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Stellaris Dev Diary #221 - Balance and Quality of Life Improvements

Hey folks, I’m @Alfray Stryke, a member of the QA team for Stellaris. As part of the Custodians’ work on the 3.1 “Lem” patch, as mentioned in Dev Diary #215, the team has done a balance and Quality of Life pass on various features throughout the game and we’d like to highlight some of the more harder hitting changes. This is not a complete list of all changes, and may contain some not-final numbers. As a reminder, the changes to the Necroids Species Pack were covered in Dev Diary #216, and all of these changes will also be included in the Lem update.

Void Dwellers

We’ve been aware that the implementation of Void Dwellers of having two separate traits, one positive and one negative resulted in behaviour that we weren’t happy with - in particular being able to gene-mod the negative aspects of the trait out of existence. To solve this we’ve made some changes to how the traits work:

  • There is now only a single Void Dweller trait, so it can’t be exploited via genetic modification of your species.
  • The modifiers on the trait itself have changed, previously it gave:
    • +15% Resources from Worker and Specialist jobs & -10% growth speed (for the positive version)
    • -60% growth speed (for the negative version)
  • The new version of the trait is now:
    • +15% Pop Resource Output on Habitats.
    • -15% Pop Resource Output on Non-Artificial Worlds.
    • -10% Growth Speed
    • -30% Happiness on Non-Artificial Worlds.

Void Dweller.png

The new, improved, Void Dweller trait with its modifiers.

What this means is your Void Dwellers pops are most productive and happiest on habitats, have their bonuses removed on ringworlds and have production and happiness penalties if they settle on planets (best to leave those for immigrants or robots!)

Shattered Ring

So before you grab your plasma-pitchforks (yes, plasma-pitchforks are canon now), rebalancing the Shattered Ring origin is something the team has been discussing for a while. We’ve gone through various iterations on decreasing the initial power of the origin, while keeping the player fantasy that it provides in mind and eventually settled on having the progression of the Shattered Ring resemble that of the Remnants origin.

Shattered Ring.png

The Voor Technocracy, showing off the Shattered Ringworld Segment as a homeworld.

The shattered ring itself supports the following district types:
  • City, Hive & Nexus - housing depending on your empire type.
  • Industrial - where valuable consumer goods and alloys can be manufactured.
  • Trade - where clerks turn a tidy profit and artisans run their workshops.
  • Generator (not pictured) - where hive-minds and machine intelligence power their infrastructure. Note that Generator and Trade districts swap depending on the owner of the Shattered Ring, much like Commercial and Generator Segments on a ringworld.
  • Agricultural - where food is grown for those that eat it.
  • Mining - more on that in a moment...

Once all the rubble has been cleared out, there’s space for 25 of these districts.

So you might be wondering, “Are those mining districts on my ringworld? What am I mining?”

Well dear reader, the answer is the ring itself!

Mining District.png

Mining districts, aka tunnels filled with valuable minerals and alloys.

As a civilization that has only known life on the ring prior to achieving spaceflight, the only resources available to you were those that made up the ringworld itself. Luckily ruined ringworlds are massive and can spare some missing broken materials without falling into their local sun.

As such your mining district on the shattered ring replaces the regular miner jobs with scrap miner jobs with a base job output of 2 minerals and 1 alloy per month.

Of course, as was alluded to above, we wanted the progression for the shattered ring to resemble that of the relic world from the Remnants origin. So once you’ve cleared all the debris from the shattered ring and researched the appropriate technology you can repair it into a fully functioning ringworld segment.

Repair Shattered Ring.png

Of course, sometimes a bit of home repair work needs to be done.

Upon completion of this monumental task, the districts on the shattered ring are upgraded into their respective ringworld districts at a 5:1 ratio - so 5 agricultural districts become 1 agricultural segment. Since fixing up the ring means you’ll no longer be clearing out material, the mining districts are removed and the ability to construct research segments is added.

Ecumenopolis QoL Changes

Something we’ve received a lot of feedback on is that when a world is transformed into an Ecumenopolis is the assignment of industrial districts.

