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Stellaris Dev Diary #129 - Tradition Updates

Hello everyone! Today you will be able to enjoy yet another Stellaris development diary, so that the drudgery of ordinary life gets momentarily replaced with excitement and joyous anticipation. As promised we will continue by detailing the features in the free 2.2 'Le Guin' update, and the topic will be the traditions and how they have been updated to work with our new game systems.

As per usual I of course have to reiterate that we're not yet ready to reveal anything about when 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ is coming out, and that images may contain placeholder art, interfaces and non-final numbers.

Lets get started then! Updating the traditions was of course a necessity with the reworked economy, but a secondary objective was also to make the themes of each tradition tree be more well-defined. A tradition tree should stick to a theme or a playstyle, while also making sure the bonuses are as unique and fun as possible.

Expansion
The Expansion Traditions are themed around colonizing faster, growing a large population, and generally having a large empire.
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Domination
The Domination Traditions are no longer focused around vassals, but are instead focused around reducing crime, better workers and slaves, and better rulers and governors.
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Prosperity
The Prosperity Traditions are themed around improving planets and making specialists better.
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Harmony
The Harmony Traditions are themed around sustainability, amenities, and stability.
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Supremacy
The Supremacy Traditions are themed around domination of space. You will be able to field larger fleets and upgrade more starbases, while both of them will also be stronger.
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Diplomacy
The Diplomacy Traditions are themed around federations, the galactic market and trade.
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Discovery
The Discovery Traditions are themed around research and space exploration.
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That covers most the traditions and how they have been updated to the new system. As you saw, some of them still have some work that needs to be done. They are also still prone to change and numbers are non-final and all that.

Tune in for a short stream today where I’ll be talking some more about the traditions, and perhaps showing up some the more unique traditions for gestalt empires and purifiers.

Next week we will continue to mercilessly tease you about the upcoming update by showing some of the New Technologies, so make sure to mark it in your calendars!
 
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While I'm happy at the new stuff we're getting with the updated and reworked traditions I'm a bit saddened that the Supremacy tradition tree no longer gives bonuses to armies. :(

Still they're continuously working on the traditions so it's possible that somewhere armies will still get bonuses.

Plus there are always mods!
Did you see the +army damage in the opener?
 
So.... discovery is still the best tree to take first.

That research bonus is too good, lets you snowball real fast.

Well, the expansion tree gives you 6% less of every cost in there, science included, if you grow to a size where it's relevant.
So 10% more research vs 6% less research cost and more
 
So no new trees? I was really hoping you guys pulled a page from EU4 with a "traditions update".

Most of the trees are even blander than before. Far too many traditions are outright useless or so small that you don't even notice it.
 
More balanced overall, and a couple of interesting effects such as the lower downtime between jobs, but still, quite weak effects and not too much roleplaying possibilities. Perhaps someday we will get mutually exclusive trees, I wonder...
 
A New Life -tradition in Expansion.
"A new life" has been a colonisation recruitment pitch propably since the colonization of America.

Also that Tradition was there since Traditions were introduced in 1.5. Same Tree. Same Position.

I noticed nothing about Vassals. Will that go away or is it just default we can demand vassals or Tribute?
The same way it worked all those version before Traditions were even introduced and locked it (and Federation) away.

So no new trees? I was really hoping you guys pulled a page from EU4 with a "traditions update".
This is a planet Update. Feature Creep is a think that applies fully to patches.
They even explained why they are not doing that in the Stream of today.
 
Couldn't help but notice that you guys seem to have removed all effects that gave more unity. Is there any particular reason for that?
They talked about that in todays stream.
 
Couldn't help but notice that you guys seem to have removed all effects that gave more unity. Is there any particular reason for that?

There are living standard that you can enable and generate even more unity from unemployed population.

Throwing 10% on top of that would most likely make the other living standard mediocre or worse.
 
Sooooooooo.... Space Unicorns when?





And will there actually be a Stellaris Dev Clash? Been looking forward to one since you mentioned you were working on a multiplayer observer mode...
 
Paradox makes another step towards its grand stratergy singularity, wherein you can start as a system full of dust during star formation, sculpt your star and planets, seed the first life, watch it grow to sentience then take control of one single piece of it and expand its influence around the planet then out to the stars. Space mongols are dlc
 
I have to admit, I was really hoping that the Tradition system was going to get an overhaul/upgrade along with the planet system (although, in hindsight, there was really nothing to suggest this was in the pipeline, just my wishful thinking I guess).

Thus, I was initially pretty disappointed by this whole DD, because the "new" Traditions are just a translation (with, to be fair, some very nice balance improvements) of the old Traditions so that it can work with all of the other new mechanics. Once I put to the back-burner my dreams of (IMO *much* needed) significantly deeper Tradition choices (both in category and in number of choices w/in each category), I am pretty happy with all of these changes. However, like Federations, the Tradition system still feels like a pretty bare-bones placeholder for the kind innovative, challenging, and strategic game-design being implemented now for planetary management. There are a number of mods with great ideas (though unbalanced). "Expanded Stellaris Traditions" has 48 Tradition trees (including swaps for machines/FP/DE/etc.). Playing with 7 in vanilla just feels empty and sad =( , because every empire gets the same bonuses, and every empire gets *all* the available bonuses .... every. single. game. This makes empires feel the same, and it makes games feel the same no matter what empire I'm playing. Traditions also seem like the obvious place to make tall-play genuinely viable.

I really hope the Tradition System will be expanded in future updates/DLC. I guess I'll just hope the Tradition Mods get updated sooner rather than later.

Very glad to see the unity production removed from Research, and very glad to see special buildings no longer gated by Traditions.

And .... still incredibly hyped for 2.2 and all of the impending awesomeness.
 
"A new life" has been a colonisation recruitment pitch propably since the colonization of America.

Also that Tradition was there since Traditions were introduced in 1.5. Same Tree. Same Position.
Like I said, it could have been there but I haven't noticed.
If I search that quote even without anything about offworld, pretty much only thing that comes up is that bit from Blade Runner. Heck, even "golden land of opportunity" brings only that, (and a meme) even though that I believe has been said about America?
 
Why are people so obsessed with the idea of mutually exclusive tradition trees? I think a much better system would be to have mutually exclusive perks within a given tradition tree. That way you can design a much more fine-grained empire.

Also I think this update to traditions is very reasonable, given that the 2.2 update is already so big. Prior to making radical changes to traditions, I think its necessary to see how the new mechanics work in practice and to get the community's feedback on them. The tradition system should piggyback on the core mechanics, and hence it would be foolish to change both too much in one go. The current change is mostly to make traditions compatible with the new mechanics, and to address minor concerns, such as the existing problem that many tradition perks cost unity to just give you more unity.
 
Domination should be re-named.

Perhaps to Stability or Social Cohesion or ?

Authority. It should be renamed to authority

There are a number of mods with great ideas (though unbalanced). "Expanded Stellaris Traditions" has 48 Tradition trees (including swaps for machines/FP/DE/etc.). Playing with 7 in vanilla just feels empty and sad =(

Personally, I don't like the idea of "many for the sake of many". 48 seems too many IMO, I filled 7 traditions between me starting out in standard galaxy to ending the crisis, that sounds about right.
 
So we do get an arbitrary administration cap on our Empire... I already hated that we were limited in our core worlds and now thats seems solved we get a cap on our whole Empire instead. And not even going tall will solve this as its calculated in a way that tall is only slightly better off than wide players...
That is the first thing I dont like in the upcoming update, and think it extra annoying. First thing I will do is either get a mod to remove it or worst case make one myself.