Is stratified economy too strong?

[fodazd]

My personal opinion: The problem with bonuses like +admin cap, +habitability or -building costs for the pacifist ethic (EDIT: ...Or other ethics) is that they aren't really relevant in the long-term, but might be too powerful in the short-term:
-> +10 admin cap is just straight up too weak to matter even in the early game, but +30 admin cap would double your initial cap with a single ethics point. With a bonus like this, it would probably be really good to start as fanatic pacifist in order to not get sprawl penalties for a long time, and then switch out of pacifism once 30 admin cap isn't that relevant anymore.
-> +habitability is good in the early game, but long-term you want to convert all your planets to gaia or ecumenopolis anyway, at which point habitability becomes irrelevant.
-> -building costs is no longer that relevant once most of your stuff is built... And if you are *not* constantly expanding by conquering new stuff (because you are a pacifist), you will eventually get to a point where most of your stuff is built. By that point, most of your minerals will probably be spent on alloys or consumer goods anyway, so the bonus wouldn't be that stong even if you continue expanding I think?


If pacifism gets a buff (which I think it should), the following things may be worth considering:
-> Just increase the stability bonus to +10/+20. This would make pacifism *really* strong for tall play, but I think it should be. However: With this approach, it might be too easy to reach stability 100, or to just ignore the stability penalties for low housing or low happiness.
-> Give some form of reduced pop upkeep. -housing, -amenities and -consumer goods would all be possibilities.
-> Give them *significantly* reduced piracy? I mean, it's usually not that hard to suppress piracy completely, so this would be a pretty weak bonus, but it would fit thematically..?
-> Or, the best case: Give them some sort of unique building (like the temple), some unique species right (like the various living standards) or *something* that isn't just a flat stat bonus. Maybe even a diplomatic thing? I don't know.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

By what logic would pacifist societies be as super-stable as +10/+20 represents? Those people are pacifists, not tranquilized on chemical bliss.

...partly kidding, but it does seem rather extreme.

 

[Xaelyn]

One does not preclude the other. And it's worth pointing out that Stratified Economy reduces slave consumer good use to zero (from 0.05x with decent living standards).

Sure, if you're going for the slaver guilds approach. I was thinking more of the xeno-slavery approach wherein you can't use stratified on the slaves (but basic subsistence will eliminate their consumer consumption anyhow), and are better off with social welfare on your ruler/specialist specie (or, emperor forbid, species) once you have enough slaves and robots to fill the majority of worker jobs.

 

[Secret Master]

Sure, if you're going for the slaver guilds approach. I was thinking more of the xeno-slavery approach wherein you can't use stratified on the slaves (but basic subsistence will eliminate their consumer consumption anyhow), and are better off with social welfare on your ruler/specialist specie (or, emperor forbid, species) once you have enough slaves and robots to fill the majority of worker jobs.

You don't need slaver guilds.

Authoritarian ethos can enslave xenos now without xenophobe. It also includes stratified living standards. So, you enslave the xenos and implement stratified living standards so you can lower the living standards of the xenos to absolute zero.

 

[fodazd]

By what logic would pacifist societies be as super-stable as +10/+20 represents? Those people are pacifists, not tranquilized on chemical bliss.

...partly kidding, but it does seem rather extreme.

Yes, maybe +10/+20 would be too extreme... But I am also pretty sure that +5/+10 combined with +10 admin cap is too weak.

My personal opinion: If the stability bonus stays at +5/+10, then the pacifist ethic also needs something else to make it worth picking.

 

[Bouchart]

If you like to play very wide, you'll eventually want to get one of Social Welfare or Utopian Abundance if only because micromanaging becomes such a burden you don't want all of those popup messages about unemployment and crime. So Stratified might be something you switch out of once you get an ecumenopolis or a good trade network up and running.

 

[Xaelyn]

You don't need slaver guilds.

Authoritarian ethos can enslave xenos now without xenophobe. It also includes stratified living standards. So, you enslave the xenos and implement stratified living standards so you can lower the living standards of the xenos to absolute zero.

Stratified isn't available for species that are wholly enslaved, with the exception of battle thralls. It's also pointless because basic subsistence has the exact same happiness and consumer cost for the slave strata.

 

[Derp]

the core problem is that all the lower living standards are basically just freebies with no real downside or price to pay. i feel like paradox was banking on crime/stability being the big counterbalance to slaves and oppressed workers, and it hasn't worked out.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

the core problem is that all the lower living standards are basically just freebies with no real downside or price to pay. i feel like paradox was banking on crime/stability being the big counterbalance to slaves and oppressed workers, and it hasn't worked out.

Of course there's a price to pay, and it is real: less efficient (lower happiness workers), unemployed being problematic, and the opportunity cost of not running a higher living standard.

Crime/stability probably isn't so much intended to counterbalance the lower living standards, as to make the player more vulnerable when running them: i.e. somebody running decent or higher standards can commit more errors without suffering real problems from crime or instability.

 

[Less2]

Of course there's a price to pay, and it is real: less efficient (lower happiness workers), unemployed being problematic, and the opportunity cost of not running a higher living standard.

Crime/stability probably isn't so much intended to counterbalance the lower living standards, as to make the player more vulnerable when running them: i.e. somebody running decent or higher standards can commit more errors without suffering real problems from crime or instability.

Lower happiness workers doesn't matter much since they counteract this by making workers matter less to stability, which is whats ultimately important.

Unemployed should be dealt with by employing them. A penalty that only hits players who aren't paying attention isn't really relevant for game balance.

Also important to note that living standards interact with habitability in a way that makes 0% habitability almost irrelevant for slave species and absolutely crushing for the "good" standards.

