The demotion system needs to die.

[Raph]

If only there were a PDS game where POPs switch jobs, migrate, promote and demote on their own, dynamically and in fractions rather than all at once, depending on their cash reserves. *cough* Victoria 2 *cough*

With 2.2 Stellaris has taken a big step towards Vicky-level economic mechanics, but by having a lot less detail, the game has to build a lot of workaround systems instead. The beauty of the V2 system is that everything happens dynamically with the POPs as the engine of the entire game.

 

[Little Green Mensch]

The fact that replacing and upgrading buildings gives you unemployed rulers and specialists is the most annoying part of the whole thing. In effect, it punishes you for developing your economy. If the devs fixed that, and preferred extant specialists to promoted ones, it would be much less fiddly.

Some time ago, the devs were talking about allowing you to demote pops instantly within one year of their promotion, but that pre-supposes you've noticed your unemployed rulers/specialists and are not otherwise occupied.

A retraining time which delayed pop promotion would probably also be reasonable, especially if the time required is shorter for changes within strata. The pops would move to the new job, but would have a production penalty which either stayed at 100% (or a bit less, but it should really be significant) until the timer expired, or could gradually step down. If that were implemented, I'd suggest making retraining for workers pretty quick, so that it's harder to crash your raw resource production. You could also lessen the production penalty for workers-in-training.

 

[Raph]

The fact that replacing and upgrading buildings gives you unemployed rulers and specialists is the most annoying part of the whole thing. In effect, it punishes you for developing your economy. If the devs fixed that, and preferred extant specialists to promoted ones, it would be much less fiddly.

Some time ago, the devs were talking about allowing you to demote pops instantly within one year of their promotion, but that pre-supposes you've noticed your unemployed rulers/specialists and are not otherwise occupied.

A retraining time which delayed pop promotion would probably also be reasonable, especially if the time required is shorter for changes within strata. The pops would move to the new job, but would have a production penalty which either stayed at 100% (or a bit less, but it should really be significant) until the timer expired, or could gradually step down. If that were implemented, I'd suggest making retraining for workers pretty quick, so that it's harder to crash your raw resource production. You could also lessen the production penalty for workers-in-training.

This together with a happiness penalty for demoting POPs sounds like a pretty decent solution.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

For some of these examples I think you're already paying several penalties. As such the demotion costs could be rolled into increasing the attached costs if need be. Otherwise the added demotion costs are pretty hard to predict for new players who wreck their economies the first game or two (I know I did when 2.2 first hit). For more experienced players it just gives them an unfair advantage over the AI which doesn't understand or use the systems. Demotion examples:

1. Replace a consumer goods factory with 8 jobs with a research lab with 8 jobs.
You lose the investment in the goods factory = 400 + 600 + 800 = 1800 minerals lost and 50 + 100 = 150 crystals
and then pay the lab costs as normal.
You also have the output of 6 fewer specialists, so 6 unemployed/demoting pops for many years even if you have open worker jobs. (480 + 480 days assuming you upgrade to the same level and don't wait for demotion to complete).
Your planet is also busy for a long time (lab+upgrade+upgrade, 360 + 480 + 480 using the wiki values... which seem a bit high to me)
Demotion makes that up to 8 fewer specialists (if intelligent workers are promoted instead) who are all (potentially) now unemployed instead of workers. It adds a large monthly cost in terms of output (they aren't working), stability (they're less happy, more political power than workers), crime etc on top of the large loss in investment in terms of upfront mineral and rare resource costs.

2. For switching civics you already pay a large cost in influence - more if you first promote or embrace a faction to be able to switch civics, less if the change is more minor.
Demotion (sometimes) adds a huge monthly cost for the next 15 years that you can't predict or calculate before hand, with no warnings that you'll have to pay this extra cost.

3. For putting the best pops on each job you again have to pay a cost - genetic modification, migration treaties, conquest, buying from the galactic market etc.
Demotion adds both an extra fee (15 years for your newly improved rulers to kick the old rulers down to workers) as well as some game-mechanics that stop pops from doing the correct jobs in the first place (making genetic modification, migration, conquest and the slave market all a bit broken) because it would cause the above effect when the new pops do the job they're best at. So pop traits don't really matter unless every pop on a planet has that trait because the game will not give them the correct job. Obviously that's hyperbole, traits do matter... just far less than the values indicate as they will rarely be doing the jobs they're good at.

