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Stellaris Dev Diary #299 - Civics, Origins, and Traditions

Hello and welcome back to my little corner in the Arctic! It’s Marek again, and today I will showcase some of the new empire creation stuff we made for you. I bet you already suspected from the title that it will be about Civics, Origins (or, Origin to be precise) and traditions!

Watch the video Dev Diary:

Civics focused on leaders… but not always
Doing our design run on the potential civics, we had to take into account a few different things:
  • We should focus on civics, effects and modifiers targeting leaders in some way
  • We also want to add new ways for players to play their empire
  • We need to remember to strengthen the fantasy for certain playstyles, that are still not present in the game

So we decided to do everything - instead of being content with just going 1-2 civics per empire type. That’s why we ended up with… 8 unique civics (if you count copies of civics which are just an adjusted version for different empire types - then the number is 12), sprinkled around Standard Empires, Megacorps, Hive Minds and Machine Intelligence.

Vaults full of knowledge
For our most iconic civic, we picked the one which allows you to store the knowledge of your leaders, to enhance your future leaders. To sum it up a bit, every leader who manages to survive up to level 8, will give a bonus to the unique building provided by the civic - where the story, experience or knowledge of this leader will be stored for future generations.
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All this knowledge, just enter the vault and search for it

They will be like us… either they like it, or not
The next civic, we decided to make something which would showcase some of our more fancy traits as soon as possible. But I also wanted to play an empire which embarks on a holy war to turn everyone into a proper clone of my ethics. And to have some war civic, which would not be useful for expansionists, conquer everything empires.

The whole idea around this civic is not being religious (hence you don’t need to be spiritualist to take it), but more a fanatic towards proselytizing your ethos to others. After all, they were converting people to their moral values on their planet, why would they stop doing that when in space?

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Zealot trait is one of my favorite Veteran Traits, and it’s the only reason I made this civic, so I will get it on every Admiral - the above is just an excuse

But what about the profits?!
Let’s not forget about these players who like to play the MegaCorp, as we also have something fancy. Megacorp themes are usually centered around dystopian corporations running the country, either at the forefront, or from the shadows. Here we wanted to add a new brick to this player fantasy, which we felt was lacking.
And this is how Pharma State was made, giving a boost to Medical Workers and also unlocking a new Corporate Building for your fancy Branch offices! Be it an illicit place making people go bankrupt by providing aesthetic surgeries for credit or a company focused on making lives better (with a hefty profit margin, of course), the choice is yours to take.
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We just invented new ways of preventing coughing! Instead of standard 7 days treatment it will take only 1 week to get rid of it, so definitely worth the 50% increase in price!

Profits are not everything! (what?)
The efficiency of the processes is also critical for any MegaCorporation success.
Inefficient work can lead to serious mismanagement, loss of profits (well, so there is the profit part) and a potential loss of “worker of the month” status. After all, you are not just a cog in the machine. You are a very precise cog, which keeps the company afloat!

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The superb organization skills of this MegaCorp allows it to hire more cogs, er I mean leaders.

Something for Gestalts?
Gestalts are, in a way, the opposite of Galactic Paragons DLC - which is centered around individuals, their growth and path to glory / power / wealth / levels. So we came with these two civics, focused on making their leaders a bit more “individual” compared to other gestalts. Both Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences with these civics will give more freedom of thought to their leaders, allowing them to focus their consciousness on different matters - which should also help a bit with leader Unity upkeep, as the base change from 2 to 1 is effectively 50% leader upkeep reduction (which is then put into easier to get resources).
It’s almost like delegating by consuming more nutrients!

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There is clearly no modifier after the upkeep change.

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This one was easier to make then the previous one, the hidden modifier is less obvious.

But that’s not 8 civics!
Well, where is the fun of speculating or exploring the civics by yourself? Here are some teasers about the missing ones (but also let me tell you that Vaults are present for every type of empire, just adjusted a bit for them).

