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Stellaris Dev Diary #297 - Leaders, The Council, and Agendas

Eladrin posting on behalf of the Arctic Team.

Hello everyone! I’m XM, the lead designer of Galactic Paragons. From the beginning of development, we’ve followed one simple mantra - make leaders matter. What you are going to read about in the following paragraphs are the results of months of work following that direction.

Watch the Video Dev Diary:
Wishlist Galactic Paragons now!​

Reducing Leader Count

For leaders to start being significant, there needed to be a lot less of them. With this goal in mind, we removed the research scientist positions currently in the game, and combined them into a single “Head of Research” Council position (we’ll talk in more detail about the Council later). We also allowed leaders to perform Council duties while maintaining their field positions. These changes dramatically reduced the number of leaders you need to keep track of.

The lower leader count also enabled us to make them a lot more powerful.

Improved Role-playing

To deepen the emergent narrative weaved with these new heroes, we’ve improved upon the leader interface to give you better insight into their past and how they came into service. You can see their homeworld, previous job, and even their ethical alignment.

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There are so many more improvements we’ve made to leaders that I want to share with you, but I need to cede my time here now to my amazing design team, who are smarter than I am, and can better explain their areas of development in more detail.

The Council

Greetings from Karl, designer at Arctic! I’m here to talk about some of the features that I’ve been responsible for in the upcoming Galactic Paragons DLC; however, none of them would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of my beloved colleagues.

The Empire Council is the heart of your government. Every game the Council starts out with 3 seats; for your Ruler, Head of Research, and Minister of Defense.

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Eladrin strongly approves of this council's species portrait.

Each position gives a unique Empire bonus that scales with the skill level of the assigned leader. For example, the Head of Research provides 2% Research speed per level.

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With Galactic Paragons, we have also added a lot of new traits. Some of these traits are Council Traits, which are applied to your entire Empire but only if the leader is on the Council (more on Traits further down). This way you get to decide which bonuses you want active, by switching Councilors. To get as many bonuses as possible, you will also want to expand your council…

Unlockable Council positions

Everyone will have access to the basic council. But if you have Galactic Paragons you’ll be able to unlock 3 more positions for your Council throughout the game. What positions you’ll have access to maps directly to your Civics. As an example, the Idealistic Foundation Civic enables the Tribune of Rights Councilor.

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Thus we have added no less than 95 unique Council positions for the Council to match your Empire’s design, and make it look and feel different every time you play. Including unique Ruler bonuses depending on what kind of authority you have. For example the stronger an Imperial Ruler becomes, the more Power Projection they generate.

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For the kind of Empire you are running to stand out even more, we’ve crafted unique Council screen backdrops for each of the Authority types.

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Council Agendas

Another important feature for the Council is that they pursue an Agenda that you set for them. The moment you assign an Agenda to the Council it gives a small bonus, but it takes several years before it’s ready to be launched and you get the full effects from it. This requires you to be somewhat strategic in your planning, if you for example expect a war.

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You can only pursue one Agenda at a time, but once an Agenda is finished you gain the full benefits for another 10 years. The more Councilors you have and the higher their skill level, the faster you can complete an Agenda; while for a huge empire it takes a bit longer to finish.

At the start of the game, you have very few Agendas to pick from as they are tied to the Ethics of your Empire. But if you have Galactic Paragons you will get a new Agenda for every Tradition Tree you unlock. These are all tied to the theme of the traditions. This might incentivize you to go wide with Traditions rather than finish them one at a time.

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The Gestalt Council

We felt that the Council feature didn’t sit that well with the Gestalt fantasy, but also didn’t want these players to feel completely left out. Now Gestalt players can directly level up and design not only the Ruler, but 4 new Nodes of the consciousness too. They are a little less flexible, but are on the other hand immortal!

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Leaders Reworked

Hi everyone! It’s me, Marek, your new fancy (self-appointed title of course) and barely known (I guess I should talk more on forums, like Offe) Content Designer from the Northern office. I will try to warm the climate with some hot takes on our upcoming features from Galactic Paragons.

So, prepare your tea, coffee, or anything really - and let’s dive deep into the new systems and features, both free and paid.

