The demotion system needs to die.

[Zenopath]

I normally don't complain about small details, and I am pretty sure I can open up the text editor and figure out how to get rid of this feature, but lets talk about the time it takes an unemployed population to demote to a lower strata.

Its not only too long (will often take populations 5 years to get off their ass and get a job!), its completely unnecessary anti-fun mechanic. Worse of all, it happens all the time by accident or glitch and can't be fixed easily.

First lets take a look at a few ways to end up with unemployed pop that can't be bothered to do anything but drain resources and take up space.

1) Destroying a building that uses specialists
2) Replacing a building that uses specialists (game has a decent chance of promoting new ones instead of using old ones)
3) Changing government types. (If you switch a civic or from megacorp to regular government, you can get all your rulers left unemployed while a whole new crop of specialists get promoted. This means you will be left with 5 or so former executives who don't know how to do administrator jobs. Or aristocrats who can't administer, or administers who can't merchant if you pick up merchant guild as 3rd civic. Or science directors who can't administer, the list goes on, any change of civic that affects rulers will leave you with upto 5x number of planets worth of dead useless pop that suck up 1 cg per month and do nothing else for 5 years.)
4) Resettling from a planet that drops it below 50 or 100, will cause a merchant to go unemployed, filling that number back will cause a new merchant to take over, leaving a unemployed ruler.
5) Anything to do with anything other than full citizens will cause constant unemployed residents who get their jobs taken by full citizen that just got born. Constant stream of unemployed specialists if you have full and residents living together.
6) And my personal favorite... complete randomness. Yes, sometimes an unemployed ruler will show up for no reason you can figure out. like, why did i get a bunch of unemployed rulers after genemoding my race? I can only imagine there was this moment where the new guys came in and were like "you are obsolete, my turn to rule" and the old guys go, "hold on here is my genemod serum, now we both same race again.", only to get a response "too late, you are unemployed now." Now thats just a guess. But its only reason I can think of why genemoding sometimes generates unemployed rulers.

Long story short, you end up with unemployed and unemployable rulers every once in a while, and unemployed specialists all the time. The specialists you can deal with, if you don't mind waiting for new construction, the rulers are upto 5 years of dead weight. (think harmony tree drops it to 2 and a half years.)

This mechanic is seriously broken.

Now lets discuss why it is anti-fun.
Because it serves no purpose other than to be a tedious bit of micromangement that you will either need to ignore or try to deal with, and possibly fail. Moving people around to wherever a new construction will happen is what I end up doing, can't imagine how frustrating it is to deal with with egalitarians who have resettlement turned off. I can only recommend taking shared burdens to reduce that time to something manageable because you will be seeing a lot of dead weight unemployed pops. If you try to ignore it, you will have to overproduce consumer goods and probably have to wait on building new stuff on planets since you also have a bunch of empty job slots that will take a long time to fill with pop growth, or build more things on planet than you need, leaving empty jobs slots just to use up the unemployed specialists while your basic resource gather jobs go unfilled. I am convinced improper handling of unemployed specialists is one of the ways newer players will destroy their economies. It is easy to end up with a lot of dead weight and empty jobs slots, that can crash your whole economy, if you don't watch out.

What was this mechanic supposed to do?
So far as I could tell, it was intended as a means to give egalitarians and utopian abundance some advantage, if you have these things, they will produce unity while unemployed and will demote much faster than they do stratified economies. This is somehow meant to help balance out egalitarian with the clear advantages of stratified? If so, it doesn't work. You can micro your way around the problem, and its not even a legit game problem, its more like a broken mechanic that happens so often the game tries to reward you by making it less of a hassle if you are willing to give every pop a full cg or take shared burdens civic. Maybe its there to make the harmony tree meaningful, which, is something, it kinda lacks.

What should be done to fix it?
Well, you could just let pops freely fill jobs at will, starting with rulers then specialists as needed, without worrying about demotion at all. Failing that, there should be some way to force them to get back to work. Either by clicking on them and paying influence or energy or food or whatever, or a policy that reduces happiness but makes unemployement illegal, or by fixing all the bugs that create them.

 

[Urza1234]

(will often take populations 5 years to get off their ass and get a job!)

