Only 6 Leaders?

[Panzerslothen]

Posting for visibility, from the hotfix thread

It's possible to interpret read Enfield's comment in two ways. Firstly that he's hinting at general balance sweeps which would not include changes to the Leader Cap. Second, that he's hinting at general balance sweeps which would include revising the Leader Cap, but not removing it. It is worded vaguely.

But, his comment is no more 'arrogant' than any of the other passionate (and in some cases, obstinate...) opposing opinions.

I don't disagree with him on a Leader Cap in theory being a better design (cool your jets, haters - not disagreeing is not the same thing as agreeing). I am still of the opinion that the angry players can (and probably should) get over the existence of the Cap, but that the actual number simply needs fine-tuning (with further means of it scaling/increasing, beyond even Aptitude (which everyone seems to forget anyway)) [Edited to make it absolutely clear what I'm saying because I'm sick of being repeatedly lied about and deliberately mis-represented by malicious actors].

I can't for a moment believe the Devs would ignore demand to that effect if it became loud and protracted enough... although come to think of it, they've been ignoring calls for Internal Politics for yonks so mehbeh they will...

Furthermore, I don't think we should all get caught-up in just talking about the Leader Cap and the relative power of Governors. I think we should also advocate for buffs to Generals and an increase in the effects of many Councillor effects by upwards of 50%. Yes, seriously.

 

[-Marauder-]

The problem isn't the cap, the problem is the Cap being absurdly low and almost static. It ignores Empire growth, it ignores map size, and even if you "Balance" some rulers more, some types will always be more valuable if they all draw from the same pool.

 

[Wheem]

I play exclusively with the largest galaxy size setting and having a 6-leader soft cap at the start feels overly restrictive. Playing a Broken Shackles start with Baol precursors is relatively demanding on my very limited pool of scientists, and accepting a unique one that bumped me up to 7/6 completely killed my Unity generation for a while (and it's still quite slow).

Perhaps the Automated Exploration Protocols technology should allow the empire to construct a secondary type of science vessel which:

1) Can't have a leader assigned to it.​

2) Can't research anomalies or dig archaeological sites.​

3) Costs more to build and/or upkeep than standard science vessels.​

There could be other restrictions too if it's deemed necessary, I'm just sort of shooting from the hip.

If one plays in a more natural-feeling and RP-friendly way early on, without any sorts of gamey tactics, it's difficult to get very much exploration going at the start of the game (and the Discovery tradition tree really doesn't help that much). This might not be a big deal if you're playing on smaller maps, but having a maximum of 3 exploration vessels at the start (assuming one doesn't immediately fire their admiral and/or governor, dealing with a weaker council and worse-RP as a result) simply isn't enough, IMO. Especially when one takes early archaeological digs and anomalies into account.

 

[RoverStorm]

I can't for a moment believe the Devs would ignore demand to that effect if it became loud and protracted enough

In the past, they HAVE bent to public pressure to revert changes or change existing mechanics. Granted, that was previous dev teams, and based on the dev comments from 3.8 they seem to be taking a bit of an aristocratic "we know what is good and you are wrong" mentality. Of course, even if my understanding is correct and they are on a high horse, that still hasn't always prevented public pressure leading to gameplay changes. Anyone else remember Imperator Rome?

 

[Kabian]

In the past, they HAVE bent to public pressure to revert changes or change existing mechanics. Granted, that was previous dev teams, and based on the dev comments from 3.8 they seem to be taking a bit of an aristocratic "we know what is good and you are wrong" mentality. Of course, even if my understanding is correct and they are on a high horse, that still hasn't always prevented public pressure leading to gameplay changes. Anyone else remember Imperator Rome?

Ah yes... imperator rome. that game that did so well that is played less than victoria 2.
that game that had some patches that the community had to get in arms to revert them

 

[Panzerslothen]

In the past, they HAVE bent to public pressure to revert changes or change existing mechanics. Granted, that was previous dev teams, and based on the dev comments from 3.8 they seem to be taking a bit of an aristocratic "we know what is good and you are wrong" mentality. Of course, even if my understanding is correct and they are on a high horse, that still hasn't always prevented public pressure leading to gameplay changes. Anyone else remember Imperator Rome?

I get what you mean, but we have only the one comment from one member of Q+A to go on.

