• 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.

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.
 
  • 112Like
  • 52Love
  • 5
  • 4
  • 2
Reactions:
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.
Alright, thanks for the clarification, though your screenshots are really misleading on several parts:
- 2 culture workers getting a bonus of 87,5% to their unity output just "shortly after the start of the game"? That is not exactly believable.
- You mention a bonus of 2,5% worker happiness in the text, while displaying a 5% bonus
- The reduced upkeep buff is only shown in the screenshot and not mentioned in text.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Alright, thanks for the clarification, though your screenshots are really misleading on several parts:
- 2 culture workers getting a bonus of 87,5% to their unity output just "shortly after the start of the game"? That is not exactly believable.
- You mention a bonus of 2,5% worker happiness in the text, while displaying a 5% bonus
- The reduced upkeep buff is only shown in the screenshot and not mentioned in text.

That Culture Workers bonus were specific for a Fanatic Egalitarian (which doubles the basic Egalitarian happiness bonus) Xenophile (whose upkeep reduction bonus is actually written in the text).

Also I think the Jobs Production misleadingly count the Unity Production of the Building.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
2 culture workers getting a bonus of 87,5% to their unity output just "shortly after the start of the game"? That is not exactly believable.
It estimates "15", which could mean 14.1 to 15, from a base of 8, so it could be a 76% increase.

5% from the building itself, 10% from artisan enclave, 5% from Planetary Unification, 10% from Prosperous Unification, 2% from governor, 15% from Beacon of Liberty, 10% from capital, and 15% from stability (from capital). Potentially, there could be One Vision ("relatively close" to the start), or the governor could have started with bureaucrat output instead of talking to the enclave

It's UNE, that's why they have 10% worker happiness: that came from the fanatic egalitarian ethic, at that point (with fanatic, each made 5% happiness).

The reduced upkeep was the old xenophile bonus.

Everything needed to explain the screenshot was in the text of the post, except for a missing 10% modifier which could be a large number of things.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
"to make sure gestalts arent being left out, we give them even more useless amenities because we have no idea what to do with them anymore"
 
  • 5
Reactions:
"to make sure gestalts arent being left out, we give them even more useless amenities because we have no idea what to do with them anymore"
It’s quite the opposite. Maintenance drones is the worst job you keep around just to keep your amenity above 0, you deprioritize it after the point you’re in the positives. With the change machine empire can get quite a lot of amenity AND unity at little cost, it’s effectively 75% better coordinator since it also provides amenity 75% of a maintenance drone. With 6 of these on your every world you can save on average of 4 pops that can now work in real jobs. It’s huge. It’s now also super easy to run maintenance drone free economy playing hivemind spamming these everywhere pairing with the synchronicity tradition. In fact, aren’t these really just better synapse drones? A synapse drone takes a tradition AND an orbital ring to reach the same level of amenity output while taking 100% additional upkeep. Wow, I don’t need to think, I should just spam these monuments everywhere whenever possible. Comparatively a huge nerf to Rogue Servitor as they don’t really need these additional unities.
 
Last edited:
  • 11
Reactions:
It’s quite the opposite. Maintenance drones is the worst job you keep around just to keep your amenity above 0, you deprioritize it after the point you’re in the positives. With the change machine empire can get quite a lot of amenity AND unity at little cost, it’s effectively 75% better coordinator since it also provides amenity 75% of a maintenance drone. With 6 of these on your every world you can save on average of 4 pops that can now work in real jobs. It’s huge. It’s now also super easy to run maintenance drone free economy playing hivemind spamming these everywhere pairing with the synchronicity tradition. In fact, aren’t these really just better synapse drones? A synapse drone takes a tradition AND an orbital ring to reach the same level of amenity output while taking 100% additional upkeep. Wow, I don’t need to think, I should just spam these monuments everywhere whenever possible. Comparatively a huge nerf to Rogue Servitor as they don’t really need these additional unities.
To be fair:
I always thought single-consciousness or hive-mind entities should be producing vastly more "unity" than societies consisting of billions to trillions of individuals with partially independent or contradicting interests.

I made a thread once to get community consensus [ here ] and got pretty much significant agreement.
Voting concluded (up to this point):
  • 13 votes for higher potential of unity generation than regular empires (14 if you'd include my opinion)
  • 10 votes for on-par potential of unity generation with regular empires
  • 03 votes for lower potential of unity generation with regular empires
Essentially a 23 to 3 majority for "gestalts should produce more unity than they currently do" - even though opinion differs on the precise amount they should produce more.
 