Prior to 3.1, all of the industrial districts were assumed to be devoted to alloy production and thus converted into foundry arcologies. No more, in 3.1 industrial districts will convert based off of the planetary designation:

  • With the “Foundry World” designation, industrial districts will convert into foundry arcologies, at a 2:1 ratio
  • With the “Factory World” designation, industrial districts will convert into factory arcologies, at a 2:1 ratio.
  • With any other designation, including the “Industrial World” designation, industrial districts will convert into both foundry and factory arcologies, at a 4:1:1 ratio.

Relic World.png

Earth, a bygone relic of a time long past, ready to be restored anew.

Ecumenopolis.png

Earth, restored anew! Note that the local governing algorithm did not assume all industrial capabilities should be focused on supporting the Custodianship Navy.

Another change we’ve implemented is the Arcology Project ascension perk and decision to restore relic worlds into ecumenopolises is now accessible to Rogue Servitors. In addition, the leisure arcologies that would normally be present have been repurposed for housing bio-trophies in luxurious towering arcologies.

Sanctuary Arcology.png

Pampering will be provided at Floor 314, Room 15 at 9:26 am.


Assorted QoL Changes

As mentioned above, the planetary designation for consumer goods has been renamed to Factory World, because we’ve added an Industrial World designation.

Industrial Designations.png

Multiple planetary designations for your various needs

The new Industrial World designation is ideal for planets where you don’t want to focus the Industrial districts on a single job type, instead providing a minor upkeep discount to both Artisan and Metallurgist jobs.

Industrial World.png

Industrial World Designation

Both Hive Worlds and Machine Worlds have gained an additional bonus to bring them more in line with Gaia Worlds. Hive Worlds now have +1 innate Spawning Drone job and Machine Worlds now have +1 innate Replicator job. The Machine World given by the Resource Consolidation origin starts with a blocker which will need to be cleared to unlock the Replicator job.

Hive World.png
Machine World.png


Subversive Cults (MegaCorps with both Gospel of the Masses and Criminal Syndicate) no longer have access to the Temple of Prosperity. Instead, they can now establish a Subversive Shrine in their branch offices - increasing both Spiritualist ethics attraction and crime on the planet.

Subversive Shrine.png

Subversive Shrine Tooltip.png

Subvert expectations with deals so good they’re criminal!

With that I’ll pass things over to @Gruntsatwork to discuss some of the changes we’ve made to civics!

----

Hello everyone. I am one of Game Designers currently working on Stellaris and on the Custodian Team. While we have been busy with radical changes here and there, new civics and origins, we also wanted to have some more tame but no less important balance changes for our already existing civics, specifically for our outliers and those we felt under- or especially over-utilized.

The following lists all the civics we felt needed a substantial lift up
Regular Empires
  • Beacon of Liberty: Gave +15% produced Unity -> Now ALSO also gives -15% Empire Sprawl from Pops
  • Imperial Cult: Gave +1 Edict cap -> Now gives +2 Edict cap
  • Idealistic Foundation: Gave +5% Happiness -> Now gives +10% Happiness
  • Environmentalist: Gave -10% Consumer Goods Upkeep -> Now gives -20% Consumer Goods Upkeep
  • Parliamentary System: Gave +25% Faction Influence -> Now gives +40% Faction Influence
  • Efficient Bureaucracy: Gave +10% Admin Cap -> Now gives +20% Admin Cap
  • Nationalistic Zeal: Gave -10% War Exhaustion Gain and -10% Claim Cost -> Now gives -20% War Exhaustion Gain and -15% Claim Cost
  • Functional Architecture: Gave -10% Building and District Cost, -10% Building and District Upkeep and +1 Building Slot -> Now gives -15% Building and District Cost, +2 Building Slots, Upkeep reduction removed
Hive-Minds
  • Subspace Ephase: Gave +15% Naval Capacity -> Now gives +20% Ship Speed and ALSO gives +15% Naval Capacity
  • Divided Attention: Gave +10% Admin Cap -> Now gives +20% Admin Cap
Machine Intelligences
  • Constructobot: Gave -10% Building and District Cost, -10% Building and District Upkeep and +1 Building Slot -> Now gives -15% Building and District Cost, +2 Building Slots, Upkeep reduction removed
We hope those changes, while strictly number tweaks, will give those civics a breath of fresh air and increase their appeal to the wider player-base because, “oh, shiny new numbers” is one hell of a drug.

