What do you think about edict upkeep costs?

[Franton]

Personally I hardly use edicts anymore, because none of them is worth the upkeep! E. g. in my current game (year 2297) I have 732 pops and 854 empire size. with an edict cap of 170 and a plus of 1625 unity/month. When I look at the edicts that offer no economy benefit, they're quite expensive, but it's difficult to judge whether these are worth a cost of several hundred unity or other resources. When I look at edicts offering economy benefits however, it becomes very obvious, they horribly overpriced (I'm going to evaluate the value of unity at 2 energy, because that is what trade policies do):

- Extended Shifts (+10% worker and slave output) - cost: 96 unity / month
I have no slaves, and my worker put out about 2500 base resources, with an average of about +150% to output, so a base of about 1000 resources, 10% of which would be 100. So I'd have to spend unity for base resources at a 1:1 ratio!
Benefit to cost ratio: 0.5
- Capacity subsidies: (+50% technician output, +0.5 energy upkeep per technician) - cost: 287 unity
Being Synth Ascended, my technicians produce a abse of 8 energy, plus 2 from Energy grid, if built. +50% output and +0.5 ipkeep means +4.5 per technician. Hwowever, I only have about 17-18 technicians according to the job output I see, so this edict would give me only about 85-90 energy over the current output!
Benefit to cost ratio: 0.15
- Mining subsidies: (+50% miners output, +0.5 energy upkeep per miner) - cost: 287 unity
I have about 55 miners each of which puts out 4+2 base with a Mineral purification hub, and therefore would produce +3 minerals each, at a cost of +0.5 energy. That's a total benefit of roughly +140
Benefit to cost ratio: 0.23
And the list goes on.

It doesn't get any better with edicts that cost other resources, and ambitions are even worse, costing 716 unity / month, each!

Obviously, I could use one or two of the cheapest edicts (e.g Extended Shifts) for free, but why would I ever want to use any of the others? And what is the point of edicts that cost 700 unity per month? Ok, there are a few that grant bonuses that you cannot get in any other way, e. g. the Architectural Renaissance and Will To Power ambitions. But beyond, that, it's pretty obvious that, IMHO, the editc costs need a balance check,

What do you think? Which edicts do you still use? Or how else do you deal with edicts?

 

[Starfury]

If going by trade policies, unity would be worth 4 energy, not 2.

The main problem with economic edicts is the same as with any other +x% modifier. There's tons of them, so any individual bonus is only worth a fraction of the advertised benefit.

Now, I don't think economic edicts should ever be "worth it" from a resource perspective alone. You're spending unity to push one aspect of your economy beyond its normal limit. But once you've passed a certain empire size, they're simply no longer worth it under any circumstance (maybe until you reach the point, where the only other use for unity is planetary ascension)

I think the economic edicts should be changed to have a much lower base unity upkeep but add unity upkeep to the affected jobs. Then the cost would be more in line with the actual benefit.

 

[fusei]

Any of the basic resource edicts is underwhelming, simply because producing basic resources is underwhelming. Usually around the start of my midgame I get my basic resources from my vassals, so every planet becomes an Ecumenopolis, which means it will either produce alloys or unity, this means I end up with a much higher unity production than you.

With that the edicts I usually use are:
Nutritional Plenitude (more pops)
Fleet Supremacy (more diplo weight)
Forge Subsidies (more alloys)
Bureau of Espionage (higher base intel; more diplo weight from envoy)
Diplomatic Grants (more diplo weight; more diplo weight from envoy)
Research Subsidies (more research)
Land of Opportunity (more pops)

A Grand Fleet (more naval cap; less ship upkeep)
Scientific Revolution (more research)
Will to Power (more influence for managing vassals, GC resolutions, etc.)
Architectural Renaissance (more mega structures)

 

[taltamir]

I play wide, I use some early game game edicts like map the stars. then they get too expensive so i turn them off until lategame where I finally finish my ascension perks and then I pour it into megastructures or extra influence.

I also use the engine gas edict pretty much always. As extra sublight speed is so freaking huge. it lets me intercept enemy fleets, and it also saves significant amount of time on travel. meaning i am conquering faster. more planets fall to me per year.

 

[gedsaro]

Also the bonuses you get for edict capacity are Really small to, you get a tiny amount for the level of your leader (maybe the leader level should be a multipler on whatever capacity you are getting from elsewhere? to make it actually mean something?).
a few (1-3?) techs i think give you something like what. 25?50? each? woo.
and uh... am sure there was somethigng else... oh right, i think there is at least one acension perk that gives a whopping what, 75? maybe it was even 100?But that doesn't scale for shit, after all,if you are actually using edicts enough to go over the capacity, that means each point of capacity is worth exactly 1! untiy per month, and you have a perk that is just giving then a flat 100(or whatever it is) unity per month? Thats pathetic(i think it does something else to, but not sure, wasn't enough to make me take it for sure)

So by end game i had capacity as high as what, a couple hundered? don't recal, maybe even 500?(i think thats overestimating) but by that point the cheapest edict is at least 300 unity a month,.