Why Aptitude traditions don't work that well for leader focused strategies

[Zentay]

In my view, the most important thing for a leader focused strategy is having long-lived leaders with high experience bonuses who pick the good traits and avoid the weak ones. That means we want "additional leader trait options +1, lifespan and experience bonuses.

The Aptitude tree offers no "additional leader trait options +1", and only a 10% experience bonus, and only +10 leader lifespan bonus.

The main benefit of the tree is lower leader upkeep, +1 leader capacity, +1 leader pool size, -1 negative traits and an extra random trait on newly hired leaders. These are useful bonuses but don't seem good enough to compete with other traditions trees. There is one exception: the -2% empire size per governor is gamebreaking and I assume will be changed so I ignore it in my analysis.

The Aptitude finisher (leaders start with an extra trait) is not retroactive. If you start with a long-lived species then your existing leaders will not benefit from it. The ruler in under one rule also doesn't benefit. That feels bad.

I think Aptitude traditions would work better if the finisher was an additional trait pick that was also retroactive, and there was a "additional leader trait options +1" somewhere in the tree, and it offered more competitive lifespan and experience bonuses.

 

[Harvey_James]

maybe just add the +1 when u adopt instead and maybe split the upkeep bonus between adopt and completing it

 

[Aerophobius]

here is one exception: the -2% empire size per governor is gamebreaking and I assume will be changed

You're correct:

[*]Aptitude Tradition "Champions of the Empire" now gives bonus per Leaders' levels.

• Effect is now a flat -2 Empire Size per Governor level, and 0.5% Exp per Scientist level and 2 Naval capacity per Admiral/General level.

I think Aptitude traditions would work better if the finisher was an additional trait pick that was also retroactive

I think the additional trait pick being retroactive might be at odds with the way the leveling system works. Requesting a new trait for a level 10 leader might just add another veteran trait, while a level 3 leader would get a basic trait. But that's conjecture, we would need a dev to confirm or deny that. However if a basic trait was added to existing leaders (maybe even nodes), that would indeed be nice.

and there was a "additional leader trait options +1" somewhere in the tree

This would also introduce more trait options for gestalts, which I would appreciate a lot. Not sure if they were skipped intentionally to make node-quality more random though.

 

[ShandoKhan]

I think you miss the Agenda of that tradition: Every leader revieves 1 lvl up until lvl 4, above lvl 4 he recieves 2000exp.
Which means, you can lvl up your leaders way faster than someone who doesnt have that tradition.

 

[Zentay]

I think you miss the Agenda of that tradition: Every leader revieves 1 lvl up until lvl 4, above lvl 4 he recieves 2000exp.
Which means, you can lvl up your leaders way faster than someone who doesnt have that tradition.

One can unlock the Aptitude tree to use it. The rest of the tree is a bit weak to justify completing it when considering the alternatives.

It's also difficult to say how good that agenda is in comparison to alternatives. A leader focused strategy does not mean that one should prioritize leaders above everything else. I would probably prefer to run the unity, or stability, or council expansion agendas before one that gives leader experience.

 

[ShandoKhan]

Sure, but the Agendas have all cooldown. And with with lvl up agenda, you passively increase the speed to get Agendas ready.

 

[XCodes]

10% experience bonus is the new standard for experience bonuses. I guess the devs thought that nerfing one of the most useless modifiers in the game in two separate ways was a good idea. The fact of the matter is that since experience required to level scales geometrically and these utterly useless bonuses scale linearly, you're going to wind up driving yourself crazy trying to find and stack all the experience gain bonuses you can... and wind up being a single level ahead of the curve compared to an empire that doesn't bother. Sometimes. Unless you have a crazy long starting lifespan, it's just not worth pursuing, and even with a crazy long lifespan you get more than enough just picking up the free stuff.

The stats you want are lifespan and reduced maximum negative traits. While this tree only has +10 years, it's still something, and it has the reduced maximum negative traits, which is fantastic. The real draw of the tree is the Council Agenda, though. 2000 experience is +1 level at most levels. Is everything else meh? Yeah, sure, but that's every tree, really. Even Prosperity has a couple stinkers. Nobody cares about -5% job upkeep or +1 housing per city district.

 

[moyang]

Yeah, the bonuses in Aptitude tree is really bad.
For example, Discovery has flat +25% leader experience gain, and another +20% for scientists. And those traditions come with another benefit.
Meanwhile, Aptitude have meager +10% without another bonus.
And +10 years leader lifespan is just bad when Harmony have +20 years and -1 negative trait in 1 tradition. I don't know what devs were thinking.

I would like rebalance like this:
Opener: +1 Leader Starting Traits (Finisher moved to opener, so you can actually get its benefit early in the game)
The Empire Needs You: Same effect, but swap place with The Empire Needs You.
Psychological Profiling: -25% leader upkeep (Opener effect moved to here)
Healthcare Program: −1 Leader Maximum Negative Traits, +25 Years Leader Lifespan (Merged with Psychological Profiling, and buffed)
Specialist Training: +33% Leader Experience Gain (Buffed, Maybe just give +50%)
Champions of the Empire: Leaders get a bonus trait point upon reaching level 3 and 5. (Rework, you get to choose a normal trait and a veteran trait)
Finisher: +1 Leader Capacity and +1 Leader Pool Size (Same bonus as The Empire Needs You)

 

[XCodes]

It's always funny when people disagree with Math.