  • 4Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
To be fair:
I always thought single-consciousness or hive-mind entities should be producing vastly more "unity" than societies consisting of billions to trillions of individuals with partially independent or contradicting interests.

I made a thread once to get community consensus [ here ] and got pretty much significant agreement.
Voting concluded (up to this point):
  • 13 votes for higher potential of unity generation than regular empires (14 if you'd include my opinion)
  • 10 votes for on-par potential of unity generation with regular empires
  • 03 votes for lower potential of unity generation with regular empires
Essentially a 23 to 3 majority for "gestalts should produce more unity than they currently do" - even though opinion differs on the precise amount they should produce more.
Not really. It’s why MI unity job is called coordinator since without individual thoughts it requires a unified coordination which can get quadratically chaotic as the number of nodes that needs order goes up. Even in a decentralized control algorithm it’s still common to have a “leader” that needs the command propagate through the network, and obviously that takes time and can cause discord during the process.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Not really. It’s why MI unity job is called coordinator since without individual thoughts it requires a unified coordination which can get quadratically chaotic as the number of nodes that needs order goes up. Even in a decentralized control algorithm it’s still common to have a “leader” that needs the command propagate through the network, and obviously that takes time and can cause discord during the process.
Yes, i am aware of the field of organic computing that specifically deals with issues like that.

But calling a coordinated swarm of drones (whether with a coordinator or just organically coordinated) less united than a workforce of individuals is kind of absurd, don't you think?
 
Not really. It’s why MI unity job is called coordinator since without individual thoughts it requires a unified coordination which can get quadratically chaotic as the number of nodes that needs order goes up. Even in a decentralized control algorithm it’s still common to have a “leader” that needs the command propagate through the network, and obviously that takes time and can cause discord during the process.

It's also the reason why they have the Deviancy mechanic, the orders are not always correctly followed and some "malfunctioning" drone is certainly expected.

However the lack of factions is the main offender for Gestalts bad unity production, it's undeniable. Even though I disagree that they should produce more unity than regular Empires, I think Gestalts should get a similar per pop unity production, a rework for them would be really appreciated.
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
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
More sources of Incidental Research is definitely a thing that should exist, but I don't think that's necessarily the role of Culture Workers, especially if the plan is to have them adapt to your empire. I'd much rather see extra Research be distributed around some other less popular buildings like Gene Clinics, or squirreled away into some Civics or Traditions.
 
It's also the reason why they have the Deviancy mechanic, the orders are not always correctly followed and some "malfunctioning" drone is certainly expected.

However the lack of factions is the main offender for Gestalts bad unity production, it's undeniable. Even though I disagree that they should produce more unity than regular Empires, I think Gestalts should get a similar per pop unity production, a rework for them would be really appreciated.
Gestalts should have one faction called "Me" and the only demand is to keep deviancy low.
 
  • 4Haha
Reactions:
The tweaks are nice. Also like the approach of having it so that the more restricted play styles, get the slightly more powerful bonuses, since that is a good way to balance things. Not to mention that pacifist is considered one of the weaker ethics, so giving it a boost is kind of needed. Plus, some ethics really shouldn't get huge boosts given how powerful they already are.
 
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)
  • Pacifist: +2.5% Trade Value from Lifestyle (Planet)
  • Egalitarian: -2.5% Housing Usage (Planet)
  • Authoritarian: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  • Xenophobe: +2.5% Citizen Happiness (Planet)
Some potential issues, as of the last version:
  • Three of the bonuses are ultimately about Happiness (Materialist, Spiritualist, Xenophobe), two of which are so via Amenities. This feels unfortunate, since it makes these bonuses so similar to each other (there is also the issue with overabundance of Happiness bonuses). It can also be noted that Pacifist's unique edict adds +10% Happines; it is getting crowded in the Happiness sector.

