Social Stratas are annoying (and how i think they can be improved)

[scaper12123]

OK so, social strata. I'm sure everyone's learning that you cannot ever build or upgrade buildings on planets unless the planets have their jobs filled to capacity, because otherwise those the people making up the backbone of your empire will suddenly go get a job at the new Apple office while failing to realize that they still gotta eat, and somebody's gotta till the fields.
And then when somebody who knows how to work a computer better moves in and those same ex-farmers get laid off, they spend a very long time downgrading to the fields and doing nothing to contribute to the society like anybody who would complain that xenos are ruining the country (and also creating an annoying notification in the Outliner that is meaningless to me so long as they don't move their butts to the 12 different clerk jobs. Like, being a middle-manager isn't that bad, you guys).
My point is that Social Stratas are a massive, MASSIVE hinderance on the game right now and I really would like to see them improved asap, preferably in a 2.2.3/4 update.

So, how do I think they can be improved? Well firstly,

• The system is completely backwards. It should take some time for a pop to try and upgrade to a strata not downgrade. Such an upgrade should not prevent the pop from working a building while they're waiting, and pops should be able to grow into empty specialist/ruler jobs too.
• As for downgrading strata, that should be immediate. You got a family to feed, Jenny. Get down in the mines and go do something; I don't care if it'll take you 3 years to afford your cubic-zirconium tentacle ring. My point is that a pop should have a resource debuff for a while to reflect the misery of toiling when they once had an apartment in New York's Billionaire Row.
• If we really have to leave pops unemployed while they downgrade to different strata, for the love of god don't give me a red notification in the Outliner about it. That just makes me think pops are going to waste when nope: it's just specialists whining and not getting back to work in the power plants. At least make the notification yellow when it's just a specialist or ruler downgrading. It's only really a big problem if it's a worker, meaning there are literally no jobs that can be filled.

Yeah, so those are my thoughts. Loving 2.2 except for this issue, thanks. Also please fix the overuse of consumer goods pls im dying

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Strongly disagree.

The downgrade lag makes plenty of sense and forces you to commit at least a little to a given path of development and makes redeveloping planets down the road a risk.

The system could do with a brief upgrade lag though- maybe a month before a POP finishes upgrading to a higher strata?

 

[Namfuak]

I think the system should have a lag in both directions, as well as a policy section regarding the empire being able to choose jobs, maybe something along the lines of:

A. Empire has no control over civilian jobs (egalitarians are forced to keep this)
B. Empire can reserve jobs for specific species before they are filled
C. Empire has free reign to move pops between jobs of the same strata (Authoritarian only)
D. Empire has free reign to move pops between jobs (Authoritarian only), this could also impose a penalty to production when pops are moved between strata that lasts as long as it would have taken them to move naturally

The downside to more control by the empire would presumably be happiness penalties.

 

[meiam89.]

Yeah I'm fine with how it is now (mostly) but we really should have more control over it, at the very least we should have the ability to prevent people from upgrading strata (after all that would be akin to letting us close the job before anyone have time to upgrade, which is possible but really hard to do especially once lag gets really heavy late game), maybe being able to build something but mark it as "close upon completion" and let us manually open the slot when were ready, sometime you don't want all new slot to be taken at once.

There should also be some system to expedite people to go back down the strata. Two problem that keep happening for me and are mostly outside the player control: When a new pop is created that has some bonus to a job (usually unity trait or research) they'll auto upgrade and displace someone from a higher strata, which will then become unemployed, not much you can do as a player there. Also assimilating people with psychic make them all unemployed, which means all the job are auto filled, but then when they finish being assimilated they just become unemployed. You can get around it by using the genetic template, but that's a giant pain in the ass and probably an exploit. Honestly I don't care that much about the lost resource, I just want to remove the red icon from the UI, that's what I use to know that new pop were created and need jobs on planes, I just scan the list up and down and check planet with red icon (no other way to do things once you have 20+ planets), I end up checking the same planet over and over again just waiting for the pop to downgrade.

 

[Subcomandante]

but we really should have more control over it

The game mechanics already provide it: Slavery. Control is equal to authoritarianism here. You want to have control over your population's job choices. That cannot be reconciled with personal freedom. So you need to be authoritarian.

This is not mere fluff, it is the basis for the whole ethics system.

 

[Kryndude]

I think the system should have a lag in both directions, as well as a policy section regarding the empire being able to choose jobs, maybe something along the lines of:

A. Empire has no control over civilian jobs (egalitarians are forced to keep this)
B. Empire can reserve jobs for specific species before they are filled
C. Empire has free reign to move pops between jobs of the same strata (Authoritarian only)
D. Empire has free reign to move pops between jobs (Authoritarian only), this could also impose a penalty to production when pops are moved between strata that lasts as long as it would have taken them to move naturally

The downside to more control by the empire would presumably be happiness penalties.

it won't work cuz the ai's too dumb. egalitarian becomes unplayable

 

[buglepong]

The lag doesnt make sense. The pop should be hit with a happiness penalty or something

 

[wundte]

The lag doesnt make sense. The pop should be hit with a happiness penalty or something

or the lag should be a lot shorter, like 2 years maximum

 

[meiam89.]

The game mechanics already provide it: Slavery. Control is equal to authoritarianism here. You want to have control over your population's job choices. That cannot be reconciled with personal freedom. So you need to be authoritarian.

This is not mere fluff, it is the basis for the whole ethics system.

Can't partially control species, it's either all slave or no slave. Plus I provided 2 example where slavery wouldn't help.

 

[VanguardKing]

If auto promotion is a problem, you can block a job slot before creating additional slots, and it will prevent the auto promotion by locking the new slots automatically.

 

[scaper12123]

If auto promotion is a problem, you can block a job slot before creating additional slots, and it will prevent the auto promotion by locking the new slots automatically.

to me, it's more of an issue of micromanagement. I've solved the problem by only building new buildings when a planet's jobs are completely filled, but this adds a significant degree of micromanaging to the game now. It's basically what they were trying to fix with the tile system.

 

[Less2]

The notion that the demotion wait encourages some kind of long-term planning is absurd. We can replace a whole planet full of alloy fabricators with research labs, which is basically a 360 degree shift in priorities, with no pop employment problem. But if you have two races on a planet and the game magically decides with its mystical internal logic that your +15% mineral pop mining minerals needs to be promoted to alloy worker rather than your +0% food mining pop working food, when the empire is at a deficit of minerals, you just get screwed. Eat a heavier deficit because you'll never get that pop back working the mines, it's never worth letting a pop go unemployed for a decade in order to get them back into the lower strata (nevermind that if you try to get the game to promote another pop it might again just decide to promote the mineral mining pop).

Additionally the whole system is a massive noob trap for players who aren't as good with managing their economy, a micromanagement annoyance for players who are, and a way for the AI to shaft itself. None of these three are desirable qualities in a gameplay mechanic.

 

[Gyrvendal]

I'm totally in favor of the yellow notification instead of red when pops are demoting. It's annoying to check the planet every five minutes only to think "shit it's that demoting pop again, it takes so friggin' long". The rest is fine IMO.

 

[ShaTiK]

I would argue that it should either lag both ways or no lag at all. I personally feel that replacing employment with timed debuff would make for a better AI-regulated economy, planet-wise. This way build-it planetary governor could swap out POPs between strata - because right now it can only try to put the best-suited POPs inside the same strata. With some limitations depending on ruling ethics, of course.
Also there are some issues with the way AI handles promotions, but that's hard to pin down.
But overall the system is very nice, not at all annoying. I get why it's here and think it only need to replace current downgrade system with more flexible one.