3.3 Unity Open Beta Feedback Megathread

[Zenicetus]

An early impression. The leader cost is too punishing for those of us who enjoy exploration and want to make contact with neighboring factions as quickly as possible. This feels way too restricted. It's not fun, and it breaks immersion and roleplay. Why wouldn't a civilization who had just discovered FTL travel put maximum resources into it?

One consequence is that it kills restarts for bad initial setups. I know that not everyone does this, but I'm the kind of player who will sometimes restart a game if it looks like my starting position or closest neighbor isn't going to be fun to play. The punishing leader cost places that decision point too far into the game, with too much wasted time if I don't like the setup.

It's also a major problem with science ships killed by creatures or in first contact scenarios.

One solution might be refunding at least part of the Unity recruitment cost for a leader killed in action, but it would better to just lower the recruitment cost to 1/2 or 1/4 what it is now. A more complicated solution would be to split scientists into two classes -- one for research slots and one for science ships, with those on science ships cheaper to hire. We don't lose scientists in research slots due to random rolls of the dice.

Sprawl as a hard cap feels even more like an arbitrary mechanic than it did before. At least before, there was a natural-feeling link to growth. Now it's leading to things like Swiss Cheese holes in my empire for systems where the resources or colony potential aren't worth the Sprawl penalty.

Finally, the game is running noticeably faster at Normal speed. I can't tell if that's due to code optimization and my system couldn't run any faster before, or if the devs just increased the base rate for Normal. It's not a problem, I like the slightly faster speed at Normal. I'm just wondering about the reason.

 

[Archael90]

my additional thought about spiritualists balance:
especially death cult civic:
Temple of grand sacrifice which is lvl3 equvalent of temple (sacred nexus to be presize) - it costs 8 energy, 1 volatale mote and 2 exotic gases to maintain, and provide 15 unity, 6 soc research, 12 amenities.
While lvl2 of regular temple needs 5 energy and 1 rare crystal to maintain and provide:
16 unity, 8 amenities, lvl 3 of temple needs additional 3 energy and 1 rare crystal, and provide 24 unity, and 12 amenities.
That means you are screwing yourself choosing dead cult for one of your civics.
And yes, with dead cult you have additional soc research and can sacrifice your mortal initiates to produce additional unity. But downside of that is this few points of soc research is nothing, and with edict... you have to sacrifice your pops...
My ideas to make it a little more balanced, you may choose how many you want, i think that all of them should be applied at once, but just one is enough to make a difference:
- Makes death preiests produce 8 unity each, or at least 6, so that with mortal initiates they would produce the same amount of unity as regular temples.
- Mortal initiates should get bonus to unity production from exalted priesthood.
- Increase soc research that temple of sacrifice provide to at least 4 (either 3/1 or 2/2 for priests/mortal initiates).
- Dead cult edicts should not kill all mortal initiates, but only all from one temple from every planet.
- You may leave cost of 0 for those edicts :x
I would also ask for a dead cult equivalent of high priest, called prophet of faith that replaces some politician jobs. It would have same resource output as high priest, but would increase bonusses from dead cult edicts, or lower the number of mortal initiates that are killed by edict.

 

[Paladin395]

I feel like planetary ascension is kinda lackluster, especially for the high cost. The only planet I feel like got a benefit out of it was my capital. This is because capitals have a universal job production bonus that can be boosted. The resources I care about boosting the most are alloys and research which ascension can't boost because planetary designations don't increase their production (except ring world tech designation which I think have their own issues). I don't really care about boosting raw resource production or upkeep reduction with planetary ascension. If I'm having raw resource issues in the mid to late game it's probably because I built to many specialists jobs at once and promoted out to many workers. I think making specialist planetary designations give a small bonus to output would fix this (like how the new unity planetary designation works) or making planetary ascension give a small bonus independent of the planetary designation (like +5% job output).

I also experimented with using planetary ascending a relic world with 6 rare resource mining buildings (crystals, motes, and gas) and the miner planetary designation. It took several planetary ascensions to see a +1 boost in they're output so I don't think that's a good use for it either.