New Level Up System

For those who choose to forgo Galactic Paragons, your level system will look fairly similar, with a few changes.
  • All leaders will be capped at level 10
  • Leaders will always get trait every 2 levels (starting from level 1), for a total of 5 traits
  • Every trait will be randomized from Common trait pool
  • There will be a new tiered trait system: Common traits and Negative traits will have 2 tiers each

As you see, the Free Patch leaders will still be more powerful than before (having a total of 5 traits), but the Galactic Paragon leaders will achieve a power level of over 9000!

For those who choose to embrace the Galactic Paragons, the leveling system will give far more flexibility:
  • Leaders get new trait pick every level
  • Players can choose the trait from a randomized pool that is based on class, veteran class and ethic.

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  • On level 4, leaders will get to choose from Veteran Class which give access to different types of Veteran Traits (every class has 3 Veteran Classes, which are centered around different bonuses and their leader actions). Each veteran trait has 3 tiers.
  • On level 8, leaders will get a one time Destiny Trait pick. This powerful trait represents a leader finding its destiny within the galaxy.

Potential level 10 leader with Galactic Paragons:

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I bet you don’t know what I’m talking about with the Veteran and Destiny thingies…

My god it's full of… Traits

For owners of Galactic Paragons, there will be almost 700* (we decided to stay humble with the number) traits, including tiered versions. There are a bunch of new free Common traits, but the bulk of new content is gated behind the DLC.

* Some traits may require other DLCs. Number includes tiered traits.

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Some of the new traits

To get into a bit more details about new traits, they are divided into 3 categories, Common, Veteran, Destiny.

Common traits:

The one that comes with Free Patch (most of them are updated versions of old traits). They are the “bread and butter” for Free Patch players, as leaders will be getting them every 2 levels. For DLC owners, they represent the first 3 levels for the new Leaders and their journey to power!

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I guess it should have a doggo as an icon?

Veteran Traits:

Veteran traits are available only to players with Galactic Paragons DLC. They will cover every level from 5 to 10, and (as mentioned before) their pool for a given leader is dependent on leader ethic and their Veteran Class. They are more powerful than Common traits.

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New fancy effects for leader actions? Yes, please!

Destiny Traits:

Destiny traits are One-Per Leader (in most cases, as sometimes leaders might get event based Destiny traits too!) and they represent the peak of this given leader - as such, leaders get the destiny trait on Level 8.

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What is this, even? The more species, the better the trait? Madness!

Small disclaimer: Gestalt leaders operate slightly differently - rather than gaining Destiny traits, they have more Veteran picks than non-Gestalts. They do not have individual destinies like the standard empires do!

Leaders Reworked - Veteran Classes

Veteran Class is a paid feature from Galactic Paragons, and it allows you to customize your leaders more. Every leader will get to choose from 3 Veteran Classes on level 4, bringing the number of Veteran Classes to 12.

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Each of the Veteran Class will focus on different aspects of the Leader. Let’s take Scientists for example, which can choose from Explorer, Analyst and Researcher Veteran Classes. Picking the proper Veteran Class is paramount to utilizing your leader in a way that you want them to fulfill. For example, Analyst Leader will get Veteran Traits centered around Assist Planetary Research action, while Researcher will get Veteran Traits focused on the Council.

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Veteran Class Icon as seen on the left side of the leader - Level 1 Admiral for comparison.

Negative Traits

Let’s also mention the small detail of Negative traits. Every leader is randomized with Negative trait potential. The bigger the potential, the more (and faster) negative traits will accumulate on this given leader. With luck, you will find leaders with 0 negative potential, but you never know what it will be until your leader suddenly comes home with a new set of negative traits and starts to steal your resources to open up a new casino in his basement.

New Leader Cap System

Leaders are now vastly more powerful than before, so we decided to introduce a soft leader cap - just like with the naval cap, leaders will grow more expensive when empires are above the cap. It might take some time to get used to, but no longer are the time when in the early game it is viable to send out 20 science ships to explore the galaxy, but it also allows for players to take meaningful choices - creating an economy based on strong governors is a viable strategy, just as well as making strong navy based on many high level admirals.

In my humble opinion, this change somewhat favors smaller empires, which might feel less incentivized to go over their leader cap to fill all the roles, while huge empires will need to take choices on, for example, governor placements (or going over Leader Cap).

