The New Precusor Building is absurdly broken

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Aside from basic resource subsidies and ambitions, what 'very strong' unity edicts are there? Specialist subsidies are barely worth using even if you have the edict fund, and the rest are either only situationally available or give only moderate benefits.
How are specialist subsidies "barely worth using"? 0.3 alloys or 0.6 consumer goods for 1 energy credit is not a good trade? And that doesn't even factor the alloy nanoplant, civilian repli-complexes and the orbital rings buildings, with those you are getting 0.6 alloys or 0.9 consumer goods for 1 energy credit. That surely is "very strong".
100 edict fund in the early game allows you to run two or three basic resource subsidies at a time when you have maybe +50% resources from jobs and lots of workers, so you get the maximum effect from those edicts. Using those edicts later will have diminishing returns because of all the +% resources from jobs modifiers that accumulate over the course of the game.

Also, +100 edict fund per planet isn't the same as infinite edict fund, even if it is a lot. As an example, in my current game (in the late game) I would need 24k monthly unity or edict fund to run every unity edict and ambition at once, but I only have around 100 planets (for potentially 10k edict fund with the first league building). How many edicts this building allows you to run depends on how efficient you can be with sprawl.
I never said that 100 edict fund in the early game wasn't strong, in fact i pointed out earlier that executive vigour and imperial cult are among the strongest ap/civics in the game.

You might not be able to run all edicts but you can certainly run most, probably all, of the subsidies and ambitions, which is already insane.
You won't be able to build the Cybrex building in every system, but you will be able to build it in every good system. The real question there is how many high mineral or strategic resource systems (and nanite deposits) you can get, and how that compares to the edicts you could run.
Yes that is the relevant question to truly assess how strong the Cybrex building is. However keep in mind that you're getting most of your minerals from jobs, not stations, so even if you build it in most good systems, which will already require a very large number of starbases, you're only buffing a subset of your mineral production, now compare that to +83% miner output from edicts, which results in +6.64 minerals per miner lategame! Are you truly not convinced that the first league building is much stronger? Again i'm not saying that the Cybrex building is not strong, it is, but at least it's not insanely broken.

The same for the Vultaum, it's strong for sure, but not as broken. With the science edicts you are getting +30% research (additively), so +1.2. In the lategame your reseachers produce maybe 15 research of each type, so you're getting ~8% increase to research production. With only two edicts you already have roughly half of the bonus that the Vultaum provides, and on top of that you can get +6.64 minerals per miner, +5 influence, +4.5 energy credits per technician, +0.6 alloys per metallurgist and +0.9 consumer goods per artisan, and you'll still have edicts fund left!
 
I'm confused where the minor relics for this Precursor building spam are supposed to come from without causing non-trivial tradeoffs in other minor-relic buildings and military and decision applications.

100 edict capacity and a boost to unity workers on a world is indeed nice. But so is boosting strategic resource jobs on a planet so that you can afford upgraded buildings that functionally reduce sprawl penalties that slow tech and traditions and increase edict cost. And missile spam to suppress enemy fleet point defense capacity and drastically increase your effective and torpedo efficiency in critical battles. Or carrier fleets that devastate the current armor-heavy meta. Or defenses to let you carry through a decisive battle and carry on the offensive. Or other potential applications, presuming they still exist, such as influence conversion, energy conversion, fallen empire buildings, or whatever else we have.

Minor Relics do appear a harvestable resource, but not in the 'you can expect to have hundreds excess just laying around doing nothing' sort of way. If you want to spam first league buildings in the late-early or mid-game, you're not using it for other things.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
I'm confused where the minor relics for this Precursor building spam are supposed to come from without causing non-trivial tradeoffs in other minor-relic buildings and military and decision applications.
It's 30 minor artifacts, once, per planet (from the screenshots, it looks like they're 28 with a 5% reduction, making it probably 30). It ramps up slowly, but with the new scale, that's extremely cheap. They rescaled all the minor relic costs, so those 30 minor relics seems to be equivalent to 3 minor artifacts pre-patch. Not exactly breaking the bank.

