Stellaris Dev Diary #367 - 4.0 Changes: Part 1

[Jay Sherman]

That would be neat, with the caveat that it tends to fall under the Paradox paradox: making the game itself harder makes winning in SP easier.

I'm not following, can you expand on this please?

 

[Calvax]

That would be neat, with the caveat that it tends to fall under the Paradox paradox: making the game itself harder makes winning in SP easier.

I'm not following, can you expand on this please?

I'm not getting it either sorry. Is this a comment about the AI not being able to handle it when the game gets harder?

 

[grommile]

I'm not following, can you expand on this please?

The mechanical difficulty of Paradox games generally sits at a level where the computer players have difficulty competing.

Thus, making the game harder undermines the performance of the computer players, making it easier for the human to win the game.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

A long running hope I've had is that one day internal politics could be fleshed out to make conquering a significant amount of territory (relative to what you already have) quite difficult requiring some strategy.

In Master of Orion 2, conquered pops started off as unhappy and unproductive. They had to be "assimilated" one pop at a time, at a pace of X turns/pop where X was influenced by government type and traits (i.e. Charismatic/Repulsive).

Introducing something like a pop assimilation time requirement could be an improvement. It is kind of strange that pops instantly integrate into their new colonies/empires. Internal resettlers should have the easiest time, followed foreign immigrants, then refugees, and the hardest ones to integrate should be the conquered ones. (Nomadic and Sedentary pops should then modify the movement-related assimilation times.)

 

[Calvax]

In Master of Orion 2, conquered pops started off as unhappy and unproductive. They had to be "assimilated" one pop at a time, at a pace of X turns/pop where X was influenced by government type and traits (in this case, civics).

Introducing something like a pop assimilation time requirement could be an improvement. It is kind of strange that pops instantly integrate into their new colonies/empires. Internal resettlers should have the easiest time, followed foreign immigrants, then refugees, and the hardest ones to integrate should be the conquered ones. (Nomadic and Sedentary pops should then modify the movement-related assimilation times.)

I mentioned in the factions feedback request that non-ethic based factions or special interest groups would have a lot of potential. Having to deal with a faction of conquered pops, keeping their power low and happiness high enough to reduce their numbers over time, could be good.

I've read a couple of books recently where nations biting off more than they can chew has backfired, or in some cases resulted in the conquered party becoming a major power bloc that shifts the course of the empire. That sort of thing can't happen in stellaris at the moment.

 

[lucasmpereira]

Any chance we get the species default feature assigned to a specific job? That way my miner/food/energy/blabla droids will always be set to their proper template

 

[SarahGabriella]

Stellaris devs are amazing. I hope yall are being well paid. Get raises even!

 

[openly-retro]

I am extremely excited for the Databank. I feel it is going to bring huge gains for making lore accessible. I look forward to being able to add custom content as a modder, and expand it into a "lore encyclopedia". It also already looks immersive. Absolutely my top favorite addition I've seen so far in the 4.0 series. So much potential.. I'm giddy.

 

[Siren Soule]

I would add that Psionics has a very specific flavor that you /have to/ play with or you are getting nerfed in some pretty serious ways. You loose a whole civic slot if you don't change your government to F-Spiritualist + Authoritarian, unless you have really strong ethics you will be stuck with a Spiritualist faction which is the undisputed worst faction in the game for its combination of stickiness and unreasonable demands, and almost all the benefits are locked behind choosing a demon lord, which are all 40k rip offs and only one of them doesn't come with catastrophic downsides (not-slanesh is the only one that doesn't kill leaders/pops/entire planets, and also comes with the best buffs. You also can't get it if you are egalitarian, which is one of the few ethics powerful enough to crush spiritualist)

You never want to play the map into psionics, you go psionic if you want to play 40k

I am hopeful that alternative Psionic gameplay gets supported in an eventual rework that Paradox has mentioned on the road map - given the number of different things narratively you can do with machines, synth ascension and cybernetics it'd be a cruel fate if Psionic was still stuck as the WH40k fanfiction ascension.

