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Stellaris Dev Diary #102: Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we continue talking about the Apocalypse expansion and 2.0 'Cherryh' update, on the topic of Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions.

Edict Changes (Cherryh Feature)
There will be a number of changes coming to Empire and Planetary Edicts in 2.0 'Cherryh', with the aim of both making Edicts more attractive to use, and increasing the number of useful things players have to spend their pooled Influence and Energy resources on. Firstly, we have moved most of the edicts out of the Planetary Edict category, keeping only a handful of Edicts that are either about dealing with a specific short-term problem (such as Unrest-reducing edicts) or executing a long-term or permanent effect (such as Consecrated Worlds or the new Land Clearance edict given by Mastery of Nature). Instead, a number of these edicts have become Empire Edicts.
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Empire Edicts have also been changed to work in the same way as Planetary Edicts, with an upfront cost and a duration rather than a monthly cost. The reason for this is that we wanted to ensure players always have a use for their pooled influence - an empire that is not using that influence on expanding through Starbases or Claims will be able to boost their empire in a variety of ways, including powerful resource-boosting edicts such as Production Targets and Capacity Overload. We decided to move away from the monthly cost because players tend to shy away from monthly costs that bring them into a negative balance, even if they are consistantly hitting their stockpile cap, and so ended up using Empire Edicts far less than they could actually afford to.

To make managing and renewing Edicts less of a hassle, we have added a message when an Edict (Empire or Planetary) expires.
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Campaigns (Cherryh Feature)
Campaigns are a new type of edict added in the Cherryh update. Campaigns are edicts that are unlocked by the Planetary Unification technology and cost energy instead of Influence. They typically have fairly situational effects, and are meant to be an additional use for stored energy.
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Unity Ambitions (Apocalypse Feature)
Unity Ambitions is another new type of edict added in the Apocalypse expansion. These are extremely powerful edicts that last 10 years and cost Unity to activate. You will get access to Unity Ambitions after researching the Ascension Theory society technology, and activating a Unity Ambition has a dynamic cost that is calculated in the exact same way as the cost for unlocking a new tradition (though activating an ambition will not raise the cost of future ambitions/traditions). Unity Ambitions are meant to give a use for Unity after the player has unlocked all the traditions they want to unlock, and to ensure the resource is never completely without use.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll continue talking about Cherryh and the Apocalypse expansion, on the topic of Civics and Ascension Perks.
 
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Campaigns (Cherryh Feature)
Campaigns are a new type of edict added in the Cherryh update. Campaigns are edicts that are unlocked by the Planetary Unification technology and cost energy instead of Influence. They typically have fairly situational effects, and are meant to be an additional use for stored energy.

Is the cost of a campaign fixed or does it scale somehow with empire size? I'm worried that campaigns would either be too expensive for small empires or too cheap for larger empires. It seems like larger empires will get more benefit out of a campaign (e.g. more planets so more extra pops from increased growth rate).
 
I like that the edics are so powerfull now.

But to be honest I think the monthly costs were better than how it will now work. I think it will be annoying to have to constantly refresh the edicts now. It is annoying enough with the science curator buff already. I know why this change was made. However I don't think that you have to take the players by the hand that much. If a player doesn't want to go into negatives even if he is at max storage it is his fault.

Since I don't think you will revert back to monthly costs: Any chance there will be an "renew automaticly" button or at least the option to pay monthly as an alternative payment method instead?
 
@Wiz one question that I have since introducing planet destroyers weapons. Whit will be if I try use Planet Cracker on planet isolated by force field from another planet destroyer?
 
I like these changes, especially the empire-wide edicts. I'm a little sad about the unity edicts tho. It comes down to paying for having use of an excess resource.
 
You will get access to Unity Ambitions after researching the Ascension Theory society technology,
Does researching Ascension Theory unlock ALL of the Ambitions, or are they also tied to Traditions such that you have to have unlocked certain Unity trees trees to use certain Ambitions? For example, would I have to have researched Ascension Theory AND put points into the Discovery tree to be able to use the Scientific Revolution Ambition?
 
I hope there will be a popup/notification when edict runs out of time. More notification choices would be welcome.
 
I hope there will be a popup/notification when edict runs out of time. More notification choices would be welcome.

I think he said the following: To make managing and renewing Edicts less of a hassle, we have added a message when an Edict (Empire or Planetary) expires.

I believe that is the pop notification.
 
I think he said the following: To make managing and renewing Edicts less of a hassle, we have added a message when an Edict (Empire or Planetary) expires.

I believe that is the pop notification.

Well, that's what I get for not reading things very thoroughly. Thanks. And very good to hear.
 
Will there ever be a reason not to unlock all the traditions?

If the unlocked tradition penalty also applies for unity ambitions, then yeah, after 2.0 there will be. Unlocking domination if you have no vassals and never plan on gaining any will immediately and forever make the unity ambitions you might actually want (20 % more science? Yes please!) more expensive.
 
Probably has been suggested already, but how about adding an option to automatically renew Influence-spending Empire edicts when they have expired (and queueing them if there isn't enough influence yet)?
 
Nice changes, but there is still the Problem of Megastructures being available first when you do not actually need them anymore.

Especially the Science-Nexus is very much a roleplay-element for players that are trying to play tall in the first place.
In my last game, I didn't even have Access to Mega-Engineering before I unlocked most of the repetative Research options.
 
Surely a -50% unrest planetary edict is making it just a bit too easy to deal with planetary revolts? If you can get rid of 50% for a bit of influence, that means that unrest will only be a threat when you have just conquered a planet, and not a very creditable one then so long as you have enough influence. Unrest after you have conquered a planet will never reach 160 unless you do something very stupid.
 
The problem with using Unity for these edicts even after you have all traditions you want is that you still might want to unlock Ascension Perks, despite going down the undesirable trees to get them...unless how you get Perks is changing somehow.
 
Surely a -50% unrest planetary edict is making it just a bit too easy to deal with planetary revolts? If you can get rid of 50% for a bit of influence, that means that unrest will only be a threat when you have just conquered a planet, and not a very creditable one then so long as you have enough influence. Unrest after you have conquered a planet will never reach 160 unless you do something very stupid.

As far as I know unrest never was a problem on recently conquered planets and won't be in this patch either.
 
Surely a -50% unrest planetary edict is making it just a bit too easy to deal with planetary revolts? If you can get rid of 50% for a bit of influence, that means that unrest will only be a threat when you have just conquered a planet, and not a very creditable one then so long as you have enough influence. Unrest after you have conquered a planet will never reach 160 unless you do something very stupid.

As far as I know unrest never was a problem on recently conquered planets and won't be in this patch either.

There is an unrest mechanic in this game?

The answer is slavery: watching the stream, Wiz has been having unrest issues with his slaves for pretty much the whole game, (edit: including on his HW) and has already made use of the edict once or twice.

Flip it around: if you have to keep dumping 100 influence per planet to keep your slaves from revolting, it adds a decent cost to offset all the extra minerals you get.

Keep in mind you also cannot just drop some armies in place to keep unrest under control on recently conquered/high slave population planets: you have to devote tiles to fortresses in order to get an unrest reduction.