• 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:
Hooray! Am very glad to see that culture workers might make a comeback.

I like having the effects linked to governing ethics - not only does this add to the variety between empires, it makes good sense, as the kind of culture that is funded (either via patronage or the state) varies greatly based on the society. I think most make a lot of sense. However, it seems less than ideal that materialist and spiritualist both affect amenities. And I don't quite see the logic of xenophile reducing pop upkeep - unless this was for non-primary species only. In general, having some sort of bonus/benefit for xenos would be in keeping.

An interesting question is whether culture workers should reinforce governing ethics attraction - this is certainly true for certain parts of history, though in others I they have also been a crucial source of dissent. One approach could be to have their effect on governing ethics tied to their own happiness, or to planetary happiness in general. Another is to use them in the 'encourage political thought' edict, so they switch to promoting an ethics shift.
 
  • 16Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Actually, I have only just realised that culture workers no longer produce society research. This could be an option for one of the ethics effects that could be made to fit better. It could make sense for xenophiles (investigating alien cultures in novel ways), and maybe for materialists (taking a research based approach to culture).
 
  • 22Like
  • 3
Reactions:
It's great that you're keeping up your dialogue with the community, even over the summer!

I do wonder if Authoritarians should get a bonus to Ruler happiness as well as Political Power, though? The power bonus could be a problem if a ruler pop joins an unhappy faction, but this could be eased with happiness bonuses.
 
  • 5
Reactions:
I like the idea of returning the culture workers. Good thing you are working on it. Two comments:

1. I play Pacifists a lot, and -2.5% crime is not exactly a good modifier. Pacifists, especially Fanatic Pacifists already have very low crime from the get go. Pacifist planets average at 0% crime in my games, without even taking specific anti-crime measures. As such, -2.5% crime would be a waste, especially compared to the additional naval capacity offered to Militarists. A better modifier for Pacifists would be additional resources or further sprawl reduction.

2. It would be interesting to see culture as a broader concept, influencing the gameplay. My suggestion is to make culture an aspect of species, instead of aspect of state. This way you could make culture a non-political way of life integral to the specific species. It would be different from ethics and civics integral to the specific state. That way species would be able to share culture regardless of where they live, offering a lot of possibilities both for Xenophiles and Xenophobes.
 
  • 28Like
  • 7
  • 1
Reactions:
I love the possible return of Culture Workers and the fact that they provide different bonuses depending on your Ethics is a really nice addition. However I don't really like the fact that Spiritualists and Materialists have such a similar bonus, especially for Materialists it seems a bit out of flavour imo. Maybe Materialists Culture Workers could provide Society Research like they originally did.
 
  • 5Like
  • 5
Reactions:
Love it! The ethics flavor is a great idea, and a good way to buff the weaker ethics a little by giving them a better bonus. I'm sure the balance needs to be worked on a bit though. Definitely would like to see Society Research as one of the possible effects as well, like someone else said.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I love the possible return of Culture Workers and the fact that they provide different bonuses depending on your Ethics is a really nice addition. However I don't really like the fact that Spiritualists and Materialists have such a similar bonus, especially for Materialists it seems a bit out of flavour imo. Maybe Materialists Culture Workers could provide Society Research like they originally did.
Giving Materialists even more tech when they're already the best at it might be a bad idea. On the contrary, giving the Society Research to Spiritualists might be a better one, giving them a leg up on working towards the Psionic techs they want.
 
  • 15
  • 5Like
  • 4
Reactions:
Oooh! More Evaluators for the Rogue Servitors would be good. Right now we only get them from the Ministry of Culture.
 
I'm not sure if Rogue Servitors having evaluators is a bug or feature, either way I hope this gets a definitive conclusion on future patches.
Happy to see more roleplay depth being added to the game, more unique effects from ethics, this is really nice!

Unity however has been a bit of an issue for regular Machine Empires as they have no factions to produce those nor pop traits to give the unity bonus, will they get access to the Propaganda unity trait from robots at any point? So that their evaluators can specialize and give more output :)
 
Crime percentage reductions work on the net crime on a planet right? Could I suggest making those work on the total positive crime? Otherwise these modifiers feel very useless.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
switch xenophiles and pacifists - fan xenophile with utopian abunance is going to be overwhelming (saving 0.3 CG pop upkeep with max upgraded site).

