Stellaris Dev Diary #316 - Leader Consolidation

[aantia]

Very interesting. I would like to suggest that there be a law to allow Commanders to be governors - it just doesn't make sense for some empires to place a sector under martial law. That also makes it straightforward for factions to oppose it.
I also hope the existing civics have lots of fun interaction with governor classes. A general to enforce my Corvee System, Technocracy punishing me for having non-scientists running planets...

 

[ashbery76]

The state Leader should be the capital planet governor imo.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

2. It makes perfect sense to combine generals and admirals, but the veteran general sub class is going to suffer the same problems as the general class does now in that generals just aren't necessary in the game, especially with such a strict cap on number of leaders. Unless the cap is softened quite a bit I can't imagine anybody ever picking this at level 4. Speaking as someone who mods out the leader cap, this doesn't bother me and I actually I love this change quite a bit because I will always have a general no matter what and this will definitely add flavor to it. Still thought it deserves mentioning for the vanilla game.

On the contrary, the leader cap change means that some players like me who don't abolish the cap will start using generals, at least in SP.

In the current system I use three admirals in the early game for exploration, and if I am going for early conquest I use several admirals until that is done, but otherwise I play with just 1 council specced admiral (or 2 if playing psionic with a non-Instrument Covenant) and use all the rest of my leader cap and exceeding it for scientists and governors, since I find that to be the more powerful combination when I go all out economic/diplomatic conquest, or only go for mid- and end-game military conquest, crushing the enemy in an avalanche of battle steel bought by the superior early-game economic buildup.

But with a leader cap for commanders of its own, any extra commander slots not required for those 1-2 strategists can be profitably used on generals to speed up invasions on the rare occasions I do go to war, or for military governors. Depending on just how the military governor's veteran and destiny traits work out, I could easily see myself incorporating one of them on a permanent basis in most of my builds just for the convenience post conquest if they are strong. And I can certainly see myself running one planetary invasion specced general on a permanent basis - outside the early game, they reduce frustration much more than an extra admiral would when at war.

I can even exceed the commander leader cap if I feel for whatever reason that I do want more admirals or generals without penalizing my scientists and planet/system governing officials, so I am probably going to do that if I don't have enough commander cap for the strategists and generals mentioned above.

As described in this development diary, 3.10 is the very first iteration of the game where using generals on a permanent basis to have them available in times of war makes excellent sense - at least for my SP playing style, where admirals leading fleets just aren't that important compared to running a strong economy.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

If you're reworking leaders, give rulers something to do. While leaders do have an empire to run, it's weird that the running of the empire's capital (which in the beginning of the game is almost the entire empire) is left to someone else. Governors have already been reworked to have sector governors and planetary ones; now that any leader class can act as a governor, it should be fairly easy to have rulers as the automatic governors of the capital sector. A new civic/origin could be created that sort of mirrors the shogunate in Japan, where the ruler is the nominal head of the empire, but the minister of defense is the actual governor of the capital sector (and thus, the one who has control). "Bakufu" if a civic (or maybe "military bureaucracy"), and "under two rules" if an origin (yes, it's terrible. Maybe "military bureaucracy" would be better. Or "administrative military"?).

No.

My immortal God Empress, Chosen of the Composer of Strands, is not going to be spending her everyday life doing the day-to-day minutiae of governing the capital. She is busy eating grapes and ruling an empire.

There is a reason that kings, princes, presidents, prime ministers, etc. don't run the capital in real life. Not only does it require a separate skillset, but even were they interested in doing so and had the required skills and knowledge, where would they find the time required to do a good job without harming their ability to rule? There are only so many hours in the day.

One of the most important aspects of leadership is being willing and able to delegate so you can concentrate on the important things you cannot delegate, and the running of cities - or in this case planets - is definitely something that should always be delegated.

 

[Marvin Ehre]

A question, will these changes be put into an open beta, so modders will know in advance, what they would need to change?

 

[Zetesofos]

Will there be a bigger leader cap on larger maps, or any ability to increase it through empire expansion?

No...but you know; there's something to that.

I think they could add a leader cap factor based on the map size. Especially now that habitats are consolidated, there's a semi fixed rate of systems; they could up the end game amount based on the map size without much issue I think.

 

[stargazersatnight]

Still waiting on a war rework so we don't have to conquer the entire Galaxy for every war after midgame.

 

[Zetesofos]

This mostly looks good. My only real concern is when it comes to scientist classes. Namely that with the current game mechanics, both explorers and academics hit a point where they become useless. At some point all the systems will have been surveyed, all the anomalies will have been studied and all archaeological sites will have been excavated.

Of those two, probably academics are the easiest to keep relevant with the current game because we do have systems in place that could introduce more dig sites and anomalies to ensure they are worth keeping around. Explorers are probably at the greatest risk of hitting irrelevancy and making players regret in investing in them, given that we probably don't want to be constantly adding too many new hyperlanes being discovered that lead to new systems, largely as a result of performance concerns. Only other area I can see that might be useful for keeping both relevant, now that it looks like assist research is going the domain of analysts, would be to give both classes bonuses for researching debris. Of course the issue is that only helps empires that are constantly getting into war and I'd argue the game pushes conflict too much at the expense of diplomacy and discovery.

So curious if this concern is on the radar of the devs? If so, what are they considering to ensure that both explorers continue to be relevant past the exploration phase. If they don't consider it a concern, then why not and what do they expect the player response to be? As in is the intended the design is that we only invest in one of each at game start and then either let them die off or fire them upon running out of places to survey, anomalies to research and dig sites to loot?

