Changes I'd like to see to 3.3 based on observations in the Beta

[Pillage]

I've jumped into the beta for 3.3 a bit, and I have some small ideas for what could be changed and added.

The first that I found weird is how all of the jobs seem to be uniform, which makes things bland and boring. So here is how I'd change up the jobs
Non-Gestalt Jobs:

• Politician: 6 unity, 3 amenities, 2 CG upkeep (unchanged)
• Executive: 5 unity, 2 amenities, 6 trade value, 2 CG upkeep
• High Priest: 6 unity, 5 amenities, 2 CG upkeep (unchanged)
• Noble: 6 unity, +5 stability, 2 CG upkeep
• Science Director: 5 unity, 6 research, 2 CG upkeep
• Merchant: 2 amenities, 12 trade value, 5 unity w/merchant guilds civic, 2 CG upkeep
• Bureaucrat: 4 unity, 2 CG upkeep (Unchanged)
• Manager: 3 unity, 4 trade value, 2 CG upkeep
• Priest: 4 unity, 2 amenities, 2 CG upkeep (Unchanged)
• Death Priest: 5 unity, 2 amenities, 2 CG upkeep
• Mortal Initiate: 1 unity, 2 amenities
• Necrophyte (Non-Hive): 2 unity, 2 amenities 1 CG upkeep (Unchanged)

Gestalt Jobs:

• Coordinator: 4 unity, 4 energy upkeep (Unchanged)
• Bio-Trophy: 1 unity (above 50% happiness), +0.1% complex drone output (above 50% happiness), -1 housing usage, 1 CG upkeep (Unchanged)
• Synapse Drone: 4 unity, 2 energy upkeep, 2 food/mineral upkeep (Unchanged)
• Necrophyte (Hive): 2 unity, 2 amenities, Double pop consumption upkeep (Unchanged)

This makes all of the different administrative jobs feel unique and different as each non-standard job gives a new bonus unique to them (politicians and bureaucrats are the "standard" jobs).

Another thing I'd like to see added is a new repeatable to replace the edict duration repeatable. While the removal of edict duration makes sense, since all the edicts are now indefinite but with an upkeep, I'd like to see a new +10 edict fund 5-level repeatable (while it's never explicitly said, there are two types of repeatable: indefinite repeatables, and repeatables that stop at level 5).

I haven't dug too deep into the new beta, so I might add more to this as I play more of the beta.

Edit 1:
After some more experimenting, I found out that the void dweller origin is in a less-than-ideal situation when starting the game. Both of your secondary habitats start low on amenities, causing the habitat to be around 36 stability. Additionally, there is an entirely unnecessary holo-theatre on the main habitat. My suggestion for Organic Void Dwellers is to replace the commercial districts on the secondary habitats with leisure districts, remove the extraneous holo-theatre, and buff the arcane replicator to produce 12 consumer goods and 16 alloys. This will give the origin a stable start instead of crashing and burning right from the beginning. For Lithoid Void Dwellers, I would do something similar. Each lithoid secondary habitat should have 2 of its resource district, and the farms that Organic VD's would have be replaced with holo-theatres. I would also replace "Powered Exoskeletons" with "Geothermal Fracking" as one of Lithoid VD's starting tech, as Lithoids VD's struggled to feed their pops more often than organic VD's, even before 3.3

Additionally, the empire sprawl from districts, pops, and colonies have been changed to 0.5, 1, and 10 respectively. I don't know if this is a bug or an intentional feature, but I think they should be reverted back to the old 1, 0.5, and 5 empire sprawl respectively.

Finally, using the power of modding I have actually modded in my pop job changes I suggested, and nothing has been broken or unbalaned upon the start of the game.

Edit 2:
Looking at death cults now, and I think some extra changes should be made to them. First off, make death temples and regular temples mutually exclusive again. Players should be forced to build death temples to build up their mortal initiate population, instead of chickening out and building regular temples.

Secondly, I think some changes should be made to the death cult building itself, which I'll list below.

1. Level 1: 1 death priest, 1 mortal initiate.
2. Level 2: 2 death priests if regular/1 death priest and 1 manager if megacorp, 2 mortal initiates
3. Level 3: 3 death priests if regular/2 death priests and 1 manager if megacorp, 3 mortal initiates

This changes the building so that regardless of if you're regular or megacorp death cult, you will always have the same amount of mortal initiates.

Finally, and this is minor, remove the extra industrial district on the start as death cult, as its unnecessary. Even without it you'll have 2 cg/month, which is still pretty standard. I recommend either adding an extra city district or a commercial zone building to replace this extra industrial district.

 

[GOLANX]

I think the Unity Value of Politicians, Executives, Science directors should be based on pop happiness or planetary stability rather than flat. When everyone hates a ruler they aren't very unifying. I didn't suggest High Priests because that's their shtick (or they scale with stability with a higher cap). Nobles are supposed to be hated and make stability anyway.