If egalitarians are to be given a buff in this respect then perhaps give them (one of) the following:
A resource refund when replacing buildings,
A discount reforming government,
A happiness boost when pops work their idea job (tied to living standards)
You'd achieve the same things, but without having a large, opaque and confusing penalty to new players that also blocks the job mechanic from working properly.

Or if you really want to keep it in... make it a proper mechanic that you interact with regularly and not merely when you make a mistake, or when the game makes a mistake. Training times and costs for ALL new jobs, modified by civics, traits, techs etc. But if you do that, please make sure it's fun and adds something to the game first. Personally I think what it adds to the roleplay, (e.g. rising unrest when changing from aristocrats to a technocracy) isn't worth the added frustration for new players. You could achieve more interesting and thematic situations with events that trigger on changing civics as well as more options for player interaction and different outcomes. In short, I don't think demotion is needed or a good thing in the game.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Perfectly happy with the demotion system- it gives your choices regarding infrastructure more weight.

It needs tweaking and improvement, not to be removed.

 

[Ryika]

I know it's stupid, but I think the part of me that's annoyed by the demotion mechanic, would be soothed entirely if they just removed the unemployment icon on planets that only have unemployed pops that are in the process of demoting. That feeling of noticing that icon, clicking to see what's going on, realizing that you can't do anything about it and go do something else... to then do the same thing a year later because I've already forgotten about it or want to see when that damn icon finally goes away... it's torture, that's what it is.

 

[Jman5]

People defending the demotion system as it exists now are crazy. They're acting like its some crucial feature rather than just being some stupid annoyance. However, I've given up trying to argue the point.

Paradox will eventually realize the current system isn't working well, but in the meantime here is a simple mod that just reduces demotion time to 1/10.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584571997

 

[Apophenia]

The one thing I actually want is some way to look at the outliner and be able to distinguish from unemployed workers and unemployed specialists/rulers. Far too often do I look over, see the symbol for an unemployed pop, go to the planet, build a district, then once the district is done wonder why the planet still has unemployed people, go over and learn that it is because I have an unemployed ruler. Then I need to remember that planet is special for like 15 years.

 

[AlanC9]

People defending the demotion system as it exists now are crazy. They're acting like its some crucial feature rather than just being some stupid annoyance. However, I've given up trying to argue the point.

Being annoyed by demotion is like being annoyed by colony ships costing lots of alloys and CG. Dealing with stuff is what the game is about.

 

[AlanC9]

The one thing I actually want is some way to look at the outliner and be able to distinguish from unemployed workers and unemployed specialists/rulers. Far too often do I look over, see the symbol for an unemployed pop, go to the planet, build a district, then once the district is done wonder why the planet still has unemployed people, go over and learn that it is because I have an unemployed ruler. Then I need to remember that planet is special for like 15 years.

Yeah, the interface is pretty horrible. They've said they're looking into it, but who knows what they'll come up with.

 

[Doctor Moriarty]

The issue really is the bugs. I can see the argument that, in an ideal world, there should be a crippling penalty for demoting a ruler to a worker because demoting a ruler to a worker should be something that is never done lightly. But the problem is that we see unemployment and consequent inability to find new work on the same stratum happens all the time in ways that are almost unavoidable and also silly. For example, when a government type is changed and new people are made into rulers, leaving the previous rulers useless until they go all the way down to workers. New people should never be promoted to do a job that could be fulfilled by unemployed people already on that stratum.

There's also no good way to rectify unemployment. You can't say "Oh, I have some unemployed rulers. Let me give them a job to make them useful." There may be no way to create new ruler jobs, even with difficulty, and if you can, you still might end up promoting people into rulers instead of using the existing unemployed ones. That only compounds the problem.

 

[Doctor Moriarty]

As for the resident/citizen thing, it does make sense that citizens push out residents due to their belief that they should be privileged over residents by birth, but obviously the mechanical effects are purely detrimental. This goes to a deeper problem of what advantage should racism have besides as an excuse to slavery. There's no particular mechanical reason why you would want to deny certain races in your empire from being citizens. But role-play ends up driving the halfway status to have real detriments. This is one of those.