The new relic-world researchers give .5 per month each, and you get 4 of them (IIRC). So one of these buildings per 15 months until every planet has one, even if you never get another source of minor relics. Plus, if you have 3 Prospectoriums on your network, they're almost free (unless they stealth fixed the vassal hyperlane effects stacking). -90% building cost (the new cap) means you can almost build one per month. Or just get a hefty discount if you have only one prospectorium.
How are specialist subsidies "barely worth using"? 0.3 alloys or 0.6 consumer goods for 1 energy credit is not a good trade? And that doesn't even factor the alloy nanoplant, civilian repli-complexes and the orbital rings buildings, with those you are getting 0.6 alloys or 0.9 consumer goods for 1 energy credit. That surely is "very strong".
They're significantly weaker than the worker subsidies. Energy subsidies is +2.5 energy per technician at least, and +4.5 at most. The specialist ones net you +.2 energy equivalent at the least or 1.6 energy equivalent at most (or maybe a bit more, if you have e.g. ascensions to reduce metallurgist upkeep). Roughly 1/3 the benefit for late game tech, and basically no benefit at all for early game.

Would you run a unity edict that had no effects other than "technicians gain 5% output"? That's on par with the size of the effect, after accounting for upkeep.

Of course, this assumes that you care about the energy upkeep at all. You may be swimming in energy (vassals, branch offices, trade-for-CG-that-also-gives-too-much-energy, etc.) and jump at the chance to efficiently turn worthless gold into precious latinum. But if you have to spend pops to produce both, the edicts are pretty weak.

By rights, they should be +25% (since each % is worth twice as much for a specialist than for a worker, generally). Instead they're 10%, and have double upkeep as well to add insult to injury.
 
Last edited:
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
It's 30 minor artifacts, once, per planet (from the screenshots, it looks like they're 28 with a 5% reduction, making it probably 30). It ramps up slowly, but with the new scale, that's extremely cheap. They rescaled all the minor relic costs, so those 30 minor relics seems to be equivalent to 3 minor artifacts pre-patch. Not exactly breaking the bank.

The new relic-world researchers give .5 per month each, and you get 4 of them (IIRC). So one of these buildings per 15 months until every planet has one, even if you never get another source of minor relics. Plus, if you have 3 Prospectoriums on your network, they're almost free (unless they stealth fixed the vassal hyperlane effects stacking). -90% building cost (the new cap) means you can almost build one per month. Or just get a hefty discount if you have only one prospectorium.

They're significantly weaker than the worker subsidies. Energy subsidies is +2.5 energy per technician at least, and +4.5 at most. The specialist ones net you +.2 energy equivalent at the least or 1.6 energy equivalent at most (or maybe a bit more, if you have e.g. ascensions to reduce metallurgist upkeep). Roughly 1/3 the benefit for late game tech, and basically no benefit at all for early game.

Would you run a unity edict that had no effects other than "technicians gain 5% output"? That's on par with the size of the effect, after accounting for upkeep.

Of course, this assumes that you care about the energy upkeep at all. You may be swimming in energy (vassals, branch offices, trade-for-CG-that-also-gives-too-much-energy, etc.) and jump at the chance to efficiently turn worthless gold into precious latinum. But if you have to spend pops to produce both, the edicts are pretty weak.

By rights, they should be +25% (since each % is worth twice as much for a specialist than for a worker, generally). Instead they're 10%, and have double upkeep as well to add insult to injury.
I'm not sure what you mean with this: «The specialist ones net you +.2 energy equivalent at the least or 1.6 energy equivalent at most»

I agree that the basic resource subsidies are stronger than the specialist subsidies in the early game but that might not be true in the late game. Gaining 0.6 alloys in exchange for 1 energy credit is equivalent to paying 1.67 credits for 1 alloy. The price to buy alloys is usually between 15 and 20 and the price to sell is around 10, so 1.67 is a great trade. Worst case scenario if you activate the edict and sell all the additional alloys you'd get 6 (0.6*10) credits per metallurgist, netting you a profit of 5 credits per metallurgist, most likely better than getting 4.5 credits per technician.
 
Remember when there was a high chance to get a Titan from an Archeology site very early? It got nerfed very quickly. If this building or any other turns out to be too powerful, it will just get nerfed. Numbers are just numbers.
 
