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Stellaris Dev Diary #260 - Summer Culture

Hey folks, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer/winter break (depending on your hemisphere). I’ve found some time between my other summer experiments and the work we’re doing for 3.5 “Fornax” to dive into the feedback/suggestions lists. Since Eladrin is still away, you’re getting another sneak preview of what I’ve been working on.

One of the frequent requests from the Unity rework that was part of the 3.3 “Libra” patch earlier this year was for us to return Culture Workers to the game. Currently, they exist only as jobs provided by some event buildings, but many in the Community felt we removed some flavor/roleplay aspect when we removed them.

Over summer, I’ve been experimenting with potentially adding them back in. For context, in the current version of the game Culture Workers are a Specialist job that belongs to their own economic category, produce 3 Unity and 3 Society Research with an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods.

Let’s have a look at an Autochthon Monument constructed by the UNE shortly after the start of the game.

1658126587496.png

Showing the Culture Workers with some unusual modifiers

To start with, the monument is retaining the Unity from Jobs modifier and the passive Unity production per Ascension Perk, but additionally provides 2/4/6 Culture Worker jobs per tier of the monument. The same applies to the Corporate version of the monument.

The sharp-eyed might notice that there’s some odd modifiers being given: Worker Happiness? Pop Upkeep Reduction? What, might you ask, has happened?

In this experiment, we’re looking at Culture Workers having an output that depends on the Ethics of your empire. After all, what influences your culture the most if not your ethics?

These are the ethics-based modifiers we’re currently testing and whether their effects are Empire-wide or only affecting the planet that the building has been constructed on:
  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet)
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet)
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire)
  • Pacifist: -2.5% Crime (Planet)
  • Egalitarian: +2.5% Worker Happiness (Planet)
  • Authoritarian: +5 Ruler Political Power (Planet)
  • Xenophobe: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet)

These modifiers are provided by both Culture Workers and Death Chroniclers (as their job-swap with the Memorialist civic) and are doubled in the case of Fanatic ethics. They are intended to be a small buff/addition to the job, with the Unity production from both the jobs and the building being the primary draw.

Additionally, Culture Workers/Death Chroniclers now belong in the Administrator category, in the Culture Worker sub-category meaning they’ll benefit from multiplicative bonuses to Administrator output (such as those provided by the Unification or Ecclesiastical planetary designations). They produce a base of 4 Unity and +10% Government Ethics Attraction (+2.5% Stability for Death Chroniclers) with 3 Consumer Goods upkeep.

There’s also been some discussion around having Resort Worlds add Culture Workers, and if I find time I’ll be looking into that as well.

To ensure that hive-minds and machine intelligences don’t feel left out, Sensorium/Simulation Sites now provide 2/4/6 Evaluator jobs per tier of the building. These now provide 4 Unity and 3 Amenities in exchange for an upkeep of 2 Energy.

1658126626613.png

A hive-mind sensorium site providing 2 evaluator jobs.

Chronicle Drones provide the same Unity and Amenities output but give an additional +2.5% Stability in exchange for slightly higher upkeep (and that upkeep being based off of the upkeep cost of the pop working the job). Like their individualist equivalents, these jobs both now belong to the Evaluator sub-category of the Administrators jobs.

I’m not sure if we’ll have another surprise dev diary over summer, but our normal schedule should resume once Eladrin’s back and we’ll start delving into 3.5. Regardless I’ll be keeping a close eye on this thread for your thoughts, suggestions and any feedback.
 
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So what is the point of even including the gestalt version, if it is clearly just an afterthought?
A whole building slot for some better maintenanc drones and no ME/Hive specific boni? Wow, so interesting.
The gestalt version is good. If they're not useful, just disable them: they're free jobs.

As proposed, they're improved Synapse Drones and Coordinators. They have 3 amenities and an upkeep of only 2 energy which makes them fantastic. Not as good as fanatic Materialist culture workers (which give 4), but still really good.