 

[James_K]

Perhaps a hybrid approach would be beneficial - make demotion times lower (more like 1-3 years than 5-15, but for the remainder of the time give the demoted pop a happiness penalty. This would represent the social disruption of groups losing their social status without being so much of a pain for the player.

 

[PirateJack]

The issue really is the bugs. I can see the argument that, in an ideal world, there should be a crippling penalty for demoting a ruler to a worker because demoting a ruler to a worker should be something that is never done lightly. But the problem is that we see unemployment and consequent inability to find new work on the same stratum happens all the time in ways that are almost unavoidable and also silly. For example, when a government type is changed and new people are made into rulers, leaving the previous rulers useless until they go all the way down to workers. New people should never be promoted to do a job that could be fulfilled by unemployed people already on that stratum.

I agree with you on this. Unemployed POPs of a given stratum should always be given priority over new arrivals.

There's also no good way to rectify unemployment. You can't say "Oh, I have some unemployed rulers. Let me give them a job to make them useful." There may be no way to create new ruler jobs, even with difficulty, and if you can, you still might end up promoting people into rulers instead of using the existing unemployed ones. That only compounds the problem.

I don't on this though, because a POP isn't just a few people. It's a demographically relevant segment of your society; enough that it operates an important societal niche. If we were to look at a Merchant POP it wouldn't just be a few very wealthy men. It would be those wealthy men, their companies, employees, servants and other hangers on. A POP becoming unemployed is more like an entire industry going bust, which takes a ton of time and effort to fix itself.

Giving them a new job to do in game terms is literally just sticking a new building in there (or replacing an old one) to give them the work they need to not be unemployed.

Perhaps a hybrid approach would be beneficial - make demotion times lower (more like 1-3 years than 5-15, but for the remainder of the time give the demoted pop a happiness penalty. This would represent the social disruption of groups losing their social status without being so much of a pain for the player.

I'll echo @Apophenia and say that the majority of the annoyance with POP demotion is to do with the little unemployment icon that shows up on the outliner. It's just a niggling little thing that sticks out every time you look at it and you never remember it for long enough that you can just glance over it the next time you look.

 

[Zenopath]

So, the thing that made me want to write this post was the ruler civic thing that happened to me. End up with 60 some unemployed rulers because I thought taking merchant guild as a 3rd civic sounded cool. How was I supposed to know I would end up losing 60 pops worth of productivity and paying some 60popsx120monthsx1.2habitiblity = 8440 consumer goods and food wasted for simple little mistake like that. If the feature is intended, I would have like a little warning at the very least. I am pretty sure that 3rd civic will never actually provide any benefit in my whole play-through, since it will take 60 merchants something like, 100 years to make that much consumer goods...

But the other concrete example of how this system is annoying even if there is no glitch or ¨intended penality for changing civics¨ is the ecumenopolis. Stop me if this scenario sounds familiar to you:

1) Yay, I finally built an ecumenopolis! (or first leagued it) Now I will build alloy production on this world.
2) Huh, i guess i dont need alloy production in lots of individual factories on all my other worlds, I want to move all alloy production to ecumenopolis.
3) So, every time an alloy district is almost finished, I must now go to every planet with alloy factories, demolish them and then resettle the unemployed metalworkers to the ecumenopolis. This process must be repeated every time a district is about to finish or 10 regular workers will get promoted instead.

Is that a huge deal, or really hard to do? No.

But it is kinda tedious to micromanage the process if you have to do it every single time. I usually make it a point to demolish one alloy factory per forge world and transfer 2 specialist from each of 5 worlds at a time, so that takes about a good 5 minutes worth of clicking through worlds, demolishing an alloy factory, waiting 3 days for unemployed pops to show up, then click on resettle, then find the unemployed specialist in the long lists of the resettlement list, 5 seperate times, and resettle them one by one. Its 5 minutes of tedium have to do about 5-10 times per play through, and its meanless. If I could demolish alloy factories at will and not have unemployed specialists, I would just do that and let them mine or farm or whatever, and I could just use all the clerks already living on planet (or resettle any worker) instead of having to wait for the unemployed metal workers to be moved right before the alloy district finishes.

There should only be one unemployed population type, and he should be willing to take any job.

 

[Zenopath]

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?