10 years actually to go from Ruler to Specialist, then 5 years from specialist to worker. Values are in common\pop_categories\00_social_classes.txt
Up to 15 years total

Yes, its completely broken. IMO it takes an otherwise decent job system and forces the devs to implement all sorts of other values to prevent pops from switching to jobs they would be better at.

This mod addresses this issue, among other things:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629545379


Thanks for the thread though, the devs should really deal with this, and its a nostalgic reminder of having to deal with such a useless and awkward mechanic.

 

[mrkusrk]

It seems obvious to me that underemployment and unemployment of pops should cause stability and lead to problems, but, as the OP says, not obvious that they would outright refuse to work.

One (hopefully) simple solution would be to give pops a temporary modifier* upon their (instant) demotion that drops their happiness and also drops stability. That way, the annoying unemployment is resolved and the other intended penalties are maintained. The ascension perks and bonuses could simply modify the duration of the happiness/stability penalty instead of the time to demote.

*I'm not sure if pops can have temporary modifiers though... maybe a stacking modifier to the planet would work instead?

 

[Urza1234]

*I'm not sure if pops can have temporary modifiers though... maybe a stacking modifier to the planet would work instead?

Pops can 100% have temporary modifiers, its one of the better supported aspects of stellaris scripting.

Unfortunately, however, I dont believe there is an on_demote action of any kind.
So... if you wanted to add that you might have to get creative, IE drastically reduce demotion time, but leave it long enough to trigger a on_monthly_pulse check or something to apply the modifier, or at least thats what I've got off the top of my head.

Or the devs could just fix it

 

[LeanneKaos]

What was this mechanic supposed to do?
So far as I could tell, it was intended as a means to give egalitarians and utopian abundance some advantage, if you have these things, they will produce unity while unemployed and will demote much faster than they do stratified economies.

Also Gestalts, who demote down instantly.

It seems obvious to me that underemployment and unemployment of pops should cause stability and lead to problems, but, as the OP says, not obvious that they would outright refuse to work.

They don't refuse to work. They're just snooty about what *kind* of work they're willing to do.

 

[Derp]

be a glorious space communist and this problem disappears

 

[Peter34]

I don’t mind the reasons listed by the OP, #1-6. I’m fine with those.

The one case where the Demotion timer bothers me, is when Refugees come to my empire but won’t take Worker stratum Jobs.

I really think that Refugees should Demote five times faster!

 

[permeakra]

It seems obvious to me that underemployment and unemployment of pops should cause stability and lead to problems, but, as the OP says, not obvious that they would outright refuse to work.

It is completely obvious (because people with good job tend to accumulate savings and usually don't want to go to job they avoided at significant cost, do try to find a person with medical degree who willingly works as a cleaner) and is completely in agreement with real life.

The system is WAD, is not broken, and makes you pay for stupidity. It *could* be polished with updating outliner so we could see how much of unemployment is due to lack of job total count and how much from slow demotion, and also some interactions with assimilation citizenship and the likes, but I find it worth keeping.

 

[Urza1234]

I would find it worth keeping if it worked properly.

I've been into those files and fiddled with those values. The vanilla game has a fairly delightful pre-existing job-weights system, however we get all sorts of complaints about "oh my Industrious pop is stuck as a researcher, and my intelligent xeno is stuck as a miner" because the vanilla game also has values in 3 different places to prevent pops from pretty much ever swapping jobs with another pop.

Instead players have all sorts of stupid micro that they have to do to swap pops around(and only within a strata) if they want the pops with the right traits to work the right jobs. And the AI does not have the benefit of that micro.
But as it turns out, if you severely reduce some of those vanilla values that prevent your pops from switching jobs, then even in the most complex multi-xeno society pretty much all your pops end up in the right places, because the vanilla job-weights system actually works out pretty well.

The Caveat? The demotion times. It takes up to 15 years all your pops to reach their appropriate places if the jobs system is actually loosened up to the point where it works.
The demotion times are the one, singular, sole mechanic responsible for the current jobs system being the clunky pos we have, rather than the flexible and working system that is figuratively right on the other side of the mole hill.
Remove or severely reduce Demotion Times and the entire jobs system can flow smoothly. I've tried it, and have a working proof of concept.

