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Stellaris Dev Diary #275 - Bless Thy Soul

Hello everyone!

It’s been a busy few weeks here on the Stellaris team, and I wanted to thank the community for helping us out so much with the 3.6 Orion Open Beta.

There was significantly more activity than anticipated - during the month of October, over 100,000 players took part in the Orion Open Beta branch - and the volume of feedback we received was incredible. The 3.6 update should be much better thanks to your involvement.

We have a few more fixes that we’d like to get into the update (such as vassals colonizing Holy Worlds), after which it’ll go through the final testing, localization, and release process. As mentioned last week, we’ll be keeping the Open Beta branch available until the live release of 3.6 Orion so you can continue your games.

I’ll now pass you over to Mr.Cosmogone, who will provide a bit of enlightenment about one of the features that has been in the Open Beta, but hasn’t gotten a proper dev diary thus far. (Now, with non-placeholder art!)

Raising Spirits

Peace be upon you, children,

Mr.Cosmogone here, to tell you about the upcoming Spiritualist Federation. I had the chance to collaborate on this with the famous Caligula who had long yearned for a way to share his spiritual convictions with his allies.

Some of you may have already had a chance to play this as part of the ongoing Open Beta, they might not find anything new here, but for the rest of the faithfuls, let me introduce to the Holy Covenant:

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Spiritualist empires will find this new federation type to be quite aligned with their gamestyle, as it will provide them with a range of bonuses about unity, priests and the spiritualist faction.

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Their level two perks will help lay strong foundations for your church:

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While the third level will help you on your way towards ascension:

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At the fourth level, priests will start appearing left and right to carry the good word.

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The fifth and last level of the federation will be a consecration for its members:

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Like all federation types, the Holy Covenant comes with a unique succession challenge, the conclave, where the most pious are assured to be rewarded. Or perhaps the most generous. Money is the root of all sins after all, so you might as well give it away.

That’s it from me this week, and remember if you want to play all the cool things we’ve talked about over the last few weeks, go play the beta!

To opt-in to the Open Beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Betas tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.
 
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Is the effect on Spiritualist ethic attraction applied by every Envoy, or only Envoys assigned by my Empire?

In other words, if my Empire sends 2 Envoys to the Federation, and my fellow covenanters send a total of 3, do I get +40% ethic attraction, corresponding with 2 Envoys, or +100% attraction, corresponding with the total of 5 Envoys assigned to the Covenant?
 
Looks like a B or C tier federation, does not even compare to some other federations, the effects on 2nd and 3rd levels are always most important because they help you survive early game.
+10% unity output is okay but you are going to be making a lot of unity anyway with or without it.
The envoys generating more cohesion is useless since it's very easy to keep it at 100 anyway, the spiritualist attraction isn't that impactful when you have other things that can help promote spiritualists.
There is probably more important things to make your pops work then being culture workers of all things, but maybe it's different in 3.6
The voting strength is negligible when there are usually more useful galactic resolutions to pass in the beginning anyway.
The trade policy sounds interesting but it's at level 3, still it might be the only reason to use this federation if the numbers are good or you are just better off using the trade federation instead.
The Planetary Ascension buffs are nice but you are better off spending unity on traditions in the first century so it's hardly useful until late game.

Also we don't know what centralization the federation fleet needs, my guess is that it's like Galactic Union/Trade League, which isn't bad but it's not as good as Martial Alliance/Hegemony fed fleets.
 
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The idea is really nice.
But the decriptions read extremly "meme" to me. Not very immersive but more written for the laughs to be honest. A road Stellaris has taken to an extend for quite some time, but never was so obvious as with those describtions.

Also, as with so many "new" things, the Bonuses are extremly powerfull compared to other federation types, which have a lot of worthless bonuses on top of the lower numbers.
 
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But the decriptions read extremly "meme" to me. Not very immersive but more written for the laughs to be honest. A road Stellaris has taken to an extend for quite some time, but never was so obvious as with those describtions.
I don't see what you mean? The descriptions are very devoted in nature, but I don't see how they're "written for the laughs".

Also, "never more obvious", may I introduce you to the Blorg? Or the Metalheads personality type?
 
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I still don't get why Neutron Sweep is unavailable to Spiritualists.

It's the weapon used by the Holy Guardians fallen empire. And it's a perfect weapon for "cleansing" the planets of heretics.
That's not so bad.
If they had Neutron Sweep, they would suffer from the ghost pop upkeep bug too.
 
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Not to bleak. not to fancy. A wellcome addition.

But missed opportunity is definitely the auto casus belli against the Machine somewhere along the line.
 
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Two questions-

-Will this new Spiritualist Federation have any impact on faction approval? IE, will the spiritualist faction get a happiness benefit?

-Can you clarify what the trade conversion ratio of the new Trade Policy is?
 
Two questions-

-Will this new Spiritualist Federation have any impact on faction approval? IE, will the spiritualist faction get a happiness benefit?

-Can you clarify what the trade conversion ratio of the new Trade Policy is?
1 trade = 0.5 energy + 0.5 unity (at least in the beta)
 
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-Will this new Spiritualist Federation have any impact on faction approval? IE, will the spiritualist faction get a happiness benefit?
Yes, they get +5% approval. And they get -10% from having a research federation.

-Can you clarify what the trade conversion ratio of the new Trade Policy is?
0.5 energy and 0.5 unity per trade value.
 
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-40% delve cooldown(Federation+Tradition Finisher) is significantly more micro and EC cost.

Does anyone else have a hard time making Federations due to excessive AI vassalage?
 
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