Planetary ascension seems kinda pricey. I was paying over 100k per with about 900-1000 empire sprawl in the late game. I think I had done about 9-10 total across 3-4 worlds. That's a lot for ~+5% resource output for one kind of resource.

Addendum: After reading a few other posts I realized that a great thing for planetary ascension to do would be to reduce sprawl from that planet (and by planet I mean sprawl from the pops, districts, and the colony). Maybe something like 5-10% per level. That would be a good way to make unity empires play tall. Right now pops are so important that your going to get a lot of sprawl from pops wide or tall.

 

[Procyon19]

I feel the unity rework should also rework and expand on the communist civics.maybee democratic goverments should also produce more unity.
And for planetary ascension maybee some more flavor like at some tier of planetary ascension you can build a planetary elvator or ring in the decisions.

 

[Haedrian]

Sprawl
---

My feedback on sprawl is that in the early game it really doesn't really stop you from spreading out.

Previously, I'd set up a few colonies, wait a bit until I can deal with the penalties (advancing in tech, building the appropriate buildings &c), and then gradually expand.

In my last game, with the penalties being so mild early on, there was nothing to stop me spreading very rapidly. Terraforming unlocked rather early, so every single planet I saw, I colonised.

There was no hard decisions on whether the new colony is worth the penalty. Maybe it turns out different in the midgame, but I don't know.

Unity
---
Went for a fanatic materialist + eglaterian civilisation. Didn't really notice any issues with Unity, was making enough of it and never lacked enough to spend. Minor annoyances sometimes when a scientist dies just after you've spent all the Unity unlocking a tradition, but otherwise it didn't feel very different, or difficult.

 

[Panzerslothen]

Having had more time to consider my feedback, I have edited this post slightly.

Good:

• I think you’ve done a bang-up job on this Beta so far – noting that we’re not at the polishing stage yet – and I really appreciate you letting us trial the beta and provide feedback.
• I like the idea of Planetary Ascension
• I generally like most of the Unity changes in general.
• I generally like paying for Leaders with Unity as the main currency.
• I REALLY like that I can play a Tall Empire with lots invested in Unity as a way of racing ahead in Traditions. It’s fun in Vanillaris, but it’s going to be fantastically good fun with Extended Stellaris Traditions!
• I REALLY like the AI and general usability improvements.
• I like the Power Projection mechanic.
• Thank you Eldarin for rating my post here as Helpful (before I edited it, anyway)

Work To-Do

• There needs to be a Pacifist/Diplomatic/Espionage style alternative to Power Projection for Empires who can’t or don’t want to wield a ‘Sword’, but prefer ‘Pens’ or ‘Daggers’ (more on that below)
• I support the many comments here regarding the cost of Edicts and Campaigns.
• I support the many comments regarding the numbers for Unity as the currency for Leader purchasing.

Could Improve Ons:
The system you’ve introduced is not what I had been expecting from your comments in Dev Diaries and other sources; is not the one I hoped for; and not particularly the one I wanted. What I expected, hoped for and wanted was a means by which Administrative Cap was paid for (or otherwise taxed/drew from) Unity production.

• Working from a 3.2 style approach, all that needed to happen was, lower Bureaucrats to 5 Admin Cap output rather than 10, and have Admin Cap be produced by Unity (still with a CG cost for the Job). I thought this is what you were going to do.
• Working from a 3.3 Beta style approach, though, why not have Administrators convert Unity into some form of “Anti-Sprawl” which lowers your Sprawl Penalties?

What I mean by this is a way of having Unity Production directly lower Empire Sprawl by some means and in some circumstances. Thematically, this would reflect the efforts of both your Government and your Society (media, institutions, religious organisations, what have you) to create a unifying culture and keep everybody on the same page.

I imagine that this proposed model would better enable, at a minimum, various possibilities under broad playstyle archetypes like these.