There is no reward for guessing the civic and its effects, but you can always brag about it if you put your prediction in post and then it turns out to be true.

Can you spot what is wrong with this planet? I’m not asking about the Aristocratic Elite civic buildings.

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Perfectly balanced building composition, as all things should be.

Here are some more, which we won’t go over super tiny details.
[EFFECT.RandomizeNamesOrder] Letters of Marque, Neural Vaults and Heroic Past.
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Other civics, should be easy to connect them to the names below

To give them some descriptions:
Heroic Past
puts the empire into something like legendary / heroic figure worship, which is focused on creating better leaders faster than other empires. Taking this civic, the empire shows that it’s dedicated to growing their citizens into exceptional individuals who will lead it to a great future! (or to die when entering the system with Ether Drake by accident - we do not promise that your leaders will actually survive to become true legends)

Letters of Marque is our take on the fantasy around pirates working for big MegaCorp, helping them in dealing with anything which requires firepower. Why spend money on fighting piracy, where you can spend money on hiring pirates to do your bidding? Be it raiding your neighbors or… keeping other pirates in check.

The Neural Vaults are an adjusted version of Vaults of Knowledge, so you can extract memories from efficient drones and then use these memories in creating more powerful leaders.

Yes, I thought that giving 1 screenshot per civic would bloat the DD with too many pictures. And yes, I know that you can guess the MegaCorp civic by its color.

One to Rule Them All - Galactic Paragon ruler origin
Under One Rule is a semi-story origin, with a lot of different outcomes based on the empire composition and in-game choices. If someone asked me what was the inspiration, I would say a certain person from the Invincible series (his name starts with O) - and some historical characters, like Charlemagne.

But the main theme is about an empire interconnected with an exceptional individual who, instead of unifying peacefully, unified the planet by… other means. Imagine the New World Order First Contact event, but at a later date, with a ruler who actually succeeded in staying in power. This exceptional leader is the Luminary of the empire, the one who brought the new age, and promised the glory of the stars to his or her people (or it). I guess you get it by now ;)

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Beware of your actions!

As we had time to do only one Origin, we decided to follow the more story-like approach BUT! We tried to not go the way of the story-story only. It’s more of a road of the Luminary leader to fulfill his destiny, which is in the player's hands. There are 4 (or more, depending on how you count it) different outcomes based on the player choices, with a special route which I used to call “I don’t care about the story that much”, which bypasses a lot of story content by also bypassing a lot of potential power gains.

For those who will see the Dictatorial requirement and are baffled why they can’t be imperial with this Origin - as every story goes its own path, there are possibilities in game to pursue different goals than staying true to the Founding Myth (yes, this means that there are events which allows to change the Authority Type, and I’m not afraid to spoil them as they happen fairly quickly).

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This isn't even my final form.

But let’s talk about more mechanical aspects - the main feature of the Origin is to give the player a strong starting ruler, with a unique set of powerful starting council traits (all can be tiered up to tier III, so there is room to grow the leader). These traits, in opposition to standard council traits, are not based on Leader Class, but instead on Empire Ethics. To say it short - there are 14 traits to choose from.

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There are also unique negative traits which might put some “bad mojo” into your Luminary - and they are tied to Empire Ethics as well.

And remember to not be overly tyrannical to your people… or maybe there is a hidden power in being the evil ruler? Or maybe that’s just a trick from me so you will use colossus on your capital planet (but seriously, don’t do that)?

We are close to the finish line now, so as tradition would make us do, let’s talk about our last feature in this Dev Diary.

Tradition Trees, Aptitude and StateCraft
Our choice for themes of the tradition trees was quite easy, and let’s be honest with that. We have leader rework and new Council features. I bet you already see where it is going.

Let’s start with the Leader Tradition Tree, our Aptitude
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This was supposed to be a funny Aptitude-Altitude pun, but I deleted it and forgot how it went.