  • The Materialist bonus turns Culture Workers into superior Priests (albeit more expensive). +2 Amenities production to the Specialist Unity job is a "hidden" Spiritualist bonus that sets Priests apart from Bureaucrats. With the suggested changes Culture Workers would produce 4 Unity and +10% Governing Ethics Attraction, to which moderate Materialist would add 2 Amenities and Fanatic Materialist woud add 4. If the ethics attraction bonus for Temples is considered a part of the Priest jobs, for the sake of fairness, the comparison looks like this:
BureaucratPriestCulture Worker
Fanatic Materialist
Culture Worker
moderate Materialist
Unity4444
Amenities-242
Ethics Attraction-+2.5% Spiritualist+10% Governing+10% Governing
We are looking at a potential total of 9 Culture Workers per world with these stats (6 from monuments, 3 from Ministry of Culture). The Amenities bonus to Materialist Culture Workers would be problematic for the Spiritualist-Materialist balance even if the specialist-level Unity jobs in general were not already struggling for relevancy (due to the large amounts of Unity from Ruler jobs). Fanatic Materialist would for the most part become strictly, objectively superior in one regard where Spiritualist currently is designed to be better. (And while a reduced Amenities consumption would slightly counter this new relative advantage, it would also overlap with Spiritualist simultaneously getting the aforementioned 2 Amenities advantage to their specialist-level Unity jobs. And I am also still not sure what exactly the Amenities bonus for Materialist is supposed to represent; Materialist is neither the first nor the second ethic that comes to my mind when thinking of service-mindedness.)​
  • Culture Workers being a source of Edict Fund production for Authoritarian, while Ruler jobs currently produce none, feels odd.

  • It would be more consistent if all ethics got local bonuses, rather than two getting getting empire-level bonuses.

  • +90% Governing Ethics Attraction is a lot, and is the total bonus we end up with when multiplying +10% per Culture Worker with 9 Culture Worker jobs (6 from monuments, 3 from Ministry of Culture). When compared to the current Governing Ethics Attraction bonuses, I see two potential balance problems:
    • The potential size of the bonus is almost twice as big as that from an ascension perk, One Vision, and nearly four times as big as that from the Isolationist diplomatic stance.
    • It raises the potential total GEA bonus from 325% to 415%, if we ignore the bonuses from Empire Capital, Conservative and FC/SbtP (and Psychic), as well as the ability to promote specific ethics with +100% EA without any cost or downside, and 3 of 8 ethics potentially making Culture Workers directly or indirectly raise Happiness (which raises GEA). Similar to what has happened with the Happiness bonuses, and to some extent also the Stability bonuses, power creep is a real concern for GEA. And unlike most GEA bonuses which are locked behind traits or ascension perks, the GEA bonus from Culture Workers would be available to everyone, growing incrementally from very early in the game.
      • If Culture Workers are to have a GEA bonus, could there be any compensating changes to offset the change in game balance as far as ethics attraction is concerned?
      • What if Culture Worker instead added +10% ethics attraction to their own ethic, and the job perhaps also attracted pops with non-governing ethics?
        Not only would this match a lot of tropes, but it would also put a big twist on the EA bonus from the job. The EA "bonus" would start out as a downside to the other bonuses but it could potentially also be a major, conservative GEA bonus in societies that achieve high ethic cohesion (among the pops eligible for the Culture Worker job).