Style​	Main Focus​	Main Benefit(s)​	Main Cost(s)​
Tall	Unity	Quick Planetary Ascension & Traditions	Fewer systems, planets & pops; slower accumulation of other Resources
Tall	Science	Quickly getting Technologies	Fewer systems, planets & pops; slower accumulation of Planetary Ascension and Traditions
Wide	Science	Quickly getting Technologies, Systems and Planets	Less stable Empire overall; less productive Empire overall; slower accumulation of Planetary Ascension and Traditions
Wide	Unity	Quickly getting Systems, Planets and Pops.	Need to invest a fair amount of Unity into countering Empire Sprawl, therefore balancing rate of accumulation of Planetary Ascension and Traditions; Slower accumulation of Technologies.
Spherical	Unity	Balance between countering Sprawl Costs, accumulating Planetary Ascension and Traditions, and Technology; more Systems and Planets than ‘Tall’ builds but not as much as dedicated ‘Wide’ builds	Jack of all Trades, Master of None. Slower accumulation of Technologies; not as many Systems, Planets and Pops as dedicated Wide Builds (but more than Tall builds). Need to invest at least some Unity into countering Sprawl.

I'd like to respectfully remind the playerbase that, just because you start your game Tall, doesn't necessarily mean you'd have to stay that way all game: you could widen-out via Conquest. Similarly, just because you start your game out Wide, doesn't necessarily mean you'd have to stay that way all game: you could slim-down via releasing Sectors as Vassals. You could change your Production focus by replacing Buildings. I think 3.3 - after it's had a bit more work done - will give us more options than ever before, and as a sly Cardassian once said: personally, I think that would be a very good thing.

I do not like that there is now absolutely no way of increasing Admin Cap (or Empire Sprawl now) at all now. I absolutely agree that the old ‘Bureaucrat Planet’ system was absurd and lame and needed to go. However, I think the removal of any means to increase Admin Cap at all, is a millstone around our necks and is not fun. I’d agree that such measures should be few and far between, but I would like SOME means of getting Admin Cap increases (please). By which I mean, increasing the ‘no penalties when below this threshold’ figure from 50 to a higher figure through means unlocked in-game.

Sprawl Penalties:
If, however, the current approach is going to be continued, then I think Empire Sprawl should affect more than just Edict, Technology and Tradition Cost. I am not necessarily saying I want a stronger total penalty; simply that I would like the existing cost(s) to be rebalanced in a different way and in a broader way. I like the idea of using higher Empire Sprawl as a curb on more sprawling Empires than lower ones, however I don’t feel the current penalties are really broadly enough – and as such, they don’t really inhibit in quite the way I think they intended to (or should). Some users on the Reddit forum have run the numbers and this seems to hold up. I think that the costs from more Sprawling Empires should include the following:

This may be a controversial suggestion, but I think more sprawling Empires should be at greater risk of Crime, strife/negative events, and Civil Wars etc – when you get around to releasing that mechanic, then this could possibly be done through Situations. I'm thinking of Event-based changes; Faction-based lobbying and complaint, protesting, terrorism, insurgency... all manner of things! A sprawling Empire should have more of these than a Taller empire. Thematically, this could be reflective of local cultures clashing with the State-sponsored or majority one, clamour for autonomy or independence, alien nationalism movements, etc.
(While keeping the current Technology Cost and Edict Cost effects (though lowering the numbers on Edict Cost penalty and re-jigging Leader Unity Cost)

I no longer want the base Sprawl effect of Pops to be decreased by default (as I did yesterday). I would, however, like a choosable way of decreasing the Sprawl effect of Pops slightly – but otherwise I actually think it’s pretty good. I think Imperial Prerogative would be an appropriate selection for this. A Sector-unique Building which also lowered the Sprawl rating of Pops on the planet it was built on would also be pretty neat, and would make Sectors (and the choice of Sector capital world) quite interesting, and more Strategically important.

Other thoughts other users have raised which in turn made me think more.
Campaigns
I do think that the monthly energy maintenance costs are presently too high. In my test game, in 2263 I was getting figures of 99 E per month for both Education Campaign and Recycling Campaign. My Monthly energy profit was about 60. Why don’t – or why couldn’t – these Edicts work in a similar basis to how things like Capacity Subsidies works (i.e. an increase to the monthly Upkeep of various Leader/Pop classes, with a corresponding benefit, as long as the edict is active?