Speaking as someone who does play it a lot at current, and has developed ways to restore ethics after divine sovereign, it really isn't THAT bad to deal with at the moment - it's somewhat annoying, but easily manageable. It simply demands that you're pro-active with ethics attraction in a way that players never need to concern themselves with for the rest of the game, and that involves playing into a bunch of modifiers that exist, and that the game hints at, but never explicitly tells you.

Rather my problem is that you can restore your ethics to anything and you still have the divine sovereign civic, even if you're neither spiritualist nor authoritarian by the time you're done. I have the bonuses, but it doesn't feel like there's any coherent story here - I've just gamed the mechanics. This would be fixed by supporting more playstyles for psionic - something Paradox have demonstrated they can do quite clearly for other ascension paths with machine age.

Also to the guy saying Instrument is the best covenant, I heavily, heavily disagree lol. It's the safest, but since the patch that gutted researcher and tech progression in general, Whisperers has been a really good investment, and you can play around the leader deaths in a bunch of different ways (paragons, external leaders, enclave leaders, with chosen one traits going to your most important leaders you want to protect from death).

 

[Thiend]

I am hopeful that alternative Psionic gameplay gets supported in an eventual rework that Paradox has mentioned on the road map - given the number of different things narratively you can do with machines, synth ascension and cybernetics it'd be a cruel fate if Psionic was still stuck as the WH40k fanfiction ascension.

Speaking as someone who does play it a lot at current, and has developed ways to restore ethics after divine sovereign, it really isn't THAT bad to deal with at the moment - it's somewhat annoying, but easily manageable. It simply demands that you're pro-active with ethics attraction in a way that players never need to concern themselves with for the rest of the game, and that involves playing into a bunch of modifiers that exist, and that the game hints at, but never explicitly tells you.

Rather my problem is that you can restore your ethics to anything and you still have the divine sovereign civic, even if you're neither spiritualist nor authoritarian by the time you're done. I have the bonuses, but it doesn't feel like there's any coherent story here - I've just gamed the mechanics. This would be fixed by supporting more playstyles for psionic - something Paradox have demonstrated they can do quite clearly for other ascension paths with machine age.

Also to the guy saying Instrument is the best covenant, I heavily, heavily disagree lol. It's the safest, but since the patch that gutted researcher and tech progression in general, Whisperers has been a really good investment, and you can play around the leader deaths in a bunch of different ways (paragons, external leaders, enclave leaders, with chosen one traits going to your most important leaders you want to protect from death).

The Whisperers covenant penalizes unity directly more than it benefits research and additionally penalizes stability, which is all resources including research.

You've been deceived by the veneer, Whisperers sells you that it's good for research. It is not (at least not enough to use over Instruments). You lose more research on lost planetary ascension and needing to direct more pops to the rest of your economy than you will ever recover on the relatively small research bonus. It makes telepaths give good research output, but it also penalizes the unity they already produce so that isn't as good as it may appear either, plus they're generally limited to two per planet.

 

[Siren Soule]

The Whisperers covenant penalizes unity directly more than it benefits research and additionally penalizes stability, which is all resources including research.

You've been deceived by the veneer, Whisperers sells you that it's good for research. It is not (at least not enough to use over Instruments). You lose more research on lost planetary ascension and needing to direct more pops to the rest of your economy than you will ever recover on the relatively small research bonus. It makes telepaths give good research output, but it also penalizes the unity they already produce so that isn't as good as it may appear either, plus they're generally limited to two per planet.

You're thinking too much In the context of an economy that is end game and complete.

Whisperers telepaths represent 2 upkeep free researchers each (on jobs you want to work anyway), the 10% research speed is worth more than 10% research from jobs, given all the productivity buffs you already have and the multiplicative scaling, and you print so much monthly unity with telepaths that the monthly unity penalty is something you can just totally ignore. Go wide enough (yes, wide, not tall) and you reap the rewards in spades (accumulating unity for traditions actually speeds up with each new colony gaining telepaths, not slows down). Whisperers even helps facilitate this by providing influence buffs for more habitat spam. You can manage this by rush resettling pops across your empire to cheat out more telepaths sooner than you ordinarily could. For an ascension path with slow growth, cheating out extra pops worth of research with none of the consumer goods demand seems far more incredible to me than simply stacking yet more (additive) % buffs.

