Administrator job diversity in normal empires (for 3.4 or beyond)

[Tannhäuser Cake]

As per Dev Diary #237, the two jobs serving as primary sources of Unity for normal empires are Bureaucrats and Priests, while Culture Workers are removed from that role.

A case can be made that more administrator types would enrichen the game, and potentially also help make empires of different ethics appear and play more differently. For instance, there is currently no job for military administration, even though several government descriptions make references to military administration replacing civilian administration.

So, what if different ethics resulted in different types of administrator jobs being promoted?

• Spiritualist - Priest
  Materialist - Academician? (shout-out to Alpha Centauri)
• Militarist - Officer?
  Pacifist - Culture Worker? Trader? Economist? Manager? (the latter three would be most in line with how the Pacifist ethic is currently portrayed, i.e. focused on prosperity)
• Xenophile - Culture Worker? ("their culture is so interesting"; "diversity, yay!")
  Xenophobe - Culture Worker? ("our culture is so superior"; "uniformity, yay!")
• Authoritarian - Bureaucrat? (all those control mechanisms require a lot of bureaucracy)
  Egalitarian - Bureaucrat? (all that welfare state requires a lot of bureuacracy)
• For example, Egalitarian/Spiritualist/Militarist empires would end up with a mix of Bureaucrat, Priest and Officer jobs.

What should be the distinguishing features (extra bonuses) of different administrator jobs?

• Bureaucrat: extra Amenities?
• Priest: extra Unity?
• Academician: extra Research?
• Officer: extra Naval Capacity, Planetary Defense Armies?
• Trader: extra Trade Value?
• Culture Worker: extra Society Research? Pop Growth Speed?

How exactly should an ethic promote a specific administrator job type?

• Job swaps?
  • Would be easier if administration buildings added 3 jobs per level rather than two; then each ethic could supply +1 job, with fanatic ethics supplying 2.
• Enabling specific buildings that add the jobs?
  • How would players (and AI) be encouraged to not limit themselves to just one type, of the 2-3 types made available by their ethics?
• Enabling all administration buildings / job sources for all ethics, but promoting some jobs over the others?
  • Materialist empires would be able to build Temples, but should generally be more interested in building "Academies". Especially if they are Fanatic.
  • Have the distinguishing feature for each administrator job type be something that the ethic offers a bonus to, thus making that particular job win out in a comparison?
  • Reduce all administrator jobs' base Unity production from 3 to 2, then add back +1 Unity production for the jobs that match the governing ethics?

Any thoughts on this topic?
Opinions?
Feelings?

 

[Lidhuin]

As per Dev Diary #237, the two jobs serving as primary sources of Unity for normal empires are Bureaucrats and Priests, while Culture Workers are removed from that role.

It's a good idea, but it could be better, because as of the 3.3 beta, the primary source of Unity for me is my ruler pops, trade and factions. I would never bother touching bureaucrats or priests, as I produce more than enough unity without them, and any pops working those jobs could be doing something better.

FYI managers already exist for megacorps, but they're arguably weaker than clerks.

So I think the first step is to either nerf researchers or buff bureaucrats/priests/managers, and then it'd be cool to have different kinds of administrators. Those administrators then don't necessarily all have to be balanced - if materialists are good at tech, they should be bad at unity, and they should feel the negative effects of that.

I do want to ask though: Do you get choices of several different types if you're three different ethics? Because if we want to nerf materialists a bit, then it doesn't work if they can just spam out officers.

 

[Lidhuin]

True, spiritualists aren't bad at research per say.

It would be nice if they were actually good at unity

 

[GloatingSwine]

• Academician: extra Research?

None of them should give research, because it's basically the most valuable resource and it would make that substitution the unequivocally correct one in all situations.