Influence Generation:
I did find Influence was much, much harder to come by in my first 3.3 test game.
I agree that spamming out empty ships for influence boosts is gamey and exploity.
I don’t always play aggressive/militarist/militarily strong Empires, preferring static defences and building up fleets in response to particular needs. As such, needing to increase my Power Projection by building up Ships felt like it was only one tool being offered, and one that doesn’t suit my playstyle or RP. I think Envoys or Diplomatic relationships could be a good mechanic for increasing Influence for more Diplomatic/Cloak-and-Dagger, Influence-from-behind-the-scenes type Empires; for example, representing ‘Soft Power’ foreign policy influence and other such means. In the real world, this is an absolutely HUGE part of grand stategy, diplomacy, and the international political order. Perhaps this could be put behind a Civic, but I think adding an additional mechanic that lets us decide if we're going to use Hard Power (Fleets), Soft Power (Envoys, Diplomacy, or something else), or a combination of both to some degree, would be the most thematic, the most choice-expanding, and lots and lots of fun.

Leader Costs:
Although Unity as the basic currency for Leaders works, IMHO, I think 200 is too high. Some options to deal with this could be: Give players a bit more starting Unity, so they can buy a Scientist at the start of the game; Make Leaders a bit cheaper (100 U? 50 U?) - heck, why not make them cost a range of assets like Colony Ships do? 50 Unity, 25 CG, 25 Energy seems like a good starting point to me.

 

[IshmaelTibbs]

Started a playthrough today, using my favorite empire. Fanatic materialist/militarist technocracy warrior culture. Really a mixed bag of nuts in terms of results.

1. A lot of the core unity changes are quite good. Unity for planetary decisions and edicts is great, and the edict fund is a pretty good system at its core. Unity to reform government seems like a good setup, and doesn't make getting that third civic slot feel like such a pause.
2. That said, it really feels like unity is involved in too much in this update. It's like everything was thrown at the wall and we're just poking it to see what sticks. I feel like no other resource is going in so many directions, especially for being tertiary. The unity economy is just too much.
3. The leader system right now is bad. Firstly, leaders cost WAY too much unity in the early game. More than a year's worth of unity per leader, and each leader leads to a massive drop in unity production. It's way too high a cost for a tertiary resource in the early game. Yet, by mid to late game the cost becomes a blip. Maybe leader hiring costs need to be affected by sprawl. At the same time, unity for leaders doesn't really make sense to me in the first place. Why should it cost units of civil coherence to hire people? And why should it cost such to keep them employed? I can't make a good justification. Energy, being the game's primary currency, makes far more sense for both. If the issue is one of balancing the costs to make shuffling for traits a less optimal strategy, might I suggest consumer goods as a component to their costs. As a secondary resource, it's a compromise, and it doesn't have nearly so much economy around it.
4. Factions giving unity instead of influence feels like another thing just thrown at the wall. While it isn't anti-fun like leaders, it just feels extraneous. Like everything else in the system would work just as well without the change. It does, however, put a definite pinch on the influence economy. That pinch isn't felt as much as it could be because of how much was shifted off of influence, but it's felt nonetheless. And while influence from ships is a neat idea, it doesn't quite compensate for the losses enough.
5. Empire sprawl is a very feel-bad system right now. For one, it's way too punishing, and the ways to reduce it are too few and far between. While the old system did probably give too much edge to wide playstyles, it had a good concept to it, with wide playstyles needing to invest part of their resources into admin cap. The return on investment may have been skewed, but I feel like the concept was better.
6. Technocracy sucks right now. Which is really deflating because it was my favorite Civic. The whole design is anti-synergistic with the rest of the patch's changes. While the deck manipulation it provides is an interesting idea,in order to really take advantage of it you need to either keep a range of scientists on staff, or shuffle through to get the ones you want. Both options are heavily penalized now, making it a half-wasted civic. Additionally, with the change of administrators to politicians and the general reflavoring of unity production, it actually makes the old form of technocracy make even more sense, since the notion of technocracy is scientists leading society in place of politicians. While it may well need a debuff compared to where it was, it is actually made far more interesting by the new system, since it would actually create a unique playstyle. The new version, however, does little to change up gameplay, even if leader costs were reverted. Honestly, I'd rather see this changed back than anything else in the beta, though I'm definitely biased.

