3.3 Unity Open Beta Discussion Thread

[-Marauder-]

Honestly, one of the problems Spi faces is, they don't have the population growth to really capitalize on their advantages. If they go Bio Ascension for cloning vats and faster pop growth they lose out on all the Spi techs including such basic ones as Precognition Interfaces. Meaning they also need to allow AI or be stuck with inferior ship parts.

If they allow Robots, the Spiritualists will be forever upset and pissy.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Nope. The spreadsheet simulation does not look at the myriad possible variations caused by edicts, traditions, technologies, civics, ascension perks, DLCs, the third ethic point, species traits, leader traits, and so on - just the fanatic version of a single ethic.

With all due respect for the analysis, this is why it doesn't work as an analysis model. If you analyze an element in isolation without accounting for elements of interplay, you're not reflecting the applied effects. If the model doesn't reflect reality, the problem isn't with reality, but the model.

This is similar with the issues of a lot of the early analysis on Catalytic Converters, which focused on the pop-efficiency of farmers versus miners, without factoring in the implications of Starbases as pop-free sources of food that could be scaled via traditions (Unyielding) or Civics (MegaCorp trade posts) to produce huge early-game alloy advantages. The best early-game alloy robot build isn't any mineral-build, but a catalytic build, despite the -1 food from farm jobs robots have.

Many things in Stellaris only work as a synergy of mutually supporting/complimentary mechanics, and taking any mechanic in isolation only is misleading.

Honestly, one of the problems Spi faces is, they don't have the population growth to really capitalize on their advantages. If they go Bio Ascension for cloning vats and faster pop growth they lose out on all the Spi techs including such basic ones as Precognition Interfaces. Meaning they also need to allow AI or be stuck with inferior ship parts.

If they allow Robots, the Spiritualists will be forever upset and pissy.

This is a meme. The spiritualist penalty for robots is -5, the lowest margin there is, and is not determinative for which approval level tier you get to. (Psionic is.)

The faction unity is something like .5 unity a pop, modified by a Faction approval and a presence in the empire. Even for a 100% spiritualist empire, a 5 approval difference is about a .025 unity per pop. You'd need 40 pops to see 1 less unity... while the 10% unity from ethic would be getting more than that.

You're neither lowering your planetary happiness or meaningfully harming your faction unity income by playing with Spiritualist-robots.

 

[fourteenfour]

Every 1 sprawl over 100 increases:
Tech by .1%
Tradition by .2%
Edict Cost by 1%

Is that right? I hate math. That makes it look far worse than it feels and it already doesn't feel good as it is.

Regardless, its too easy to ramp up the penalties and even large percentage bonus values which reduce it cease to have any real effect after a certain point.

I really really want four sliders in this game so that players can tailor their experience better however I am not sure how well the AI understands the effect of sliders.

Sliders

• Technology costs 0.25x-25x
• Tradition costs 0.25x-25x
• Empire Size effect on Tech 0-100
• Empire Size effect on Traditions 0-100

Those last two being expressed as a percentage penalty per 1000 size.

        EMPIRE_SIZE_TECH_COST_PENALTY            = 0.001    # Per empire size above base
        EMPIRE_SIZE_TRADITION_COST_PENALTY        = 0.002    # Per empire size above base

 

[Ryika]

Is that right? I hate math. That makes it look far worse than it feels and it already doesn't feel good as it is.

Do these numbers really feel bad?

It takes 1000 Sprawl to increase tech costs by 100%.
It takes 500 Sprawl to increase Unity costs by 100%.
It takes 100 Sprawl to incresase Costs of Edicts by 100% - which is ridiculous, but devs have already confirmed that this is going to change.

Which means that if you start with the tech production you have at 100 sprawl - let's say 200 combined research - and then you grow your empire until you have 1000 more sprawl, you have to once again produce 200 combined research to stay even in tech speed.

 

[jjbenton3]

hey could you guys make it so slaves could work as duelist in warrior cultures? just seems like it should be a thing. domestic servants can work as entertainers but not duelist. but why not allow slaves to fight as gladiators in a warrior culture?

