Aristocratic Elite is not strong in late game

[trojan1234]

I've seen many people saying he/she prefers Aristocratic Elite in late game because of stability bonus. I'd like to share what I've found in 2.2. I conclude Aristocratic Elite civic is weaker than alternatives.

Here is a picture from my last finished game(late game) :

Spoiler

Note that I built this planet planning to switch to Byzantine Bureaucracy but game ends before I switch.

Example of typical basic planets.

1. Stability bonus is nice but it is additive. It is better to get more base production than to add % bonus.
For example, in the above picture, my 60 metallurgists produces 349 alloys. This means they are at 193.8% efficiency. 112 researchers produce 1379 physics, which is at 307.8% efficiency. That's why I didn't bother with 6% stability or 3.6% bonus I can get. It doesn't improve 3.6% from current state, marginal bonus is around 1.8% (in alloy) or 1.2% (in research).


2. Stability can be improved by happiness, which is easy to pick in late game.
In the example picture above, 247 pops are at 91-98 happines. This is from (default) decent livind standard, festival of worlds(Artisan troupe bonus), life tree bonus, faction approval, food policy and high amenities. High happiness leads to high approval rating then higher stability. Combined with harmony bonus, deep space black site, stability is around 84 excluding capital and police state bonus.

Note that typical basic planets have 97% approval rating, thanks to 20% high amenities bonus.

3. Comparison with alternatives (Technocracy, Byzantine Bureaucracy, etc)
Aristocratic elite provides 10% stability which is flat additive 6% production bonus. In terms of alloy, this is 3% marginal bonus due to already high efficiency. If I wanted more alloy, Byzantine Bureacracy allows me build avg 2 more foundry districts(up to planet size) in ecumenoplois without overcrowding. 20 more metallurigists outproduce 10% stability. If I wanted more science or unity, Technocracy or Exalted priesthood provides base research or unity, which outproduces 10% stability. I excludes building noble becuase 5% stability can't compete one building's base production.

 

[AppleBeam]

You are misunderstanding some of the mechanics:

1. Yes, stability bonus is additive, like many others. We know, it's just not productive to mention that after every bonus.
2. Stability bonus from happiness is capped, and it's extremely difficult to raise happiness without creating even more problems (like by applying very expensive living standards), which will negate the bonuses. If you are doing anything unusual, like having slaves, planetary modifiers, events etc. that directly or indirectly affect your stability, you will be quite far from 100%, so nobles are always helpful (except for rare cases of ultra-stable worlds).
3. Nobles are actually +15 stability, with a building. Which you should build in the mid game, because (and now comes the fun part):
4. During the entire early and mid game, and sometimes even part of the late game (so, basically before you "already won") you are limited by pops, not by tiles. If you are limited by tiles, you probably don't colonize nearly enough, and trying to apply some sort of "tall" strategy which simply do not work in Stellaris. "Oh I'll just use more pops to solve the problem" is a problem by itself.
5. When you already won (own the entire galaxy, or just 20-30 your own planents and they are maxed, or everyone is your tributary etc) any extra change is "win more", and therefore meaningless.
6. While housing bonuses are extremely strong, you don't need them to max out your ecumenopolis and all building slots without building housing districts. Just use droids (alloys and CG production, culture workers, enforcers etc.) or slaves (in case of Ecu that will be entertainers most likely, unless you built a few buildings that allow slaves to work them).
7. Later, when EVERYTHING is over-crowded, you can just switch to habitats, if you want to continue into ultra-late game, but you already won anyway, and the stability is more important for situations like that, because even trade is affected by it.

Technocracy is bad in the late game, because typically the bonus from nobles is larger. People usually take it as first pick and then switch to nobles (it is strong in the early game, don't get me wrong, except that the usefulness of strong science in the early game is somewhat limited compared to other similar games; here it's fine to be behind in tech and catch up later, so Technocracy is by no means mandatory to start with).

BB is interesting (allows some insane habitat builds for over-cramped starts where you don't have a lot of planets, and when don't want to conquer anyone), but it's by no means stronger. While I would still recommend a -10% housing trait on pops, and a -5% housing bonus from the event, I wouldn't go as far as saying the extra 10% make too much difference, with the exception of the case where you have a "no slaves and no robots" playthrough (in that one you may end up in a situation where you don't have enough housing for everything you want to build on a planet).
Yes, I'm aware that these -10% are also additive (before the multiplicative robot/slave modifier), so it's better to stack as many of them as you can, except that it, again, creates a "win more" situation instead of "change losing into winning".