I do want Culture Workers to return, and I do want them to fill a unique niche. The idea of having Culture Worker output vary from empire to empire, depending on their characteristics, is good - but I think it could be even better if it is based on other things than ethics.
  • Ethics need to be balanced versus all the other ethics, while their bonuses need to be conceptually appropriate and also not overlap with each other. Assigning 3 bonuses (2 for the ethic itself, 1 for its unique edicts) that are appropriate, balanced and distinct is already difficult. It can even be argued that Stellaris currently is not quite there yet in 3.4 (the lack of Militarist and Materialist unique edicts is a rather objective sign of this not yet being accomplished). Adding ethic-based effects to Culture Workers is essentially trying to add a 4th bonus that is also supposed to be appropriate, balanced and distinct, which is exponentially more difficult (because of all the good bonuses already being taken), even if it is intended to be a minor bonus when compared to the main ethic bonuses. It becomes even harder when also factoring in that Culture Workers need to retain some balance with other jobs, even if they cannot exceed 9 jobs per planet. As I may have expressed before, I doubt it is even possible to achieve a set of ethic-based benefits that is appropriate, balanced and distinct - at least within any reasonable amount of effort (but hey, I am neither omniscient nor prescient, and some of my hunches are wrong some of the time).
    • There are also the aforementioned lingering questions I faced in a similar ethics design discussion/conundrum(where I concluded that adding a 4th bonus for all ethics was too difficult while still adhering to the goal of the bonus being appropriate, balanced and distinct from the other bonuses):
      • "If a bonus to this output is logical for this ethic, why is the ethic not boosting it already? Why should this bonus not be one of the main effects of the ethic?"
      • "If a bonus to this output is desirable for this ethic, can't empires with the ethic already be expected to already pursue the accumulation of it? Meaning that an extra source at best would not add that much flavour or interesting choice to the ethic, and at worst adds imbalances to the economy?"
      • "How would this ethic-based source of the output/bonus impact the "broad strokes" design of ethics? Where the ethic bonuses represent the fundamental characteristics all adherents of the ethic have in common, while other choices (such as civics, authority type, policies, traditions) are normally used to handle the finer details?"
      • "Is this being done primarily to make the game design more interesting? Does it make the actual gameplay more interesting?"
  • Tradition trees could offer a much easier time getting Culture Workers right. Culture Worker bonuses would not suffer from the constraints of ethic bonuses, since they do not relate to each other the same way that ethics do (i.e. no opposites, and we pick 7 of 11 rather than 2-3 of 8), and would additionally be much easier to balance since each tradition tree is a whole package of many different bonuses. Culture Worker bonuses could even be used to improve some currently weak tradition trees. Tying Culture Workers to tradition trees would also make sense as the monument buildings already are tied to traditions (via Unity proportionality to the number of Ascension Perks). Also, it can be argued that ethics are values and traditions are culture.
    • The number of bonuses could be kept to 1-3 by either only checking the first picked 1-3 tradition trees (which could also be used to add incentives for non-meta choices, which could add interesting choices to the game), or by just not having one Culture Worker bonus per tradition tree; only in the ones where it makes the most sense.
      • (If it is desirable that Culture Workers should not grow in value over time, each tradition-tied Culture Worker bonus could come at the cost of swapping out one Unity point from their Unity production. This would also have the advantage of reducing their overlap with normal Administrator jobs as time goes by. However, as has been pointed out, other jobs usually increase their output over the course of time.)
    • Tradition trees also has the benefit that many different bonuses could be appropriate. And, in case of an unlikely shortage of new ideas, a quick and dirty solution could be to just take an existing tradition bonus and tie it to Culture Workers.
  • Several civics would be excellent picks for changing Culture Worker outputs. Pleasure Seekers, Media Conglomerate, Citizen Service, Merchant Guilds, Agrarian Idyll, Beacon of Liberty, Nationalistic Zeal, Idealistic Foundation, Aristocratic Elite and other civics practically beg for a visible cultural impact. And these too avoid the big issues associated with ethics, while allowing a much greater degree of freedom (as only a limited set of civics would logically affect Culture Workers) and potentially also offering the opportunity to boost current non-meta civics.
  • Planet designations could be another potential source of Culture Worker differentiation, albeit between planets rather than between empires. Are urban world Culture Workers the same as rural world Culture Workers? Would a Mining World have the same culture as a Tech-World? This could also let Gestalt Empires get some variety.
  • Government authority types could also potentially interact with Culture Workers, reflecting that culture serves different kinds of purposes in democracies, monarchies and corporations (and this could also leave room for differentiating Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences).
  • Policy choices (possibly a new policy) could also be a source of differences.

For a truly great variety of Culture Worker bonus combinations, multiple sources could be combined.
For instance, if the first tradition tree decides one bonus, the government authority type decides another bonus, and the local planet designation decides the third bonus, we could be looking at something like 11 * [5 or 7] * [up to 52ish] = up to nearly 4,000 different combinations (depending on whether GC empires would take part of this multitude). And that is before adding in the possibility of appropriate civics also contributing, or additional tradition trees being added in the future.
(Example: mercantilistic monarchic miners could have visibly different Culture Workers from supremacist democratic urban dwellers.)
 
Last edited:
  • 4Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
But calling a coordinated swarm of drones (whether with a coordinator or just organically coordinated) less united than a workforce of individuals is kind of absurd, don't you think?
even worse, democracies, historically the least unified societies, produce more unity than authoritarian and hive mind which are more united in every sense of the word.