 

[HFY]

hey could you guys make it so slaves could work as duelist in warrior cultures? just seems like it should be a thing. domestic servants can work as entertainers but not duelist. but why not allow slaves to fight as gladiators in a warrior culture?

It's been a while since I made a slaver empire with Warrior Culture, but it seems like Battle Thrall would do this.

 

[Dementor4]

I've been playing with the new feudal society civic lately, and it's actually a pretty good unity civic, especially considering it doesn't lock you into spiritualist ethos. The imperial government type is... fine I guess. At least I don't have to worry about elections.

I like scientist spam for early exploration, so having them cost half as much to hire and nothing to upkeep is pretty great. If you're running just 6 total scientists (I run more) the civic is worth +15 monthly unity plus 100 or so for the discounted hiring cost right off the bat.

And eager leaders are TOTALLY FREE to hire no matter how many other leaders you have. I wound up running 12 scientists in this latest game because I kept getting eager recruits, and with all that going on I had a stupid amount of anomalies to choose from.

There's great synergy with Void Dwellers here. Void Dwellers need extra scientists to aid research on all their science stations. And void Dwellers are really good at "skipping" systems in such a way so as to maximize the number of sectors they can generate and thus gaining extra unity from the added governors. And the civic is a way to generate unity without using up the void dwellers' precious building sluts.

 

[-Marauder-]

Do these numbers really feel bad?

It takes 1000 Sprawl to increase tech costs by 100%.
It takes 500 Sprawl to increase Unity costs by 100%.
It takes 100 Sprawl to incresase Costs of Edicts by 100% - which is ridiculous, but devs have already confirmed that this is going to change.

Which means that if you start with the tech production you have at 100 sprawl - let's say 200 combined research - and then you grow your empire until you have 1000 more sprawl, you have to once again produce 200 combined research to stay even in tech speed.

I really hope so. Ambitions once fixed would be unaffordable. You could probably have one running, but two would be a stretch. And there's little you could really do about that. Because increasing your ambition output would in turn increase cost for ambitions and cost too. Not quite putting you at +-0 but close enough.

Not that different for planet upgrades. Not only do they increase with sprawl, they also have a blanket increase each time you use one. This makes them horrible in every way.

 

[HFY]

I really hope so. Ambitions once fixed would be unaffordable. You could probably have one running, but two would be a stretch. And there's little you could really do about that. Because increasing your ambition output would in turn increase cost for ambitions and cost too. Not quite putting you at +-0 but close enough.

Not that different for planet upgrades. Not only do they increase with sprawl, they also have a blanket increase each time you use one. This makes them horrible in every way.

I guess the meta would be to suddenly decrease your Sprawl (e.g. by forking off a bunch of Vassal sectors), upgrade your Core planets, then re-integrate the vassals?

 

[-Marauder-]

I guess the meta would be to suddenly decrease your Sprawl (e.g. by forking off a bunch of Vassal sectors), upgrade your Core planets, then re-integrate the vassals?

Don't really think that helps. The problem is that EVERY upgrade to ANY planet will massively increase the cost of EVERY future upgrade on ANY planet. That alone kills the whole planet upgrade. No idea why they decided that was a necessary feature. The cost scales absurdly with sprawl to begin with, and even worse with every upgrade stacking up.

Right now, the entire thing isn't really worth bothering with aside from maybe a few levels for an ECU.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I believe this is enough to get a reasonable comparison of how different ethics can perform in regards to Unity production and usage, i.e. how much different ethics are advantaged or disadvantaged relative to each other, but feel free to point out anything you think is missing and likely to change the ethic comparison noticeably. If the model can be improved in a way that is relevant for its purpose, I certainly would not object to that.

It isn't what is included in the model that's an issue, but what isn't, and can't be by virtue of it's interactiosn and dynamism- rate of expansion/conquest, and the builds that facilitate conquest.

Any model of Stellaris without conquests is ignoring a core pillar of its 4X design, and conquest is tied to the rate tradition expansion since wider is better at everything, including traditions. Further, Traditions accelerate the development of more traditions, whether through economic improvement or conquest facilitation. Inversely, conquest is the biggest factor in the Edict Fund cost spiral.