Keep in mind that as of 2.4.4 many planets have significantly less districts than size (some of them are even district-less), which means you will have to build housing anyway, instead of mines or generators. I was told that there was a micro-update to 2.4.4 that made it less severe (there should be no feature-less planets now), but you are still going to encounter situations where you simply don't have a better option than city districts. For example, when there is too much food in the empire, and the food prices are horrible (happens all the time after 2.2).

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

This is very interesting. I always build the noble estates aswell which ends up at +15 stability on a 80+ pop world. By turning noble jobs on and off, I saw a difference of 9% total ressource production bonus. I didn't check the actual ressource gain. Of course if you look at your 300% efficiency from research, 9% is not that much. Maybe you are correct and Noble Estates do get outproduced by simply getting another production building.

So what is Aristocratic Elite useful for then? I presume you should be using it with civics like Syncretic Evolution and slavery to make use out of the flat ressource production bonus for your workers, since the other options do not increase worker output.

 

[kirell]

Technocracy is bad in the late game, because typically the bonus from nobles is larger. People usually take it as first pick and then switch to nobles (it is strong in the early game, don't get me wrong, except that the usefulness of strong science in the early game is somewhat limited compared to other similar games; here it's fine to be behind in tech and catch up later, so Technocracy is by no means mandatory to start with).

I agree with most of what you said, but stong science is very useful especially early game (which i consider the first 60-80 years). It really adds up, if you get +20% research output a few years earlier, those years in turn accelerate the access to the next +% even more. Or rather, it doesn't just add up, it creates compound interest. Same with any tech that increases resource output...

 

[trojan1234]

You are misunderstanding some of the mechanics:

1. Yes, stability bonus is additive, like many others. We know, it's just not productive to mention that after every bonus.
   
2. Stability bonus from happiness is capped, and it's extremely difficult to raise happiness without creating even more problems (like by applying very expensive living standards), which will negate the bonuses. If you are doing anything unusual, like having slaves, planetary modifiers, events etc. that directly or indirectly affect your stability, you will be quite far from 100%, so nobles are always helpful (except for rare cases of ultra-stable worlds).
3. Nobles are actually +15 stability, with a building. Which you should build in the mid game, because (and now comes the fun part):

Stability doesn't do harm. It is a nice bonus, we all know. However, stability from Aristocratic Elite has opportunity cost - excluding choice of Byzantine Bureaucracy, Technocracy, or Exalted priesthood. This is player's choice between % production bonus from Aristocratic Elite or flat base production from other civic. It is pointless to say % production bonus is great without comparison with other.

I explain what you need to hit 90% approval rating. I used decent condition living standard which is default at game start. I know slaves, purging pops, etc can affect stability - this is why you need planet specialization. Throw those in basic planets while keep stability high in important planets like tech worlds, alloy worlds.

1. During the entire early and mid game, and sometimes even part of the late game (so, basically before you "already won") you are limited by pops, not by tiles. If you are limited by tiles, you probably don't colonize nearly enough, and trying to apply some sort of "tall" strategy which simply do not work in Stellaris. "Oh I'll just use more pops to solve the problem" is a problem by itself.
2. When you already won (own the entire galaxy, or just 20-30 your own planents and they are maxed, or everyone is your tributary etc) any extra change is "win more", and therefore meaningless.
3. While housing bonuses are extremely strong, you don't need them to max out your ecumenopolis and all building slots without building housing districts. Just use droids (alloys and CG production, culture workers, enforcers etc.) or slaves (in case of Ecu that will be entertainers most likely, unless you built a few buildings that allow slaves to work them).
4. Later, when EVERYTHING is over-crowded, you can just switch to habitats, if you want to continue into ultra-late game, but you already won anyway, and the stability is more important for situations like that, because even trade is affected by it.

I can't fully understand what is your point here. I think we have different definition of mid-late game. 15% stability from noble comes when you have 80 pop capital building and noble building. That is kinda 'end game' for me. It was time I already won the game when I think to fill all my planets up to 80.

