2 more Merchants though (assuming specific Tradition choices of course).
Masterful Crafters
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2 more Merchants though (assuming specific Tradition choices of course).
It's not about the trade per pop. It's about the efficiency per pop. The +0.17 per specialist pop is worth it when the majority of your pops are specialists and you'll have consumer goods coming out of the wazoo. If trade value per consumer goods efficiency is what you think is best then I reckon you'd want everyone to run the Shared Burden civics instead, as that living standard has the best CG to TV conversion rate across the board?
The topic is literally about the Masterful Crafter civic. Can't fault me for the other guy getting the name wrong.
I agree, that's why I advocate for taking it EARLY GAME and swapping out of it LATE GAME. I never told anyone to keep it 100% of the time for the trade boost it gives.
There's loads of things to use CG for early game. The planetary decisions, trade with other empires, fielding more high end jobs. You can't have too many CG until you get your federation up. At which point I specifically recommend shifting out of the civic for something long term.
I've only ever talked about the civic as an early game crutch. It's not RP related at all, just sheer numbers. Early game Masterful Crafters is the best for void dwellers because:
- You get +1 consumer good per artificer. Meaning you need less pops working CG.
- You get +1.1 engineering research per artificer, which is a flat increase and benefits from modifiers. It helps getting robots or habitat tech up earlier.
- You get +2 trade value per artificer. For trade empires this means +0.5 unity each, which helps getting your traditions and key ascension perks up sooner.
Sure, but even with 15% discount you still need 510 minerals to build the districts and buildings. Even when you buy your minerals you won't have these slots filled before a proper trade empire has the Voidborne perk unlocked. (assuming mercantile rush)
You don't need the building slots from day 1, it can wait until government reform.
Just take pleasure seekers for a more powerful version of Utopian Abundance
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The problem with it is, the better it is the worse it is. As the game goes on you usually need fewer CG's, and have more ways to get them. So you will have fewer and fewer Artisans, negatively affecting the benefit you get out of the civic.
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On the other hand, the more the game goes on the more industrial districts you can support as a % of your overall total, which means more building slots for free.
Sure, but you don't want a split between Artificiers/Metallurgists. You want the latter. And you usually only need five city districts to unlock all building slots. Which you often need simply to give your pops enough living space.
CG's similar to food are a resource you don't want to overproduce, you want to have as little of a surplus as possible. Which means you're going to be actively looking to reduce the number of Artificiers. Which in turn leads to the trade/science bonus diminishing. If you go for the trading stance, that becomes even more pronounced. So this civic has the problem that it is actually somewhat self defeating.
Which is why it's only an okay civic, rather than a great one.
Masterful Crafters is stupendous. My current game I took Technocracy to start (I use it more as an early tech crutch than a tech rush -- with Technocracy, I don't build any labs initially concentrating on early colonization and alloy development and don't worry about Unity income as when I do make labs they are more than enough).
By the time I got my third civic choice, I was feeling the extra CG tax. I swapped Technocracy for Masterful Crafters. got immediate CG relief, my unity income didn't change noticeably (I bought all traditions and activated all useful ambitions by 2300 without a single dedicated unity income building) and my engineering income went up.
With Masterful Crafters and colonies having industrial districts, ecumenopolises are mostly pointless. Industrial districts open building slots so most colonies carry them leading to alloy and CG surpluses enough to operate the whole empire.
By the time I got my third civic choice, I was feeling the extra CG tax. I swapped Technocracy for Masterful Crafters. got immediate CG relief, my unity income didn't change noticeably (I bought all traditions and activated all useful ambitions by 2300 without a single dedicated unity income building) and my engineering income went up.
With Masterful Crafters and colonies having industrial districts, ecumenopolises are mostly pointless. Industrial districts open building slots so most colonies carry them leading to alloy and CG surpluses enough to operate the whole empire.
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Utopian Abundance is fanatic egalitarian (equal living standard), so swapping from it is terrible from a roleplay perspective. Just keep utopian abundance with pleasure seekers
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That's shared burdens and as we know from actual history it's definitely not utopian or abundance lol.