And now, something to finish our little trip into this leader madness…

Ruler Creator

Well, I disliked the fact that I can’t choose my starting ruler trait - especially on dictatorial and imperial empires. Now I won’t have to restart the game every time I get a trait I don’t want to have on my ruler. Coders wept when I designed this, and UX was more than happy with coming up with the layout. I guess you can never make everyone happy.

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Right now, there is only a limited number of traits to choose from, but we decided to not overwhelm players with new choices here. They should be hunting for new civics instead!

Honorable mention

Let’s talk about one last change, close to the leaders, but not exactly. This is present in both Free Patch and DLC, so buckle up this one last time!

With the new trait system and reworked leaders and cap and everything - we decided that the Governor traits should only apply to the planets he currently “sits” on.
But as the game had this nice feature of Sector Governors too, we wanted to use this system, rather than just removing it.

So now, if you would like to see the potential career of a governor, it would be - Planet Governor, Sector Governor, Councilor, Empire Ruler.

How does the new sector governor thingy work?

Whenever there is a Governor sitting on a Sector Capital planet, his level will apply bonuses to every planet in this sector, in a way like it used to be.

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You can always override the “Sector Governor” by putting a proper Planetary Governor here. Just remember that Leader Traits do not work on Sectors!

Is that all? Yeah, I guess so. Don’t forget to Wishlist Galactic Paragons! See you on the next DD!
 
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How will a survey speed boost or firepower boost or building speed boost be useful to a ruler who cannot do anything but sit on the council? Every non-council trait is wasted on a ruler.

Oh. You're talking about activity traits. Sure, I guess they won't be used if a Leader gets on the Council - but then, then, Council traits will be wasted on non-Council Leaders in the same way. Each leader will be a mix of Council and non-Council traits and we can deploy them to positions as we see fit - I don't see one being as "upgrade" or an “downgrade” over another.

It's not a good look to just immediately disagree with valid criticism without even thinking your disagreement through. A lot of people are too quick to defend every developer decision on principle.

I don't think that's what I am doing. I think I'm just offering my understanding/expectation of how things will work and my opinion on them. Don't be too quick to assign motives to people who hold opinions you disagree with. You'll notice I haven't replied to any of your - many - pessimistic comments throughout this thread accusing you of "being quick to attack every developer change on principle"
 
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How will a survey speed boost or firepower boost or building speed boost be useful to a ruler who cannot do anything but sit on the council? Every non-council trait is wasted on a ruler.

It's not a good look to just immediately disagree with valid criticism without even thinking your disagreement through. A lot of people are too quick to defend every developer decision on principle.
How does a survey speed boost help your scientists that are leading research right now?
 
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You are disagreeing with valid criticism by coming up with imaginary counterarguments. Again, this kind of debate is not a good look.
Expertise traits now apply if the scientist with those traits is serving on the council (including if they are the empire's ruler).
We already know that expertise traits still apply even for rulers. So you can hopefully understand where my reckon was coming from.

Besides, how does it differ from before? If you elect a scientist to be your ruler right now, the traits also don't apply as far as I'm aware (albeit I think there's some ruler traits that can only be gained with the right background).
 
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They don't, which is why you put them on a science ship instead.

You can't put your ruler on a science ship. You have very limited opportunities to change your ruler, depending on your government type, and it's costly to do so.
I think I have a slightly less rosy experience with ruler traits than you do.

My experience is that the first ruler, if you restart, is good, and the rest are all garbage like Destroyer Focus after you've gotten battleships and reduced colony ship cost after you've colonized everything. And the ruler itself is useless: 5 edict fund per level may as well not exist.

Now you have 4 slots (or up to 6) to roll the equivalent of Deep Connections on.
 
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Scientists, Admirals and Generals are mostly unchanged in how they are used.
Science ships still require a scientist to be on it in order to function.

Leaders on your council can also be on a ship/planet ex Head of Research can also be on a science ship.
Two exceptions is the Ruler that can only Rule and the Gestalt nodes.
Given the Gestalt Nodes are not usable as leaders, do they count against leader cap?
 
Oh. You're talking about activity traits. Sure, I guess they won't be used if a Leader gets on the Council - but then, then, Council traits will be wasted on non-Council Leaders in the same way. Each leader will be a mix of Council and non-Council traits and we can deploy them to positions as we see fit - I don't see one being as "upgrade" or an “downgrade” over another.

