Lets talk Death Cult (Civic)

[CWJameson]

It's one of my favorite civics, however, it feels extremely underwhelming in 3.0.

I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this civic is it too weak or balanced?


I would like to have this civic give the same number of death priests that regular spiritualists get instead of only 1.

Also, it would be nice flavor if you could sacrifice slaves instead of full residence pops, especially since in 3.0 pop growth has been significantly changed as the mortal initiate job is the only job worse than the clerk, or perhaps remove it entirely and have it sacrifice a random pop on each planet that a temple is built on.

Definitely would love to hear your thoughts on this and hope the Dev team will give some attention to this civic soon, especially since it was in a recently released DLC.

 

[Less2]

The Death Priest is actually an incredibly good relative improvement. It's basically one job that gives double the unity of the base job (priest), which is itself a boosted version of the default normal job (Culture Worker). The obvious way to use it is to simply disable the mortal initiate job and use the pop elsewhere while your priest works twice as hard for free. If it was any other job aside from Clerks that was receiving this kind of benefit it'd be vastly overpowered. Imagine if technocracy also made your labs require half as many pops and 50% less CG inputs to produce the full research, that'd be nuts.

Unfortunately it's let down by
- Unity just not being something you need to rush in the first place
- Spiritualist ethics being awful both on it's own and because it locks you out of the incredibly good materialist ethics.
- The +% minerals/energy edict, the one you'd most likely want to use, being made relatively weaker over time as more and more other +% mining and energy boosts have been added.

It's a neat idea but the whole spiritualist and unity mechanics need a big overhaul to make their perks relevant, and the sacrifices are nowhere near able to pay themselves off.

 

[Lord Milutin]

I agree that it is currently underwhelming. A small rework with increased numbers and sacrifice mechanic could make it much, much better.

 

[GuardianGI]

You can also sacrifice a single pop every 5-6 years to get +20% happiness to your whole empire.

 

[HFY]

Also, it would be nice flavor if you could sacrifice slaves instead of full residence pops, especially since in 3.0 pop growth has been significantly changed as the mortal initiate job is the only job worse than the clerk, or perhaps remove it entirely and have it sacrifice a random pop on each planet that a temple is built on.

Yeah.

If I could go full Aztec and sacrifice a conquered pop that would be better mechanically AND better for RP.

 

[CWJameson]

Great replies,

I wish we could get a developer response so we could know we aren’t forgotten about ..

also the citadel of faith should have some sort of rework or alternate for death cults

 

[CWJameson]

The Death Priest is actually an incredibly good relative improvement. It's basically one job that gives double the unity of the base job (priest), which is itself a boosted version of the default normal job (Culture Worker). The obvious way to use it is to simply disable the mortal initiate job and use the pop elsewhere while your priest works twice as hard for free. If it was any other job aside from Clerks that was receiving this kind of benefit it'd be vastly overpowered. Imagine if technocracy also made your labs require half as many pops and 50% less CG inputs to produce the full research, that'd be nuts.

Unfortunately it's let down by
- Unity just not being something you need to rush in the first place
- Spiritualist ethics being awful both on it's own and because it locks you out of the incredibly good materialist ethics.
- The +% minerals/energy edict, the one you'd most likely want to use, being made relatively weaker over time as more and more other +% mining and energy boosts have been added.

It's a neat idea but the whole spiritualist and unity mechanics need a big overhaul to make their perks relevant, and the sacrifices are nowhere near able to pay themselves off.

Are they the same ? I think regular two priests puts out more for less then one death priest and the amenities is half of the two priests as well if I recall correctly

 

[Archael90]

It's one of my favorite civics, however, it feels extremely underwhelming in 3.0.

I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this civic is it too weak or balanced?


I would like to have this civic give the same number of death priests that regular spiritualists get instead of only 1.

Also, it would be nice flavor if you could sacrifice slaves instead of full residence pops, especially since in 3.0 pop growth has been significantly changed as the mortal initiate job is the only job worse than the clerk, or perhaps remove it entirely and have it sacrifice a random pop on each planet that a temple is built on.

Definitely would love to hear your thoughts on this and hope the Dev team will give some attention to this civic soon, especially since it was in a recently released DLC.

Death priest is 2x more effective than normal priest so no, increasing its number especially in 3.0+ is bad idea - the less jobs - the better.
Only thing that bothers me in death cult civic is citadel of faith building or rather lack of its death alternative with this civic.
Im not sure if slaves cannot be mortal initiates, but i believe they shouldnt (or maybe only indeture servitude slaves) because being sacrificed is very important, noble and resposible job that slaves should not be allowed to do.

 

[CWJameson]

So a regular priest is +5 amenities and produces 2.5 Society Research and 4.5 Unity at the cost of 1 food and 2.5 Consumer goods and you get 2.

While A death priest is +5 amenities and 10.5 unity along with 2.5 society research for the cost of 1 food and 3.5 consumer goods. Mortal initiate gives 1.3 Society Research for 1 food and .01 Consumer good upkeep.

So Regular Priest building gets 10 amenities and 9 unity for the cost of 2 food and 5 consumer goods.

Death Cult is 5 Amenities 10.5 Unity 3.8 society research for the total cost of 2 food and 3.6 consumer goods.

So I propose they buff the mortal initiate job to also give 5 amenities so that Death Cult provides a more measurable bonus over regular spiritualist

ALSO, GIVE THE DEATH CULT A UNIQUE CITADEL OF FAITH <3

Having to build extra amenities while playing death cult over regular spiritualists feels goofy.