Ethics, in turn, are core parts of builds that affect how they will expand, and at what rate. An ethic doesn't exist in a vacuume, but in how it facilitates the expansion, or consolidates the gains of expansion. Spiritualist, for example, is a consolidation ethic- it doesn't have the highest peak faction approval, but can provide the highest average faction approval through the unique benefits it has to ethic shift seperate from weighting factors (assimilating conquests faster), and how it's faction pressures someone to push the resources that would go into robots (alloys and energy) towards other means (such as conquest).

 

[Janx14]

I have to say, as someone who's been pretty negative about the game for years:

This is the best the game has felt in ages.

There's definitely some tweaking and refining to be done. But the AI actually feels component now. I watched it defeat the crisis (admittedly it was only at 1x difficulty) and give fallen empires a run for their money.

Planetary management feels so much better. I can actually plan planets again.

I havent really played enough or played MP to see how it feels with tall v wide or other stuff, but the game just feels so much nicer now

 

[Lidhuin]

Is that right? I hate math. That makes it look far worse than it feels and it already doesn't feel good as it is.

Regardless, its too easy to ramp up the penalties and even large percentage bonus values which reduce it cease to have any real effect after a certain point.

I really really want four sliders in this game so that players can tailor their experience better however I am not sure how well the AI understands the effect of sliders.

Sliders

• Technology costs 0.25x-25x
• Tradition costs 0.25x-25x
• Empire Size effect on Tech 0-100
• Empire Size effect on Traditions 0-100

Those last two being expressed as a percentage penalty per 1000 size.

        EMPIRE_SIZE_TECH_COST_PENALTY            = 0.001    # Per empire size above base
        EMPIRE_SIZE_TRADITION_COST_PENALTY        = 0.002    # Per empire size above base

It's close to right. Edict costs scale immediately and are so high that most edicts won't ever be worth it once it becomes impossible to run them with negative unity.

For tech and traditions though, it's far too easy to ramp up research and unity as is, to the point where by doing nothing, you should be filling out all the tradition trees by 2300ish, and by focusing on tech (as you should), you'll hit repeatables way before that.

In fact, it's easier than back when there were bureaucrats, as you don't have to spend 100-200 pops on reducing your sprawl, but can instead just add 100-200 researchers. Tech feels a lot faster than it did pre-3.3 and everything seems to indicate it is faster as well.

 

[Lidhuin]

It isn't what is included in the model that's an issue, but what isn't, and can't be by virtue of it's interactiosn and dynamism- rate of expansion/conquest, and the builds that facilitate conquest.

Any model of Stellaris without conquests is ignoring a core pillar of its 4X design, and conquest is tied to the rate tradition expansion since wider is better at everything, including traditions. Further, Traditions accelerate the development of more traditions, whether through economic improvement or conquest facilitation. Inversely, conquest is the biggest factor in the Edict Fund cost spiral.

Ethics, in turn, are core parts of builds that affect how they will expand, and at what rate. An ethic doesn't exist in a vacuume, but in how it facilitates the expansion, or consolidates the gains of expansion. Spiritualist, for example, is a consolidation ethic- it doesn't have the highest peak faction approval, but can provide the highest average faction approval through the unique benefits it has to ethic shift seperate from weighting factors (assimilating conquests faster), and how it's faction pressures someone to push the resources that would go into robots (alloys and energy) towards other means (such as conquest).

A lot of what you say is true, but you keep repeating that spiritualist have some sort of highest average faction approval.

But there's no basis for that assertion, because Xenophiles and Egalitarians exist, and both of them can easily consolidate the empire around their ethics and without any effort or penalty obtain higher approvals than spiritualists. Especially now that promoting factions is free.

Spiritualists, by contrast, have to give up robots, and have to adopt psionics, and have to not colonize tomb worlds (or terraform them, during which time period they have lower approval). The cost to making spiritualists happy is tangibly expensive. The cost to make xenophiles happy is nil, and the effort required to make xenophiles a vast majority of your empire is nil.