-crime reduction is a joke
raw edict fund is a joke once you get into ambition edicts
+1 naval cap from militarist is also joke since 1 fortress gonna give you more naval cap than 6 culture workers.

my 5 energy credicts.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Appreciate the feedback. As stated, we're not wanting the ethics-based modifiers to be the main draw of the job (that's the unity production), but I'll look at changing up the modifiers for some of these. To answer a few queries:
  • Research on these jobs is something we want to avoid.
  • The crime reduction functions in the same way as enforcers, as a direct reduction to the value, not a multiplier.
 
  • 24
  • 10Like
Reactions:
Aren't culture workers too overlapped with bureaucrats now? Both jobs generate mostly Unity. Wouldn't it be better to have Culture workers generate less Unity, but have the ethic bonus be an even big part of their output?
 
  • 7
  • 5Like
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
Oh, this is nice to see!

View attachment 861579
Showing the Culture Workers with some unusual modifiers
Curious that culture workers have an expected unity production of 7.5 each in this tooltip, instead of the expected 4. Is the unity from the building being included in the job production?

Are culture workers going to be balanced around only being able to get a limited number of them from monument buildings, or will they be returning to districts and alien zoos?

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)
With these rates, spiritualist culture workers have worse amenities value than materialist ones until they break even at 80 total base amenities usage (EDIT: assuming the materialists have absolutely no +% amenities bonuses), after which they start to become better. I'm not sure you want multiple ethics impacting the same modifier like this, since it seems like on most colonies for most of the game the spiritualist effect is just worse than the materialist one. Maybe give spiritualist culture workers the society research output that priests lost in the unity rework?

  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet)
All the other ethic-related bonuses make sense to me, but I'm having trouble seeing how this one is related.

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.
:)

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.
Is the Evaluator job category being moved to a sub-category of Administrator jobs too, then? Currently they aren't, they're a sub-category of Resource-Producing jobs and don't benefit from administrator modifiers.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this thread for your thoughts, suggestions and any feedback.
Here are the notes I had for a potential culture worker restoration/rework suggestion that I hadn't finished developing:
(EDIT: This is copy/pasted unaltered and predates this dev diary, so it includes research output that is no longer desired.)



Sources
  • Embassy building
  • Alien Zoo building
  • Living standards
  • Leisure districts → Cultural districts
  • Civic swapping admin buildings for culture worker buildings?
Base output
  • current: 2 CG → 3 unity, 3 society research
  • reworked: 4 CG (8 unity) → 3 unity, 3 society research, 3 amenities, 6 trade value (3+1+1+3=8)
  • Value calculation
    • 0.5 CG → 1 unity = 1 each research = 10 amenities = 2 TV
    • 2 CG = 4 unity (Bureaucrat) = 4 each research (Researcher) = 2 unity + 20 amenities (Entertainer)
    • 3 amenities + 12 TV (Merchant) = 3 amenities + 6 unity (Politician) => 1 unity = 2 TV
    • Midway between clerk and merchant is a 1 CG → 2.5 amenities + 8 TV specialist
Output swaps based on civics
Can trade up to 1/3rd of base output/upkeep for different resources or effects to make job more related to your empire's culture
  • Functional Architecture: –1 amenities, +1 engineering research
  • Masterful Crafters/Mastercraft Inc.: –1 society research, +1 engineering research
  • Diplomatic Corps/Public Relations Specialists (debate): –2 trade value & –1 amenities, +1 unity & +1 society research
  • Beacon of Liberty: –2 trade value, +1 unity
  • Shared Burdens: –2 trade value, +unity/amenities?
  • Idealistic Foundation: –?, +1 unity
  • Agrarian Idyll: upkeep –1 CG & +4 food
  • Mining Guilds: upkeep –1 CG & +3 minerals
  • Nationalistic Zeal: –?, +naval cap
  • Pleasure Seekers/Corporate Hedonism: –amenities, +trade value
Boost output, happiness, and/or political power of civic-related jobs?
  • Cutthroat Politics, Feudal Society, Parliamentary System, Philosopher King, Shadow Council = Rulers
  • Meritocracy = Specialists
  • Shared Burdens = Workers
  • Efficient Bureaucracy = Administrators
  • Byzantine Bureaucracy = Bureaucrat
  • Exalted Priesthood, Imperial Cult = Priests
  • Death Cult = Priests, Mortal Initiate
  • Technocracy = Researchers
  • Police State = Enforcers
  • Pleasure Seekers = Entertainers
  • Mining Guilds = Miners
  • Agrarian Idyll = Farmers
  • Catalytic Processing = Catalytic Technician
  • Masterful Crafters = Artificer
  • Memorialists = Death Chronicler
  • Anglers = Angler, Pearl Diver
  • Aristocratic Elite = Noble (Rulers?)
  • Citizen Service, Warrior Culture, Fanatic Purifiers, Barbaric Despoilers = Soldier
  • Corporate Dominion, Merchant Guilds = Clerk, Merchant
  • ?: Environmentalist, Functional Architecture, Beacon of Liberty, Corvée System, Distinguished Admiralty, Free Haven, Idealistic Foundation, Inward Perfection, Slaver Guilds, Idyllic Bloom, Pompous Purists, Reanimators
Culture Worker boosts from traditions?
 
