Stellaris Dev Diary #307 - Leader Experiments

[Enero]

Maybe Commanders (Admirals), Administrators (Governers, Scientists), Diplomats (Envoys). I hope Generals and assault armies will be removed completely at last.

 

[Edorath]

Leader Consolidation is on a longer timeframe, everything in that image is 3.9.

so the leader consolidation's not part of 3.9?
damn, i was hoping we might get an espionage rework with it.

 

[Jay Sherman]

Yes, we've had one, yes, but what about second leader rework?

<3

 

[-Marauder-]

Oh look, the terrible cap system that was entirely unwarranted is still causing issues. You guys do realize you could just scrap it, right?

 

[InvisibleBison]

Imposing restrictions to limit players forces them to think more and strategize differently.

Limitations can force players to think more and strategize differently, but it can also just stifle gameplay. Restricting leaders doesn't create interesting decisions; it just restricts the range of actions they can take.

Post rework leaders are incredibly strong and having them uncapped would be way way too powerful and game's difficulty would become trivial as a result

I already explained why this is not the case, but to reiterate: All nations can have leaders, so being able to recruit as many leaders as you want would not affect difficulty, because the AI would also be able to recruit as many leaders as it wanted. Both the player and the AI are equally empowered by the increase in leader power, so game balance isn't changed.

 

[Dlin369]

Maybe Commanders (Admirals), Administrators (Governers, Scientists), Diplomats (Envoys). I hope Generals and assault armies will be removed completely at last.

I think having Admirals be able to command armies attached to their fleets would simply things, giving the “Commanders” more utility.

Diplomats imo should include Governors since Envoys alone aren’t really useful as a category

 

[Northernwwater]

Leaders above a base cap could be tied to civics, ethics and maybe agendas. Just as when you unlock a new council position perhaps add to the leader cap in some way.

 

[Northernwwater]

Oh look, the terrible cap system that was entirely unwarranted is still causing issues. You guys do realize you could just scrap it, right?

Removing the cap and making the leader game trivially easy would be unwarranted.

 

[PLSKICKME]

Am i missing something, but it looks like that envoy glitch is a simple scope error? Envoys are not threated as leaders in the current version(as far as leader cap work) and you partly refused it bcs it had a bug in that.

As others pointed out, puttingtogether admirals and generals while having same trait pool is horrible. I dont like even now that my leader suddenly becomes half councilor-half specalist, and bad at both the same time.

Maybe make traits be more widenly useable and merged? So Admirals aggressive trait gives more firarate on ships while also giving bonus to armies they command? Or Or while a scientist is good with anomalies, they also provide a bonus to research if he is the councilor?

 

[amib]

Envoys being rolled into "diplomats" is great, but you need to separate espionage from them. i like having generals affect espionage, so you should consider splitting it away from "diplomacy" and roll it into military stuff. most of the espionage missions are worse than useless and the envoys are better put to use improving relations or increasing your diplo weight with the galactic community. infiltration and spying makes more sense rolled into "military intelligence" and should just be a separate "agent" leader job. just like diplomacy gives envoys, let subterfuge give "agents" and split up the roles.

to make them actually useful, consider giving us espionage operations to worsen relations between two other empires, or to facilitate/manipulate them closer towards peace, or towards hostility. being able to foment rebellion in the territories of my enemies would be amazing, and also something i'd have to watch out for in my own empire. then you can make generals as important as admirals on the council, and stuff like the domination tradition and the civics and edicts related to a police state and oversight become more important compared to stuff like prosperity

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I already explained why this is not the case, but to reiterate: All nations can have leaders, so being able to recruit as many leaders as you want would not affect difficulty, because the AI would also be able to recruit as many leaders as it wanted. Both the player and the AI are equally empowered by the increase in leader power, so game balance isn't changed.

There is a notable exception in that the unintended/exploit cases which the AI isn't programmed to follow can make the game easier for players.