On top of that, if you go synthetic ascension, all your robot pops are - for whatever reason - pretty much forced into being materialists, where you can obtain a higher approval than spiritualists can (unless spiritualists give up robots and adopt psionics), without having to even sign any research agreements. And Synthetic Ascension can assimilate all organic pops, basically forcing them all to be materialists. Spiritualists still have to go through regular ethics shifts. That's before considering other benefits of synthetic ascension.

Spiritualists are not a consolidation ethic. They do not have particularly high approval rates without enormous costs. They do not have an attraction that's noticeably higher than xenophile, egalitarian and materialists can pull off.

 

[Lidhuin]

Don't really think that helps. The problem is that EVERY upgrade to ANY planet will massively increase the cost of EVERY future upgrade on ANY planet. That alone kills the whole planet upgrade. No idea why they decided that was a necessary feature. The cost scales absurdly with sprawl to begin with, and even worse with every upgrade stacking up.

Right now, the entire thing isn't really worth bothering with aside from maybe a few levels for an ECU.

Are planetary ascensions kept when integrating? I.e. could a vassal theoretically cheaply ascend their planets and then when you integrate, you get to keep an ascended planet?

Not really relevant until the game is already over, of course, but still.

 

[Lidhuin]

I've been playing with the new feudal society civic lately, and it's actually a pretty good unity civic, especially considering it doesn't lock you into spiritualist ethos. The imperial government type is... fine I guess. At least I don't have to worry about elections.

I like scientist spam for early exploration, so having them cost half as much to hire and nothing to upkeep is pretty great. If you're running just 6 total scientists (I run more) the civic is worth +15 monthly unity plus 100 or so for the discounted hiring cost right off the bat.

And eager leaders are TOTALLY FREE to hire no matter how many other leaders you have. I wound up running 12 scientists in this latest game because I kept getting eager recruits, and with all that going on I had a stupid amount of anomalies to choose from.

There's great synergy with Void Dwellers here. Void Dwellers need extra scientists to aid research on all their science stations. And void Dwellers are really good at "skipping" systems in such a way so as to maximize the number of sectors they can generate and thus gaining extra unity from the added governors. And the civic is a way to generate unity without using up the void dwellers' precious building sluts.

There's a great synergy with every non-egalitarian tbh, because the unity you save from hiring leaders, and the unity saved from upkeep, is large enough that you can reform out of the civic later on in the game when you get your 3rd civic, and you will guaranteed have saved unity.

I don't think there's a lot of civics giving the same ROI at the moment, and there's only a few cases where you can't start with it, as long as you're willing to start as an imperial (but you certainly don't have to remain imperial throughout the game - just adopt a different government type when you reform out of feudal society).

 

[DeanTheDull]

A lot of what you say is true, but you keep repeating that spiritualist have some sort of highest average faction approval.

But there's no basis for that assertion, because Xenophiles and Egalitarians exist, and both of them can easily consolidate the empire around their ethics and without any effort or penalty obtain higher approvals than spiritualists.

Define 'easily.' The issue/advantage/opportunity with Spiritualist is that it doesn't require a no-slave build, as Xenophile-Egalitarian does, and that % modifiers in the game appear to work seperatly from the base weight machanics, with Spiritualist having many more. You have admitted to not playing with Temples in the past, I have admitted not having insights into the code, and last I recall the discussion on the wiki-analyzing Reddit post wasn't something either of us had authority on besides lingering disagreement.

Especially now that promoting factions is free.

Since it's seems not intended to be free, I'd put this far closer to 'unfixed bug' than something to rely on.

Spiritualists, by contrast, have to give up robots,

They don't.

and have to adopt psionics,

Only to reach the highest happiness tier, which is a 5% happiness modifier difference.

You've never identified what strategic impact this is meant to make.

and have to not colonize tomb worlds (or terraform them, during which time period they have lower approval).

This is a temporary malus, at least on the terraforming side.

The cost to making spiritualists happy is tangibly expensive. The cost to make xenophiles happy is nil, and the effort required to make xenophiles a vast majority of your empire is nil.

