Stellaris Dev Diary #316 - Leader Consolidation

[Echo Candor One]

No any news about new DLC?

The next DLC is about expanding xeno-compatability. The number of hybrid species will be increased tenfold, and there will be a unique, AI-written pop-up describing each one as they are spawned.

 

[Rafss]

The next DLC is about expanding xeno-compatability. The number of hybrid species will be increased tenfold, and there will be a unique, AI-written pop-up describing each one as they are spawned.

And StableDiffusion AI will handle creating a new hybrid monstrosity portrait

 

[Zeta-0]

The next DLC is about expanding xeno-compatability. The number of hybrid species will be increased tenfold, and there will be a unique, AI-written pop-up describing each one as they are spawned.

I want to see how their parents get in love, and the following sequence. Not sure it is too otherworldly for current AI

 

[Lenk]

Got a question, since they added the ability to rename the council position names, why not add the ability to rename the three leader positions? So if someone doesn't like the name they could name it something else?

 

[Millbot]

And StableDiffusion AI will handle creating a new hybrid monstrosity portrait

I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that we wouldn't see the mangled AI generated hands for most of them.

 

[frozenparagon]

I mean, you can always get nobility, if you want

ah yes. nobles. exactly. tho i don't see the ruler jobs becoming leaders thing being implemented any time soon, a relatively pain free way to do so would simply be via planet designation. politicians for production/extraction, head researcher research worlds, nobles should perhaps supersede other rulers and provide unique traits to validate the nobility civic that allows them in the first place

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Hello everybody!

Today we’re going to look at a likely 3.10 feature, some changes that we’ve called the Leader Consolidation.

With leaders becoming more important to your empire following the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ release alongside Galactic Paragons, there were some rough edges leftover and experiences that could be better. Some of the changes we’re implementing during this leader consolidation were things we talked about during the development of Galactic Paragons but decided against for various reasons, or were out of scope at the time, while others are based on data gathered since then and community feedback.

So What’s Changing?​

Some of these names are still being argued over, so are subject to change. Hate one in particular? Let us know. One of us probably hates it too.

View attachment 1027384Admirals and Generals will be merged into the Commander, the Military leader class.

Admiral and General will remain as veteran classes, with the following foci:

• Admiral - Focuses on Fleets and general naval combat
• General - Focuses on taking planets and assaulting static defenses - Armies, Planetary Bombardment, Ground Combat, and attacking defensive structures such as Starbases are the General’s forte
• Commissioner - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Martial Law)
• Strategist - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Defense position

View attachment 1027385The old Governors and some Envoy functions will be merged into Officials, the Administrative leader class.

Their veteran classes will be:

• Delegate - Focuses on Federations and the Galactic Community
• Industrialist - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Industry and Development)
• Ambassador - Council Focus (Diplomacy, Espionage, and First Contact), especially suited for the new Minister of State position
• Advisor - Council Focus (Economy)

This does give the Officials two council focused subclasses, but the two are different enough that we felt it best to let them specialize accordingly. The Advisor is expected to thrive in some civic based council positions.


View attachment 1027386Scientists remain the third, Scientific leader class.

Veteran Classes:

• Explorer - Focuses on Surveying and Exploration
• Academic - Focuses on Archaeology and Anomalies
• Analyst - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Assist Research)
• Statistician - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Science position

As suggested in last week’s teaser and by some of the above bullet points, “governor” will no longer be a leader class. Instead, a planet or sector can be governed by any leader, regardless of class, with differing effects. For example, instead of being local planetary decisions, placing a Commander in charge of a sector will place the entire sector under Martial Law. (The exact effects of which will be changing somewhat too - we want it to be a reasonable thing to put the military in charge of a newly conquered or disruptive set of planets until the condition stabilizes.) Administrative leaders will have most of the effects of the current governors, and the Assist Research effects will be moving to the Scientific governors.

You will still be able to override a Sector Governor on a specific planet by placing a Planetary Governor there, so your Forge Ecumenopolis could have an Industrialist governor in a sector that is otherwise led by a Scientist.

We’re also doing a major rebalancing of the traits themselves. As part of this, we’re reintroducing some sector-wide traits to governors (though now they’re split across the governing veteran classes), and the traits themselves will clearly show if they’re of sector or planetary scope. Note that a sector-wide governor trait will not apply to a planet that has its own local planetary governor overriding them.

