Stellaris Dev Diary #302 - Leaders and 3.8.3 Balance Changes

[Lude]

This is true. Particularly as it's per leader cap. You're spending thousands of unity to save, at most, single digit unity per month. In the best case scenario it's going to be centuries to pay that back which is beyond the scope of regular games.

I would probably shy away from putting reduced leader hire cost in a tradition tree as well, it is such a small amount over the course scheme of a game. Leader upkeep is at least a permanent effect.

 

[Lude]

• Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.

Does this mean that you can no longer stack the effect by having 3 governors in a system that has three planets / habitats?

 

[Zetesofos]

I've only ever played 1000 star. I assumed less than 1000 star was just for people who have PCs that can't handle 1000 star. It's a game where you run a space empire and try to take over the galaxy... ofc we'd want the scale as big as possible.

Can you explain what you mean by optimal?

I've only ever played on 1000 star galaxies. Have I been doing it wrong and depriving myself of the "intended pacing?" I do get mental fatigue on the large galaxies with trying to manage 30+ planets and all.

A reminder that people who post on game forums are not representative of a games player base. Even if a majority if people in this thread play 1000 star galaxy doesn't mean us the average.

 

[Starfury]

I've only ever played on 1000 star galaxies. Have I been doing it wrong and depriving myself of the "intended pacing?" I do get mental fatigue on the large galaxies with trying to manage 30+ planets and all.

Sounds like it, from your description.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm more than happy by the time I have 20 planets in my empire. There's only so many planet archetypes anyway, and adding an 11th reasearch planet, a 3rd foundy world or a 5th unity world isn't really all that exciting to me.

It's just like reaching the Renaissance in a Civ game, discovering a new island where you could fit 3 more cities and thinking: "Why bother? It's not like these cities are ever going to make a difference."

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

It's also optimal to play with 2400 as the victory year intstead of 2500, as it fixes not just endgame lag, but also the entire pacing and design of the game - fallen empires and crises remain a proper threat, the tech tree doesn't run out of techs halfway through the game, and the AI doesn't fall hopelessly behind the player snowball.

But that's not the standard setting, so it's easy to wonder exactly what kind of games the devs are playing and balancing the game for.

 

[Rooker75]

It's also optimal to play with 2400 as the victory year intstead of 2500, as it fixes not just endgame lag, but also the entire pacing and design of the game - fallen empires and crises remain a proper threat, the tech tree doesn't run out of techs halfway through the game, and the AI doesn't fall hopelessly behind the player snowball.

But that's not the standard setting, so it's easy to wonder exactly what kind of games the devs are playing and balancing the game for.

So much this. Sorry if I'm playing the game wrong, nobody told me I wasn't allowed to change the defaults. Not that this is a valid point in the first place, because I'd have the same size empire regardless how large the rest of the galaxy is. I don't colonize the entire thing. I play on bigger galaxies so there's more AI to interact with.

Remember when that one iPhone came out years ago with an antenna that didn't work right and Apple's response was "you're holding it wrong" ? This thread is looking very much like that, especially when a developer accuses someone of making a bad faith interpretation, then immediately confirms the interpretation with the rest of his post.

 

[Foxosaur]

I like the analogy ^.

 

[Brodosaurus]

A bit late, I guess, but.

Thank God somebody finally closed that loophole in my Mercenary contracts! Now I won't have to worry about my admirals invoking their "Permanent Paid Leave" clause the moment a fight starts!

(To be clear, do admirals still keep their existing traits when they become part of an enclave, or is that all rerolled? It would be nice to have that little bit of control.)

The admiral which is added to the fleet is a different admiral than the one used to generate the enclave
But they will keep their traits if they acquire any during their contract.
The admiral which is used to create it becomes its "ruler", you can't hire this one.

I hope this issue won't resurrect itself back again

"Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens"

Does this refer to overall pop happiness, choices in events, something else entirely or multiple of aforementioned?

Choices and outcomes of some events. To give some more insight:
Before, when you had a rebel situation, and rebels gave their "demands" it was pretty harsh even if you were a benevolent ruler overall.
Now, if you were benevolent, they will ask for a way less (bordering on almost nothing, but asking for nothing would be too funny, so if there are no egalitarians to demand anything then they might disband, or will ask for just tiny adjustments to the empire if you were good to them - try getting rid of your egalitarians now and see what happens, although it might be hard). This might also lead to getting rid of the story related negative trait (depending on previous choices).

 

[-Marauder-]

Some welcomed bugfixes and minor changes. The fundamental issue remains. And no, it's not that "empty portraits" exist. But that leaders aside from the council DO NOT warrant the restriction. They're stronger sure, but nowhere near as much as the devs make them out to be. And given everyone gets the same number of leaders, the whole "balance" argument simply doesn't hold up to begin with. It's an excuse to force a personal preference of the current lead dev.

No change to governors and how their traits only affect a single planet either, no change to planetary governors, etc.

 

[-Marauder-]

I think your focusing on the word Optimal too much. Maybe I should have said "Default", Medium is our starting point or baseline.

