Big remaining issues with 4.0 balance.

[Guthuk Gaming]

1. Ethics based civilian effects should be yoinked out of the game and just replaced with a general set of buffs. It's pretty obvious that some are COMPLETELY dominant in the early game, and some don't really do anything at all. It's basically forced to go 1 point in to spiritualist or materialist, 1 point in to egalitarian, then 1 point in to another good ethic. Ethics now have to be min-maxed SUPER hard, or you can find yourself literally hundreds of research down early game for no reason other than you decided to try authoritarian.

Due to how many civilians you'll have early game and late game, there's simply no way to compete unless you're triple ethics with points in the right area. It's a legitimate issue, with many players not even understanding how they can be hundreds of tech behind even a few years in to the game.

2. Seasonal Dormancy is overtuned as hell. If you properly set up your civilians the only real drawback you're going to be facing is paying the consumer goods for these guys. That is, unless you just go Seasonal Dormancy for a mere 2 points, and get -75% upkeep on every civilian. I've had empires with 40k pops fed off 3 farming districts. Seasonal Dormancy is probably the second biggest contributor to the game's bad balance right now. I think at -50% upkeep it would still be outrageously good.

3. Knights of the Toxic God is just way too much. It needs to generate less research baseline by a bit, and then it also needs to be able to stack civilians for output a bit less well as well. Both of those should combine to a ~33% drop in research early and mid and late game. It's sort of operating at a balance level that isn't really acceptable for a mere origin, as picking it AT ALL makes you build broken.

4. Clone Army continues to just be completely dominant in the game. Stacking pops is king right now due to civilians, and Clone Army does it best. It's always been one of the most Origins, but now it's just silly.

5. Psychics. Having to ban an entire ascension from MP games feels silly.

6. The above but also for Virtual. Ascensions by themselves shouldn't be so game breaking.

 

[Revengeance_oov]

Civilians with Autochthon Monuments are worth about half a Pop of production. They also don't benefit from the many scaling outputs and efficiency bonuses that buildings provide, and things that do boost production (Civil Education) adds research at a very inefficient CG rate.

Seasonal Dormancy isn't nearly as overpowered as you make it out to be; it's fantastic in the early game with UA builds, but it falls off quickly because you have to use Civilians to get the UA research bonuse. don't get bonuses from jobs (other than, say, Civil Education, which adds upkeep that isn't subject to the Dormancy upkeep reduction). The real reason it seems powerful is that UA provides the highest faction output, most of the "broken" builds rely on getting faction research/unity from Parliamentary System or Crowdsourcing.

Psionics is overpowered only because of the Enforcer-Telepath job swap, which will undoubtedly be cured by making the job efficiency bonus not apply to itself (this is the same problem with Dictatorial Cybervision).

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

Civilians with Autochthon Monuments are worth about half a Pop of production. They also don't benefit from the many scaling outputs and efficiency bonuses that buildings provide, and things that do boost production (Civil Education) adds research at a very inefficient CG rate.

Seasonal Dormancy isn't nearly as overpowered as you make it out to be; it's fantastic in the early game with UA builds, but it falls off quickly because you have to use Civilians to get the UA research bonuse. don't get bonuses from jobs (other than, say, Civil Education, which adds upkeep that isn't subject to the Dormancy upkeep reduction). The real reason it seems powerful is that UA provides the highest faction output, most of the "broken" builds rely on getting faction research/unity from Parliamentary System or Crowdsourcing.

Psionics is overpowered only because of the Enforcer-Telepath job swap, which will undoubtedly be cured by making the job efficiency bonus not apply to itself (this is the same problem with Dictatorial Cybervision).

That's just simply not true, past bio ascension you can produce more pops than you could reasonably ever put in jobs. The more planets you get, the more jobs you get, but also the more pop growth you get. Civilians stacking is mandatory because you CAN NOT play without them in the current environment.

This makes seasonal dormancy exactly as overpowered as I make it out to be, as you can go to utopian day 1, getting INSANE output advantage on anyone who hasn't gone seasonal dormancy, then just pop growth your way to victory. You'll have a tech and unity advantage the entire game because of it, and because of how snowballing works you'll just sorta win. The game ends at some point, you can't just say "okay but after 200 years-" because the seasonal dormancy player will just cosmogenesis win by that point easily.

There's so many ways to stack modifiers on civilians. All ethics do, then mercantilism does, then the monument does, then utopian living standards does, then you can do some funny stuff like educators

Also, yeah, that's why psionics is OP, but that's exactly why it needs to be addressed already.

 

[Metallichydra]

Pop growth is extremely unbalanced at the moment.
Some ascensions and civics allow for insane pop growth or assembly stacking, even without cosmogenesis (And with fallen empire buildings it becomes even more silly).
The amounts of pops are insane. I regularly reach upwards of 90% of my population as civilians.
Come lategame, I can't even build districts fast enough to fit them all in there.

The big offenders seem to be mutagenic spas / lubrication tanks, cloning (And to a lesser extent any biological ascension) and fallen empire buildings.

