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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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you know? something is confusing to me. This DLC is called Galactic Paragon and yes, now the leaders seem to be more important in your empire. But only in your own empire? With the exception of the Admirals for obvious reasons, I really don't see how the current leaders can really be of interest or actively interact with other empires. I mean, if he is a Galactic Paragon then I suppose he must be a figure that transcends beyond the borders of his own empire. I would like to see my leaders "sitting" on the Galactic Council posts, exerting their own influence, rising to Custodian and eventually Emperor. Likewise, the envoys should be reviewed since mainly these are the ones in charge of interacting with other empires by non-aggressive means. I imagine political leaders who literally make a difference between the political balance in the galaxy, leaders who can tip a vote just by their presence or even unify the galaxy. Now imagine what it would mean if that great Galactic Paragon died abruptly.
Maybe there are ruler traits that influence diplomatic weight, federation coherence or opinion gain? Or give a flat buff for acceptance chance like EU4 diplomatic reputation.

We will have to wait for the traits to be shown
 
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I haven't played in a while, but what will happen to all the max level bonuses? If those still exist in 3.7.
 
So basically you've removed a feature from the base game, but don't worry as we'll be able to get some ineffective facsimile of it if we toss money at Paradox. Also even if we do this we'll have to forgo most of the non-tech bonuses to pull it off.

Nothing's been removed from the base game. You could target your research by hiring Leaders with the correct traits before - and you can still do it under the new system. The only things that have changed are where those new leaders sit and the fact that your decisions around it now have consequences, rather than being an entirely self-contained mini-game.
 
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The screenshots in the previous dev diary showed that the "Envoy" icon in the top nav has changed to the new "Leader" icon that's being used with the new leader system - so I'm pretty sure that envoys are getting a rework as part of this too. Perhaps they're getting rid of "Envoy" as a category and, instead, we'll send Admirals, Generals, Governors or Scientists on Envoy missions - with traits affecting how effective they are or something?


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You expect too much. There's no changes to internal politics, just the leaders themselves. But the devs keep implying that it will come, sooner or later. Feels to me like the leader overhaul will be half-cooked until such a time.

Removing ruler traits (and thus making the ruler completely interchangeable with the other council members) is definitely just bad design. The previous system was also badly designed though, in that leaders switched between ruler traits and normal leader traits and didn't let you see the other set of traits. There are better ways to do this - at least give traits special/boosted effects when they're on the ruler.
I think you're expecting too little. The leaders having individual ethics, the "Factions" tab being rolled into the Leaders UI, the ethics and happiness icons appearing in the Leaders UI - it all strongly suggests mechanics where the Council and Factions interact.

The devs have got so much to cover in Dev Diaries prior to release that they've moved to two DD per week - and we've only had one DD so far. Clearly there's a lot more coming.

At this point, asserting that "Removing ruler traits (and thus making the ruler completely interchangeable with the other council members) is definitely just bad design" is nothing more than imagining how the system will work and then complaining about the flaws in your imagined system. After one DD, you simply have no way of knowing that rulers will be completely interchangeable with other council members.
 
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I think you're expecting too little. The leaders having individual ethics, the "Factions" tab being rolled into the Leaders UI, the ethics and happiness icons appearing in the Leaders UI - it all strongly suggests mechanics where the Council and Factions interact.

The devs have got so much to cover in Dev Diaries prior to release that they've moved to two DD per week - and we've only had one DD so far. Clearly there's a lot more coming.

At this point, asserting that "Removing ruler traits (and thus making the ruler completely interchangeable with the other council members) is definitely just bad design" is nothing more than imagining how the system will work and then complaining about the flaws in your imagined system. After one DD, you simply have no way of knowing that rulers will be completely interchangeable with other council members.
I will point out we probably only have one proper dev diary left though, the one this coming Tuesday. Then Thursday will be patch notes and the following Tuesday is release day.
 
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You expect too much. There's no changes to internal politics, just the leaders themselves. But the devs keep implying that it will come, sooner or later. Feels to me like the leader overhaul will be half-cooked until such a time.
Maybe you're right but adding ethics for leaders is a step in right direction and it can be used in the future to make ruling faction more important (some leaders may not work with factions with oposite ethics, leaders connected to the ruling faction may demand positions in the council, etc.)
 
I will point out we probably only have one proper dev diary left though, the one this coming Tuesday. Then Thursday will be patch notes and the following Tuesday is release day.

Perhaps - but I'd guess we're getting at least two proper Dev Diaries next week and the patch notes will be pushed to launch week.
 