Now sadly, only strengthening the civics we felt undervalued or under-used doesn’t solve all issues, so we also introduced some slight nerfs to the 2(3) biggest offenders in terms of being “must have” civics.
  • Slaver Guilds : Reduced enslaved population from 40% to 35%
  • Indentured Assets: Reduced enslaved population from 40% to 35% (Megacorp civic)
  • Technocracy: Added 1 Consumer Goods upkeep to Scientist Jobs that create unity because of Technocracy

As you can tell, for the slaver guild civics, this change is relatively minor, compared to the Technocracy nerf. The goal here is to make those 3 civics slightly less good. We have no intention of nerfing them into the ground. Our goal here is to move them from “the best pick, every time” to “could be best pick, depending on circumstances”.

We will be following your feedback here and over all other platforms very closely as well as our own telemetry and we will keep adjusting and tweaking the civics as we go on.

As an extra note, we know that there are several other civics that definitely need a pick me up, we will be looking into them as well, but not for the Lem update.

That’s everything from us this week! Thanks for reading and we’ll be back next week diving into more changes in the Lem Update.
 
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When I say "button", I'm using that as an analogy for the fact that it doesn't take any pops. Researchers are not a "button", because it takes a pop as upkeep, effectively. Comparatively, the bonus CG->Unity of Technocracy doesn't use any extra pops. There is no pop as upkeep, hence it's a button. Yes it's still tied to pops, but increasing pop throughput, even at a lower rate, is worth it.

And I fully agree that culture workers are a horrible job. That's the main benefit of technocracy, you never have to build a single one of them.

I was trying to avoid doing math with modifiers, but doing it that way just misses too much. We'll completely ignore unity production, but have the technocracy empire with the additional tradition tree of prosperity (realistically Technocracy has more than a 50% increase in unity production, compared to only incidental unity).

Researchers get +13% to job production, however due to pretty high base production bonuses it turns into around 8% effective. So for 100 technocracy researchers, the other empire needs 108. Technocracy, each researcher has an upkeep of 1.8 CG (-20% tech world, -20% tradition) for a Toal of 180 CG. At 6.78 production per artisan, you need 26.55 artisans. At 4.8 upkeep per (-20% factory world), that's 127.44. At 6.32 minerals per miner (+50% other bonuses, +8% prosperity), we end up with 20.16 miners. Altogether 100+26.55+20.16 = 146.71 pops.

For the normal empire, we start with 108 researchers to match Technocracy. Upkeep of 1.2, so 129.6 CG. With only 6CG per artisan, you need 21.6 artisans. Same upkeep on the artisans, so 103.68 minerals. At 6 minerals per miner, that's 17.28 miners. Altogether 108+21.6+17.28 = 147.4 pops.

Except it gets even worse for the normal empire. Assuming around 30 pops per planet on average, these ~150 pops take 5 planets. That's an additional 6.25 researchers worth of science. And with more planets for food, energy, alloys, more minerals, admin cap, etc. that's more science directors. With the 50 labs and 23 districts needed to supply jobs to pops, -10% upkeep saves another pop of energy (or much more, if you need to use higher level labs or produce rare resources).

Yes, technology is heads and soldiers above unity. But unity isn't worthless, and getting unity for a minor increase of upkeep means you can grab the traditions which support your economy, and thus your research.

And yes, the increased upkeep is minor when you consider all the actual things you are paying for a researcher. For each researcher you need half a lab (-1 energy), half a building slot for that lab (~0.5 exotic gas), 1 food, 1CG as pop upkeep, and 2 CG as job upkeep. Assuming 1 exotic gas = 5 CG = 10 energy = 10 food (base prices on the market), that's a total of 6.5 CG. Adding an additional 1 CG to that isn't a 50% increase in upkeep, it's a 15% increase in upkeep.
Your button analogy is rubbish and didn't prove anything because every wasted CG can be turned into research or alloys, one way or another, you just wiggling around with it.

Its not about culture worker being a horrible job, its about unity being horrible investition.