Ex. Just to pick one, were the cap to just be removed with no further changes, the player could stack unemployed leaders of all types (occasionally gaining a level through Leader Conditioning) to get continuously escalating empire size reductions, leader XP modifiers (so the few leaders that actually have assignments level blazingly fast), and naval capacity. And also tons of free resources with the basic resource traits.

Note that this isn't really an "exploit" in the normal sense, where you have to bend over backwards and hit some corner case for it to be useful. It's not the intended way to use the mechanics, but ultimately it's just that hiring another leader is always better than not, so you do. Ex. I would almost always choose to spend 2 unity per month to get -2 empire size (and potentially +32 minerals once they hit level 3 at -6 unity upkeep), once I'm past 100. I might even save net unity on traditions/edicts. So I hire every governor (and in fact, leader) that crosses my path.

But the same patch that added the cap also introduced these bonuses for leaders that didn't depend on their assignment, so presumably the patch that removed the cap would remove (or rework) those changes at the same time.

 

[AaronWaterhog]

I'm glad that per-role leader caps didn't work out. I love how the current system makes me decide where I want my empire's focus to be, and whether I want to take a penalty if I think the rewards of having an extra leader or four will outweigh the costs. I would have been very sad to return to a system of "get as many of each leader type as the game allows" because it sharply reduces interesting choices.

Hopefully the reduced penalties aren't too extreme. The fact that they're so heavy if you go too far is one of the biggest things that makes the current implementation fun.

 

[Millbot]

Changes to federation starts looking promising. That might make them worthwhile,

That said, I'm hoping we will see more tweaks to federations overall in 3.9 because the vassal rework ended up being a big indirect nerf to them. Ideas that I can think of, many of which, if not all, have been suggested before, but worth suggesting again.

-Decouple the ability to form federation from the diplomacy tree. I'd suggest making it a technology that we research, which I think was the case before I started playing Stellaris. Could have the tech added, once first contact is made with another normal empire. I'd also suggest making this a required tech to have vassals. Federation starts would of course already have the tech. This would likely put federations on a better footing with the vassal system, since it would make the cost of entry reasonable. You still have to level them up and deal with cohesion.

-Add in federation holdings. This would be the next step to evening things out. Would probably also provide good levers to make Hegemons feel like they have a purpose, other than being a weaker version of an overlord and their vassals.

-Rework diplomacy to be the federation tree that is exclusive from the domination tree, which would be the overlord tree. Heck, I'd even suggest adding in another tradition tree for those that don't want to be in a federation or be an overlord. Possible make it two trees, one for empires that want to be truly free of federations and not have to have vassals (maybe call it the autarchy tree), while you have a second tree for empires that want to be subordinate to other empires (aka scion, vassals and I guess empires in hegemonies, that have no desire to be the hegemon empire). I suspect one thing that makes vassals meta, is that that isn't much delay on when an empire can reap most of the benefits (yes, your specialists have to level up, but it's not at the gating that we see with federations.


As for the leader cap. My main concern with the consolidation, is that could make the diplomacy aspect of the game really annoying because you have to choose better governance of you colonies or being able to do diplomatic stuff. So hopefully, the change will be done in such a way where it won't reduce our diplomatic options. Maybe the concept of envoys will be replaced with diplomatic delegations, which determine how many diplomatic actions you can have going on at any time (this includes: spying, improving relations, harming relations, working on first contact, representing your empire in a federation or representing your empire in the GALCOM). Just that diplomats (I'd suggest renaming this to statemen or politician) could be a way to turbo charge your diplomatic actions.

Also, I'm hoping 3.9 will take another stab at espionage. I'd strongly suggest opening up espionage actions against leviathans, marauders, the Khan, spaceborne fauna, The Gray Tempest, Fallen Empires and end game crises (add stuff in as needed because I'm sure more will be added). This would not only add more options for what we can do to interact with those things, but would be an area where you could have more powerful espionage options. I know that some of the espionage actions are on the weak side because the devs are trying to strike a balance between fun to have, while not being awful to play against. Given that none of those things are options for people play as in a standard game, not much risk of people getting mad, for example, about having to play against espionage actions against Fallen Empires because outside of modding, you can't play as an FE and it's not the devs job to balance around mods.