I wouldnt complain if there were some sort of slow replacement system, or literally any system that would eventually actually place pops in jobs that they're suited to. There isnt. That Industrious pop will remain a researcher forever without outside influence. This both makes no sense in terms of fluff and in terms of game mechanics. The current system fails in every way.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

The demotion times are the one, singular, sole mechanic responsible for the current jobs system being the clunky pos we have, rather than the flexible and working system that is figuratively right on the other side of the mole hill.
Remove or severely reduce Demotion Times and the entire jobs system can flow smoothly. I've tried it, and have a working proof of concept.

Just grabbed your mod. Will be trying it out tomorrow (almost 4am here, so time for bed). I stopped making different templates that were good at different things in 2.2 because the job prioritization system is frustratingly incompetent right now. This has been especially annoying for machine empires, considering early templates is perhaps their only advantage. I hope your mod fixes all that.

Also, could you perhaps make sure to post your findings in the next dev diary/patch notes and nag the devs until they read it?

 

[Urza1234]

This has been especially annoying for machine empires, considering early templates is perhaps their only advantage. I hope your mod fixes all that.

I think it should help, if what you want is for your pops to actually switch jobs. I'm not really an expert on Robits playstyles, so I could use feedback.

Also, could you perhaps make sure to post your findings in the next dev diary/patch notes and nag the devs until they read it?

Lol, I wish.
I try not to hope or assume in that regard, my experience is that devs think we are all idiots. And in my case maybe they're right. I'm always reminded of this meme my friend likes to send me:

 

[Raph]

Lol, I wish.
I try not to hope or assume in that regard, my experience is that devs think we are all idiots. I'm always reminded of this meme my friend likes to send me:

Well, I don't know if you're an idiot or not (I'm guessing not), but I do know that PDS has listened to and even hired modders in the past. IIRC Wiz was once a pretty talented AI modder before getting a job at PDS. Trin Tragula, Darkrenown and DDRJake are other examples if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Zenopath]

I am honestly shocked that half the people that decided to click on button to comment on OP decided to ¨respectfully disagree¨

So I want to clarify a few points here:
1) My main complaint is that it takes too long, if you mod it to something like 3 months, the system would be workable.
2) Its buggy as all hell, and as a concequence I have to do micro to avoid it. Like, you can´t safely replace a building, without, in month before it finishes replacing, close out the jobs manually or disable building, so that the new building will find unemployed specialists to use. In the OP I listed a few scenarios where you can avoid unemployed specialists, but also a few where it just sort of happens. I am playing in 2.2.4 and, I would hope that with 4 big patches they might have gotten around to fixing this issue, and posted this to hopefully remind devs of how annoying this can be.
3) Its a pitfall that catches newer players who havent figured out how to micro around this issue, and microing around this issue is time consuming and distracts from funner aspects of game, which is why it is anti-fun.

and most importantly:

4) It serves no purpose.

Really, ask yourself, what is the point of this system? What is it trying to prevent? It is punishing the player for what? It is rewarding what?
Someone, seriously, explain why this system provides some benefit to the gameplay, why do we need something that takes control of our pops away from us and forces us to tediously find ways around the problem?

Even if there were no glitches, why do we need this system, other than the one situation where it does seem to make sense, which would be to punish xenophobes who can´t let aliens be full citizens? Even then, it just sort of forces you to use slaves instead, because at least slaves demote instantly. Or more likely, what it really is, is a failed attempt to provide some benefits to egalitarians, which, honestly could be replaced by a stronger boost to specialist output to balance out extra cg costs.

 

[permeakra]

So I want to clarify a few points here:
1) My main complaint is that it takes too long, if you mod it to something like 3 months, the system would be workable.

It's actually too fast. IRL demotion can take generations and I find that system should punish intensive job-juggling as harsh as possible. Ideally micro like job assigment and resettlement should be taken from player control completely.

2) Its buggy as all hell, and as a concequence I have to do micro to avoid it.

Meaning it doesn't punish micro bad enough.

3) Its a pitfall that catches newer players who havent figured out how to micro around this issue, and microing around this issue is time consuming and distracts from funner aspects of game, which is why it is anti-fun.

It's an issue newer players have to learn to plan around.

and most importantly:

It isn't as developed as it should and punishing as strong as it should.

You are shocked because you want pops to be little cogs in machine and learned that not everyone has same wished. Not everyone wishes an easy run. Me personally? I like it. I actually think that most whistles and levers that allow player to micro pops should die and the system need to turn on its own outside macro decisions (i.e. planetary decisions, edicts and policies. Even control over most building process should be eventually taken away from the players)

Someone, seriously, explain why this system provides some benefit to the gameplay, why do we need something that takes control of our pops away from us and forces us to tediously find ways around the problem?

