Could we have a megacorp version of the "functional architecture" civic?
- Thread starter Aepdneds
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It'd be possible but what does it do to play balance?
Now, I tend not to take universal transactions with void dwellers but the Voidborne perk early to gain the slots.
Prosperity tree can add a slot, as does some technologies; frankly I'm managing OK without functional architecture because a trade league removes the need for unity & consumer good jobs.
Presumably having both functional architecture and branch offices would make corps op and too easy to play, once you have a partner to make a trade league.
Trying Catalytic Processing to avoid need for miners for alloy production, I've taken trading posts to ensure food production via bases with hydroponics and simplify early game expansion. But, right now due to a bug on foundries not replacing CG jobs for alloy ones unless you also take the Mastercraft Inc civic, Lem is looking poorly play tested, they really ought to open up betas to the community rather than face a rush of reports.
Now, I tend not to take universal transactions with void dwellers but the Voidborne perk early to gain the slots.
Prosperity tree can add a slot, as does some technologies; frankly I'm managing OK without functional architecture because a trade league removes the need for unity & consumer good jobs.
Presumably having both functional architecture and branch offices would make corps op and too easy to play, once you have a partner to make a trade league.
Trying Catalytic Processing to avoid need for miners for alloy production, I've taken trading posts to ensure food production via bases with hydroponics and simplify early game expansion. But, right now due to a bug on foundries not replacing CG jobs for alloy ones unless you also take the Mastercraft Inc civic, Lem is looking poorly play tested, they really ought to open up betas to the community rather than face a rush of reports.
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The same thing it does to other governments having it.
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There is a convoluted way to do this:
1. Be a Megacorp
2. Form the Galactic Community
3. Form the council and become a part of it
4. Become the custodian (opening the L-Gate or Destroying some marauders might help here)
5. Proclame the imperium, transforming you into ImperiCorp
6. As ImperiCorp you keep access to the Megacorp mechanics (civics and branch office) but are otherwise a regular empire, so reform your empire and take the civic you want
Note that this is also a way to "fix" the megacorp artificer civic not working on Ecu world by replacing it with the regular one that work fine.
But yes a regular megacorp civic would be nice, in the meantime you have this workaround or it can probably easily be modded in
1. Be a Megacorp
2. Form the Galactic Community
3. Form the council and become a part of it
4. Become the custodian (opening the L-Gate or Destroying some marauders might help here)
5. Proclame the imperium, transforming you into ImperiCorp
6. As ImperiCorp you keep access to the Megacorp mechanics (civics and branch office) but are otherwise a regular empire, so reform your empire and take the civic you want
Note that this is also a way to "fix" the megacorp artificer civic not working on Ecu world by replacing it with the regular one that work fine.
But yes a regular megacorp civic would be nice, in the meantime you have this workaround or it can probably easily be modded in
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Oh I forgot they added that in Nemesis. It's so late in the game I almost forget what it's like to be a different empire.
For testing purposes it'd be interesting to see what some of these forbidden combos look like and if they're too OP or not.
I think there's a good number of combos that aren't available because the devs just never made a civic for that authority or they blocked it off outright to avoid weird outcomes they don't want to deal with.
So my point is that the Megacorp DLC could do with some custodian actually playing as & against Megacorps, then development to streamline; adding civics and cool features with nobody taking care of consequences has created enough mess already, in past DLC has been neglected after its release. Players tend to (if allowed) optimise the fun out of their own game, not having challenges and making everything easy leads to dull play.
BTW if I play a void dweller Megacorps, then I often take the thematic Void Borne perk early-ish to gain similar effect to functional architecture, despite it duplicating parts of the Void Dweller origin but it does help xeno immigration speed. With the trading posts civic you can move hydroponics food to bases until you have food planets established, saving building slots. Later you can boost slots rapidly by other tradition trees once you have Trade League trade policy set. On planets housing districts open slots, so can't corps simply do that? The clerk jobs shouldn't be too terrible with thrifty and all the bonuses. This desire seems to be related to current void dweller meta now functional architecture is +2 but you're intended to farm out some production to branches, extra slots to build Admin Offices in starting habitats early on could well fit into the optimising out the fun category by unimaginative play.
There's a huge distance penalty on commercial pacts outweighing clear massive trade benefit to corp clients, the intel changes to 3.0 have made pacts harder to establish early on, which limits opportunities for corporate wars and you really need to play the diplo game well to avoid federation infiltration. That has devalued Universal Transactions as you just won't get far flung pacts anyway, until your corp has exclaves established. Just establishing a few branches in friendly near capitals pays off better, later you can afford more influence and energy expenditure easily.
Other gov types don't have branch offices, having some civic limitations in return for Corporate Authority is reasonable. +2 slots might actually be counter-productive tempting you into an anti-Megacorp play style. There's a huge number of civics you can pick with Merchant Guilds that are unavailable to Corporates in return for the missing branch offices.
