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Stellaris Dev Diary #192 : Perfectly Balanced, As All Things Should Be...

Hello!

This week we’re going to look at some more changes we're planning, as well as a review of how some of the experiments mentioned in the last few dev diaries have evolved.

Thank you for the massive amount of feedback in those threads.

Reduction in Pops

Due to the effects on performance and a desire to reduce the micromanagement burden in the mid to late game, some of the things we’ve been deeply looking into are different ways of dramatically reducing the number of pops in the galaxy.

These experiments have generally revolved around modifying the growth (or assembly required) for pops as an empire’s population grows, with some variants trying a logistic pop growth (where growth follows an S-shaped curve as planets develop, based on a carrying capacity of a planet). These experiments have reduced the end date pop count to somewhere around one half of the old numbers with the expected performance improvements.

Organic pops will follow a curve where they begin at standard population growth, increase growth as the approach a midpoint between population and the planetary carrying capacity, then slow down to zero as they reach the top of the curve. Pop Assembly, on the other hand, is generally slow but consistent. The biggest change is that producing a new pop no longer costs a static amount of pop growth - it increases as the empire population does.

A significant reduction in pops has a cascade of major implications for the overall economy, production, and other gameplay effects. As such, these also require a pass on buildings, technologies, and even seemingly minor ripple effects like what the value should be for the trade value generated by pops.

There will be a lot of patch notes.

Most buildings have been standardized to now give 2 jobs per tier rather than the old 2/5/8 progression.

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Just one example of many.

We’ve also changed a few buildings to have new or additional features, such as the Spawning Pool and Clone Vats, which have had their Pop Growth modifiers replaced with the new Organic Pop Assembly. This fills the same slot on the planet as Robotic Pop Assembly, so generally you’ll want to pick one or the other. (Clone Vats also picked up a food upkeep cost to represent simple materials to break down.)

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Pops is Soylent Green!

A few other jobs got minor perks added to them, like the Medical Workers from Gene Clinics making it a little easier to live on less hospitable worlds.

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Doesn't normally produce exotic gas, this one happens to be a lithoid.

And a few new techs have been added to help compensate for lost productivity. One tech line increases both the job production of a planet as well as job upkeep - those fewer pops are still capable of producing the work of more on a developed planet.

Ring Worlds

As part of the balance pass, Ring Worlds have been bumped up to 10 segments from 5, and the jobs per segment have been adjusted.

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The Shattered Ring origin now possesses a warning that it may be a Challenging Origin for Lithoids due to a scarcity of minerals, and now also applies the Ring World Habitability Preference to your pops. We’re considering adding a similar warning for Hives selecting the origin, since the habitability preference change puts a serious crimp in their expansion.

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Put a ring on it?

Their starting blockers have also been adjusted to give a more balanced spread of jobs.

Ecumenopoleis

Like the Ring Worlds, these start with all building slots open. As mentioned before, you can now use the Arcology Project decision on a planet that has a mix of City and Industrial Districts.

Note: Empire has all technologies but no traditions active.
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The ecumenopolis has a unique distinction of being able to have both the Factory and Foundry building lines on the same planet.

Habitats

The changes to Habitat modules are much smaller in scope, but here’s the list of their districts.

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Void Dwellers have gotten a bit of attention as well with some tradition swaps for those that had minimal or no beneficial effects for them.

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Replacing Public Works Division:
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And for Void Dwellers with the Adaptability tree:
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Interstellar Franchising and Imperious Architecture now also function for Habitats.

Updates to Dev Diary 190

Some of these updates may not be new to people following the forum threads, but it's easy to miss things so I figured we should go over them.

Many people requested the ability to fully specialize their foundry and factory worlds. We've modified the Forge and Industrial World planet designations to shift one pop on each Industrial District to the appropriate job if possible.

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We've also upgraded the Food Processing Center, Mineral Purification Hub, and Energy Nexus to provide an extra job to each of their associated resource production districts. (The Food Processing Center will also improve Hydroponics Farms.)

