Stellaris Dev Diary #55 - Unity and Traditions

[TheCosmicKid]

I definitely approve of the goals of differentiating civilizations more and making tall ones more viable. The Civ5 civics model seems like a good way to do that. But I have a couple of concerns about the new "Unity" resource.

Firstly: the symbol looks too much like physics research. If it's going to be a swirly thing at least make it not blue.

Secondly: why not just use Influence instead of a completely new resource? It seems like a natural thematic place for the purple stuff. (For the record, Culture and Faith in Civ5 being completely unconnected drives me up the wall.)

 

[Razzlie]

I definitely approve of the goals of differentiating civilizations more and making tall ones more viable. The Civ5 civics model seems like a good way to do that. But I have a couple of concerns about the new "Unity" resource.

Firstly: the symbol looks too much like physics research. If it's going to be a swirly thing at least make it not blue.

Secondly: why not just use Influence instead of a completely new resource? It seems like a natural thematic place for the purple stuff. (For the record, Culture and Faith in Civ5 being completely unconnected drives me up the wall.)

It's teal, because RGB are already used by Minerals and Science, so all the primary colours are already spent.

 

[jady]

Is global food coming with 1.5?

 

[Me_]

Is global food coming with 1.5?

I would suspect so. If they are adding option to use aliens as food, it would be of limited use if you would have to have a pop of your species present on a planet to benefit from it.

 

[Jabby]

"Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for."

- George Sand

"To defeat ones enemy one must understand them. Not just their battle tactics, but their history, philosophy, art..."- Grand Admiral Thrawn.

 

[General Apocalypse]

The last two deb blogs are a terrible idea.

Way too much politics and too little space. The further you move away from realism and to unstomacheble gimmicks like those in EU IV the more the quality of this game will drop.

We still can't move food between planets , battles are a blob vs blob with no tactics and little strategy , we have no galactic trade system in place and your ideas to develops this great game further are scraps from the EU IV devs ?

This is bloody ridiculous.

 

[Chief of Staff]

The last two deb blogs are a terrible idea.

Way too much politics and too little space. The further you move away from realism and to unstomacheble gimmicks like those in EU IV the more the quality of this game will drop.

We still can't move food between planets , battles are a blob vs blob with no tactics and little strategy , we have no galactic trade system in place and your ideas to develops this great game further are scraps from the EU IV devs ?

This is bloody ridiculous.

Now that is interesting. I never really thought about moving food between planets. I remember watching episodes in a given Star Trek series where the starship in question would be ferrying cargo (most often medicinal supplies, tools, and maybe food?) from a planet to another planet.

With that in mind, perhaps if there is a real food emergency on a planet, one could use their fleets to ferry food to that a planet. But there is a opportunity cost in this.... once you committed a fleet to that planet, you can't use it if you were to need all available ships for either defense or offense.

Just a thought.

 

[Josiah0626]

How about an appearance designer similar to the Sims character creation?

 

[Milten]

We still can't move food between planets

I still find the idea of using space ships to move millions tons of potato between planets every day bloody ridiculous, but it's going to be that way soon regardless. So complaining about something which already got green light is kinda pointless.

 

[UberWaffe]

[OT]

I still find the idea of using space ships to move millions tons of potato between planets every day bloody ridiculous, but it's going to be that way soon regardless. So complaining about something which already got green light is kinda pointless.

And yet, here we are. *shrug*
[/OT]

 

[sr999]

You may be shocked to find out that there are other features in Stellaris 'ripped off' from other games, for example colony ships.

(The mechanics of Traditions differ from those of social policies, especially where Ascension Perks are involved, but I can understand thinking so from the interface)

Actually I had the opposite views (and preferences!) to the poster to whom you replied. My initial thoughts were ok, so it'll be like idea groups from EU4!

Then I saw that costs go up, so... it might be horrible like Civ5...