I do care and we are very much invested in the popular setups being enjoyable. We just have to do so with an eye to where we place our efforts.

This, speaks volumes. You guys are playing on mid sized galaxies, quitting the game before midgame, barely expand much less play the game as most players do. It's no wonder you think this is a great approach. You're completely and utterly out of touch and intent on forcing this on absolutely everyone come hell or high water. Players will be made to "comply" and play the game as you envisioned. Which does not align with how the game worked for YEARS, in the slightest.

Your fricking design doesn't even make sense. So far NONE of you have commented on how a huge blanket nerf to governors aligns with "stronger and buffed leaders", in them not affecting the entire sector anymore with their traits. Nor how Planetary Governors make sense when you guys plan to make an absurdly, incredibly, tiny, number of leaders available, at all.

At this point I wish you had just removed leaders outright, aside from the council. Because even that would've been a better solution than what you've wrought. 99,99% of the "strong" stuff is directly tied to council positions for crying out loud.

I've been with this game for 7 years, and active on this forum ever since. I've played this game regularly over all this time. You guys have managed something no other change, no other dlc, nothing so far has. You've put me off the game in it's entirety.

 

[fusei]

Imperial Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity in addition to its existing effects.

Is there a reason to attach this to something megacorps don't have access to?

Kidnapper trait now checks that the general's owner allows slavery instead of checking their ethics.

So where does this leave Gia'Zumon?
Does she keep the trait even if your empire doesn't allow slavery, can she use it, can she upgrade it?

 

[Gabbl]

I really like the changes to fleet command limits, dealing with split up fleets was a nightmare and I even stopped playing aggressively because of it.
As for the "unmanned" fleets and sectors thing, I have to say that it really is a weird feeling to have fleets with seemingly nobody at the helm (ignoring the fact that those fleets are also objectively much much worse) or unsupervised sectors, especially after having learned for years that the first thing you do when creating a new sector or fleet is to put someone in charge.
While the idea that actually, it's just nameless officers or bureaucrats organizing everything instead is nice on the surface, the game doesn't tell you that. All the game does is show you an empty box where a leader could be, with a planet with no bonuses, or a fleet that is just performing worse in every regard, exactly like a science ship with no officer. In this vein, you could argue that the science ship is still technically staffed by a crew, how else could it fly around, but then why can't it perform basic functions? If you apply the same logic of saying an "unmanned" fleet is still being organized by a bunch of lower ranking officers and can somehow function in battle without blowing itself up due to poor communication or a lack of a higher chain of command, why can't an "unmanned" science ship do basic scans of unremarkable asteroids? The lower ranking crew could still record any anomalies and notify a qualified officer to come check them out later.

I'm not actually trying to say you should let "unmanned" science ships do system surveys, (that would be a balancing nightmare, obviously) I'm trying to show how faulty that logic is. Because as soon as you try to brush something off with head canon and attempt to make that actual canon, everything else falls apart when exposed to any kind of scrutiny. The leader system in itself is really good I think. The leader cap in itself is also really interesting from a strategic point of view, and this is a strategy game after all. But as pointed out in the dev diary it feels bad to have an empty box, for multiple reasons. So please, either really have a default portrait sitting there as suggested, or have separate leader class caps or even a different kind of penalty. Because right now it doesn't feel immersive, it just feels gamey; you can try to make up excuses or head canons about why you have so few visible leaders but at the end of the day, everyone knows why, and the reason isn't one the game tries to hide or even explain.

 

[Soranya]

Great to see you so eager at work.

Only thing from the Text bit (not the note list) i did not like is the solution for fleets splitting when leaders die. I verymuch liked the more flexible fleet size from admirals. (are the traits that change fleet size still there?) - a debuff or something similiar until you can resolve the situation would have been my prefered solution.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

I would like to comment on one thing. I keep hearing that leaders are more powerful now but it seems fairly obvious to me that if you don't have the DLC, the leaders are actually worse than before the patch. Governors being nerfed are the obvious example but it goes deeper than that. Besides the fact that governors only apply their trait to one planet, you can also have governors who get council traits, so you might end up with governors applying no traits whatsoever, even to the planet they are directly governing. Pre 3.8, leaders had one set of traits for their job and different traits if they became the ruler, now they are limited to sharing their primary job traits and council traits in one pool instead of having both separate.....and without the dlc, you are completely at the mercy of RNG. Never a good thing. I'm not asking to be able to pick traits like in the dlc, but at least let me decide whether the RNG picks job traits or council traits.

In the past, when you hired a leader, a new leader was added to the pool....now the pool is static for 5 years. I had a game where my starting head of research had a council bonus to mining stations, and the 3 scientists in the pool had +10 lifespan, +4 minerals and +3 happiness as a councilor....those were my starting choices, and thus only choices, the first 5 years of the game. Not one starting scientist with a trait for research, not one starting scientists with a trait for exploration...in other words not one starting scientist with a trait for science. Powerful leaders are they, unleash them on the galaxy I must. Maybe just one or two more leaders in the pool could help alleviate such "overpowered" starts?

