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Stellaris Dev Diary #84: Čapek Feature Roundup (part 2)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is a continuation of the feature round-up in the 1.8 'Čapek' update that we started in last week's dev diary. In this one, we'll be talking about some new policies being added to the game. Everything mentioned in this dev diary is part of the free update.

Land Appropriation
The first new policy added is called 'Land Appropriation'. This policy is available to all ethics and governs whether or not newly conquered planets should have land appropriated from non-citizen species. If this policy is on, any newly conquered planet with less than 5 tiles of unblocked free space will have some non-citizen pops removed to clear way for citizen pops. These pops are either simply removed outright (simulating being driven into slums and fringe regions) or become refugees that will attempt to flee to an empire that will have them. Additionally, any planet that has land seized will get a temporary 'Land Appropriated' modifier that massively increases migration attraction and prevents non-citizen species from reproducing and migrating there while in effect. Non-multispecies AI empires will make use of this policy, meaning that even regular wars of conquest will generate refugees, indirectly boosting refugee haven empires.
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Pre-Sapient Policies
The policies for Pre-Sapients (previously Pre-Sentients, we have changed the Sentient/Sapient terminology in 1.8) have been expanded in 1.8. The following policies are now available for choosing how to deal with pre-sapients:
* Extermination: Pre-Sapients are quickly and efficiently exterminated to make room for your Pops.
* Livestock: Pre-Sapients are hunted and eaten, producing food for your empire, though this will slowly deplete their population. They can also be manually purged at will. Depletion is mostly done for balance reasons, as otherwise there would be no reason *not* to eat them.
* Tolerated: Pre-Sapients are tolerated and will generally not be interfered with, though they can be manually purged or killed off via terraforming.
* Protected: Pre-Sapients are protected from purging and worlds they are living on cannot be terraformed.
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Initial Border Status
A new policy has been added that controls the initial border status you have towards other empires: open or closed. This only affects the status of borders after establishing communications and has no effect on empires you have not contacted. It also does not prevent manual opening or closing of borders towards select empires.
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Robotic Workers
The last new policy ties into the changes to artificial intelligence policies discussed in dev diary 78 and is simply a blanket policy for whether robotic workers should be permitted to be built and maintained. If banned, all robot pops in your empire will automatically be disassembled.
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Manual Purging
Finally for today, also as a result of feedback given after dev diary 78, we have brought back the manual Purge button for organic pops as well, though its use is highly restricted. You can manually purge selective Pops only if they are Slaves, non-protected Pre-Sapients, or robotic Pops without citizen rights. The rules for which Pops can be Purged/Disassembled are fully moddable.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll continue the feature roundup by talking about changes to Ascension Paths and Megastructures and the addition of Awakened Empire Decadence.
 
Some egalitarians are more equal than others!
Yankee traders style. We're all equal aside from me and you because I can afford a gunship and you can't.
 
I read your post as saying I wasn't being honest about us implementing things based on request (because I did say it was just one of our priorities when making decisions). If that's not what you meant, then fair enough.

Never mind it, miscommunication I blame on my horrid sleep habits. If you're still on can you address my previous question real quick?


So this may be a stupid question but please forgive this as I am functioning on 2 hours of sleep, but why not allow us to purge any pop, regardless of social status? Surely you could add an unhappiness modifier - something along the lines of "Tyrannical government -35 happiness" for purging political adversaries/non-slaves. I ask this because I typically play as fanatic xenophobe and authoritarian. I enslave alien species and confine them to their planet while my native species does all the ruling on chattel slavery, so purging in this new update wouldn't be useful to me because I would only be able to do it to a species that already doesn't matter in my empire outside it's food and mineral income and I wouldn't wanna purge one of them.. on the other hand, ethic divergent pops on far away planets that are making things unhappy because they're of a faction I'm suppressing would be the absolute ideal target of a swift purging.
 
@Malonex

My impression, based on his response a month ago (referenced on page 1), is that it has to do with balancing the faction system:

The main reason for removing specific purge was less to do with micromanagement (though that was a factor) and more to do with the new faction/ethics system in Banks.

Granted, the current faction system doesn't have much bite to it (mostly just lowers your Influence gain), so I feel it doesn't really matter how the penalty is implemented.

I'm with you on this one; I usually don't want to purge an entire species, just the ones who are whining about freedom and equality. I'm assuming, though, that the design intention is to make sure there are still pissed off and oppressed pops lurking around in a totalitarian state to represent dissidents, because otherwise every remaining Authoritarian pops who didn't get purged would be tots cool with your Supreme Leader's massive purge of nonconforming members of the same species.

The work-around I can think of is to add long-lasting unhappiness modifiers to a good number of existing Authoritarian pops to represent their displeasure and have this modifier lead to ethics shift... which may just result in another feedback loop of purge, leading to a spiral of purging that dwindles down your population. This can be how your species die out!