And I can see it from PDX's perspective - they've worked a long time on this change, they almost certainly want it to work out, and they probably don't want to have to backtrack on that. They may well be looking at it as 'tough medicine' the playerbase 'needs to accept for its own good'. And I still think there are elements of the Leader-specific changes which are indeed net positives. Still, there isn't necessarily a conflict between the model they've introduced and what the playerbase (certainly the vocally disgruntled parts of it here, anyway) want... which is, fundamentally, more Leaders. The devil in the details - but also the space for negotiation between the Devs and us - is what the Leader number is and how it can be achieved in-game.

 

[jayparadoritox]

Needs to be different tiers of "leader" (they already have precedents in the form of paragons vs leaders, and leaders vs envoys).

If they're adamant that the cap = better design that's great, but give the player an increase in fun moments by giving them the opportunity to fill scientist ships, planet slots and sector slots with something.

There is a general consensus out there that grand strategy games like this are at their best in the early game, when you have plenty of intimate and meaningful decisions to make, and then it trails off somewhat by the end when things become oppressively macro. But it's as though the developers tried to fix that by merely reducing the number of things you can do in the early game lol

 

[RoverStorm]

The problem is that NEITHER the leader cap, NOR the bonuses of all leaders, scale equally with your empire.

I still think there are elements of the Leader-specific changes which are indeed net positives.

Totally agree! In fact I would go against the grain and say that the update, as a whole, is a total net positive. Particularly since the leader cap can be modded out with about ten minutes of effort (source: I did that).

Still, there isn't necessarily a conflict between the model they've introduced and what the playerbase (certainly the vocally disgruntled parts of it here, anyway) want... which is, fundamentally, more Leaders.

Actually I think both points here are incorrect. If players want more leaders, this is a huge conflict because their stated goal is fewer leaders. Of course they then instantly contradicted themselves with the change of sector governors to "mostly" planetary governors (yes governor level applies to sector, but most of the traits are where the real power is. +6% job output from a level 3 governor or +25% trade (+10% if comparing to "pre-update" traits) from a trait? Yes, they still apply traits to the sector capital, but how many trade planets do you think a trade-focused empire is going to have? It's 100% going to be a lot more than the leader limit.

However, on the other hand I think players don't exclusively want "more leaders", I think they want one of two things. One is for leader cap to scale equally with your empire. The second is to get rid of leaders on the map and have them be exclusively empire-wide buffs. Of course you need a leader limit if each one buffs your entire empire. But if each leader is limited in what it can do (only buff one sector/planet, only buff one fleet, only command one scientist), then the cap needs to scale with your empire or any leaders not sitting on the council cannot make an impact on your game.

Note: nobody is complaining that the council is limited to 6 (maybe as high as 8) council seats and that's it. Those leaders apply a bonus to the whole nation. It's the low-level leaders that's the focus. Those don't scale with your empire, yet are capped (even if softcapped).

And yes, there will always be people who resist change even if it's for the best. Perhaps the biggest example of this in Stellaris' history is the removal of "starting FTL method".

....though they have kinda added it back with the Eager Explorer and similar civics, haven't they?

 

[RoverStorm]

There is a general consensus out there that grand strategy games like this are at their best in the early game

Technically not entirely accurate. The agreed consensus is that almost all strategy games are at their most important in the early game. Small mistakes or losses early can lead to being catastrophically behind for the rest of the game. Some say this is actually an indication that strategy is at it's weakest early, since it causes defeatist mentalities, like "bad spawn, restart or I leave".

There are, however, several games that excel at the middle and end game, where your build-up comes to fruition and you unlock very overpowered toys. The trick is to minimize the amount of micro in the macro.

 

[Millbot]

In the past, they HAVE bent to public pressure to revert changes or change existing mechanics. Granted, that was previous dev teams, and based on the dev comments from 3.8 they seem to be taking a bit of an aristocratic "we know what is good and you are wrong" mentality. Of course, even if my understanding is correct and they are on a high horse, that still hasn't always prevented public pressure leading to gameplay changes. Anyone else remember Imperator Rome?

Worth keeping in mind that vocal people on the forum do not speak for the whole of the player base. I'd even cautioned people that are really unhappy with the patch to remember that most people that really love the new content are busy playing the game and not spending their finite time posting here. If we do post here, it's because we either taking a break or have a schedule that prevents us from loading up a game that requires a huge block of time to fully enjoy.