 

[Rodmar18]

A good idea: unity from job could depend on local stability (let us say that hatred for nobles is already accounted for in their base unity).
Now, would stability be an always negative modifier (like x1 at 100%, x0.5 at 50%, or something else), or would the base unity production correspond 50% stability and then be minored or majored according to a lower or higher stability?

 

[GOLANX]

A good idea: unity from job could depend on local stability (let us say that hatred for nobles is already accounted for in their base unity).
Now, would stability be an always negative modifier (like x1 at 100%, x0.5 at 50%, or something else), or would the base unity production correspond 50% stability and then be minored or majored according to a lower or higher stability?

kids. Preference would be 1x at 100% and 0.5x at 50% this means your average ruler is making 3 unity. This nerf is due in large part to the ubiquitous nature of rulers, they are not densely packed but you have a lot of them, with Unity filling the gap of admin cap causes problems I played around with in mods, adding admin cap to rulers, even just 5 completely invalidated the need for Bureocrats. In essence the devs have unwittingly made politicians not Bureocrats the primary Unity producing job.

However I would also like to suggest that civics be turned into major supplemental sources of unity. taking Unity from citizen service was a bad idea, adding Unity sources to jobs/buildings/features that the civic deems as important could help spice up the flavor of a lot of the more bland and boring civics, while also causing players to build differently.

 

[Pillage]

In essence the devs have unwittingly made politicians not Bureocrats the primary Unity producing job.

I have to disagree with this. Yeah politicians might cover the bare minimum unity threshold to not sink, but the difference between unity and admin cap is that admin cap completely negated severe debuffs, while unity mitigates minor but unavoidable debuffs. The more unity an empire has, the better off its going to be.

 

[GOLANX]

I have to disagree with this. Yeah politicians might cover the bare minimum unity threshold to not sink, but the difference between unity and admin cap is that admin cap completely negated severe debuffs, while unity mitigates minor but unavoidable debuffs. The more unity an empire has, the better off its going to be.

I haven't played around with the beta yet so I'm not 100% on what they added, I don't know how unity mitigates the debuffs. I only know that wide empires used to need bureocracy planets to counter sprawl, now that it's been switched to unity, no bureocracy planets are needed, meaning you can skip them entirely, that's a tax wide doesn't have to pay anymore, unless they nerf the unity from politicians. If the wide empire needed to invest in Administrators to maintain the status quo then they would be paying a similar tax to what they used to. Also civics could help make up the gap by that nerf, Meritocracy could probably buff politicians back up.

 

[GOLANX]

• Priest: 4 unity, 2 amenities, 2 CG upkeep (Unchanged)
• Death Priest: 5 unity, 2 amenities, 2 CG upkeep

Why did they nerf priests into the ground? They traded 3 amenities and 2 society for 1 unity, that is not a good trade. The thing that makes priests good is that they can make amenities such that you can replace entertainers and build a temple on every planet, 2 amenities is nothing that makes them a sidegrade to Bureocrats not an upgrade anymore, it'll only be worth it to put them on administrative worlds where you will be able to skip a holotheater as the only buff, I really hope that's a typo because that is a really heavy nerf to a Ethic that didn't need it.

 

[Pillage]

Why did they nerf priests into the ground? They traded 3 amenities and 2 society for 1 unity, that is not a good trade. The thing that makes priests good is that they can make amenities such that you can replace entertainers and build a temple on every planet, 2 amenities is nothing that makes them a sidegrade to Bureocrats not an upgrade anymore, it'll only be worth it to put them on administrative worlds where you will be able to skip a holotheater as the only buff, I really hope that's a typo because that is a really heavy nerf to a Ethic that didn't need it.

its not a typo, but tbf, priests are now the bureaucrat replacement for spiritualists, to which this is a direct upgrade even if it is minor. Additionally, unity is way more important now, as its used for traditions, edicts, most megastructures, and planet ascension.

 

[GOLANX]

its not a typo, but tbf, priests are now the bureaucrat replacement for spiritualists, to which this is a direct upgrade even if it is minor. Additionally, unity is way more important now, as its used for traditions, edicts, most megastructures, and planet ascension.

Priests were a major upgrade to culture workers, 5 amenities meant they could replace entertainers at least in the short term and you had reason to build temples on every planet (which I hope they didn't nerf by removing the spiritualist ethics attraction). 2 society for 1 unity is a good trade that every other ethic made 3 amenities and 2 society isn't a good trade for 1 unity especially when compared to Bureocrats, this is a nerf to the job overall, even if the resource is more valuable. Imagine if the devs turbo nerfed entertainers down to 4 amenities (which isn't as much as the priest nerf) you'd be quite upset needing to rely on Clerks to provide the neccesary amenities your planets need. Sure you could blow a building slot and replace clerks, but that's a real waste of a slot you'd be better off with the clerks. Actually this is a bad analogy, you could blow that slot to replace clerks, you can't blow a slot and replace entertainers.