Unity crtique

[Diezy]

Early on in the game, it's great, there's always something nice to pick, and most of the picks stay relevant in later stages too.

However there comes the time when you complete all the branches, which makes it feel... terribly finite. If Pacifist, it happens very quickly. You're just done with Unity and have no use for it.

All the good Traditions are picked, and I only ended up taking traditions that didn't give any real benefit by the late game. And for Hive Minds, many traditions have absolutely no effect. Sooner or later, the picks are aren't aligned with our ethics at all.

Thankfully there is always the Ascension Perk at the end of each tree, which is nice.

One should not have to have to take Diplomacy when playing the Fanatic Xenophobe isolationist, for example. Other games had that sense of scarcity, having to take something useless was inconceivable, because you always had many choices to pick from, no matter the playstyle.

Though, if it's intended to complete every Tradition, I'd advise for other things to spend Unity on, after finishing all of those, or even before that happens, too.

Perhaps there should be more means to get Ascension Perks, other than maxing out all your Traditions+the one tech, just so things aren't balanced around taking absolutely everything!

 

[Agamemnic]

Great observation there.

Two other suggestions

1. We get some level of repeatable traditions/ascension perks.
2. Certain traditions should either be locked or very expensive depending on one's ethos. Using your example, a xenophobe should have to pay 3x the unity cost for diplomacy.

 

[Nostalgium]

I would like for there to be traditions based on your ethics, ideally. So an Egalitarian Xenophile Pacifist regime wouldn't have the same picks as a Fanatic Militarist Spiritualist. Even if it's just a rebranding for fluff reasons. Having my Authoritarian Empire full of slaves pick "Harmony" to make all its people happy felt... Strange.

 

[AndragonLea]

Or as a gap-stopper: why not have a second button next to adopt that says "abandon" - you press it and your unity goes towards a progress bar that's half as expensive as taking the tradition, at the end of which you get the ascension perk related to it and a general bonus geared towards the opposite of what the tradition was. So if you skip federations and vassals as a purifier you instead get personal might related stuff - nowhere near as much as the benefit to the tradition areas would have been, but something that is useful to a playstyle that wouldn't use either of those.

I have absolutely no use for any of the domination perks, for example - they're all geared towards having a gaggle of vassals, which I almost never have. I'd rather have the ascension perk double as fast and relinquish the bunch of perks I'll never get any use out of.

 

[Diezy]

Perhaps with a tech that comes up later in the game, each Tradition tree could gain more depth, staying in that theme of not having too overwhelming of a game at any point.

Either by having another 5 traditions further down in each tree, getting you a perk when those are completed as well.

Also some Traditions could be unlocked several times over, although their initial rank would have to be a lot weaker to account for power creep. But you'd still need just one point in it to unlock deeper parts of the tree, so you don't spend ages 5/5-ing the 20% Habitability tradition, just pick the initial rank and move on deeper. With perks coming from more varied sources as well.

Instead of putting just 5 points in a tree, you could commit even as much as 20 or more of them that way! So you don't end up putting points in something questionable for your empire

Although even then, given enough time, you'd still fill out everything. :< A big problem is after getting all 7 trees done, Unity is completely pointless, so there'd have to be a use for it there too. I suspect it might be part of a victory condition some day.