Also most players don't post of the forums and those that are perfectly content with everything are less likely to bother. I mean, you don't see many forums threads gushing about how someone absolutely loves the game. You usually see posts where people are fervently complaining about how upset they are that things got changed with a new update and listing off balance concerns or suggestions for QoL. Also noting bug issues.

Unless you are really aware of the stats or the overall community. It's rather hard to spot the difference between the usual butthurt that comes with every major update and the majority of the community being livid over an unpopular change that kills enjoyment of the game for them.

That said, I suspect that a fair chunk of complaints can be boiled down to:
-People not fully grasping the extend of the changes. For example, seeing lots of complaints about pop production nerfs because of the changes to sector governors, yes those people don't grasp that you get a council or nodal consciousness with leaders who get traits that apply production bonuses to all your pops and that those bonuses are larger than what the old governors could do and more chances to stack them. So I suspect this will die down, once the hotfixes are mostly done and people have a better grasp of how this all works.

-Those that feel the promise of better leaders weren't delivered.

-Gestalt mains because this content mostly passes over them. Utopia is over six years old and Synthetic Dawn is about half a year younger than it. Perhaps it's time to fold both into the base purchase. I have my doubts that Paradox is making huge sums of money off of them and we're getting enough DLCs where I can't help but feel it's turning off new players from picking up the game. So I could only see the net result being more sales given that new players would be less daunted and gestalt mains would have more reason to pick up DLCs, if having gestalts was a baseline thing. I mean, it's good design that we aren't required to pick up multiple DLCs just to unlock one little feature.

-Those that don't like the idea that they can't have leaders for everything and continue to be opposed to the routinely stated design goal that you're suppose to make choices. Now I'll agree that they should remove the silhouettes on various things so that people don't feel that the UI is telling them they are wrong to not have a leader assigned because it bugs me too. Also that we when go over the soft cap on leaders, it probably should be yellow instead of red. Honestly, with any fo the soft cap stuff, and boy do people need to learn the difference between soft and hard caps, it probably should be yellow if we're within a certain range of the cap and only shift to red once we're significantly over the cap or the game determines that our overage is actually causing other problems (ex. if my in the negative on energy production and that is a result of me being over fleet capacity, then yes my fleet capacity should be red. On the other hand, if I'm running a massive surplus and I'm only two ships over naval capacity, then it should be yellow not red, to let me know I'm over the softcap, but that it's not causing issues). Essentially get rid of some UI elements that we've been conditioned to associate with, "OMG something is wrong and/or you're doing something wrong!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?" and replace them with something that instead says, "hey, you might want to keep an eye on this because you're taking some negatives, but they aren't an issue yet."

 

[Panzerslothen]

However, on the other hand I think players don't exclusively want "more leaders", I think they want one of two things. One is for leader cap to scale equally with your empire.

Yes, we’re in violent agreement lol. This is what I’ve been saying. This is exactly what I mean by ‘more leaders’ – or at least one of them. Aptitude gives ‘more Leaders’ for investment. Mike Louis’s scaling mod adds ‘more Leaders’ for investment too. Seriously, I’m wondering why this isn’t being communicated correctly – though at least in your case it seems to be a genuine accident, and not willful misrepresentation as I’ve got in (cough) other cases. So I’m not (and can’t be) mad at ye.

There's no conflict between the Dev's intention of 'Fewer Leaders to start' (be that the current 6, a future possible revision to 8 or 10, or whatever) and 'More Leaders throughout the game', as long as conditions to achieve that - be they 'passive' by scaling, 'active' by Traditions/Techs/Civics/what-have-you, or a combination of both.

Worth keeping in mind that vocal people on the forum do not speak for the whole of the player base.

And thank The Shroud for that!

 

[RoverStorm]

Unless you are really aware of the stats or the overall community. It's rather hard to spot the difference between the usual butthurt that comes with every major update and the majority of the community being livid over an unpopular change that kills enjoyment of the game for them.

Absolutely true. For leader cap, I feel pretty confident this isn't a popular change for two reasons:

1. Leader cap used to exist and was removed in the past. Largely, if I recall, because they said it wasn't enjoyable. Now I know that the dev team has changed and the new guys probably don't have the same knowledge of past events, but that's not an excuse for reinstating unpopular mechanics from the past. That's an excuse for better note-taking for the next team.