 

[Draelian]

About zombies: That they are called the same as the original species is not exactly interesting, it feels confusing. In inhabitants of the void religious, his special building spawns in an unsuitable area, I'd suggest removing one of the two temples from the main habitat to fix it, starting in ruins when spawned in an area with no space. Second, not if I was unlucky, but they don't seem to have any special events like revivers. Finally, it would be interesting if they had a special corporate building that would allow zombies to be set up in the branches, it would probably make it more interesting, because right now, except for a little bit of fresh flavor, zombies are better off with living levels where they are produce unity or union. and science. Edit to add something I forgot to add: It may be interesting that having the civility of having zombies prevents you from choosing mechanical ascension. Your "robots" are the reanimated bodies, and in fact, if you didn't play with another species than your own, the civic would be rendered useless as a robot.

 

[metatoaster]

I found Planetary Ascension to be a rather bland Unity sink.

Same here.

Planet specialization already feels arbitrary and over-complicated (especially those two noob traps that look like the rest but switch your industrial production to all alloys or all goods). I'd much rather see you remove that system and add more reasons to specialize a planet in a certain direction, such as more planet particularities (ex. +10% power production due to strong winds), instead of doubling down on it.

The game is more fun if finding a planet with some kind of bonus is exciting, instead of making the player yawn because whatever particularity you find is insignificant compared to the bonuses you'll get from your own specialization stacked with Planetary Ascension levels. (Endless Space 2 gets this right, planetary and pops production bonuses make for a fun optimization game.)

Wouldn't Sectors be better Unity sinks, both thematically and gameplay-wise? I could see Tall empires main advantage being having larger sectors, thus making better use of leadership, and perhaps building synergy from having raw materials coming from the same sector where they are processed. You can level up sector administrations and buy perks for them too, why not.

I'm thinking that there's some useful inspiration to draw from Civ 6 cities for how sectors grow and occupy the map in Stellaris. After all, Stellaris used to have pretty much a copy of the Civ IV influence border spread, pre-1.8, then moved to a "survey and buy tiles one by one with influence" mechanic, but never explored an "in spaaaaaace" equivalent of the "city spread out on the hex map" mechanic.
I could very well see sector-unique buildings that require a specific type of system to build, or system-adjacency bonus within a sector similar to the current commercial resource collection - all of which could be made into incentives to build tall.

 

[syndicate1978]

Hey guys, long time player, new to the forums.
The Empire sprawl definitely puts a cap on major expansion as you can see here especially when you become the crisis, I don't think there is any other way of managing this that I am aware of, love the way you have to spend unity for leaders but you feel like your at a stale mate or a at a major disadvantage with major empire sprawl, having said that in a real life scenario I would imagine that it would put a major strain on the empire, being synthetics though I cant see how it would effect them in any way other then technology levels not being sufficient to meet the level of expansion, maybe adding some sort of hub to drive the A.I could lower this level I don't know, I realise not every one likes the synthetics especially starting on a machine world seems to high of a advantage in my eyes.
Great work Developers keep it up, great to see a game come so far, the expansions are what do it for me with this game and the constant updates make this game feel alive.

 

[CReaper210]

This may have been mentioned already, but I really want to say that I don't like the unity bonus being removed from soldier jobs with citizen service civic.

I don't really mind whether it keeps its new buffs/changes or not, but the unity bonus felt thematically appropriate for roleplay reasons. The idea being your nation is unified further via military service. I really hope something is changed to make this a thing again. I used to built 1-2 fortress buildings on every planet, but now I don't even bother. Getting nothing but stronger defensive armies just isn't worth it.