With the new Aptitude, your empires will focus themselves on leaders, giving them bigger and smaller buffs, with the EXP rate being the most obvious one. It's a solid tree if one wants to focus on leaders, but if it’s not your thing, then the tree is possible best to stay away from.

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Starting Traits make up for a potential stronger leader at the end, as they will be able to get 1 more trait compared to leaders without this bonus.

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Champions of the Empire is the fanciest one you can unlock from the tree.

Next one is the Statecraft tree!
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I see 5 pictures, and in 4 of them someone is doing something with their hands. I petition the 5th picture to also include at least one hand.

It’s easy to pinpoint it to Council feature, having stronger councilors and, somewhat, also boosting leaders. Although, if your empire is not focused on leaders, it might still profit from the non-leader oriented effects and modifiers to build up a strong government to run the show. So, to sum it up, it’s about… leading a state. Fitting name, is it not?

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Effective Councilor Skill is my favorite modifier in the whole DLC. I want to thank Karl who fought for this modifier.


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This bonus is pretty nice when you have a lot of leaders and play around with Agendas.

So! We are at the end of the road for this Dev Diary. And we are pretty close to the release date, there are a few things I would like to say to you: Speculate! Write posts on forums! Play Stellaris! And have fun doing so! :D

By the way, a gentle reminder to Wishlist Galactic Paragons on Steam!
 
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Another thing I wanna point out with that ecu image, aside from just being ocean world, it is not covered head to toe in buildings. Even non-ecu planets are filled to the brim with buildings based on number of pops, and that planet has over 200 of them. We shouldn't be able to see the ocean at all.
 
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Whether you are willing to exceed the cap depends on whether its benefits outweigh the costs. For example, When you have 1000 empire size, With this tree, 1 governor = 2% research speed. As we know, When you have 1000+ empire size, The benefits of continuing increases researchers are already low(assuming you don't use scholariums and fanatic pacifst).
The rest ways to efficiently increase research speed are either massive release scholariums or stack the empire size reducement bonuses like Fanatic Pacifist or the tree mentioned in this thread.
There's no amount of being willing that would make it possible to exceed the cap by 40 if it were something like +30% upkeep, exponential. 1.3^40=36118. With 50 leaders, all level 1, you'd have to pay 3.6 million unity every month.

Technically doable. Repeatables are a thing, and you can always (in theory) fill the entire galaxy with unity ecumenopoleis. But it wouldn't actually effect gameplay.

But I doubt they'll make it exponential. Their soft caps have all been linear increases in the past (which become quadratic in total since the number of things they apply to also increases linearly).

On the subject of the benefits of increasing research being low... 1000 size doubles your tech costs. Adding another 1000 size in researchers and support will likely triple your output (assuming you don't invest more on alloys), but only increase tech costs from 2x to 3x, so it's a net 2x increase.

There's never a point where growing is bad. Only a point where splitting off vassals is better.
 
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What's wrong with that planet? The background is bugged and hasn't change to ecumonopolis. That bug exists for many versions. Other than that, the amenities production is really weird. It looks like police produce all the amenities.
They probably used the console to terraform it for the screenshot. I've noticed from messing around for modding that (usually) when you terraform with the console, the background does not also update and will stay the original planet class until you reload the game.
 
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A couple patches ago they set a maximum on all values, you cant get more than 90% reduction on anything anymore. So 50 governors is no more effective than 45 governors.
Even at -90%, that will mean you stay below 2x research cost (1100 size) until your empire size (without the reduction) would put you at 10.9x (11000 size).

And with a 90% reduction in ascension cost (plus oodles of unity), you'll probably be able to ascend every planet and bring it even lower.
 
All starting leaders can be customized.
Have you ever seen the traits you can pick in empire redactor?
They are absolutely irrelevant, something like +3% food or +2% stability. Random amount of +6 mineral deposits near your home system making more impact than the leader trait you pick. The additional effects of civics (not even the whole civic) added in 3.8 sometimes are making more impact than the leader trait you pick. The current Moon phase is making more impact.

