Clerks Buff

[evilcat]

Clerks are bad job, however you cant just "do not produce them" since each building slots means 2 or more clerks job, So we need manually switch them off.
The problem of clerks:
- Bad output
-Not enought means to increase trade value

PDX had good idea with Integrated Preservation and adding +2 ammenity to synapse drones, but clerks werent blessed with useful perks.
There is general problem that Politicians no longer provide ammenity in big quantity, and there are few jobs providing bigger chunks of it, so Holotheater is required and there is no alternative play. There are many jobs with random +2 ammentiy, but if you spam +2 ammenity clerks there is not much jobs for anything else. There could be more jobs providing ammenities larger than 2/pop, so you can use entertainers but it is not the only option.


Solution
Harmony Kinship add Clerk get +1 ammenity. Kinship otherwise is questionable in utility, and Harmony in total is not great tradition.
Byzantine Bureocracy Clerk get 2 ammenity or +1 stab or +1unity, there could be a one civic which buffs clerks and this one sounds right
Some civic - each clerk provide +1% output for OTHER jobs

Trade Value:
Add +10% Trade value generation from tech (1 for each tech tier)
Add edict Everything for Sale (name is placeholder) which grants +50% Trade value and 20 base trade protection so it will be similar to energy edicts.
Add repeatable +5% Trade Value
Add Petent Trading trade policy generating 1tv=0.5e + 0.1science. But you need to get Discovery Completed and mercentali 1.

Adding more ammenity to clerks is the best aproach, since we have deficit of ammenity sources, and having some from workers jobs would make all this +5% output of workers maybe eventually useful. PDX loves to add +5% workers output, and then with each expansion more.... specialist jobs.

Other aproeach:
In policy tab add window "Clerks coverage" with 3 options
1. Discourage - prefered number of clerks is 0
2. Balance - we have 50% of clerks job open
3. Clerks control - max clerks

So there are many ways to deal with xenos.

 

[Sutopia]

Physics repeatable: High frequency trade algorithm
Increase trade by 5%

Solved.

I have a feeling dev is avoiding to over-buff clerks that they take over other respective specialized job positions. It’s like pearl diver...

 

[GOLANX]

I agree that harmony tree could give clerks more Amenities, but I think Clerks should supplement Amenities from Holotheaters and not replace, but then people look at Clerk and it's a bad replacement. So the question is how to make supplemental Amenities and Trade worthwhile.

Imo merchants should also scale output with clerks or vice versa, a trade build should use both and not just 1.

 

[GOLANX]

I have a feeling dev is avoiding to over-buff clerks that they take over other respective specialized job positions. It’s like pearl diver...

I think they are worried about 1:1 balancing when they should be using opportunity cost balancing instead. If you look at Pearl Diver from a 1:1 perspective it makes sense, job is as efficient as the artisan, just not worth the opportunity cost of one. Similar for the Clerk producing 5 discreet units which is just below the 6 of other workers, as long as you don't consider the issues of their scaling output anyways.

 

[Sutopia]

I think they are worried about 1:1 balancing when they should be using opportunity cost balancing instead. If you look at Pearl Diver from a 1:1 perspective it makes sense, job is as efficient as the artisan, just not worth the opportunity cost of one. Similar for the Clerk producing 5 discreet units which is just below the 6 of other workers, as long as you don't consider the issues of their scaling output anyways.

I mean, I think devs values a mixed production job pretty high and the job value accounted for the convenience. There are some overhead making specialized planets and resource management while a mixed production job will have less resource overhead with the same amount of excess jobs, which does have its own value in it. Clerks are qualified up to 4 resource mixes: ec, amenity plus cg and/or unity. It does make them look somewhat bad on total production especially later in the game. I guess they’re maybe meant for early game niche jobs just like medical workers.

Can we talk about how to nerf Masterful Crafter though? It looks painfully Op...

 

[Jedras]

Clerks are bad job, however you cant just "do not produce them" since each building s+lots means 2 or more clerks job, So we need manually switch them off.
The problem of clerks:
- Bad output
-Not enought means to increase trade value

PDX had good idea with Integrated Preservation and adding +2 ammenity to synapse drones, but clerks werent blessed with useful perks.
There is general problem that Politicians no longer provide ammenity in big quantity, and there are few jobs providing bigger chunks of it, so Holotheater is required and there is no alternative play. There are many jobs with random +2 ammentiy, but if you spam +2 ammenity clerks there is not much jobs for anything else.


Solution
Harmony Kinship add Clerk get +1 ammenity. Kinship otherwise is questionable in utility, and Harmony in total is not great tradition.
Byzantine Bureocracy Clerk get 2 ammenity or +1 stab or +1unity, there could be a one civic which buffs clerks and this one sounds right
Some civic - each clerk provide +1% output for specialist jobs

Trade Value:
Add +10% Trade value generation from tech (1 for each tech tier)
Add edict Everything for Sale (name is placeholder) which grants +50% Trade value and 20 base trade protection so it will be similar to energy edicts.
Add repeatable +5% Trade Value
Add Petent Trading trade policy generating 1tv=0.5e + 0.1science. But you need to get Discovery Completed and mercentali 1.