You just picked one modifier that is convenient to you, thats why you use bare jobs for this, without any modifiers, must i tell you how much it will be with all modifiers added. The only thing that matters for technocracy is ratio of research directors to researchers, not researchers to researchers, because then technocracy loses from day 1, i already calculated how its compare and you would have knew it if you read my comments at all, and if normal empire somehow got 20 researchers per one 1 RD technocracy has, then technocracy is in the deep shit.

And yes, the increased upkeep is minor when you consider all the actual things you are paying for a researcher. For each researcher you need half a lab (-1 energy), half a building slot for that lab (~0.5 exotic gas), 1 food, 1CG as pop upkeep, and 2 CG as job upkeep. Assuming 1 exotic gas = 5 CG = 10 energy = 10 food (base prices on the market), that's a total of 6.5 CG. Adding an additional 1 CG to that isn't a 50% increase in upkeep, it's a 15% increase in upkeep.
And for artisans and miners you don't need energy upkeep for buildings, advanced resources and building slots? Food - isn't even part of this, and so is market, technocracy doesn't affect them, pop upkeep though increases technocracy efficiency, but marginally, and doesn't fix its problem. And don't forget 1 additional civic that isn't wasted on technocracy.

You are plainly ingnore everything i said in regard to upkeep and pop efficiency, you don't read my comments, you don't even try to understand what im saying, you just think how to present me with same BS in different wrapping every comment, because you just don't want to accept that unity doesn't make for lost research and technocracy falls off because any pop efficiency gained is temporary and shrinks into liability the more researchers you accumulate.
 
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Calculations made with academic privilege, decend conditions more effective then AP

normal empire
(11 pops)3miner > 2A > 6R > 72 research / 3 unity
8.75 extra CG > +1.46A and 2.1875M x 0.25 = 0.54CG > 4.1875 extra pops
15.1875 pops > 72 rp / 3 u

technocracy with RD
(13.5 pops) 4.5M > 3A > 6R > 87 research / 6 unity
10.125 extra CG > +1.69A and 2.53M x 0.25 = 0.63CG > 4.85 extra pops
18.35 pops > 87 rp / 6 u

15.1875/18.35 = 0.828

72 x 0.828 + 15 = 74.6 rp for technocracy with same amount of pops

15.1875 pops of /normal empire 39.5% researchers /technocracy 32.7% researchers

normal empire
15.1875 x 0.395 = 5.999
5.999 x 12 = 71.98
16 = 75.84
17 = 80.58
18 = 85.32
19 = 90
technocracy
15.1875 x 0.327 = 4.966
4.966 x 12 + 15 = 74.59
16 = 77.78
17 = 81.7
18 = 85.6
19 = 89.5

New results: normal empire (19 pops, 7.5 of them researchers ) outproduced technocracy (19 pops, 6.2 of them researchers and 1 RD) in research by 0.5 RP. If living standarts kept at decent conditions wich are more efficient then AP, then efficiency ratio will be further shifted towards normal researchers.
 
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Your button analogy is rubbish and didn't prove anything because every wasted CG can be turned into research or alloys, one way or another, you just wiggling around with it.

Its not about culture worker being a horrible job, its about unity being horrible investition.

You just picked one modifier that is convenient to you, thats why you use bare jobs for this, without any modifiers, must i tell you how much it will be with all modifiers added. The only thing that matters for technocracy is ratio of research directors to researchers, not researchers to researchers, because then technocracy loses from day 1, i already calculated how its compare and you would have knew it if you read my comments at all, and if normal empire somehow got 20 researchers per one 1 RD technocracy has, then technocracy is in the deep shit.


And for artisans and miners you don't need energy upkeep for buildings, advanced resources and building slots? Food - isn't even part of this, and so is market, technocracy doesn't affect them, pop upkeep though increases technocracy efficiency, but marginally, and doesn't fix its problem. And don't forget 1 additional civic that isn't wasted on technocracy.

You are plainly ingnore everything i said in regard to upkeep and pop efficiency, you don't read my comments, you don't even try to understand what im saying, you just think how to present me with same BS in different wrapping every comment, because you just don't want to accept that unity doesn't make for lost research and technocracy falls off because any pop efficiency gained is temporary and shrinks into liability the more researchers you accumulate.
The trouble with using bare jobs is that it gives different results. And when you are playing, you don't have bare jobs, you have modifiers. Yes, if you treat unity as worthless then of course paying an extra CG for nothing will result in you having fewer researchers. The reason I've been ignoring what you've been saying about upkeep and pop efficiency is that you've just been wrong: the 2 CG researcher upkeep is not the only upkeep of the job. The fact that you've been getting around 15% fewer researcher with your math shows that my estimates of pop efficiency are more accurate.

