Unity Rework - Bureaucrats vs. Culture Workers

[GOLANX]

I don't share the idea that ethics should decide "how" your empire produces unity. It should influence it? Yes, no problem with that, but I don't think all empires of ethics X are united/governed in the same way. Why my empire can only have artists if it has Y ethics? What happens if my empire has two ethics than change the unity worker designation?

I think that this flavour should come from civics that specify what brings unity to your people. Have some general ways to obtain it that provide some side effects other than unity as some have commented, but then add the new alternatives and improvements of the general buildings with civics. Important the word alternative, it should not be a replacement.

We have 3 ethics points multiple titles based on ethics will cause more problems than its worth.

We have Byzantine Bureaucracy and Efficient Bureaucracy they both could use Bureocrats and everyone else culture workers.

 

[GOLANX]

And this is what is increasing unity?

You need to fill out form I-8788J for the answer to that question.

 

[drawar]

Cultural workers could return to the game if a culture/religion/ideology system is implemented.

It is not necessarily "complicated", you can take as a basis the religion system of CK3 with some adaptations.
Each “cultural / ideological / religious” doctrine costs a certain number of cultural points: military, economic, religious, diplomatic, societal and etc.
These points are generated by the pops of this culture (perhaps according to the ethics of the empire and / or of the pop), "cultural workers" and others, for example, with the civic "citizen service", the soldiers generate military cultural points.
With technologies, traditions, ascension perk and more, we can unlock new cultural doctrines.

Each empire according to its diplomatic and other relations generates a cultural pressure on the other empires. This pressure depends on the basis of the production of cultural point of the empire.
Obviously, he may have less passive means of spreading his culture, such as espionage or war for example; where the branches of megacorporation. Another peaceful approach would be, for example, to finance cultural promotion campaigns in another empire, but it requires authorization from that empire, the empire referred to could have certain benefits.
Ultimately, we could make our culture the galactic culture by a vote of the Galactic Community, this does not automatically adopt its culture to other empires, but greatly increases its cultural pressure. After that, we could possibly pass another vote to make other culture illegal ...

An empire can adopt another culture or reform a foreign culture that it would have adopted, obviously, it is not free, not without conditions and not without consequences.

Cultures could have a system of levels or parallel levels, one can progress in various branches, each branch being able to have different conditions of progress.

Obviously, we have to think about the system so that it does not duplicate the system of traditions. Each system would have its own mechanisms.

Progressing in a culture could also allow to unlock new civics (or more powerful versions for some already accessible, but possibly with penalties).

 

[DeanTheDull]

Cultural workers could return to the game if a culture/religion/ideology system is implemented.

Especially if they serve an ethics attraction role rather than just a unity role.

 

[cryptkeeper]

Their title could depend on your ethos, don't need to change anything except the title. It would feel more distinguished for your empire type.

• Spiritualist => Cleric
• Materialist => Bureaucrat
• Xenophile-/phobe => Culture worker
• Egalitarian => Community organizer
• Authoritarian => Propagandist
• Pacifist => Bureaucrat
• Militarist => Warrior poet

Egalitarian and pacifist = social worker
Authoritarian and militarist = State media

 

[Dragatus]

I don't share the idea that ethics should decide "how" your empire produces unity. It should influence it? Yes, no problem with that, but I don't think all empires of ethics X are united/governed in the same way. Why my empire can only have artists if it has Y ethics? What happens if my empire has two ethics than change the unity worker designation?

I think that this flavour should come from civics that specify what brings unity to your people. Have some general ways to obtain it that provide some side effects other than unity as some have commented, but then add the new alternatives and improvements of the general buildings with civics. Important the word alternative, it should not be a replacement.

I think ethic influencing how you gain Unity would be a good thing, but I wouldn't do it through different jobs. As you mentioned, empires can have up to three different ethics so which job would you get?

I imagine it to work something like this (numbers are only for illustration and would have to be balanced):
Xenophobe: every pop that is of your main species produces 0.5 Unity
Xenophile: every pop that is not your main species produces 0.5 Unity
Pacifist: all pops produce 0.5 Unity while at peace
Militarist: all pops produce 1 Unity while at war
Authoritarian: all workers and slaves produce 0.5 Unity
Egalitarian: all specialists produce 0.5 Unity
Materialist: produce Unity with Researchers
Spiritualist: produce Unity with Priests

Fanatics just get double the above, so for example a Fanatic Pacifist would get 1 Unity per pop while at peace and Fanatic Spiritualists would have super priests.