Adding more ammenity to clerks is the best aproach, since we have deficit of ammenity sources, and having some from workers jobs would make all this +5% output of workers maybe eventually useful. PDX loves to add +5% workers output, and then with each expansion more.... specialist jobs.

Other aproeach:
In policy tab add window "Clerks coverage" with 3 options
1. Discourage - prefered number of clerks is 0
2. Balance - we have 50% of clerks job open
3. Clerks control - max clerks

So there are many ways to deal with xenos.

I like clerks being base-line useless, it makes them great for a customizable job
I think they should provide very small buffs dependent on planet designation (like +1% minerals on mining planet, +1% research on research planets etc.) that would stack together into sizeable modifiers as the planet grows. That would also indirectly buff their trade output (as trade planets have a lot of clerks) and represent how clerks are the smallest cogs of the administrative machine of your empire that ultimately keep everything together

 

[evilcat]

I think they should provide very small buffs dependent on planet designation (like +1% minerals on mining planet, +1% research on research planets etc.) that would stack together into sizeable modifiers as the planet grows.

+1% other jobs output per clerk is interesting idea. It could be gated with civic or tech, or not. That would justify that 20 clerks on my capital world.

 

[Sutopia]

I like clerks being base-line useless, it makes them great for a customizable job
I think they should provide very small buffs dependent on planet designation (like +1% minerals on mining planet, +1% research on research planets etc.) that would stack together into sizeable modifiers as the planet grows. That would also indirectly buff their trade output (as trade planets have a lot of clerks) and represent how clerks are the smallest cogs of the administrative machine of your empire that ultimately keep everything together

That’s really just turning everyone into Rogue Servitor. Their baseline output is not all that shabby if you’re running a trade build and quite honestly it can make them OP. Think about an ecumenoplis with 5 trading megaplex...

 

[Morchaste]

+1% other jobs output per clerk is interesting idea. It could be gated with civic or tech, or not. That would justify that 20 clerks on my capital world.

Merchant Guild would make sense.

 

[evilcat]

It is nice that culture workers get the buff, but maybe there is time to pay attencion to clerks and if someone dont want to shut them down on every planet there could be a path for clerks to not be totally horrible.

 

[NotAYakk]

Workers typically produce 6 energy equivalent value. Food = 1 energy, Minerals = 1.5 energy.

Amenities = 1 energy, and Trade = 1 energy.

(Alloys/Research/CG/etc I'll leave out as it doesn't matter, but there is a value for them as well).

Using this, Clerks are "worth" 6.

Amenities are interesting in that their value scales with pop value.

There are 4x +20% output techs for miners, technicians and farmers.

There are buildings that add +1-3 yield to miners, technicians and farmers.

For technicians, this is (6+3)*1.8=16.2 energy yield per technician at the cost of 1 amenity and some CGs.

And then there is the new rings ; they add to yield on technicians, but add +5% to the planet trade value. +1 yield is like +11%-16%; +5% trade is +2%-4% value on clerks (as adding percent doesn't stack well with other add percents, while modifying base yield scales great).

For a Clerk, there is +1 trade value available and +20% from a tradition (this is a serious commitment, unlike a technology).
There is Galactic Stock Exchange for +20%.

You can add +20% from planet designation; this isn't as good as +25% from mining/tech/farming.

To get more, you need to build trade leagues, get resolutions passed in the galactic senate, etc. All serious investments, none as cheap or as inevitable as "just get more technology", and is really expensive in influence.

Then you can get commercial pacts, which effectively act as a multiplier on top of the multiplier, but not a big one. This costs you influence every month.

In effect, you can make clerks "worth it", but only by making your entire empire optimized around making them worth it.

Meanwhile, technicians just require getting 4+3 techs, building one building and a bunch of districts, and maybe assigning a planet purpose.

After the first two cheap techs, your technicians on a genertor world at 50% stability produce ((6+1)*1.2)*1.25 = 10.5 energy -1 amenity.

A clerk at that point produces 4 trade and +1 amenity.

So take a planet with 8 clerks and 8 technicians. (2 city districts with commercial zone buildings and 4 generator districts).

Total value is 116 (trade+energy) for 19 per district and 7.25 per pop.

Add a holotheatre. Entertainers add +9 net amenities and +1 U/-1 CG and you get 2 per building (U>CG, so we'll ignore it for now).

2 city district, 2 holotheaters, 9 generator districts. 11 total districts, 189 energy generated.

17.2 per district and 9.45 per pop.

30% yield improvement is pretty good for doing away with clerks; that makes a difference between an empire stagnating and one exploding with growth.

 

[mammonmachine]

I think there are some good ideas here. Is it also worth considering making it so Interstellar Franchising (from the prosperity tree) makes Clerks more productive, instead of producing more clerk jobs? I feel like since the pop growth changes, creating lots of low productivity jobs is more of an inconvenience than a bonus.

 

[Thiend]

I've said this before and I'll say it again, clerks can have their production taken to 0 by piracy and that isn't true of any other job class. Trade value should, from a balance perspective, be at least equivalent to getting the same resources with other jobs - equivalent if piracy = deposit RNG for energy, as an example. Personally, I find that having fleets and starbases and all the associated resources allocated solely to "make sure a size 800 fleet somewhere in my empire doesn't destroy my economy, drive me before it, and hear the lamentations of my women" amply compensates for not needing to deal with deposits.