3.3 Unity Open Beta Discussion Thread

[Grenartia]

Current sprawl effect doesn't make expansion prohibitive (it's quite the opposite), but pop sprawl increasing pop maintenance might do so.

Hence why I said sprawl should be manageable, but not necessarily trivially. Perhaps make bureaucrats produce admin cap again, but have it be a policy, where you can have them produce some admin cap and lots of unity, lots of admin cap and only some unity, or about equal amounts of both (but not a lot of either). And don't gate that policy behind a tradition (there's too many "must have" traditions already).

Or have system sprawl be a multiplier effect, rather than an additative value. If you, say, took the number of total systems and divided by the number of system you had the colonies in, and then multiplied your sprawl penalty by that, this would have a significant efficiency penalty on dense vs distributed empires. Dense- tall- empires with a Habitat in every system would be far more efficient than empires where habited sectors are months or years of travel time away from the next inhabited sector.


Now this is an example, not a recommendation, but you could absolutely use system sprawl in a different sense to incentivize tall vs wide.

(For example- instead of multiplying the penalty, decrease it in a way that favors the tight empires.)

Alternatively, have the multiplier be based on the ratio of developed to undeveloped systems.

 

[Verx90]

i found myself as spiritualist to just build 1 temple on all planets\or the like , and be done with it , or playing as non-spiritualist and ignore unity buildings\jobs ... i simply builded trade value and converted 0.5 of it to unity.


while i found myself REALY slow in making those tradition ( even more because the sprawl grew realy hard during mid-lategame slowing me down even more , since with a spiritualist build i would have ended them faster)

but i've to say that now i get why i find edict (unity cost) quite hight ,i simply don't focus planets on unity ( old administration) anymore, so i can't realy afford edicts , or to use unity for anything else apart leaders and traditions.

i'm not sure if it is intended for edict founds not to actualy cover the whole price of 1-2 edicts , i guess it is, so i'm simply going against the wanted behaviours because i played previous version.

i'm not used to have planets dedicated to unity production , because in my mind unity is still a secondary thing you get as an extra.

 

[Strangedane]

Increase !?!?? three times now Tech build empires have barely even seen the option for repeatable tech by the time the end game crisis has popped, I hate to imagine if I tried building non-tech, this is actually pushing me in to an even heavier tech build than I ever did before the changes, contrary to what they were trying LOL

Meanwhile some of us are still hitting repeatables in 70-100 years.
Yes it needs an increase.

 

[Grenartia]

Meanwhile some of us are still hitting repeatables in 70-100 years.
Yes it needs an increase.

Why should those of us who play like normal people have to put up with nerfs because effectively speedrunning the game is easy for those who want to do it?

 

[Strangedane]

Why should those of us who play like normal people have to put up with nerfs because effectively speedrunning the game is easy for those who want to do it?

Why should those of us who like a challenge have to resort to mods instead of getting an actual high difficulty?
That other people cannot optimize shouldn't mean that i cannot have a challenging game.
And really why is your way to play the game "normal"?
I can play games badly as well, that does not make it normal.

ED: the stated goal of these changes was to stop snowballing. It does not. It need more penalties to stop rampant snowballing, this is simple fact, not opinion.

 

[Grenartia]

Why should those of us who like a challenge have to resort to mods instead of getting an actual high difficulty?
That other people cannot optimize shouldn't mean that i cannot have a challenging game.
And really why is your way to play the game "normal"?
I can play games badly as well, that does not make it normal.

You're not playing badly unless you're losing.

And if you do want a challenge and the current sliders aren't scratching your itch, and you don't feel like heading to the workshop, then ask the devs to increase the limits on them, and make new sliders if necessary, instead of asking them to force the rest of us to play into some meta.

What makes a play style normal is how many people do it, as a proportion of the total number of players in general. Like, I'm reasonably confident (regardless of the number of "respectfully disagree" or "laughing emoji" reacts I'll likely get for posting this), that most players don't post on the forums, and don't rush. There's an insular community here pushing changes on the devs, making the devs push changes on the rest of us, and you all need to realize that most people aren't 'hitting all repeatables by 2250' or whatever, and most of us probably aren't really even trying.