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One of the suggestions made in the thread was to add a civic that increases unlocked Building Slots. Sounded like a great addition to Functional Architecture.

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Functionality increased!

Updates to Dev Diary 191

We’ve explored some additional options regarding the resettlement system we outlined in Dev Diary 191, and after trying a few things, and have settled on some extensive modifications to the system.

All planets with free sapient unemployed pops that are not locked down by migration controls will have a small chance every month of moving one to another planet within their empire that has jobs that they are willing and able to work, housing, and habitability of 40% or higher. This chance is increased if there are multiple unemployed pops that meet the criteria.

The system now prefers to move higher strata pops first, so rulers and specialists will move before workers, and this system also functions for gestalt empires. It will not relocate non-sapient robots or slaves. It will generally prefer to move pops to the planets with the most free jobs.

After some experimentation we’ve chosen to keep the Transit Hubs as Starbase Buildings that provide a system wide buff to the chance of auto-resettlement occurring. (Rather than being essential to have it occur in the first place.)

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Doubles the chance the pops choose to resettle themselves.

Greater Than Ourselves has been rewritten to also massively increase this chance when the edict is active, with a +200% bonus.

We initially had these pops considering destinations available through Migration Pacts as well, but decided against keeping that since it introduced a new Migration Controls micromanagement element that we didn’t find desirable.

We’ve also done a minor update to the Authority bonuses that seemed a little bit weak.

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Democracies now have a bonus encouraging their pops to seek their dreams, and Dictatorships have a bit of an easier time holding things together when they’re a bit overstretched.

Closing Thoughts

One other little quality of life improvement that was just added is this filter on the colonization interface.

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That’s probably long enough for today. We’re looking forward to your feedback on these as well.

Next week w̷e̵'̸l̸l̴ ̴b̸e̴t̵̮̄ǎ̸͈l̷̠̈k̴͔͂i̴̞͒n̷̪͊g̸̳͗ ̸͚̎a̵͉̐b̵̤̿ȯ̴̲ṵ̵̀t̸͇͂ ҈҂▒©╛⅜

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I asked this a couple of times but didn't get an answer. I think it's "because it's a good mechanic to stop there being too many pops". Which, ok, fair enough.

Well I mean, maybe, I just hope it's not a huge increase in cost, like a linear one, because it would be very annoying having your 1000th pop costing 10 times more than your 100th one.

Maybe something like a log base 10
 
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The problem is that as things stand it won't work, because since the cost is dependent on total amount of empire pops, a 10X10 planet empire and a 100x1 planet empire will have the same growth cost, but the 10 planet one will have an overall empire growth of 10x the one planet empire.

If you can't make pop growth empire dependent, than making it directly proportional to the amount of pops present would at least nullify the distinction between the two; So for example one pop = 1 growth/month and 100 pops = 100 growth/month (before modifiers).
This creates other problems of course but it is the only way to keep tall and wide evenly balanced while keeping planet based growth.

That's good and correct. Who told you that having more planets is not an advantage? And why do you expect 1 planet to work like 10?

If I can suggest one change it would be to base that S curve on the total carrying capacity of your entire empire instead of a single planet.

And then divide the growth coming from that over each planet proportionally to the unfilled carrying capacity of each planet.

That would solve a lot of problems regarding gamey systems where people keep partially filled planets around just to be on the sweet spot of that S curve and then migrate/resettle pops from that planet to other planets.

It would also help significantly in the wide vs tall contrast as new colonies would no longer be adding entirely new sources of growth but simply increase the total carrying capacity. This would open the door for tall mechanics that increase carrying capacity without expanding ( like mastery of nature ). A tall empire that's invested significantly in a few planets through ecumenopolis, mastery of nature, a ringworld etc. would be able to achieve the same total carrying capacity and thus growth as a very wide empire that has dozens of colonized systems.

it feels gamey and not realistic. Have the local effect and feel the pressure from theglobal pop count.

