here is that instead of outpacing it with bureaucrats you outpace it with more scientists. its a sprawl penalty.

 

[TempestM]

see my post at the end of page 14. its a linear penalty to a resource that is unbounded. as long as your empire is growing organically, you should be able to outpace it. that is the dev intent, and thats how it works with bureaucracy right now. the only change here is that instead of outpacing it with bureaucrats you outpace it with more scientists. its a sprawl penalty.

It works right now. But what the point of discussing it if only how it will be matters. When devs say there will be significant changes you can't just assume that the numbers will remain the same

 

[Wirsing]

This. The goal is "make tall empires viable" but the solution to "make wide empires unviable by sprawl penalties" instead looks underwhelming

You guys are way too pessimistic. Let's face it. Currently wide players face ZERO drawbacks. They can just snowball to infinity and beyond, just by building some cheap admin building. And make Stellaris the kinda bland game that it currently is, with no empire/play style differences whatsoever.

Wide empires desperately needed some nerfs to make them less of a snowballing behemoth.
And the notion that a few obstacles will break wide to the point that it's unplayable, is kinda ridiculous. We players will have no problem to find ways!

 

[TempestM]

You guys are way too pessimistic. Let's face it. Currently wide players face ZERO drawbacks. They can just snowball to infinity and beyond, just by building some cheap admin building. And make Stellaris the kinda bland game that it currently is, with no empire/play style differences whatsoever.

Wide empires desperately needed some nerfs to make them less of an snowballing behemoth.
And the notion that a few obstacles will break wide to the point that it's unplayable is kinda ridiculous. We players will have no problem to find ways!

I just don't think that an actual tall playstyle will ever be viable in a game like this without completely changing some base mechanics (even more than they usually do with pops), but nerfs to already existing stuff is not fun

 

[Maaloc]

You guys are way too pessimistic. Let's face it. Currently wide players face ZERO drawbacks. They can just snowball to infinity and beyond, just by building some cheap admin building. And make Stellaris the kinda bland game that it currently is, with no empire/play style differences whatsoever.

I think that my pessimism is justified by the fact that the devs have never been good with balancing stuff. I mean, come on.

Wide empires desperately needed some nerfs to make them less of an snowballing behemoth.
And the notion that a few obstacles will break wide to the point that it's unplayable is kinda ridiculous. We players will have no problem to find ways!

In my opinion, the right direction to take here would be to try and make wide empires more unstable and prone to falling apart or malfunctioning in many ways unless you manage them really carefully. But giving them a tech debuff sure seems easier.

 

[jaredstanko]

I just don't think that an actual tall playstyle will ever be viable in a game like this without completely changing some base mechanics (even more than they usually do with pops), but nerfs to already existing stuff is not

Sorry if my tone was rude earlier, I see what you're saying. but I do think you're being way too pessimistic. what I'm saying is just because its a penalty doesn't mean its a PENALTY. I don't think anyone wants tall empires to be as viable as wide empires. that's an annoying 4x trope and it would be a shame to see the devs pursue it. what we want is for there to be some kind of reward for building a well optimized empire. the game should never reward avoiding sprawl, it should simply reward the player for managing its sprawl effectively and efficiently. without some form of sprawl, blobbing is always the most efficient choice, in the short and the long term. ideally, at any point a tall empire should be able to step up, make some power plays, and become a galactic contender. the idea behind sprawl is that if you manage to accrue a lot of it the development of your empire changes.

if you have built a smooth and efficient tall empire and then decide to conquer 6 core worlds from your neighbor alongside the sparse galactic backwater beyond them and become wide you simply aren't the same tall empire you were before. now you are WIDE, and that comes with additional challenges that you have to overcome. its not about making tall as viable as wide, its about choice having meaningful consequences. adding 120 pops to your empire 40 years after game start IS going to affect your development for decades. without a sprawl penalty, not only are you dealing with a powerful rival but you are also functionally changing nothing about your empire in doing so.

do you see the problem, and do you have a solution youd like to propose in the place of empire sprawl?