Or, alternatively, they could just have the Unity they said you'd get from factions scale with the amount of pops in your empire and have it be the primary source of Unity.

 

[Franton]

I never quite understood the concept of the culture worker job: what kind of job would that be in real life? E. g. people working in museums are not the ones that create culture, it's the artists who created the art presented within the museum who created culture! But, given that one pop represents many millions of people, we cannot reasonably think that there is even the equivalent of one pop creating the culture on any planet: at best it's a fraction of a pop!

Therefore I like the new concept of using monuments - without jobs - rather more reasonable. The task of the bureaucrats, then, is not so much to create the art, but to present it and make it available to the public: people working at museums, etc..

 

[Dragatus]

It may have been somewhat of a translation issue. In my language we use "culture worker" to denote anyone working on creating culture. Essentially artist in the broad sense, because our word for "artist" is typically associated more with painting and sculpting than with say music or writing. Maybe Swedish has something similar, but the literal translation to English doesn't work out so well because it's not a common phrase.

Note also that the icon of the Culture Worker job is a paintbrush crossed with a piano keyboard. I am convinced they are meant to represent creators of all kinds, ranging from painters to musicians and from poets to filmmakers. And yes, it's a unrealistically large fraction of the population, but so are Researchers when you think about it.

 

[Mik_C]

We have 3 ethics points multiple titles based on ethics will cause more problems than its worth.

We have Byzantine Bureaucracy and Efficient Bureaucracy they both could use Bureocrats and everyone else culture workers.

It's what I was just saying, replying to a post that proposes that each ethic changes the title of the job.

My suggestion was to put all unity (building) alternatives behind civics.

 

[hfel]

I've noticed a few people raise concerns in the dev diary thread about the removal of culture workers, and how bureaucrats being the primary Unity-generating job might feel a little "soulless" (except in the case of a Byzantine Bureaucracy, of course).

I think "Culture Worker" never really made a whole lot of sense, especially since that job was generated by Monuments.

What if instead, we have "Academies". This job produces a "Creatives" job, which replaces Culture Workers.

Academies represent various institutes of higher learning in a creative context, and Creatives represent artists, novelists, screenwriters, filmmakers, choreographers and so on.

Do you see the cultural & academic elite making our societies more unified and less polarized in the real world?

I think it's a mistake to treat unity as a spendable resource to begin with; it should be a coefficient for influence production, which is the final measure of any government's ability to undertake grand projects in society. Having a unified society gives a tremendous boost to any government's power, but that's certainly not the only way governments can expand their power.

 

[Bezborg]

Do you see the cultural & academic elite making our societies more unified and less polarized in the real world?

Well, frankly.. yeah.

Do American movies not make Americans feel more American? Is it not a consistent propaganda tool that informs and generates their sense of shared identity? I think it does.

This doesn't really pertain to Stellaris tbh, since we don't have any sort of cultural products that would produce societal effects, Stellaris is rife with mana-type resources and that's a poor solution to any complex societal simulator... which Stellaris isn't either.

Just discussing

 

[Archael90]

It may have been somewhat of a translation issue. In my language we use "culture worker" to denote anyone working on creating culture. Essentially artist in the broad sense, because our word for "artist" is typically associated more with painting and sculpting than with say music or writing. Maybe Swedish has something similar, but the literal translation to English doesn't work out so well because it's not a common phrase.

Note also that the icon of the Culture Worker job is a paintbrush crossed with a piano keyboard. I am convinced they are meant to represent creators of all kinds, ranging from painters to musicians and from poets to filmmakers. And yes, it's a unrealistically large fraction of the population, but so are Researchers when you think about it.

In my language"culture worker" is a very wide term including not only artists, musicians etc. but also librarians, and tour guides. Basically any jon that has anything in common with culture, except teachers.

 

[Mastikator]

Do you see the cultural & academic elite making our societies more unified and less polarized in the real world?