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Remember when there was a high chance to get a Titan from an Archeology site very early? It got nerfed very quickly. If this building or any other turns out to be too powerful, it will just get nerfed. Numbers are just numbers.
its just very funny the complete disbalance of numbers between the same precursor buildings.
First league office is valuable in all worlds and gives you around 5/12 pops worth of unity.

Baol building gives you around what, 1 pop worth of CG in a farmer world? maybe 2? and maybe another pop on food gain? and is only usable on food worlds which usually you have either one or none
 
  • 1Haha
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
How are specialist subsidies "barely worth using"? 0.3 alloys or 0.6 consumer goods for 1 energy credit is not a good trade? And that doesn't even factor the alloy nanoplant, civilian repli-complexes and the orbital rings buildings, with those you are getting 0.6 alloys or 0.9 consumer goods for 1 energy credit. That surely is "very strong".

If you look at it in terms of pop-efficiency (comparing resources based on how many pop-months they're worth, in order to avoid things getting warped by the market), that's not really worth it. If a technician produces 20 to 25 energy, the about 1 energy upkeep from specialist subsidies costs 4 to 5% of a technician. If you have +100% resources from jobs for your specialists, the 10% bonus from subsidies is actually only worth 5% of a specialist pop. You also save some mineral upkeep from needing fewer specialists, but it's not hard to have more than +100% specialist output in the late game, and researchers can do even better.

In that way, an edict that saves 4% of a specialist but costs 4% of a worker is hardly worth using. Things change if you have excess energy from somewhere that doesn't come from pops, but you're not likely to get that before better edicts become available.

You might not be able to run all edicts but you can certainly run most, probably all, of the subsidies and ambitions, which is already insane.

Subsidies and ambitions are the main cost in the example I gave, and I wouldn't be close to running all of them at once. Going back to that example...

It's a few years later, so my empire size has slightly increased to 2500. I have 106 colonies, each of the 6 subsidies costs 780 unity, and each of the 8 ambitions costs 1950 unity. Using all subsidies and ambitions at once would cost 20,280 unity, and I would only get up to 10,600 edict fund from the First League building. That's only enough for half of the subsidies and ambitions, with not much left over for any other edicts.

Yes that is the relevant question to truly assess how strong the Cybrex building is. However keep in mind that you're getting most of your minerals from jobs, not stations, so even if you build it in most good systems, which will already require a very large number of starbases, you're only buffing a subset of your mineral production, now compare that to +83% miner output from edicts, which results in +6.64 minerals per miner lategame! Are you truly not convinced that the first league building is much stronger? Again i'm not saying that the Cybrex building is not strong, it is, but at least it's not insanely broken.

If you have the systems for it, the Cybrex building gives a ton of pop-free resources. Depending on how quickly you finish the precursor, that could be a great boost to your economy, and could come before you get access to unity ambitions. It's probably more situational than the First League, but it's not that much worse and you also get a ringworld and the Cybrex relic.
 
It's 30 minor artifacts, once, per planet (from the screenshots, it looks like they're 28 with a 5% reduction, making it probably 30). It ramps up slowly, but with the new scale, that's extremely cheap. They rescaled all the minor relic costs, so those 30 minor relics seems to be equivalent to 3 minor artifacts pre-patch. Not exactly breaking the bank.

Not quite addressing the question, which admittedly might not have been clear. The point wasn't whether you'd be able to get minor artifacts, the point was the alternative uses of the minor artifacts that would compete with stockpiling.

For example, consider energy conversion. In the current build, spending minor relics for energy is a strategy you can do, usually to finance extremely meta-leaning deficit strategies to fund a rapid buildup of industry and science production, but it's generally restricted to short-term game strategies due to the long-term opportunity costs. 2 minor relics a year for 1000 energy is absolutely useful and usable, but because you don't know in advance how many future minor relics you can plan on receiving, you are disincentivized to spending the relics in longer games because they may be what you need to get that -insert thing.- This goes double with the unity conversions, where 500 unity a decade, it's rarely worth the potential opportunity cost if you can't guarantee future minor relics (like, say, via rubricator).

