How to make unity rellevant?

[Archael90]

I believe that every person will have their own idea of how to do this.
But
I have been using some mods that increase number of traditions... and i have to say its great. Yeah having lot of traditions can make your empire powerfull, but on the other hand there is always a cost...
Unity ambitions are strong but their cost is tied to cost of new tradition, so more traditions you have - the more expensive your ambisions are. Unity may not be a problem buit only to a degree, and the most fun part is when you have to decide wether you want more traditions (and ascension perks if you have mods for more ap's) or you want to finish to be able to run ambitions, because with nest tradition you may not afford them.
What do you think?
Any other ideas?

 

[Echo Candor One]

Unity is already relevant, so I am not entirely sure what you're asking for.

Do you want unity to be as strong as science?

 

[Archael90]

Unity is already relevant, so I am not entirely sure what you're asking for.

Do you want unity to be as strong as science?

Unity is needed for traditions and ascension perks, but you dont need much unity to do everything, and focusing on unity (spiritualists) is waste of resources, especially comparing to science focus (materialists).

 

[Serenity84]

I like the idea of tying unity to sprawl. That's also thematically fitting. Sprawl is what threatens to tear your empire apart through lack of cohesion. But unity ties it together.

And I'm not a fan of all those mods that add many new tradition trees together with an AP slot for everyone of them. More traditions yes, but the AP slots should always be lower, so you have to make some actual choices.

 

[Zoomy]

Unity is already relevant, so I am not entirely sure what you're asking for.

Do you want unity to be as strong as science?

Unity isn't all that relevant. If you specialise heavily into unity production you'll get steamrolled by anyone specialising in something useful like science or alloys, meanwhile if you just ignore it you'll be minorly inconvenienced at worst as you have to wait slightly longer for minor bonuses and AP slots.

 

[gamerk2]

Unity is really only relevant for the first few ascensions; really stops being useful after that point. It needs to tie into things like Empire Sprawl and overall pop happiness somehow.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I'd give every pop a 0.1 unity upkeep and each colony a unity upkeep equal to its hyperlane distance from the capital as part of the admin cap rework.

If you want to make it a bit more fiddly, pop unity upkeep could scale off happiness or faction support and colony unity upkeep could be 0.5 x (distance to capital + distance to sector capital) for colonies that aren't sector capitals.

If this needs a unity production increase for balance (I haven't run numbers) I'd suggest adding a small amount of unity production to clerks. 0.2? 0.5? Or maybe having the unity upkeep of pops scale between 100% with no clerks or administrators to 50% with, say, one for every 5 pops. That would stop clerks from directly adding unity for traditions.

There's a bunch of stuff you could do with pop unity upkeep too, like a scaling penalty for many different species that xenophiles get to ignore and a bonus for being single species for xenophobes. Or something similar for spiritualists and robots. Or opposed ethics. Or conquered pops. etc.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I'd give every pop a 0.1 unity upkeep

Even better- every pop not of the official state ethics requires upkeep. Gotta reward those high-ethics attraction combos that otherwise just give influence.


More constructively-

I think having unity become a substitute for Bueracrats in terms of compensating for admin cap could be used for a balance. Whether as a unity-costing Edict that needs to be regularly bought to boost admin cap, or a more systemic rework, spending unity to mitigate the effects of admin cap could make Spiritualist empires better suited for 'wide' empire play.

 

[Echo Candor One]

Unity isn't all that relevant. If you specialise heavily into unity production you'll get steamrolled by anyone specialising in something useful like science or alloys, meanwhile if you just ignore it you'll be minorly inconvenienced at worst as you have to wait slightly longer for minor bonuses and AP slots.

Ah, I see what you guys are saying now. Yes, at most I build one unity building on one or two planets - but I usually depend on civics or theaters to give unity.

In niche situations, like securing Unyielding because you realized all your neighbors are devouring determined fanatical exterminator swarms, I could see myself rushing unity.

 

[Zoomy]

I'd give every pop a 0.1 unity upkeep and each colony a unity upkeep equal to its hyperlane distance from the capital as part of the admin cap rework.

If you want to make it a bit more fiddly, pop unity upkeep could scale off happiness or faction support and colony unity upkeep could be 0.5 x (distance to capital + distance to sector capital) for colonies that aren't sector capitals.

If this needs a unity production increase for balance (I haven't run numbers) I'd suggest adding a small amount of unity production to clerks. 0.2? 0.5? Or maybe having the unity upkeep of pops scale between 100% with no clerks or administrators to 50% with, say, one for every 5 pops. That would stop clerks from directly adding unity for traditions.

There's a bunch of stuff you could do with pop unity upkeep too, like a scaling penalty for many different species that xenophiles get to ignore and a bonus for being single species for xenophobes. Or something similar for spiritualists and robots. Or opposed ethics. Or conquered pops. etc.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but I fail to see how this makes any significant change to the game. You'd be replacing admin building spam for unity building spam, leading to the same problem we have right now where you can play as wide as you want with no penalty as long as you dedicate one planet to countering the negatives.

 

[Jaxck]

The cleanest solution to my mind (for the issue of Unity dropping off in value) would be to remove the Ascension Perk tech (and any techs added by mods). Instead, additional Ascension Perks can be purchased with Unity once every 10 years for a compounding cost. Not only does this space them out quite a bit, but it also gives a very good reason to keep investing in Unity later in the game. Ideally I'd want the balance to be somewhere inbetween "I complete all my Ascension Perks before the Final Crisis" and "I have three empty slots, but they'll cost me a combined 10 million Unity to research", with the exact numbers for late game tied to a game settings slider.

I also totally agree that the new Traditions system is rad. Would recommend the Planetary Wonders mod if you're looking for an additional tree with well thought out features.

 

[Mastikator]

Replace admin capacity with unity. The shorter time to next tradition the less sprawl penalties you get. Something like
effective sprawl = total sprawl / months until next tradition
So each tradition you purchase increases your effective sprawl, the more unity you produce the faster you tech. This would give a huge bonus to spiritualists who IMO need it badly because they suck so hard. It would also jive with the technocracy roleplaying aspect, since scientists make unity.

You'd also have to make unity ambition cost disconnected from sprawl

Additionally you could have certain jobs require unity upkeep, or unhappy pops in general.