 

[Strangedane]

What makes a play style normal is how many people do it, as a proportion of the total number of players in general. Like, I'm reasonably confident (regardless of the number of "respectfully disagree" or "laughing emoji" reacts I'll likely get for posting this), that most players don't post on the forums, and don't rush. There's an insular community here pushing changes on the devs, making the devs push changes on the rest of us, and you all need to realize that most people aren't 'hitting all repeatables by 2250' or whatever, and most of us probably aren't really even trying.

This may all be true, but then you are not the target of the changes at all.
The target is litterally those of us who snowball so hard the game becomes a matter of clearing x25 faster and faster on smaller and smaller maps.

And most of us agree, sprawl is toothless and irrelevant at best.

 

[Nevars]

I cannot understand that multiple species does not generate extra sprawl, for example.
Would be an easy way to curb snowballing from conquest a bit at least.

They used to do that before megacorp I think.

 

[Grenartia]

This may all be true, but then you are not the target of the changes at all.
The target is litterally those of us who snowball so hard the game becomes a matter of clearing x25 faster and faster on smaller and smaller maps.

And most of us agree, sprawl is toothless and irrelevant at best.

We may not be the target of the changes, but the changes are still negatively affecting us. Ask for sliders with a wider range of numbers, and for settings that aren't yet in the game (might I suggest a sprawl intensity slider?). But don't ruin the game for the vast majority of us.


EDIT: And just to head off any misinterpretation, I'm not saying the game is currently ruined, or that the changes in the beta will ruin it. But the trend of demanding the devs "make it harder for the chronic rushers and optimizers" will eventually ruin the game for the vast majority of the playerbase that is not interested in being forced to rush.

 

[Strangedane]

We may not be the target of the changes, but the changes are still negatively affecting us. Ask for sliders with a wider range of numbers, and for settings that aren't yet in the game (might I suggest a sprawl intensity slider?). But don't ruin the game for the vast majority of us.


EDIT: And just to head off any misinterpretation, I'm not saying the game is currently ruined, or that the changes in the beta will ruin it. But the trend of demanding the devs "make it harder for the chronic rushers and optimizers" will eventually ruin the game for the vast majority of the playerbase that is not interested in being forced to rush.

Fair, more options might be the way it has to go, I'm ok with that.

That doesn't change my point of view on sprawl though.
Based on my own games (which is what i can base my observations off) sprawl does nothing and needs to be much more punishing to stop my rampant snowballing.

 

[Grenartia]

Fair, more options might be the way it has to go, I'm ok with that.

That doesn't change my point of view on sprawl though.
Based on my own games (which is what i can base my observations off) sprawl does nothing and needs to be much more punishing to stop my rampant snowballing.

Out of curiosity, and without any intent to judge your play style, when was the last time you played without trying to rush anything?

 

[Strangedane]

Out of curiosity, and without any intent to judge your play style, when was the last time you played without trying to rush anything?

The thing is.
I don't think i'm rushing anything in most games.
Just using the tools given to me to maximize my outputs of the games relevant currencies, tech and fleet power.

Some games I will rush megas and focus my tech draws around that. Some games I will rush battleships to wtflol an FE early.
Most games I just sit silently optimizing while waging wars.

 

[Nevars]

What makes a play style normal is how many people do it, as a proportion of the total number of players in general. Like, I'm reasonably confident (regardless of the number of "respectfully disagree" or "laughing emoji" reacts I'll likely get for posting this), that most players don't post on the forums, and don't rush. There's an insular community here pushing changes on the devs, making the devs push changes on the rest of us, and you all need to realize that most people aren't 'hitting all repeatables by 2250' or whatever, and most of us probably aren't really even trying.

You can be 'reasonably confident' for all you want but if you want to claimed that your playstyle is the norm and thus a benchmark that everything must revolve around then you need to back it up.

Also no one claiming that they can hit all repeatable tech in 2250, your attempt to use this number in contrast to whatever you are claiming is an attempted to strawman.

