Stellaris Dev Diary #321 - Origins and Civics

[Foxosaur]

Great to see more empires. I know many create their own but I am bad at this - without them being too alike. So this is v cool.

Dlc looks great of course, thank you.

 

[LiZinckle]

50 from civic, 10 from harmony, 10 from domination, 10 from psionic, then 15 from beacon of liberty, 5 from Borin's event, 10 from Galactive community. 110 pop sprawl reducyion in total, in older system it will reduce the pop sprawl to negative.

It should not be a problem... right? Like it should not reduce the sprawl lower than 50, or that 50 use a different multiplier just like Gray Eminence once did?

 

[V-Metamorph]

Poor Nyrr folks, totally oblivious to what a terravore actually means for their civilisation.

 

[Eladrin]

A note regarding tomorrow's dev diary - it's going to be a little later than normal, probably at 15.00 Stockholm time. (Two hours later than usual.)

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Commander and Official it is, then.

Sovereign Guardianship + Citizen Service = 3 Unity per Soldier.

Inner Focus sounds like something Inward Perfection could use. That, or a Campaign that turns Influence into Edict Funds.

Will the Inner Focus edict have a non-zero Edict Funds / Unity cost?
Is it possible to spend more Unity on it, than it produces?

Shouldn't Guardian Cluster and Guardian Matrix add Unity to Warrior Drones, rather than to Soldiers?

 

[Draelian]

At this point, two initial civics for a final three feels too little, for the first time I am going to consider a mod that adds exactly one more civic or one that offers that option.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Heyo, time for the 'how good will this be?' speculation. My favorite hobby of my hobby!

New Origin - Riftworld​

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Riftworld is what we consider our 'launchpad' Origin for this expansion. If you want to get right into what Astral Planes is all about, this is where you might want to start.

Riftworld is the only way that a full-blown Astral Rift will appear at map generation. As you may remember, all other Rifts are formed from Astral Scars that open over time throughout the course of the game. In the Riftworld, you have had one looming over your home planet as long as your society can remember.

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Why is it there, and what significance does it have? You'll have accelerated access to Astral Rift technology with this Origin, so you'll be able to find out.

Being so closely connected to worlds beyond the Rifts, you'll also possess some general attunement to the planes and enjoy several bonuses that make exploring them both more likely, and less dangerous.

Obviously intended to get you into rifts early. The key question is 'how early?'- as in, will you get enough of a head-start with your rift-boons for it to have a mid-game payoff?

(The fact that it seems like a mid-game payoff is enough to mean 'not a top tier' origin- but that's fine, and not a problem. Rather, this will support a more peaceful 'bloom' style, which takes the pressure off of early expansion expectations if you just commit.)

If the home-system archeology site allows you to get started stockpiling threads early, this could actually be far more snowbally-than-expected. One of the more relevant points would be to use threads from the starting rift to force-generate new rifts.

On the other hand, if the home-system archeology doesn't enable exceptionally-early access, then you're still going to have to get through the normal early game challenge of 'find, draw, and research the relevant tech.' Which means you're just operating without the competitive bonuses.

Hyperspace Specialty Civic​

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Debug tooltips intentionally left on so you can read the Council position descriptions.​

Hyperspace Specialty encompasses one of the core themes of the Astral Planes: the manipulation of time and space.

Gotta go fast? This might be for you. This civic will set you on the fast track for Hyperlane research, provides some extra sublight speed, and boosts your Physics research. Physics research is another recurring theme in the Astral Planes - observing many of the phenomena inside of the Rifts will give new insights to your scientists.

You'll also have a boost to planet sensor range, which will start you with some greater understanding of your initial surroundings.

This civic seems better for the gestalts than the organics, while also being genuinely good as a starting civic, especially if you do a Statecraft-opener for early-3rd-civic-reform.

For all builds, the mix of planetary sensor range and early guaranteed access to the next Hyperdrive are significant edges for the exploration phase. This can be critical to bee-lining to potential planets, spending less time in transit / earlier starts to colony pop growth, and even military implications for greatly increasing that early military advance potential to try and press the attack in early wars before enemy fleets finish their emergency FTL from your victory.