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Absolutely no shot. With all the changes to leaders, the removal of the ruler leader type, and the addition of the council, there's no way the game will be able to parse saves from prior versions.
I see... well, at leas i hope they pay attention to leader avatar this time and each rule will have some different outfits when they ascend t leadership
 
Looks good but don't think Research Scientists should have been removed. I don't think anyone likes it when Paradox removes existing features from a game in the name of an "update". It's inherently a bad idea imo.
This feature was getting a notification every 50 years to replace one of three guys on your research screen with another identical guy with a lightbulb or Einstein icon next to his name.

Since expertise isn’t going away, that’s the only “feature” being removed here. Can’t say I’ll miss it.
 
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I'm confused about the removal of dedicated researchers on science ships - does this mean all the current events which impacted on those researchers out in space are now null and void?
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.
 
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A lot of it sounds good. The governor stuff is confusing though. Are you saying we'll now need a governor per planet rather than per sector? That's going to be a LOT of governors!
 
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A lot of it sounds good. The governor stuff is confusing though. Are you saying we'll now need a governor per planet rather than per sector? That's going to be a LOT of governors!

It sounds like it's an option to put a governor on every planet, rather than you "need" to.

I imagine it'll come down to a strategic choice on how you want to use your Unity. Do you want to buff your planets with huge numbers of individual governors - or do you want to invest in Edicts and/or progress through the Tradition trees.
 
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A lot of it sounds good. The governor stuff is confusing though. Are you saying we'll now need a governor per planet rather than per sector? That's going to be a LOT of governors!
That's what the devs meant when they said it slightly favours smaller empires.

A small empire can get the full bonuses to all important planets with planetary governors, but larger empires would have to pay exceedingly more to get the same administrative benefit, so they'll probably have to resort to limiting it to a few key planets and otherwise utilise the less effective sector governors to spread a smaller bonus to a larger share of their worlds.

This is how i read that at least.

I like how they implemented that, since it gives smaller empires an boon without giving larger empires a rather arbitrary malus. Larger empires can still decide how they invest and what they focus on. It doesn't limit player agency or impose a "bureacrat tax" as we had in the past, but relatively speaking they can not utilise the power of leaders as well as smaller empires can.
At least in concept this is great.
 
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can you explain how some of the existing leader Traits (assuming they still exist) will function when a Leader becomes your empire's Ruler?

ex. you have a Governor Leader with the Architectural Sense trait. if that Governor becomes your Ruler does that trait no longer function?

similarly if you had a Ruler with Destroyer Focus (assuming that still exists) and then you elect a different Ruler and he is just an Admiral let's say again does the Destroyer Focus trait that he had also now provide no benefit to him as an Admiral?
 
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Will Democracies now have elections every 10 years, instead of every 10 years and 3 months?
I am glad that I am not the only one that gets annoyed by this. The better way to do it is to let us select an inauguration day (in the empire design screen, when we select the authority type) and then the election pops up a couple of months early to give us time to review the candidates and throw our support to one of them if we want. New rulers will be inaugurated on the same day every 10/20 years (depending on authority). The only issue would be when the current ruler dies in office. Maybe an emergency election and they only rule until the end of the current term to keep elections back on track. Might not be possible in the current system though.
The screenshots in the previous dev diary showed that the "Envoy" icon in the top nav has changed to the new "Leader" icon that's being used with the new leader system - so I'm pretty sure that envoys are getting a rework as part of this too. Perhaps they're getting rid of "Envoy" as a category and, instead, we'll send Admirals, Generals, Governors or Scientists on Envoy missions - with traits affecting how effective they are or something?


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Good catch on the icons! It doesn't look like they are getting rid of envoys though and letting regular leaders do the jobs of one, considering the amount is still shown in the top bar. But hopefully they've improved them so they can level up, can gain skills, be specialized towards different areas. I like the idea of the envoy, but they are so bare bones. Just set them to an empire or the galactic community and forget about them. It doesn't matter which one you use, they are all the same. It doesn't matter when one dies, he's replaced with another one that is the exact same.
A lot of it sounds good. The governor stuff is confusing though. Are you saying we'll now need a governor per planet rather than per sector? That's going to be a LOT of governors!
I am still trying to fully grasp the governor changes as well. It makes since to me, that not only can there be a sector governor but also a planetary governor. What I am not fully understanding is how they play off of each other? Who takes precedence on a world if both are avaliable? Do both sets of traits take into effect, essentially giving that planet double bonuses?
 
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Do both sets of traits take into effect, essentially giving that planet double bonuses?
They said traits only work for the colony the governor was assigned to.

The part I'm not clear on is their skill. The sector governor's skill will apply to all colonies in the sector that do not have a governor... but does it also apply to the colonies that do have their own governor? As in, do they stack?
If not, then is it always the skill of that colony's governor which is applied, or is it the highest of the 2?