 

[Obeliskkai]

I hope so, because the changes are so drastic that I'm afraid my playstyle will actually be dead.

Well there's been a developer response saying that wide is still probably the stronger playstyle and that is fair enough, the genre's fundamentals are set up to encourage wide play and you would probably have to redesign the game from it's very foundations to promote tall over wide (which Victoria 3 seems to be doing),

But nerfing wide and buffing tall as they are doing here is a reasonable approach. I doubt tall will ever surpass wide in terms of pure power, but I am excited that I can build an empire with a reasonable number of worlds that is focused on developing what I have rather than claiming more and more.

 

[Maethendias]

True, this is a worry I saw raised on Reddit as well. Maybe unoccupied systems that are within a sector have no sprawl penalty, while systems outside the sectors do? You'd have Swiss cheese fringes, but as you settled outwards those would fill in.

oh god, SECTORS... PLEASE REWORK SECTORS

i almost forgot about that mess

 

[Alfray Stryke]

1. Does this mean Spiritualists will still build the Temple building sequence?
2. If yes, given the Autochthon Monument is being turned into this other building, will non-Spiritualists get a different building, or are Temples now a special distinctive perk of having Spiritualist ethics?

We're looking at which empire configurations get which buildings as part of the rework, not everything we're changing could fit in a single dev diary.

 

[Maethendias]

I really don't get the general excitement here. Two major points.

1. You identify the problem ("tall empires suck") and you decide to fix this by crippling wide empires. Call it what you want but making admin cap fixed is essentially screwing wide empires over. And that's really puzzling since the game encourages you to play wide (personally, my problem with tall empires is that they miss out on too much: mid-game crises, excavations, leviathans, etc).

2. We've already had all that. This was the game setup a few years ago when we had:
- wide empires not being able to research stuff;
- technocrats sitting on one planet and discovering ring worlds by 2300;
- devouring swarms that flew corvettes until late-game.
Why? Why would you bring this back?

I really think that both game styles should be viable but not at the cost of making them both equally shitty.

dont forget machines who get major penalties for admin cap (makes no sense btw)

 

[Maethendias]

why cant the player base grasp that going over the admin cap isn't a bad thing? this line of thinking caused the devs to implement the current underwhelming iteration of bureaucrats and we all know how well loved that change was(see: this dev diary)

think about it like this. one tall empire had one science world that makes 100 science, and no admin cap penalty. one wide empire has 2 science worlds that produce 180 science and has a 30% cost increase from sprawl. the wide empire is not nerfed, the wide empire produces ~50% more science than the tall empire! the reason the sprawl is there from a design standpoint is so that the wide empire does not gain 100 science from conquering the small empire, but rather would lose total science output due to the confluence of unhappiness on the conquered world combined with the added empire sprawl. in the long term however, as the wide empire integrates its new subjects, its potential for science would be even stronger than before, even with the sprawl penalty. how is that not straightforward enough?

a small sprawl penalty rewards civic planning and limits snowballing without making wide empires worse than small empires. without some sort of admin cap every addition to your empire is an immediate boon, with no limits to when the growth is appropriate or how long it will take to see an ROI. even a world where 90% of its output goes out the window due to the fury of its populace would still be giving you that last 10%, without empire sprawl there is no representation of the diplomatic, economic, bureaucratic maneuvering that your empire has to do for this angry local populace.

in the past those penalties were represented by a proportion of jobs having to go toward mitigating sprawl (bureaucrats)

now those penalties will have to overcome by a percentage of jobs producing extra science, or whatever, to make up for the penalty. its the same thing either way. i just don't understand how people could be engrossed in this game, thematically, and not understand this.

why cant people who claim admin cap isnt a bad thing understand how ABSOLUTELY crucial technology in this game is?