For normal empires, this will be especially good for xenophobes and authoritarians. Both obviously get the most out of the early influence economy and bee-lining potential. This also would go well with Environmentalist, which scales in benefit with your early planet blockers. The stability-stacking councilor can also work well with a deliberate strategy of under-amenitizing planets to just get that extra worker, or as a way to stabilize planets outright when conquering... which is an Authoritarian/Xenophobe synergy.

For MegaCorps, this will be a significant combo with the Privatized Exploration, which is the '500 energy cheap colony ships' civic whose benefit, again, scales with planets settled. Privatized Exploration is itself a prime Statecraft->3rd Civic Reform 'early game only' civic, which will make this quite good.

Gestalts can get some better use out of this civic because due to how they don't do trade, Gestalts can get better use out of outright skipping systems to hyper-focus on bee-lining, while their solar panels will get earlier bonuses from that physics research potential.


For origin combos, two that come to mind are the Galactic Slingshot and Necrophage. The slingshot's distant-claim-cost-reduction means that you can really, really go far with skipping systems to just claim planets. This could be a huge increase in your expected number of early planets. For Necrophage, the planet-sensor becomes your best way to hunt those juicy primitive worlds for necro-purging, which remains the best way to suddenly increase your population and get rid of those pesky stellar cultureshock modifiers and get boat-loads of early unity. That necropurging also comes from being a xenophobe, ie the ethic best set up to leverage this...

Dimensional Worship Civic​

View attachment 1043609​

There is a spiritual aspect to the Astral Planes that can be ignored, but not if you choose this Civic.

At each place you discover a weakness in the boundaries between dimensions, you have the opportunity to build a shrine to other worlds. You'll also get a bonus to Astral Rifts appearing (which stacks with the Riftworld Origin),

One area we enjoyed in developing this new content was getting the chance to explore the new design space introduced by the systems in Galactic Paragons, which in this case can gear your priests to have an additional affinity toward Physics research.

This one is... odd. Mostly a 3rd-civic reform into, rather than start. And probably weak if you're not specing for Rift-diving.

The priest boon is honestly pretty marginal, as even at high levels it's not that much base physics research, and your expected allocation of priests isn't that high.

The 10-unity starbase building is honestly probably not worth it in general, for the general point that starbase capacity is precious, and generally better used elsewhere either for strategic defense or planetary support (black sites for stability/ethics). The 10 unity is worth considerably more than 10 food, mind you, but the question is really 'when will you have the starbase capacity to spare to put starbases there but not elsewhere?'

The rare technology chance is... not bad, but not that useful either. Since the Ascension rework to force-draw the techs you need, the relevance for psionic has decreased, and most other rare techs aren't particularly relevant. Maybe relevant for a archeotech-weapon build for that extra draw chance?


The threads bonus, though... this is where the strategic bonus could be. 25% more of a limited resource that can be used to open/explore more rifts, and double the spawn rate in your own territory to increase the base? That's good. That's good enough to third-civic reform into, if you're aiming to maximize your rift-bonuses.


This would likely pair well with the Riftworld origin, again assuming you can get into the rifts early enough to matter. If it's super-early game, it may even be worth as a starting civic (for the 10 unity bump in the home system).

Dark Consortium Civic​

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Dark Matter is a material which makes up 'the nothing' throughout various dimensions, and we thought it interesting to include an option to play as a society which is deeply attuned to its utilization.

The Dark Consortium is a type of Civic that cannot be added or removed after the game starts, as it adds some significant changes to your society. Not only do you begin with a Dark Matter deposit in your home system, you already have the capability to harvest it. Rather than it being something extra you can sell on the Galactic Market, we wanted to introduce some new uses for it.

First, you'll have access to a set of new Edicts which have Dark Matter as a cost.

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Dark Matter Forging and Dark Matter Unravelling are global production benefits which will increase your monthly Alloy and Energy generation, respectively. Baryonic Insight is yet another way to boost your monthly Physics research. Investing in Shadow Matrix provides advantages in Encryption, Codebreaking, and Infiltration Levels.

Toward the late-game, you'll also have the opportunity to activate a Council Agenda which will unlock one of the Dark Matter technologies at random, a privilege previously only available if you were able to 'borrow' it from one of the Fallen Empires.

Its Council position provides a way for you to generate even more Dark Matter, without having to find new sources of harvest.

By contrast, this has some interesting early-game implications. Depending on how large the starting deposits, and how many more you can find early, this could be a significant increase to your early econ, whether from a 'sell the dark matter' or 'use the dark matter edict for energy.' Being able to transition that further to dark matter forging also offers some interesting implications depending if you can adopt a militarized economy early.

