The case for physic/engineer focused research labs/jobs

[Tavior]

I didn't actually see the downside of intelligent. My takeaway was that you were trying to avoid the slant, which I don't think is worth doing.

As for specializing the other way, which is what Ur-Quan Lord's talking about, I didn't find it to be all that useful in the older versions either, so I didn't miss it this time.

Then you will just have to accept that we have a half empty half full situation here because I do miss the old specializing labs.

 

[wtrmute]

Society has a lot more techs which end up being pretty minor. It makes sense you progress through that research easier. Keep in mind engineering tends to contain the most powerful and useful techs.

Society has bio-modding, terraforming tech, doctrines to increase admin cap, fleet power and naval power, the pop growth bonus techs, most of the unity generation techs... I guess if you're a machine empire you'd feel it's less relevant, but I don't see these techs as "pretty minor". I guess if you want mostly weapon techs and Mega-engineering, then sure.

I'm amiss why priests provide society research at all. Of the all types of "cultural" jobs, priests seem to be the least sensical for that. Besides they already provide a rather big boost to amenities - actually as big as high priests do.

Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian Friar; Charles Darwin trained to be a parson; and priests in general produce a lot of research on society and mores generally, and biology secondarily. Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans did a lot of research on Native American and East/Southeast Asian languages and societies for the purpose of evangelising them — very important grammars of Japanese and Vietnamese were written by Jesuits, as well as the only grammars for several Amerindian languages. Actually, historically astronomical research was a province of priests (see Babylonian astronomy; also Copernicus, Lemaître), which might be a reason to make primitive clerics yield physics research!

There is a problem here. Imagine a mechanist materialist empire that gets Psi tech long before synthetics or even droids because they have like 3x the society research and no way to boost engineering (happened in my last 2 games actually, getting psi without trying or wanting it).

There's nothing keeping you from not picking the Psi tech card, which of course you didn't.

If that example didn't help, imagine if every time you wanted to build alloys or consumer goods you had to build an "Advanced Materials" building produced BOTH but that only had half the output of either an alloy or consumer goods building. Or worse, if you wanted to build a mining district and instead could only build a "Basic Materials" district that produced 1 farmer, 1 technician and 1 miner job. You'd be annoyed because instead of plugging a gap in your economy (mineral deficit) or defining your race instead you're just making yourself more generic and technically a little stronger... but with the same gap/imbalance. (I know it's not a perfect comparison because there are few drains to research barring enlightening primitives I think and you can't really go negative, but the idea is the same).

You're right — the comparison isn't perfect, and in fact it's invalid. As you say yourself, there's nothing that uses up research — except for Technological Enlightenment or Covert Infiltration of primitives, which uses up ... Society research, the one you get from priests and culture workers as a bonus. And even then it's only -5 per primitive civ, so maybe you have a primitive planet somewhere in your empire and you get Sanctuary, which is another four, and decide to infiltrate all of them: that's -25 research, which is probably the society output of one research complex. So there's no situation where you'll find yourself in a "physics deficit" or "engineering deficit" like you could (very easily) with Minerals, or Alloys, or Exotic Gases. So it's fine to boost all three.

 

[Fjolsvid]

Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian Friar; Charles Darwin trained to be a parson; and priests in general produce a lot of research on society and mores generally, and biology secondarily. Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans did a lot of research on Native American and East/Southeast Asian languages and societies for the purpose of evangelising them — very important grammars of Japanese and Vietnamese were written by Jesuits, as well as the only grammars for several Amerindian languages. Actually, historically astronomical research was a province of priests (see Babylonian astronomy; also Copernicus, Lemaître), which might be a reason to make primitive clerics yield physics research!

Do i specifically need to point out millions of priests, pastors, padres and monks of various religions who weren't scientists?
Indicating a few of them who were is very much missing the point of what church was throughout the ages.
Yes, churchmen or specifically their sons often ended up doing relevant research notes and science, because the job allowed for the scientific mindset to form and required a certain modicum of education. Education which very often was controlled by the dominant church. However, as with any controlling institution there were times when such controller forbade knowledge and learning of specific topics - anatomy was one of them, which is part of biology and falls under society research points in the game.
So, yes, while there were scientifically curious and scientifically-minded people who were religious or active members of their churches and made important discoveries partially thanks to the benefits churchmen have, one really shouldn't mistake that for Church as an institution, being actively interested in scientific progress of the society they service or even govern.

Also this is all mostly irrelevant to the game as there are only two big questions that need to be answered.