You do need energy upkeep for districts and buildings. Check the wiki or check in game, I promise it's there. Technocracy doesn't effect food or market directly, but traditions do: traditions you'll be getting faster with technocracy.

My last post was more primarily showing the benefits of the Prosperity tree, with the assumption that a technocracy would be able to grab 3 tradition trees in the time it take a normal empire to grab 2 (discovery and Supremacy, the only goods according to you).

I'm not saying Technocracy is a good civic now. Meritocracy certainly out-classes it. I'm just trying to point out the civic isn't actively detrimental to your empire. Yes, on the face of it (assuming a fully optimized empire), you loose a little science compared to without, as you've repeatedly shown. But the bonuses you gain from traditions give enough amplification to your researchers to more than make up for it.
 
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I'm just trying to point out the civic isn't actively detrimental to your empire. Yes, on the face of it (assuming a fully optimized empire), you loose a little science compared to without, as you've repeatedly shown. But the bonuses you gain from traditions give enough amplification to your researchers to more than make up for it.
Why not just build culture workers instead of using technocracy? Culture workers are more efficient at producing unity anyway with the recent changes. Basically they’ve crippled technocracy, it would have been better if they just removed the science director effect of technocracy rather than removing technocracy.
 
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Meta is dead, all hail the meta!

Perhaps in 3.3 we will see Technocracy changed to be more like Merchant Guilds -- no bonus to Researchers, but you get +x Unity from your Science Directors.

Also with Discovery Tradition every Research District now produces 1 Science Director.

(All hail the meta!)
 
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Why not just build culture workers instead of using technocracy? Culture workers are more efficient at producing unity anyway with the recent changes. Basically they’ve crippled technocracy, it would have been better if they just removed the science director effect of technocracy rather than removing technocracy.
From culture workers, two pops turn a total of 4 CG into 6 unity. With technocracy, you can have those two pops be a a miner and artisan and get 6 CG, which then combine with the base 4 upkeep to turn into 10 unity (from your researchers, which you should be stacking).

Culture workers are still just bad. Unity as a whole is better in 3.1, but it's better to get it from other sources.
 
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The trouble with using bare jobs is that it gives different results. And when you are playing, you don't have bare jobs, you have modifiers. Yes, if you treat unity as worthless then of course paying an extra CG for nothing will result in you having fewer researchers. The reason I've been ignoring what you've been saying about upkeep and pop efficiency is that you've just been wrong: the 2 CG researcher upkeep is not the only upkeep of the job. The fact that you've been getting around 15% fewer researcher with your math shows that my estimates of pop efficiency are more accurate.
Really, different results with bare jobs? And with modifiers that benefit your point of view not? When you are playing, you can get all the modifiers idiffirently of your civics, thats why equations has to be done with core values, or all possible modifiers you can get without events. Researchers income after all modifiers throughout game is 50%-200% extra research points, most modifiers and multipliers come from tech.

My math shown technocracy to fall off later, nothing else.
You do need energy upkeep for districts and buildings. Check the wiki or check in game, I promise it's there. Technocracy doesn't effect food or market directly, but traditions do: traditions you'll be getting faster with technocracy.
And if you check my comments you will see that i never said they don't, i promise it's there.
My last post was more primarily showing the benefits of the Prosperity tree, with the assumption that a technocracy would be able to grab 3 tradition trees in the time it take a normal empire to grab 2 (discovery and Supremacy, the only goods according to you).
Unity in expense of research and alloys, extra traditions in expense of tech or ships.
I'm not saying Technocracy is a good civic now. Meritocracy certainly out-classes it. I'm just trying to point out the civic isn't actively detrimental to your empire. Yes, on the face of it (assuming a fully optimized empire), you loose a little science compared to without, as you've repeatedly shown. But the bonuses you gain from traditions give enough amplification to your researchers to more than make up for it.
Everything outclasses it, because continues to provide its benefits throughout whole game, however miserable they are, no other civic makes you overpay with time.
 