The cost of making Xenophiles is having a xenophile build, which itself imposes build opportunity costs.



Etc. etc. etc., To remain polite, you still haven't updated your counter-arguments, and I'm still not moved by them, but we can continue this again if you'd really like to.

 

[Lidhuin]

Define 'easily.' The issue/advantage/opportunity with Spiritualist is that it doesn't require a no-slave build, as Xenophile-Egalitarian does, and that % modifiers in the game appear to work seperatly from the base weight machanics, with Spiritualist having many more. You have admitted to not playing with Temples in the past, I have admitted not having insights into the code, and last I recall the discussion on the wiki-analyzing Reddit post wasn't something either of us had authority on besides lingering disagreement.

Slave builds aren't good enough to justify spiritualists.

Even if they were, Authoritarian (with or without Xenophile) can easily run slaves and please the xenophile faction as much, or more, than spiritualists.

The materialist faction can also, with zero effort, get the same approval that spiritualists require effort to get to. If you go synth ascension, that's the obvious alternative to xenophile as you'll be swimming in materialists.

The fact is, your arguments for the spiritualist faction are not correct. You get less than 75% approval, with effort. That's pretty much the baseline for all other factions.

Since it's seems not intended to be free, I'd put this far closer to 'unfixed bug' than something to rely on.

It seems like a deliberate change in 3.3. it cost influence before and doesn't now.

They don't.

They do. If they don't, then why even bother with spiritualist approval? It won't get over 75%, and you can get that with every other faction easily.

Only to reach the highest happiness tier, which is a 5% happiness modifier difference.

It's not just about happiness, it's also about unity.

Also, you're now giving up psionics *and* not giving up robots. Your approval won't even break 70% with spiritualists at that point afaik.

And it's about effort. Without banning robots, spiritualists are only as happy as any other faction or less. They will never be happier. So why would you *want* your pops to be spiritualists, given they'll be happier in the other factions?

You've never identified what strategic impact this is meant to make.

That other factions are easier to please, so I don't want spiritualists.

This is a temporary malus, at least on the terraforming side.

Correct

The cost of making Xenophiles is having a xenophile build, which itself imposes build opportunity costs.

No, xenophiles are pretty much happy with minimal effort. Not so for spiritualists.

Etc. etc. etc., To remain polite, you still haven't updated your counter-arguments, and I'm still not moved by them, but we can continue this again if you'd really like to.

You still haven't proven your argument. Stop making false assertions and I'll stop countering them.

Here's a factual assertion: Even for a fanatic Spiritualist empire, it is undesirable for them to have spiritualists pops, as even their materialist faction will be happier than the Spiritualists faction.

Show me a spiritualist faction without psionics and with robots, and I can show you a faction that requires no sacrifice to get the same approval: -5 from robotic workers, +5 from ethics and +10 from 25%+ spiritualists. In comparison, materialist get +10 for not outlawing AI and +10 for not being behind in tech.

So which is better, 60 max approval or 70 base approval? Remember, you said I don't have to outlaw robots or take psionics.

Edit: And let's compare to Xenophiles with slavery - fairly easy to get 65 base approval, which is already higher than non-psionic Spiritualists with robots.

Egalitarian probably won't have slaves unless they're also Xenophobe, so if you do play egalitarian (e.g. you want beacon of liberty) the base approval for that faction hovers around 75% - no need to manually resettle with democracy & utopian abundance.

Authoritarian faction has a higher base approval.

Pacifist factions are easy to eradicate, so their low approval from war are irrelevant.

Militarists faction has a higher base approval.

Supremacists (Xenophobe) has a higher base approval.

I already showed materialists have higher base approval.

So why do I want my pops to be spiritualists with low approval? Alternatively, why do I want to be spiritualists without robots?

 

[Lidhuin]

Yes they feel bad. They are dreadful. I have posted my examples over and over as I took over my neighbors. I was faced with 990 unity cost edicts which when you do the math show you how ridiculous the cost becomes - entire planet full developed cannot ever pay for one! Can you imagine what the next two empires do to my costs?

