Economic Crash - No return?

[Ridixo]

I've also found out the hard way that one should NEVER EVER accept a Migration Treaty, as allowing Migration between your Egal Fed Member & your Empire also has the 'hidden' side effect of Neutering your own Main Race's ability to reproduce... which is especially Devastating when your Main Race is Very Strong but your Federation Ally Race can't work for beans in Jobs by comparison... (I seriously hope this is a Bug...)

It's not a bug, with the old tile system you can get various species to grow at once, now you can only get one at the same time, two if you build robots. Did you know that if you click on the portrait of the growing species you can select which species to grow? That way if you need, lets say eight pop you can force-grow them and then force grow your main species. the only problem is that a species forced to grow have a penalty, 25% IIRC, making babies at gun point apparently not encourage desire. One more hidden system in Stellaris.

 

[Robula]

Short question: What kind of mod are you using for the outliner?

That would be Tiny Outliner v2
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1610578060

It's not a bug, with the old tile system you can get various species to grow at once, now you can only get one at the same time, two if you build robots.

So signing migration treaties no longer provides any bonuses to population growth?

 

[Dëzaël]

I was playing as a Devouring Swarm, so no, I couldn't afford to have a weaker fleet than my neighbors...

In that case, yeah, I guess... Was speaking for normal empires.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

In that case, yeah, I guess... Was speaking for normal empires.

Well, sure. I should have pointed out earlier, what my situation was, as well.
Gotta say, Devouring Swarms are really fun to play though.
My only complaint is that I have to stop drone growth and resettle them every time I invade a new planet to eat the population.
I'm considering getting the Colossi build just so I can crack open their planets.

 

[Sigma 582]

So signing migration treaties no longer provides any bonuses to population growth?

It does if your planets have higher Immigration Pull than the other party's. Planets with high immigration pull have pop growth speed boost from immigration. Planets with emigration push (or low pull if there's stronger pull out there) have pop growth malus from emigration.

I've also found out the hard way that one should NEVER EVER accept a Migration Treaty, as allowing Migration between your Egal Fed Member & your Empire also has the 'hidden' side effect of Neutering your own Main Race's ability to reproduce... which is especially Devastating when your Main Race is Very Strong but your Federation Ally Race can't work for beans in Jobs by comparison... (I seriously hope this is a Bug...)

The new pop growth system is silly in that it tries to prioritize "underrepresented" species and eventually all your planets have even distribution of all species you have in your empire.
To make it less annoying, you just need to change a few defines. This post gives a good idea of what the values can look like. You can create a small personal mod (like I did) or check out if someone has published such a mod on Steam yet.

 

[Jman5]

People are going to get on your case for not managing your economy, but imo that this can happen so easily indicates a problem with the game design. I think there are three main problems going on here.

1. Players accidentally build too many specialist buildings. Too many workers instantly promote to specialists leaving districts empty. They get themselves into a situation where they need people in the worker districts, but it takes 5-10 years for specialists and leaders to demote. Their growth rate is a mess because their food production is a mess because they don't have any workers.

2. Getting into this mess is easy. Getting out of it is complicated. You have to go into planets downgrading and disabling the right buildings that wont make things worse. You have to adjust policies and species rights.

3. Going zero on resources leads to cascading failures of another resource, which leads to a failure of another resource, etc... It can be difficult for players to know where to start in recovering their economy. They might actually be producing surplus minerals, but they don't know it because their 0 energy is cutting mineral production in half. I think Paradox needs to rethink how they penalize 0 resources so it's a little easier for players (and the incompetent AI) to crawl out of an economic death spiral.

 

[szmik]

it was recoverable and a nice challenge in itself... until you disbanded your fleets

enemy AI loves wardecs when feeling like overwhelming you

 

[MechaThumper]

A bit late, but in terms of getting out of your situation the only two shortages you might have needed to fix were the Rare Crystals and Energy Credits. The Rare Crystals would have probably bumped up the minerals & alloys production into the positive, and if not, then energy shortage would have bumped minerals into the positive. That would have fixed the mineral shortage which subsequently could have possibly have fixed the consumer goods shortage if you lowered the living standards down.