I think they give more benefit to a gestalt than to a materialist, though. Amenities are much harder to come by efficiently and also more valuable, in general, for gestalts.

10% excess amenities for a gestalt gives 3% stability. For a non-gestalt, it gives 2% happiness and 1.2 stability.

Similarly, 1 excess amenities for a gestalt is 1/3-1/4 of a job (3 excess from maintenance drones, or 3.8 with Charismatic). For non-gestalts, 1 excess amenity is less than 1/9*3/4 or 1/11*3/4 of a job, as entertainers are more efficient (and also make unity like 1/4 of a bureaucrat).
 
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I'm calling it, the new meta is Fanatic Militarist + Materialist; Byzantine Bureaucracy now solid S tier auto pick
You pay: 3 consumer goods
You get: 2 naval capacity (worth 0.33 pop), 2 amenity (worth 0.2 pop), 4+1 unity and 1 stability
It's really just 50% better Bureaucrat that's worth spamming on every planet for these two ethics.

Nice, no more admin worlds, not worth a dime.
 
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To ensure that hive-minds and machine intelligences don’t feel left out, Sensorium/Simulation Sites now provide 2/4/6 Evaluator jobs per tier of the building. These now provide 4 Unity and 3 Amenities in exchange for an upkeep of 2 Energy.

More amenities for gestalt?

I don't know what other people's games are like but every time I've played gestalt, I've had a crippling oversupply of amenities. Found this out the hard way after playing autonomous service grid twice and machine uprising twice in the last month.

It doesn't matter so much late game, but early on it's a very tedious amount of manually resettling maintenance drones so they can work on something worthwhile like alloy production or research.
 
It says fanatic culture workers give double the bonus so adding residency + vultaum + ecological + one vision should be -50%, then adding -30% from 6 fanatic spiritualist culture workers will give -80%

Without your mods it'll be -10% from One Vision and -30% from 6 Culture Workers for -40%. Which is still very good, but it's not quite -80%.

Edit: I've since been corrected and notified that "residency" refers to Residence citizenship and that "ecological" refers to Ecological Protection line of GC resolutions. My bad.
 
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The gestalt version is good. If they're not useful, just disable them: they're free jobs.

As proposed, they're improved Synapse Drones and Coordinators. They have 3 amenities and an upkeep of only 2 energy which makes them fantastic. Not as good as fanatic Materialist culture workers (which give 4), but still really good.

I think they give more benefit to a gestalt than to a materialist, though. Amenities are much harder to come by and also more valuable, in general, for gestalts.

10% excess amenities for a gestalt gives 3% stability. For a non-gestalt, it gives 2% happiness and 1.2 stability.

Similarly, 1 excess amenities for a gestalt is 1/3-1/4 of a job (3 excess from maintenance drones, or 3.8 with Charismatic). For non-gestalts, 1 excess amenity is less than 1/9*3/4 or 1/11*3/4 of a job, as entertainers are more efficient (and also make unity like 1/4 of a bureaucrat).
So less unity, no happiness, no ethics attraction and no ethic specific bonus is suddenly fine, because of a tiny bit of amenities?

You also can’t just lump MEs and Hives together. One has the highest pop growth of all playstyles and the other one has one of the worst, if not the worst pop growth.
Giving them jobs with the same efficiency is lazy at best.
 
So less unity, no happiness, no ethics attraction and no ethic specific bonus is suddenly fine, because of a tiny bit of amenities?

You also can’t just lump MEs and Hives together. One has the highest pop growth of all playstyles and the other one has one of the worst, if not the worst pop growth.
Giving them jobs with the same efficiency is lazy at best.
Yes. Gestalts don't have happiness: amenities directly affect stability at 2.5x the effectiveness as for non-gestalts. They have no ethics (and hence no faction unity) because pops don't require CG upkeep. They have no ethic specific bonuses because, again, they have no ethics. What they do get is 1.5x the Materialist bonus, and 3.75x as effective at raising stability as said materialist bonus.