With Lubrication tanks, I got one of my planets to be printing over a thousand pops each month, and that was without picking cosmogenesis AND after applying the 86% pop growth penalty I had reached. Had there not been the penalty, I'd be getting more pops each month than you start the game with.

My biggest problem in the lategame was getting enough consumer goods for my pops.
One of my Ecumenopolis had a 95% unemployment rate!

Normally I'd disregard the cosmogenesis buildings due to them being blatantly overpowered, but with the increasing number of ways to get them, I think we at least have to mention them, especially when talking about multiplayer. At this point, there's just so much stuff that needs banning if you want a semblance of balance.

And this is just on the pop growth side of things.
Then there's stuff already mentioned, such as Psionics.

Also, if anyone has noticed, there are no buildings to give flat output to Artisans or Metallurgists. (The buildings that give +1 alloys from metallurgists and such).
There's still the orbital ring, but that just means Ringworlds are severely disadvantaged.
Ha, just made me realize, Ringworlds are good for nothing.
Can't use them for basic resources, because the amount of jobs you get is super low.
Can't use them for advanced resources, because you can't put orbital rings on them.
Oh, and also, you cannot roll any food building techs (More specifically the +1 food from farmers building) until you have colonized a planet. Shattered Rings don't count.

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

Pop growth is extremely unbalanced at the moment.
Some ascensions and civics allow for insane pop growth or assembly stacking, even without cosmogenesis (And with fallen empire buildings it becomes even more silly).
The amounts of pops are insane. I regularly reach upwards of 90% of my population as civilians.
Come lategame, I can't even build districts fast enough to fit them all in there.

The big offenders seem to be mutagenic spas / lubrication tanks, cloning (And to a lesser extent any biological ascension) and fallen empire buildings.

With Lubrication tanks, I got one of my planets to be printing over a thousand pops each month, and that was without picking cosmogenesis AND after applying the 86% pop growth penalty I had reached. Had there not been the penalty, I'd be getting more pops each month than you start the game with.

My biggest problem in the lategame was getting enough consumer goods for my pops.
One of my Ecumenopolis had a 95% unemployment rate!

Normally I'd disregard the cosmogenesis buildings due to them being blatantly overpowered, but with the increasing number of ways to get them, I think we at least have to mention them, especially when talking about multiplayer. At this point, there's just so much stuff that needs banning if you want a semblance of balance.

And this is just on the pop growth side of things.
Then there's stuff already mentioned, such as Psionics.

Also, if anyone has noticed, there are no buildings to give flat output to Artisans or Metallurgists. (The buildings that give +1 alloys from metallurgists and such).
There's still the orbital ring, but that just means Ringworlds are severely disadvantaged.
Ha, just made me realize, Ringworlds are good for nothing.
Can't use them for basic resources, because the amount of jobs you get is super low.
Can't use them for advanced resources, because you can't put orbital rings on them.
Oh, and also, you cannot roll any food building techs (More specifically the +1 food from farmers building) until you have colonized a planet. Shattered Rings don't count.

that's the frustration. For MP, in the past you maybe banned 5-6 things, limited hives/robots a little, and then you'd have a roughly even playing field

Now you have to ban, like, 15 things, limit 10 more things, and outright ban multiple ascensions at this point. And it goes on.

For example, you can do overtuned and ascend on tree 3 instead of 4. So you do mutagenic/pharma opener, with seasonal dormancy. You sit and grow a shitload of pops until you ascend (earlier, because you're overtuned) and then once you ascend you have 30 pops growth on every world, and when you do purity/megacorp you get trade per pop. A LOT OF TRADE per pop. More than is possibly reasonable. 0.5 per positive trait point, so that's literally 10. That's 5 trade per 100 pops. You can then turn every world in to a clone world, turn your trade policy to consumer goods, and your pops will literally pay for their own CG consumption while offering unlimited trade that just grows the entire game. Buy 200 alloys a month by 2235.

So the question becomes, do you ban purity megacorps now? as well as seasonal dormancy? Do you ban overtuned as well because it has so many abuse cases right now? Getting to the point where you ban enough to make to remaining empires feel "fair" just feels too much.

I'd just like to get bans back to 5-6 to get a reasonable game, rather than the game currently having S+++++++++ tier stuff, S++++++ tier stuff, S++++ tier stuff, etc.

It's also super frustrating that everyone has to go egalitarian + materialist+spiritualist + something else. If you don't you are going to play VERY far behind due to how the game functions. Some people do like to play MP with a more RP oriented build, even if it's a min-maxed RP build.

 

[Red Death]

It's basically forced to go 1 point in to spiritualist or materialist, 1 point in to egalitarian, then 1 point in to another good ethic.

Doesn't a fanatic ethic double that effect on Civilians?

 

[Metallichydra]

Doesn't a fanatic ethic double that effect on Civilians?

They do.

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

Doesn't a fanatic ethic double that effect on Civilians?

I suppose I was a bit hyperbolic. It is true though that you need 1 point in Egalitarian in the current environment to unlock utopian. It's super restrictive.

 

[WJJellO]

There should honestly be an upper bound to how many civilians a planet can support, along with stability penalties for going past that limit.