• Are there lore based reasons for priests in spiritualist societies to be actively interested in performing active well-funded research in societal domains, as defined by the game - i.e biology, xenobiology, planetary development, administration, sociology, economy, military theory, logistics and whatever i missed.
• Does the game balance require that priests provide society research points to be competitive with non-spiritualist societies

 

[Flame13223]

The more buildings the better.

Btw physics research is the shortest so I actually don't think you should ever build anything but Engineering research labs as society will already get inflated and physics is irrelevant as its the path with the least amount of techs. I always finish everything in Physics first and get repeatables, then I finish society and lasstly I have still years and years of engineering research (even with Natural engineer pops) that just go on and on and on.

Its kind of imbalanced right now. We need more building options and more research options especially for physics.

 

[The Boz]

Please don't bring back this stupid system. There are other ways we can focus research areas.

 

[Tavior]

Please don't bring back this stupid system. There are other ways we can focus research areas.

Are you talking about the different lab buildings that used to exist in 2.1?

What was wrong with it? Was it the number of clicks to upgrade the labs?

There are already few proposals from me and other that would not bring back the old buildings system. The most popular solution seems to be giving other non-research jobs physic/engineering as a secondary benefit.

 

[EvilTom]

I've read through most of this post, but don't understand what the complaint is. Are you just trying to balance your research?

Are you saying that you don't want to produce as much society research (as you mention not building observation posts and avoiding society deposits). More Society research is not at the expense of Physics or Engineering.

There are, at the moment, just more ways of producing society research than the others.
I used to produce tonnes of physics (especially with special events and when dark matter gave +% too).

It should be balanced with the total amount of research points required to research the entire tech tree. I think (this is anecdotal) that there appear to be more technologies in society than physics, for example. Maybe they just need to add some more techs with better flavour?

I would much prefer that, than to add more buildings, unless they are unique ones that give planetwide +%... or more powerful planetary modifiers

 

[Flame13223]

Are you talking about the different lab buildings that used to exist in 2.1?

What was wrong with it? Was it the number of clicks to upgrade the labs?

There are already few proposals from me and other that would not bring back the old buildings system. The most popular solution seems to be giving other non-research jobs physic/engineering as a secondary benefit.

Well, it would be better to just have multiple other unrelated building types. For example we should keep a generic equal benefit building like science labs are right now but we need an engineering and physics equivalent to the Monument that produces unity and society research. Maybe something like alloys+engineering and energy+physics.

 

[The Boz]

Yes. The number of clicks. The constant busywork.

 

[EvilTom]

Well, it would be better to just have multiple other unrelated building types. For example we should keep a generic equal benefit building like science labs are right now but we need an engineering and physics equivalent to the Monument that produces unity and society research. Maybe something like alloys+engineering and energy+physics.

Maybe consuming other resources... like living metals, or dark matter? That'll give a better end game use for them?

 

[Tavior]

I've read through most of this post, but don't understand what the complaint is. Are you just trying to balance your research?

Are you saying that you don't want to produce as much society research (as you mention not building observation posts and avoiding society deposits). More Society research is not at the expense of Physics or Engineering.

There are, at the moment, just more ways of producing society research than the others.
I used to produce tonnes of physics (especially with special events and when dark matter gave +% too).

It should be balanced with the total amount of research points required to research the entire tech tree. I think (this is anecdotal) that there appear to be more technologies in society than physics, for example. Maybe they just need to add some more techs with better flavour?

I would much prefer that, than to add more buildings, unless they are unique ones that give planetwide +%... or more powerful planetary modifiers

Already partially answered earlier.

The issue is primarily not being able to provide more raw physic/engineering like you can with society.

If you have a limit mineral/energy budget (most game usually don't but machine empire gestalt has energy issue right now) you will not want to spend XX energy on upkeep to save 2 or 3 month when you can instead spend the same budget to save 8 or more month for physic/engineering. It is an efficiency thing and diminish return on each point of extra society research you have.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I really would like to go heavy into robotics and industry at the expense of all else or to be the master of energy weapons churning out repeatable technologies before I can even field a massive fleet. I want to meet an AI empire that's got synths and superior armour that needs to be designed against or one that's got super shields and I have to decide between adding a bit more kinetic or getting disrupters. I also want to be able to make a hive mind that uses basic technology but relies on fleet capacity upgrades to make a frightening swarm of corvettes. If instead I meet an empire and it's the same as the last empire +/- one tech level... it just feels bland.
Currently you can choose WHICH engineering tech is important, I want to be able to choose THAT engineering technology is important to my empire.

I entirely understand arguments against increasing the micromanagement, I understand why certain jobs should have additional research outputs. Perhaps a policy much like the militarized/civilian/balanced economy would allow both the player and the AI to have a focus without increasing the overhead or requiring adjustments to a dozen buildings.

 

[wtrmute]

Do i specifically need to point out millions of priests, pastors, padres and monks of various religions who weren't scientists?
Indicating a few of them who were is very much missing the point of what church was throughout the ages.
Yes, churchmen or specifically their sons often ended up doing relevant research notes and science, because the job allowed for the scientific mindset to form and required a certain modicum of education. Education which very often was controlled by the dominant church. However, as with any controlling institution there were times when such controller forbade knowledge and learning of specific topics - anatomy was one of them, which is part of biology and falls under society research points in the game.
So, yes, while there were scientifically curious and scientifically-minded people who were religious or active members of their churches and made important discoveries partially thanks to the benefits churchmen have, one really shouldn't mistake that for Church as an institution, being actively interested in scientific progress of the society they service or even govern.

Absolute nonsense. I've read extensively on the subject of religion and science, and just because I mentioned a couple of priests who have done particularly meritorious discoveries, the fact still remains that priests, pastors, padres and monks even today have a good deal more formal training than the average layperson, and are significantly more interested in intellectual questions than the vast majority of the people they minister to. Catholic priests who are actually ordained, for example, all have to study philosophy for four years and then theology for another four, and the majority that I know have yet another four-year degree in some other field like maths, law, psychology or linguistics. Rabbis are also famously dedicated to learning, and not only the Tanakh. The University system evolved from schools devoted to priestly training, and I cannot count the number of religious orders dedicated to educating the masses. Even in Greco-Roman and Egyptian polytheism, the priestly class had the lion's share of patronising the arts and sciences. In the Far East, scholarship is also related to Confucian and Buddhist mores, and Buddhist schools also served to spread philosophy and culture throughout the whole region.

So it's all great fun to call religion obscurantist, but it sort of flies in the face of actual evidence.

Also this is all mostly irrelevant to the game as there are only two big questions that need to be answered.

• Are there lore based reasons for priests in spiritualist societies to be actively interested in performing active well-funded research in societal domains, as defined by the game - i.e biology, xenobiology, planetary development, administration, sociology, economy, military theory, logistics and whatever i missed.
• Does the game balance require that priests provide society research points to be competitive with non-spiritualist societies

Here I agree with you completely. The two questions are, does this make sense internally? And, does this make sense externally?

The first question, I believe I have explored enough above. The takeaway is that, unless the doctrine of the religion in question is specifically anti-intellectual (and this is much, much rarer than it looks), then it's perfectly reasonable for the priestly class to be interested in advancing the state of the art of at least a good part of the society field (which, unfortunately, suffers from being a "catch-all" category for everything which is neither physics nor engineering). Not as much as full-time researchers, but then again, priests in game don't produce nearly as much Society research as Researcher pops.

The second question is something I might perhaps being less well-qualified to answer, as I don't feel I have enough experience with the game (having bought it last November). I think it's important to point out, though, that the priests cannot be compared to the scientists of non-Spiritualist societies, but to the culture workers, which are the jobs the non-Spiritualist analogue of temples (i.e., Autochton Monuments and upgrades). And the difference between Priests and Culture Workers is that Priests provide extra amenities (+5), and beside that both produce unity (+3) and society research (+2).

The question then becomes, should culture workers generate society research?

All that being said, I think that having other jobs generate physics and engineering research might be warranted and not unbalanced. Perhaps the synthetic SR workers (chemists, translucers and gas refiners; maybe roboticists, as well) could stand to give some engineering research as well as the resources they do produce (at very very bad rates, I might add). I'm a bit stumped as to which jobs could give physics research; letting workers generate it seems thematically off. Maybe you have a good idea?

 

[Fjolsvid]

Absolute nonsense. I've read extensively on the subject of religion and science, and just because I mentioned a couple of priests who have done particularly meritorious discoveries, the fact still remains that priests, pastors, padres and monks even today have a good deal more formal training than the average layperson, and are significantly more interested in intellectual questions than the vast majority of the people they minister to. Catholic priests who are actually ordained, for example, all have to study philosophy for four years and then theology for another four, and the majority that I know have yet another four-year degree in some other field like maths, law, psychology or linguistics. Rabbis are also famously dedicated to learning, and not only the Tanakh. The University system evolved from schools devoted to priestly training, and I cannot count the number of religious orders dedicated to educating the masses. Even in Greco-Roman and Egyptian polytheism, the priestly class had the lion's share of patronising the arts and sciences. In the Far East, scholarship is also related to Confucian and Buddhist mores, and Buddhist schools also served to spread philosophy and culture throughout the whole region.

So it's all great fun to call religion obscurantist, but it sort of flies in the face of actual evidence.