 

[Cry_Havok]

One thought I had to make planet ascension feel useful is add some sort of bonuses to ascension that aren't just a multiplaction of the standard classification benefit. Maybe reduce sprawl by X% per ascension teir (5%, because maybe 10 is too much at the top end?) on all ascended planet. You wouldn't even have to make it unique to every world type, but could use broad categories

Worker focused world (rural, mining, generator, agriculture): +1 rural district per ascension tier, or just add a building slot for each tier (so instead of having to build city districts to get buildings you can focus even harder on rural districts)
Specialist focused world (tech, industrial, factory, forge): +5% specialist output per tier (to make any of these feel remotely worth it) or each tier adds a job of its type (industrial alternating between consumer goods job and metalurgist)

Unique worlds types would need more unique bonuses, but that's at least an off the top of my head suggestion

 

[WoodenP]

After reading this entire thread, my favourite idea is definitely that:

1. Sprawl should affect stability
2. Unity can be spent to fix this

The flavour behind this concept works brilliantly while also working towards the patch philosophies.

Wide empires expanding too greedily fast will experience not only production maluses, but also a higher likelihood for unrest events such as rebellions, which is all very fitting. Tall empires will have the unity resource in hand to deal with things and keep the systems in line.

Focusing on stability also neatly opens the possibility for the custodians to add one or two new unrest events with the patch, which I don't believe has ever been done since the Wiz era when stability was first added? It does look like the custodians like adding an event here or there with the releases, which I've really been enjoying.

Beyond this, I think the entire beta and design goals can be sorted with just number tweaks.

1. Tweak unity leader costs
2. Improve espionage operations and have them cost influence

Being big ones.

FWIW I think all the unending discussion around min-maxing/"correct playstyles" is entirely unhelpful. It's not acute feedback and you people can copy paste that type of discussion onto every patch that has ever released.

 

[TrotBot]

Should sprawl and unity effect birthrate?

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

Increase !?!?? three times now Tech build empires have barely even seen the option for repeatable tech by the time the end game crisis has popped, I hate to imagine if I tried building non-tech, this is actually pushing me in to an even heavier tech build than I ever did before the changes, contrary to what they were trying LOL

This is not at all whats happening in standard games. Maybe you set research speed to 5x slower or something? You can easily get > 1k tech output by 2250 in both 3.2 and 3.3.

Also most players set Crisis Start Date to 2300. Because with the tech progression as is, it feels like end starts when you get repeatable tech.

Another thing that doesn't fit into the game progression is galactic community. If the community gets formed around 2260, atleast from my experience in large galaxies with 18 to 26 empires, then it doesn't get to pass many meaningful things until lategame crisis.

 

[Nevars]

Should sprawl and unity effect birthrate?

Is there any reason why it should?

I'm kind of blanking why should it affect growth rate.

 

[grommile]

forcing new strateigc decisions on Ultra-Wide players about how to deal with the ever-increasing Stability problem.

(From a proposal in the feedback thread along the lines of "-1% stability per jump from the capital")

That strategic decision is to rush gateway tech so that you can shrink the jump distances of your empire.

 

[John MacWhat]

After reading this entire thread, my favourite idea is definitely that:

1. Sprawl should affect stability
2. Unity can be spent to fix this

The flavour behind this concept works brilliantly while also working towards the patch philosophies.

Wide empires expanding too greedily fast will experience not only production maluses, but also a higher likelihood for unrest events such as rebellions, which is all very fitting. Tall empires will have the unity resource in hand to deal with things and keep the systems in line.

Focusing on stability also neatly opens the possibility for the custodians to add one or two new unrest events with the patch, which I don't believe has ever been done since the Wiz era when stability was first added? It does look like the custodians like adding an event here or there with the releases, which I've really been enjoying.

Beyond this, I think the entire beta and design goals can be sorted with just number tweaks.

1. Tweak unity leader costs
2. Improve espionage operations and have them cost influence

Being big ones.

FWIW I think all the unending discussion around min-maxing/"correct playstyles" is entirely unhelpful. It's not acute feedback and you people can copy paste that type of discussion onto every patch that has ever released.

I would prefer the direction of effect in the other direction, where stability alters the sprawl contribution of a colony's pops (I have an explanation of the benefits of this approach earlier in the thread). I do like the idea of unity being paid via planetary decisions or ascension effects to boost stability.

In general, I would tie that approach to making stability a lot harder to come by for newly conquered planets, perhaps altering some traditions available in the domination tree to mitigate those increased stability issues directly.