Being unable to reduce deviancy except through their crappy Hunter-Seeker jobs/buildings (unlike non-gestalts, who use happiness) is a major weakness of machines and hive minds, sure. I would actually like it if the new culture worker equivalents doubled up on the bonuses that Synapse drones and Coordinators got: +2 amenities and -2 deviancy to start, then gaining either another +2 amenities or -2 deviancy if hive/MI, with the relevant tradition. Then it's government specific, at least. I agree with you there.

Also, I'm not really sure how you think that MIs have the lowest pop growth of all playstyles. MIs start with 4 or up to 5.52 with the generally meta civics/traits (Rapid Replicators and Mass Produced). Driven Assimilators and Rogue Servitors start with 2.25 on top of that (2.475 if Rapid Breeders), putting them at 7.995 to start, at most. Even without those two civics, a machine intelligence who manages to get a hold of organics to grid amalgamate can grow at (roughly) those rates, though they won't get access to e.g. genome sequencing, IIRC. A hive mind starts with an absurd 7.625 (8.075 with Rapid Breeders, or similar with Budding), which is basically the same as a MI with organics. MIs, with all the available techs, produce 4.5*.5*1.8+8*1.15*1.5=17.85. That's a rogue servitor just doing its thing on an ecumenopolis, without anything particularly special (beyond assembly plants), and I may have forgotten a modifier or two.

And both are miles ahead of the 5.85, at most, that non-gestalts can start at with Rapid Breeders and fanatic xenophobe. Even stacking Budding, Fertile, clone vats, the growth techs, and gene clinics, an organic empire will cap at 4.5*(1+.2+.2+.3+.2+.1+.5)+(3+4)*1.2=19.65 on an ecumenopolis with 200 pops, which is only a bit better than the MI just doing its thing. 2 building slots, 2 traits (with 4 trait points), a fanatic ethic, an ascension path, and 200 pops all stacked on one world to beat MI by 1.8. Like the MI, I may have forgotten a modifier or two.

Gestalt intelligences are not put upon, at least not from a balance perspective. They suffer from a lack of interesting mechanics, but they're certainly not weak.
 
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I don't know what other people's games are like but every time I've played gestalt, I've had a crippling oversupply of amenities

You're supposed to disable maintenance drone jobs until you get to the level you want. Gestalts have the opportunity, generally, to get all the amenities they could ever want, but it's through an extremely inefficient job that you want as few pops working as necessary. I had hoped that amenity automation would solve this for players, but the planet automation doesn't seem to do anything sane with it (like disabling further jobs once amenities are in the green, so pops can migrate).

Sorry, I miscommunicated. Amenities are indeed easy to come by, but they're hard to come by efficiently for gestalts. Maintenance drones are terrible. If you can avoid it (such as by getting stability through biotrophies or Bulwarks), you shouldn't employ a single one. They make only 40% as many amenities as an entertainer (since each amenity is 2.5x as effective), but not really, since they have to cover themselves. They really make 1/3 of the amenities of an entertainer, without unity, since they take 1 for themselves (leaving 3 for others) while an entertainer takes 1 for themselves, leaving 9 for others.

Without your mods it'll be -10% from One Vision and -30% from 6 Culture Workers for -40%. Which is still very good, but it's not quite -80%.
By "mods" do you mean "modifiers", or "modifications" (as in, Steam mods)? Resident citizenship status is vanilla, as is the Ecological protection GC resolution. Vultaum may be random, but the others are pretty easy to arrange in every game.
 
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I'm calling it, the new meta is Fanatic Militarist + Materialist; Byzantine Bureaucracy now solid S tier auto pick
You pay: 3 consumer goods
You get: 2 naval capacity (worth 0.33 pop), 2 amenity (worth 0.2 pop), 4+1 unity and 1 stability
It's really just 50% better Bureaucrat that's worth spamming on every planet for these two ethics.

Nice, no more admin worlds, not worth a dime.

Unfortunately, the bonuses from Byzantine Bureaucracy won't apply to Culture Workers.
 