So are Envoys Real Leaders Now?​

Partially.

A single Administrative leader can be assigned to your Federation and another to the Galactic Community (or Empire) like numerous Envoys did in the past. Their level and traits will determine how effective they are at the job instead of cramming every Envoy you can spare into there, making Delegates the optimal candidates for this sort of thing.

The Minister of State position is being added to the base council alongside the military and scientific ministries. This councilor will also have general effects on diplomacy, espionage, and first contact.

View attachment 1027445
Ruler, plus one red, one yellow, and one blue council member.​

Envoys will remain as they were to represent the Minister of State’s bureaucratic reach, and will continue to handle “minor tasks” such as Improve and Harm Relations, maintaining Espionage spy networks, and First Contact.

What About Leader Caps?​

Leader caps remain, but are per-class, with any over-cap penalties affecting only the particular leader class that is over. Civics, traditions, and other effects that previously increased the generic leader cap will now generally increase the cap for one or more specific classes.

We may end up shifting more of the over-cap penalty over to the upkeep cost of leaders.

What about Gestalt Councils?​

Gestalt Councils currently have a significant advantage in passing agendas in the early game due to having a larger number of councilors. This disparity will be lessened a bit due to the regular empires starting with one additional councilor, and we’re also making council legitimacy (how happy your factions are with your council) affect agenda progress.

Their nodes will get a little bit of a reshuffle to accommodate the various changes, but should otherwise remain generally familiar. We’ll be able to share more details later on during the development cycle.

I’m a Modder, Tell Me Modding Stuff​

We’ll have more details in the release notes, but leader classes are no longer hard-coded and are thus much more moddable in script, so you should theoretically be able to do things like "this leader does research, commands armies, and represents us in the galcom!"

Is that everything?​

Nooooo.

Next on our Custodian “this is not internal politics” agenda is to do a pass on council agendas. Our thought is that agendas should have more impactful results (tangible effects rather than modifiers), and the range of available agendas should be related to the ethics of your active councilors instead of the ethics of your empire.

This is planned for 3.11 ‘[REDACTED]’ at the earliest.

In the longer term, we may want to make greater differentiation between the councils of different authorities - the councils of a Democracy and a Megacorp could feel different from one another, for example.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll boldly go where no dev diary has gone before.

(We're all currently at a staff conference, so dev replies to the diary will be delayed, but we'll make sure to read through all of the comments when we get back.)

I was meaning to write up some thoughts on leaders and related stuff, but only got around to it now. Anyway, better late than never, so here goes:


Leaders, ethics and authority types

• The modifiers to leader pool size from Fanatic Authoritarian (-1) and Fanatic Egalitarian (+1) would go much better with their corresponding authority types. +1 pool size would be thematically appropriate for Democratic, regardless of whether the empire is Fanatic Egalitarian or not Egalitarian at all. Similarly, -1 pool size would be thematically appropriate for Dictatorial and Imperial.
  • The latter forms of government generally filter out deviants (only trusted loyalists are welcome), while Democratic by default leaves more room for deviants than any other form of government. Fanatic Authoritarian and Fanatic Egalitarian would still be guaranteed to get -1 and +1, but everyone else should also get these modifiers if they pick the corresponding authority types.
  • Ethics holding more than 2 modifiers, and ethics holding negative modifiers, are both inconsistent with the design principles Stellaris has used for ethics since time immemorial: only 2 modifiers, and only positive ones. Moving these leader pool modifiers to the authority types would improve both the ethics and the authority types at the same time.
  • Philosopher King could add +1 pool size. This would let Enlightened Monarchy and Elective Monarchy, the governments unlocked by Philosopher King, recruit more broadly than the other autocracies.
    • (Shameless side-plug: Philosopher King should allow Elective and Enlightened Monarchies to use otherwise blocked civics)
• Similarly, the external leader pool size effects should also be removed from the Xenophile and Xenophobe ethics.
  • Corporate governments should get +1 external pool size. Profits are what matters most to a megacorp, after all, and when it comes to marketing and recruitment ad campaigns a megacorp should really be one step above the regular governments.
  • Diplomatic stances would be a great place for external pool size modifiers. Mercantile xenophobes should be much more into (ab)using external talents than Supremacists of any ethic persuasion.
  • Civics would also be a good new home for the external pool size modifiers. Pompous Purists, for instance, could get a -1 or -2 external pool size modifier, while Philosopher King could be a potential candidate for +1. Corporate Dominion should give +1 for those who lack the Megacorp expansion.
• Dictatorial feels a bit lackluster when compared to the other authority types, as it has no empire effects. Since Oligarchic gets +2 Effective Councilor Skill, a +X Effective Ruler Skill bonus for Dictatorial would seem sensible, fair and balanced.