Being a Governor or being a Councilor gives 5 exp per month. That's basically as good as it gets, although exploring scientists will get more experience in the early game but we'll handwaive it because not all tradition bonuses will be active for a while into the game, anyway. Let's use each tradition as an example to calculate some relatively real benefits assuming that we're going to get 55 working years (45ish is a bit more common, but the first lifespan tech isn't all that hard to get during your first 'generation' of leaders). Leaders will gain XP at the following rates:

Scientists will gain 3xp per month plus 5xp more if they're a Councilor.
Governors will gain 3xp per month plus 5xp more if they're a Councilor.
The Ruler will gain 5xp per month as a Councilor. They can't do anything else, so they're stuck there.
Admirals and Generals will gain 5xp per month as a Councilor and dick squat otherwise unless you go to war. Sucks to be these guys.

Now, let's compare the results of taking various traditions first.

Baseline: Head Scientist will hit level 4 before dying by a decent margin. Ruler, Head Admiral, and Capital Governor will all be lucky to hit level 4.
Discovery: Head Scientist will barely hit level 5 before dying, Ruler, Head Admiral, and Capital Governor will be solidly level 4.
Domination: As baseline, except Ruler and Capital Governor will be more solidly level 4.
Supremacy: As baseline, except Head Admiral will be more solidly level 4.
Harmony: As Discovery (!) if not Necrophage (noteworthy as Necrophage is a good origin for a leader-oriented strategy).
Aptitude: As Discovery, assuming you hire a second Scientist.

Let's do something goofy, now. Let's *double* the experience you get for all your leaders. +100% experience bonuses. Don't care how, just magically make it happen. How do they compare to all these?

Head Scientist will die at level 5, Ruler, Head Admiral, and Capital Governor have a remote possibility of reaching level 5 before they die, but probably won't.

That's how bad experience bonuses are compared to Lifespan bonuses. 10 years of lifespan is as good as 30% of experience bonuses in small amounts, and in large amounts experience is going to have a barely perceptable effect while lifespan prevents the case where a leader dies and has to be replaced with a level 1 scrub. Granted, that gets adjusted a bit when you have *extremely* long-lived leaders like Ascended Clone Soldier Lithoids or pretty much any Necrophage, but when you have extremely long-lived leaders, minimizing the negative traits they can pick up becomes *much* more important as a leader that lives for 150 years and picks up a negative trait in the first 10 is going to be dealing with that negative trait for a *very long time*. Therefore, that -1 maximum negative trait becomes *extremely important*. Then, on top of that, you get to look at Leadership Conditioning -- the Agenda granted by the Aptitude Tradition. In addition to the passive 10% experience gain, Leadership Conditioning will, when fired, provide half again as much experience to any Councilor as they would earn over their lifetime -- presumably itself also adjusted by experience gain bonuses. As a result, it's kind of just the best experience gain tree.

It's an utter waste of time to stack experience bonuses. Either stack lifespan or prepare to accumulate a large amount of lifespan immediately after your "first generation" of leaders die so that they're all level 4 by 2300 (useful if you're on 0.5x tech speed and that's your midgame year).

 

[GhostDanny]

Admirals gain experience for piracy suppression.

General's really should be able to get experience from crime suppression.

 

[moyang]

[snip]

Simply not true. Experience bonuses allow leaders hit higher level faster, so they become useful earlier. Getting a couple of level 4 scientists(researcher class) helps a lot, and Discovery tradition helps this with +45% exp and increased survey speed.
Also it's easy to keep those first leaders until the end of the game if you go non-psionic ascension, as they have its own way to extend lifespan. If you go psionic you have to be bit careful but it's not that hard to keep leaders alive.
Negative trait prevention could be good, as some of negative trait is very nasty. But also some of them has very low impact - its RNG nature makes hard to evaluate this perk.

 

[XCodes]

Simply not true. Experience bonuses allow leaders hit higher level faster, so they become useful earlier. Getting a couple of level 4 scientists(researcher class) helps a lot, and Discovery tradition helps this with +45% exp and increased survey speed.
Also it's easy to keep those first leaders until the end of the game if you go non-psionic ascension, as they have its own way to extend lifespan. If you go psionic you have to be bit careful but it's not that hard to keep leaders alive.
Negative trait prevention could be good, as some of negative trait is very nasty. But also some of them has very low impact - its RNG nature makes hard to evaluate this perk.

It takes 37.5 years for a Councilor Scientist to reach level 4 with baseline xp, 25.9 years for the same scientist to reach level 4 with Discovery traditions, and 32.9 years for the same scientist to reach level 4 with Aptitude traditions, assuming you have 2 Scientists total. In fact, since you have +1 leader cap from Aptitude, what you can really easily do is hire an extra Scientist around 2235 or so and just have them shoot lasers at a planet for 32.5 years. After that 32.5 years, your primary scientist will be right around the age they catch a sudden case of death and your backup will step in and have a head-start on their experience, hitting level 4 in 20.9 years -- not only out-performing Discovery, but out-performing it by a lot.

It's also worth noting that this application of leader experience gain faces *severe* diminishing returns, as you can see above. 14% knocked 4.6 years off the retraining time on a replacement leader. The next 31% knocked only 7 years off the retraining time after that. The next 55% after that will only take away 7.1 years, and the next 100% after that will take away about 6.3. It's also deeply inconsequential as a well-structured empire will eventually have backups for each leader on their council who will start at higher and higher level as the council lives longer and longer, and then in turn also live longer, themselves.

After the first 25% or so, Leader Experience Gain is, Mathematically, a terrible and useless stat.