With a minor relic income stream, you can have the knowledge of a future relic income expectation, and so assume less risk in spending your current resources for immediate benefit. You expect to receive 60 minor relics a year? Okay- spend 40 of them for 1000 energy a year, and leverage those pop-years into something else. As long as you can meet your benchmark needs, you spend early and invest in early growth to get to the point of snowballing. This is the same principle of not building massive food stockpiles. Compounding interest is the most powerful force in the galaxy, and that's not happening if you're not spending. All you need to be able is to meet your benchmark power spike needs and contingency buffers.

The issue for the precursor buildings being 'broken' is that they (probably) aren't the benchmark or the buffer. The benchmarks are what happen before the midgame completion of all anomalies and researching the project and finding the precursor. The continency buffer- and other benchmark- is using your supply to subsidize your economy to build an advanced fleet, and then using the other part of your supply on the archeotech weapons to further power-spike that fleet into something to dominate with, and the things that unlock the efficiency potentials of your advanced resource economy for sprawl and military upgrades and other things. That fleet will cost a pretty penny in minor relics, but what it does....

If you've already got three prospectoriums in the tank and a galactic highway linking your empire and vassals and dozens of worlds under your control to put the First League building on, that doesn't make the building broken, that makes it irrelevant. You've already functionally won the game, and could do so sooner by spending the minor relics on something else.
 
Last edited:
  • 1
Reactions:
I'm not sure what you mean with this: «The specialist ones net you +.2 energy equivalent at the least or 1.6 energy equivalent at most»

I agree that the basic resource subsidies are stronger than the specialist subsidies in the early game but that might not be true in the late game. Gaining 0.6 alloys in exchange for 1 energy credit is equivalent to paying 1.67 credits for 1 alloy. The price to buy alloys is usually between 15 and 20 and the price to sell is around 10, so 1.67 is a great trade.
The game values 1 alloy at 4 energy.

The market price only matters if you're selling or buying. The cost of production is what matters, otherwise.

In the early game, it's extremely straightforward. All jobs (except miner) net +6 energy equivalent. Technicians make +6 energy, and metallurgists make +3 alloys (+12 energy) for 6 mineral in upkeep.

A late game metallurgist makes ~12 alloy for ~12 mineral upkeep. At 4 energy per alloy (and 1 energy per mineral), that's around +36 net. A late game technician, before repeatables, will be making ~30. So even in late game, energy per alloy is roughly 4.

The market price is so high because the AI is bad at overproducing alloys in peace to prepare for war.
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Not quite addressing the question, which admittedly might not have been clear. The point wasn't whether you'd be able to get minor artifacts, the point was the alternative uses of the minor artifacts that would compete with stockpiling.

For example, consider energy conversion. In the current build, spending minor relics for energy is a strategy you can do, usually to finance extremely meta-leaning deficit strategies to fund a rapid buildup of industry and science production, but it's generally restricted to short-term game strategies due to the long-term opportunity costs. 2 minor relics a year for 1000 energy is absolutely useful and usable, but because you don't know in advance how many future minor relics you can plan on receiving, you are disincentivized to spending the relics in longer games because they may be what you need to get that -insert thing.- This goes double with the unity conversions, where 500 unity a decade, it's rarely worth the potential opportunity cost if you can't guarantee future minor relics (like, say, via rubricator).

With a minor relic income stream, you can have the knowledge of a future relic income expectation, and so assume less risk in spending your current resources for immediate benefit. You expect to receive 60 minor relics a year? Okay- spend 40 of them for 1000 energy a year, and leverage those pop-years into something else. As long as you can meet your benchmark needs, you spend early and invest in early growth to get to the point of snowballing. This is the same principle of not building massive food stockpiles. Compounding interest is the most powerful force in the galaxy, and that's not happening if you're not spending. All you need to be able is to meet your benchmark power spike needs and contingency buffers.

