Was there talk at one point of removing Culture Workers?

[Liggi]

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.

I'm fine with it in theory, I don't have a strong attachment to them as a concept. My issue is really with Bureaucrats becoming the primary Unity-producing job. That doesn't make any sense to me conceptually.

If anything, what I'd like to see is something like "Academies", that produce jobs like representing Artists, Writers, Filmmakers etc. etc. as distinct from "Entertainers".

EDIT: On a related note, I hate the Autochthon Monument building in general. Why is a "monument to the first pioneers into space" the only place that people can do jobs related to cultural unity? That's... stupid. And also why do we have so many of these bloody monuments?

 

[GloatingSwine]

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

Yeah, though that just makes them green consumer goods.

Pops already have two or more upkeeps.

 

[Millbot]

Honestly, it makes plenty of sense for bureaucrats to generate unity. They tend to be the behind the scenes people that makes sure that all the decisions made are actually executed. High Lord Entertainer Bleabergsmth might be super popular but none of it's degrees are going to executed without an army of bureaucrats making sure that resources arrive on time and providing the plans to make those degrees happen. They ensure that a rulers ideas happens, so that the population continues to have faith in their government.

One thing I do look forward to with this rework is that I don't have to deal with useless monument buildings clogging on my society research early in the game. Granted, still wish the devs would do something about the bloat in engineering though. (Like can we split it in half or maybe make some of those techs things you choose early on in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, so there is less bloat in the tree?)

 

[exi123]

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

Its useless in the current enviroment, but with an expanded overworked system a neccesary tool.

 

[Liggi]

Honestly, it makes plenty of sense for bureaucrats to generate unity. They tend to be the behind the scenes people that makes sure that all the decisions made are actually executed. High Lord Entertainer Bleabergsmth might be super popular but none of it's degrees are going to executed without an army of bureaucrats making sure that resources arrive on time and providing the plans to make those degrees happen. They ensure that a rulers ideas happens, so that the population continues to have faith in their government.

One thing I do look forward to with this rework is that I don't have to deal with useless monument buildings clogging on my society research early in the game. Granted, still wish the devs would do something about the bloat in engineering though. (Like can we split it in half or maybe make some of those techs things you choose early on in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, so there is less bloat in the tree?)

I completely disagree. In what possible sense could bureaucrats said to be the primary force by which the cohesion of a people and of a culture is created. Unity unlocks traditions, and defines your empire. That being, at root, the work of bureaucracy is just nonsense to me.

 

[MatthewP]

I completely disagree. In what possible sense could bureaucrats said to be the primary force by which the cohesion of a people and of a culture is created. Unity unlocks traditions, and defines your empire. That being, at root, the work of bureaucracy is just nonsense to me.

I think the IRL translation would be that a bureaucracy allows the nation’s leadership to push it down the development path it wants. Not the only reasonable interpretation of how tradition trees work, but It fits the top-down model of how most things work in stellaris.

 

[Archon87]

I think a big part of what makes culture workers unappealing in the current meta is that there are too many ways to get unity in the game right now. Civics just add more ways. Administrators add unity, so any developed planet is going to have some unity production even if you put zero effort into creating unity. Most ruler pops add unity, really, and entertainers are just way more useful than culture workers, because they add amenities. Holo-theaters are much more economical to build because you can kill two birds with one stone (unity and amenities). As a result, I almost never build monuments nowadays, and I think that is a shame.

The culture worker job needs to stand out more in one way or another. One way that I would like to see is reducing the number of other sources of unity, and/or make culture workers a more potent source of unity. For example, remove the unity production from entertainers, and have them purely produce amenities. Or scale back the unity that ruler pops give. I don't much care for culture workers giving society research, honestly. I dislike imbalances in my science output, especially when they are caused by job design rather than luck in finding space deposits. I would love to see them bring back the different types of research labs though, so you could specialize in a specific type of research to make up for deficiencies.

 

[Liggi]

I think it should be feasible to play a "low-Unity" build.

