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Stellaris Dev Diary #102: Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today, we continue talking about the Apocalypse expansion and 2.0 'Cherryh' update, on the topic of Edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions.

Edict Changes (Cherryh Feature)
There will be a number of changes coming to Empire and Planetary Edicts in 2.0 'Cherryh', with the aim of both making Edicts more attractive to use, and increasing the number of useful things players have to spend their pooled Influence and Energy resources on. Firstly, we have moved most of the edicts out of the Planetary Edict category, keeping only a handful of Edicts that are either about dealing with a specific short-term problem (such as Unrest-reducing edicts) or executing a long-term or permanent effect (such as Consecrated Worlds or the new Land Clearance edict given by Mastery of Nature). Instead, a number of these edicts have become Empire Edicts.
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Empire Edicts have also been changed to work in the same way as Planetary Edicts, with an upfront cost and a duration rather than a monthly cost. The reason for this is that we wanted to ensure players always have a use for their pooled influence - an empire that is not using that influence on expanding through Starbases or Claims will be able to boost their empire in a variety of ways, including powerful resource-boosting edicts such as Production Targets and Capacity Overload. We decided to move away from the monthly cost because players tend to shy away from monthly costs that bring them into a negative balance, even if they are consistantly hitting their stockpile cap, and so ended up using Empire Edicts far less than they could actually afford to.

To make managing and renewing Edicts less of a hassle, we have added a message when an Edict (Empire or Planetary) expires.
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Campaigns (Cherryh Feature)
Campaigns are a new type of edict added in the Cherryh update. Campaigns are edicts that are unlocked by the Planetary Unification technology and cost energy instead of Influence. They typically have fairly situational effects, and are meant to be an additional use for stored energy.
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Unity Ambitions (Apocalypse Feature)
Unity Ambitions is another new type of edict added in the Apocalypse expansion. These are extremely powerful edicts that last 10 years and cost Unity to activate. You will get access to Unity Ambitions after researching the Ascension Theory society technology, and activating a Unity Ambition has a dynamic cost that is calculated in the exact same way as the cost for unlocking a new tradition (though activating an ambition will not raise the cost of future ambitions/traditions). Unity Ambitions are meant to give a use for Unity after the player has unlocked all the traditions they want to unlock, and to ensure the resource is never completely without use.
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That's all for today! Next week we'll continue talking about Cherryh and the Apocalypse expansion, on the topic of Civics and Ascension Perks.
 
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Wouldnt then just not picking many traditions be a thing? Like the boni seem to be pretty good, I could see myself focusing on those and keeping them cheap, instead of unlocking more traditions. Would strongly encourage cherry picking

You can't get them until you unlock Ascension Theory, a late game technology. If you want to just stockpile unity for 150 years and take no traditions so you can get infinite access to ambitions for the last 50 years or so of the game then... knock yourself out I guess?
 
But claiming a system costs 75, so to reach a planet 3 systems away you already pay more than today. Influence is hard to come by, especially now that you have to pay the (higher) edict costs upfront.

These edicts are *empire wide* - potentially, that's a massive bonus.

Less useful in the early game, but you'll be spending all your influence to expand then anyway.
 
Quick request @Wiz

Please can you split Policies and Edicts into their own tabs? The lists are already pretty cramped and look like they will be very scroll heavy in 2.0
If you get some time this would be a really nice QoL thing to implement. :)

Seconded.
 
Will there ever be a reason not to unlock all the traditions?

By the time this is posted someone might have already answered. But if I understand things right, since the ambitions cost as much to activate as a tradition does to unlock, that means they'll be cheaper the less traditions you have. So there should be situations where you for example have all the ascensions you want and rather than opening a new tree with little use to you (most likely diplomacy and/or dominion depending on type of game) you instead put your unity into ambitions.
 
Quick request @Wiz

Please can you split Policies and Edicts into their own tabs? The lists are already pretty cramped and look like they will be very scroll heavy in 2.0
If you get some time this would be a really nice QoL thing to implement. :)

There is an internal task for this. We'll see if there's time for 2.0, otherwise it will happen later.
 
Will there ever be a reason not to unlock all the traditions?
For example the Diplomacy tree when I play as a Divine Empire. Pretty much all the stuff there is useless to DE. You don't need federation, you have vassals (and some defensive pacts), habitability is a non issue (unless you massively colonize tomb worlds),. Visitor Centre? You mean for the xeno slaves? Etc etc....

Now I will be able to take that's actually useful to me, instead of a bunch of traditions that do nothing.
 
For example the Diplomacy tree when I play as a Divine Empire. Pretty much all the stuff there is useless to DE. You don't need federation, you have vassals (and some defensive pacts), habitability is a non issue (unless you massively colonize tomb worlds),. Visitor Centre? You mean for the xeno slaves? Etc etc....

Now I will be able to take that's actually useful to me, instead of a bunch of traditions that do nothing.

I don't know, I always seem to be short on ascension perks because I tend to want to take more than there are available spaces for them :D And if we're getting additional ones now, that problem won't get any better.

"I can't make decisions, I'm a president!"
 
While I am more than happy to purchase this DLC when it comes out for other features, the fact that the Unity Ambition is locked behind Apocalypse feels a bit strange to me. If anything it should be part of Utopia as that DLC actually deal with ascension and such.
Good to see Unity has some use after unlocking all traditions finally but imo this should be a update to old DLC or free feature. Maybe some war related ones can be included in Apocalypse as a compromise?

edit: While we are diving into the dangerous topic of Paradox's DLC policies, I think this video from Remen's Paradox explained its problem very well from EU4's perspective. Mostly I just don't want to see Stellaris' DLC structure devolve into the same confusing mess as EU4's.
 
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I don't know, I always seem to be short on ascension perks because I tend to want to take more than there are available spaces for them :D And if we're getting additional ones now, that problem won't get any better.

"I can't make decisions, I'm a president!"
This gives you the option between:

1) Fully commiting a bunch of resources (unity, ascension perk slot) and time into something you cannot change later andwhich may be situational ( damage bonus vs. FE for example)

2) Taking an equally powerful bonus for smaller cost however also for a limited time. And if you no longer have any use for that bonus, you can take a different one.
 
Well you wouldnt need to pick no perks. Just stopping after lets say 3 or 4 trees would do and then let your unity production snowball away
Well, yes, but even after getting most crucial ones other ascension perks aren't bad either. So it looks like a good kind of dilemma to me.
 
I like the new edicts move to Empire-wide.

Not sure if the Unity dump options will have much of an impact by that stage in the game, but it's nice to have the option.

I would really like to see many more Tradition paths - like double - with the game locking you to your chosen paths and greying out the other paths once eight have been selected. That way you would not become over-powered by completing 16 tradition paths like some mods let you do currently.
 
They're lovely and much needed changes, edicts will be far more powerful than they are now, also I think they're now an Empire modifier, which means mining stations are affected as well!

Final numbers are not final, I guess, it's but one of many ways to make the Ambition costs scale after all.

It's good that every star system has guaranteed resources, though I still worry that it can lead to some situations where expanding a lot is extremely punishing due to diminishing returns while small sized empires are really self-sufficient by comparison. Luckily far-flung empires still got high fleet capacity :D