Stellaris Dev Diary #370 - 4.0 Changes Part 4

[Toby-wan_Strife]

Trade routes are no more? Clerks are dead? What even is this game anymore!?

I’m in particular loving the idea of civilian militias and resistance groups. I just wish planetary revolts and slave uprisings were better. I like the idea of pops organizing in mass strikes and open rebellion against their particularly authoritarian new overlords and mass demonstrations breaking out across several worlds. Will we get better planetary revolts and mass strikes in this new update? Will we get a slave rework with this too?

 

[wisecat]

What about the Pops that are being expelled / eradicated / eaten / assimilated by machines /occupied hiveminds dying out/? How will they fit into new hierarchy?

 

[Ilab]

I asked already but I perhaps it was missed. I am curious on how will modding (pop modding) work now.

Previously X pops changed every month to get their auto mod traited. Now I expect that 100 (or equivalent number) would do that each month.

However, my doubt is that, since these pops will be 'more numerous' won't we end up with pop grous out of control? For instance, pops with agrarian automodded should not be in the same group as trifty, as they both affect their work. Is this how it will be? Or is it going to work differently?

Also, another note, what about traits that affect leaders? Previously if you modded 50% of your pops with, lets say erudite, then 50% of your leaders would get the Erudition trait.

As a matter of fact I will just copy my previous comment in roder to get a 2nd chance at a response:

For instance, leader generation. I suppose it will still use the same percent based weight mechanic?

Additionally, are we getting any improvement to Dominant species with this? If not, we should. Let me explain.
Currently, we are very limited to what we can do with our main species. It makes sense that we can't purge ourselves, but not that we can't enslave ourselves (except with a civic, that doesn't allow for easy control on ratios). With these changes, and since now pop groups will be tied to several things, including faction etc. It makes sense that we can enslave pop groups. For instance, I want my pops that are egalitarian to be enslaved, to teach them the error of their ways (just an example). Improvements on this area would be very welcomed. We could finally RP about how we treat our dissidents and traitors for example.

On another note, the productive traits are straightforward (they now boost workforce totals) But how about reductions? For example, traits that reduce empire size from pops, I suppose won't work on the workforce, but rather in the group, so 100 by default. Is this assumption correct?

And finally. I believe that this is an excellent time to 'deal' with Virtual pop printing mechanic. Perhaps they can get a huge 'growth' of civilians or something. The mechanic is not only badly balanced (on top of all other benefits of virtual, such as immortal leaders, low empire size, unconquerable pops and huge production bonuses) But also make sense. Think about it this way.
A pop needs to be created for any species, an example of that is seen in the synthethization situation on the event that asks, now that we will 'build' ourselves, how will people be generated? Experts create identities, its a mix of their parents etc. This makes sense for everything except virtual. As a matter of fact, virtual is more akin to just installing software over and over on places (with said software being the pops) While this seems to make sense, it doesn't, as software shouldn't have happiness or factions for instance. So they should instead be rapidly built, but not instantaneous.

This will have the side effect of turning virtuality down a bit, and among other things, avoid the bug where things like purging never end because new pops are printed immediately. As a matter of fact, virtual pop purging doesn't make sense. The servers should be destroyed and the planet lost instantly. Yet we treat them as pop in this scenario, and like software in others. It needs to be standarized.

All in all, it is a great time to do this, since we are reworking pops, this printing mechanic should be reviewed. By having plenty of civilians, it would be better.

 

[Incompetent]

I think mechanically Civilians is imprecise, but not terrible.

I have some objection to it thematically, however. If they're civilian, that implies that everything else is not - but, of course, as an extreme example, in an egalitarian society the trade jobs are probably not governmental.

In a non-Gestalt empire, you can imagine that only a fraction of the imperial economy is actually mobilized for strategic purposes. This is hinted at by things like the existence of an internal market where the State can get resources it doesn't produce directly (even Fanatic Purifiers aren't at 100% mobilization, apparently). I'm not sure what a good single word is for this "private sector workforce".