It would look like a "looser" confederation of planets and populations that all consider themselves part of a single empire, but without a cohesive, binding vision of what their people stand for and what they want to achieve. But the variety in ethics could actually be useful, because it might allow your empire to be effective at doing a lot of different things, rather than more "focused".

 

[Liggi]

I imagine there being five primary concepts in Stellaris: Unity, Research, Military, Administration and Economy.

As an example, here's what I imagine various High Unity / Low Unity combinations looking like with those things:

• High Unity - High Research (Vulcans)
• High Unity - High Military (Citizen Service with high population buy-in)
• High Unity - High Administration (Byzantine Bureaucracy)
• High Unity - High Economy (Apple (or some company with a cohesive culture / vision)… IN SPACE)

• Low Unity - High Research (something a bit more akin to the scientific community on Earth, decentralised but consider themselves part of a larger “project”)
• Low Unity - High Military (a “Warrior Culture”. No cohesive vision of what they are fighting FOR or WHY they fight, but a desire to train and to fight)
• Low Unity - High Administration (I’m imagining something like a relatively decentralised empire with a highly efficient courier network)
• Low Unity - High Economy (a loose collection of business interests and companies that generate maximum profits, but with no larger vision)

EDIT: I feel like this approach allows for more interesting ways to play the game. If I don't HAVE to focus on all of these things, I can choose to focus on one or two for unique empire playstyles. So maybe I go Low Unity, but High Military and High Economy. In that case, I'm an empire resembling something like mercenaries (maybe Naval Contractors). Technology isn't that great, and they don't have a shared and cohesive vision, but their economic power allows them to sustain a large military, and that military is extremely effective. They may be using Level 1 Coilguns and basic shields and armour, but they have insane evasion, and their tactical ability / fleet size allows them to take on much more technologically advanced empires.

 

[mammonmachine]

On a related note, I hate the Autochthon Monument building in general. Why is a "monument to the first pioneers into space" the only place that people can do jobs related to cultural unity? That's... stupid. And also why do we have so many of these bloody monuments?

Yeah, that is ridiculous. It is a building back from the tile system days, where you could only have one of these per planet. If they do keep the culture worker (or something like it) it would be nice to see if reworked. I don't think they even need to change the artwork, just the name (along with the other stages... I mean who the hell upgrades a heritage site to a hypercomms forum?). Personally I would take 'heritage site' as the first step, and then go ->museum complex->cultural nexus or something like that. That would work with renaming the culture worker to 'curator'.

 

[Mastikator]

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.

I think in non-communist empires those would just be called "celebrities".

 

[ShamanMcLamie]

A really simple idea I have is make culture workers the in-between of entertainers and bureaucrats. Entertainers give only amenities and bureaucrats give only unity. The culture workers gives a mix of both. Not the most ambitious, or even elegant idea, but could be a simple solution to still having both culture worker jobs and bureaucrats.

 

[methegrate]

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

Perhaps this could be an ethics-based thing? Each ethic could have something antithetical to its nature that requires unity for upkeep.

For spiritualists, scientists could require a unity upkeep. For pacifists it could be fleets, while for militarists it could be envoys. (Even as spymasters, I feel like it works. Klingons may need spies, but that doesn't mean they respect them.)

I'm not sure if this can be cleanly mapped onto each ethic. There's some low hanging fruit, but what do materialists oppose? Or authoritarians? Maybe we could use leaders for some of these options, but except for scientists the answer would be to just not hire a leader if they get expensive. It could be an interesting mechanic if it did work though.

Personally, I've also liked linking unity to ethic-specific actions. Militarists should generate much of their unity from being at war, while pacifists should get it from being at peace. Materialists should get a unity boost when they make a scientific discovery, etc.

Again, you'd need to connect this with each ethic, but there I feel like the challenge makes more sense. Each ethic should have a clear, gameplay-oriented goal. If you can't answer the question of "what is an egalitarian supposed to do that would generate unity," I feel like the right move is to clarify egalitarians so that you can answer that question.