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By "mods" do you mean "modifiers", or "modifications" (as in, Steam mods)? Resident citizenship status is vanilla, as is the Ecological protection GC resolution. Vultaum may be random, but the others are pretty easy to arrange in every game.

My bad, I thought those were all modded civics and ethics. It didn't occur to me that those could be references to citizenship status or galactic community resolutions, for what are really quite silly reasons.
 
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Unfortunately, the bonuses from Byzantine Bureaucracy won't apply to Culture Workers.

Fan Militarist + Materialist + any civic of choice with culture spam is still very valid by the virtue of naval capacity not scaling anywhere.
Sounds a bit weird but this seems like just strictly better Citadel of Faith for materialist and simultaneously half a fortress for militarist.
For other ethics the bonuses are too minor to be worth bother using the job. Suddenly becoming 50% more expensive Bureaucrat that's not providing 50% more bonuses only gets them deprioritized for the monument itself's free monthly unity.
 
Fan Militarist + Materialist + any civic of choice with culture spam is still very valid by the virtue of naval capacity not scaling anywhere.
Sounds a bit weird but this seems like just strictly better Citadel of Faith for materialist and simultaneously half a fortress for militarist.
For other ethics the bonuses are too minor to be worth bother using the job. Suddenly becoming 50% more expensive Bureaucrat that's not providing 50% more bonuses only gets them deprioritized for the monument itself's free monthly unity.
The bonuses will be situational and it will definitely be smart to turn off one of the jobs or both some of the time, especially if building the Monument early. I think that makes for an interesting level of nuance, but it could also become annoying since buildings are built with jobs enabled, which immediately steal pops which then require ages to demote back to their previous job.
 
Goddamn, I love this idea. It was about time culture workers and culture would get a bit of love. While I would like to see a much bigger, influential cultural system, this is a good first (small) step in that direction. Perhaps priests and temples could undergo a similar rework at some point?

Either way, as for the particular bonuses of each ethic:

  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet) => I really don't think that extra amenities fit materialism at all
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet) => Temathic & powerful at the same time. I like it!
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire) => A bit weak. Perhaps +2 would be better?
  • Pacifist: +2.5% Trade Value from Lifestyle (Planet) => I love how this combines with Utopian builds, and it is powerful to boot
  • Egalitarian: -2.5% Housing Usage (Planet) => Cool & thematically appropriate
  • Authoritarian: +3 Edict Fund (Empire) => Edict funds bonuses are a much better fit for authoritarians than xenophobes, yep
  • Xenophobe: +2.5% Citizen Happiness (Planet) => Wow, that's... quite powerful. Also not entirely sure about its relationship with the xenophobe ethic
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet) => A bit like the previous one, I don't understand what it has to do with xenophiles, but it is quite powerful nonetheless

As for how I would modify them:

  • Materialist: +3% to specialist happiness (Planet)
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet)
  • Militarist: +2 Naval Capacity (Empire)
  • Pacifist: +2.5% Trade Value from Lifestyle (Planet)
  • Egalitarian: -2.5% Housing Usage (Planet)
  • Authoritarian: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  • Xenophobe: +1 extra unity bonus (when compared to vanilla culture workers)
  • Xenophile: -3% to Xeno Pop Upkeep
Still, I look forward further differentiation and bonuses from different ethics (and different Traditions, too!)
 
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I really don't want to rain on your parade, but:
Yes. Gestalts don't have happiness: amenities directly affect stability at 2.5x the effectiveness as for non-gestalts. They have no ethics (and hence no faction unity) because pops don't require CG upkeep. They have no ethic specific bonuses because, again, they have no ethics. What they do get is 1.5x the Materialist bonus, and 3.75x as effective at raising stability as said materialist bonus.
While they do gain more stability from the amenities, you are completly ignoring the fact, that everyone else already gets 10% worker happiness, more unity and the ethics attraction.

