Stellaris Dev Diary #177 - Edict Rework

[Admiral Howe]

Over all this is the poorest DevDiary for Stellaris I've seen in a while as nothing is inspired or really solving a broken mechanic.

The Good:

1. Revisiting pop growth. The current/legacy version is functional but also nonsensical. Especially the "only species may breed at a time" rule.
2. The resource/ambition edicts are untouched by this system.

The Bad:

1. The Edict cap is just a bad idea and comes across as a hold over of Monarch Power or other pet ideas for hindering players in the name of "depth." Does the former without adding the latter.
   1. As presented, a cap of two is absurd too against the number of edicts available. But if you want to build a game where vast interstellar empires can't chew bubblegum while tying their shoe then more power to you. It's tuned way too low.
2. 25% penalty to Admin cap for going over is petty and arbitrary. It comes across as a meeting-room hat pull and nothing around fun or balance. Something more like +5%*number of edicts past 2 works better and gives players more agency.
   
3. Cost to cancel the policy? Really? Just stop right now, that's a concept without merit. If you think the costs are too low double them. Charging to exit an edict though punishes mistakes, discourages players from experimenting with swapping out policies, and doesn't ultimately add to game play or fun.

The Ugly:

1. Fix game performance in the later game - even on a medium galaxy the engine starts falling apart. Last thing needed is adding more features when the existing job handling algorithm chokes the life out of the game.

 

[Mauer]

Too little change, too predictable, too meaningless. Anyone knows you have to run Nutritional Plenitude at all times.
Being over the cap on edicts is free if all it does is increase the now irrelevant empire sprawl.

 

[Methone]

Anyone knows you have to run Nutritional Plenitude at all times.

To be fair, they are saying they're trying to look at pop growth. Right now, it's required at all times because working pops are the direct measure of strength for an empire, but if that changes, so too does Nutritional Plentitude's power.

 

[ArmChairAttila]

Finally, I have been waiting years for you guys to revert back to the old edict activation system.

 

[Mauer]

To be fair, they are saying they're trying to look at pop growth. Right now, it's required at all times because working pops are the direct measure of strength for an empire, but if that changes, so too does Nutritional Plentitude's power.

I think it should affect something else, population growth is not a function of the availability of food in modern societies, much less in a space-faring one.

Pops being the measure of strength is not going to change given the economic system that we have, unless they add deep downsides to keeping unhappy conquered/abducted populations or something else. It's funny how it used to be that in the previous system getting more pops was inconsequential after a few years once most planets were full and now it's the most important thing.

 

[Incompetent]

Concurring with the others saying they won't want to change edicts. You say you want edicts to feel more like a temporary focus, but this is incentivizing us to think of them as more permanent decisions than we do now.

More precisely, influence edicts will be a somewhat more flexible version of regular civics (not counting locked ones like Barbaric Despoilers and so on):

- At any one time you have a strictly limited number of civics (initially 2, goes up to 3 with a certain tech). You can change the regular ones at any time, but it costs influence to do so.
- At any one time you have a soft-limited number of edicts enabled (initially 2, goes up with various things; you can exceed the cap but probably don't want to unless you are running Byzantine Bureaucracy). You can change them, but it costs influence to do so.

I don't think this is a bad change, but the experience of government reforms is relevant here. How often do players reform their government opportunistically, as opposed to a one-off change in direction (or 'levelling up' when they go from 2 to 3 civics)? To a first approximation, that is how often players will flip the switches on edicts.

I hope that when this change comes through, the bonuses on some of the existing influence edicts will be made more impactful over the longer term, especially now they are quasi-civics and also have drawbacks. For instance, the proposed new Farming Subsidies gives +1.2 food and -0.5 energy for each Farmer. That's OK early on, but will become negligible over time due to the way empires naturally employ proportionally fewer and fewer Farmers as the game goes on; it could even become totally useless once the Galactic Market in food crashes, which is something that can happen quite often. What about giving Farmers +1 base food instead? That way, the bonus scales up in a more meaningful way over the course of the game.

 

[Methone]

unless they add deep downsides to keeping unhappy conquered/abducted populations or something else

Ha, you mean re-add. 2.2, for some reason, completely neutered the effects of Recently Conquered, Faction Happiness, and such things.