I trust it'll be somewhere in between, so that only the auto-haters will be completely turned off the project...

But I really hope that whatever the result it'll somehow be balanced for tall empires!

 

[Dalinski]

I would rather we fought HARD for stability than it be given to us on a platter.

And then for it to be taken from us again if we rest on our laurels. Such is then the endless churning of the galaxy as it cuts its way through space remorselessly.

 

[talon1de]

This looks great

 

[Hybrode]

Supremacy, Harmony and Purity? What is this CivBE?

seriously though i think this will be an awesome update.

 

[migalhone]

-> "Unity is an accumulative resource that increases each month, and is primarily gained through the construction of government buildings such as monuments, mausoleums and temples. Unity is spent on adopting Tradition trees and purchasing individual Traditions. Each Tradition tree has a starter bonus, five unlockable bonuses and a finisher bonus that is gained once the entire tree is filled out."
-> "The cost of unlocking a Tradition depends on the size of your empire, as well as how internally stable it is."

Civ5's social policies concept applied to a Paradox Game? Might be a good idea. Once a tree is filled out can they be swapped? Are some of the trees exclusive?


Also, is Jon Shafer working for Paradox now? If so, say hi to the Civ5 Lead Designer. I'm a bit old to believe in coincidences. I've also heard he stopped developing a game called "At the Gates", stopped communicating with the people who actually backed him on Kickstarter and invested money on his project. Working in another company does justify his silence... But i might be wrong! Happy Holidays folks!

 

[petruxa]

Culture stuff has really good potential. I thought it might also be interesting to implement such thing as degradation of Culture - as Unity drops to a certain level, Culture begins to degrade, resulting in losing of traditions. That would be kind of realistic and also helps to more clearly separate culture from tech development.

 

[Xoatl]

Culture stuff has really good potential. I thought it might also be interesting to implement such thing as degradation of Culture - as Unity drops to a certain level, Culture begins to degrade, resulting in losing of traditions. That would be kind of realistic and also helps to more clearly separate culture from tech development.

What would Unity have to maintain to cause that? It can't just be traditions because as low as it can get is 0 monthly gain that way if each one cost 1 unity monthly to keep active.

EDIT: Unless you can get lump sum unity gains like you can with influence. Although many players would be smart enough not to go over the limit even then. This would only devastate empires that just suffered major territorial lose where their monuments and stuff were at.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Any particular reason it can't be done using existing influence resource? Since, you know, the original idea was to keep game simple?

 

[huru2judge1]

I wish you would add a trade/merchant mechanism. I would love to see merchant fleets that automatically trade between worlds and friendly empires that have trade agreements. It would be cool and add more diversity to the game and map.

Plus, it would be fun to have to ability to raid merchant fleets. You could probably incorporate merchant missions ... where merchantile minded people in an empire want the government to be more business and trade friendly.

 

[117Killer]

I can understand why the devs have added this as its the easiest way to implement tall empires, and i more than encourage implementing tall empires. But i dont see why they needed to implement such a basic system in order to achieve it. I pointed out in another post of mine how a simple expansion of the strategic resources current role in the game could allow the playstyle of a tall empire, and even give a little more depth to the fleet combat, but required genuine work and planning in order for a player to achieve, not just waiting for a ticking number to count up. Why not give tall empire players a system that as oppose to bore them as they wait for next tradition unlock, gives them a sense of purpose, direction and excitement as they work hard to gain that upper hand in the galactic battlefield. And a sense of elated fulfilment as they grab that one key resource from the enemy at the last second, or accepting dread as they realise that they will have to battle even harder in order to survive the oncoming battles ahead. Why they didnt expand on thier current systems, like the strategic resources or giving smaller empires large bonuses to science in order to compete with larger empires, or even large happiness bonuses that are like coming together against outside threats. Why they felt the need to implement a system thats both new and feels like a fairly shallow way to implement tall empires simply confuses me.

Ps: sorry for word wall