I don't think that's what I am doing. I think I'm just offering my understanding/expectation of how things will work and my opinion on them. Don't be too quick to assign motives to people who hold opinions you disagree with. You'll notice I haven't replied to any of your - many - pessimistic comments throughout this thread accusing you of "being quick to attack every developer change on principle"
It's just about basing argumentation on established information, rather than assumptions. Also, I'm not being critical by default - I had nothing but lavish praise for the First Contact update, for instance. I'm just passionate about the game and want to avert ill-advised changes. I am a game designer, and I do have a long history of being spot-on in terms of which changes turn out good or bad - I was one of the loudest voices yelling alarms before the 2.2 patch that broke the game for like two years, for instance.

I think I have a slightly less rosy experience with ruler traits than you do.

My experience is that the first leader, if you restart, is good, and the rest are all garbage like Destroyer Focus after you've gotten battleships and reduced colony ship cost after you've colonized everything. And the ruler itself is useless: 5 edict fund per level may as well not exist.

Now you have 4 slots (or up to 6) to roll the equivalent of Deep Connections on.

I'm definitely not saying the current system is good. I mentioned earlier it's also badly designed. But this is the opportunity to fix it, and by taking away everything that makes rulers special, they're not fixing it.
 
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(Assuming that rulers are covered by the multitasking quote above. Explicit confirmation is still needed.)
Rulers have been confirmed to not multitask, which is what they were responding to.

That implies they have some base effect besides a place to store traits (like the current ruler), but we don't know what it is yet, I think.

Edit: we do know about one of the base effects. The Emperor gets up to +.25 influence per level (if you're maxing out your power projection).
 
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It's just about basing argumentation on established information, rather than assumptions.

I’m basing my opinion on established information too. And I believe established information doesn’t support your view that “becoming a ruler will be a downgrade”.

Also, I'm not being critical by default

I haven’t accused you are being critical by default. Perhaps you could extend the same courtesy and stop accusing others of being “defensive of every dev decision by default”.
 
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Rulers have been confirmed to not multitask, which is what they were responding to.

That implies they have some base effect besides a place to store traits (like the current ruler), but we don't know what it is yet, I think.
You keep basing your arguments on false assumptions my dude. There is no base effect other than the innate ruler slot bonus, which scales with level. But all the council slots have innate bonuses that scale with level.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but the devs are great at responding to the thread, and they've given no implications that rulers get anything special that we haven't seen yet - presumably aside from certain rare traits like the special Chosen One ruler trait and so on.
 
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Hello.
You know, in my opinion, this upcoming «Galactic Paragons» update is going to be very, very, very sad and disappointing. No, there are also things that I liked, but, basically, it really disappoints me, upsets and even... irritates. Actually, the main (and, perhaps, the only) moment that caused such a VERY violent reaction in me is precisely the «Reducing Leader Count».
In theory, the larger the empire, the more leaders. In fact, it can apply to almost any leader (scientists, governors, admirals, generals). Except, I suppose, the rulers - he is usually alone. But, I will treat the reduction in the number of governors calmly (personally, I absolutely do not use them in any way - I have absolutely no need for them). Most likely, I will also ignore the reduction in the number of generals and admirals (the «Fleet Capacity» parameter never interested me - fortunately, a very powerful economy allows you to have a fleet of almost any strength, completely ignoring the penalties for exceeding the capacity of fleets). But the reduction (all the more - SO strong) in the number of scientists - this, in my opinion, is a very, very sad and bad idea.
Let me explain - how, personally, I use scientists in my empires (any). Three scientists - at once in three areas of research (physical, sociological and engineering). Another 5 (five) to 10 (ten) scientists are sent, on scientific ships, to explore the galaxy (together with a small accompanying fleet - one construction ship and several military). And finally, above the capital and above each colonized planet there is one scientific ship (with a scientist, of course) with the order «Assistance in planetary research». Thus, even if we take the minimum number - three lead researchers, five science ships and five colonized planets - there are already 13 scientists (no, it's still a LITTLE). And there can be even more, depending on the number of ships and planets (yes, micromanaging is very, very good). The order «Assistance in planetary research» is remarkable in another circumstance. Even in the event of a sudden death from old age, all three leading scientists (and this happened to me ... four times, in five real years of playing) - the most advanced, from orbital scientists, can be transferred to the positions of leading researchers, and recruits can be hired on ships – and the drawdown in science will be minimal. And finally, the fact that three scientists study three different technologies at the same time is better than if only one scientist remains and he studies only one technology at a time.
The reduction in the number of scientific leaders... This is - let's face it and without any exaggeration - a CATASTROPHIC circumstance.
With the rest, I can quite agree, and even painlessly. Actually, the «Council of the Empire», I think, is not a bad idea. The position of «Head of Research» can further enhance scientific research and give it more speed and flexibility - in addition to the system of scientific research that is already in place. But here, it is the idea of removing the three leading scientific posts, as it seems to me, is an exceptionally bad idea.
Maybe the developers will not rebuild the system of scientists and scientific research in the game as abruptly, unusually and radically as it was announced in the last diary (at the time of 28.04.2023)? Or maybe they will create a setting through which the user himself will be able to choose whether to leave, in a particular game party, the old system of scientific leaders? Or, after all, will they somehow combine the existing research system with the proposed future update?
With best regards.
 