The issue for the precursor buildings being 'broken' is that they (probably) aren't the benchmark or the buffer. The benchmarks are what happen before the midgame completion of all anomalies and researching the project and finding the precursor. The continency buffer- and other benchmark- is using your supply to subsidize your economy to build an advanced fleet, and then using the other part of your supply on the archeotech weapons to further power-spike that fleet into something to dominate with, and the things that unlock the efficiency potentials of your advanced resource economy for sprawl and military upgrades and other things. That fleet will cost a pretty penny in minor relics, but what it does....

If you've already got three prospectoriums in the tank and a galactic highway linking your empire and vassals and dozens of worlds under your control to put the First League building on, that doesn't make the building broken, that makes it irrelevant. You've already functionally won the game, by spending the minor relics on something else.
Three Prospectoriums was the extreme end of the spectrum. The point was that at 30 minor artifacts each, these aren't exactly breaking the bank. It would be different if they had minor artifact upkeep, but it's just an up front cost.

If they keep the ratios for selling artifacts (with the 10x rescaling), then 30 is the equivalent of 1500 energy. 100 unity per month for one time 1500 energy is a no brainer.

If you value unity so little that this isn't a bargain, and indeed such a bargain that it gives you a massive advantage, maybe you should be closing your Politician jobs. The difference between 12 politicians and 3 entertainers is somewhere around 100 unity. Unless you're not running edicts that could use this, one building is at least 9 pops.

If the main point of contention is how much opportunity cost 30 artifacts represents, we may just have to wait and see. It sounds to be like it will be so cheap (at the scale of an early-mid empire) that the value of 100 unity per month is multiple times higher. These new ship components are costing 2-5 artifacts each, and none of them seem so brokenly good that it wouldn't be better to have 1 ship with a single artifact component instead of 2 ships, which puts a cap on how much value the artifacts will actually have, for war.

Edit: 10 artifacts per ship component. The swarmer missiles component you mentioned costs 10 artifacts, just by itself. So you could have one of these buildings, or a single corvette's worth of S slots equipped with the nano-swarm missiles to overload PD. One of those swarm missiles produces 5 swarm missiles worth of targets, but they have only half as much health. So you're turning an S slot into 2.5 M slots. Or you could just build an extra Destroyer and get the same result (3 extra M slots worth of PD targets).

The new X slot artifact weapon costs 45 each. This building is... not expensive. Either that, or all the ship components are way too expensive to be useful.
 
Last edited:
  • 1
Reactions:
I mean - ambitions edicts can easily cost 2k-3k edict fund per ambition. This building certainly helps in this cases.
You'd need 20-30 for a single edict still. If you have 20-30 planets, you should have enough unity output that it's still more of a "minor benefit", rather than "op". With Unity increases, designations, and all. This building might account for 3-4 pop jobs in the mid game, much less later. And depending on trade stance, contribute even less.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
You'd need 20-30 for a single edict still. If you have 20-30 planets, you should have enough unity output that it's still more of a "minor benefit", rather than "op". With Unity increases, designations, and all. This building might account for 3-4 pop jobs in the mid game, much less later. And depending on trade stance, contribute even less.
I'm looking an extremely late game save (I apparently stopped at Administrative Efficiency C), and my priests make 50 unity each, with an orbital filing system, on a fully ascended Ecclesiastical Center ecumenopolis with a ring (+1 unity from jobs), in a Covenant federation (another +1 unity). That puts me at +900% unity from jobs, at least, and 6 base unity output. So it would save me 2 pops, in this instance.

But a mid game save is going to have, maybe, +100% to unity from jobs. Your bureaucrats/priests will be making 10 unity, not 25, much less 33. And you have to pay for the job upkeep for those 10 bureaucrats with another artisan or two, and half a farmer, and a miner. What mid game empires have you been running where 100 unity is only 4 pops?
 
If you look at it in terms of pop-efficiency (comparing resources based on how many pop-months they're worth, in order to avoid things getting warped by the market), that's not really worth it. If a technician produces 20 to 25 energy, the about 1 energy upkeep from specialist subsidies costs 4 to 5% of a technician. If you have +100% resources from jobs for your specialists, the 10% bonus from subsidies is actually only worth 5% of a specialist pop. You also save some mineral upkeep from needing fewer specialists, but it's not hard to have more than +100% specialist output in the late game, and researchers can do even better.