 

[TrotBot]

i don't have a problem with bureaucrats producing unity if i can run utopian abundant pleasure seekers without bureaucrats. give me something more utopian than bureaucrats for my unity, not sure if it makes sense for the living standard to be self-sufficient, but let me run a flavour swapped unity building that isn't bureaucracy if possible. like a forum for citizen participation, an agora for the space communist future. maybe unity producers should flavour swap based on your empire description, which itself is based on your ethics and authority.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

It would be a travesty for the flavor/RP aspect of the game if culture workers were removed. It would mean culture is a complete non-factor in terms of what populations get up to, when realistically, technologically advanced empires can spend MORE time on cultural endeavors.

Culture Workers should be buffed, not removed - or rather, Unity itself should be buffed, especially by making it relevant in endgame. Locking Marketplace of Ideas behind a tradition already went some way to make Culture Workers more relevant early on, but I expect with the Unity/Admin Cap rework that Unity will now be a truly vital resource, and that means Culture Workers have more reason than ever to exist. Maybe rename them to "Artists" if "Culture Workers" is deemed too vague, but for the love of the worm don't remove them.

If Admin Cap is going away to be replaced by Unity as the Sprawl-mitigating factor, then simply come up with something new to differentiate Culture Workers from Bureaucrats. Bureaucrats could give 2 Unity + Stability while Culture Workers give 3 Unity + Happiness for example. It doesn't matter if the difference isn't that big - no one plays Stellaris wanting a sleek, super-optimized game with all the fat trimmed. More flavor to choose from is better.

 

[Richard Dolder]

I completely disagree. In what possible sense could bureaucrats said to be the primary force by which the cohesion of a people and of a culture is created. Unity unlocks traditions, and defines your empire. That being, at root, the work of bureaucracy is just nonsense to me.

There's an academy that decides the french language.
And language is a huge part of how national identities are created.

It would be a travesty for the flavor/RP aspect of the game if culture workers were removed. It would mean culture is a complete non-factor in terms of what populations get up to, when realistically, technologically advanced empires can spend MORE time on cultural endeavors.

Entertainers exist.
And hey If you want a sci-fi culture where all the people lounge all day and only produce cultural endevours, hey rogue servitors exist.

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

Entertainers exist.
And hey If you want a sci-fi culture where all the people lounge all day and only produce cultural endevours, hey rogue servitors exist.

Entertainment is only the most superficial form of culture. If the main source of "culture" for all these space empires were holo-theaters, that might be a scathing parody of our current consumerism and vapid media obsession, but also pretty depressing. I want to play alien cultures that aren't like that.

 

[TrotBot]

some people have been talking of unity being cultural unity. i don't think it should be so narrowly defined, that is one aspect of unity which I'd be fine having mechanics for, but unity is also political unity, social unity, class divides should also play into undermining unity. a society of majority slaves should come with unity costs for example, and in unequal societies the gap between the highest living standard and the lowest should effect that cost. so running utopian abundance on a planet with majority slaves should cost enough unity to make cheesing utopian abundance that way uncompetitive. that strat, of only granting utopian abundance to some pops though it's meant to be the ultimate fanatic egalitarian lifestyle, should be roleplay only, not meta.

 

[Richard Dolder]

Entertainment is only the most superficial form of culture. If the main source of "culture" for all these space empires were holo-theaters, that might be a scathing parody of our current consumerism and vapid media obsession, but also pretty depressing. I want to play alien cultures that aren't like that.

What is culture?
Religion, Myths, Social fictions, music, aesthetics.....

Bout 4 of those fall under the heading of entertainment, the 5th definitively falls under unity.

Also stellaris is you know, vapid consumerist media.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I think more from a mechanical sense is that there are loads of different jobs that are "provide some Unity and X", especially with the planned sprawl change where you won't be able to pay down sprawl with admin cap any more, so bureaucrats would be out of a job otherwise.

It seems to me that culture workers, bureaucrats and priests could be swaps for entertainers based on civics/ethics the same way duellists are.