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Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary will be about some more changes coming in the 1.8 'Čapek' update, with a particular focus on Hive Minds and Traditions.

Hive Minds
Hive Minds was a feature in Utopia that we were not unhappy with, but felt we could have done more on. While it works fine from a gameplay perspective, offering a different mode of play for those who do not wish to concern themselves with internal politicking and just want to get on with building their glorious empire among the stars (and eating those that stand in their way), Hive Minds ended up somewhat lacking in the flavor department, and suffered narratively from gameplay text that does not fit a Hive-Minded society, such as early exploration events.

For 1.8, we've decided to make a major push to improve Hive Minds, both narratively and gameplay-wise. Many events have been changed, disabled or rewritten to fit Hive Minds and their unique societies. We've also tried to address a number of non-event related narrative breaks, such as replacing the 'Sprawling Slums' starting planet tile blocker with a unique tile blocker only found on Hive Mind homeworlds. A new system for relocalising technologies based on government authority types was also created, and a number of technologies will now have different, more suitable names for Hive Minds (such as renaming Administrative AI to Synaptic Enhancers). Some new, unique interactions were also added to the game to emphasise the inherent psionic nature of Hive Minds.

We've also changed the way Hive Minds interact with non-Hive Mind pops. While we still do not want non-Hive Minded Pops to be regular citizens of Hive Minds (for numerous reasons, the main one being keeping Hive Minds distinct from regular empires in how they are played), we have added the option to keep them around as Livestock instead of simply being processed or displaced. AI-controlled Hive Mind empires now also vary in how they treat Pops of other species, with some preferring displacement and others making use of livestock or processing. Livestock/Processing have been buffed from 3/6 food per Pop to 6/8 respectively, and a number of fixes have been made to ensure that Pops that are kept as livestock do not incur building maintenance or similar issues.
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Devouring Swarms
In addition to the changes to regular Hive Minds, we've also devoted some more attention to the Devouring Swarm civic that was added in 1.6. Devouring Swarms have had their bonuses increased to be more on par with their Fanatical Purifier non-Hive Mind variant, and a new government type and AI personality was created for Devouring Swarms that you encounter while exploring the galaxy. They also have a few new flavor texts and unique interactions.
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Assimilation
Finally, we've improved the process of assimilating non-Hive Minded Pops into the Hive. Instead of having to genetically modify the project (and complete said project before the Pops are eaten or forced out), Hive Minds now have access to a new type of citizenship species right, that is unlocked once they unlock the Evolutionary Mastery ascension perk. This citizenship type, called 'Assimilation', will convert non-Hive-Minded Pops into a Hive-Minded variant of that species, allowing them to be integrated seamlessly into your Hive Mind empire. The process is gradual, with a certain number of Pops converted at regular intervals rather than all being modified at the same time. Non-Hive Minded Pops will of course be quite upset by this, selfishly holding on to their individuality rather than simply surrendering to the glory of the collective. This new method of assimilation was also made available to Synthetic empires, and can be used to convert Pops to cyborgs (if partway through Synthetic Ascension) or upload them into robot bodies (if fully Synthetically Ascended). It can also be used to by non-Hive Mind empires that have unlocked Evolutionary Mastery to de-assimilate Hive-Minded Pops.
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Tradition Swapping
Another issue both gameplay and narrative-wise that affects Hive Minds, but is not unique to them, is that certain traditions simply do not fit certain kinds of empires. When creating the tradition trees, we tried to keep them as broad as possible, but ultimately you're never going to be able to design seven full trees that fit perfectly into every possible society and playstyle. It's for this reason that we have created a new system that we call 'Tradition Swapping'. Tradition Swapping allows any Tradition Category (such as Diplomacy) or individual Tradition (such as Trans-Stellar Corporations) to be set up with a number of potential 'swaps'. These swaps have conditions and weights for each individual empire, and can be anything from a simple name and description swap to a full replacement of name, description, icon and effects. A number of such tradition swaps have been created for empires with specific playstyle, such as Hive Minds and Fanatical Purifiers. For example, Hive Minds have replaced 'Trans-Stellar Corporations' (Private Colony Ships make very little sense in a Hive Mind...) with Warrior Forms, a tradition that reduces army upkeep. They also have the entire Diplomacy tree replaced with Adaptability, a new tree focused on growth, habitability and genetics.