The other way to think of it would be something like the setting of The Expanse, where at the start, the UN and MCR are comparable in strategic power despite the big disparity in population (30 billion vs 4 billion) because Mars's population is highly mobilized, whereas a large proportion of Earth's population are on "Basic" and are a drain on the UN budget. But I don't know if we're supposed to think of Civilians as being inherently unproductive; they're just doing their own thing rather than working towards imperial goals.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

Can we get a word about classified secret things devlopers shouldn't be telling us about like the upcoming changes to espionage in the next dev diaries?

 

[The Scrungler]

Hello everyone!

This week we’re going to look at the upcoming changes to Pops in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update.

Last week I said we might also look at the Planet UI, but I’m going to save that until next week since there’s quite a bit to cover here (especially if you’re into the technical details), and I’d rather not split the feedback.

Pop Groups and Workforce​

As mentioned in Dev Diary 366, the Pop and Jobs system introduced in Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ has always had significant performance implications in the late game, and we’ve been working on incremental improvements ever since. In the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, Pops will be grouped into Pop Groups based on species, strata, ethics, and faction, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs. As part of this change, we’re changing the overall scale of Pops - most things that previously affected or manipulated 1 Pop would now affect or manipulate groups of 100. The new systems can manipulate any number of Pops within a Pop Group just as easily as manipulating one, and I’ll go into some of the benefits of the finer resolution below.

Our primary desire with these changes is to improve late-game performance, but while working on it we took the opportunity to streamline some aspects of planetary management and improve the planet UI.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the details.

Workforce​

In Stellaris, the core economic loop since 2.2 has been: Pops fill Jobs, and Jobs produce resources.

With the 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, we’re making a subtle but important change - Pops will now generate Workforce, which is used to fill Jobs, and planets themselves will produce resources.

At a basic level, this works almost the same way. By default, every Pop generates 1 Workforce, so Jobs are still filled at the same rate. However, this shift is crucial for backend performance improvements, reducing the number of calculations the game needs to make each month.

Example: Then vs. Now​

Before (3.14):

• Take a planet with 100 Pops working Metallurgist Jobs, where 20 of them have a +10% Production Bonus from a Species Trait.
• These 100 Pops produce 612 Alloys per month.
• Every Pop is individually checked - 80 produce the standard amount, while 20 get a 10% Alloy production bonus from their species trait.

Now (4.0):

• Instead of tracking individual Pops, we track Workforce filling Jobs.
• The Jobs are now filled by 10,000 Workforce (since Pops are scaled up by 100).
• 8,000 Workforce comes from regular Pops, while 2,000 Workforce comes from the bonus-earning Pops.
  • The species bonus is now “10% bonus Workforce when working Alloy jobs” - those Pops contribute an extra 200 Workforce, making the total 10,200 Workforce. Bonus Workforce is allowed to go over the required Workforce for a job, yielding extra production.
• If 100 Workforce still produces 6 Alloys, the planet still produces 612 Alloys - same output, different system.

Why This Matters:​

The key benefit is efficiency. Instead of iterating through and calculating production for every individual Pop, the game now only checks once per planet. This makes the system more scalable and improves performance, while still allowing for species based bonuses and modifiers.

Most existing species traits that affect Job production will be converted into Workforce bonuses or planet-based modifiers. As always, the final balancing will be refined through the Open Beta.

There are a few quirks and subtleties about how this interacts with other modifiers - bonus Workforce as a modifier is more powerful than bonus Production due to the two of them stacking multiplicatively rather than additively.

Pop groups are currently split up by Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction. If you end up in a case where a Pop group is not completely uniform (for example, if 20% of the Pop group are recent refugees and thus happier than the rest), then the differences get averaged across the Pop group.