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utopian abundance is "full communism" which marx literally described as "superabundance". shared burdens is the "transitional society" to it. if you don't believe me, look at utopian abundance: 1CG per month for ruler pops, 1CG per month for specialist pops, 1CG per month for worker pops. perfectly equal. i don't support stalinism, so comparisons to current human history are irrelevant, utopian abundance is space communism. like star trek.
point is, no one who likes utopian abundance should trade it for decadent, they are literally politically opposed (decadent is extremely unequal) so it makes no sense from a roleplay perspective.
If you want to generate a lot of consumer goods, you can do better by spamming trade. I'm not quick to call things overpowered, but the Mercantile tree is very broken with the amount of Merchant jobs it allows you to generate, especially if you plan things correctly.
Just let the private sector handle everything.
Just let the private sector handle everything.
Not broken, but definitely strong. Especially if you go Megacorp or start a trade federation. Sadly turning it into a one country state via diplomatic weight votes takes some time. Producing 0.5 energy, 0.25 unity, and 0.25 consumer goods per trade is pretty good.
How does this not describe Shared Burdens to a T as well? The civic's quote is literally:
"This society believes in an equitable distribution of resources, making little to no distinction between the needs of ruler and ruled. All work together for the benefit of the whole."
Shared burden has an upkeep of 0.4 GC for all strata.Shared burden = Communist society
Utopian abundance = Utopian society
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i think this just comes down to people not understanding that there was supposed to be a "lower and higher stage of communism" and marx very specifically referred to the higher stage as stateless, classless, superabundance.
so to me Shared Burden is the "lower stage" or "transitional stage" of communism, which Marx described as "from each according to their abilities to each according to their labour" and Utopian Abundance is the "higher stage" of communism, which Marx described as "from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs". It is that kind of a society where it would not matter if you don't work, hence utopian abundant unemployed pops still receiving their 1CG.
as for "utopian", marx and engels saw utopian as sort of starting from the goal and working backwards instead of starting from the problems in this society and seeing how the fight against them can bring us there. like imposing a future blueprint on today's conditions, instead of seeing how today's conditions are creating the social upheavals that make change possible. Engels wrote a book called "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" which adresses how he and Marx took the socialist ideas of the utopian reformers before them and figured out how the working class can change society (a class the utopians ignored in favour of begging the monarchies and bourgeois to reform). so in reality, Marx and Engels shared the vision of a future without want that the utopians had, they just put it on the basis of class struggle. so space utopians are just space socialists/communists, even if they haven't read the humans marx and engels
point is tho, 1CG for all equally is 100% incompatible with "decadent" and its deeply unequal 1CG/0.5CG/0.25CG class society. Utopian abundance is a classless society, decadent is not, and anyone who runs UA would not be satisfied by a switch to decadent. They are diametrically opposed from an ethics standpoint. Utopian Abundance is the very definition of Fanatic Egalitarianism taken to its logical conclusion (if you don't want to say communism, at least Fanatic Egalitarianism is not debatable here), and Decadent is authoritarian by its very nature.
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Broken if you leverage it correctly, just strong if you use it otherwise. VD+Mercantile+Functional Architecture is an example of leveraging Mercantile correctly, due to the sheer amount of opportunity this provides to spam Merchants between building slots and trade districts. To get around edge cases that make this tradition so powerful, it should really only add something like +1 Merchant per planet/hab.
Trade value is still a better alternative to using Masterful Crafters for smaller empires. The simplification that the multiple roles trade fills provides allows the user to save many pops from needing to work jobs like Miners, Artisans, Culture Workers and Technicians, all of which can be rededicated to other jobs, including those that produce trade. Trade's worth mostly comes from its savings in terms of opportunity costs. Clerks can make about 9 TV without trying very hard, which I believe more than justifies their existence. Along with the occasional Merchant, TV production isn't very difficult, and can be done anywhere regardless of deposits.
Still though, large empires would have difficulties with protecting trade routes, making the strategy best for small compact and contiguous empires.
Still though, large empires would have difficulties with protecting trade routes, making the strategy best for small compact and contiguous empires.