So psionic ascension has the fewest pops and the weakest pops but thats ok because they are good at espionage. Yeah just like they've been fine for the past 2 years. It is nice to be able to clearly see how superior your opponent is compared to you. I really struggle to find a strength for psi ascension that can match massive early pop growth modifiers combined with quite weak pop bonuses. And way too much of psi strength is tied in lengthy rng shroud events.

Also we are now placing an even greater amount of pop productivity in technologies where spiritualists are weak and materialists are strong. Is there any plan to do something to make unity useful and tech less massively overpowered

Do you realise how hard it is to have a relatioship as a psionic being? Oh the constant mind reading, oh the manipulation... Hence the low birth rates!!! perfectly balanced like all things should be!!!

"The biggest change is that producing a new pop no longer costs a static amount of pop growth - it increases as the empire population does."

I think this is gonna make keeping some low pop vassals/ despoiler prey around somewhat worthwhile.

Also can you please make it so that Agrarian Idyll can repair relics worlds in ecumenopolis, without having to shuffle civics?

And that's a perfectly valid new way to play. Remember that you are sacrificing a full sector for this!

I can see so many ways for this to go wrong.
I hope you don't have your testers underpaid paradox, this is going to be interessing.

It will be exciting! A new ERA!

I don't believe this. You're doing everything that's good. Like what are you thinking!?

Can you imagine that the case might be that we might shut up and stop nagging??? Nahhh we'll find new ways and reasons to be toxic and protest!! :D:D:D

Suggestion: As planets reach carrying capacity for pops and their local growth rate slows down, they could add a small multiplicative modifier to immigration for other planets. That would represent populations leaving the overcrowded planet for less populous worlds where there's less competition.

That is like introducing a new system to curb growth and then another one on top, that undoes what you wanted originally!!

The line of techs is currently:
View attachment 654316

The higher bonuses are tied to higher tiers of capital buildings, so resource gathering backwaters are less likely to reach maximized production levels than your heavily populated core worlds.

Better than I could imagine it! Capacity upgrade on building levels! You Rock! The hype for building Tall IS REAL!!!:p:p:p
 
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I think that influence cost for moving your pops is a good choice. Generally you don’t want to just move to whatever city the government tells you to go. You are usually bond to the place you live by family and friends and resettlement is actually forcing you to leave it behind.

The other thing is that it helps to stop some suggested exploits to evenly distribute population between your planets or to build a lot of exes housing so that the pops grow faster even if you don’t need that much of them on this particular planet. Such approach should have a steep cost like at least suggested star-base slot use for transit hub.

The last problem can be also addressed with diminishing returns in carrying capacity increases as a function of available housing. For example if
Carrying_capacity(available_housing) = constant(planet based) + log(1+available_housing)
so that you get less carrying capacity per extra housing you build the more you already have. Log is just an example, there are many functions that work in this way.
 
Have you guys considered giving agriculture districts to habitats around habitable worlds? Given how they extract their other resources through specific planetary deposits, I feel like that would fit. But could there be a reaon this isn't implemented?
 
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well, at least some thougts from me

1.) atm i see the automigration is a very nice thing, but it should also relocate slaves and robots if migration is allowed to them
1.1) that unemployed pops become slaves first i think is because of domestic-slavery where unemployed slaved get a special job ... that overall could get a bit of a rework...

2.) i like the pop-growth changes but i also think it should vary on some planet-modifiers wich atm just vary habitabillity...
2.1) well at least for realism, some planet-modifyers need some rework too, like storms and such could destroy buildings and kill pops and so on... but that also can be shown in lower pop-growth and more building costs and time (to make buildings and districts stormsafe for example) but thats another point.