If none of this feels like it makes sense - it’s okay. It’s mostly a behind-the-scenes change. Jobs require Workforce to fill them, and that’s generated by Pops. We have some ideas about ways to expand upon this in the future, such as replacing part of the Workforce with automation by using a building.

Pop Growth​

With more granular Pop units, we have more ability to support simultaneous growth of Pops on a planet. Each species present on a planet will grow normally, and with the smaller unit size, will grow every month.

This results in several benefits, including multi-species empires not getting their growth dominated by underrepresented species, and also lets us remove the floor on colony Pop growth. This does mean that newly settled colonies will be very reliant on migration to grow their population until they develop to the point where they can support their own Pop growth, and removes a long-running issue where spamming colonies regardless of habitability simply for the minimum flat Pop growth was optimal.

Xeno-Compatibility will pool all species on a multi-species planet together to calculate their growth rate, then split the growth proportionally across the various species.

Assembly works largely the way it did before, except that fractional Assembly will become “microPops” thanks to the finer resolution of Pops. Machine and Organic Assembly will no longer conflict with one another, as the Organic Pops will handle their own growth, while all mechanical assembly will be channeled towards the highest “score” mechanical Pop templates available.

Colonization and Civilians​

Since your new colonies will be extremely reliant on migration from their homeworld until they reach a critical mass of inhabitants where they can begin to support themselves, we’re adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship). These Civilians form the generally content base of your empire, and will trickle out to the colonies, looking for better opportunities. Unemployed Pops will still exist and downgrade through the strata, with unemployed Worker stratum Pops demoting to Civilians over time. This will have an impact on stability, as Civilians are largely content and non-disruptive.

Spoiler: More Technical Details

This is mostly for you modders out there to abuse, but in the new system, “Unemployed Specialist” will technically be a Job - there’ll be one for each stratum. Every Job can have a demotion target assigned to it, and a time.

In our implementation, all of the Specialist stratum Jobs will demote to Unemployed Specialist; Unemployed Specialist will demote to Unemployed Worker, and Unemployed Worker will demote to Civilian as they give up on their dreams of productivity and veg out in front of the holoscreen.

Spoiler: Even More Technical Details

There are actually going to be many more Strata than I listed there.

Our current list includes the following for regular empires:

• Elites
• Elites (Unemployed)
• Specialists
• Specialists (Unemployed)
• Specialists (Slave)
• Specialists (Slave, Unemployed)
  • For Indentured Servitude
• Workers
• Workers (Unemployed)
• Workers (Slave)
• Slaves (Unemployed)
• Civilians
• Residents
• Criminals
• Pre-Sapients

Gestalts would have:

• Complex Drones
• Menial Drones
• Maintenance Drones (Civilian Equivalent)
  • Unemployed Complex and Menial drones demote directly to here, skipping the Unemployed state
• Deviant Drones
• Slaves (For Grid Amalgamation, Livestock, etc.)
• Bio-Trophies
• Bio-Trophies (Unemployed)
• Pre-Sapients

There are likely to be more once we’re done, including the various Purge types.

Like many of the other changes, it’s all about removing iteration. Instead of going through the Pops to find the unemployed ones, we already know that any Pops in the Specialist (Unemployed) stratum are, in fact, unemployed. When a Specialist Job opens up, we have a smaller pool of candidates that are pre-identified, and we already have a clear priority of who has dibs on the Job.

In this model, Slaves would demote to the Slaves (Unemployed) Job/stratum and go no further, so they’ll never hit the content state of Residents and Civilians. Based on playtesting, we might end up adding a Slaves (Specialist, Unemployed)

Spoiler: Things I Will Regret Writing in a Dev Diary

Modders: Technically, there’s nothing stopping you from having a Job “demote” to a higher strata, like if you had a Worker stratum “Academy Cadet” that led to a Specialist stratum “Officer” Job. Just make sure you comment your script.