For instance, if the first tradition tree decides one bonus, the government authority type decides another bonus, and the local planet designation decides the third bonus, we could be looking at something like 11 * [5 or 7] * [up to 52ish] = up to nearly 4,000 different combinations (depending on whether GC empires would take part of this multitude). And that is before adding in the possibility of appropriate civics also contributing, or additional tradition trees being added in the future.
Maybe instead of planet designation the ethic could give a bonus, but only the fanatic ethic/gestalt consciousness. for empires without fanatic ethics they could increase planet designation affect (akin to a weaker planetary ascension).
 
Last edited:
even worse, democracies, historically the least unified societies, produce more unity than authoritarian and hive mind which are more united in every sense of the word.
That somewhat depends on what you define as unified.
A slave driving dictatorship is likely to be significantly less united than a diverse democracy of people who at least with a significant majority agree that sentient's rights should be a universal thing - even if they disagree on a lot of other values or details on how to achieve certain agreed-upon goals. (At least if you count the slaves as people, too - which i would.)

When it comes to how "unified" the political power is exerted than i think you might be right, an autocracy will be vastly more swift, united and decisive.
It very much depends on what "unity" means.

A democracy of hardcore voltaire adherents would be strongly united in some sense of the word.
("I May Disapprove Of What You Say, But I Will Defend To The Death Your Right To Say It.", a quote from his biographer, not him directly, though.)
They would most certainly rise up against any external threat that intends to subjugate them as a united force.

Whether or not you count democracies as more united than autocracies, i think we can agree on hive minds and single-consciousness empires being vastly more "united" than either.
 
Some potential issues, as of the last version:
  • Three of the bonuses are ultimately about Happiness (Materialist, Spiritualist, Xenophobe), two of which are so via Amenities. This feels unfortunate, since it makes these bonuses so similar to each other (there is also the issue with overabundance of Happiness bonuses). It can also be noted that Pacifist's unique edict adds +10% Happines; it is getting crowded in the Happiness sector.

  • The Materialist bonus turns Culture Workers into superior Priests (albeit more expensive). +2 Amenities production to the Specialist Unity job is a "hidden" Spiritualist bonus that sets Priests apart from Bureaucrats. With the suggested changes Culture Workers would produce 4 Unity and +10% Governing Ethics Attraction, to which moderate Materialist would add 2 Amenities and Fanatic Materialist woud add 4. If the ethics attraction bonus for Temples is considered a part of the Priest jobs, for the sake of fairness, the comparison looks like this:
BureaucratPriestCulture Worker
Fanatic Materialist
Culture Worker
moderate Materialist
Unity4444
Amenities-242
Ethics Attraction-+2.5% Spiritualist+10% Governing+10% Governing
We are looking at a potential total of 9 Culture Workers per world with these stats (6 from monuments, 3 from Ministry of Culture). The Amenities bonus to Materialist Culture Workers would be problematic for the Spiritualist-Materialist balance even if the specialist-level Unity jobs in general were not already struggling for relevancy (due to the large amounts of Unity from Ruler jobs). Fanatic Materialist would for the most part become strictly, objectively superior in one regard where Spiritualist currently is designed to be better. (And while a reduced Amenities consumption would slightly counter this new relative advantage, it would also overlap with Spiritualist simultaneously getting the aforementioned 2 Amenities advantage to their specialist-level Unity jobs. And I am also still not sure what exactly the Amenities bonus for Materialist is supposed to represent; Materialist is neither the first nor the second ethic that comes to my mind when thinking of service-mindedness.)​
  • Culture Workers being a source of Edict Fund production for Authoritarian, while Ruler jobs currently produce none, feels odd.

  • It would be more consistent if all ethics got local bonuses, rather than two getting getting empire-level bonuses.

  • +90% Governing Ethics Attraction is a lot, and is the total bonus we end up with when multiplying +10% per Culture Worker with 9 Culture Worker jobs (6 from monuments, 3 from Ministry of Culture). When compared to the current Governing Ethics Attraction bonuses, I see two potential balance problems:
    • The potential size of the bonus is almost twice as big as that from an ascension perk, One Vision, and nearly four times as big as that from the Isolationist diplomatic stance.
    • It raises the potential total GEA bonus from 325% to 415%, if we ignore the bonuses from Empire Capital, Conservative and FC/SbtP (and Psychic), as well as the ability to promote specific ethics with +100% EA without any cost or downside, and 3 of 8 ethics potentially making Culture Workers directly or indirectly raise Happiness (which raises GEA). Similar to what has happened with the Happiness bonuses, and to some extent also the Stability bonuses, power creep is a real concern for GEA. And unlike most GEA bonuses which are locked behind traits or ascension perks, the GEA bonus from Culture Workers would be available to everyone, growing incrementally from very early in the game.
      • If Culture Workers are to have a GEA bonus, could there be any compensating changes to offset the change in game balance as far as ethics attraction is concerned?
      • What if Culture Worker instead added +10% ethics attraction to their own ethic, and the job perhaps also attracted pops with non-governing ethics?
        Not only would this match a lot of tropes, but it would also put a big twist on the EA bonus from the job. The EA "bonus" would start out as a downside to the other bonuses but it could potentially also be a major, conservative GEA bonus in societies that achieve high ethic cohesion (among the pops eligible for the Culture Worker job).