Age of recruited leaders
I have noticed that many leaders are incredibly young when they reach the empire's leadership positions. It feels very unrealistic that teens are part of the recruitment pool; they are unlikely to have full adult rights at that point, yet can somehow be entrusted with governmental positions. Having teens end up in governmental leadership positions (including commanding armies and science expeditions) is worse than the usual main character age of Hollywood movies - this is deep into shonen manga territory. No matter how talented and educated they may be in theoretical aspects, there is no credible way they have sufficient experience of life and leadership to be among the most qualified candidates for an interstellar government. If there are to be rare young leadership prodigies, they should appear through special events. Please consider taking another look at the recruitment ages of leaders and raising the minimum age to 30, even if this means also adjusting the life expectancy upwards to keep the lifespan in service unchanged.

Governor level bonuses could be changed to throughput rather than output
Currently, a Governor adds +2% resources from jobs per skill level. Due to the implications of output bonuses relative to throughput bonuses, this means that a sector optimized around internal resource supply chains (i.e. Miners who supply Artisans who supply Researchers, and such) may need to be reorganized whenever the leader goes away and is replaced by a much less skilled successor. If the +20% resource bonus allowed X Miners to supply Y>X Artisans who in turn could supply Z>Y>X Researchers, losing the resource bonus could necessitate the sector reducing its number of specialists in order to eliminate the resource shortage that just appeared. A throughput bonus (i.e. an increased upkeep paired with the increased output) would have the benefit that the internal socioeconomic structure could remain unchanged, with no unemployment being called for, enabling a smoother transition for players (especially for those inclined to micromanage). It can also be argued that Stellaris' prolific use of output bonuses, rather than throughput bonuses (of which there are only a few), contributes to the overly strong performance of regular empires (both human and AI) relative to leviathans, marauders, fallen empires and crises.

Number of governors needed for the empire
There is a potential way to keep the number of Governors more stable over the course of the game, drawing inspiration from the Command Limit of Admirals. If sectors started small and grew bigger over the course of the game, it would allow each Governor to cover an increasing number of systems and thereby allow expanding empires to manage with a more stable number of Governors (as sector size would also grow throughout the game).

Rulers in "field" positions

• I think rulers should generally be able to double as the governor of the capital sector. Beyond this, specific civics could enable rulers to hold other field positions, where it makes sense for that culture - such as Warrior Culture allowing rulers to hold Commander field positions.
• Though this could also be made a matter of difference between authoritarian and egalitarian government types; authoritarians concentrate power to fewer leaders, making it more logical for them to "multiposition", whereas more egalitarian forms of government spread out authority and duties among more people. This could be represented in a reasonably balanced way by allowing Imperial and Dictatorial to hold field positions, while Oligarchic and Democratic could have 1 more leader capacity while limiting their ruler to the council (having more leaders would also go well with Democratic's election type).
• Perhaps this could just be a policy choice?
  • Council only: ruler sits only on the council, can only gain council traits
  • Govern capital: ruler sits on the council and governs the capital sector, can gain both council and field traits, -1 leader capacity
  • No limitation: ruler sits on the council and holds any field position desired, can gain both council and field traits, -1 leader capacity
    • "No limitation" is only unlocked for specific civics, such as Warrior Culture, Technocracy or Divine Sovereign.
    • Alternatively, two separate options: "Military Command" and "Scientific Leadership".
  • This proposed setup should arguably satisfy both those who argue that "multitasking rulers perform worse" and those of us who want to be able to have their Chosen One Emperor of Blorgkind personally lead the crusading fleet of friendships in the grimdark struggle against the friend request deniers.