Though Tradition swaps may appear to be completely different from what they are replacing, they still occupy the same 'slot'. This means that the system is able to easily handle any change in the empire that would affect the tradition trees - if a Fanatic Purifier has the Purity tree (replacing the Domination tree) filled out and stop being Fanatical Purifiers, they will not lose their unlocked traditions and ascension perks, instead they are simply swapped for whatever variant of the same slots are valid for the empire - in this case reverting the Purity tree back to being Domination. While this may seem slightly strange, we felt it is nonetheless the preferrable way of handing such switches, as all sorts of issues would arise from simply yanking a number of unlocked traditions from empires that could no longer fulfill the conditions for them. By keeping the system as robust and dynamic as possible, it allows us to make far more adjustments to individual traditions for different playstyles than would be otherwise possible. The Tradition Swapping system is, of course, fully accessible to modders.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about voices. Or hearing voices? At any rate, voices will be involved for sure, so stay tuned!
 
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That's the idea. You will always be able to unlock all trees available to your empire in the base game, though of course modders can do it differently.

What about the bizarre situation where you've unlocked all Traditions (especially on Unity-heavy empires), rendering Unity completely useless? Are there plans to address this?
 
so when you assimulate other species into robots do they classify as your synthetic species or a new type of synthetic species basically 2 didn't robot species? or do they merge?
 
I see that keep the tradition slots and simply swap the traditions inside is a convenient way to do it. It feels strange though.

Have you considered something like science accumulation? I.e.: when you swap you lose all the traditions but you get refunded the unity that is put in a stash and every month you retrieve out as many points as you produced that month?
 
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary will be about some more changes coming in the 1.8 'Čapek' update, with a particular focus on Hive Minds and Traditions.

Them buildings need to be re-skinned or perhaps new buildings entirely for hive minds.
 
More great news, and all well-catered to my Zerg-esque tendencies. Though I'd still love to be able to (sans modding) create starter Cyborg (which could have Hive Mind as an option) and starter Synth (which could be Machine Consciousness in place of Hive Mind) species, perhaps spending Trait points to unlock certain techs that might help craft them from their earliest roots. I'd love to do a good Meklar or Borg sort of species, each able to assimilate from the get-go (or to at least unlock it early in the game).
 
Focus on diplomacy, federations and so on really does not fit too well with the playstyle and general theme of Hive Minds. Diplomacy is still possible unless you're a Devouring Swarm, but they're not too good at it - their mindset is simply too alien to individualistic societies. You're going to have to try harder than most to make friends.

I'm considering adding a special civic for 'peaceful' Hive Minds that try to understand and co-exist with non-Hive Mind civilizations though.

finally ! Galaxia of asimov will be born
 
Fantastic Dev-Diary! It's nice to see, that Hive-minds are being more fleshed out and the tradition-swapping should help a lot in making empires even more unique.
I'm starting to more and more look forward to the next update :)

PS: We haven't forgotten that blue brain symbol from the twitch-stream - I have a feeling synthetic hive-minds are going to be a topic in one of the next dev-diaries
 
It's nice to see that Wiz still has the magic touch. He brought it to eu4 and it really blossomed under his leadership and I see the same happening here.

Of course having a great team helps too!
 
Having read your reasoning for not allowing Hive Minds to have normal non-slave pops, have you considered instead adding for peaceful Hive Minds a 'pets' slavery type instead?

Pets would have a malus to production, but a small bonus to happiness (as you coddle them). Its point would simply be to allow for the flavor of being a peaceful benevolent Hive Mind. (And maybe offer some diplomatic benefits when dealing with non-Hive Mind species.)
 
Great, all of it!
 
Having read your reasoning for not allowing Hive Minds to have normal non-slave pops, have you considered instead adding for peaceful Hive Minds a 'pets' slavery type instead?

Pets would have a malus to production, but a small bonus to happiness (as you coddle them). Its point would simply be to allow for the flavor of being a peaceful benevolent Hive Mind. (And maybe offer some diplomatic benefits when dealing with non-Hive Mind species.)
Hive Mind pops has no happiness, so a happiness bonus is pointless for a Hive Mind.
 
Are the additional leader levels equivalent to that we have nowadays? Were they split in half to give the feeling of a more dinamic leveling?
Or do they have additional bonuses and are there to benefit long living/quick leveling leaders?

I doubt these questions will be answered now, perhaps in a dev diary... but it's curious to think of. Would be a nice addition for empires with min-max leader build and ascended leaders.
 
I'm glad to see hive minds getting a bit more flavor.
 
Is there anything planed for late game usage for excessive Unity? While it may not be a huge problem for wide Empire, a unity focus Empire might unlock everything before the actual end game stage.

Most unity producing buildings, and also patronage, become useless as soon as the Ascension tree is completed. That always struck me as a major problem.
It's like your entire empire suddenly goes "Uhm wait. we're completely ascended utopian beings now, what's up next? Nothing?" - *drops into lethargy*
 
The benefit is that they produce food.

When you're actually adding this "peacful hivemind-set", they should produce society research instead.