I do want Culture Workers to return, and I do want them to fill a unique niche. The idea of having Culture Worker output vary from empire to empire, depending on their characteristics, is good - but I think it could be even better if it is based on other things than ethics.
  • Ethics need to be balanced versus all the other ethics, while their bonuses need to be conceptually appropriate and also not overlap with each other. Assigning 3 bonuses (2 for the ethic itself, 1 for its unique edicts) that are appropriate, balanced and distinct is already difficult. It can even be argued that Stellaris currently is not quite there yet in 3.4 (the lack of Militarist and Materialist unique edicts is a rather objective sign of this not yet being accomplished). Adding ethic-based effects to Culture Workers is essentially trying to add a 4th bonus that is also supposed to be appropriate, balanced and distinct, which is exponentially more difficult (because of all the good bonuses already being taken), even if it is intended to be a minor bonus when compared to the main ethic bonuses. It becomes even harder when also factoring in that Culture Workers need to retain some balance with other jobs, even if they cannot exceed 9 jobs per planet. As I may have expressed before, I doubt it is even possible to achieve a set of ethic-based benefits that is appropriate, balanced and distinct - at least within any reasonable amount of effort (but hey, I am neither omniscient nor prescient, and some of my hunches are wrong some of the time).
    • There are also the aforementioned lingering questions I faced in a similar ethics design discussion/conundrum(where I concluded that adding a 4th bonus for all ethics was too difficult while still adhering to the goal of the bonus being appropriate, balanced and distinct from the other bonuses):
      • "If a bonus to this output is logical for this ethic, why is the ethic not boosting it already? Why should this bonus not be one of the main effects of the ethic?"
      • "If a bonus to this output is desirable for this ethic, can't empires with the ethic already be expected to already pursue the accumulation of it? Meaning that an extra source at best would not add that much flavour or interesting choice to the ethic, and at worst adds imbalances to the economy?"
      • "How would this ethic-based source of the output/bonus impact the "broad strokes" design of ethics? Where the ethic bonuses represent the fundamental characteristics all adherents of the ethic have in common, while other choices (such as civics, authority type, policies, traditions) are normally used to handle the finer details?"
      • "Is this being done primarily to make the game design more interesting? Does it make the actual gameplay more interesting?"
  • Tradition trees could offer a much easier time getting Culture Workers right. Culture Worker bonuses would not suffer from the constraints of ethic bonuses, since they do not relate to each other the same way that ethics do (i.e. no opposites, and we pick 7 of 11 rather than 2-3 of 8), and would additionally be much easier to balance since each tradition tree is a whole package of many different bonuses. Culture Worker bonuses could even be used to improve some currently weak tradition trees. Tying Culture Workers to tradition trees would also make sense as the monument buildings already are tied to traditions (via Unity proportionality to the number of Ascension Perks). Also, it can be argued that ethics are values and traditions are culture.
    • The number of bonuses could be kept to 1-3 by either only checking the first picked 1-3 tradition trees (which could also be used to add incentives for non-meta choices, which could add interesting choices to the game), or by just not having one Culture Worker bonus per tradition tree; only in the ones where it makes the most sense.
      • (If it is desirable that Culture Workers should not grow in value over time, each tradition-tied Culture Worker bonus could come at the cost of swapping out one Unity point from their Unity production. This would also have the advantage of reducing their overlap with normal Administrator jobs as time goes by. However, as has been pointed out, other jobs usually increase their output over the course of time.)
    • Tradition trees also has the benefit that many different bonuses could be appropriate. And, in case of an unlikely shortage of new ideas, a quick and dirty solution could be to just take an existing tradition bonus and tie it to Culture Workers.
  • Several civics would be excellent picks for changing Culture Worker outputs. Pleasure Seekers, Media Conglomerate, Citizen Service, Merchant Guilds, Agrarian Idyll, Beacon of Liberty, Nationalistic Zeal, Idealistic Foundation, Aristocratic Elite and other civics practically beg for a visible cultural impact. And these too avoid the big issues associated with ethics, while allowing a much greater degree of freedom (as only a limited set of civics would logically affect Culture Workers) and potentially also offering the opportunity to boost current non-meta civics.
  • Planet designations could be another potential source of Culture Worker differentiation, albeit between planets rather than between empires. Are urban world Culture Workers the same as rural world Culture Workers? Would a Mining World have the same culture as a Tech-World? This could also let Gestalt Empires get some variety.
  • Government authority types could also potentially interact with Culture Workers, reflecting that culture serves different kinds of purposes in democracies, monarchies and corporations (and this could also leave room for differentiating Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences).
  • Policy choices (possibly a new policy) could also be a source of differences.

