[Dev Team] Wilderness Open Beta Available [updated 2025-07-03]

[turtleturtle111]

I found that they'll consider the build plan complete (so won't have one selected) if they're hitting 90% of all of their targets though, so they need some additional plans for the mid and late game that scale higher. We'll probably have those in next week's update. (Though I do want to split up the build plans more than they are right now - they don't need to have a single economic plan to focus on.)

I don't really understand this comment. What actually changed between 3.14 and 4.0 that caused this bug to happen? It doesn't happen in 3.14 even with similar empire production levels. Is this a change that was made for performance reasons? As far as I can tell that section of code is run recursively when it tries to calculate a new target, so I imagine that is bad performance wise. Or is the issue purely the logic inside the script visible to us? I diff'd the changes between 3.14 and 4.0 and didn't really see anything that would to me seem to be the issue, but I can take that further and just edit trade into the 3.14 script and disable bioships and fauna ships and see if it works.

I don't really understand why there is suddenly a need to have multiple economic plans when there was not before. I tried to be able to write some of the logic being used in the debugger back out but as far as I can tell there isn't an exposed effect that gives you future monthly income only current.

 

[Jay Sherman]

- Accidentally culling nodes: There was a time I had accidentally done the agenda for killing my research council node instead of removing negative traits from it, and I didn't realize until the agenda was finished (since you really only look at it once when you pick it and then when it's ready to launch). I didn't want to kill my high level node so I didn't launch it for a while, but it blocked me from doing any other agendas since there is no way to cancel it, so I had to bite the bullet and restart my research node from scratch to continue using agendas. I think it would be really nice for the culling agendas to have some sort of abort option when ready to launch to prevent mistakes like this.

Regarding this point, for every (ready or not, culling or not) agenda you can just click here:

and pick a different one instead of launching it.

 

[yarpus]

I think that Civilians got stealth-nerfed. Or maybe I was just confused.
It seems that Seasonal Dormancy only affects Civilian's Pop Upkeep rather than Pop Job Upkeep - and all the extra modifiers applied by Monument/Mercantile/Academies is now considered pop job upkeep.
It's honestly a great nerf.

 

[turtleturtle111]

It seems that Seasonal Dormancy only affects Civilian's Pop Upkeep rather than Pop Job Upkeep - and all the extra modifiers applied by Monument/Mercantile/Academies is now considered pop job upkeep.

This has always worked this way.

 

[Cedar Oak]

Hive mind empire with Familiar Face appears to disable espionage when you assign an envoy to infiltrate a network. Also had Shared Genetics civic and Evolutionary Predators origin.

I like the Wilderness changes but they seem to behave oddly with behemoth fury districts, at least from what I have played before the current open beta patch.

Evolutionary Predators situation needs some tweaking, the progress rewards from events and such are incredibly low and never scale, it might be better if they were a multiplier of current progress rate (ideal for anomaly outcomes and events), scaled with the progress required (ideal for the espionage action if the intent is to maintain it at 1/25 of the progress), or have more "percentage of situation gained" rewards. Diplomatic-focused megacorp authority makes it very easy to gain a lot of progress rate by just starting commercial pacts with everyone.

Auto-modding tooltips are unusual, "efficiency" is not descriptive in the context of pop groups. For example, does 60% efficiency mean that 60% of the pop group is working jobs related to that trait or that the trait's effect only applies at 60% of its rate? If it's the latter then auto-modding is seriously broken because it rarely ever reaches above 70-80%. If it's the former then it might need a new description, hopefully something that represents how much it actually benefits the respective jobs. Maybe tweak the numbers so that each auto-modded trait notes the full effectiveness of pops working that job, so for example if only 60% of workforce in an entertainer job is auto-modded then the trait would note 60%, rather than a far lower "efficiency" value that notes the total pop group's percentage that are working those jobs. If I recall right the auto-modded trait also shows the actual modified values as they are rather than the base values, so it's mostly a matter of presentation.

Mutation can barely keep up with the other ascension paths outside of playing Evolutionary Predators, Purity gives incredible bonuses and Cloning creates a lot of pops, Mutation doesn't have enough going for it (the tree that is, the first flexible tradition is extremely good). What if it gave a lot more points to add many traits with? And/or lifted the "similar modifiers" limits so that traits can be stacked like Evolutionary Predators can.