 

[Soranya]

Now after reading the patch notes.
Any news on plans to really fix the stacking exploits with (ship) building costs? (what? when?)

Rest sounds solid.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

I'd suggest that an empire that wants to build entirely around having a large stable of really good leaders should have that as an option, and that it would be better to use appropriate unity costs to balance the benefits of those leaders rather than shutting of the XP spigot once you hit a certain (relatively small) number of leaders.

Thanks for this, I would recommend making the leader xp cap much much more lenient and remove the 0 xp gain entirely if you are over double the leader cap. Minus 100% xp gain should mean just that, not 0 xp gain due to the effect being multiplicative as apposed to additive. For example if I have 20 leaders and I am over double the leader cap of 10, all leader xp should be about -100%. However, if I have buffs that counter this which add up to 200%, all of my leaders should get +100% xo as opposed to 0 (how it works currently).

Granted, some of the leader xp buffs could be reduced a bit to compensate for this change somewhat.

You'll notice in the patch notes that the penalty for going over the cap has been reduced. You can now go 125% over the cap before reaching 0 XP. Combine that with a few other ways to get upkeep free leaders, and I hope you'll find that the leader cap is less a hindrance than it was in the past.

 

[Lenk]

Lot of nice changes though I find a few things odd about the DLC or just frustrating to deal with.

With the Under one Rule origin, think it might be good to have the Luminary have 100% chance to take chosen one trait since their the golden one? its honestly infuriating to have them die when they are lit up green in the event box. The origin revolves around that leader and it just gives that bad feel vibe to have them die due to pure random chance because the game felt like it. Just a campaign ender there. Stopped a couple of runs because of that when trying to explore the event chains. Also wouldn't the luminary be a legendary paragon because in the Origin text, its said they're a legendary leader?

Got to say, don't know how frequently Keides spawns for everyone else, but I never have seen him nor any other legendary leader for that matter. Seen some of the renowned but none of the legendary leaders. Guess I wont see him ever lol.

• Lowered the spawn chance for the legendary paragon Keides by 75%.

I am intrigued with envoys getting explored as full leaders but I think they should be in a separate "leader poll" of sorts. Knowing how people talk on the forums and on steam, if the envoys were combined with leaders then no one would use an envoy and instead use that leader capacity slot to have a governor on every single one of their planets or admiral on each fleet. But yeah Envoys getting upgrades would be nice just cannot see them being included in the same leader pool with the other leader types. I can imagine them earning traits differently, like if one is doing spying more then diplomacy they should earn traits that make them better at spying and same goes for diplomacy.

Could rework the Bureau of Espionage where instead of base Intel edict, could make it more interactive, you unlock a special council slot for the General, and per level could give base intel. that would also even out the visual layout of the council.

This is more of a flavor thing then anything, but I think leaders once they reach level 8 and earn their destiny trait, they should get the renowned graphic border/title. Those who get chosen one or one of the covenant traits, should be marked as legendary (with the graphic border/title) since there can only be one of each in an empire.

 

[Dr Pippy]

You'll notice in the patch notes that the penalty for going over the cap has been reduced. You can now go 125% over the cap before reaching 0 XP. Combine that with a few other ways to get upkeep free leaders, and I hope you'll find that the leader cap is less a hindrance than it was in the past.

I'll definitely look forward to trying it out!

 

[Abdulijubjub]

You'll notice in the patch notes that the penalty for going over the cap has been reduced. You can now go 125% over the cap before reaching 0 XP. Combine that with a few other ways to get upkeep free leaders, and I hope you'll find that the leader cap is less a hindrance than it was in the past.

... I assumed the question was whether you'd doubled it or tripled the hard cap. It hadn't even occurred to me that you would increase it by only 25%.

So if I had 12 max leaders, instead of hitting a 0 XP hard cap at 24, I can now go all the way to..... 27?

Granted, Eager leaders alleviate this. And I really appreciate that. But they're most effective, ironically, if you keep them around as Aptitude stat sticks (borderline exploiting) instead of actually assigning them to anything, or you keep them as a rotating roster which have to be repeatedly fired once they hit level 4 (awkward and slightly tedious, but reasonable).

Maybe Eager leaders are enough. I'll have to try it out, it's hard for me to reason about how much of an impact it will have, so I guess I'll wait and see.

 

[LystAP]

Choices and outcomes of some events. To give some more insight:
Before, when you had a rebel situation, and rebels gave their "demands" it was pretty harsh even if you were a benevolent ruler overall.
Now, if you were benevolent, they will ask for a way less (bordering on almost nothing, but asking for nothing would be too funny, so if there will be no egalitarians to demand anything then they will disband - try getting rid of your egalitarians now and see what happens, although it might be hard). This might also lead to getting rid of the story related negative trait (depending on previous choices).

Does this include events tied to if your ruler takes the 'status quo' approach to power? I don't think that pathway has many events compared with if you seized power.