 

[Secret Master]

Crime/stability probably isn't so much intended to counterbalance the lower living standards,

I really don't see crime as a big deal at all in most games. It's a small tax on production in the form of enforcer or telepath jobs.

The exception seems to be when criminal megacorps are involved. If you are the biggest, richest empire in the galaxy, you can expect 50% of your planets to be hosting criminal trade offices. In that case, living standards matter very little, as you will have criminal buildings on your planets raising crime by 200 points or more.

Which wouldn't be a big problem, but then the drug ships start crashing and killing buildings and POPs. Basically, this guy was on every damn planet making a nuisance of himself.

And now you know why my Force-wielding spiritualist lunatics embraced both the Worm-in-Waiting and the Eater-of-Worlds before committing genocide on the Hutts. It wasn't the Dark Side; it was just an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. (And I didn't feel like cutting a deal with the crime lords for stability, because my pride wouldn't allow it.)

Also important to note that living standards interact with habitability in a way that makes 0% habitability almost irrelevant for slave species and absolutely crushing for the "good" standards.

Yeah, that's becoming my conclusion as well. I turn the crappiest planets I own into thrall worlds (like Salusa Secundus) since 99% of the POPs that live there wont care any more about how bad the habitability is compared to anything else they hate.

And I didn't realize it at first, but thrall worlds support strongholds and fortresses. So, Salusa Secundus can give me a bunch of naval cap if I need it, plus recruit armies from slave processing facilities and military academies.

 

[Less2]

I really don't see crime as a big deal at all in most games. It's a small tax on production in the form of enforcer or telepath jobs.

The exception seems to be when criminal megacorps are involved. If you are the biggest, richest empire in the galaxy, you can expect 50% of your planets to be hosting criminal trade offices. In that case, living standards matter very little, as you will have criminal buildings on your planets raising crime by 200 points or more.

Which wouldn't be a big problem, but then the drug ships start crashing and killing buildings and POPs. Basically, this guy was on every damn planet making a nuisance of himself.

I'm not even convinced it's worth policing all of the time. If you do the deal with crime lords I believe the max that can happen is 4 criminals. 4 criminals is not that bad, they are lower-class jobs that don't require a building. If you would have needed 4 pops in the middle class policing and possibly using a building to do so, go with the crime.

It's also basically an exploit right now that you can intentionally create crime by moving pops off police jobs, pick up a free permanent +10 stability, then move them back on.

 

[Wolfgang I]

I'm not even convinced it's worth policing all of the time. If you do the deal with crime lords I believe the max that can happen is 4 criminals. 4 criminals is not that bad, they are lower-class jobs that don't require a building. If you would have needed 4 pops in the middle class policing and possibly using a building to do so, go with the crime.

It's also basically an exploit right now that you can intentionally create crime by moving pops off police jobs, pick up a free permanent +10 stability, then move them back on.

I'm currently playing a game in which I'm abusing all the exploits that I know and I started using a corrupt governor for getting the required crime for the crime lord deal.

 

[Secret Master]

I'm not even convinced it's worth policing all of the time. If you do the deal with crime lords I believe the max that can happen is 4 criminals. 4 criminals is not that bad, they are lower-class jobs that don't require a building. If you would have needed 4 pops in the middle class policing and possibly using a building to do so, go with the crime.

It's also basically an exploit right now that you can intentionally create crime by moving pops off police jobs, pick up a free permanent +10 stability, then move them back on.

The extra events based on crime are a nuisance, but you are right that the deal with crime lords is a strong decision to take. Then those events don't happen.

Perhaps crime ends up like amenities: sometimes, it's not worth the effort.

 

[Urza1234]

Because this thread has partially turned into a "why is pacifist so bad?" thread, I'm going to chime in with a; yep, its pretty bad, + admincap is pretty useless.

A small percentage reduction in Empire Sprawl would actually be good, since it would, y'know, scale.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Lower happiness workers doesn't matter much since they counteract this by making workers matter less to stability, which is whats ultimately important.

Unemployed should be dealt with by employing them. A penalty that only hits players who aren't paying attention isn't really relevant for game balance.

Also important to note that living standards interact with habitability in a way that makes 0% habitability almost irrelevant for slave species and absolutely crushing for the "good" standards.

I'm torn between saying "right you are" and "remember that you aren't an average player, and design and balancing is made with the average player in mind".

Case in point: Unemployment.

You will never have issues with it in SP unless running a test series for that purpose, because you'll either employ people or use a high living standard (planned well in advance), but mostly the former. Neither will I, nor any other math-proficient or experienced player. So I understand where you are coming from.

But we are not the norm, and we are overrepresented in the forum compared to the average player.

And no matter how good the player at running circles around the poor AI, were we to play multi-player we might end up with unemployed on some planets during war, because human enemies are ever so much nastier than the AI could ever be and every decision is made under time pressure.

So unemployment is relevant to game balance in its current state, even if, for some of us, it mostly is trivial to plan for and deal with.

 

[Less2]

Well I'd like to think that the current sector system is a placeholder. Sector management should be able to keep pops employed once its been fixed so its actually usable. The AI seems to not have much employment issues in large empires. Prioritization of jobs issues, sure, but not unemployment.

Even if we're talking huge empires with 50+ colonies in MP then at that point you also have practically infinite minerals to quickly build a dozen buildings and/or districts. With that in 5s of the player's time they'll make enough jobs to last through 30 years of future growth. That's way, way less wasteful than the combined CG cost of the 2000-4000 pops inhabiting those worlds would suck up on better living standards. I'll commonly queue up 10 mining districts on a new colony past the 2300 or so mark.