Unity Rework - Bureaucrats vs. Culture Workers

[exi123]

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..

As @Dragatus mentioned it is just an odd naming choice for the job. The job itself was also washed up after the Federations patch, which made monuments and heritage sites not planet unique AND ALSO totally useless. In earlier patches you needed some of these buildings here and there to get more unity, especially when a (working) sprawl mechanic was in place, which is not the case in the current form.

In my view you have can draw a line between on what entertainers are and what purpose "culture workers" have to your special kind of empire. Entertainer are there for fun (as mentioned, movies creators, sports and so on, stuff that distracts the population but has no pilitical influence), culture workers should represent the lower administration of your empire and these can vary extremely.

And also, bureaucrats are just a niche for some empires (authoritarians with shared burden anyone?). It would be very immersive if spiritualists for example would have priests as rulers and, for example, monks as lower administrative class created by temples, not administrative offices. Militarists could get a building called headquarters, which creates Military Officer jobs, Megacorps get the managers, feudal societies have knights and so on.

Everyone of these jobs creates unity and should fullfill another role special to the empire type. Managers generate some extra trade value, Military Officers some naval cap and hard defense armies, egalitarian judges stability, materialistic sociologists grant some extra research... This would add so much flair to different empire types combined with some real game value... but...

 

[MathyM]

Materialist: produce Unity with Researchers

I’d be veeeeery careful about this. Remember how broken Technocracy used to be?

I wish the roboticist side of Materialists was explored better. Tying them directly to Research kinda locks a lot of strong buffs (such as Research Cooperatives) behind an already strong ethic.

 

[BrokenSky]

I'm not sure if anyone's commented on this before, but one thing I just thought of is "what's Byzantine Beurocracy actually going to do?" on paper, the obvious answer is "the same as what it currently does - bureaucrats give (more) unity and stability", except that the effect of that basically means you have fewer bureaucrats for the same amount of unity, and you want to spread them out, which is kinda the opposite of the big bureaucrat ecumenopolis planet trope...

What might be good is if it did something like
Bureaucrats replace culture workers, and have -1 base unity (compared to culture workers), but also give +5% bureaucrat output, or some similar scaling thing? (numbers may need rebalancing, depending on base unity output).
Alternatively if they instead decided to do something like "you can have both, and they provide different ancillary bonuses, this could just be a change to bureaucrats' stats.

 

[MatthewP]

This is a really interesting discussion, but I think it’s missing something. Look at what unity is going to do in the rework:

1) pay for traditions: big projects the whole empire will focus on for a decade or more.

2) pay for edicts: basically government programs to support certain sectors of the economy, military, etc.

3) pay for planetary decisions: edicts but local.

4) pay for pop resettlement

5) pay for leaders

6) suppress or promote factions: basically government propaganda.

Ignore the word “unity” for a second. Aren’t these all things that bureaucrats would help with? They implement and maintain large scale permanent goals (traditions), they implement laws, they organize and enforce resettlement, they provide the staff for leaders, and they’re in charge of disseminating propaganda. This all makes sense.

The disconnect isn’t that bureaucrats would be working on all these things, it’s that the resource they produce is called unity. If they renamed unity to admin capacity, is there anything that doesn’t make sense?

As for culture workers, they always had a ton of conceptual overlap with entertainers. Maybe it’s better to only have one.

 

[BrokenSky]

This is a really interesting discussion, but I think it’s missing something. Look at what unity is going to do in the rework:

1) pay for traditions: big projects the whole empire will focus on for a decade or more.

2) pay for edicts: basically government programs to support certain sectors of the economy, military, etc.

3) pay for planetary decisions: edicts but local.

4) pay for pop resettlement

5) pay for leaders

6) suppress or promote factions: basically government propaganda.

Ignore the word “unity” for a second. Aren’t these all things that bureaucrats would help with? They implement and maintain large scale permanent goals (traditions), they implement laws, they organize and enforce resettlement, they provide the staff for leaders, and they’re in charge of disseminating propaganda. This all makes sense.

The disconnect isn’t that bureaucrats would be working on all these things, it’s that the resource they produce is called unity. If they renamed unity to admin capacity, is there anything that doesn’t make sense?

As for culture workers, they always had a ton of conceptual overlap with entertainers. Maybe it’s better to only have one.