For a truly great variety of Culture Worker bonus combinations, multiple sources could be combined.
For instance, if the first tradition tree decides one bonus, the government authority type decides another bonus, and the local planet designation decides the third bonus, we could be looking at something like 11 * [5 or 7] * [up to 52ish] = up to nearly 4,000 different combinations (depending on whether GC empires would take part of this multitude). And that is before adding in the possibility of appropriate civics also contributing, or additional tradition trees being added in the future.
(Example: mercantilistic monarchic miners could have visibly different Culture Workers from supremacist democratic urban dwellers.)
Variety doesn’t make a mechanism engaging, you’re not building your entire empire around culture workers. Are you gonna think about a very specific job when making every single decision? It’s probably gonna be spammed on all worlds without considering all the “varieties” by the virtue of being limited edition better bureaucrat already, just like you don’t ever think twice putting down that psi corp playing psionic. It then becomes the getaway wildcard for devs to “balance” various mechanisms? Then why not do the balance on those mechanisms themselves already?
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
The number of bonuses could be kept to 1-3 by either only checking the first picked 1-3 tradition trees (which could also be used to add incentives for non-meta choices, which could add interesting choices to the game), or by just not having one Culture Worker bonus per tradition tree; only in the ones where it makes the most sense.
Why not have traditions unlock cultural policies instead, which alter the output of culture workers? You could then have some policies unlocked by ethics (not every ethics would need a cultural policy option) and some unlocked by traditions (again, not every tradition would need an option, only some).
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
You know, just once I'd like the "Culture Workers should care about Traditions!" crowd to bother to suggest the 13 different, distinct effects they want on Culture Workers.

I mean if it's so obvious that it should be Traditions instead of Ethics, then obviously they've thought about this and have some ideas. Come on, don't be shy, lets see what 13 distinct things you'd add up to 7 to for every Culture worker in your empire.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
You know, just once I'd like the "Culture Workers should care about Traditions!" crowd to bother to suggest the 13 different, distinct effects they want on Culture Workers.

I mean if it's so obvious that it should be Traditions instead of Ethics, then obviously they've thought about this and have some ideas. Come on, don't be shy, lets see what 13 distinct things you'd add up to 7 to for every Culture worker in your empire.

Pop upkeep (Adaptability)
Resource output from ruler (Domination)
Resource output from specialist (Prosperity)
Sprawl from pop (Harmony)
Sprawl from colony and districts (Expansion)
Additional defense army (Unyielding)
Small science output (Discovery)
Immigration pull (Diplomacy)
Percentage Trade Value (Mercantile)

Synchronicity and Versatility are gestalt exclusive so they can be ignored.

Supremacy probably doesn’t need any bonus since it’s already OP (maybe should also remove prosperity bonus).

I’m now surprised why xenophile bonus is not additional immigration pull.

With this array of bonus I doubt if culture workers should have any unity output.
 
  • 4Like
Reactions:
We are looking at a potential total of 9 Culture Workers per world with these stats (6 from monuments, 3 from Ministry of Culture).

Ministry of Culture is still bugged and you can only build one of it in your entire empire.


Supremacy probably doesn’t need any bonus since it’s already OP (maybe should also remove prosperity bonus).
+10 XP for armies recruited on this planet.