Leader trait redactor could be an additional layer of empire customization, doing the things comparable with your civics or species traits choice. But no, sorry, this redactor is doing something exclusively for only one origin, other should just take their boring +15 edict fund, spending less than 5 seconds on this tab.

We have a really great mechanic, but the potentional of this mechanic can't be used in 99% of cases.
 
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I really like the "Under one Rule" Origin. Especially the flexibility that comes with it and given by the different "endigns" the replayability.

What i would like to know, if this is a legendary ruler, does it come with it's own special portrait or is it in this case the normal species one?
I think that it is pretty obvious that this is the leader that you creates when making or choosing your empire! "Under on Rule" is an Origin. And it will use the portrait of whatever species you are using when creating your own empire or choosing one of the already pre-existent in-game empires.
 
Letters of Marque is our take on the fantasy around pirates working for big MegaCorp, helping them in dealing with anything which requires firepower. Why spend money on fighting piracy, where you can spend money on hiring pirates to do your bidding? Be it raiding your neighbors or… keeping other pirates in check.

This is amazing and I love you. I've wanted something like this since Megacorp dropped.

Will it work any different for Criminal Syndicates? Any special Branch Office Buildings?
 
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You should totally make this for Gestalts:
Instead of leaders heaving individual destiny traits, your ruler (core/hive mind) should have the destiny trait, which would be stronger, than regular empire leaders' destiny traits.
As Gestalt empire, you are basically a single system, an individual of collective, so it would make a fair trade off. Instead of individual leaders (parts of the system/organs), your whole empire can choose it's destiny.

Also, I think that Progenitor Hive, should maybe have normal Destiny traits, as it's unique in a way that it's centered around leaders with more independence, but ruler can maybe lack the Destiny trait, since it delegates it to leaders.
 
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I’m not asking about the Aristocratic Elite civic buildings.
While a joke, this still underlies the fact that the Aristocratic buildings are typically superfluous and not that desirable even when the stability can matter. Could it or the Aristocrat job get some buff?
 
Ah yes good catch.

I was more wondering about the fact that the planet produces influence, which I don't think was the possible before (but I may be wrong)

That's normal, its just the capital planet
 
There's no amount of being willing that would make it possible to exceed the cap by 40 if it were something like +30% upkeep, exponential. 1.3^40=36118. With 50 leaders, all level 1, you'd have to pay 3.6 million unity every month.
When it is exponential... No reason to exceed it too much. But assuming the calculation remain linear, it could be similar to starbase:
Exceeding 16 starbases still profitable if you don't use planetary rings that consume rares, 1 exceeded starbase = +25% additional upkeep, 16 = +400%, However, basic upkeep of Hydroponics Bay is 1, Even you take +400% upkeep, 5 energy trade 10 food still profit.
For Gestalt, Solar Panel Network upkeep is 0, It's not even affected by penalties.

So +25% looks scary, but assuming your buildings are productive and not pointless, I can ignore that.
 
Have you ever seen the traits you can pick in empire redactor?
They are absolutely irrelevant, something like +3% food or +2% stability. Random amount of +6 mineral deposits near your home system making more impact than the leader trait you pick. The additional effects of civics (not event the whole civic) added in 3.8 sometimes are making more impact than the leader trait you pick. The current Moon phase is making more impact.

Leader trait redactor could be an additional layer of empire customization, doing the things comparable with your civics or species traits choice. But no, sorry, this redactor is doing something only one origin, other should just take their boring +15 edict fund, spending less than 5 seconds on this tab.