Other leader-related suggestions or issues

• More accessible policies and edicts tab: while it is nice that they share the same tab, I wish that tab was more accessible - without having to go through the council page.
  • If the top resource bar also included an Edict Funds counter ("13/20") next to the Unity counter, and clicking on this counter took you directly to the Policies/Edicts tab, this would solve two problems at once. The tab would be instantly accessible, and it would be much easier to keep track of your current Edict Funds situation (which can fluctuate quite a lot without you being aware of it).
• Show council member names: it would be very nice if the names of council members were visible beneath their position titles, especially in empires with low portrait variability. "Minister of Defense Khan Singh" and such.
• Archaeologist trait and Minor Artifacts production: please consider having the Archaeologist trait boost any local production of Minor Artifacts, when/if we get Scientist governors.
• Death Cults being able to recruit Mortal Initiate leaders, who live fast and die young, could potentially have fun and interesting gameplay implications.
• Please remove the Environmental Engineer trait from leaders under the Environmentalist civic: it would be nice if the civic blocked the trait spawning, since it is about as desirable for them as slavery modifiers are when slavery is outlawed. Environmentalists want to keep their natural blockers, not remove them.
• Council tooltip text/visual issue: on mouseover of the council portraits, only the Ruler's tooltip displays the title - and does not need to, since the title is already being listed beneath the portrait. In fact, the extra text makes the tooltip occlue the topmost part of the portrait.
• Ruler elections visual issue: the council traits are hidden behind an "x", at least if the leader is not already on the council. This makes it difficult to see which leaders you may want to get elected. It should be the non-council traits that are crossed over, if any.
• (Council size and council symmetry: it would be nice if the maximum number of leaders on the council was odd, as this would center the ruler.)

Intel, Diplomacy, Galactic Community, and external leader pool

• While you are looking at diplomacy, both in the upcoming diplomatic rebalance and in connection to the ongoing leader and envoy rework, perhaps you could consider having Intel affect the efficiency of Improve Relations and Harm Relations. It makes logical sense that a good understanding of another empire's Government would improve the efficiency of attempts to influence them (and perhaps also Trust-building in general, and how much Influence it costs to call in Favors they owe).
• It would similarly make sense that a good understanding of another empire's Diplomacy would enable a more efficient opposition of their suggestions in federations and the Galactic Community, and perhaps also reduce the efficiency of their opposition to your suggestions.
• Furthermore, a good understanding of another empire's Economy could improve your share of the profits from a Commercial Pact (at the other party's expense), and perhaps also improve your external leader pool (such as hiring costs and starting levels of leaders from the targeted empire).
• Additionally, a good Intel on their Technology could similarly improve your benefits from a Research Agreement (and reduce theirs), and increase your gains from scavenging their debris, or something else.
• Finally, having good Intel on their Military should also offer benefits, perhaps to all three of Damage, Tracking and Evasion, representing how your military is aware of the other empire's hardware and software limitations and how they can be exploited - allowing a nominally weaker force to potentially defeat an otherwise stronger enemy, via a mechanic that makes a lot of sense.
• The overall idea is essentially that Intel should be useful for regular, "tactical" activities towards other empires - not just the "strategic" special operations. That having solid Intel on other empires should by itself offer advantages over them in your regular interactions. This should have no risk of crossing the line into being "unstoppable anti-fun" for the target, as these effects could presumably be both defended against (by raising Encryption) and actively compensated by getting good Intel on them. And these effects would also be very "quiet", as they would be a silent part of other activities - and those activities would generally also only occur under circumstances that the player can influence, if not outright decide whether they happen.

 

[Kava]

I hope there are more leader cap increases sprinkled throughout civics/traditions such as more Governor/Official cap from Domination traditions and Aristocratic Elite civic, or more Scientist cap from Discovery traditions and Technocracy civic.
One thing I'm wondering is how we'll be able to fit in a General. If they share leader cap with any of the others, they'll probably not see much use.

 

[Calvax]

I hope there are more leader cap increases sprinkled throughout civics/traditions such as more Governor/Official cap from Domination traditions and Aristocratic Elite civic, or more Scientist cap from Discovery traditions and Technocracy civic.
One thing I'm wondering is how we'll be able to fit in a General. If they share leader cap with any of the others, they'll probably not see much use.

Generals and admirals are being merged into one leader: the Commander. Governors are getting removed as a dedicated leader type, instead all leaders can be governors of sectors/plants and apply different bonuses based on their type.