And as much as I'd love to purge those disruptive dissidents who whine about inequality, from a PR perspective, once you start purging your peeps en masse solely for political dissent, wouldn't most of the remaining dissidents (assuming they can't launch a coup) hide their true beliefs and just toe the party line, at least publicly and superficially? You'd see Authoritarian pops everywhere, yet there would be secret factions you can't see and conspiracy parties you won't be invited to... and my experience tells me that misleading info and lack of transparency are generally highly undesirable in strategy games.

Dear Leader: "B-b-but why would my people rebel against me? They all swore they love me!"

My head canon is that the faction/pop ethic can be seen by you the all-seeing Shroud god, but your empire and government aren't capable of mind/data reading everyone.
 
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Land Appropriation looks brilliant
evil
but good for the game

Egalitarians may not necessarily be about equality between species. They can't seize land from citizens (nobody can).

the americans, soviets, french and british considered themselves egalitarians.
 
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Cheers for the DD Wiz, more great changes :).

I spelled out the reason in the OP. There would be zero reason to use Tolerated instead of Livestock if it had no downsides.

On this, what about if one (Livestock) gave a bonus to food but didn't depopulate (after all, even us silly pre-space travel humans can manage maintaining farming populations most of the time*), and then the other (Tolerated) gave a bonus to either science (humanity is still learning all sorts of things from 'wildlife' and 'wild areas'), gold (tourism) or influence (can't think of a good reason here, so unless you can, would recommend science or gold!) Protected could have a bigger bonus than Tolerated of the same kind.

You can even have the amount of bonus depend on the number of pre-sentient pops, adding not just balance between Livestock/Tolerated/Protected, but interesting decisions for players about whether they want to have a science/tourism-based planet with a heap of pre-sentients (Jurassic Planet :D).

Just thoughts, as always ignore if useful :). Or, if I was being appropriate to the internet, if you don't implement these I'll accuse you of selling you soul and betraying the fundamental principles of strategy gaming for cheap profit :rolleyes: **.

* You could add livestock-related events for famines and disease if you wanted. Possibly not your highest priority though :).

** In case there's the slightest ambiguity, this is a joke - you're one of the straightest shooters out there.
 
or maybe amass a giant ass fleet to lead the greatest conqu I mean war of liberation evar
 
@Wiz Not sure if this has been asked and answered elsewhere, but will Machine Empires have immortal rulers like Hive Minds do? Or will Machine Rulers be subject to the malfunction/accidents of other Machine Leaders? My apologies if it's been answered elsewhere.
 
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Well maybe Lunar bases but being able to change the name colour and icon of your empire after the start of the game seems like a definite QoL issue. Especially since the AI tends to change name when they change certain aspects of their empire.
ALL empires change name when their governments change, not just AIs. Players can change their empire names back.

Anyway, I was amused in a recent game to have a rival empire spawn right next to me with the exact same color and emblem. I strangled it quickly through expansion and enveloped it, then promptly forgot it existed because it blended right in. Was one of the last empires I annihilated because of that.
 
If we're going to make migration a more core part of the game, can we (if not now then for 1.9) get a basic upgrade so migrating pops take up space on their target planet as soon as they start migrating?

Don't they already? Haven't played in a few months, but I seem to recall immigrants having the same "faded out" pop as growing pops. IIRC.
 
I wanted to say this last week but didn't get the chance:

Could the cost to force elect a leader be influenced by the popularity of the leader's faction? For example, a leader with more support would be cheaper to force elect, because it is more likely that his faction would gain victory anyway, while a leader with very less support should be very difficult to elect. i would suggest maybe setting the cost between 100~200, for example, election cost = 200 - percentage support * 100

Also, I would suggest that even for dictatorships and dynasties that there be the option to force-reelect, since in real life many dictators and emperors don't remain in power till the day they die. For the force-reelection of a hereditary rule, I suggest that once the player selects the option, the emperor simply retires, and his/her heir immediately takes the throne.

Oh, and one last thing: why would an emperor or dictator join an egalitarian faction? That's weird.
 
Caste System pops can indeed not be purged, only fully enslaved species. The reason they can't migrate is that they could end up migrating into slavery, so that's not changing.

If we see the migrating pop as an incomplete pop icon on the target planet, the player or AI would be able to decide what happens to the migrating pop, whether into slavery or not.
 
And what exactly is this "Space UN" gonna do? Express deep concerns or condemn my Emperor with the strongest of words? Sanction all the influential leaders in my Star Empire? Ha, I laugh at these puny Federations!

Use your brain, every decision you make in front of the computer is not seen as the will of a single person in the game, but the change and flux in society. And in any society similar at all to the ones we know won't be egalitarian and then out of the blue start killing a lot of people for no reason.
 
Not a single respectful disagreement. It looks like you've perfected the art of the developer diary. Bravo.
 
the americans, soviets, french and british considered themselves egalitarians.
You just have to say they're not really citizens, problem solved
 
@Wiz,

First thanks for the QoL improvements, these are very nice.

Second, possible to ask for two important QoL changes for coreworlds?

1. A proper building queue for planetary build that allows a player to reorder or selectively cancel constructions, rather than remake the entire build/upgrade chain.

2. An autobuild toggle for core worlds, that allows a player to chose to automate planetary construction/upgrading, or not.
 
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