 

[Lady Alannah]

This looks really promising, I am so glad to be excited for Stellaris again

 

[verybad]

Glad to see Envoys getting a proper place in the scheme of things.

Maybe make spies a thing like armies that you place under Envoys to give more or less power to different roles. So you can give large spy armies to cold wars while ignoring friendly empires.

I see
level 0 for all tasks as being the base. Have a Unity cost to get them to level 1. different societies would get bonuses/negatives on various roles. Limited cost, but limited capability. Give all leaders a choice to follow on role or another at level 1 raising. Give them all names, including backwater governors that your never going to do anything with other than replace them when they die.

Research level 0
Internal Can be hired to Social/Physics/Engineering for minor bonuses (ie scientist armies) can investigate artifacts can not boldly go but help
External can explore planetary systems at ~half speed (including fleet speed). Can not investigate or find anomalies/artifacts.
Military level 0
Defenders can defend planets, armies under their control get half power move at half speed. Can run star ports.
Attackers fleets can only be half max fleet size for their empire, move at 75% speed, no ability to explore.
Social level 0
Internal Politicians planets can run under their command, assigned to roles to increase planet or ministry efficiency.
External Politicians can be assigned to external politics (Envoys or Spies) no ability in spying other than system analysis envoys also would have limited roles.

Unhappy leaders will have a chance to advance to level 1 for free but with negative traits related to their faction. (i.e. Faction leaders, etc.)

So change Admirals/Generals to the same role, give Defensive/Aggressive roles to them
Scientists give them Exploration/Research roles
Social leaders give them internal/external roles.
Military leaders can be better or worse at leading ground/space roles depending on their capabilities. No good reason to make separate General/Admiral leaders though. Defensive/Aggressive roles makes more sense (the name might be better than my chosen ones though)

So level 0 roles would be for leaders in bureaucracies, they would help make systems a bit better, but cost more, level 1+ leaders leading would be able to assign more level 0 leaders to various roles (eg multiple level 0 Social leaders to a planet to increase it's stability, a scientists could assign level 0 Researchers to research roles to make it a bit better or slowly exploring external space.)

Current leadership roles look like they were made for different DLCs by different people. Making them all fit in External/External roles would make them easier to understand, and just plane neater. I like neat. They should all have the same method of use. A Scientist level 0 could be assigned to External or External roles, multiples for making it quicker, ( 6 level 0 scientists to physics would make it better, level 1+ leaders could increase the cap on such roles for the level 0 leaders better internal social leaders would increase sector max size but might have more Faction rises. Level 0 Spies would increase speed at investigation)

All roles would be led by level 1+ leaders with level 0 leaders in their 'armies' making them better higher level leaders would have bigger army capacity and efficiency
Level 0 Social leaders could be assigned under a level 1 sector leader to colonize a planet, a level 1 sector leader would have negative sector roles in planets after 1 system level 2 sector leaders would get 2 systems away, etc, after 3 jumps, the max would be soft and get sector space more pirates and revolts etc (outlands) but more level 0 social leaders assigned to those planets might make them more stable. Different level 0 roles depending on your empire type etc.

Give them all the same method of use, give them level 0 ministraters under level 1+ leaders to do things with.

 

[Enero]

I think having Admirals be able to command armies attached to their fleets would simply things, giving the “Commanders” more utility.

Diplomats imo should include Governors since Envoys alone aren’t really useful as a category

Why? Diplomats are extremely important and have a totally diferent flavor.

Commanders - military side.
Administrators - civilian side.
Diplomats - foreign relations and espionage.

Logical and eloquent.