 

[Archael90]

Okay. I was playing f.spiritualist/xenophile death cult, exalted priesthood empire, and i have ended test campain in 2360, when grey tempest destroyed whole galaxy...
i know its not strictly the part of beta test, but i hope that in released version difficulty of mid-game crisis would be adjusted somehow. Empire sprawl slows research, and yet AI empires can open L-gates, while at the same time none, including 5-state federation fleet, and awakend great khan, could stand a chance to all of those grey pests. Grey tempest strenght should either be adjusted to galaxy settings like tech cost and mid-game year, or makes them a swarm of 1-5k fleets (depending on year), with heavly defended bases in L-cluster: 50k in terminal egress, and 200k in their mother system, with ability to rebuild base in TE.
Lets move on:
- Leader higher price seems weird, in early game its too high, in mid game its more-less okay, but as someone posted it could cost consumer goods insead of unity, with unity/ec upkeep.
- Sprawl frm pops, and colonies is extremally high, maybe 10x lesser for pops to boost tall playstyle, and as someone posted - multiplanet system could count as one colony instead of each planet separately.
- I almost didnt use planetary ascension, it was too expensive and not enough impactfull. And as someone said it before - it could be sector ascension rather than planet.
- AI was expanding extremally fast... i think its okay?
- There is too much unity sinks and not enough influence ones, or i havnt seen such. Relic activation at least could use influence as their was.
- power projection... i dont really know how it works. it seems like it is taking my ships naval count, but dont know compared to what... there should be some tip for that so that i easly know how to increase my early influence production. but i think it should use my actual fleet firepower, or better - sum of my fleet and starbases firepower compared to other galactic nations, and unyelding tradition and eternal vigilance ascension perks could rice starbase count.
Now i have to test some hive mind... and im really afraid

 

[nfmarque]

First i would like to thank the dev team for this awesome work
- Performance is amazing
- AI is better
- Take point is working and is amazing

Played humans F.Militarist+xenophobe with Feudal Society and Masterful Crafters.
- Vassals are very useful to mitigate empire sprawl
- Vassals follow (take point) my fleets and such makes them fun and even more useful
- Allies also follow my fleets

On the unity changes:
- I like the overall changes
- Edicts (energy) need further balancing (too expensive)
- Police state is bad

Other:
On total war i get stuck with planets/pops that i dont want and have no tools to get rid of them, cant give them to vassals or allies.

Edit:
Healthcare job : when i transfer a primary pop to a planet the job politician is not fulfilled until healthcare jobs are full, in the file the weight is given by @spawner_drone_job_weight, a bug?

 

[Dr Pippy]

A few initial thoughts based on relatively limited playtime; I might have more to add after I do a full playthrough:

1. The early game performance increase is fantastic! The first few decades were just flying by.
2. I really like the change to Regenerative Tissue; it'll be nice to have that as a viable way to repair your ships in between battles.
3. Most of the unity changes seem conceptually reasonable, although the numbers still need quite a bit of tuning. In particular:
   • Unity cost of leaders seems too high in the early game by a factor of 2-4; 50-100 unity to hire and 0.5-1 unity/month upkeep seems more reasonable.
   • Edict costs are much too high, and scale far too punitively with empire sprawl. I need to go back and run the numbers. but it seems like these costs have increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude from what they were in 3.2.
4. The empire sprawl changes feel like a large step in the wrong direction, and I really hope that you go back to the drawing board on these. I'd much rather see a system where you can still use bureaucrats/coordinators/etc. to increase the administrative capacity, but they become progressively more expensive. (E.g., every bureaucrat gives +10 admin capacity and +5% bureaucrat upkeep.) This way larger empires would have to spend a progressively larger fraction of their resources administering their empire. This seems both less punitive and more realistic (insofar as realism matters in a game with magic zombie space dragons and all).
5. Given that you're probably pretty committed to the approach you're testing in the beta, I'm not expecting that what I've said in #4 will have much impact. But if we're not able to avoid empire sprawl penalties, the existing numbers still seem to need quite a bit of tuning:
   • The +33% penalty to machine empires is a massive late-game nerf; it's essentially a 25% slow-down relative to non-machine empires once you hit repeatables. This is just plain bad, and should be eliminated.
   • +10 sprawl per colony seems really high. This is particularly true for habitats (and small planets), and seems likely to have a pretty hard impact on void dwellers or other habitat-heavy playstyles. Given that "tall play" generally seems to mean building tons of habitats in a small number of systems, this would seem to run against the design philosophy of making tall empires competitive with wide empires. Alternative approaches would be either to make empire sprawl per planet scale with planet size (e.g. 0.4*planetSize would give 10 sprawl for a size 25 planet), to have lower sprawl costs for habitats, or just to go back to 5 sprawl per planet.
   • In general, the system feels like it's punishing me for playing the game: every time I grow a new pop, or colonize a new planet, or claim a new system, tech and tradition costs go up, and I can't do anything to mitigate it. YMMV, but I find this anti-fun.
   • Consider adding a slider to the game-start menu so that we can adjust empire sprawl costs to our own taste.