2. Other games in the genre have leaders, and have largely drifted away from capping leaders in a way that doesn't scale with your empire. This strongly indicates a mechanic that it is "in general" either not a fun mechanic or, even worse, is actively harmful to a game's design. Stellaris is a game that likes to borrow concepts from other franchises to improve, and I think that's totally fine. And what they should do here, since the "4x" community is larger than just the Stellaris community and have made this change.

 

[RoverStorm]

Seriously, I’m wondering why this isn’t being communicated correctly – though at least in your case it seems to be a genuine accident, and not willful misrepresentation as I’ve got in (cough) other cases. So I’m not (and can’t be) mad at ye.

Yeah my sincere apologies, I am a little more prone to missunderstandings than average.

 

[Holefernes]

I signed up to respond to this thread simply because I agree that the cap is not very polished as it is. Luckily this is a feature which can be moded for the time being.

A non-interstellar pre-space travel civilization like the USA has over 160 flag officers for its navy, 6 4-star admirals, 50 governors, and many thousands of scientists. Its really hard to simulate how an interstellar empire or nation would not have a whole giant list of officers in charge of things like science ships, planetary government, and council positions.

This one needed more development.

 

[Kabian]

Main problem with the leader cap is the following:

All leaders are created equal currently ,and it shouldnt be.

Leaders, as we currently know them, are the amazing guys who stand shoulders above rest the others. The scientist is not just the lone scientist in our empire, is a genious lead scientist which routinely makes breakthroughts.
Our governor is not a mere bureocrat, but a seasoned worker which makes the logisticall nightmare of coordinating a planet with trillions souls as easy as playing spacechess.
Our admirals are not just the mere fleet commanders, they are our four star admirals capable of coordinating multiple battlegroups in real time.

But this enters in conflict that these amazing people are ALL the leaders we have in our empire.

So i propose the following partition of leaders into 3 tiers:

basic leaders tier 0 - no slot, no level up, only basic traits, appear automatically to fill empty positions
normal leaders, current leaders, now tier 1- take slot, can level up, can be councilors
paragons/renowved tier 2- dont take slot, can be councilors

What would this system entrail?

All your planets/fleets/science ships would have a basic leader, which is good enough to do the job but not really the crem of the crem.
You would still have a limited crade of real leaders which you put in important places, and are the leaders you interact in the game loop.
And then, you would have the paragons/renowed leaders, where you are not forced to take the decision of "do i really want this leader", since they no longer count for the leader cap, they would always be a boon to accept.

Bonus interaction:

Since now we would have a t0 leader class, we could use those t0 leaders for our recruitment pools, which would mean that as your empire grows, the amount of leaders you can choose to recruit, and tranform from t0 to t1 leaders increases, which mantains the game expectation of "i am an empire with a hundred planets and dozens of fleets, why i only have 4 governors to recruit from"

 

[Abdulijubjub]

A non-interstellar pre-space travel civilization like the USA has over 160 flag officers for its navy, 6 4-star admirals, 50 governors, and many thousands of scientists. Its really hard to simulate how an interstellar empire or nation would not have a whole giant list of officers in charge of things like science ships, planetary government, and council positions.

While I agree with the direction of the argument in general, this... doesn't really work.

Clearly recruited leaders are figures with national significance. Ex. Albert Einstein would be a recruited scientist if 1930-40s US were somehow inexplicably a Stellaris nation. But the "thousands" (hundreds of thousands) of scientists in the US working at universities, corporate R&D, etc. would be researcher pops, not scientist leaders. Nor would every literal admiral be an Admiral leader in Stellaris: Admirals/Generals would likely be the equivalent of 5 star generals. You may not recruit any new ones at all during peace time.

 

[Masked Ermine]

While I agree with the direction of the argument in general, this... doesn't really work.

Clearly recruited leaders are figures with national significance. Ex. Albert Einstein would be a recruited scientist if 1930-40s US were somehow inexplicably a Stellaris nation. But the "thousands" (hundreds of thousands) of scientists in the US working at universities, corporate R&D, etc. would be researcher pops, not scientist leaders. Nor would every literal admiral be an Admiral leader in Stellaris: Admirals/Generals would likely be the equivalent of 5 star generals. You may not recruit any new ones at all during peace time.

But those wouldn't be field officers. IE if you're argument that leaders should only represent the officers at a cabinet level then fine...cool...DON'T MAKE SCIENCE SHIPS AND INDIVIDUAL FLEETS AND ARMIES HAVE TO HAVE CABINET LEVEL REPRESENTATIVES ATTACHED TO THEM!