This is the silliest line of argument. Realism? Really?

You were working at an civillian factory and a war breaks out.
Forman says: ¨Sorry, our factory is being replaced by a alloy factory, you guys are all unemployed now.¨

Artisans: ¨Wait, we could do this new job of metalworker, its not THAT different, we´re specialists, we got art college degrees.¨

Foreman: ¨Nope sorry, already found a batch of farmers to take over. They get promoted to high paying jobs with no college degrees required or anything. No training either, they start tomorrow, amazing what farmers can do, right?¨

Artisans: ¨You don´t think we might be more qualified?¨

Foreman: ¨Doesn't seem like any qualifications are required at all, so don´t see how that matters.¨

Artisans: ¨Well our species is now at war for our survival, but I feel like NOT doing anything for 5 years in protest, and the government is obligated to continue to pay me full wages for those 5 years, AND I plan to add crime and lower stability while I wait.¨

Foreman: ¨Sounds fair. Oh wait, looks like you getting sent off world to be researchers in a new lab opening up. Guess they dont have any requirements either.¨

Artisans: ¨OMG! Someone should protest about how unfair that is, and how much more realistic it would be for us to be allowed to sit around getting full wages and causing crime for 5 years without anyone trying to ¨micromanage¨ us into a useful job somewhere.¨

 

[permeakra]

Giving them a new job to do in game terms is literally just sticking a new building in there (or replacing an old one) to give them the work they need to not be unemployed.

Actually, there are few buildings giving ruler-level jobs.

So, every time an alloy district is almost finished, I must now go to every planet with alloy factories, demolish them and then resettle the unemployed metalworkers to the ecumenopolis.

No you don't. You perfectly can employ them in new specialist buildings at the old place

Foreman: ¨Nope sorry, already found a batch of farmers to take over. They get promoted to high paying jobs with no college degrees required anything. No training either, they start tommorrow, amazing what farmers can do, right?¨

Fun fact: never observed something like this, I converted recently several of my alloy factories to civilian industries and there was no unemployment. Actually, I do get occasional unemployed specialist pop, but it never rises above1-2 per planet.
Now, if I would be stupid enough to convert those buildings into commercial zones...

 

[anamiac]

The one thing I actually want is some way to look at the outliner and be able to distinguish from unemployed workers and unemployed specialists/rulers. Far too often do I look over, see the symbol for an unemployed pop, go to the planet, build a district, then once the district is done wonder why the planet still has unemployed people, go over and learn that it is because I have an unemployed ruler. Then I need to remember that planet is special for like 15 years.

This. I would be happy if it would just not display the red briefcase on planets where the number of jobs exceeds the population. I'm so sick of clicking on a planet to try to solve its unemployment and then discovering that they have 116 jobs available and 98 population, but some wanking nobleman refugee is too stuck up to go find a real job!

 

[Zenopath]

Fun fact: never observed something like this, I converted recently several of my alloy factories to civilian industries and there was no unemployment. Actually, I do get occasional unemployed specialist pop, but it never rises above1-2 per planet.
Now, if I would be stupid enough to convert those buildings into commercial zones...

You weren´t paying attention then. The game routinely promotes workers to fill specialists jobs leaving old specialists unemployed. It isn´t 100%, but it happens often enough that i find myself preemtively microing the situation by disabling the building right as it is about to finish. This is a glitch one of many, but you would see that as 1-2 unemployed specialists sitting around for no particular reason. If there weren´t any glitches, the system would only be either tedious or meaningless, depending on what you were trying to do.

Heres a better solution, that would be both less tedious and less meaningless:

What if populations had levels at their jobs and changing them reset them back to lvl 1?

At level 1 at their new job, they suffer -10% output, then every year they automatically get promoted and gain 5% output. So lvl 3, after 2 years at same job would have no peanalties and level 5, at 4 years at same job, would have 10% bonus.

This would actually make you care about your pops staying at the jobs they are currently at, and give you meaningful reasons not to randomly reassign them, but wouldn´t punish you so hard for glitches or simple mistakes.

The factors and bonus that affect demotion time could be changed to influence promotion time, giving egalitarians a meaningful bonus because utopian workers gain experience faster or something.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Don't understand the logic where demotion is a good mechanic, which misses that a similar promotion mechanic is not present.