Is it intentional for Wilderness biomass to contribute to empire size?

The new planetary UI is more optimized but it also generates some serious number anomalies now and then, such as when looking at what pops are producing.

Pop growth rate is inconsistent, presumably because the pop groups are getting decimal contributions but are not producing fully-fledged pops until they have enough for 1. Having a way to note when the next pop of that group will appear would be nice. Pop groups also lack details such as immigration/emigration.

Nice beta overall though, good improvements all around.

 

[GuardianGI]

The workforce bug that affects the beta completely breaks telepaths and Dictatorial Cybervision, since they rely on the actual number of pops working those job, not the workforce amount (to avoid infinite workforce loops).

 

[Abdulijubjub]

The workforce bug that affects the beta completely breaks telepaths and Dictatorial Cybervision, since they rely on the actual number of pops working those job, not the workforce amount (to avoid infinite workforce loops).

Dictatorial Cybervision does not count number of pops.

Dictatorial Cybervision just applies a buff that doesn't affect the Enforcer job (because it's worked by a different strata).

 

[Dawnshot]

Diplomatic-focused megacorp authority makes it very easy to gain a lot of progress rate by just starting commercial pacts with everyone.

Yes, it does. Yes, it does indeed. Welcoming every species in the galaxy into your empire provides even more.

I recently played a xenophile Evolutionary Predator megacorp with Astrogenesis Technologies and Pharma State. I set up pre-sapient preserves on every planet I colonized. And in every corporate branch office I built clinics (to roleplay collecting DNA from unsuspecting xenos under the guise of helping them with my advanced medical technology), embassies, and xeno-outreach agencies. I built a large trade federation with free migration pacts too. I took World Shaper and turned all of my planets into gaia worlds (except for two relic worlds). But perfecting my own species and planets wasn't enough, so I turned to perfecting reality.

 

[jacopus95]

So, i was trying out the beta and i had a couple of "is it a bug" situations. I'm playing a wilderness run, bear in mind this.

The first one is this: it seems like the infiltration level is broken. Even though i have enough encryption and decryption, i can gather enough intel and i have the envoy assigned to the spy network, it won't go up and it stays at 0. Is there something different on the spying feature i don't know about?

And the second one is more of a flavour accident. It is a first contact event with a gestalt empire. Well, it is a bit contradictory: i am a wilderness, so gestalt myself. So why is the screenshot pointing at how "they have no concept of individuality that is inherent to the (wilderness i'm playing with) species"?

Do i need to open a bug here on the forum?

 

[indalecio248]

Yes, it does. Yes, it does indeed. Welcoming every species in the galaxy into your empire provides even more.

I recently played a xenophile Evolutionary Predator megacorp with Astrogenesis Technologies and Pharma State. I set up pre-sapient preserves on every planet I colonized. And in every corporate branch office I built clinics (to roleplay collecting DNA from unsuspecting xenos under the guise of helping them with my advanced medical technology), embassies, and xeno-outreach agencies. I built a large trade federation with free migration pacts too. I took World Shaper and turned all of my planets into gaia worlds (except for two relic worlds). But perfecting my own species and planets wasn't enough, so I turned to perfecting reality.

View attachment 1330239

Are you, me? I did the exact same thing.

 

[Archael90]

And the second one is more of a flavour accident. It is a first contact event with a gestalt empire. Well, it is a bit contradictory: i am a wilderness, so gestalt myself. So why is the screenshot pointing at how "they have no concept of individuality that is inherent to the (wilderness i'm playing with) species"?

I would argue that wilderness is not gestalt, and rather single giant organism.
But since it can spread to other planets we can assume all those planets are sentient and thus consciousness of wilderness is split between all those planets making it gestalt.
But the thing that should be not debated is that wilderness should say about itself "I" not "we". And since it's single being it is individual, and thus different from other gestalts.
(Same should be applied to "one mind" civic)

 

[Cedar Oak]

Yes, it does. Yes, it does indeed. Welcoming every species in the galaxy into your empire provides even more.