IE there should be no slots for field positions if the idea is that the 'leaders' don't represent the field workers.

Why have planetary governors when the 'governor leader' is only meant to represent the Attorney General or the Secretary of Interior or whatever....

Either simplify the system and get rid of the field leaders, and only have councilor leaders.

Or

Raise the leader cap so we can have an appropriate number of field leaders and cabinet leaders....

Or implement a two tiered system.

Don't do what the devs did, which was force the penalties of a 'Cabinet members only' model onto a game that begs us to have significant numbers of field leaders employed to lead individual units and worlds....

 

[Pellaken]

I managed to sneak in a few decades of play; the 6 starting cap isn't the problem as far as my experience. My concern is that the cap needs to grow at a proper rate, and while I didn't run in to any problems in the few decades I played. I'd also been using civics that gave you a higher cap, and picked higher cap stuff with my unity. As such I felt like I would have been short on slots if I'd played to the mid/end game. I could see an empire with, maybe, 5 governors, 5 admirals, 2 generals, and 3 scientists. Do you have a cap of 15 on a regular playthrough by the time you start pushing back the crisis?

 

[polarscribe]

But yes, I think we're going to be in a period of adaption whilst we work out the best way to work with the new leader caps and how it limits early exploration.

"The best way to work with the new leader caps" is just to edit the defines file and set it to 1000, because it breaks my playstyle and enjoyment of the game.

I play exclusively on 1000-star galaxies with 12ish AI starts. I don't want my early exploration limited. I didn't ask for Paradox to decide that my early exploration should be limited. So I'll fix the game to be enjoyable again. And I'll wait for them to fix the DLC before I pay for it.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

But those wouldn't be field officers. IE if you're argument that leaders should only represent the officers at a cabinet level then fine...cool...DON'T MAKE SCIENCE SHIPS AND INDIVIDUAL FLEETS AND ARMIES HAVE TO HAVE CABINET LEVEL REPRESENTATIVES ATTACHED TO THEM!

IE there should be no slots for field positions if the idea is that the 'leaders' don't represent the field workers.

Why have planetary governors when the 'governor leader' is only meant to represent the Attorney General or the Secretary of Interior or whatever....

Either simplify the system and get rid of the field leaders, and only have councilor leaders.

Or

Raise the leader cap so we can have an appropriate number of field leaders and cabinet leaders....

Or implement a two tiered system.

Don't do what the devs did, which was force the penalties of a 'Cabinet members only' model onto a game that begs us to have significant numbers of field leaders employed to lead individual units and worlds....

Agreed. People hate the leader limit because some game actions absolutely require a leader when they shouldn't (why can an empire the size of the galaxy only afford to have 5 scientists to win to the race to survey the L-Cluster?), and some part of the UI taunt you with emptiness when you don't assign a leader (fleets, sectors, etc.).

But that's not the same thing as "the US has hundreds of naval officers and thousands of scientists". Those wouldn't be scientist leaders or admiral leaders, even before 3.8.

The US has seven numbered fleets. The numbers of flag officers isn't relevant. And the US has 50 state governors, yes, but governors in Stellaris are leading entire planets at the very least.

We should have more leaders, probably scaling with the number of systems (as a proxy for sectors) and total fleet capacity (as a proxy for fleets). But the number of "governors" and "admirals" in the US has nothing to do with it, since they aren't even remotely similar positions. The fact that they used the same words is an analogy, but not one that means they must have a 1:1 correspondence.

Like I said, I agree with the direction of the argument, but the actual parallel you're trying to draw seems spurious.

I'm partial to the two tiered system: a finite number of high level leaders, mostly restricted to those sitting on the council, and then everyone else.

On they "they wouldn't be field officers" thing: in Stellaris, they would. Stellaris is a scifi simulator. So Arcturus Mengst commands his fleet from the front, even though he's probably actually be a leader positioned in safety in real life. Jean Luc Picard leads his science ship/warship/flying city as it explores the galaxy, even though any sane situation would have a ton of smaller ships and most of their data would likely be send back home (or to the flying city which stays at a safe distance from any unknown phenomenon instead of flying right up to it), rather than an enormous science ship with a small city being sent out into the unknown and constantly putting the non-crew at risk.

Stellaris copies scifi, not reality. And scifi has all the important figures leading from the front so it's more dramatic.