When you are limited by pops, Aristocratic Elite isn't civic for that stage. Even without any other bonus, 1 noble needs 33 other pops on the planet to make profit because 5% stability or 3% production bonus on 33 pops is 0.99 pop worth production. Which means just to make the noble pop working in other job is more productive in terms of production per pop. But in reality, there is enough bonus from techs or traditions when your planets have around 33 pop each, making noble is waste of your pop at that moment.

Technocracy is bad in the late game, because typically the bonus from nobles is larger. People usually take it as first pick and then switch to nobles (it is strong in the early game, don't get me wrong, except that the usefulness of strong science in the early game is somewhat limited compared to other similar games; here it's fine to be behind in tech and catch up later, so Technocracy is by no means mandatory to start with).

You are making arguement without any solid evidence. Technocracy will produce more research and unity than Aristocratic Elite - this is in terms of base production so multiplicative. Nobles can produces others by 3-9% on top of other bonus.

 

[strangebloke]

You are making arguement without any solid evidence. Technocracy will produce more research and unity than Aristocratic Elite - this is in terms of base production so multiplicative. Nobles can produces others by 3-9% on top of other bonus

You seem to misunderstand what you're showing. You don't have proof that Byzantine bureaucracy is better, you have proof that it's better for late game forge worlds.

In a game where you're playing with slaves, your strategies will be completely different. Stability will be more needed, and the focus will be more in using trade to get insane amounts of energy/cg/unity than on alloys alone.

Even then, a slave can build a forge habitat that operates dozens of times more efficiently than anything a non slaver could. Fill a habitat with rulers, metallurgists, and livestock and see what happens.
,

 

[Secret Master]

I just want to throw in the discussion the idea that the relative merits of aristocratic elite versus byzantine bureaucracy are driven, in part, by the type of planet you examine. Wasting a building slot on a forge world with the extra stability building from aristocratic elite is a waste, but on the other hand, if you have a world with 150 POPs working mining, food, and energy, plus dozens of clerks, suddenly it makes some sense. Stack it with the crime lords deal, and you can kill precinct houses in favor of the noble estates building for even more stability. Add in the slave processing facility, and it's like you don't even care or know about slaves.

It seems to me that the game is intentionally designed so that aristocratic elite is better for less urbanized worlds, while reducing housing needs and amenities is gold for highly urban worlds. It actually makes some kind of roleplaying sense, and it's almost like the designers of Stellaris stole the idea of aristocrats from Vicky2. Maybe the designers of Vicky2 should sue...

 

[FiddleSticks96]

I've been playing as a slaver type Fanatic Authoritarian/Xenophobe empire with the Aristocratic Elite and Police State civics to great effect. Combine this with the Harmony finisher and a Deep Space Black Site and you are talking about +25 free stability (with an extra +5 for each Noble Estate you build). The massive bonuses to stability completely negate the instability caused by stratified living standards and high slave populations with stability to spare. Even just one extra noble from the unique building can be enough to bring stability to 80+. I think it is quite strong if your empire type tends to create lots of unhappiness.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

So you are paying the opportunity cost of giving people decent living conditions and high amenities to get high happiness and conclude based on that, that AE doesn't cut it in the endgame.

To which the obvious question would be, "why are you considering the value of AE in pleasant societies that are deliberately constructed to not need it's bonuses, because you've already paid to get equivalent benefits in another way, rather than comparing with societies that are less pleasant and gain full benefits?"

Those decent living standards and surplus amenities aren't free. You need to figure their cost over less pleasant solutions into the equation as to whether they are worth it compared to alternatives.

 

[Less2]

I really don't see how this proves anything.

-housing is good, but you can put communal on pops. You can put the advanced gene mod trait on pops. You can run slaves or robots. Some can take adaptability. Your pops have base 1 housing. Obviously Byzantine Bureaucracy is better in that case, but that is arguably a bad build to begin with. Take the good things I've already outlined and you quickly find yourself overflowing in housing.

vs. Technocracy is a harder comparison, but keep in mind that aristocratic elite also improves efficiency, not just production. You get more out of the same material put in. This is essential in lategame where every mineral district in every planet in your empire is less than the amount you want going into alloys.