Clerks were balanced (actually generally quite weak) in 3.14 in part because there were only so many clerk jobs per planet, and adding more involved investing a building or district slot that could have gone to something else.

(Pop demotion times were also a lot longer in 3.14)

In 4.0, as long as you have housing, you can effectively have infinite civilians, because they generate enough amenities to not be a net drain. Sure, they aren't that productive per pop, and sure, they inflate your empire size, but they benefit from a lot of unique or per-pop benefits and, unlike an actual job, require minimal to no investment to maintain.

Strategies that pump pop growth to silly levels (i.e. any Biogenesis ascension) benefit immensely from this - they can basically grow their empires as fast as they can build, and not only can they fill all of their colonies incredibly quickly, and not only suffer no penalties for piling up large numbers of civilians, they can profit immensely from them. This is effectively getting quite a lot for nothing, and the added CG upkeep for increased productivity is not enough of an opportunity cost to fundamentally change this.

 

[masteriw]

There should honestly be an upper bound to how many civilians a planet can support, along with stability penalties for going past that limit.

Clerks were balanced (actually generally quite weak) in 3.14 in part because there were only so many clerk jobs per planet, and adding more involved investing a building or district slot that could have gone to something else.

(Pop demotion times were also a lot longer in 3.14)

In 4.0, as long as you have housing, you can effectively have infinite civilians, because they generate enough amenities to not be a net drain. Sure, they aren't that productive per pop, and sure, they inflate your empire size, but they benefit from a lot of unique or per-pop benefits and, unlike an actual job, require minimal to no investment to maintain.

Strategies that pump pop growth to silly levels (i.e. any Biogenesis ascension) benefit immensely from this - they can basically grow their empires as fast as they can build, and not only can they fill all of their colonies incredibly quickly, and not only suffer no penalties for piling up large numbers of civilians, they can profit immensely from them. This is effectively getting quite a lot for nothing, and the added CG upkeep for increased productivity is not enough of an opportunity cost to fundamentally change this.

There's that new trait, Shelled, that give you -75% housing consumption which basically renders housing obsolete. You need to pick an ugly portrait for it though.

 

[WJJellO]

Even without Shelled or Communal, any city district focused planet is going to have a lot of excess housing once it's built up.

 

[Red Death]

There should honestly be an upper bound to how many civilians a planet can support, along with stability penalties for going past that limit.

I think housing should be that limit. Otherwise, what's the point of housing? You always have more of it than jobs.

The answer is to significantly pare down the amount of housing from each district type, including the technologies that increase it. And of course nerf the Shelled trait.

 

[Metallichydra]

Even without Shelled or Communal, any city district focused planet is going to have a lot of excess housing once it's built up.

You'd be surprised how fast an ecumenopolis gets filled with some of these builds.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

@Metallichydra What are you doing to get 1k pop growth? Are you sure that wasn't just a mass migration to fill jobs?

 

[Psykhes]

What kinda confuses me is why quite a few people disagree here.
It is kinda obvious that those things are rather broken.

 

[Sweeze]

That's just simply not true, past bio ascension you can produce more pops than you could reasonably ever put in jobs. The more planets you get, the more jobs you get, but also the more pop growth you get. Civilians stacking is mandatory because you CAN NOT play without them in the current environment.

That's just a load of crap, do I need to show you my empires with most worlds having -75% growth penalty due to being "too large"? You struggle to populate jobs once you get any decent amount of planets

EDIT: here. I have 139k pops across 46 worlds, which equate to an average of 3k pops per world, and this is with absolutely busted stacked growth bonuses on evolutionary predator. Pop growth is slow as shit on default growth settings.

(the +187% from pop jobs is mostly from mutagenic spas btw, its overpowered but also causes like -100% happiness penalty so you need to stack happiness to use it well)

I agree that all civilian bonuses are stupid and should be nerfed to the ground. Civilians should produce nothing or next to nothing, producing something by not working a job is retarded. This idea that unemployed pops should provide value to society clearly came from some liberal arts major who can't even land a job asking people "do you want fries with that?"

 

[Psykhes]

Civilians should produce nothing or next to nothing, producing something by not working a job is retarded.

So I am not misunderstood: Civilians definitely should be nerfed (or at least balanced).

But game lore wise Civilians are not "not working". They represent the.. well.. civilian side of a society. I.e. a hairdresser is a civilian.

 

[ShoGuL]

... you guys use civilians ?

Maybe I don't play long enough into the game -- and I also exterminate my neighbors, so there's always more living space to be found...


Edit: I've been experimenting with Cyborg ascension into advanced automation on every world, with the -building upkeep + prosperity + lucky leaders, it's almost like playing a 50% virtual build that can go as wide as you want, and has almost no empire size because of low pop count.

Who needs pops anyway.

 

[HFY]

You need to pick an ugly portrait for it though.

"I sell more merch than you will ever own."

 

[Sweeze]

So I am not misunderstood: Civilians definitely should be nerfed (or at least balanced).

But game lore wise Civilians are not "not working". They represent the.. well.. civilian side of a society. I.e. a hairdresser is a civilian.

The game seems to disagree with you