Specifically in my experience Corporate Embassies allow Megacorps to massively inflate diplo weight, their offices apart from forum tend to create low value surplus unfillable clerk jobs, the mining/farmer variant just 1 job; so there's general balancing issues. In a recent game, getting Workers Rights through against Corp opposition actually cut 1 small Megacorp empire from 90K diplo weight to 30K immediately after passage.
Similarly Hostile Takeover wars of branch offices, do not result in surrender to that war goal, leading to total destruction of the faction when non-corporate neighbouring empires have claimed every planet.
OTOH competitive multi-player production focused players regard Megacorps as unplayable trash just for rp focused games.
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Rather than see copies of regular civics, I'd like to see the civics unique to Megacorps give more significant impact, preferably in a way that is tied to the mechanic that makes this empire type interesting: Branch Offices. There are many civics in their list that aren't real options when compared to the others. If Franchising for example made Branch Offices cheaper, it would suddenly have an effect that both competes with some of the better civics and leverages what makes Megacorps fun. Gospel of the Masses, despite its flaws, does the best job of leaning into the Branch Office mechanic of any of the currently available civics.
(Just a few more ideas for civic changes.)
Indentured Assets could enslave a number of pops on the planets the Megacorp has Branches on equal to the number of Branch Buildings they have constructed, and give half of the production of these slaves to the Megacorp. This would make a player really think about what kind of business they want to allow on their planets.
Trading Posts could lower the Branch Office establishment price within an empire for each Branch Office a Megacorp has in said empire, representing a growing network of trade hubs.
Ruthless Competition could provide an espionage operation that allows the takeover of the Branches of other Megacorps, with both sides of this operation able to enter into a bidding war, the defender being at an advantage as to mitigate frustration. This would lean into the civic's current function of increasing codebreaking.
(Just a few more ideas for civic changes.)
Indentured Assets could enslave a number of pops on the planets the Megacorp has Branches on equal to the number of Branch Buildings they have constructed, and give half of the production of these slaves to the Megacorp. This would make a player really think about what kind of business they want to allow on their planets.
Trading Posts could lower the Branch Office establishment price within an empire for each Branch Office a Megacorp has in said empire, representing a growing network of trade hubs.
Ruthless Competition could provide an espionage operation that allows the takeover of the Branches of other Megacorps, with both sides of this operation able to enter into a bidding war, the defender being at an advantage as to mitigate frustration. This would lean into the civic's current function of increasing codebreaking.
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Good post, I liked it .. BUT: As a law abiding Megacorp, you co-opt the host population production where slavery is outlawed, really? I don't agree that indentured assets should apply in any way outside of the corp itself. The problem is that branch office building jobs already don't provide ENOUGH mutual benefit, just look how Criminal Heritage is stomped on because crime now is seriously undesirable, proposals which increase parasitic effects make issues even worse. For Megacorps to be more viable in multi-player you need trade development to be faster and MORE benefit to host empires and corps, not introduce more hesitancy. Otherwise everyone just sticks to their military industrial complex, invasion and vassalisation and there's no wealth to skim.
As a Megacorp I will ruin rival Megacorps and take their branches (often with federation allies), I don't even need a commercial pact and the host empire cannot hope to win a war to close the branches; they often just don't get a say.
Xphobe/authoritarian Megacorps need to hide their intolerance and prejudices off planet to do business, the AI creates far too many xphobe Megacorps that struggle to strike pacts and become road kill once cooperative/mercantile empires are established. So if Indentured Assets need boosting to serve the slave market better, enabling xphobe corps by adding an extra envoy to grease diplomacy and cover the exploitation would make more sense. As it stands, I've settled on fan xphile megacorps as it makes diplo deals cheap, boosts trade value and frees up a civic because that diplo corps one is redundant. Boosting ouput rather than cutting upkeep costs is a better strategy and cooperative trade federations last better.
If a nasty side of Megacorps is required beyond the greed and payola, then surely boosting Criminal Heritage to corrupt regimes and perhaps traffic pops into slavery by adding host empire pops to planet growth might be interesting. As a civic it has always failed in implementation due to offices closing.
Mega Corps needed changes on day 1 of there launch.
Branch office's have never worked in there current form.
They scale off trade and apart from one building they provide no means to increase the trade on a planet. Go play star net AI to see how garbage mega corp buildings are.
A good player and a good AI works 0 clerk jobs on a planet, so your mega corp building providing 2 clerk jobs increase's planet trade by 0
They provide energy credits which leaves you massively producing energy credits when you don't need them. This is ten times worse in 3.1 since your spamming merchants who are also producing energy credits.
The Fix for this:
Branch offices should provide a percent of the planets resources determined by the branch office building that the megacorp builds.
If you build the mining building, you get a percent of the minerals produced and you increase the miners output on the planet
if you build the food building, you get a percent of the food produced, and you increase the farmers output.
if you build the science building, you get a percent of the science that is produces, and you increase the science output on that world.
if you build the alloy building ...
This allows megacorps to be played either via conquest creating vassals and extracting resources from there vassal planets or peacefully extracting resources via commerce pacts / trade federation
Branch office's have never worked in there current form.