Your homeworld will start with a fairly large pool of Civilians to support your early expansion. We’re a bit worried about early conquest of homeworlds being too easy of a snowball with this increased starting Pop count, so are considering various ways of making it more challenging to take homeworlds in the early to mid game. One idea we have includes having Civilians create impromptu defensive militias to help defend their home, and possibly starting you off with a few Defensive Platforms. Another idea is for aggressively invaded Civilians to take “Resistance” Jobs that they must then “demote” out of over time. The number of Civilians converted to this new Job and how long it takes them to drop out of it would be modified depending on how their people are being treated by their new and old masters.

We welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Clerks are dead! Long live Civilians!​

We’re currently still experimenting with the effects Living Standards have on Civilians (and Pops in general) - it’s likely that more of the Trade generation from Living Standards will be shifted to the Civilian stratum, and production from Unemployed Pops in the old system may also move to the Civilians. This will give them some of the functions of Clerks in the old economic model. In Gestalt empires, they are likely going to be outright named Maintenance Drones rather than “Civilians”.

We’re also renaming the Ruler stratum to “Elites”, so “Ruler” isn’t double-dipping between your Empire’s ruler at the top economic stratum.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be going through the new Planet UI, and how all of this changes things there.

Are effects that give +jobs per X pops going to just have the “X pops” multiplied by 100?

 

[hart30]

"Civilians" are pops willing to migrate. Looking for a better future. Making them "Migrants".
At least by only looking at their main function ingame and not analyzing too deep into their role inside an empire.

PS: Sorry, dont want to rip open an old discussion. Just had to tell my headcanon.

 

[drawar]

Except these aren't just pops ready to migrate... As repeated many times.

 

[Skeletr0nKing]

Ñ

"Civilians" are pops willing to migrate. Looking for a better future. Making them "Migrants".
At least by only looking at their main function ingame and not analyzing too deep into their role inside an empire.

PS: Sorry, dont want to rip open an old discussion. Just had to tell my headcanon.

Civilians main function is likely going to be generating trade for trade based empires replacing clerks so having them called migrants would not be accurate.

Still nothing stops a civilian from being a migrant, but remember you stop being a migrant after your migration is done nd you've lived on the same spot for some years

 

[Calvax]

Still nothing stops a civilian from being a migrant, but remember you stop being a migrant after your migration is done nd you've lived on the same spot for some years

Plus the term migrant applies to people who have moved, not to people who would move if the opportunity arose. It would be strange to start a game and have a bunch of migrants on your homeworld and have that intend to mean that they're migrants-in-waiting.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Plus the term migrant applies to people who have moved, not to people who would move if the opportunity arose. It would be strange to start a game and have a bunch of migrants on your homeworld and have that intend to mean that they're migrants-in-waiting.

Every pop gets nomadic. No exceptions.

 

[Red Death]

We currently do not intend on changing "Civilians". Many of the proposed alternatives in this thread carry negative connotations that we very much want to avoid - they might be, but also critically might not be an underclass or unskilled, depending on the ethics, civics, and policies of your Empire.

In The Culture or Star Trek, these people live in a post-scarcity society, with no expectations placed upon them. They go to the colonies because they choose to - not because they have to. In a story like The Expanse or many other dystopias, their lives are much harsher and desperation leads them to the stars.

While scripted localization to change their name could be interesting, we've found it tends to be confusing to newer players when game terms change from game to game.



This is correct.



The new strata would replace it. We're still experimenting with some of this though, so there may be changes before release.

There's also literally no benefit to this name, is there? The name literally means something different than what you're using it for. Civilian means non-military, or at best non-government.

You're not even going to change it to Citizens, to more match the non-Citizen Residents strata you mentioned in the original post?

 

[Zergor]

There's also literally no benefit to this name, is there? The name literally means something different than what you're using it for. Civilian means non-military, or at best non-government.

You're not even going to change it to Citizens, to more match the non-Citizen Residents strata you mentioned in the original post?