The problem with that is the point where bureaucrats are swapped out for priests. Otherwise, fair analysis.

 

[hfel]

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.

I think that's more of an epiphenomenon of an already relatively united culture, helpful in directing it towards desired ends.

Modern culture wars ravaging Western countries are often value-laden standoffs between elites – especially “creatives” – and commoners. The idea that you can just throw more money at Hollywood to marshal societal support for e.g. a green transition seems naive. It might work as a way to set the direction in a culture that's already unified and trusts their institutions and elites (or genuinely fears them), but if the inverse is true, it's just as likely to make existing divisions even more severe.

 

[DeanTheDull]

The problem with that is the point where bureaucrats are swapped out for priests. Otherwise, fair analysis.

Bureaucrats aren't swapped for priests, priests are an alternative if you build temples instead of administration buildings.

If you're building priests, you are not only a spiritualist government, but you are a state-sponsor of religious institutions. These is either in a directly theocratic rule-by-priests sense, or in a state-sponsored religion sense of 'this is your state funded place of moral guidance, what a coincidence that it suits government purposes.'

At which points, state-sponsored priests supporting government efforts to mobilize public support is... exactly how state-sponsored priests have operated for the majority of human history, whether they were in charge of the state or not.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I think that's more of an epiphenomenon of an already relatively united culture, helpful in directing it towards desired ends.

Modern culture wars ravaging Western countries are often value-laden standoffs between elites – especially “creatives” – and commoners. The idea that you can just throw more money at Hollywood to marshal societal support for e.g. a green transition seems naive. It might work as a way to set the direction in a culture that's already unified and trusts their institutions and elites (or genuinely fears them), but if the inverse is true, it's just as likely to make existing divisions even more severe.

Without stepping into the real world comparison, this is why I was encouraged by the idea mentioned in one of the dev responses that they are considering unity upkeep for ethic-dissident pops in a post-3.3 update. Having ethically-aligned pops support faction unity, but ethically-opposed pops detract from overall unity, would be a good way to reflect and reason to pursue a relatively united empire culture. It'd also help as a passive obstacle for warmongering empires. Yeah, you can force the conquered slaves to work your mines and forge your alloys, but they aren't going to rally behind and support you for the -insert many things unity will support-.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

This is a really interesting discussion, but I think it’s missing something. Look at what unity is going to do in the rework:

1) pay for traditions: big projects the whole empire will focus on for a decade or more.

2) pay for edicts: basically government programs to support certain sectors of the economy, military, etc.

3) pay for planetary decisions: edicts but local.

4) pay for pop resettlement

5) pay for leaders

6) suppress or promote factions: basically government propaganda.

Ignore the word “unity” for a second. Aren’t these all things that bureaucrats would help with? They implement and maintain large scale permanent goals (traditions), they implement laws, they organize and enforce resettlement, they provide the staff for leaders, and they’re in charge of disseminating propaganda. This all makes sense.

The disconnect isn’t that bureaucrats would be working on all these things, it’s that the resource they produce is called unity. If they renamed unity to admin capacity, is there anything that doesn’t make sense?

As for culture workers, they always had a ton of conceptual overlap with entertainers. Maybe it’s better to only have one.

I think the problem though is mostly that these call just as easily be called ‘influence’, something that already exist, and as I mentioned in the DD, something which makes one of these resources redundant.

Personally, I would make what the unity changes are into ‘influence’ and scrap ‘unity’. It would be closer to how the game worked before unity was even a resource, and would help balance the wide v tall problem (aka is influence / unity spent on expanding and conquering, or traditions and your planet quality

 

[Liggi]

This is a really interesting discussion, but I think it’s missing something. Look at what unity is going to do in the rework:

1) pay for traditions: big projects the whole empire will focus on for a decade or more.

I really don't see Traditions like this.

Traditions represent the cultural development of your people, it's who your people become over time. They aren't Government-directed projects, they are cultural evolution / development.

 

[GOLANX]

I really don't see Traditions like this.

Traditions represent the cultural development of your people, it's who your people become over time. They aren't Government-directed projects, they are cultural evolution / development.