Ask yourself, why do you actually want control over your pops? Do you really need it for the game to be fun? There is plenty of games that do NOT give you direct control of the units and they are still fun.

 

[Zenopath]

What I find most preplexing about your reply is how much you contradict yourself.

lets try an experiment, let me reply to your points, from the point of view of two different people. Person A likes to be able to micro manage their population to ¨get ahead¨ in game play. And, person B likes nothing to do with micro and wants to ignore the population completely, and just build buildings when slots open up, or maybe, occassionaly change out a research center for an alloy factory if they get into a war. Would rather never look at population tab.

It's actually too fast. IRL demotion can take generations and I find that system should punish intensive job-juggling as harsh as possible. Ideally micro like job assigment and resettlement should be taken from player control completely.

A) Well that doesn't seem realistic, I mean if we are talking about "IRL" losing a high paying job doesn't usually lead to permanent unemployment. People will find other work, not "wait generations for new job opportunities."
B) Yeah! Punish people who fiddle with populations controls, they should suffer consquences, for some reason. That way I can just play the game and not worry about it. I am sure the population will do things correctly and never accidentally get themselves unemployed, well, once glitches are worked out. Well, maybe I should just never replace or destroy buildings! That will make game faster paced.

Meaning it doesn't punish micro bad enough.
It's an issue newer players have to learn to plan around.
It isn't as developed as it should and punishing as strong as it should.

A) ...
B) Well, when you say its an issue that newer players have to learn to plan around, you don't mean microing right? You mean, they should learn never to replace or destroy buildings and hope things like changing civics or genemodding doesnt randomly dump unemploy population on them for 10+years and the only solution would be to try to micro the unemployed pop to get rid of them. So what you are saying is new players should know what building and civics they will need from day 1 and never have to correct any mistakes.

You are shocked because you want pops to be little cogs in machine and learned that not everyone has same wished. Not everyone wishes an easy run. Me personally? I like it. I actually think that most whistles and levers that allow player to micro pops should die and the system need to turn on its own outside macro decisions (i.e. planetary decisions, edicts and policies. Even control over most building process should be eventually taken away from the players)

A) Its a strategy game? We should have meaningful strategical desicions? Why implement this new system at all, if we should keep our hands off the population? You could just have a game that has building slots and no direct control over population.
B) Thats what I want too! I am so frusterated by having to micro and fix all these unemployed population. If only they didnt happen at all, like never went unemployed at all, then I could just build stuff and change my buildings freely and not worry about them at all! I am so glad we agree.

Ask yourself, why do you actually want control over your pops? Do you really need it for the game to be fun? There is plenty of games that do NOT give you direct control of the units and they are still fun.

A + B) I think you missed the point entirely. I DONT want to control the pops, I want to be able to change the buildings or civics, or generally do stuff without having to deal with the micro of handling unemployed pops. If they didn't ever take time to demote, the game would actually be a lot MORE hands off, and less micro intensive. Both of us want to not have to deal with this problem...

A) ...game is forcing me deal with it with micro.
B) ...game is burdening me with unemployed pops draining my economy through no fault of my own, other than maybe trying to replace buildings or change civics.

 

[durbal]

I wish there were an actual promotion and demotion mechanic.

 

[stumason]

Seems to me most of your complaints are self inflicted and you've put yourself in some sort of micro-management tailspin. I do not have the same issues that you describe and by the sounds of it, I never will. I'm not replacing buildings willy nilly, resettling pops all the time and fussing about who does what job constantly. Why? I've planned ahead, the buildings are the ones I want and have workers ready to go when they are built and I am not shifting so many pops around I am knocking jobs of planets because it's fallen under a threshold.

Most of your complaints would vanish if you planned a little bit.

 

[Hyomoto]

There are undoubtedly some issues but I also wouldn't count out a large slice of this issue being how bad Stellaris is at explaining itself. War is an easy target because if I just point blank described how it works to someone who never played before, they would think it sounds ridiculous and stupid. But, if I take the time to explain how it works in the context of the game, it's a flawed but ultimately suitable system.