In that way, an edict that saves 4% of a specialist but costs 4% of a worker is hardly worth using. Things change if you have excess energy from somewhere that doesn't come from pops, but you're not likely to get that before better edicts become available.
That's a good methodology, but a technician lategame produces much more than 25 credits, between 35-40. In that case the +1 energy upkeep of the edict is less than 3% of a technician. If, for example, your metallurgists produce 17 alloys, the 10% bonus is actually worth 3.5% of a metallurgist.
Subsidies and ambitions are the main cost in the example I gave, and I wouldn't be close to running all of them at once. Going back to that example...

It's a few years later, so my empire size has slightly increased to 2500. I have 106 colonies, each of the 6 subsidies costs 780 unity, and each of the 8 ambitions costs 1950 unity. Using all subsidies and ambitions at once would cost 20,280 unity, and I would only get up to 10,600 edict fund from the First League building. That's only enough for half of the subsidies and ambitions, with not much left over for any other edicts.
Fair enough, you can't run all edicts but getting 10k edicts fund in your spot is equivalent to either being able to run 5 ambitions for free or, if you're already over the cap, gaining 10k free unity! If your administrators are producing 17 unity then you are gaining 588 administrators worth of unity (that don't even require consumer goods) How is that not OP? Imagine if there was a precursor that gave you 500 pops once you complete it. That's much better than getting a ring-world.
The game values 1 alloy at 4 energy.

The market price only matters if you're selling or buying. The cost of production is what matters, otherwise.

In the early game, it's extremely straightforward. All jobs (except miner) net +6 energy equivalent. Technicians make +6 energy, and metallurgists make +3 alloys (+12 energy) for 6 mineral in upkeep.

A late game metallurgist makes ~12 alloy for ~12 mineral upkeep. At 4 energy per alloy (and 1 energy per mineral), that's around +36 net. A late game technician, before repeatables, will be making ~30. So even in late game, energy per alloy is roughly 4.

The market price is so high because the AI is bad at overproducing alloys in peace to prepare for war.
The market price matters because if you're producing at a cost higher than the price to buy then you should be buying alloys and if you are producing at a lower cost than the price to sell you should be selling alloys and shifting pops from technician jobs to metallurgist jobs. Also a metallurgist lategame produces at least 17 alloys, for less that 17 minerals (since there are more modifiers that increase output than input).

But even with your numbers the edict would still be worth it. Gaining 0.6 alloys in exchange for 1 energy credit is equivalent to paying 1.67 credits for 1 alloy, if in the lategame the marginal rate of technical substitution was 4, as you say, then producing 1 alloy would come at a opportunity cost of 4 credits. Using the edict would be profitable since you could shift pops from metallurgist jobs to technician jobs to make up for the additional energy costs and would end up with more alloys being produced. See the following example:

Assuming each metallurgist produces 12 alloys and each technician produces 30.

You have 200 Technicians and 200 Metallurgists, producing a total of 200*12=2.4k alloys and 200*30=6k credits.

With the edict you can shift 7 pops from metallurgist jobs to technician jobs, resulting in 206*30-193=6017 credits. And your alloy production will be 193*12.6=2432. The edict gave you a net gain of 32 alloys and 17 credits. Plus you also save some minerals.
 
I just saw Montu's latest video where he shows (among other things) the new special buildings you get from precursors, and the First League will allow you to build the following building:

View attachment 954482

Notice how there's a planet limit, not an empire limit, meaning that you can spam this in every planet and get an astronomically large edicts fund. This is absurdly broken as it will essentially make all edicts free. Even if the bonus was cut in half it would still be broken as you can very easily get your edict fund into the thousands.

I would suggest that they make the building empire unique so you can only have one. It would still be a very strong building (much stronger than the Baol building).
It's not that broken, late game ascension edicts are like 3k each a mo th so that is 30 planets with these to pay for 1 edict.
 
More importantly, it was revised to be empire unique on release, instead of planet unique.

This thread's entire premise is now out of date.
Indeed. I guess the devs agree with me that it would be op.

top-gun-tom-cruise.gif
 
  • 2Haha
Reactions:
  • 1Like
Reactions: