Certain Ethos/Government Types Overpowered?

[Trithemius]

I keep seeing people repeat this for some reason, but it's misinformation. Looking at any tile resource production tooltip in any of the gameplay videos disproves the claim that a pop's resource production is multiplied by its happiness value. Instead, there's a flat +10% production modifier above a certain happiness threshold (IIRC, most likely 70% - somebody helpfully provided a screenshot the last time we hashed this out) and most likely a -10% penalty below another one (probably 30%).

Good observation.

Did this change? There certainly seemed to be changes to happiness with respect to the agendas so there may have been some happiness balancing too?

 

[ElectricEel]

The 'happiness is a multiplier to production' claim has never been true, AFAIK. I'm pretty sure it's already disproven in the Quill18 space cats video, which is some of the earliest gameplay footage to be released.

 

[Turin the Mad]

The way you deal with unhappy pops is slavery or killing them off. And you can get a bonus from slaves. So what does all of this mean? It means there are many ways to play the game.

Indeedeleedely!

It seems that purging and slavery have potential costs of their own, depending on your empire as to whether or not those costs are seen domestically or inter ... stellar-y?. Some may carry relations/threat "penalties" we've not seen as of yet. (The Blorgstream hasn't shown much/anything of what those ramifications actually are since Wiz's Blorg aren't doing anything potentially annoying to his neighbors other than border friction and denial of migration rights ... and the Befriendings, of course.)

Looking forward to seeing how they play out in-game!

 

[Turin the Mad]

The 'happiness is a multiplier to production' claim has never been true, AFAIK. I'm pretty sure it's already disproven in the Quill18 space cats video, which is some of the earliest gameplay footage to be released.

IIRC Wiz mentions in the earlier Blorgstream episodes that happiness does affect pop productivity. Quill's single episode dates back to mid-March, showing the results of an 82% happiness pop with the decadent trait. Tooltip showed the net production by that pop on that tile, with the bonuses applied before the penalties as I read it. (3 energy for power plant I, +1 from other stuff [happiness was not displayed in the tooltip as part of this], -10% from decadent for having no slave pops, net production 3.6 energy with the tile display showing a red 4.)

Possibly conflicting sources of information are at work?

 

[ElectricEel]

The +1 is probably the tile's base resource value (and I'm not going to waste time hunting for the tooltip). The footage was released in March but recorded in January, so it's entirely possible that happiness affecting production at all wasn't in the game until some time between the recording of that video and the start of the developer streams.

 

[helicopterpizza]

I've written elsewhere about this in detail elsewhere, but the short version:

I think science output bonuses from intelligence and materialism are overestimated.

- They only apply only to tiles on planets where your pop stands. Not events, not extraplanetary stations, not the scientists themselves. Meanwhile, talented, quick learner and age enhancing traits will increase research speed directly and you might integrate good "science aliens" later.
- If you have 5 research stations on a planet, and intelligent+materialist means they function like 6, how is this better than high happiness, increased energy production from individualist and thrifty, increased food production from agrarian etc, meaning they need one less production building, and hence just build the sixth research station and get the same science output?

Where did you see this information??

 

[Yenzen]

Where did you see this information??

Empire-wide modifiers are shown in the ethos screen. It's easily clarified that modifiers are POP specific, unless otherwise stated. POPs of another species that are not intelligent/materialist won't be as good at science stuff if they're placed in research stations. Blorg spiritualist POPs, for example, have the happiness bonus, despite the Commonality not being spiritualist.

Paradox devs could correct me, but we've only ever really seen these modifiers apply to tiles, not space stations nor events. Your POP has ethoses and so does your government, but mostly it matters only to the former and what they think of your government, if the latter has effects, the ethos screen says so. Stations don't necessarily contain your majority POP anyway, so it makes sense that they're more straightforward.

I do think tech and government will affect stations by giving bonuses to overall output.

 

[LordPavel]

We cannot judge today, simply because we dont know if the event will be ''equal''. Maybe a xenophobic will have lot of more bad event than a xenophilic. So, even if the numbers for one ethos is better than another, that dont means one is better.

 

[Mesina2]

This is just silly to talk about.

Different ethics and government types have many more options, bonuses, events choices and special events we have yet to discover.

Maybe in initial start some government types and ethics are more powerful then other, but in long term things might balance out or initial weak ethics and government types might become a lot more powerful then others.

Basically, we need to wait and see. Once game is out, we will see how balanced the game is.