I don't know if pop demotion is vital honestly. It's the backbone of a potentially more interesting system, but all by itself doesn't accomplish much. But, many of the complaints about inefficiencies in the pop system could also be chalked up to neurotic behaviors. Yeah, it would be nice if each pop worked specifically in an industry that was tailor made to their strengths and we just naturally reaped the benefits of a perfect society. But what the pop system models well, even unintentionally, is the inefficiency and inequality of society as it expands. If you have twenty different species and you hope they'll all fall neatly into specific jobs: why? They wouldn't in an insular society: if they are alone in their own society they have to fulfill all jobs, presumably happily. Just because you work out doesn't mean you want to be a bouncer. Joining another society won't change that.

Interestingly, we have the tools to micro a perfect Utopia at the cost of a lot of investment fighting an uphill battle. But, you could design perfect habitats for each species that is built to cater specifically to their strengths if you put in the effort. The team behind NetHack once infamously said, "The DevTeam has arranged an automatic and savage punishment for pudding farming. It's called pudding farming." The idea being that the very act of ruining the game for yourself is sufficient punishment for trying to break it. While they would eventually make changes, and I don't have any angst for similar effects here, there is an important question in that comment: how much of this is actually bad, and how much is the result of trying to game the system? And, to refer to my first point, how much is because Stellaris does an awful job of describing the intent of the system? When you strip those two away, are there really any mechanical flaws?

Pop demotion, by itself, reflects an inefficiency that the player has little control over but to let it run its course. I don't know if it's important, but I do know once you learn to ignore inevitable population issues like these, the "problem" vanishes. There are issues with instant promotions, and even job fulfillment (clerks first, please!), but I'd argue they are far more minor than this thread insists.

 

[Ekufa]

I don't believe unemployment on civic change is intended but it's pretty realistic. Imagine you have hereditary nobility ruling and suddenly you change to technocracy where rulers are chosen on merit. Naturally a lot of nobles won't fit, lose their position and cause instability.

 

[permeakra]

A) Well that doesn't seem realistic, I mean if we are talking about "IRL" losing a high paying job doesn't usually lead to permanent unemployment.

You literally ignored the entire paragraph that addressed it.

Yes, loosing hi-paying jobs does not neccarily prevent you from getting another position. But being in hi-paying job for some time you accumulate enough money to afford being picky about your next job. At some point you might say "meh, I have enough money to spend the rest of my life in relative luxury, so screw you, I'm not going to dig dirt."

You mean, they should learn never to replace or destroy buildings and hope things like changing civics or genemodding doesnt randomly dump unemploy population on them for 10+years and the only solution would be to try to micro the unemployed pop to get rid of them.

Shockingly, big changes in society have consequence and period of instability. If you are planning them, then yes, you should expect a price to pay. So, yes, big changes should result in social troubles, like unemployments, disgrunted pops and in some cases factions being grumpy.

Why implement this new system at all, if we should keep our hands off the population?

That's actually an interesting question (probably the only one in the entire post), even if you probably though it is rhetorical. It isn't, it is a valid question worth thinking about.

There are two answers in my opinions
- micromodeling (in this case, simulating individual pops) saves a lot of time on designing and balancing planetary management mechanics which, if we had no pops, would be a hell of non-trivial decisions
- micromodeling makes planets feel more alive, unlike planets without exposed internal structure.

For similar reasons many games move to micromodeling from more hi-level mechanics. Compare 1990s Simcity (no micromodeling, in particular because computers didn't have power for it) and City:Skylines, which does genuine (even if mediocre) attempt in micromodling population, traffic and economy

I DONT want to control the pops, I want to be able to change the buildings or civics, or generally do stuff without having to deal with the micro of handling unemployed pops.

I.e. you want to do your thing without ever facing consequences, including replacing buildings as you see fit.

I don't know, I really dislike the idea. But you probably can mod it, if you are that desperate.

A) ...game is forcing me deal with it with micro.
B) ...game is burdening me with unemployed pops draining my economy through no fault of my own, other than maybe trying to replace buildings or change civics.

A) game offers options for micro if you are really desperate. Pesonally I think it should not. Anyway, you don't have to if you don't want to, the game is perfectly playable with zero microing about your pops
B) Shockingly, changing civics represents fundamental changes in society, so it should have drastic consequences. Changing few buildings represents big changes in lifes of several pops and yes why they should not react to this?