Last edited:
  • 9Like
  • 1
Reactions:
On a different note from my other post, I'd like to bring up that some civics switch Politician jobs to a different, specific role (Technocracy and Exalted Priesthood for example), and that you have Memorialists switching Culture Worker jobs as well.
Within that context, I'd like to ask:
Could some of the "bland" civics people complain about get Culture Worker job swaps to spice them up? It would certainly add more depth and roleplay.

(Edit: just as I made this post, I saw the above one talking about civics, that's a good discussion to have! :))
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
What I am thinking about each of these, and a few questions I have :
  • Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet) :
Do you mean +2% amenities ? Because only +2 is really underwhelming compared to others. Especially for materialists that are enslaving robots until the end of midgame, so they need less amenities, so this +2 is almost useless.
  • Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet) :
This effect is way more powerful than the materialist one (maybe to balance ethos). Could be really powerful if combined with authoritarian or xenophobes, as slaves will cost almost no amenity at all. A good bonus that scales well across the entire game
  • Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire) :
This one is hard to read. The bonus seems really underwhelming, as there will be (if I understand correctly) culture workers only from the Autochthon Monument (and its upgrades), meaning there will be only 1 building and up to 6 jobs per planet max (and probably none on most of planets). So the empire will count only a handful of culture workers, granting something like +20 naval cap, on an average empire. If, however, admin offices or temples are also granting these jobs, then the effect is nice. But then other ethos become insane.
  • Pacifist: -2.5% Crime (Planet) :
This effect seems really underwhelming. Crime is rarely (never) an issue.
  • Egalitarian: +2.5% Worker Happiness (Planet) :
This is effect is one of the strongest. Maybe too powerful ?
  • Authoritarian: +5 Ruler Political Power (Planet) :
I find this one perfect for the spirit of authoritarian gameplay. It increases the stability thanks to the ruler happiness. Rewards the player handling correctly his stratified economy without being too OP.
  • Xenophobe: +3 Edict Fund (Empire) :
Seems to be a very good effect early game, but very weak during endgame. Could be useful for early strategies, but once endgame, it will feel dull... A percentage (even small) weren't possible ?
  • Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet) :
Does that count the job upkeep ? Like the mineral upkeep for metallurgists ? If that's the case, it could be OP on an Alloy Ecumenopolis combined with the ascension levels. If that's not, it feels a bit weak compared to others (maybe a trade value bonus could have been more appropriate).
 
Last edited:
  • 6
  • 4
  • 1Like
Reactions:
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.


Maxresdefault-0.jpg


RECITE YOUR BASELINE​
 
  • 2Haha
Reactions:
Do you mean +2% amenities ? Because only +2 is really underwhelming compared to others. Especially for materialists that are enslaving robots until the end of midgame, so they need less amenities, so this +2 is almost useless.

I don't know about you, but I take +2 even over +20%.

amenities2.jpg
 
  • 4Haha
  • 1Like
Reactions: