Was there talk at one point of removing Culture Workers?

[Liggi]

I vaguely remember it being mentioned in a dev diary that as part of an Admin Cap / Empire Sprawl rework, Culture Workers might be removed and Bureaucrats might become the primary Unity-creating job.

I can't actually find where this was mentioned, but I have a lot of concerns about that approach.

I realise that "Culture Workers" is a very vague and ill-defined concept, but "Unity" to me is conceptually a measure of how "together" your people feel to one another. How coherent and shared their culture is, and their values are. How similar their vision of the galaxy and their vision of their own future is.

For me, it would be totally incoherent to have Bureaucrats creating this in MOST empires (for some it makes sense, ie. Byzantine Bureaucracy).

I don't really have a better solution, but I don't remember hearing anything since those plans were talked about, and I'm really hoping that's not the direction that things are going.

 

[mammonmachine]

As far as I know, there is still a unity rework planned. The proposed removal of culture workers, and making bureaucrats the primary unity generators, was mooted as part of this. I don't know whether these plans have changed at all. I agree with you that removing culture workers wouldn't be great; their vagueness was mooted as a reason for removal, but this could easily be addressed through an identity such as 'artists' or 'curators'. I know Grekulf is attached to the idea of having massive administrative worlds; I felt this could still be achieved by having the Bureaucrat as a 'swap' for the culture worker if you have the byzantine bureaucracy civic.

 

[exi123]

I mentioned this in one thread or even the dev diary itself that we will lose a specialist job and have even less things to build and use.

I proposed some ideas like jobs to increase stability, ethics attraction and stuff like komissars, propagandists who serve the idea of my empire at a local scale, but got downvoted heavily.

 

[Franton]

I also remember something about culture workers in the context of a planned empire sprawl rework, but no idea where to start looking, nor do I recall any details.

That said, I would welcome a unity rework, because I always end up swimming in more unity than I need without a single active culture worker! There are simply too many other jobs providing unity, and too few uses for it. (one option would be to increase ambition cost with every use, just like picking another tradition does.)

 

[Pancakelord]

I vaguely remember it being mentioned in a dev diary that as part of an Admin Cap / Empire Sprawl rework, Culture Workers might be removed and Bureaucrats might become the primary Unity-creating job.

I can't actually find where this was mentioned, but I have a lot of concerns about that approach.

I realise that "Culture Workers" is a very vague and ill-defined concept, but "Unity" to me is conceptually a measure of how "together" your people feel to one another. How coherent and shared their culture is, and their values are. How similar their vision of the galaxy and their vision of their own future is.

For me, it would be totally incoherent to have Bureaucrats creating this in MOST empires (for some it makes sense, ie. Byzantine Bureaucracy).

I don't really have a better solution, but I don't remember hearing anything since those plans were talked about, and I'm really hoping that's not the direction that things are going.

Yeah, it was odd. I remember it too. They did frame it as a unity rework, not a culture or stability rework though (which I would like to see).

• Unity suffers from being irrelevant at the planetary level (stability),
• And Irrelevant at the empire wide level (there's no empire stability, derived from AVG planet stability or sector stability etc).
• The edicts it can create often come too late to matter.

Whilst sprawl/bureaucrats issues are well known and don't need re-treading.

I can appreciate they spoke in vague terms as it was early days - and anything is better than the current situation with bureaucrats/sprawl/science - whilst this rework might fix runaway science, I don't have high hopes that we'll see some actual cultural or internal-strife gameplay coming from this, too.

I imagined unity would lead to deeper civil war mechanics when it came in 1.5 alongside the faction rework. I'd personally love to see sectors fleshed out so that

• unity is a sector-wide resource (must be produced/consumed within that sector to apply)
• A sector with too low unity income vs output will
  1. slowly increase pop sprawl and crime
  2. if this persists (e.g. > 2yrs) it slowly drains planet stability, year on year up to some cap.
  3. Eventually leads to riots and (in non-capital sector) secessionists.

Some pops (unruly ones or unhappy ones, recently conquered ones, former primitives, or ones with high Political power) consume more unity passively.

• This would lead to annexation being a long term issue, which can't go away as easily. Either you:
  • segregate conquered pops - so they don't destabilise your other sectors, but deal with riots flaring up regularly or -output events (strikes etc)
  • Or enact costly 'integration' programs - spawning culture workers on relevant planets that must be worked by a happy pop.
  • or you resettle them across your empire, if it's big enough, to mitigate them.
• Sectors with high unity can get bonuses to supercharge their governors with a focus to certain outputs or actions (e.g. faster terraforming in that sector).
• Governors can become 'locked in' to their positions, refusing to be removed if unity is low - or may attempt a coup - a kind of constitutional/secessionist crisis.

 

[Franton]

unity is a sector-wide resource (must be produced/consumed within that sector to apply)

The main issue here is that currently, unity is not a consumable. You, the player, can use it to unlock traditions and edicts, but there is no actual consumption of unity - and that is one of the main reasons why it becomes irrelevant very quickly.

Maybe unity should replace CGs as upkeep for bureaucrats, and researchers might be changed to use 1 unity + 1 CG instead of 2 CG.

P.S.: I would argue that armies, ships, and soldiers, should also require unity as upkeep.

 

[Dragatus]

It was dev diary 215, reply #29: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...g-considerations.1478888/page-2#post-27607534

 

[Ikael]

As far as I understand, the eventual removal of culture workers was tied to a future extensive rework of admin cap, bureaucrats, and unity (two patches ahead, give or take). While there are few concrete details about it, the general gist of the idea was to make unity a necessity for wide empires, giving unity additional (internal) uses other than buying traditions (for example, needing to expend unity in order to assimilate foreign populations). It is one of these things that one has to see in action, in order to get a better feeling for it, I guess.

 

[Liggi]

The main issue here is that currently, unity is not a consumable. You, the player, can use it to unlock traditions and edicts, but there is no actual consumption of unity - and that is one of the main reasons why it becomes irrelevant very quickly.

Maybe unity should replace CGs as upkeep for bureaucrats, and researchers might be changed to use 1 unity + 1 CG instead of 2 CG.

I think it's always worth keeping in mind what something is supposed to simulate. I don't like the idea of Bureaucrats producing Unity because I don't understand how a Bureaucrat is causing an empire to become more culturally cohesive.

Likewise, I don't know why Bureaucrats or Researchers would consume Unity, either. Why would having more Researchers mean that an empire was less culturally cohesive?

This is my overall concern with removing Cultural Workers.

From the dev diary: "Angry Pops could potentially also have a Unity Upkeep Cost, to represent the drain on your society." <- this makes sense, because pops that are angry would reduce the cultural unity of their empire.

 

[Franton]

I think it's always worth keeping in mind what something is supposed to simulate. I don't like the idea of Bureaucrats producing Unity

Not produce - consume! I suggested Bureaucrats should require unity as upkeep (instead of CGs)

 

[Franton]

Likewise, I don't know why Bureaucrats or Researchers would consume Unity

Maybe not researchers. But considering how much people like Bureaucrats in real life, I'd say they do use up some of the unity.

I've added a P.S., suggesting unity as upkeep for military stuff - do you like this better?

 

[Liggi]

I feel like the things that should consume Unity are things like:

- POPs with vastly different ethics to the Governing Ethics (scaling with difference in ethics)
- POPs at distance from the Capital (scaling with increasing distance)
- POPs with low happiness
- Unhappy factions

etc.

 

[Pancakelord]

The main issue here is that currently, unity is not a consumable. You, the player, can use it to unlock traditions and edicts, but there is no actual consumption of unity - and that is one of the main reasons why it becomes irrelevant very quickly.

Maybe unity should replace CGs as upkeep for bureaucrats, and researchers might be changed to use 1 unity + 1 CG instead of 2 CG.

P.S.: I would argue that armies, ships, and soldiers, should also require unity as upkeep.

True. But it is coded as a resource (unlike Trade Value), and it's trivial to even mod in unity as a cost or upkeep cost for things.

The way I've always imagined it is that all sentient pops would require unity in upkeep, and their upkeep would scale with happiness

[(base_value +/- trait_mods) * happiness : or 0.5 if gestalt]

Whilst culture workers, artisans, bureaucrats and so on would produce unity as a from their jobs (perhaps scaled by governor traits or something on the sector capital).

Another way to look at it is like this:

• Pop CG upkeep scales with pop traits + habitability
• Pop Unity upkeep scales with pop traits + happiness

Armies and ships requiring unity is an interesting idea.

 

[Liggi]

True. But it is coded as a resource (unlike Trade Value), and it's trivial to even mod in unity as a cost or upkeep cost for things.

The way I've always imagined it is that all sentient pops would require unity in upkeep, and their upkeep would scale with happiness

[(base_value +/- trait_mods) * happiness : or 0.5 if gestalt]

Whilst culture workers, artisans, bureaucrats and so on would produce unity as a from their jobs (perhaps scaled by governor traits or something on the sector capital).

Another way to look at it is like this:

• Pop CG upkeep scales with pop habitability
• Pop Unity upkeep scales with pop happiness

Armies and ships requiring unity is an interesting idea.

I'm confused as to why armies and ships would require Unity upkeep. How does a larger military reduce the cultural unity / coherence of a people / empire?

 

[Franton]

- POPs at distance from the Capital (scaling with increasing distance)

Agreed on all points, specifically this one: I do think that Stellaris should work distance into more of its concepts! I dislike how it completely disregards the effort of moving resources and leaders across the galaxy, while fleets with the most advanced propulsion technology take years or even decades to achieve the same!

 

[Pancakelord]

I'm confused as to why armies and ships would require Unity upkeep. How does a larger military reduce the cultural unity / coherence of a people / empire?

I'm not sure what @Franton, whom I'd been referring to, had in mind, but my mind went to

• military ships producing unity if you're a militarist - and at war (against a sufficiently strong enemy/set of enemies) - and consuming it if you're at peace. (Encouraging you to fight if a militarist).
• Invert this for pacifists (so they gain unity from big fleets at peace and lose it from big fleets at war).

 

[Liggi]

I'm not sure what @Franton, whom I'd been referring to, had in mind, but my mind went to

• military ships producing unity if you're a militarist - and at war (against a sufficiently strong enemy/set of enemies) - and consuming it if you're at peace. (Encouraging you to fight if a militarist).
• Invert this for pacifists (so they gain unity from big fleets at peace and lose it from big fleets at war).

Woah, I LOVE the idea of Unity production / consumption by POPs being dependent on their ethics. That's fascinating.

- Being at war means your Militarist POPs produce more Unity
- Having a high proportion of Researchers to other jobs makes your Materialist POPs produce more Unity

And so on and so forth.

 

[Franton]

How does a larger military reduce the cultural unity

We may just have a different understanding of what unity means. In many 4x games, having a larger military causes unrest in the populace, and you need to do something to counter these effects. I interpreted consuming unity as a way to reduce these issues, in the sense of providing more culture to detract the people from the disturbing issue of managing a large military.

That said, as @Pancakelord suggested, how military interacts with unity may depend on various factors, such as whether you are at peace or not, or whetheryour militarist faction is strong.

 

[Ffc]

I mentioned this in one thread or even the dev diary itself that we will lose a specialist job and have even less things to build and use.

I proposed some ideas like jobs to increase stability, ethics attraction and stuff like komissars, propagandists who serve the idea of my empire at a local scale, but got downvoted heavily.

It's not a good game design to have specialist jobs just for the idea of having specialist jobs, it doesn't add much flavor.

Also, adding new jobs is a big task because you've to rethink how the game is balanced if those are common jobs; that's why the game use "job swap" with civics most of the time.

You could have a civic which add a building with propagandist which increase ethic attraction but it wouldn't be good in itself since ethic attraction isn't good.

And Nobles already increase stability

 

[evilcat]

Dont know anything about it, but it is welcome change.
Culture workers are just week as even amount of Unity they produce is minimal.
It is better to go for entertainers, and get ammenity in the process.
There are also some extra sources like traditions giving unity (defense, diplomacy) or spammin habitats (and capital building in each.