 

[CWJameson]

Any ideas on how to get the development team to eyeball this thread ?

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Any ideas on how to get the development team to eyeball this thread ?

Have you tried sacrificing any POPs?

 

[Azhcristokos]

Any ideas on how to get the development team to eyeball this thread ?

They have definitely seen it, and such feedback regarding Death Cult is not new. I suspect that balancing in terms of number of jobs and pop outputs will continue with each major patch now. I only wish they had decided to do a 3.0.4.

Death Cult can also not be completely "fixed" in terms of its power compared to other playstyles unless spiritualism is. In the early days of Stellaris, the ethics got a major balance pass with pretty much every patch. Glad things are more stable now, but spiritualism itself needs a major overhaul to reduce the opportunity cost of choosing civics that require it.

 

[CWJameson]

They have definitely seen it, and such feedback regarding Death Cult is not new. I suspect that balancing in terms of number of jobs and pop outputs will continue with each major patch now. I only wish they had decided to do a 3.0.4.

Death Cult can also not be completely "fixed" in terms of its power compared to other playstyles unless spiritualism is. In the early days of Stellaris, the ethics got a major balance pass with pretty much every patch. Glad things are more stable now, but spiritualism itself needs a major overhaul to reduce the opportunity cost of choosing civics that require it.

what would you propose ?
I would like to see the shroud get buffed to be less random and more just constant buffs to make it more competitive

 

[Magnificent Genius]

Yeah.

If I could go full Aztec and sacrifice a conquered pop that would be better mechanically AND better for RP.

This is what disappointed me the most about the civic, is that it seems perfect for that, but nope, has to be a free citizen. But darnit, I want to make the sun rise with the blood sacrifice of captured space foxes to Quetzalcoatl.

 

[Azhcristokos]

what would you propose ?
I would like to see the shroud get buffed to be less random and more just constant buffs to make it more competitive

Yes, the Shroud should not be a crapshot RNG-fest. That would be a huge step. Another would be changing the -5%/-10% edict costs bonus to boost edict capacity, or really anything besides that near-useless cost reduction.

For unity bonuses to feel impactful, unity either needs to be harder to get or empire sprawl needs to be relevant again. Or both. Or traditions themselves need to be stronger.

Ideally, a DLC would give spiritualist unique mechanics like cults/religions that would be fun and useful.

 

[Archael90]

I would like a little overhaul to spiritualists, so that nobody will be confused because spiritualism =/= religion.
Spiritualism is about believing that there is something more than material world, but stating WHAT this "something" is, and HOW to approach this is a religion by itself. Even materialists can have their religion, when seeing shroud they can say - its something new, we should study it and check what this is, and this is okay (same with spiritualists who see shroud and sais - its what we was looking for, lets chek it up). But if anyone sais:
a) We havnt seen it before and this ruins our approach to the world, so this means it has to be a mistake or a fraud.
b) Its something divine we should make a cult around it.
Those are religions.

 

[CWJameson]

Great ideas and points keep them coming !

I am still confused as to why they set the mortal Initiates job the way they did

also don’t understand why you take an amenities hit going with death cult

to me the sacrifice edicts don’t seem to pay for themselves especially with the abundance of credits or minerals you can get now

 

[Deshiba]

So a regular priest is +5 amenities and produces 2.5 Society Research and 4.5 Unity at the cost of 1 food and 2.5 Consumer goods and you get 2.

While A death priest is +5 amenities and 10.5 unity along with 2.5 society research for the cost of 1 food and 3.5 consumer goods. Mortal initiate gives 1.3 Society Research for 1 food and .01 Consumer good upkeep.

So Regular Priest building gets 10 amenities and 9 unity for the cost of 2 food and 5 consumer goods.

Death Cult is 5 Amenities 10.5 Unity 3.8 society research for the total cost of 2 food and 3.6 consumer goods.

So I propose they buff the mortal initiate job to also give 5 amenities so that Death Cult provides a more measurable bonus over regular spiritualist

ALSO, GIVE THE DEATH CULT A UNIQUE CITADEL OF FAITH <3

Having to build extra amenities while playing death cult over regular spiritualists feels goofy.

The Death Priest itself is more efficient for unity generation. At 4.5 unity you'd need 3 regular priests to generate as much unity as a death priest. This basically means you need less people working the unity job, freeing them up for other things. This calculation becomes even worse for regular priests when you factor in output modifiers.

If you are looking at amenities you'd be better off going for Duelists or Entertainers. And if you are going for society research then Necromancers are your best bet. Death priest with Exalted Priesthood is the single best unity rush job there is with F.Spiritualist ethic and Traditional Trait it nets you 9.1 unity in a single job. This is before any other modifier like happiness, Veneration of Saints, or Sacrifice:Togetherness.

That being said. Unity rushing is underwhelming so it doesn't matter.

 

[Biotact]

What is up with the numbers being thrown around here?
Priest: Upkeep is 2 consumer goods. Produces 2 society research, 3 unity and 5 amenities. You get 2 with the basic temple.
Death Priest: Upkeep is 3 consumer goods. Produces 2 society research, 6 unity and 5 amenities. You get 1 with the basic temple.
The Mortal Initiate you get is horribad and should be disabled until you want to sacrifice something.

There should be an offering that buffs military power for me to consider Death Cult. For unity rushing, I would just pick Exalted Priesthood.

 

[Archael90]

For unity rushing, I would just pick Technocracy.

Here, i fixed it for You