We have a really great mechanic, but the potentional of this mechanic can't be used in 99% of cases.
  1. They're all weak because they're the level 1 version. You double it at level 3 when you take it again.
  2. Generally, before, leaders got either 3 traits plus an ascension trait, or 2 plus ascension if they were hired after ascension. Scientists could get a bunch more through anomalies, and admirals through fleet victories, but that was the exception. Now they get 5, plus destiny, plus a veteran class. It makes sense to expect base level traits to be roughly half as powerful as the pre-patch traits, as you'll get twice as many, and more to boot.
  3. +2 stability is actually quite good, for what it's worth. With the just the starting jobs, at 1.2% of all job output and trade, that's +.1 minerals, +.7 energy, +.3 food, +.15 CG, +.075 alloys, +.24 unity and +.1 science. In total, around +2 energy, plus some unity/research. But it scales.
  4. Charismatic is really strong, though. +20 unity and an edict cost reduction that scales into the late game is way better than all the other options.
The real travesty is the +2.5% minerals from jobs trait (aka, +.2 minerals). That one, at least, should be monthly minerals, so it also affects the mining stations. And even then, it would be too weak.

This needs someone who actually looked at the numbers to do a balance patch. Obviously they can't all be equally good in all situations (ex. the minerals one is probably better for lithoids), but they should at least be on the same order of magnitude, instead of e.g. stability giving 10x the effects of the mineral one.
 
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When it is exponential... No reason to exceed it too much. But assuming the calculation remain linear, it could be similar to starbase:
Exceeding 16 starbases still profitable if you don't use planetary rings that consume rares, 1 exceeded starbase = +25% additional upkeep, 16 = +400%, However, basic upkeep of Hydroponics Bay is 1, Even if it quadruples, 4 energy trade 10 food still profit.
For Gestalt, Solar Panel Network upkeep is 0, It's not even affected by penalties.

So +25% looks scary, but assuming your buildings are productive and not pointless, I can ignore that.
As I said before, if they use starbase cap mechanics, this will be laughably broken and it will be almost free to completely remove empire size. ~1000 unity to get your 45-50 governors. That's why I'm hoping it's significantly more punishing than that.
 
Leader upkeep swaps are nice and all, but there is a fairly common trope in scifi that individual minds/souls/personalities will live on in the collective consiousnesses they are linked to, which would have fit in perfectly here.
Why not have a civic (or just a straight up mechanic) whereby occasionally gestalts can "reincarnate" dead leaders (same name, same traits, maybe losing 1 level, and being capped on number of reincarnations?) that the gestalt mind was able to back up (somatically or digitally, if hive or machine) shortly before death.
I know the game has effects that support cloning flags as of 3.8 between scopes & can back up/exile leaders into a hidden (from the player) space in memory, so this seems fairly doable...

Now that you said it, it's weird that we never had this approach to Hiveminds. Missed opportunity, really
 
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Are there any ethics requirements/limitations for Crusader Spirit? There's an empire that I've wanted to play that are fanatic pacifists who want to end war by converting the whole galaxy to fanatic pacifism. Unfortunately, fanatic pacifists can't impose ideology, so I'd love it if this civic could let me do that.
 
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Are there any ethics requirements/limitations for Crusader Spirit? There's an empire that I've wanted to play that are fanatic pacifists who want to end war by converting the whole galaxy to fanatic pacifism. Unfortunately, fanatic pacifists can't impose ideology, so I'd love it if this civic could let me do that.
From Reddit screenshots of the Dev livestream, unfortunately you cannot go on a pacifist crusade across the galaxy.
 
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As I said before, if they use starbase cap mechanics, this will be laughably broken and it will be almost free to completely remove empire size. ~1000 unity to get your 45-50 governors. That's why I'm hoping it's significantly more punishing than that.
A limit of around 10 governors seems reasonable, While -20% is worth picking, but not enough to break the empire size system.
I guess the leader cap includes scientists and admirals. They at least uses 10 cap, so leader cap might be around 30.
 
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Now that I think about it, if the tier number is on the right side, why not put the council marker on the left side? Observe:

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Otherwise, the icons look weirdly unbalanced to me.
 
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