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You don't understand. You don't get any free pops because you need them in CG production, multiply amout of artisans needed to cover expenses by 50% too. Wich is more important is that unity doesn't matter, research does, you won't want to have extra unity, you want extra research, that what i meant when i wrote about people too fixated on unity it gives, unity was just addition to research, this civic doesn't need unity. You get exact same amout of research for 50% cost, that makes technocratic researchers lose to normal ones, technocracy literally made worse for science, thats not reasonable at all, we don't need to replace culture workers, just let them do their job and researchers their's, and that with CW job being bad on itself, entertainers give you unity at better ratio and ameneties on top. Ofcourse you can argue that technocracy can be civic that gives unity at expense of research, but that will be differences of opinions.

And i don't know how you calculated extra 2 pops per 6 researchers, but that even worse than what i thought, 2 pops that could have made extra research or alloys per 6 researchers. Maybe you meant 1 pop? But that still not worth it. And if discovery traditions apply that won't make difference because they apply to everyone and gap between technocracy and normal empires remains same, and discovery tree is too good to not pick it.
So, most of what you said just isn't accurate.

1) You do get extra pops as technology improves -- you get the same Unity out of those Researchers as you get from 2 Culture Workers, but it requires a miner and an artisan. As your mineral production and CG production improves, that ratio will improve, reducing pop usage. It's also reduced if Discovery traditions apply to the extra CG cost - I haven't tested that yet.

2) Unity matters. Unity always matters, but it absolutely matters when getting to the end game. Traditions provide useful bonuses that help you build your empire. This notion that something doesn't matter if it doesn't give you a huge end-game bonus is nonsense. You have to get to the end game. And even then, you need Unity for end-game super edicts.

3) So, let's go over the numbers:
  • Culture workers cost 2 CGs for 3 Unity and 3 Society research. No one gets Culture workers for Society research - it's all for the Unity.
  • Entertainers cost 1 CGs for 2 Unity and 10 Amenities. That's less pop effective, but costs fewer CGs.
  • So, getting 6 Unity requires 2 Culture Workers and 4 CGs, 3 Entertainers and 3 CGs, or 6 Researchers and 6 CGs, or 4.8 with Discovery Traditions
    • I'm going to assume that one of the first things you'll get as a Technocrat, to maximize your early game Tech rush (and, incidentally, reduce the penalty of the Civic) is get Discovery Traditions. Your mileage may vary f you don't.
  • Now, we're going to want those 6 Researchers anyway, so they're effectively a 0 pop cost - we're looking for more Researchers, not less.
    • We don't want any Culture Workers, and we don't want to get extra Entertainers just for Unity.
    • Thus, we're getting back 2 pops for 0.8 CGs, or 3 pops for 1.8 CGs.
    • The extra cost us ~0.27 pops for 0.8 CGs, or 0.6 pops for the 1.8 CGs. We net gain ~1.73 pops, or 2.4 pops, who we can invest in more Research. That's with modest buffs to get 6 minerals per miner and the base 6 CGs per Artisan. Additional production bonuses will make the exchange rate even better.
  • We we actually lose with the nerf is the additional free pops for getting CG-free Unity: 4 CGs or 3 CGs. We're losing, at most, an extra ~0.67 free pops above and beyond the 1.73 pops.
 
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So, most of what you said just isn't accurate.

1) You do get extra pops as technology improves -- you get the same Unity out of those Researchers as you get from 2 Culture Workers, but it requires a miner and an artisan. As your mineral production and CG production improves, that ratio will improve, reducing pop usage. It's also reduced if Discovery traditions apply to the extra CG cost - I haven't tested that yet.

2) Unity matters. Unity always matters, but it absolutely matters when getting to the end game. Traditions provide useful bonuses that help you build your empire. This notion that something doesn't matter if it doesn't give you a huge end-game bonus is nonsense. You have to get to the end game. And even then, you need Unity for end-game super edicts.