 

[trojan1234]

You seem to misunderstand what you're showing. You don't have proof that Byzantine bureaucracy is better, you have proof that it's better for late game forge worlds.
,

I think I explained why Byzantine bureasucracy is better as :

If I wanted more alloy, Byzantine Bureacracy allows me build avg 2 more foundry districts(up to planet size) in ecumenoplois without overcrowding. 20 more metallurigists outproduce 10% stability.

It turned out I recalled wrong number here, Let me explain more about my reasoning.

1. Ecumenopolis have 20% production bonus. It is better to focus important resource production such as alloy in this case in ecumenopolis imo. Because of this 20% bonus, I want to utilize building slots at maximum as well.

2. Say I have size 25 ecumenopolis as an example. To have max alloy production, it is best to operate 26 foundry district and 15 buildings but this provides 260 + 11 housing for 260 + around 100 jobs. It is up to housing usuage modifiers how many residential districts one builds to avoid overcrowding.

3. I don't have exact equation though, I did calculate with 104 jobs from building resulted in :
Housing usage 1 : 11 residential and 15 other districts : 325 jobs with housing.
Housing usage 0.95 : 9 residential and 17 other districts : 332 jobs with housing.
Housing usage 0.9 : 7 residential and 19 other districts : 340 jobs with housing.
Housing usage 0.85 : 5 residential and 21 other districts : 349 jobs with housing.
Housing usage 0.8 : 3 residential and 23 other districts : 357 jobs with housing.
Housing usage 0.75 : 1 residential and 25 other districts : 368 jobs with housing.

Remember that other districts above includes foundry districts.
Once I did this calculation out of curiosity. I found Byzantine Bureaucracy's reduced housing usage allow me to build more useful districts(including foundry). Let's go back to topic of comparison of civic(BB vs AE). Switching from AE to BB allow me to build 4 more alloy district in every ecumenopolis at the cost of 6% or 9% production bonus. This is why I said BB is better in utilizing ecumenopolis.

4. I know slavery and robots have lower base housing. Most jobs in ecumenopolis isn't for slaves. Robots can do wonder when filling ecumenopolis but in regular empire, biological pop growth speed is 6 or higher while robot assemby speed is 2.3. This means your pops' ratio is 2 or more bio to 1 robots and this ratio goes much higher if you accept refugees or conquer and give full rights.

 

[trojan1234]

In a game where you're playing with slaves, your strategies will be completely different. Stability will be more needed, and the focus will be more in using trade to get insane amounts of energy/cg/unity than on alloys alone.

Even then, a slave can build a forge habitat that operates dozens of times more efficiently than anything a non slaver could. Fill a habitat with rulers, metallurgists, and livestock and see what happens.
,

I've seen many of you mentioned slavery. It sounds like Aristocratic elite may work better with slavery economy.

But don't claim slavery is efficient than non-slavery. Don't forget forced labor.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I am curious about the optimal way of using each civic. So far I've enjoyed the power of both Technocracy and Byzantine Bureaucracy but only tried this civic once and was fairly sure I wasn't using it optimally. Aristocratic Elite at first glance seems to me to be most powerful when you have:

• Low % bonuses from other sources (better for Unity then Research? Also better early game in general as OP indicated before all the repeatable technologies)
• Stability penalties (lots of very unhappy slaves - completely different to OP's example, maybe best for newly conquered worlds or after relocating slaves back home?)
• Low rare resources (the noble building isn't using rare resources to increase planet output, so again, early game. Late game it may indeed be better to have a tier 2 lab or whatever instead... maybe... depends on other factors)

I would like to know how useful it is both early and late game, mostly "how many more slaves/livestock can I cram onto each world?" If the answer is many more slaves then that'd be a worthwhile late game benefit for a decent strength, thematic civic. If it's a more insignificant benefit then I'd be tempted to reform into something else instead.

Slightly off-topic:
Personally I think a great deal of the confusion discussing the maths would be solved by making more of the % bonuses actually multipliers rather than additive multipliers that do something completely different depending on what they're added to. e.g. -100% growth would make it x0.0, -100% (x0) and +100% (x2) should result in x0 and not x1 at least if you want things to be easy to calculate for the player and to make sense.