It was covered in a dev diary not long ago.

 

[Prolbo]

Oh, hi there.

I want to say that I like your idea of leader consolidation, especially removal of Generals as main class, it sounds interesting and maybe I'll be able to say something userfull here.

Idea with 3 main classes:
Officials which represent main, civilian government branch and responsible for diplomacy, admiration and economy,
Commanders which represent military government branch and responsible for fleets, armies, military forces and production (?),
Scientists which represent R&D department and responsibile for exploration, research and development;
Is nice and sound.

And you know what? It can be even better with this thing: Red, Green, Blue and Orange, Tile, Violet. It's colors for the position "sockets" and leader roles. Which means that each leader may be able to occupy position previously reserved for another role.

For example, your design draw already proposes that Commanders can occupy flotilia commander officer position and army officer position. Ad well as Scientists and Commanders able to occupy Governor position.

So, why not go further?
Why Commanders can't occupy science ship captain role and lead the reconnaissance? Yes, they wouldn't be able to research the anomalies, excavate the sites, but they still will be able to navigate the fleet and, maybe, survey the systems to remove fog of unknown from visited systems.
Scientists on the other hand can serve as diplomats to some extend, especially if they are xenophiles or even as fleet commanding officers and while they wouldn't be able to provide relevant bonuses they sure can have some minor bonuses to the secondary stats or even have a chanse to salvage some technologies right after the battle.
Officials also should be able to occupy fleet commanding position and while I can't see what they can provide to the fleet except morale bonus which doesn't exist in this game, their very presence can be used to add salt to the injury after defeating enemy fleet and maybe improving owner diplomatic standing against enemy empire.

Maybe you can even make a leader treats which will provide minor bonuses outside of leader's specialization and position.


Also, about rebalancing private mines / generators / industries traits. Yeah they are definitely broken and conjuring good right out of thin air. It's hilarious. But I fear you'll make them definitely useless.
Maybe you can make it's output per district based, divided by number of leaders with similar trait, with minimal and maximal output cap.
For example Capitalist t1 can have minimal output of 2 energy with no generator districts and maximal output of 16 with ~10 generator districts while number of leaders with this trait is 1.

 

[admiralhippo101]

First time posting anything here so please bare with me! I've more than 4000 hours in stellaris and am a huge fan of paradox games. Many thanks to the continued hard work and development of the game, and I regularly read the developer diaries
Just a few suggestions that I would like to see in terms of game improvement in development going forwards based on my gameplay experience

1. Late game performance. Obviously a known issue and there have been definite improvements here but late game lag is still bad

2. Mid - Late game micromanagement. This is another huge issue... I find that by mid to late game I often give up and rarely finish games due to the amount of increasing micromanagament as my empire expands, which makes the game both unenjoyable and tedious. A huge amount has been done to improve interfaces, and automate things such as explore which is amazing. However starbase and trade management are problematic. You have to manually upgrade each and every starbase at multiple tiers to fully customise even one starbase which is a huge time sink involving lots of clicking and it is not enjoyable. By mid game you might be trying to manage 50+ starbases. Might it be possible to set a starbase template with an upgrade button that will simply upgrade it to a design? With trade if you conquer a starbase or lose a system you have to manually find, reconnect each and every starbase to the trade network which is also both hugely time consuming and not fun in terms of gameplay (never mind the random pirate fleet spam lol). Would it be possible to introduce a system where the bases will autoconnect to a trade network? Or perhaps even revisit trade and abstract it to some degree as I do feel/find this in itself contributes to mid/late game slowdown
(gestalt empires run much faster, in my experience)

3. Planet management, There have been great improvements with sector management and automation. However newly conquered planets often have tons of buildings/districts which I would like to get rid of or re-develop (esp if fanatical purifier for example with a newly conquered planet) or even abandon (without the huge influence cost). I have to manually destroy each and every building/district on a conquered world a feature to remove all buildings would likewise be very helpful and save time

4. Leaders. I still don't feel this is quite right either. As it stands...we have 3 separate leader categories which are evenly split into capacity. I find that especially in early game I want more scientists and have no use for commanders/officials and this slows the game down. Would it be possible to perhaps being able to rebalance the various categories?

Just my suggestions!