I recently played a xenophile Evolutionary Predator megacorp with Astrogenesis Technologies and Pharma State. I set up pre-sapient preserves on every planet I colonized. And in every corporate branch office I built clinics (to roleplay collecting DNA from unsuspecting xenos under the guise of helping them with my advanced medical technology), embassies, and xeno-outreach agencies. I built a large trade federation with free migration pacts too. I took World Shaper and turned all of my planets into gaia worlds (except for two relic worlds). But perfecting my own species and planets wasn't enough, so I turned to perfecting reality.

The only issue is that everyone else also has your super-pops now with all those migration treaties. I have been trying to play a more selfish empire with the aforementioned Familiar Face hiveminds and the crux of my strategy (smuggling pops non-stop from other empires to turn into livestock, thanks to better spy skills from Familiar Face, since the origin is incompatible with Bodysnatchers) was derailed by espionage being broken in the beta. In hindsight it might not be effective either because the authority automatically terraforms your planets into hive worlds, and I don't remember if you can turn hiveminded pops in your hivemind empire into livestock.

 

[Dawnshot]

The only issue is that everyone else also has your super-pops now with all those migration treaties.

True, but not in a high enough proportion of their total population to matter competitively though, I think. They won't all be the most up-to-date version either.

 

[AnCi420]

Had the time for a longer beta game this weekend.

AI keeps up fine in early/early-mid game, but fall off a cliff in later mid game, looking forward to the adjusted economic plans, I consider my game won at this point

Flying blind without any intel on the enemy is a bit unfun because I have to deal with surprise wars and can't properly react to enemy fleet designs.

CTDs:
- selling relics from the grand archive (weirdly sometimes worked for the two lower rows, but top row consistenly crashes)
- sometimes during monthly ticks.

Couldn't upload my save because the crash reporter consistently fails to upload, so here are the crash dumps and the latest ironman save (forgot to deactivate iron man, so couldn't save on weird AI behaviours).

Cosmogenesis is OP imho, my economy snowballs and the galaxy just idly watches me warmongering one empire after another into vassalization, would love more decisive coordinated action against me on the same level as the other crisis path (even butchering the envoy from the galactic community that dared to tell me to fill up my insane fleet capacity had almost no impact ).

Would love to have the ability to set a migration target for civilians and/or move more pops with alt/shift-click, I always forget to refill my lathe and moving 100 pops a time and switching planets is annoying.

AI had some issues with fleet movements, at one time split up their fleets into two groups after declaring war, moved them to fleets of their neighbour and stayed there idling until I started bombing their planets (just speculation: did the AI think the other empire was also declaring war and decided to follow their fleets? weird association status thing?).

 

[Drullo321]

Still being investigated, along with some other strata related issues.

Here are some preliminary patch notes for this week's update:

Please also include commit for the apparently already Cybernetic Creed pop growth issue.

Is there a specific reasons why it seems some already done fixes (!= balance/UI changes) are held back from including them to the Open Beta? (Genuine question, not intended to be offensive)

 

[Geoawk]

List of feedback I collected while playtesting various builds.