I think non citizens will go in that same strata if not in an other strata. So citizen would be confusing as it has a different meaning in the game (citizenship standard).

There would be no military in the citizen strata so it's not a total nonsense (as military is in the worker strata).
The more people throw other names the more I feel that it's impossible to describe correctly that strata in english. Already if you are pedantic, the other stratas are not well defined. Why are military workers but enforcers specialists for instance ?
As long as stratas are not called strata 1, 2, 3 and 4 or some made up words, the english words used to describe them will never match the reality of what they are.

 

[Red Death]

I think non citizens will go in that same strata if not in an other strata. So citizen would be confusing as it has a different meaning in the game (citizenship standard).

There would be no military in the citizen strata so it's not a total nonsense (as military is in the worker strata).
The more people throw other names the more I feel that it's impossible to describe correctly that strata in english. Already if you are pedantic, the other stratas are not well defined. Why are military workers but enforcers specialists for instance ?
As long as stratas are not called strata 1, 2, 3 and 4 or some made up words, the english words used to describe them will never match the reality of what they are.

Well, they literally said:

we’re adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship)

So not just making that Citizens and Residents seems like a missed opportunity.

 

[Zergor]

Well, they literally said:

So not just making that Citizens and Residents seems like a missed opportunity.

They would need a job name too so those could be their job names. In the civilian strata you could have citizens, residents and servants (slaves) for instance. But I may indeed have misunderstood the dev post and citizen and residents are split into two strata. I hope that's not the case because that feels like useless bloat if it is.

 

[Yuriohs]

This is wrong. I think you might have a mod or something.

What you mention about ethics attraction is correct, and I know of all the ways to increase it: Councilors, Traits, Governors, events such as war etc.

BUT the other part is wrong. You can't enslave a subspecies of your main species. You can enslave others, but not your main one nor their subtemplates.

I'll have to check, but I'm happy to be wrong! Admittingly its been a while since I've done that.

It may have actually been that I had another empire that had the same name as the species I had (two different empires named humans) I generally don't play with mods.

 

[Afinati]

Hello everyone!

This week we’re going to look at the upcoming changes to Pops in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update.

Last week I said we might also look at the Planet UI, but I’m going to save that until next week since there’s quite a bit to cover here (especially if you’re into the technical details), and I’d rather not split the feedback.

Pop Groups and Workforce​

As mentioned in Dev Diary 366, the Pop and Jobs system introduced in Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ has always had significant performance implications in the late game, and we’ve been working on incremental improvements ever since. In the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, Pops will be grouped into Pop Groups based on species, strata, ethics, and faction, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs. As part of this change, we’re changing the overall scale of Pops - most things that previously affected or manipulated 1 Pop would now affect or manipulate groups of 100. The new systems can manipulate any number of Pops within a Pop Group just as easily as manipulating one, and I’ll go into some of the benefits of the finer resolution below.

Our primary desire with these changes is to improve late-game performance, but while working on it we took the opportunity to streamline some aspects of planetary management and improve the planet UI.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the details.

Workforce​

In Stellaris, the core economic loop since 2.2 has been: Pops fill Jobs, and Jobs produce resources.

With the 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, we’re making a subtle but important change - Pops will now generate Workforce, which is used to fill Jobs, and planets themselves will produce resources.

At a basic level, this works almost the same way. By default, every Pop generates 1 Workforce, so Jobs are still filled at the same rate. However, this shift is crucial for backend performance improvements, reducing the number of calculations the game needs to make each month.

Example: Then vs. Now​

Before (3.14):

• Take a planet with 100 Pops working Metallurgist Jobs, where 20 of them have a +10% Production Bonus from a Species Trait.
• These 100 Pops produce 612 Alloys per month.
• Every Pop is individually checked - 80 produce the standard amount, while 20 get a 10% Alloy production bonus from their species trait.