Tbh I think instrument of desires is supremely overrated nowadays. The resource productivity buffs are additive, the telepaths provide a resource which can be dealt with using the grand archive, and will only actually provide value on a small number of core worlds much later into the game. The only positive thing I really have to say about it is that it's *safe*. I prefer both composer and whisperer, and if I was more non-stop war oriented I'd prefer eater of worlds too.

 

[Cry_Havok]

Anything that kills pops and leaders is terrible though, they are the least fungible resources in the game. Replacing a lost pop, let alone large numbers of lost pops, takes 10+ in game years. Losing high level leaders can be downright irreplacable (I like to run things like venerable necrolithoids, or venerable perfected genes lithoids so I am using like, one batch of leaders for the literal entire game). Not Nurgle is great for leaders, until they randomly melt.

 

[Promin]

This is not true.

It is quite possible to minimize empire size with specialized tall builds, especially combined with the -50% empire size from pops civis. You do not even need pacifistic.
<200 empire size with 1000+ pops in the middle-late 2300s is very realistic.

And it is no useless parameter, it is to balance playstyles. Without it "expand as much as you can, always, forever" would be the only halfway valid playstyle.

I forgot to say that I know the reason why it's here and I want something instead, not a removal. Useless is the wrong word. For me it is not as good elaborated as other mechanics. It just makes the costs too high just because you have too much of something in total. You can try to slightly reduce this number by grabbing bonuses that affect only a part of it but not total, but why would you need that if there are so many better things to grab instead? This parameter affects strongly but weakly at the same time so that you don't like it when it's high, but you can ignore it when you have the opportunity to lower it if you have other options (or maybe it's true only for casuals idk). I think that it's wrong and it needs a change (that may be even make it suitable for rp idk).
And can you please share with me this secret technique?

 

[alercah]

I'd love to see automatic habitability adaptation as well, in the species designer. Automatically convert pops who can get a habitability improvement.

 

[The Founder]

I'd love to see automatic habitability adaptation as well, in the species designer. Automatically convert pops who can get a habitability improvement.

I suggested they make this a pop setting and remove it entirely from the templates:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/habitability-should-be-a-pop-thing-not-a-template-thing.1726878/

 

[alercah]

I suggested they make this a pop setting and remove it entirely from the templates:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/habitability-should-be-a-pop-thing-not-a-template-thing.1726878/

I happen to really like setting different portraits for the various habitability templates, though... I love the idea of a species completely specialising. It's a big part of genetic ascension to me, to be able to have an empire full of different, optimised pops, unlike the uniformity of cybernetic or synthetic ascension.

 

[Psykhes]

You can try to slightly reduce this number by grabbing bonuses that affect only a part of it but not total, but why would you need that if there are so many better things to grab instead?

I would like to know your definition of "slightly". Grad Admiral btw.

As said, it is quite possible to effectively negate empire size.
It is very much not "get enormously high no matter what."

Mind, you need to plan for it and need to pick just the right things. But not to that extent that you need to gimp yourself. See above stats.

I certainly do not see the "better things to grab".
I could have conquered / subjugated the whole galaxy easily by now, but really...why bother. Still got a empty ascencetion perk and still haven't raided / conquered a fallen empire. Due to Dark Consortium I already have the most important fallen empire techs already anyway.

 

[Promin]

I would like to know your definition of "slightly". Grad Admiral btw.

View attachment 1250834

As said, it is quite possible to effectively negate empire size.
It is very much not "get enormously high no matter what."

Mind, you need to plan for it and need to pick just the right things. But not to that extent that you need to gimp yourself. See above stats.

I certainly do not see the "better things to grab".
I could have conquered / subjugated the whole galaxy easily by now, but really...why bother. Still got a empty ascencetion perk and still haven't raided / conquered a fallen empire. Due to Dark Consortium I already have the most important fallen empire techs already anyway.

Ah, don't you bother answering. Just a noob talking about his problems. Nothing important.