3) So, let's go over the numbers:
  • Culture workers cost 2 CGs for 3 Unity and 3 Society research. No one gets Culture workers for Society research - it's all for the Unity.
  • Entertainers cost 1 CGs for 2 Unity and 10 Amenities. That's less pop effective, but costs fewer CGs.
  • So, getting 6 Unity requires 2 Culture Workers and 4 CGs, 3 Entertainers and 3 CGs, or 6 Researchers and 6 CGs, or 4.8 with Discovery Traditions
    • I'm going to assume that one of the first things you'll get as a Technocrat, to maximize your early game Tech rush (and, incidentally, reduce the penalty of the Civic) is get Discovery Traditions. Your mileage may vary f you don't.
  • Now, we're going to want those 6 Researchers anyway, so they're effectively a 0 pop cost - we're looking for more Researchers, not less.
    • We don't want any Culture Workers, and we don't want to get extra Entertainers just for Unity.
    • Thus, we're getting back 2 pops for 0.8 CGs, or 3 pops for 1.8 CGs.
    • The extra cost us ~0.27 pops for 0.8 CGs, or 0.6 pops for the 1.8 CGs. We net gain ~1.73 pops, or 2.4 pops, who we can invest in more Research. That's with modest buffs to get 6 minerals per miner and the base 6 CGs per Artisan. Additional production bonuses will make the exchange rate even better.
  • We we actually lose with the nerf is the additional free pops for getting CG-free Unity: 4 CGs or 3 CGs. We're losing, at most, an extra ~0.67 free pops above and beyond the 1.73 pops.
Unity also got a whole lot better in 3.1, since you can now just ignore the four worst trees.
 
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I do believe the best quick and dirty fix to 3.1.0 technocracy is having it give scientist an extra +1/+1/+1 to science production. It makes them more expensive but better in a worthwhile tradeof.
 
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I do believe the best quick and dirty fix to 3.1.0 technocracy is having it give scientist an extra +1/+1/+1 to science production. It makes them more expensive but better in a worthwhile tradeof.
According to Stefan (who is a very experienced Stellaris player, and the maker of the previous go-to Civic tier list), It's still a solid B-Tier civic. It doesn't need a buff whatsoever. Giving it +1/+1/+1 would be absolutely insane, making it even more broken then it was before.

CQZgT59lVL1rjXDIPKop21TujR6e70dJM4S1ZxnXWEK9K6i7Xtjd0BaM3z1c-PiRx-dUQVB0WCxt=s1600-nd
 
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I do believe the best quick and dirty fix to 3.1.0 technocracy is having it give scientist an extra +1/+1/+1 to science production. It makes them more expensive but better in a worthwhile tradeof.
The technocracy is already good civic, they are simply no longer overpower like they used to which is fine.

So no need to buff them back to be overpower unless your goal isn't to have balance civic but op civic so that you can cheat legally.
 
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I'd like to see Technocracy nerfed by reducing the Unity per researcher to 0.5 (or 0.33 if half is too much), and not need higher upkeep.

I don't like the increase in upkeep, but it could use a nerf relative to where it was in 2.8
 
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I'd like to see Technocracy nerfed by reducing the Unity per researcher to 0.5 (or 0.33 if half is too much), and not need higher upkeep.

I don't like the increase in upkeep, but it could use a nerf relative to where it was in 2.8
Personally, I think I prefer the extra CG upkeep to just a smaller amount of unity. It makes the civic play differently (at least a little), as opposed to just getting free unity while you tech rush as normal.
 
According to Stefan (who is a very experienced Stellaris player, and the maker of the previous go-to Civic tier list), It's still a solid B-Tier civic. It doesn't need a buff whatsoever. Giving it +1/+1/+1 would be absolutely insane, making it even more broken then it was before.

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I think stefan’s wrong here, because technocracy means you can’t spam research so will always be behind.
 
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I think stefan’s wrong here, because technocracy means you can’t spam research so will always be behind.
Nah technocracy means you can spam research and don't need to bother with culture building but still out science and out unity non technocracy empire after 3 labs onward I think.

With same CG cost (academic privilege Vs academic privilege) or marginally higher (Vs other living standard that's not academic privilege or utopian abundance) or actually lower if you pick discovery tradition.

Though they will have a bit of unity problem in very early game due to swapping one administrator to science director and need 3 labs to be on par with normal empire that build unity building but after that technocracy will left them in the dust.