Now (4.0):

• Instead of tracking individual Pops, we track Workforce filling Jobs.
• The Jobs are now filled by 10,000 Workforce (since Pops are scaled up by 100).
• 8,000 Workforce comes from regular Pops, while 2,000 Workforce comes from the bonus-earning Pops.
  • The species bonus is now “10% bonus Workforce when working Alloy jobs” - those Pops contribute an extra 200 Workforce, making the total 10,200 Workforce. Bonus Workforce is allowed to go over the required Workforce for a job, yielding extra production.
• If 100 Workforce still produces 6 Alloys, the planet still produces 612 Alloys - same output, different system.

Why This Matters:​

The key benefit is efficiency. Instead of iterating through and calculating production for every individual Pop, the game now only checks once per planet. This makes the system more scalable and improves performance, while still allowing for species based bonuses and modifiers.

Most existing species traits that affect Job production will be converted into Workforce bonuses or planet-based modifiers. As always, the final balancing will be refined through the Open Beta.

There are a few quirks and subtleties about how this interacts with other modifiers - bonus Workforce as a modifier is more powerful than bonus Production due to the two of them stacking multiplicatively rather than additively.

Pop groups are currently split up by Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction. If you end up in a case where a Pop group is not completely uniform (for example, if 20% of the Pop group are recent refugees and thus happier than the rest), then the differences get averaged across the Pop group.

If none of this feels like it makes sense - it’s okay. It’s mostly a behind-the-scenes change. Jobs require Workforce to fill them, and that’s generated by Pops. We have some ideas about ways to expand upon this in the future, such as replacing part of the Workforce with automation by using a building.

Pop Growth​

With more granular Pop units, we have more ability to support simultaneous growth of Pops on a planet. Each species present on a planet will grow normally, and with the smaller unit size, will grow every month.

This results in several benefits, including multi-species empires not getting their growth dominated by underrepresented species, and also lets us remove the floor on colony Pop growth. This does mean that newly settled colonies will be very reliant on migration to grow their population until they develop to the point where they can support their own Pop growth, and removes a long-running issue where spamming colonies regardless of habitability simply for the minimum flat Pop growth was optimal.

Xeno-Compatibility will pool all species on a multi-species planet together to calculate their growth rate, then split the growth proportionally across the various species.

Assembly works largely the way it did before, except that fractional Assembly will become “microPops” thanks to the finer resolution of Pops. Machine and Organic Assembly will no longer conflict with one another, as the Organic Pops will handle their own growth, while all mechanical assembly will be channeled towards the highest “score” mechanical Pop templates available.

Colonization and Civilians​

Since your new colonies will be extremely reliant on migration from their homeworld until they reach a critical mass of inhabitants where they can begin to support themselves, we’re adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship). These Civilians form the generally content base of your empire, and will trickle out to the colonies, looking for better opportunities. Unemployed Pops will still exist and downgrade through the strata, with unemployed Worker stratum Pops demoting to Civilians over time. This will have an impact on stability, as Civilians are largely content and non-disruptive.

Spoiler: More Technical Details

This is mostly for you modders out there to abuse, but in the new system, “Unemployed Specialist” will technically be a Job - there’ll be one for each stratum. Every Job can have a demotion target assigned to it, and a time.

In our implementation, all of the Specialist stratum Jobs will demote to Unemployed Specialist; Unemployed Specialist will demote to Unemployed Worker, and Unemployed Worker will demote to Civilian as they give up on their dreams of productivity and veg out in front of the holoscreen.

Spoiler: Even More Technical Details

There are actually going to be many more Strata than I listed there.