3.) the pop-assembly part is nice too, its a good alternative to robots for bio-ascension empires, bringes them somhow to the same lvl as synth are
3.1) think spiritualists should get an other boost there, well, no pop-assembly, cause cloning is for most religions also a no way thing like sapient machines are, so instead spiritualists could get a bonus on job-production and bit less job-upceep in case that sipirituals work together somehow fanatical to make theyr souls ready for heaven... however something that compensates the "pop-growth malus" they have without robot- and pop-assembly xD

4.) also psionic ascension needs some kind of buff, but at least that could be something on espionage, cause if your spys can read the minds of theyr targets and assassines can kill with psychokinesis... well, that would make psionic ascension a strong thing in espionage and maybe make it competitive to synthetic and biologic ascension

well, that should be enough for the moment, hopefully we see more of these planned changes and the espionage part soon
 
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Really great news! Why you putting so fast after releasing last DLC... Now I can't play in current version of the game:(
But, if we got new districts - how about research district on arcology? Simulari to other - 10 housing, 6 researcher jobs, 2 gases upkeep...
 
Have you guys considered giving agriculture districts to habitats around habitable worlds? Given how they extract their other resources through specific planetary deposits, I feel like that would fit. But could there be a reaon this isn't implemented?
in my opinion habitats over planets don't need the agriculture districts on it, but if you could build an agriculture world with a habitat over it like pops living on the habitat and working on the agriculture districts of the planet without that malus your pops get if they live on a planet while you have the voiddweller trait... well but at least you also could use farm-bots or slaves to work on that agriculture planets, should be an option for thrall-worlds to be pure agricultural... (at least i think voiddweller-xenophobes/authoritairs are a strong combination)
 
The speed of growth gets reduces the more pops an empire has because the "work" that needs to be done for 1 pop gets increased. I didn't catch anything implying that this growth speed reduction was a local thing.

The speed of pop growth per generator gets reduced or more accurately cost of a new pop increases. So double the number of generators.
 
The line of techs is currently:
View attachment 654316

The higher bonuses are tied to higher tiers of capital buildings, so resource gathering backwaters are less likely to reach maximized production levels than your heavily populated core worlds.

Can you maybe split the tech between organic and robot pops and remove the inherent synth production bonus?

Synths have 5% more production than organics for reasons. Making robots still better than organic pop assembly.
If you go synth ascnsion youget another 10% resource bonus for synth pops+ another 5% from ruler. Thats wihout even considering traits.

Organic is unable to rival that, Bio and Psi dont get 20% pop production for free.

I think these inherent robot production bonus should be removed and translated in the new pop production techs, which in reurn should have a organic pop production tech and an robot production tech.
 
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This is not the case. There have been studies about utopian conditions where a species of rats get everything they could ever hope for. With these colonies they tend to slowly grow, then as numbers increase grow rapidly, and finally have a decreased growth, disturbingly into extinction.

This wasn't due to a lack of food, as they got supplied more then they needed.


With a surplus of food, the people can afford to have kids without the fear of them starving to death. This together with better healthcare and living standards is why populations explode in industrialized societies. Massive excess does put a brake on this at a certain level. Food surplus will always be the main defining factor for population increase.
 
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Organic pops will follow a curve where they begin at standard population growth, increase growth as the approach a midpoint between population and the planetary carrying capacity, then slow down to zero as they reach the top of the curve. Pop Assembly, on the other hand, is generally slow but consistent. The biggest change is that producing a new pop no longer costs a static amount of pop growth - it increases as the empire population does.

When I first proposed logistic growth with link to Veritasium on this forum, for some reason there was thinking in the community (and elsewhere it seems) that assembling pops is any different to pops being born. The more robots you have, the more robots you need to manufacture to replenish those that were damaged, malfunctioned, or were destroyed in accidents, am I wrong? Does it not match 1:1 organic creatures being sick, getting old, or dying due to accidents?

Back then the verdict of the majority was it's different and my proposed logistic growth will be a problem, in addition, ignored was fact that the game allows you to just shut down the factory that assembles pops.

But honestly pops should have a null to none effect on performance. If they always picked favourite job as they would in real-world because either state or economy would incentivise them to do so. There would be never constant reshuffle of jobs with some weights and gods know what. Pop would be a function of how many there is and how many roles can be filled.
 