SYSTEM LEVEL

• Empires that source their resources from Starbases, Stations, and Megastructures are subject to outsized planetary deficits, making builds that utilize Arc Welders, Astro-Mining Drones, and Nanite ascension necessarily weaker and harder to balance economically (especially for AI).
  • Resolution: Resources from outposts, megastructures, and mining stations should not count towards planetary deficit for colonies in their system. This would mean the early starbase resource economy is not punished with trade requirements. It would also create a decision point for players whether to put their resource-generating megastructures in less efficient systems without trade upkeep, or more efficient systems with trade upkeep.
• The system automating Bastion designation for starbases is overly aggressive, sometimes making non-border starbases without defensive modules gain the designation. With the Eternal Vigilance perk, this results in a lot of unnecessary defense platform upkeep.
  • Resolution: Allow players to override the designation.
• Anomalies/Digsites/Events reward system has an uninteresting, win-more design that exclusively benefits empires with high tech and unity production (who gain from it the least).
  • Resolution: Give Anomalies/Digsites/Events higher minimum values for rewards, and scaling based on empire size. This would give early militarist/expansionist empires a reason to want anomalies, even fight over them, as they could act as a significant source of science and unity; potentially holding them over until they can rework their economy to produce those resources from pops.
  • Note: It would be nice if Anomalies also gave bonus exp that scaled based on the difference between the Scientist skill & difficulty. Spending 3 years on a high-level precursor anomaly to only get the same amount of exp as finding a robot in floating space feels bad. It could also become a decision point: do I spend years researching a high-level anomaly that might potentially get interrupted for a level-up, or do I play it safe and level up by going through all the easy ones first.
• Voiddweller AI can't seem to build new Habitats.
  • Resolution: I think it's because they use up all their alloys and influence on outposts. Needs new expansion logic that prioritizes building a new habitat over claiming yet another system.
• Sovereign Guardianship Civic destroys science and tradition progress of AI empires with empire sprawl due to their propensity for relentless expansion.
  • Resolution: Needs new expansion logic that is specific for tall empires, prioritizing building up to chokepoints, guaranteed habitables, and no more. Shattered Ring + Sovereign Guardianship empires do not need to claim 40 systems.
  • Note: The player could just avoid building empires with this civic, but that means they have to adjust every player build that uses this to not feature this civic. Clunky. Also, with how low-empire size strats are prevalent in player designed empires, this civic may be causing an outsized nerf to AI empires.

COLONY LEVEL

• The initial mineral production of all empire designs is too low. Human players fix this by buying minerals on the internal market, meaning that the AI falls behind in early planetary building for no reason (a major contributor in their lack of competitiveness, imo). Especially ruinous for lithoid empires, which have essentially zero mineral income at the start of the game due to their pop upkeep.
  • Resolution 1: +2 starting mining districts, -1 starting food and energy districts. With the availability of hydroponics and solar panels to all empires, this adjustment makes sense.
  • Resolution 2: Change the basic trade policy so it provides all basic resources (worse version of mutual aid, essentially) or can be selected to focus on a single basic resource.
• Basic Resource District Specialization cost is too high. 1000 minerals is a lot of resources in the early-game, easily a year of output. Conversely, building an additional resource district is comparatively (and overly) cheap. Once the economy balance patch is out, this will be an extreme chokepoint in planetary build progression.
  • Resolution: Adjust cost to match city district specialization ratio; 2x the basic district cost (versus the over 3x cost it currently is). City = 500, City specialization = 1000. Basic = 300, Basic specialization = 600.
  • Note: Comments have made me realize I misunderstood how these work, but I still feel as though these specializations *feel* expensive especially when considering early economy output & the abundance of civilian pops in the earlygame.
• Habitats don't have access to research district specializations for their city districts. But they do have access to Archives? Huh?
  • Resolution: Just give them the same base set of district specializations as everyone else, lol.
• General lack of designations for Capital Planets and specialized planets. Ex: no unity designation for your capital, which makes already weak civics like Imperial Cult feel extra bad, since you can't double down with a specialization.
  • Resolution: Go through every planetary type and make a standard list of designations that all should have. Default, Trade, Science, Unity, Mixed Industry, CG, Alloy, Food, Mineral, Soldier, and Basic Resource.