I have as many % reductions as I can get but no amount of percentage reduction matters when you look at the job cost.

As in, penalties applied for size need to be assessed by how many jobs it requires to pay for it. Right now the number of jobs is silly. When you require more than one planet filled with like jobs to offset the penalty something is wrong with the system.

Unless of course you don't go on a conquer spree and just sit and spin in your little corner of space and perhaps play the Fed game or galactic emperor by taking over the council

The simple problem is that as you conquer other empires; you know that one method of 4x games a lot of people like; you end up cratering your research and tradition gains and it only gets worse in larger galaxy sizes with more empires.

The very idea that a large empire would find it more difficult to research a widget is just simply ignoring reality of any sort. That it is as bad as portrayed in the game is beyond ludicrous. A large interstellar empire would more than easily be able to manage itself. Science Fiction is replete with galaxy spanning empires but what people tend to miss is that in many cases when they are taken down by another or from within the scale expressed in most books is but a lifetime.

The developers should put more power into the players hands to decide how they want to play the game. This means sliders to determine if empire size matters, how much traditions cost separate from any technology cost, and so on. The game truly needs a much more customized new game screen.

You're very focused on edict costs, but they're the only thing that's ridiculous at the moment, and everyone agrees.

The other penalties are meaningless. You get more research by being bigger until you have 2000+ researchers.

Which means that yes, a larger empire does find it easier to invent a widget.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Nope. The spreadsheet simulation does not look at the myriad possible variations caused by edicts, traditions, technologies, civics, ascension perks, DLCs, the third ethic point, species traits, leader traits, and so on - just the fanatic version of a single ethic. Similarly, the model presumes 100% faction support for that ethic, and that there are enough amenities to reach +20% Happiness, and that there are no significant differences due to living standards or government type. The only variants included (beyond ethics) concern the policies on robots and diplomatic stance (Isolationist/Mercantile). Even with all this simplification, the spreadsheet is over 100 rows long. More aspects can be added to the model, but it is a matter of effort vs significance.

The ethic-specific edicts, particulaly Spiritualist's +20% priest output from Veneration of Saints and Xenophobe's +10% unity from Fear Campaign, are tied closely enough to the ethics and impact unity directly enough that I'd consider them significant.

This is a meme. The spiritualist penalty for robots is -5, the lowest margin there is, and is not determinative for which approval level tier you get to. (Psionic is.)

The faction unity is something like .5 unity a pop, modified by a Faction approval and a presence in the empire. Even for a 100% spiritualist empire, a 5 approval difference is about a .025 unity per pop. You'd need 40 pops to see 1 less unity... while the 10% unity from ethic would be getting more than that.

You're neither lowering your planetary happiness or meaningfully harming your faction unity income by playing with Spiritualist-robots.

Without using robots, the resting point for spiritualist faction approval is 75% once you get Mind over Matter.

• The -5 from robots counters the +5 from consecrating a gaia world, having a shroud boon, or spending 2 minor artifacts on proclaiming a religious revelation from hitting the 80% approval tier. This prevents you from being able to hit 80% with minor artifacts as soon as you take Mind over Matter, delaying your faction approval until you have even more ascension perks.
• The maximum spiritualist faction approval without depending on temporary empire modifiers is exactly 80%, so using robots requires you to either keep spending your minor artifacts on proclaiming religious revelations, getting lucky in the shroud, or taking the -5% happiness hit.
• Spiritualist approval incentivizing spending half your ascension perks on the same four picks (Mind over Matter, Transcendence, World Shaper, and Consecrated Worlds) hurts the playstyle diversity of the ethic. It especially disincentivizes using spiritualist as a secondary ethic.

Using robots requiring you to depend on temporary sources to maintain the highest tier of faction approval would be perfectly reasonable gameplay if losing out on the pop growth wasn't so much worse than -5% happiness that the choice is no longer interesting.

EDIT:

It seems like a deliberate change in 3.3. it cost influence before and doesn't now.

From the list of known issues in Dev Diary #238: "Unity costs for faction manipulation are not implemented yet."