Our current list includes the following for regular empires:

• Elites
• Elites (Unemployed)
• Specialists
• Specialists (Unemployed)
• Specialists (Slave)
• Specialists (Slave, Unemployed)
  • For Indentured Servitude
• Workers
• Workers (Unemployed)
• Workers (Slave)
• Slaves (Unemployed)
• Civilians
• Residents
• Criminals
• Pre-Sapients

Gestalts would have:

• Complex Drones
• Menial Drones
• Maintenance Drones (Civilian Equivalent)
  • Unemployed Complex and Menial drones demote directly to here, skipping the Unemployed state
• Deviant Drones
• Slaves (For Grid Amalgamation, Livestock, etc.)
• Bio-Trophies
• Bio-Trophies (Unemployed)
• Pre-Sapients

There are likely to be more once we’re done, including the various Purge types.

Like many of the other changes, it’s all about removing iteration. Instead of going through the Pops to find the unemployed ones, we already know that any Pops in the Specialist (Unemployed) stratum are, in fact, unemployed. When a Specialist Job opens up, we have a smaller pool of candidates that are pre-identified, and we already have a clear priority of who has dibs on the Job.

In this model, Slaves would demote to the Slaves (Unemployed) Job/stratum and go no further, so they’ll never hit the content state of Residents and Civilians. Based on playtesting, we might end up adding a Slaves (Specialist, Unemployed)

Spoiler: Things I Will Regret Writing in a Dev Diary

Modders: Technically, there’s nothing stopping you from having a Job “demote” to a higher strata, like if you had a Worker stratum “Academy Cadet” that led to a Specialist stratum “Officer” Job. Just make sure you comment your script.

Your homeworld will start with a fairly large pool of Civilians to support your early expansion. We’re a bit worried about early conquest of homeworlds being too easy of a snowball with this increased starting Pop count, so are considering various ways of making it more challenging to take homeworlds in the early to mid game. One idea we have includes having Civilians create impromptu defensive militias to help defend their home, and possibly starting you off with a few Defensive Platforms. Another idea is for aggressively invaded Civilians to take “Resistance” Jobs that they must then “demote” out of over time. The number of Civilians converted to this new Job and how long it takes them to drop out of it would be modified depending on how their people are being treated by their new and old masters.

We welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Clerks are dead! Long live Civilians!​

We’re currently still experimenting with the effects Living Standards have on Civilians (and Pops in general) - it’s likely that more of the Trade generation from Living Standards will be shifted to the Civilian stratum, and production from Unemployed Pops in the old system may also move to the Civilians. This will give them some of the functions of Clerks in the old economic model. In Gestalt empires, they are likely going to be outright named Maintenance Drones rather than “Civilians”.

We’re also renaming the Ruler stratum to “Elites”, so “Ruler” isn’t double-dipping between your Empire’s ruler at the top economic stratum.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll be going through the new Planet UI, and how all of this changes things there.

"Civilian" isn't terrible as words go, evoking the civis in these inchoate communities, as distinct from a city's "citizen." But its contemporary allusion to the contrasting martial roles strikes a discordant tone.

 

[Gray.Vice]

How will the portraits work, and population ? Will there still be some kind of work-related portrait clothing and such ? I liked the visualisation of the population diversity depending on where they were working

 

[Fzfghfzg]

Since Resources are now produced by Planets instead of Pops, will this part not be calculated/tracked anymore?

Also did I understand the rules for promoting/demoting and crime/unhappiness correctly?

 

[Kvesir]

I don't get what the "Civilian" category is meant to represent. If it represents all the broader economy of a society (from Walmart cashiers to grand strategy games developers) as opposed to "workers" who are in "essential jobs" that produce resources, why is it a stratum below "workers"? Why are they content and add stability? Why does it not have its own jobs and unemployment? And does its existence mean we also won't have Entertainers and Cultural Workers anymore?

Seems to me like this is too much of an abstraction, caused by a solution to performance that did not take the actual meaning of this content into account. It is a bin that useless pops are thrown into to do nothing until a new job pops out. It doesn't make any sense.

A much better solution could be to have a generalized "civilian economy" job type produced by city districts, which belongs to the workers stratum.

By the way, I actually liked the trade routes system, but I can understand having to cut it if it causes too much performance issues.