So, just had an idea on using survey ships, and as I was writing it out, made more sense to put in my own post, but link here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/survey-patrol-a-late-game-use-for-survey-ships.1600988/

 

[Zetesofos]

Still waiting on a war rework so we don't have to conquer the entire Galaxy for every war after midgame.

What is your goal there exactly? Conquer an entire empire after winning a couple space battles or just taking their capitol? Not trying to be rude, just curious what game state you're looking for vs what the developers are? I don't forsee them actually reworking the warfare mechanic too heavily.

As it stands, the best use of war is to start one, take a few systems and one colony, then hold onto it till white peace; rinse, repeat. Military empires that want to integrate other empires are better off doing it piece-meal rather than all at once - its more accurate to how we see most conflicts throughout history that were of equalish size.

 

[Calvax]

Still waiting on a war rework so we don't have to conquer the entire Galaxy for every war after midgame.

Indirectly this may be better with the loyalty changes. Currently wars beyond the midgame are always massive due to the number of vassal and federation blobs. If the loyalty changes significantly cut down on those then it might not be so bad.

Though we'd still have the issue of two wars against the same party often resulting in a stalemate. The kind where empire A is 80 occupied by B, 20% occupied by C, but since neither B or C have 100% occupation A refuses to surrender.

 

[Zyacon16]

My grievances with the names:

Commanders renamed to Officers.
Academic renamed to Investigator.
Statistician renamed to Dean.
Analyst renamed to Director.
Official renamed to the dreaded p word... Politician.
Advisor renamed Economist.

otherwise, all the changes are quite good.

 

[Lys91]

I have been out of touch with Stellaris, and I am considering starting a new game. Do we know when 3.10 will be released? (rough estimates are fine.)

 

[Rafss]

I estimate an Open Beta on november or earlier, but 3.10 itself only december or 2024. If the next DLC is a species pack (which is probable) things could happen quicker than usual, that would be a pleasant surprise.
I guess you should enjoy your new game for now

 

[Zetesofos]

Indirectly this may be better with the loyalty changes. Currently wars beyond the midgame are always massive due to the number of vassal and federation blobs. If the loyalty changes significantly cut down on those then it might not be so bad.

Though we'd still have the issue of two wars against the same party often resulting in a stalemate. The kind where empire A is 80 occupied by B, 20% occupied by C, but since neither B or C have 100% occupation A refuses to surrender.

Just checking, but refuse to surrender in totality, or even white peace?

 

[SalivatingPanda]

not overly fond of the names. Some suggestions or what it might be worth.

Commanders:

• 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 or Warden - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Defense position

Officials:

• Delegate - Focuses on Federations and the Galactic Community
• Industrialist administrator or governor - 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 Economist or chancellor - Council Focus (Economy)

Scientists:

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

 

[thestarsseeall]

Shame that envoys still don't have traits. That was the part that I was most looking forward to when I heard about the leader rework. Was excited to start having envoy events actually start affecting their traits besides just needing to swap in another blank envoy from another empire. Maybe next rework or something then.

Having councilor positions that cover their field is a nice first step though.

I suppose that eventually once the envoys do get traits, the two councilor classes for officials will get folded into one big councilor group, while envoys will become the third group within Officials?

 

[CorporateHarold]

Hey, so I'm a new console player who's been eagerly awaiting galactic paragons, will this update be included once galactic paragons is released for console? This whole system revolutionises the expansion and I'd hate to have to wait even longer for it to come out.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

Yet another rework, losing characters that some people enjoyed in favor of trying to make characters passed over for highly valuable leader slots that did not exist before leader caps.... useful. More relearning of the game and ways to suppress the numbers of people getting back into the game. In order to hold onto this deeply unpopular new limit on gameplay? Not a fan of how things are going here.

 

[Zetesofos]

Shame that envoys still don't have traits. That was the part that I was most looking forward to when I heard about the leader rework. Was excited to start having envoy events actually start affecting their traits besides just needing to swap in another blank envoy from another empire. Maybe next rework or something then.

Having councilor positions that cover their field is a nice first step though.

I suppose that eventually once the envoys do get traits, the two councilor classes for officials will get folded into one big councilor group, while envoys will become the third group within Officials?

With the changes here, I'm not seeing a reason to give envoys traits.

Officials can get traits that likely change the effects of Envoys, but I don't see a reason to give envoys traits directly) given this system.

Envoys now just determine HOW MANY empires you can have some measure of diplomatic relations with, and the federation/gal comm is relegated to your Leader slot.

 

[Letharion]

With the changes here, I'm not seeing a reason to give envoys traits.

Officials can get traits that likely change the effects of Envoys, but I don't see a reason to give envoys traits directly) given this system.

Envoys now just determine HOW MANY empires you can have some measure of diplomatic relations with, and the federation/gal comm is relegated to your Leader slot.

I think there is a lot of ways traits could enhance the way you use envoys if - but that's an big if - espionage, diplomacy and counterintelligence gets more meaningful as far as envoys would be involved. On the other hand, some basic interactions would fall away or could be taken without an envoy. One solution, which crosses my mind would be, that one envoy would deployed to a foreign empire would act there simultaneously as ambassador and station chief (not unlike reality), but could only maintain one diplomatic/espionage operation at once - perhaps more with higher level or certain traits. And his traits would determine where his strength would lie, with espionage, diplomacy or counterintelligence. And only you would know, as long the other empire didn't have the stronger counterintelligence.