Nerf to Fanatic Authoritarian?

[Nerisande]

Auth was already a lot weaker than egal

It is not so bad. Authoritarians have a lot of quite powerful mechanics and can be a strong choice if you're not going to be a Xenophobe (because it is another way to unlock the most of these mechanics).
Slavery is strong. Raiding bombardment can be even OP. Stratified Society is a bit helpful. More influence is always nice. If you wan't to appease factions - egalitarian faction is an annoying one because they dislike resettlement, slavery, leader enhancement policy and migration controls.
Egalitarians have more straight-forward bonuces and strong civics. Benefits from being Authoritarian are not so obvious, but can be even more valuable.

But I'm not sure that FA required a nerf and FE required a buff. It feels not as balance change, but as RP-driven change or even as proclamation of some political beliefs.

 

[-Marauder-]

The idea is that an authoritarian society is less meritocratic. As a consequence the quality of leaders is likely to be lower. I think it is a fitting penalty, but I feel they should have compensated by giving a bonus in some other area. Because now there's no reason to ever pick Fanatic Authoritarian over normal Authoritarian (except for that one civic).

Except Auth concentrates on leaders, leaders matter more, and it gets techs that highly upset Egalitarians.

On top of that, this is a nerf that was neither warranted nor needed. Egalitarian did not need a buff in any kind of way shape or form. And Auth didn't need a nerf in any kind of way shape or form.



Bonus points, a look at the reworked civics makes all of this oh so much worse. Shared Burdens now unlocks a Position that gives +2% Worker Output per level. This means at level 5, this will already be as strong as the Fan Auth bonus, at level 10 it will be double.

What does Slavery Guild gives, which ONLY buffs Slave Output? +2% Slave Happiness. Since when does Slave Happiness matter, at all, in any way?! What is this bonus? This entire Expansion seems to be a huge buff for Egalitarian and a Huge Nerf and mish mash of nonsensical and contradictory changes to Authoritarian.

 

[-Marauder-]

It is not so bad. Authoritarians have a lot of quite powerful mechanics and can be a strong choice if you're not going to be a Xenophobe (because it is another way to unlock the most of these mechanics).
Slavery is strong. Raiding bombardment can be even OP. Stratified Society is a bit helpful. More influence is always nice. If you wan't to appease factions - egalitarian faction is an annoying one because they dislike resettlement, slavery, leader enhancement policy and migration controls.
Egalitarians have more straight-forward bonuces and strong civics. Benefits from being Authoritarian are not so obvious, but can be even more valuable.

But I'm not sure that FA required a nerf and FE required a buff. It feels not as balance change, but as RP-driven change or even as proclamation of some political beliefs.

Yes, this is bad. Auth has been nerfed repeatedly in various ways. This is just them kicking someone who's already down, and doing so for absolutely no good reason. While giving one of the singularly strongest Ethics another buff.

- Slavery isn't strong anymore, hasn't been for quite a while. Ever since the bonuses stopped affecting Specialists.
- Nihilistic Acquisition isn't that great. You can achieve the same damn thing simply via taking that planet, resettling the pops, then releasing it as a vassal. Hell, you're better off long term this way.
- Their dislike for resettlement is miniscule and more than compensated for by other easy to enact policies and requirements.
- No, Egalitarians have some of the singularly best bonuses and civics in the game. They have a huge number of benefits. Auth gives a benefit to the WORST jobs, some miniscule Influence income, and now punishes you further.

And yes, this is RP. But bad RP. It's a situation where somehow the Egalitarian Empire is this weird idealized utopia that does everything right, and rather than having any drawbacks always has the best outcome. While the opposite applies to Auth. It feels more ideological than game balanced at this point.

 

[Nevars]

It is not so bad. Authoritarians have a lot of quite powerful mechanics and can be a strong choice if you're not going to be a Xenophobe (because it is another way to unlock the most of these mechanics).
Slavery is strong. Raiding bombardment can be even OP. Stratified Society is a bit helpful. More influence is always nice. If you wan't to appease factions - egalitarian faction is an annoying one because they dislike resettlement, slavery, leader enhancement policy and migration controls.
Egalitarians have more straight-forward bonuces and strong civics. Benefits from being Authoritarian are not so obvious, but can be even more valuable.

But I'm not sure that FA required a nerf and FE required a buff. It feels not as balance change, but as RP-driven change or even as proclamation of some political beliefs.

Lol in what version your Stellaris stuck on that slavery is good?

And egalitarian is already on par, if not better than authoritarian right now.