With a surplus of food, the people can afford to have kids without the fear of them starving to death. This together with better healthcare and living standards is why populations explode in industrialized societies. Massive excess does put a brake on this at a certain level. Food surplus will always be the main defining factor for population increase.
So why is the developed world experiencing a stabilization / shortfall in population count? It's not from lack of food. It's from the fact that children are expensive both in cost and in effect on lifestyle. The value of the asset is lower than its cost and improvements in accidental construction limit the number of unexpected creations.
 
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If they always picked favourite job as they would in real-world because either state or economy would incentivise them to do so.
In the real world, people frequently have jobs that don't really suit their aptitudes, because it turns out the labour market is full of barriers, perverse incentives, managers whose brains are being choked by their neckties, etc.
 
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To be honest, I think the resettlement of slaves should also cost Influence. Slaves have owners and moving their property from one system to another should have a political cost. Even if you imagine that the slaves are all owned by the state, they would still be effectively the property of different Departments, Governors, or whatever.
 
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They're fairly similar. For Industrial things, change all the consumer goods jobs into alloy jobs. If it's a tier 1 resource generating job, hives get more of them.


10% currently, but the overall chance is multiplied by the number of unemployed pops.

At these numbers, here's the quick chart of "what is the chance that a single unemployed pop will have migrated within x months?"
MONTH
123456789101112
Base Empire10.00%19.00%27.10%34.39%40.95%46.86%52.17%56.95%61.26%65.13%68.62%71.76%
Base Empire + Hub20.00%36.00%48.80%59.04%67.23%73.79%79.03%83.22%86.58%89.26%91.41%93.13%
Base Empire + GTO30.00%51.00%65.70%75.99%83.19%88.24%91.76%94.24%95.96%97.18%98.02%98.62%
Base Empire + Hub + GTO40.00%64.00%78.40%87.04%92.22%95.33%97.20%98.32%98.99%99.40%99.64%99.78%
Democracy15.00%27.75%38.59%47.80%55.63%62.29%67.94%72.75%76.84%80.31%83.27%85.78%
Democracy + Hub25.00%43.75%57.81%68.36%76.27%82.20%86.65%89.99%92.49%94.37%95.78%96.83%
Democracy + GTO35.00%57.75%72.54%82.15%88.40%92.46%95.10%96.81%97.93%98.65%99.12%99.43%
Democracy + Hub + GTO45.00%69.75%83.36%90.85%94.97%97.23%98.48%99.16%99.54%99.75%99.86%99.92%

This also affects every planet now, and as noted above, if you have two unemployed pops on a planet, double these numbers.


Yes.


This is one of the things that is still in balancing, but currently it's total housing but we include a bonus for undeveloped districts. People living off the land and such. Some planets, like Gaia worlds, get more carrying capacity for their undeveloped districts.

This may change to be a simpler formula largely based on planet size, since there are a couple of quirks I'm not totally happy with right now.


An Ecumenopolis still has an extremely high carrying capacity so is excellent for population growth, and is also quite effective at producing both jobs and housing from a single district type. It's still borderline OP, don't worry.


Pop Assembly doesn't follow the logistic curve, it's (generally) slower but constant.

What does GTO mean again? I think I missed it
 
you want it to be fixed on your tech level and number of non-basic jobs? i'm ok with that.

That would actually make more sense and perhaps even provide a more interesting tradeoff.

I disagree. I feel like it invites a change in game play that is most welcome. Instead of rushing pops you now have to "lengthen the curve" by fighting the the growing number needed for a pop with growth boons in tech.

With colonies being able to split off and merged again after a little while, this severely increases the value of the Shared Destiny perk. It actually might become viable as a strategy.

It also increases the value of Nihilistic Aquisition or Barbaric Despoilers because you can keep alive enemy empires and harvest their pops every 10 years. Their decreased pop size will result in faster growth.

I'm all for game changes that bring out niches as actually viable options.

That is the definition of a lazy mechanic: one that cannot be explained within the game's lore/logic and is so gamey that the optimal play is to grant your own planets independence so they grow faster and then reconquer/integrate them.