I'm gonna try to do a mostly complete run now (at least until the crisis shows up), and I'll likely have a broader perspective after that.

 

[Ixal]

3. The leader system right now is bad. Firstly, leaders cost WAY too much unity in the early game. More than a year's worth of unity per leader, and each leader leads to a massive drop in unity production.

One leader each year would mean 17 unity a month. If you have less than that your unity simply sucks and nearly all empires start with a higher unity production than that.
And if you still need more unity than the initial 20-30 you get you can also abandon your studied meta research rush build order and instead build an early admin center.

Leaders are not too expensive and there are enough ways to earn unity early on if you are willing to use them instead of research or alloy rushing.

 

[frenchlime1]

It would be greatly appreciated if we could have some more details in the Patch Notes when this update comes out fully: Some civics which interact with Unity have been modified with no warning; Civilian Service, Death Cults (Death Priest Jobs are significantly weaker in this patch), and Merchant Guilds weren't mentioned leading into the update, but each has major changes to gameplay as of 3.3. The Merchant Guild Civic now only gives Merchant Ruler Jobs, with no other benefits, including the removal of their Unity Bonus. Nothing has been added in its place, and in fact Merchants now produce fewer Amenities as well. While the civic was quite powerful in its niche, I feel this change is too extreme of a nerf, making it almost self-sabotage in a Unity-centered update.

 

[Fediuld76]

The more I play the more I think sprawl is one of the worst ideas have seen in Stellaris since started playing the game on the May 10th 2016.
I am that old player which remembering the game during version 1 where we had to pick different travel methods!

Many "administration bonus" Civics are useless now giving some bonus that is completely meaningless. Why they do even exist?

3.3 has some good ideas, however Sprawl and the Unity/Money sinks (Edicts, Leaders). Stellaris is a strategy game of expansion not sitting around 20 sectors with 8 planets and feeling sad calling it a day. Is a game of conquest and "map painting" shall we wish to do so.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Influence was previously used as, essentially, the "you are cool / well done / tempt you to pick the immediate reward" resource in a lot of cases, awarded in almost all cases where physical goods or research didn't make sense. However, with it being more focused on claiming land and international politics, it might be time to revisit some of the things that reward Influence at present, such as anomalies and projects.

An example: the Impossible Ceramics anomaly/project still offer you influence (as an immediate reward to skip the project, or a large reward to complete it). This feels like it really doesn't make sense anymore, with Influence now having a well-defined role and purpose.

Mind you, I'm loath to remove too many sources of influence, since you still need gobs of it in the early game for obtaining systems unless you're xenophobic/genocidal/going very tall indeed. But I think there's room for some things that deal with foreign civs but don't currently give influence to do so, while making things that don't have other rewards.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Moving your capital still costs Influence. Since this is a purely internal-politics action, shouldn't it cost Unity instead?