Also, I'm not really sure how you think that MIs have the lowest pop growth of all playstyles. MIs start with 4 or up to 5.52 with the generally meta civics/traits (Rapid Replicators and Mass Produced). Driven Assimilators and Rogue Servitors start with 2.25 on top of that (2.475 if Rapid Breeders), putting them at 7.995 to start, at most. Even without those two civics, a machine intelligence who manages to get a hold of organics to grid amalgamate can grow at (roughly) those rates, though they won't get access to e.g. genome sequencing, IIRC. A hive mind starts with an absurd 7.625 (8.075 with Rapid Breeders, or similar with Budding), which is basically the same as a MI with organics. MIs, with all the available techs, produce 4.5*.5*1.8+8*1.15*1.5=17.85. That's a rogue servitor just doing its thing on an ecumenopolis, without anything particularly special (beyond assembly plants), and I may have forgotten a modifier or two.
Leave those civics out of the equation. Those are an optional choice and therefore should always be balanced around the core ME state and never the other way around. Paradox really failed on that part.
If you actually go with "technically", then MEs only have 1 base pop growth, because everything else requires buildings, jobs, etc.
Even their capitol building jobs only gets them ahead of organics by 0,5 and those 0,5 growth have to produce 8 whole pops to make up for the replicator jobs.
8 pops would take at least 800 growth, so after 133 years you get a small bonus. (or 103 years with Replicators and Mass Produced)

Gestalt intelligences are not put upon, at least not from a balance perspective. They suffer from a lack of interesting mechanics, but they're certainly not weak.
Only if you pick the "transformative" civics. A base ME is weak, nothing else.

Though I think anything more about this thema would be too much for this thread.
 
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that everyone else already gets 10% worker happiness, more unity

They don't. Worker happiness was present as the Egalitarian-ethics bonus (but I've since swapped it to housing usage reduction.

All four jobs (culture workers, death chroniclers, evalutaors and chronicle drones) have a base unity output of 4 before any other modifiers. The differences in the screenshots in the DD are due to technologies and other such bonuses.


  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet) => I really don't think that extra amenities fit materialism at all
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet) => Temathic & powerful at the same time. I like it!
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire) => A bit weak. Perhaps +2 would be better?
  • Pacifist: +2.5% Trade Value from Lifestyle (Planet) => I love how this combines with Utopian builds, and it is powerful to boot
  • Egalitarian: -2.5% Housing Usage (Planet) => Cool & thematically appropriate
  • Authoritarian: +3 Edict Fund (Empire) => Edict funds bonuses are a much better fit for authoritarians than xenophobes, yep
  • Xenophobe: +2.5% Citizen Happiness (Planet) => Wow, that's... quite powerful. Also not entirely sure about its relationship with the xenophobe ethic
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet) => A bit like the previous one, I don't understand what it has to do with xenophiles, but it is quite powerful nonetheless

The exact numbers (and modifiers) are still being looked at and reconsidered, so there might be more changes to these in the final version. Thanks for the feedback!
 
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I really appreciate your presence here even during the summer break, I don't think I have ever seen a Stellaris dev so passionate and also patient, the fact this discussion is happening is already really nice, I don't even mind the final bonuses we end up getting :) (I do miss Martin discussing the FTL rework, it was intense)

This said, Culture Workers could work in totally different ways than proposed in case there aren't strong feelings about this specific rework, there are other possibilities rather than ethics with aspects such as Traditions, Ascensions, Government Type, Civics, Edicts, Policies, Planetary Designations... Also, imagine integrations like being able to chose Culture Worker focus with a change in policy and the options given coming from the adopted Ethics; I'm throwing these here just to remember that Stellaris is vast and full of wonders, we can always think outside of any given box.
 
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Avoiding research on the culture workers is fair enough on one hand, but honestly, research has been disappointing ever since the switch from tiles to jobs.

it was great to build a military building and get society and engineering research

it was great to build a physicist building and get that associated research.

Having things like the Military academy go back to providing a job that assisted in improving your military tech would be something I’d prefer to go back to. Research right now is just WAY to brain dead in just building a single science building and you’re good to go. There is very little use for many of these specialty buildings.