For these reasons, I suspect that this civic will actually work well as a trade build or Megacorp setup, in the sense of complimentary styles. Despite their nerf with the clerks, trade remain good at above-average CG-generation, meaning the scientists who can produce dark matter. The potential energy implications can help cover for trade-shifts or the megacorp's seed-capital. The dark matter forging can maximize the value of a shift to miltiarized economy enabled by trade handling the CG. MegaCorps and Trade Federations traditionally come into full power in the mid-game anyway, which is where you'd get the higher leaders to maximize that council bonus and be able to invest in the Dark Matter agendas.

The value of this will be a bit dependent on finding other sources of dark matter early, and that itself implies a wider-than-not playstyle but there's absolutely some payoff potential here. It'll probably work well with hyperspace speciality and xenophobe for an early-wide dynamic.

Sovereign Guardianship Civic​

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Another Civic which cannot be added or removed, the Sovereign Guardianship may seem a bit out of left-field in the Astral Planes. It is very much the opposite of what you generally want to do regarding exploring the universe and other dimensions. This is for those who prefer to develop a 'tall' build, which should be clear by the heavy penalties introduced by expanding too much.

Those penalties are offset by some juicy defensive bonuses, including a new Starbase Module called the Reloading Bay which improves the efficiency of Starbase weaponry. You'll also be given access to a unique Edict which can convert your potentially languishing Influence into Unity.

We thought it important to provide as many playstyle options as possible with Astral Planes, even if it isn't necessarily themed to the new content. Feel free to turtle up, if you wish.

It's odd that what is intended as a tall-build is mechanically oriented for a hyper-aggressive counter-punch warmonger build to get over it's starting deficits.


In meta mechanical terms, this civic will be bad strategically. Defensive, sure, annoying to play against even, but a very slow start, which is critical when Stellaris power curve is so much about starting early, and about taking the fight to the enemy. Militarily, I'm sure the civic will provide a lot of impressive defensive numbers in those unseen defense armies and starbase modifiers and such. It absolutely could shut off an empire as an avenue of expansion early on. It will be annoying to face.

The problem is that if you are the empire... you are getting the worst sort of bonuses and penalties for the early game. In the early game, you don't have the raw number of pops and districts for those sprawl savings to matter much, even as the system and colony sprawl doubling is critical when they are your key source of resource inputs (system deposits) and future growth (for pops and districts). This will be a notable drag on early science and unity, especially since the sprawl equation will only start to shift in your empire's favor on truly well developed planets with enough pops and districts to outweigh the planetary sprawl increase. You don't have those in the early game. Or rather, the only planets like that in the game are homeworlds.

The only way to get over your core economic disadvantage- an active disadvantage rather than the opportunity cost of generic militarism vis-a-vis another ethic- is to go to war and conquer pops. Conquer enough pops to overmatch your deficit. Then release the empty-planets into vassals and tributaries, who will be a buffer that, well, prevents you from meaningfully using your defensive terrain bonuses (which, iirc, don't apply in subject territory, only your own).

Unless I'm very mistaken on where defensive territory bonuses apply, about the only real use for most of these military bonuses is... either in the first wars to get buffer states, or if you're already losing the war for control of the colonial buffer states. In the former, fine, but you typically don't need the help and there are better militarist civics for early warmongering. In the later, even a white peace is a strategic defeat.

And some of these bonuses are, well... influence is the most restrictive, and one of the most powerful, resources in the game. It's critical for vassal-management. It is literally the resource you need to get the pops to make your sprawl penalties become bonuses. Converting it to unity at anything but the most absurd rates is almost certainly not worth it, and is probably not worth it even as just-absurd rates due to snowballing effects of, well, getting more pops and more territory and more science and more ships.

As a defensive counter-post strategem, sure that Council bonus looks great. At higher levels, your L-slot-only weapons could be swatting out mixed fleets... as long as you politely wait for them to come to you first, and don't take the fight to them. But it literally does not exist for the gestalts who would actually want to take Unyielding early for the econ, or employ Soldiers early to make up for the naval capacity issues from solar-panel starbases... on garrison worlds that are worse for societal advancement due to the planetary sprawl eclipsing the boons of the most cadian fortress worlds with their low soldier-density meaning planetary sprawl devours whatever unity gains you wanted from the soldiers and defense armies.