 

[quintus_cicero]

Overall Impression: Very Positive

I am really enjoying the rework as a whole: I'm sure there are balance adjustments to be made, but the overall direction of Tall = 'efficient implementation of rule' is a great way to make both tall and wide playstyles viable. You still get all the resources and versitility you used to if you choose to go wide, but things like edicts are going to be expensive to enact across your whole empire.

Responses to other Feedback

Spoiler: Leaders are too expensive early-on: Disagree

While it is different from before (i.e. not a complete non-factor), it's also not extreme: it's 10 months of unity production at a default empire's starting output to get your first extra scientist, up from the previous time-gate of 2 months to build the science ship. This is not a significant amount of time in the early game, and it changes scientist spam from a clear optimal strategy with no downside (aside from taking alloys from a fleet rush) to a meaningful early-game decision: now players will have to balance number of explorers, unity production, and rate of tradition development.

It's also justified in-universe: your single science ship represents the sum total of your species' space exploration efforts and is the first vessel to be fitted with faster-than-light capability--you're not going to double that overnight without significant investment.

Suggested Changes

Spoiler: Remove negative connotations from Empire Sprawl

In discussing the implications of this patch with others, I've noticed that a number of players who do not like the changes were not concerned so much with the actual in-game effect of empire sprawl, but from the feeling of failure that comes from having an unavoidably growing malus in their resource bar for the whole game. This is unrelated to players that do feel that the actual sprawl mechanic is bad and is not an attempt to invalidate that perspective.

For the players who feel like the game feedback is telling them they're playing poorly, I think it would be beneficial to remove the negative context from the mechanic of Empire Sprawl (especially since there is no playstyle that can entirely avoid it). Instead of reading "As Empire Sprawl is X, we suffer the following penalties..." with red text for the malus, the tooltip should something more like "The administrative overhead required to facilitate technological and cultural development across our empire is..." with neutral colors and descriptions of the effects. Similarly, "Empire Sprawl" sounds negative and could be replaced with something more neutral like "Empire Size" or "Administrative Apparatus."

Spoiler: Pacifist Mechanism for Influence Generation

I would love to see a way to augment Influence income other than building up a starfleet. I was playing as a Xenophile/Pacifist/Egalitarian empire and I quickly reached a point where the various diplomatic agreements I was in reduced my influence income to 0. This seems antithetical to the intended playstyle of a cooperative empire.

I suggest some mechanic to replace the influence generation from factions: maybe a tiny amount from each happy pop with political power over a certain threshold, or a passive gain from envoys doing foreign relations?

Alternately, reduce the influence cost of maintaining agreements that align with the ethics of your empire (-33% cost of maintaining a migration pact per degree of Xenophile, that sort of thing).

Spoiler: Unrelated to Patch Theme: Apply Species' Boni/Mali to Overall Planetary Output instead of Individual Jobs

The species system hasn't really felt at home to me since we had planetary tiles. Since a player cannot control which species gets which jobs, I don't really see the value in having traits that boost output from an individual type of job.

I suggest applying an average of the boni and mali from all pops on a planet to the total output from that planet, ideally with weighting to favor diversity (IMO 3 pops with Agrarian should have a larger impact per capita on planetary food output than 30 pops with Intelligent would on research output to reflect that they would actually be more likely to specialize).

I'm not sure exactly how the code works, but I suspect that it would also be much more resource efficient to apply all species effects as a modifier to final planetary output than to assign individual pops to jobs.

Bugs

Spoiler: Lithoid Clone Soldier Origin Has Issues with Life Expectancy

I started a game with the Clone Soldier origin with the following species traits: Lithiod, Clone Soldier, Very Strong, Resilient, Sedentary, and Fleeting

A diplomat died of old age in the first year of the game, and I've had 6 leaders die by 2207. Upon further investigation, I found that 65 years old is the point at which the game started making death checks for leaders of my species, and the starting age for my leaders seems to be between 58 and 85. I suspect that the game isn't taking the much shorter lifespan from the Clone Soldier Origin into account. I am also seeing some unusual entries in my recruitment roster with negative ages and no traits (see screenshot below).