An Alien Zoo should provide a job that assists in Society Research

Energy Grids or something could provide a physicist job

I haven’t seen a Betharian stone for awhile so many they don’t exist anymore but one of the jobs provided by them could be a physicist

upgraded Healthcare centers could provide a sociologist

science is just a bit too lazy right now, and has been for quite some time. The Unity shift was fantastic and the different ways you need to manage it along with having more options then slots. It’d be great if research went a similar route and was more involved with solid science point revision
 
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Hey folks, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer/winter break (depending on your hemisphere). I’ve found some time between my other summer experiments and the work we’re doing for 3.5 “Fornax” to dive into the feedback/suggestions lists. Since Eladrin is still away, you’re getting another sneak preview of what I’ve been working on.

One of the frequent requests from the Unity rework that was part of the 3.3 “Libra” patch earlier this year was for us to return Culture Workers to the game. Currently, they exist only as jobs provided by some event buildings, but many in the Community felt we removed some flavor/roleplay aspect when we removed them.

Over summer, I’ve been experimenting with potentially adding them back in. For context, in the current version of the game Culture Workers are a Specialist job that belongs to their own economic category, produce 3 Unity and 3 Society Research with an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods.

Let’s have a look at an Autochthon Monument constructed by the UNE shortly after the start of the game.

View attachment 861579
Showing the Culture Workers with some unusual modifiers

To start with, the monument is retaining the Unity from Jobs modifier and the passive Unity production per Ascension Perk, but additionally provides 2/4/6 Culture Worker jobs per tier of the monument. The same applies to the Corporate version of the monument.

The sharp-eyed might notice that there’s some odd modifiers being given: Worker Happiness? Pop Upkeep Reduction? What, might you ask, has happened?

In this experiment, we’re looking at Culture Workers having an output that depends on the Ethics of your empire. After all, what influences your culture the most if not your ethics?

These are the ethics-based modifiers we’re currently testing and whether their effects are Empire-wide or only affecting the planet that the building has been constructed on:
  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet)
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet)
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire)
  • Pacifist: -2.5% Crime (Planet)
  • Egalitarian: +2.5% Worker Happiness (Planet)
  • Authoritarian: +5 Ruler Political Power (Planet)
  • Xenophobe: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet)

These modifiers are provided by both Culture Workers and Death Chroniclers (as their job-swap with the Memorialist civic) and are doubled in the case of Fanatic ethics. They are intended to be a small buff/addition to the job, with the Unity production from both the jobs and the building being the primary draw.

Additionally, Culture Workers/Death Chroniclers now belong in the Administrator category, in the Culture Worker sub-category meaning they’ll benefit from multiplicative bonuses to Administrator output (such as those provided by the Unification or Ecclesiastical planetary designations). They produce a base of 4 Unity and +10% Government Ethics Attraction (+2.5% Stability for Death Chroniclers) with 3 Consumer Goods upkeep.

There’s also been some discussion around having Resort Worlds add Culture Workers, and if I find time I’ll be looking into that as well.

To ensure that hive-minds and machine intelligences don’t feel left out, Sensorium/Simulation Sites now provide 2/4/6 Evaluator jobs per tier of the building. These now provide 4 Unity and 3 Amenities in exchange for an upkeep of 2 Energy.

View attachment 861580
A hive-mind sensorium site providing 2 evaluator jobs.

Chronicle Drones provide the same Unity and Amenities output but give an additional +2.5% Stability in exchange for slightly higher upkeep (and that upkeep being based off of the upkeep cost of the pop working the job). Like their individualist equivalents, these jobs both now belong to the Evaluator sub-category of the Administrators jobs.

I’m not sure if we’ll have another surprise dev diary over summer, but our normal schedule should resume once Eladrin’s back and we’ll start delving into 3.5. Regardless I’ll be keeping a close eye on this thread for your thoughts, suggestions and any feedback.
How did I miss this diary. This is literally everything I wanted for culture workers. Good god it is beautiful.