They scale off trade and apart from one building they provide no means to increase the trade on a planet. Go play star net AI to see how garbage mega corp buildings are.
A good player and a good AI works 0 clerk jobs on a planet, so your mega corp building providing 2 clerk jobs increase's planet trade by 0
They provide energy credits which leaves you massively producing energy credits when you don't need them. This is ten times worse in 3.1 since your spamming merchants who are also producing energy credits.
The Fix for this:
Branch offices should provide a percent of the planets resources determined by the branch office building that the megacorp builds.
If you build the mining building, you get a percent of the minerals produced and you increase the miners output on the planet
if you build the food building, you get a percent of the food produced, and you increase the farmers output.
if you build the science building, you get a percent of the science that is produces, and you increase the science output on that world.
if you build the alloy building ...
This allows megacorps to be played either via conquest creating vassals and extracting resources from there vassal planets or peacefully extracting resources via commerce pacts / trade federation
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The Mercantile tree which enables you to spam merchants lets you set trade policy, so your trade can already be split with CGs or unity, but I do prioritise Diplo tree on friendly contact and try to establish a trade league early to gain both CGs & unity from trade and get merchants on allied colonies.
Gaining a cut of minerals/food/research/CGs/unity and adding 2 jobs makes a lot of sense to me. We should create a new suggestion thread for this, because my feedback to 3.0.3 beta has resulted in improvements for trade since the 3.0.1/3.0.2 releases which appeared to focus on facilitating the military-industrial complex rushes liked by competitive multi-player.
I posted a suggestion giving you credit and based on your idea at https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...r-branch-office-jobs-not-just-clerks.1495251/
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Agree. These sweet +2 building slots are too addictive, making colony rush so comfortable. And megacorp private colony ships will save even more resources on colonisation.
By the way, I really don't understand why this civic was buffed from +1 building slot to +2. It was fine even with +1. It is the only thing that I can't get in the last balance patch.
By the way, I really don't understand why this civic was buffed from +1 building slot to +2. It was fine even with +1. It is the only thing that I can't get in the last balance patch.
Unfortunately, normal empires w/ Merchant Guilds are better at merchant spam then Mega Corps are.
Why? They get +2 build slots from Functional Architecture.
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I don't know if it was you, but I've seen this exact suggestion in the past and agreed with it then. I'd like to see Branches have utility outside of energy production (with all numbers involved being adjusted as balance demands, of course). What I'd also like to see is the ability to create taller branches, and invest into expanding existing infrastructure instead of building more, similar to the way habitats can be upgraded. A user currently has to decide whether they want to expand existing habs or build more; I see this dichotomy as a strong existing template for tall vs wide balance.
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Maybe we should rather take a look at why Functional Architecture is so strong that it becomes a no-brainer in the meta and see if that needs fixing. Because adding it to every type of empire seems kind of boring.
Megacorps should play differently to normal empires to just copying normal civics onto them seems boring.
Megacorps should play differently to normal empires to just copying normal civics onto them seems boring.
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Because Master crafters was added. And that easily gets many more "free" slots outside of habs, and other perks besides. It might not be as good off the bat but in the long run they get to have all the slots they want. In light of that Functional needed more ohmp lest it go down to F tier pick in the long run. And since neither is locked picks you can swap them so they do need to be somewhat close in overall power.
So Functional becomes the choice for immediate gain, or habs. master crafters is the longer term planted focused one.
Fully agreed.
Putting a hard cap on habitat building slots also reeks of bad and not fully thought-out design, tbh. I can accept that a portion of building slots are restricted, pending tech development... sure. It simulates looking at limited building space with new perspectives and new methods. Sure.
But a hard cap? That's just plain ridiculous and un-intuitive. And ugly, in a deep gameplay sense. The "feel" of it is "ugly".
Well, the main reason is that both Clone Army (strongest origin) and merchant spam (a strong strategy) work off of building slots, while Void Dwellers are desperate for all the building slots they can get. Outside of those three cases, it becomes a whole lot less strong.
Something to consider about adding civics, is that it takes FAR less dev time to port over an existing civic then to think up, test, and code something brand new. Porting a civic just needs an icon re-color, a re-written flavor text, and some basic copy paste code work. And considering just how starved megacorps and hives are currently for civics, I'd rather have 5-10 copied civics than just 1 or 2 brand new ones.
But they don't get to build branch offices and skim trade from other planets, nor do they have managers instead of culture workers.
Fixing 2 civics to do Merchant spam is a cost, choosing Corp get +20 admin cap and ONE civic for +2 slots allowing trading posts for all food production freeing up more slots appears unbalanced.
Now I can get it. But it is better to leave Functional Architecture useless in midgame than make it broken in early game. As you mentioned, you are free to reform the government (and you will do it anyway because 3rd civic slot), so declining viability of some civics during the game isn't a big problem.
However, Functional Architecture can be reworked. For example, the number of free buildings slots can be based on level of planetary capital building, making this civic not so OP in early game, but more competitive in mid- or lategame.