Additive bonuses stop you from making any penalty work properly while also reducing the effects of all bonuses by an amount that changes as the game goes on making it really hard to judge their value. It's the worst of both worlds. But it does mean you can have really big multipliers without having to really balance it very much (far easier for Devs) e.g. (100% starting value) +100% +100% +100% = 400% instead of x2 x2 x2 = 800%.

With multipliers actually multiplying then you would need to tone down some of the values or reduce the number of sources that multiply together, or both. Pop Traits x Tech modifiers x Planet modifiers if you're still grouping some of them together as a compromise? It also would make any negative modifiers more significant in general as they wouldn't be cancelled out by positives unless they were of the same type (weak and industrious for example).

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

It works particularly well paired with the natural choice of authoritarian + stratified economy, with or without slaves. Much lower consumer goods costs than decent conditions and the stability bonus makes up for the more unhappy populace.

 

[Secret Master]

and the stability bonus måles up for the more unhappy populace.

Doesn't the stability bonus also work on species that do not have two genders? I also think the stability bonus works on femåles, too. I'd have to look in the files to be sure....

 

[Less2]

4. I know slavery and robots have lower base housing. Most jobs in ecumenopolis isn't for slaves. Robots can do wonder when filling ecumenopolis but in regular empire, biological pop growth speed is 6 or higher while robot assemby speed is 2.3. This means your pops' ratio is 2 or more bio to 1 robots and this ratio goes much higher if you accept refugees or conquer and give full rights.

Why would you not resettle to have as many pops as you need running robots on ecumenopolis? Slaves can work the rural planets. Obviously it's a bit much to ask to micromanage every planet, but flipping through a few dozen to collect the robots on your ecumenopolis is trivial.

 

[trojan1234]

Why would you not resettle to have as many pops as you need running robots on ecumenopolis? Slaves can work the rural planets. Obviously it's a bit much to ask to micromanage every planet, but flipping through a few dozen to collect the robots on your ecumenopolis is trivial.

Ecumenopolis with 200 jobs requires 44*10 = 440 months to fill it up with robots even if you have 20 planets of 2.3 assembly speed(in regular empire). By the time it is done, I have more ecumenopolis to fill up. Biological pop is majority in my experience.

Plus, I think robots are best in low habitability planets. Robots have 100% habitability regardless of type. But biopops increases pop upkeep in low habitability planets. When I have 100% habitability ecumenopolis and ~60% or 40% planets, 100 robots in ecumenopolis and 100 bio pops in planets is inefficient imo compared to 100 bio in ecumeoplois and 100 robots in planets.

 

[Copperwire]

Nothing in this game is good all the time. Things work well in combinations. In that way, it is like a card game. You are basically saying "in end game when I don't have happy problems or other circumstances that combo well with AE, it isn't awesome" and following that up with "hey, I just noticed that any positive additive bonuses you can start the game with from all the ethics and traits and civics don't seem to do that much when you have finished all the research and traditions".

I mean, your not wrong, but neither of those points mean AE isn't very strong.

 

[trojan1234]

It works particularly well paired with the natural choice of authoritarian + stratified economy, with or without slaves. Much lower consumer goods costs than decent conditions and the stability bonus makes up for the more unhappy populace.

When I looked at cg, it doesn't seem like "much lower".

Say you have 600 non slavery workers in 20 planets (basically covering 15 resource districts with 30 workers per planet). Decent condition requires 600*0.25=150 cg as base needs and stratified economy requires 600*0.15=90 cg as base needs. Even if those 20 planets are 20% habitability(definitely higher than this), stratified economy only saves 60*1.8 = 108 cg. Sounds alot but in reality it is just production of one industrial districts. This is proportional to number of workers like stratified economy saves 216 cg when you have 1200 non slavery workers.

Let's compare what happens if one changes from stratified economy plus aristocratic elite to decent condition plus byzantine bureacracy. You need 100 cg per month (600 worker) or 200 cg per month (1200 workers) while you free to use 3-4 previously residential districts in every ecumenopolis in cg production or alloy production. Alloy production per months is higher with BB imo. Sure you may say it requires minerals but when you have 1200 workers in your empire, you should swim with minerals, if not, you are doing something wrong.

 

[Copperwire]

What if I told you you can swim in CG and Alloys without having any mineral dsitricts?