 

[Maethendias]

You guys are way too pessimistic. Let's face it. Currently wide players face ZERO drawbacks. They can just snowball to infinity and beyond, just by building some cheap admin building. And make Stellaris the kinda bland game that it currently is, with no empire/play style differences whatsoever.

Wide empires desperately needed some nerfs to make them less of an snowballing behemoth.
And the notion that a few obstacles will break wide to the point that it's unplayable is kinda ridiculous. We players will have no problem to find ways!

this is not a problem of wide or tall empires tho
its a problem with stellaris being an extremly static grand strategy...

 

[Maethendias]

I think that my pessimism is justified by the fact that the devs have never been good with balancing stuff. I mean, come on.


In my opinion, the right direction to take here would be to try and make wide empires more unstable and prone to falling apart or malfunctioning in many ways unless you manage them really carefully. But giving them a tech debuff sure seems easier.

bring back cohesion, and make it an actual mechanic

 

[Ikael]

Wow, there's a lot to take in. As in, a lot, a lot. I really can't wait to try all of these changes! But let's analyze them one by one:

All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. While there are ways to reduce the Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will be used to help differentiate gameplay between different empire types, empires will no longer be able to completely mitigate sprawl penalties. Penalties and sprawl generation values have been significantly modified.

That sounds really, really good. The snowball and runaway effects are too much as they are right now. As for people claiming the death of wide empires, seeing how pops will also generate empire sprawl (and thus, nerf tall empires) I don't think that this will be the case either.

So from what I understand of the system:

Wide empires => Less pop efficiency and specialization, much more physical resources, bigger fleets, less "mana" resources, harder internal politics
Tall empires => More pop efficiency and specialization, less physical resources, smaller fleets, more "mana" resources, easier to manage

Seems good to me, at least on paper.

* Bureaucrats, Priests, Managers, Synapse Drones, and Coordinators will be the primary sources of Unity for various empire types. Culture Workers have been removed.

I don't know why culture is avoided, flavor-wise I think that it better represents Unity's concepts. Plus, culture workers are always cooler than bureaucrats perhaps some pacifist civic replacing bureaucrats with culture workers or artists could do the trick?

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity.
Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.

Wow, it seems that Unity now will be -gasp- necessary in order to better manage your empire, make pops efficient and specialize your planets. It sounds awesome. The only problem that I see is that then players will need now some kind of influence sink in order to compensate for the reduced number of influence uses especially genocidal empires. Espionage, perhaps? Some kind of late-game tech or ascension that turns influence into something more "tangible"?

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on Power Projection - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Hmmm. It is an intriguing bonus for small empires, but it seems kinda pointless since smaller, non-expansionist empires will have fewer uses for that extra influence. Also, I am not sure that factions generating unity is ideal, considering that there are a lot of alternative unity sources in the game already. I am afraid that this will lead to less relevant intra-politics, but let's wait and see how it goes.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between Traditions and Leaders.

That's an actual interesting decision to make regarding internal politics. More of these, please!

As noted earlier, we’d like Unity to also reflect the resilience of your empire to negative effects. A high Unity empire may be more resistant to negative effects deficits or possibly even have their pops rise up to help repel invaders, but these ideas are still in early development and will not be part of this Open Beta or release. They’ll likely be tied to the evolving Situations

From what I understand, first, you guys will tackle more uses for unity, then move into an internal politics/rebellions rework. I think that interlocking these two systems since the beginning would help a lot with its design, but I understand that you don't want to have too many moving pieces at once. Still, I eagerly await it, and I think that making unity vital in assimilating conquered pops/planets and managing your internal politics could be a really good start.

Next week I’ll go into details regarding the Open Beta, go over a new system that is meant to provide “tall” and Unity focused empires some significant mid to late game benefits called Planetary Ascension Tiers

A way to differentiate planets from each other due to their local culture? Dear God, yes, please.