That's where unified societies come from and how they exist: shared cultural experience. No cultural and academic elite = no shared culture. Unified cultures are not a naturally occurring phenomenon

 

[Dragatus]

I'd just add that the actual cultural elite aren't people with college degrees in various art fields, but the creators whose works are enjoyed by broad swaths of the population. Like say the singer with the #1 hit or the guy making the world's most popular podcast. In some ways it might actually be Entertainers that ought to be the primary Unity job. And Bureaucrats could be an Amenity job instead.

 

[Ikael]

I agree with the general sentiment and the suggestion of renaming the unity-producing job according to each ethos. Bureaucrats generating unity and driving your empire's cultural evolution seems... kinda unfitting (unless we are talking about an empire under a Byzantine Bureaucracy regime).

Another possible alternative:

Neutral: Government officer. Generic enough name to fit any ethoi. It makes sense that government representatives increase your empire's unity.
Byzantine bureaucracy's bureaucrats: Because building bureaucratic distopias is cool too. Might be a low maintenance type of job with a higher "unity yield per consumer good" than the default job (so you have a quantity VS quality going on here).
Spiritualists: Priests, for extra united unity so you can unite while you unite.
Some kind of pacifist civic: Artists generating both unity & happiness, so we can have our agrarian idyls (or any other similar utopia-flavored civic)

 

[GloatingSwine]

I do think that "Culture Worker" or some less bureaucratic equivalent name would be better than Bureaucrat for the default unity generator job.

Bureaucrat should be the substitution job if you take the Byzantine Bureaucracy civic.

 

[Mila34]

I mentioned this in the dev diary thread but I'm thinking that Bureaucrats should increase the size of the Edict Fund, and the primary Unity producer should either be Entertainers or Cultural Workers (and priests for Spiritual empires of course).

This would have to be balanced such that the Edict Fund provided by the Bureaucrat is worth more than the Unity provided by the Cultural Worker would be when converted into Edict Upkeep.

 

[SteelCrow]

I really appreciate this discussion, it reminded me of the importance of entertainers in providing cultural unification.

Bureaucrats are involved with the practical application of policy. In USA, bureaucrats have some autonomy within their category of society, basically outsourced extensions of the government. They decide construction codes, land management, city zoning, etc. No one likes bureaucrats because they set restrictions, rules and regulation, but we need rules and regulation to keep things running smoothly. One might say that's part of our culture, but I'd say that's not the whole truth. They are governance. They remind me of Maintenance Drones.

What bureaucrats lack is creation of beautiful things that give us a sense of awe and grandeur just for existing. That's more from what should be called art. Entertainers are an excellent fit for that; really it's Entertainers and Culture Workers that are redundant. Religion also provides this feeling.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I really appreciate this discussion, it reminded me of the importance of entertainers in providing cultural unification.

Bureaucrats are involved with the practical application of policy. In USA, bureaucrats have some autonomy within their category of society, basically outsourced extensions of the government. They decide construction codes, land management, city zoning, etc. No one likes bureaucrats because they set restrictions, rules and regulation, but we need rules and regulation to keep things running smoothly. One might say that's part of our culture, but I'd say that's not the whole truth. They are governance. They remind me of Maintenance Drones.

What bureaucrats lack is creation of beautiful things that give us a sense of awe and grandeur just for existing. That's more from what should be called art. Entertainers are an excellent fit for that; really it's Entertainers and Culture Workers that are redundant. Religion also provides this feeling.

I’d argue that it’s bureaucrats that provide amenities - they are providing the underlying infrastructure which society needs to run things (amenities / stability).

Entertainers are there to keep society happy and provide a distraction from the day-to-day (amenities) and to reflect on society as a whole through stories (unity)

Culture workers in the loosest sense of the word, can be anything from artists, creatives and pop-cultural icons (unity) but could also extend to community managers, historians and writers (society research).

Priests, like culture workers / entertainers are there to reinforce religious doctrine (unity / ethics attraction)

 

[Liggi]

So my main thought from this: I'm very open-minded as to how to rework Unity, and I like a lot of the ideas the devs have put forward. I don't have any strong feelings about renaming Culture Workers based on Ethics or anything like that.

The primary thing is: there should be some sort of representation of culture creation in Stellaris, outside of bureaucracy.
Culture is the primary driver of Unity, in my opinion, not bureaucracy (except in certain cases).