This civic just feels anti-thetical to its premise of encouraging a tall or defensive playstyle. Influence is critical in tall playstyles for vassal contracts. The sprawl penalty setup is a direct contradiction between 'don't expand for more planets' and 'you must go to war for more planets for the pops to make yours not a net negative.' This is mechancially a hyper-aggressive counter-punch setup, not a tall or defensive playstyle.


Being good at defense doesn't make defense desirable. You need to have a reason to want to be on the defense, which this doesn't provide (bar an unexplained influence-to-unity conversion). Maybe if there were special bonuses for being in defensive pacts or defending others (defensive pacts cost no influence, every defensive pact provides +X happiness, protectorates provide special bonuses), it would be worth even losing the ability to declare offensive wars.

 

[Lenk]

With the Dark Consortium agenda, is it repeatable or is it a one and done sort of thing akin to the promises agenda in Under one Rule? In my games I only really keep fallen empires around at this point just to liberate their technology.

Sovereign Guardianship Civic, cannot tell because of the screen caps seem a little short, but is the "cannot remove or add after game start" on all 4? I only see it says it for the normal empire. Also If I go down the path of Devine Sovereign would this civic be removed or would it just be a inactive civic? I have not played in a tad and don't know if that is still a thing or not.

 

[Gorehuchi]

little sad to see that the different authority civics are all identical for the most part, but interested! Especially in the “formless”. I
normally always make my own empires but I may make an exception this time.

 

[Me_]

I kind of feel like 30+ isn't going to be much if were allowed to force-spawn 4 rifts on top of the randomly generated ones. I hope there will be more added in the future.
I also wish the variant civic would differ a bit - the way the pre-hyperlanes civic differs for normals/corporates/machines/hives.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Another Civic which cannot be added or removed, the Sovereign Guardianship may seem a bit out of left-field in the Astral Planes. It is very much the opposite of what you generally want to do regarding exploring the universe and other dimensions. This is for those who prefer to develop a 'tall' build, which should be clear by the heavy penalties introduced by expanding too much.

On the contrary! You are creating perverse incentives for wide play.

+100% ES from planets
+150% ES from systems
-50% ES from districts
-50% ES from POPS

This is, of course, pretty good for any wide indirect control (via vassal) play, as that benefits from much the same things that benefit tall play. Best civic ever, except...

It is frontloaded with bad stuff (ES from planet and system dominate in the early game unless you stay very, very, small) and backloaded with good stuff (ES from POPs dominate in the late game).

But let's ignore that, as it is something that can be worked around. It might not be worth working around in practice due to tempo-loss, in which case the civic will see little use in either tall or wide builds, but let's ignore that and assume it works out in practice with a conquest-assisted nudge.

So how about wide direct control with lots of planets?

Ignoring the district ES benefits entirely, the POP benefits outweigh the penalties significantly for wide direct control builds in medium or larger galaxies, where POPs are by far the greatest contributor to empire size in the mid- and late-game unless you stack all available sources for POP ES reduction or go full ascensionist with Harmony + Ascensionists + Holy Covenant and concentrate your population on fully ascended super worlds, leaving the rest of your planets as 1 POP feeder planets.

And of course if we don't ignore the district ES benefits entirely, wide builds are going to have a lot more districts than tall builds, and quite possibly many of them won't be on ascended planets. Stacking with the -10% from regular tech and -30% from the First Contact tech, each district on a non-ascended world will now cost a piddly 0.05 ES.

Tall builds, on the other hand, will already be concentrating their population on a few planets they fully ascend, giving them the reduced ES benefits from ascension to all their planets and districts. Sure, this will make it easier for them to stay at less than 100 empire size, and makes a nice alternative to Pacifism and B(e)acon of Liberty for tall minimal ES builds, but it isn't something that'll fundamentally change the game for them... the way it does for wide builds willing to take advantage.

What you've got there is a civic that is pretty tempting for anybody playing a wide empire, who doesn't take the number of systems to excess and is perhaps satisfied with two- or three- score planets under direct control rather than hundreds, using governor stacking for flat ES reduction via Champions of the Empire(Aptitude). Take Imperial Prerogative and Expansion, as any wide direct control empire will be doing anyhow , and you are at a net 12.5 ES/planet and 2.25 ES/system, 0.1 ES/district (with the two techs), And a maximum of 0.4 ES/pop, but in practice much smaller.