 

[Omega414]

The Paragons update is my second favorite DLC after Utopia. I am a modder, the new leader system is really easy to work with and produce cool new traits/effects. Please don't merge Admirals/Generals and Governors/Envoys together. I love the current system with the five classes and I don't want to see that destroyed. There are a four things I'm hoping to see in the future.

1. Envoys with levels, traits, etc. like normal leaders. Please keep the leader cap separate for envoys. Its really useful from a modder perspective.
2. Internal politics events (also caused by espionage) that can be influenced by envoys.
3. Expansion of the Espionage system. Right now its really weak. Espionage actions could kick off situations in the affected empire with degrees of severity depending upon the Encryption/Codebreaking gap.
4. Improvements to the ground combat system. I can't stress enough how useful/cool the situation UI is for features. A ground invasion should trigger a situation for both empires and players should have to make event driven choices during the battle. This opens up so many avenues to make Generals interesting and would make ground combat a lot more engaging.

Thanks for all the hard work Paradox. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

 

[Imp0815]

Why didn’t it work?​

This experiment largely failed due to UX issues. Stellaris isn’t always the easiest game to parse information from, but this turned out diabolically bad and difficult to fix.

The information transfer is made even harder by Envoys acting as their own “special version” that have their own capacity but behave entirely differently from all of the other leaders.

View attachment 1009575View attachment 1009576
This could possibly have been shown as something like 1/0/1/2 (+2) | (3), but that’s very confusing.​

I’ll go into full details after Caelum is released, but the quick summary involves consolidating the five leader classes down to three (Commanders, Diplomats, and Scientists) and reworking how Envoys are used. (As they would be merged into the Diplomat class.)

View attachment 1009577
Yes, we've had one, yes, but what about second leader rework?​

Until then, we’re planning on making some adjustments to the over-cap formulas to reduce their negative effects until the greater rework is ready.

Thanks for the insights!

I hope this is not only a one-way communication as I write down my thoughts. We already have the nested information for strategic resources. So why was a Leader nested icon/tooltip not feasible? A cap on individual leaders could have been an easy fix and would deepen the differences between empires and playstyles as different empires could have different base caps and increases. For example, a Military ethic could gain extra generals and admirals.You could just drop envoys out of the Leader tooltip right beside them.

I think your teaser for the new leader categories is cool, but I don't think Governors are Diplomats, and I hope we will see envoys directly connected to diplomats as I suggested some time ago. For Generals/Admirals, this is brilliant! But I want to mention that I think troop transports are still not a good fit and add annoying micro-management. They are already somewhat automated, and troops could be moved into a ship equipment slot and streamlined in that way.

Again, I want to voice my concern that we now foresee another round of development capacity invested into a feature that was never a real problem in the first place (Leaders worked fine), and things like the wonky RTS gameplay that has been detracting from the empire management since 2016 is still there and has massive problems like doom stacks and a non-engaging gameplay loop.

Thanks again for communicating with us this way and i hope to see some summer experiments on the military gameplay next week.

 

[monsterfurby]

To be fair, the main reason I didn't like the leader cap is because my dream 4X game would just simulate a ton of characters through all ranks and give the player the possibility to promote or demote them through the ranks, Aurora 4X style. Now, I know that's not the point of the leader system, but overall, the revised leader system did a lot to achieve the same thing without rewiring the entire game to fit my unhinged desires - it did give characters more personality and utility, and that alone is an awesome step forward. In that context, the low cap felt a bit like a tiny step back, though it was clear that it was going to get ironed out one way or another. Still, it felt like saying "we now let you do a lot more with leaders" and then adding "but not too much".

 

[Imp0815]

To be fair, the main reason I didn't like the leader cap is because my dream 4X game would just simulate a ton of characters through all ranks and give the player the possibility to promote or demote them through the ranks, Aurora 4X style.

Hoi 4 does this now as far as i know and its brilliant. I would like to see this for Stellaris. (Side note: @Stellaris_Team please stop getting inspiration from CK and use more from HoI ♥)