So this buff on egalitarian and nerf on authoritarian is a bit baffled tbh.

 

[LeoBack]

Auth let you use Information Quarantine edict (it's cheap you can run it all game) 3% to everything on top of 5% Worker job output vs 5% to specialist with egalitarian , Auth also let you use Dictatorial for −10% Empire Size Effect. Both fanatic version are bad tho

 

[-Marauder-]

Lol in what version your Stellaris stuck on that slavery is good?

And egalitarian is already on par, if not better than authoritarian right now.

So this buff on egalitarian and nerf on authoritarian is a bit baffled tbh.

It gets worse, Slavery guild gives you a councilor position that gives you SLAVE HAPPINESS of all things. And a whooping 2% at that. What Does Fan Egalitarian get? 2% blanket worker output from Shared Burdens.

So a Fanatic Egalitarian Empire with Meritocracy and Shared Burdens would have from the get go:

Faction Approval +10. I.e blanket 10+ happiness for all pops.
Faction Unity Bonus 2-20%.
Edict Funds +5-50
+50% Faction Unity Gain.
+1 Leader Pool Size.
+20% Specialist Output.
+1 Additional Leader Trait option.
+2-20% Leader Experience Gain.
Shared Burden Living Standard.
+5 Stability (roughly 2.5% output to everything).
-45% Demotion Time.
+2-20% Worker Output.

Meanwhile a Fanathic Authoritarian Empire with Slavery Guilds would get.

+1 Monthly Influence.
+10% Worker Output.
+10% Slave Output. (Enslaved Ratio 35%, can't even enslave all workers.)
-1 Leader Pool Size.
+2-20% Slave Happiness. (Literally wut?)

With the reworked civics, I'm honestly not even sure which others to pick. Probably Feudal society?

 

[-Marauder-]

Auth let you use Information Quarantine edict (it's cheap you can run it all game) 3% to everything on top of 5% Worker job output vs 5% to specialist with egalitarian , Auth also let you use Dictatorial for −10% Empire Size Effect. Both fanatic version are bad tho

My man, Shared Burden gives you +5 Stability for free. Dictatorial got a huge nerf, the -10% Empire size is gone.

 

[Kabian]

It gets worse, Slavery guild gives you a councilor position that gives you SLAVE HAPPINESS of all things. And a whooping 2% at that. What Does Fan Egalitarian get? 2% blanket worker output from Shared Burdens.

So a Fanatic Egalitarian Empire with Meritocracy and Shared Burdens would have from the get go:

Faction Approval +10. I.e blanket 10+ happiness for all pops.
Faction Unity Bonus 2-20%.
Edict Funds +5-50
+50% Faction Unity Gain.
+1 Leader Pool Size.
+20% Specialist Output.
+1 Additional Leader Trait option.
+2-20% Leader Experience Gain.
Shared Burden Living Standard.
+5 Stability (roughly 2.5% output to everything).
-45% Demotion Time.
+2-20% Worker Output.

Meanwhile a Fanathic Authoritarian Empire with Slavery Guilds would get.

+1 Monthly Influence.
+10% Worker Output.
+10% Slave Output. (Enslaved Ratio 35%, can't even enslave all workers.)
-1 Leader Pool Size.
+2-20% Slave Happiness. (Literally wut?)

With the reworked civics, I'm honestly not even sure which others to pick. Probably Feudal society?

I feel authoritarian slavery guilds dystopia society is going to be meta autho for now.

But yes, i agree this nerf without anything to compensate is really wierd.

Auth could use either a -1 negative skill limit, or leader exp, or "leaders get to choose from +1 trait more when they level up"

 

[-Marauder-]

I feel authoritarian slavery guilds dystopia society is going to be meta autho for now.

But yes, i agree this nerf without anything to compensate is really wierd.

Auth could use either a -1 negative skill limit, or leader exp, or "leaders get to choose from +1 trait more when they level up"

Why would it be meta? It literally offers you nothing. You get weaker Specialists, weaker worker/slave bonuses, weaker leaders, and weaker generalized bonuses.

 

[LeoBack]

My man, Shared Burden gives you +5 Stability for free. Dictatorial got a huge nerf, the -10% Empire size is gone.

How's wasting a civic slot counts as free

 

[Kabian]

Why would it be meta? It literally offers you nothing. You get weaker Specialists, weaker worker/slave bonuses, weaker leaders, and weaker generalized bonuses.

Yeah i just revised dystopian society and it doesnt require slaves to remove cg/amenities.