For POPs, -10% reductions from any of Psionic Theory, Harmony Traditions, Domination Traditions, Docile Trait, etc, reductions from from governor. Some of these are multiplicative rather than additive, but one way or the other, you are going to end up with a very low ES/POP from your non-ascended planets. And like the tall builds, a negligible ES/POP from the ascended planets.

If you think that +150% ES from systems and +100% ES from planets is more of a penalty than -50% ES from POPs is a benefit for wide direct control builds, you need to play more wide builds.

Or perhaps I am overreacting.

Certainly, if owning systems and planets to excess in incredibly wide direct-control play, such as in e.g. this game I played this summer, the civic would clearly be counterproductive.

The ES from POPs would pretty much evaporate, but the ES from systems and planets would increase by a LOT more than was saved on POPs. But that's a great deal wider in terms of territory than most people think of when they say wide play, and nobody would play that way with Sovereign Guardianship.

But... I can certainly see how for more moderately sized wide direct control empires I can create even better direct control wide builds using this civic than I am already capable of doing, by staying small-ish in planets until I started ascending, and then limiting myself to a two- or three- score planets after, four-score at most, with systems to match.

On the other hand, it doesn't allow the Scientist council role, so unless the accompanying leader revamp in 3.10 makes the Commander role better for civilian/economic gameplay, that's a clear strike against it for many wide builds.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in practice. The hurdles you have to get around to handle the very powerful early-game penalties are significant, so perhaps it will remain a civic for niché use, being too much trouble to be worth it in general, whether playing wide or tall. Tempo-loss is a real consideration in Stellaris.

...but I do find it amusing that my first sight on looking at those numbers isn't, "that's amazing for tall play", but "that's decent for tall and wide indirect control play assuming you adjust your approach to handle the frontloaded bad stuff, and a hidden gem for wide direct control play under the same assumptions, so long as you are willing to no go excessively wide direct control".

 

[GnoSIS]

I'm not really impressed with all this. It's a gimmick here and there for sure, but nothing that makes you go "wow".

 

[Gorehuchi]

Are all the sovereign guardianship civics non-swappable? Only the standard one has it specified.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Any particular reason for the Corporate Astral Minister providing a strictly better benefit from his job than the regular empire's Astral Minister?

It isn't unusual in Stellaris for the Corporate job and the regular empire job to provide different bonuses, or indeed for their civics to provide different bonuses, but when the civics provide identical bonuses, and the jobs only distinguish between them by one being strictly better as it provides everything the other job does plus something extra, it seems a bit strange.

Irrelevant from a balancing perspective, certainly, as the two civics are never in direct competition, but it would have looked nicer if both the regular and the corporate version had something they did better than the other version rather than the corporate having a bonus tagged on, when there doesn't seem to be anything about the civics concept or description that lends itself to the idea that this is something a corporation would clearly do better.

E.g.
Regular: +0.3 phy/level
Corporate: 0.2 phy/level + 0.2 trade/level

 

[Navar]

Ooooh! Great stuff!

Could we get the track names for the new music? I’ll be listening to those immediately and would like to know what to look for (and have a glimpse at their potential theme!).

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Any particular reason for the Corporate Astral Minister providing a strictly better benefit from his job than the regular empire's Astral Minister?

In a nutshell, because megacorps get fewer priests.

 

[Superdark33]

Megacorp, Psionic ascencion, shadow corporate, criminal syndicate....

Shadow Wizard Money Gang.....

 

[Goodwood Empire]

These civics sound fun. And I think every DLC should include at least one portrait. Thank you. <3

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

In a nutshell, because megacorps get fewer priests.

Fair enough.

Something like, "corporate gets half priests from temples, and we want everybody from the temple to provide a bonus, but if we assign the astral minister trade bonus to managers, it also affects managers from other sources than temples (whatever they might be), or perhaps it just works better with exactly one benefit per council job (for whatever reason), so instead we assign it to the priests together with their physics bonus and consider that good enough for government work."

I can respect that.

 

[LogicMage]

I'm disappointed that GCs don't have dark matter civic. I'll have to compare the hyperlane specialty with early game openers rockbreakers and rapid replicators