I agree with that thought but I also think that Bureocrats are a more "out of touch" profession than culture workers, and Culture workers could feed the traditional values of your society back into your empire as tangible benefits. If you did supremacy for example then your culture workers are telling war stories and the value of serving in the military which could result in a higher Naval cap because more of your people are joining the military.

 

[MatthewP]

I really don't see Traditions like this.

Traditions represent the cultural development of your people, it's who your people become over time. They aren't Government-directed projects, they are cultural evolution / development.

I agree traditions are the one that is least obviously done by bureaucrats. But I have two responses:

1) it’s not much of a stretch. I would say having a social safety net as a human right is the major tradition of Western Europe in the past half century, and it’s certainly bureaucracy-driven. Similarly the US has focused on lets say international hegemony - also backed by a huge bureaucracy. There are obvious counter examples, but they tend to be things like free market corporate oligarchies, where government bureaucrats are naturally replaced by corporate middle management.

2) 1 is probably subjective, I mostly bring it up for the potential of an interesting discussion. The real issue is, Given bureaucrats make sense completely for all the other unity use cases, what’s the game mechanical approach for fixing the problem? Bringing back culture workers and having them enact laws and transport people around makes even less sense.

 

[Nevars]

The problem with that is the point where bureaucrats are swapped out for priests. Otherwise, fair analysis.

Priest are bureaucrat in ancient time anyway so no contradiction in this.

 

[Grobb]

This is a really interesting discussion, but I think it’s missing something. Look at what unity is going to do in the rework:

1) pay for traditions: big projects the whole empire will focus on for a decade or more.

2) pay for edicts: basically government programs to support certain sectors of the economy, military, etc.

3) pay for planetary decisions: edicts but local.

4) pay for pop resettlement

5) pay for leaders

6) suppress or promote factions: basically government propaganda.

Ignore the word “unity” for a second. Aren’t these all things that bureaucrats would help with? They implement and maintain large scale permanent goals (traditions), they implement laws, they organize and enforce resettlement, they provide the staff for leaders, and they’re in charge of disseminating propaganda. This all makes sense.

The disconnect isn’t that bureaucrats would be working on all these things, it’s that the resource they produce is called unity. If they renamed unity to admin capacity, is there anything that doesn’t make sense?

As for culture workers, they always had a ton of conceptual overlap with entertainers. Maybe it’s better to only have one.

I would formulate it differently: Don't think of unity as unity, think of it as internal Political Capital. Bureaucrats are the parts that make the machine work, but Political Capital produced from speeches, news networks, articles, lectures, movies, music, etc. pays for the parts to be assembled into that machine in the first place, and in some cases, continues to convince people not to disassemble it later.

1, 2, 3.) Traditions, Edicts, Decisions: Bureaucrats run some of these, but only after adoption. Political Capital is what gets them adopted and keeps them adopted.

4.) Pop Resettlement: Star Bases and their undefined transport networks are what actually move people, and Bureaucrats certainly do all the relevant paperwork, but Political Capital is what's spent to either convince a group to move voluntarily, or another group to move them involuntarily.

5.) Leaders: Bureaucracy helps Leaders decisions function as intended, but Political Capital is what wins elections and appointments.

6.) Faction Interactions: Culture Workers make perfect sense here, as government-aligned news broadcasters, film studios, and bloggers do the actual political legwork of propaganda, harming factions who damage your Political Capital and helping factions who produce your Political Capital.

So these are certainly all things Bureaucrats would help with, but they don't provide the political will for any of them. However, I do agree with how you envision Bureaucrats running these things (except Faction Interactions), so maybe they could still have a place determining the effectiveness of programs like these.

 

[MatthewP]

I would formulate it differently: Don't think of unity as unity, think of it as internal Political Capital. Bureaucrats are the parts that make the machine work, but Political Capital produced from speeches, news networks, articles, lectures, movies, music, etc. pays for the parts to be assembled into that machine in the first place, and in some cases, continues to convince people not to disassemble it later.

1, 2, 3.) Traditions, Edicts, Decisions: Bureaucrats run some of these, but only after adoption. Political Capital is what gets them adopted and keeps them adopted.

4.) Pop Resettlement: Star Bases and their undefined transport networks are what actually move people, and Bureaucrats certainly do all the relevant paperwork, but Political Capital is what's spent to either convince a group to move voluntarily, or another group to move them involuntarily.

5.) Leaders: Bureaucracy helps Leaders decisions function as intended, but Political Capital is what wins elections and appointments.

6.) Faction Interactions: Culture Workers make perfect sense here, as government-aligned news broadcasters, film studios, and bloggers do the actual political legwork of propaganda, harming factions who damage your Political Capital and helping factions who produce your Political Capital.

So these are certainly all things Bureaucrats would help with, but they don't provide the political will for any of them. However, I do agree with how you envision Bureaucrats running these things (except Faction Interactions), so maybe they could still have a place determining the effectiveness of programs like these.

This also makes sense as a guiding principle for a rework. But if the devs had gone this direction (which I think it’s too late for them to do, and would have been both more interesting and more complex) then I wouldn’t really want to see political capital as a counting resource that you just generically need for things. It should more be something that ties heavily into ethics, mandates and the mandate-like thing for other governments I can’t remember the name of now. It should really reflect doing things that are aligned with the political mood of the populace. The bureaucracy resource could then fill the same spot unity does now, as the “we need this much to keep things moving on this agenda” resource.

Or I guess you could rename unity to political capital and keep things the same, but if just seems like a somewhat disappointing implementation of that idea.

 

[Ludaire]

In some ways it might actually be Entertainers that ought to be the primary Unity job. And Bureaucrats could be an Amenity job instead.

I think this is spot on. That's how gestalts work. The maintenance drones are far closer to bureaucrats than they are to entertainers. I think merging culture workers and entertainers makes a lot more sense. For example, a warrior culture society shouldn't be spamming paper pushing bureaucrats to increase unity. They should be spamming duelists. It makes the districts providing entertainers on habitats and ecumenopolises make much more sense (and brings them in line with the way rogue servitor versions of those districts work). Pleasure Seekers would gain pop growth alongside the extra unity pushing them towards a taller high unity play style to maximize the growth bonuses instead of it just being a meme based on incidental pop growth because entertainers aren't worth spamming. Priests replacing (at least in part) entertainers in a spiritualist society also makes perfect sense.

Byzantine Bureaucracy could allow bureaucrats to give a bunch of unity while providing less amenities representing how a more complex bureaucracy means each individual can achieve less, but its place in the society's culture makes up for that. Managers in megacorps seem like a better replacement for bureaucrats though, so those should probably move to the amenities side.

I think this would be a much better representation of how those jobs function, and makes more sense when things are replaced with new jobs. If a job is about how your culture functions, entertainers take a back seat. If it's how your society is organized and managed, bureaucrats do. If it's a mix, then you get a job that's a hybrid.

If entertainers still provide some amenities while bureaucrats provide a bit of unity, that also represents an interesting trade off. You can either cover your amenities with the more pop-intensive entertainers, which gives you a high unity society, or you fulfill your amenities efficiently with bureaucrats at the cost of lower cultural benefits. This also provides a place for culture workers: they're pure unity jobs provided by only a few sources coming from events or things like the Ministry of Culture. They're not something you can spam the way you can entertainers and bureaucrats.

 

[Shark7]

To me, Culture Worker = Educator. Heritage Site = museum, etc. I see them as all part of the educate your populace system.

Culture Worker left in could still bring unity, but also perhaps a Xenophile attraction as you learn about different cultures.

I also can't see bureaucrats bringing unity...they usually make things worse, LOL. No one likes Red Tape (with the exception of the bureaucrats).

As some one else pointed out, entertainers might be a good job for unity generation, with bureaucrats bringing in more amenities (after all, they are relatively good at keeping the trains running on schedule, etc.)

Propagandist would also be a good replacement for Culture Worker. A job with the sole purpose of generating unity through indoctrination. You could also add the new building type "Propaganda Center" or "Ministry of Truth" etc to generate the jobs.

Just my rambling thoughts on the matter.

 

[LekkoBot]

Militarist => Warrior poet

Bard maybe?

 

[Stardance]

I originally posted this in the beta feedback thread, and felt it would contribute to this discussion so reposting it here.

Before, I felt like I had a bit more choice. I could settle all these planets, but I could include some bureaucracy (admin planet) to help manage the colonies. It was a logical progression for long term peaceful development. Now I know there isn't a choice, just a penalty. I also miss the theme, 'this is my admin planet, culture/unity/artist planet, research planet, etc'. It filled a niche that there was a center of government, a sector capital, the loss of which would negatively impact sprawl / frontier worlds.