Two other items which affect consumer goods production are your trade policy (switch from credits to credits + consumer goods), though it would mean selling more onto the market and having a civilian economy policy for +15% consumer goods manufacture. Changing to strict rationing might help with food if you haven't changed that as well.

You would only have needed to fix the shortages during the monthly rollover (& not permanently to start), which would have been as simple as selling the other strategic resources and leaving at least 4 crystals and 128 credits in the bank. I would have also recommended buying enough food and consumer goods to end those shortages if they persisted and seen where your production ends up.

You would likely need to keep selling resources and buying the 4 crystals & leaving 128 credits leftover/month until you had positive crystal, energy credit, and consumer goods income. Turning off research buildings would resolve consumer goods temporarily, while turning off upgraded culture/unity buildings would help with both consumer goods & rare crystals. Unfortunately rare crystals seem to be the most in demand strategic because it's used with consumer goods manufacturies, advanced housing, advanced trade and culture/unity buildings, which means most are a necessary expense to fix the economy.

Upkeep of civilian ships is still 0.75 energy/month as far as I know so it would have helped disbanding most of them, but the real issue would have been re-balancing the crystal & consumer goods production permanently, and selling excess production for energy credits.

 

[Dëzaël]

Gotta say, Devouring Swarms are really fun to play though.

I don't play them myself, but they seem to. I have 3 of them as pre-scripted empires and they're constantly top dogs in their corner of galaxy. Gives a nice Starship Troopers feeling, if you saw the movie. I should try them sometime.

imo that this can happen so easily indicates a problem with the game design.

Maybe a tutorial mini-campaign that's a bit more old fashioned would be good. Like having an advisor say : "Oh my gosh we have a consumer's goods shortage" and another advisor to say : "Don't worry! As an emperor you have the means to remedy to that!". Then walking you through solving a shortage among other things. As it stands the game can be quite opaque sometimes.

 

[Jman5]

Maybe a tutorial mini-campaign that's a bit more old fashioned would be good. Like having an advisor say : "Oh my gosh we have a consumer's goods shortage" and another advisor to say : "Don't worry! As an emperor you have the means to remedy to that!". Then walking you through solving a shortage among other things. As it stands the game can be quite opaque sometimes.

That, or an event triggers to give the player a 1-time "loan" and tell them they need to make major changes soon. When I was a little kid, I used to play a city-builder game called Pharaoh that did something like that and it helped a lot for new players.

Beyond that though, I just can't help but think the economic system isn't polished well. A few too many workers promote to specialists when your stockpiles are low and suddenly it triggers a cascading failure. Experienced players with a lot of patience can keep their empire pretty well balanced most of the time, but it's not good game design to just balance around the top 10%.

At it's core I think the problem is how unresponsive the game is when the player is trying to claw his way out of an economic crisis. 5-10 year demotion times, inability to afford the buildings/districts you need if your mineral count falls off. 10 year policy decisions. slow growth rates if things aren't going well. I think a lot of economic headaches could be solved if there was a 1-time relief fund, and populations would automatically move around to any jobs that shore up deficits. Without 5-10 year demotion times.

 

[Dëzaël]

When I was a little kid, I used to play a city-builder game called Pharaoh

I played Caesar III which was basically the same in Rome.

Anyway the least that can be said is this update has rough edges. Learning curve is steeper than ever and even former Stellaris players have to go through it. On the other end, in my experience, cascading failure for workers promoting happens when being rushy with upscaling the economy of one's empire. There has to be punishment for that. Some things may be too rigid though, I agree demotion time is harsh. I guess a few balance passes will have to root out the problems and smoothen the economy's handling.