Ah, but i don't call the Church obscurantist. Pointing out that there were times when it hindered research in some areas doesn't equate to that.
However, what is relevant is how much science is done by clergymen today?
Closer to 19th and fully in 20th century an important thing happened - science became institutionalized. Less and less scientific activity was done by clergymen, but more and more by trained scientists and researchers, who might or might not have been from religious background. If studying the world is what interested a person, going into scientific career became an option compared to ancient times when it wasn't.
So I do think it is more correct to consider those clergymen who did scientific activity as scientists of their times first and clergymen second. Compared to thousands of their colleagues, such people were few and a class of their own.
You are rightfully pointing out that there was a lot of church-based education and nowadays priests are highly educated. Well, the thing is that education does not equate to active research. I come from a post-soviet country that reports 79% of its people having higher education. Does that mean that 4 out of 5 people do or did scientific research in their life? No, absolutely not! The level of superstitions (not religion, actual idiotic superstititions that can cause serious illness or even kill if followed too thoroughly) is absurdly high.
Education was and is first and foremost needed for the needs of the Church itself as it allowed more capable people to advance and do more for the interests of the church, but it also did enable those who wanted to know more about the world. Whatever scientific activity members of church performed was completely orthogonal to the religion, unless it was perceived as threatening the dogma and as such the existing order of things.
I don't contest that church often was the only centre of learning for a huge period of time in human history but what I am pointing out is that the scientific activity of those people wasn't an intended, cultivated activity from the PoV of Church. There was no Papal bull or Islamic fatwa commanding to perform sociological studies, establish a local research group on nuclear physics or build a rocket testing grounds.
Church by itself is not pro-science, but neither it is contra-science. It has its own focus - naturally, it is religion.
Can there be a science-focused religion?
I am not sure as that seems to shift the focus from what is important in the religious sense.
What i'm sure is that there can be a science-supportive Church, however that DLC for Stellaris will happen quite a bit later.

Here I agree with you completely. The two questions are, does this make sense internally? And, does this make sense externally?

The first question, I believe I have explored enough above. The takeaway is that, unless the doctrine of the religion in question is specifically anti-intellectual (and this is much, much rarer than it looks), then it's perfectly reasonable for the priestly class to be interested in advancing the state of the art of at least a good part of the society field (which, unfortunately, suffers from being a "catch-all" category for everything which is neither physics nor engineering). Not as much as full-time researchers, but then again, priests in game don't produce nearly as much Society research as Researcher pops.

The second question is something I might perhaps being less well-qualified to answer, as I don't feel I have enough experience with the game (having bought it last November). I think it's important to point out, though, that the priests cannot be compared to the scientists of non-Spiritualist societies, but to the culture workers, which are the jobs the non-Spiritualist analogue of temples (i.e., Autochton Monuments and upgrades). And the difference between Priests and Culture Workers is that Priests provide extra amenities (+5), and beside that both produce unity (+3) and society research (+2).

The question then becomes, should culture workers generate society research?

All that being said, I think that having other jobs generate physics and engineering research might be warranted and not unbalanced. Perhaps the synthetic SR workers (chemists, translucers and gas refiners; maybe roboticists, as well) could stand to give some engineering research as well as the resources they do produce (at very very bad rates, I might add). I'm a bit stumped as to which jobs could give physics research; letting workers generate it seems thematically off. Maybe you have a good idea?

That's the correct question, i agree. If culture workers represents artists, writers, musicians and so on, they are rather far from being scientists in any form. Modern cultural scientists on the other hand are still scientists living off their academical careers and as such would be found in laboratories in the game.
We have at least two group of specialists who actually qualify for being part scientists - medical workers for society points they provided in 2.1 and earlier, and roboticists for engineering. Who could be our part-physicists? Some sort of souped up technicians or maybe planetary shield operators as that covers Field theory, Energy and a bit of Computing.

 

[Zephiel]

One of the first things I noticed in 2.2 was just how much society research is generated compared to the other two science resources. This is especially true (And strange!) for machine civilizations where coordinators are both numerous and strong generators of society, yet also important as one of the few sources of unity for non-specialized machines.

I would suggest instead of specialized labs or policies or otherwise, simply allocating some physics and engineering research to another job in similar supply to coordinator would be an effective option at providing a default towards balance, but also allowing players to specialize their production further. For instance, replicator jobs could provided engineering experience in addition to their current pop assembly contributions, allowing them to give a practical, direct benefit (More robots!) and a secondary, indirect one (Additional knowledge gained while making said robots). Players who want more engineering science could opt to simply build more replicators to generate more, and in the same way, physics could be applied to another job as well.