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And finally, the fact that three scientists study three different technologies at the same time is better than if only one scientist remains and he studies only one technology at a time.
Where did they say that we only get to research one technology at a time now? As far as I understand it, we have one research leader that applies their bonuses to all 3 research categories.

Genuinely curious. If I overlooked something, please quote the post so I can see what I missed
 
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Actually, the main (and, perhaps, the only) moment that caused such a VERY violent reaction in me is precisely the «Reducing Leader Count».
The idea is that larger empires always have less efficient administrative processes. It makes a lot of sense. Every decision happens in a larger framework and every decision has more people involved in making it.

Having same amount of leaders as smaller empires, but having to distribute them among more potential tasks simulates that very well. They can do all the same things and all at the same strength as in smaller empires, but there are just more things to do - so they have to pick their tasks more carefully and focus on those, missing out on some other gains that a smaller empire might be able to pick up, since it's not a sprawling mess of 800 colonies all wanting to have a say.

I think it is a really good choice, because it doesn't disrupt player agency or give larger empires an arbitrary malus. Larger empires have to consider more carefully where they invest their finite resources, because there are more potential applications. It's a good concept.

there are already 13 scientists (no, it's still a LITTLE)
I play the game quite differently. 10 science vessels on the way would just be annoying to handle. I'd much rather have fewer and make more impactful decisions with them rather than just clustering everything with generic, faceless leaders that i constantly need to replace and are thus just a micro-annoyance.
 
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Where did they say that we only get to research one technology at a time now? As far as I understand it, we have one research leader that applies their bonuses to all 3 research categories.

Genuinely curious. If I overlooked something, please quote the post so I can see what I missed
This. You're still researching the 3 techs at a time, you just have a single overarching lead scientist who can have multiple traits to improve the research in multiple areas at a time. Just imagine, getting a scientist with Genius, with a research assistant AI bot, and then a research specialty in an area for all 3 branches of science and then, you also have a former scientist who was maniacal and has his own research AI bot along with matching research boosts who is elected as your leader. You're adding ALL of those bonuses together for a lot better research ability.
 
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Will Rogue Servitors have anything special about their Council-equivalent to denote their unique hybrid system, with individually minded bios and a Gestalt Machine Intelligence?
It would be hilarious if the Rogue Servitors had a "dummy" Council slot for their pet organics, in which the organic "Master" would be placed in a slot as if he were the leader, but all he does is generate happiness from the pet species by making them feel like they had some say in matters, but then have that leader slot give no other effects.

Then, the Rogue Servitor nodes in the other slots would be the actual leaders with actual secondary effects and bonuses.
 
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You keep basing your arguments on false assumptions my dude. There is no base effect other than the innate ruler slot bonus, which scales with level. But all the council slots have innate bonuses that scale with level.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but the devs are great at responding to the thread, and they've given no implications that rulers get anything special that we haven't seen yet - presumably aside from certain rare traits like the special Chosen One ruler trait and so on.

I'm still unclear why you think this means "becoming Ruler is a downgrade"?
 
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Will leaders still be capped at lvl 10? I feel like there's a lot of civics, techs, traits and traditions that increase the max leader lvl way beyond 10, so it feels like a waste to have those bonuses cap at 10