Right now dystopian society is slaving guilds on steroids

 

[A2ch0n]

Auth could use either a -1 negative skill limit, or leader exp, or "leaders get to choose from +1 trait more when they level up"

Exactly my thinking!
The alternative would be leader exp gain or leader life span.

If non of this would be a thing, remove the -1 pool size at least. Tbh i would like both to catch up with the egalitarians.

Authoritarian:
+5% Worker Output
+0.5 Influence

Fan Auth:
+10% Worker Output
+1 Influence
+1 Leader trait options


This would make the fan Auth at least interesting. Like someone mentioned, normal auth is quite ok while fan auth already struggled before.

 

[Imp0815]

I'm thinking about this while reading:

According to this video, picking your "Keys" aka your council is far more important in a Authoritarian system than a Democratic one. It makes or breaks your empire. And for me it sounds very logical.

For Stellaris i would just remove the penalty from Fanatic Authoritarian. Makes no sens, maybe for balance.

To spin up the old wish machine, a loyalty mechanic for Authoritarian Empires were you have to take a lookout for your council would maybe some nice addition. Granting positions to keep your keys happy etc..

 

[Ikael]

And here I was, thinking that at long last the fanatic ethics would be getting some love in order to compensate for their restrictions, only to discover that they have been nerfed, starting with fanatic authoritarian, which was already quite poor to begin with. Welp.

Yes, the maluses do make sense, thematic-wise, but they make fanatic ethics even more unappealing than before. If anything, they should be straight-out buffed in order to compensate for their more restricted gameplay options.

Just to give some ideas, from the top of my head:

Fanatic egalitarian: +1 empire leader cap (equal opportunities for all ends up bringing more leaders)
Fanatic authoritarian: +1 extra leader skill level (elitism strives to get better council leaders)

Fanatic xenophile: +2 foreign leader cap (destroying the Xeno crystal ceiling)
Fanatic xenophobe: -10% empire sprawl (Discriminating "the other" bring us all together. Also, it meshes well with inward perfection and conquering empires alike)

Fanatic materialist: +10% pop assembly speed (because materialists can love clones and cyborgs too)
Fanatic spiritualist: -15% organic pop maintenance (because thou shall reject worldly desires & temptations)

Fanatic militarist: +15% naval cap (it just makes too much sense to give militarists some good old naval cap)
Fanatic pacifist: +10% job output (screw it, this ethic needs all the help it can get)

 

[Nerisande]

- Nihilistic Acquisition isn't that great. You can achieve the same damn thing simply via taking that planet, resettling the pops, then releasing it as a vassal. Hell, you're better off long term this way.

Just one word: Influence. Raiding bombardment can't be not great since it is a way to get 50, 100, 200, 1000 pops literally for free. Of course it is kinda overwhelmed by stupidly broken and overpowered vassal mechanics, but you can use both.

 

[user192823]

Seems like something a **** dev who does not play the game snuck just before release. Fanatic egalitarian was already decently strong with the specialists bonus while fanatic authoritarian was weak. Yet another reason to mod the game. What was the special individual thinking when adding this penalty out of nowhere? -1 leader pool makes fanatic authoritarian outright unplayable, not like there was much reason to sink two ethic points in it before, but now good luck rolling those specialist scientists to roll specific techs.

 

[Twogs]

+2-20% Worker Output.

+2-20% Slave Happiness.

Little comment on that: It could be more than 20% when you stack some of the nice, new and shiny "Effective Councillor Level" modifiers.

 

[Twogs]

Seems like something a **** dev who does not play the game snuck just before release. Fanatic egalitarian was already decently strong with the specialists bonus while fanatic authoritarian was weak. Yet another reason to mod the game. What was the special individual thinking when adding this penalty out of nowhere? -1 leader pool makes fanatic authoritarian outright unplayable, not like there was much reason to sink two ethic points in it before, but now good luck rolling those specialist scientists to roll specific techs.

Uhm I think you vastly overestimate the impact of that modifier, at least for the DLC play where a Lvl 1 leader would not have any strong traits anyway. So the reduced pool has a much smaller influence as you might think, the leaders only show their true potential after leveling up a bunch of times anyway.

 

[Bloodbat]

Uhm I think you vastly overestimate the impact of that modifier, at least for the DLC play where a Lvl 1 leader would not have any strong traits anyway. So the reduced pool has a much smaller influence as you might think, the leaders only show their true potential after leveling up a bunch of times anyway.

That's one less governor or one less scientist surveying.

 

[Twogs]

That's one less governor or one less scientist surveying.

What? The POOL is smaller. Hence you can choose one less when hiring a new one. That is not that horrible