 

[majikero]

WHY EDICTS!?

Because it's easy and is all a matter of moving numbers.

 

[Mythox]

oh a nice rework await edict option make the game greater ad will more amazing if new edicts can be added

 

[permeakra]

@grekulf Are there any plans to replace influence with something less awkward ?

 

[Chilango2]

The words "democratic" and "nerf" shouldn't exist in the same sentence. Or even the same paragraph.

Well, I mean, we could say "The last thing Democracies need in Stellaris is a nerf. In fact, they need the opposite." But outside of that...

 

[Inucroft]

This shows promise and is an interesting change of mechanics. But, it needs a lot of polishing.

 

[NilsFabian]

I'd also argue for a continous payment of influence for a running edict instead of a lump sum. With this system under my current playstyle I pay the 80 influence for capacity overload and live happily ever after, because I won't change that ever.
I might change the second edict, Map the stars after 100 years but otherwise, no need for change...

 

[Verx90]

i think you could have changed some other edicts too , in particular some of the one that use special resources , just by giving increase upkeep ( in special resources) to your ships .

even if they end up actualy costing more of the pick 1 evry 10 years , it is less heavy on the " this buff is over, now your ships have 10% less armor , and if you pick it again, this armor will need to be repaired" .

 

[Olterin]

Another thought for the upkeep edicts - it'd be neat to have several tiers of each. So, for example, minor subsidies, regular subsidies, extensive subsidies. Each step requiring further investment and perhaps invoking a cooldown (not terribly long), as well as possibly taking up more edict capacity for the high-tier ones if their power warrants it. Allow the player to decide not only on whether they want to toggle the subsidies, but how much subsidizing something actually needs, too.

... Yes I like the Galactic Community way too much and wish that internal politics worked with actual voting by internal factions represented in governing body - it would create a more interesting game narrative that way, imo. (It's what gave me the idea of tiers, really)

 

[Dargaron]

Sooo, what do genocidal empires spend their influence on now? They can't spend influence on claims, expansion only exists in the early part of the game, and they can't spend it on diplomatic interactions either.

 

[Ridixo]

I get what you are saying, and agree with your frustration, but there is a definite reason Pop Growth is so impactful.

Think of this analogy: Position, Speed, and Acceleration.
Position = resources in the bank
Speed = Jobs (and the Pops working them)
Acceleration = Pop Growth

Your position changes over time depending on your speed. You change position faster when you are at a faster speed, and slower at a slower speed.
Speed also changes. The change in speed is called acceleration, just as the change in position is called speed. These measurements form a sort of logical ladder, where in the short time span, position matters the most and acceleration the least, but in the long time span, acceleration matters the most and position the least.
It gets complicated when we have initial conditions to consider, but in Stellaris's case we all start out the same: 100-200 of each resource, ~30 Pops, and ~0.03 Pops per month.

I too get what you are saying, high school is great to learn thing, and as you say pop growth is impactful. What i am against is that for someones it has become the only impactful thing. In many games with Barbaric Despiolers i have got by 2275 what other players got in pops by 2350, yet since it doesn't affect pop growth and raiding is slow and boring BD is thrash. Your example show why pop growth is important and i agree, what i disagree, not with you but with other players is that pg is not the only important thing

 

[Squared79]

Sorry wrong post.

 

[Red Earth]

I didn't play the game at release, so I wouldn't know. I started when Utopia was new. Upgrading a Research Lab used to specialize it into one field. Now all Researchers are exactly the same. Now, the only things that change the balance of research outputs are Culture Workers and space deposits. My Engineering usually ends up my lowest output, which is discouraging knowing how many key techs it has for letting me do stuff in the game.

I thought it might have been the case where in the past there were type specific labs. There are several planet modifiers for specific research fields so it seemed like specializing would have been a thing.
The natural scientist traits aren't all that interesting for specializing pops since there are few specialized jobs so I've mostly used them to give character to custom races.

 

[SteelCrow]

1. 25% penalty to Admin cap for going over is petty and arbitrary. It comes across as a meeting-room hat pull and nothing around fun or balance. Something more like +5%*number of edicts past 2 works better and gives players more agency.

Reread this.

For every toggled and active Edict above the Edict Capacity, your Empire Sprawl will be increased by +25%.