I don't know what the solution is, but I'd like to have some more player agency. Perhaps culture/politician workers could be a choice to help keep a 'tall' planet stable. Admin/clerk workers could be a choice to help keep 'frontier worlds' stable. Land management was always a big thing for bureaucracy, while those dedicated to representing or influencing the people (political leaders, cultural icons) lent a sense of stability and unity to the masses. Also every time I see the word politician, I wince. Perhaps political leader / community leader is too long, and words like 'representative' might not translate well, and there is a feeling administrator means something else, but there's got to be something better. Other synonyms: Legislator, lawmaker, public servant, statesman... I'll put this in a discussion thread.

 

[Franton]

I originally posted this in the beta feedback thread, and felt it would contribute to this discussion so reposting it here.

Before, I felt like I had a bit more choice. I could settle all these planets, but I could include some bureaucracy (admin planet) to help manage the colonies. It was a logical progression for long term peaceful development. Now I know there isn't a choice, just a penalty. I also miss the theme, 'this is my admin planet, culture/unity/artist planet, research planet, etc'. It filled a niche that there was a center of government, a sector capital, the loss of which would negatively impact sprawl / frontier worlds.

I don't know what the solution is, but I'd like to have some more player agency. Perhaps culture/politician workers could be a choice to help keep a 'tall' planet stable. Admin/clerk workers could be a choice to help keep 'frontier worlds' stable. Land management was always a big thing for bureaucracy, while those dedicated to representing or influencing the people (political leaders, cultural icons) lent a sense of stability and unity to the masses. Also every time I see the word politician, I wince. Perhaps political leader / community leader is too long, and words like 'representative' might not translate well, and there is a feeling administrator means something else, but there's got to be something better. Other synonyms: Legislator, lawmaker, public servant, statesman... I'll put this in a discussion thread.

It's a bit hard to comment without seeing the beta in action: only those having access and playing it really know what you're referring to (no beta access for GOG players, sadly).

But anyway, one of the changes I am most looking forward to is the removal of 100% sprawl compensation! I don't fully understand how it's been implemented now, but I feel anything that removes admin spam is an improvement.

Back in the time when we didn't have bureaucrats, and sprawl had a meaning, I had learned to optimize my empire for sprawl:
1. minimize number of districts:
- minimize districts by deliberately focus specific planets on just one type of district
- build mining/energy habitats to minimize the number of districts needed (3 workers per habitat districts insead of 2 on planets)
- build Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor to minimize the need for energy/mining districts
- Build Ring World food sectors to eliminate all planetary food districts (unless there's a planet with massive food output bonuses)
- and now: Build ECUs to cover all alloy and CG production

2. minimize systems:
- deliberately pick only systems that are actually valuable, long term: anything with a planet or habitat or (ruined) megastructure (incuding gateways and wormholes), systems with rare resources, and systems with tactical importance (e. g. choke points, or systems needed to obtain an uninterrupted trade route)
- if you picked systems with little value early in the game, check if you can gift them to another empire.
- consider releasing sectors with only 1-2 habitable objects and no interesting resources as a vassal (make sure to repair ruined gateways first if you intend to use them)

3. minimize sprawl from pops
There's little you can do abou that other than optimizing your output per pop:
- specialize planets
- create modifications to perfectly adapt the denizens on each specialized planet to the product of that planet; if needed, resettle some pops manually
- if you can spare a species trait, consider the one that reduces sprawl

4. plan your habitats and megastructures
(this is actually an extension to item 2 above, since this is mainly about optimizing the use of your systems)
- since you can only build one megastructure per system, and some have specific restrictions, make sure to make the best use of your systems: e. g. the Dyson Sphere and Ring Worlds destroy all resources and can't be built in inhabited systems, so build those in systems with low resource output. (e. g. those systems you have only picked for tactical rreasons, not for resources)
- habitats: make notes on any planets mith mineral or energy resources which are suitable to build habitats on. When planning megastructures, make sure to not place them in systems with such planets if they don't allow habitable objects.

I'm sure I need to rework that list with the current changes, but as you can see there is a lot you can do, and I appreciate the challenge to actually do all these things!