BUILDING LEVEL

• Resource district buildings (i.e., buildings that provide +2,+4,+6,+8 resource districts) currently invalidate all origins/civics/special decisions that expand resource districts.
  • Resolution: nerf building effect to +1,+2,+3,+4. Also, increase upkeep.
  • Note: To be honest, most empires don't even need these buildings, given how easy it is to overproduce basic resources. Except for Voiddwellers, who can neither build these buildings nor build support districts. Help Voiddwellers!
• Buildings that seem to be doing nothing since the job swap is tied to civic instead of the building.
  • Dread Encampment
    • Adopting the Civic automatically converts all soldiers into necromancers without the Dread Encampment building on the planet. The building still requires the capital building to even build, though it is entirely unnecessary. The soldier job efficiency bonus is also not tied to the building.
  • Sanctuary of Repose
    • Adopting Civic automatically converts all priests into death chroniclers without the building. Job bonuses are provided regardless of whether or not the planet is a tomb or relic world.
• Buildings that have odd job production rules:
  • Alien Zoo.
    • Why does this provide biologists with resort worlds only, where you quite literally have no use for them?
  • Research Institute, Galactic Stock Exchange, Citadels of Faith/Auto-Curating Vault.
    • Provide zero jobs. Whereas buildings that were previously considered in an equivalent tier in previous patches still do. Military Academy, which gives 200 soldier jobs, and Ministry of Production, which gives 200 politician jobs.
    • Note: These buildings used to be a consistent source of Elite pops, which were otherwise hard to obtain.
  • Holo-Museum of Geology, Holo-Museum of History, Holo-Museum of Wonders.
    • Junk museum jobs were consolidated in the most recent build. Great job!
      • Note: Some of the resort world designations for secondary districts still produce Historical Curators, which are not the same as Museum Curators, which are not the same as Culture Workers, produced by the Galactic Curator civic. Clearly, there is some smoothing out to be done there. Also, there are some odd job creation bugs when combining Storm Devotees, Warrior Culture, and Museum Curators. Empty Duelist jobs that cannot be filled.
  • Storm Relief Center
    • Clerks in 4.0!?
• Autochthon upgrade tech (Heritage Site) has Crystal resource tech as a vestigial prerequisite. Annoying for Bureaucrat builds.
  • Resolution: Remove the requirement or add it as upkeep.
• Buildings that affect job production do not apply to Elite stratum pops (affects High Priests, Technocrats, etc). Makes Elite pops substantially less valuable as the game goes on, especially given certain interactions with advanced government types.
  • Resolution: Have it apply. Why not.

JOB LEVEL

• Jobs that have no/messed up swaps and have therefore been power crept like crazy:
  • Wranglers.
    • 3.14 culture worker swap builds are dead, which is a shame. Also, resort worlds can employ trophy hunters, which seems a bit outside of left field.
  • Augmentors.
    • Why not job swap doctors like genomic researchers do?
  • Nanotech-Researcher.
    • Got fixed. I thought it was just the building bonuses. Thanks Abdulijubjub!
  • Reassigner.
    • Either swap with doctors, or make it a building without jobs like a clone vat.
• Unique resource jobs that have swaps & therefore scale way too hard compared to their action costs:
  • Astral Researchers.
    • Reduce output by a factor of 10. A single tech planet allows you to run all edicts and actions at once.
  • Archaeo-engineers.
    • Reduce output by a factor of 10, but also reduce the fleet component usage by the same proportion. Makes them still viable for military purposes, but now minor artifact actions aren't absurdly spamable. It would also make deposits, leader traits that give minor artifact output, and rewards from digsites comparatively valuable.
• Bureaucrats are now probably the worst regular job in the game. Not even the best way to produce unity, unless you spec into two civics and the correct ethics to do so.
  • Resolution: Increase the base unity production of bureaucrats by one.
• Excessive CG upkeep for Dimensional Portal Researchers. They can single-handedly put your early CG economy into deficit.
  • Resolution: Adjust the cost so they are only 1.5x the cost of normal researchers. You should feel excited to get them, not annoyed.
• Excessive Society research from Genomic Researchers. Having double to triple society research over other techs for typical ascension investment is a little out of wack, especially since a lot of society tech has nothing to do with genetics, and they give a ton of other great benefits as well.
  • Resolution: Have Genomic Researchers increase the empire's research speed for genetic technologies instead.

SPECIES LEVEL

• Traits that are way too strong for their rare resource upkeep:
  • Exotic Metabolism
  • Exotic Fuel Consumption
  • Rare Crystal Exterior
  • Volatile Mote Reactor
  • Biomimetic Assembly
  • Mote Powered Tools
  • Matrix Trading
• Traits that are too weak for their cost or too expensive for their effect:
  • Base Traits
    • Conformists
      • Change to 1 point, 50% governing ethics attraction.
    • Conservationist
      • Let it affect job usage
    • Nomadic
      • -50% resettlement cost, +100% automatic resettlement chance
    • Quick Learners
      • 25%. You have successfully stamped out strats that abuse leaders. 10% is unbelievably weak.
    • Resilient
      • Move Noxious's minimum habitability here. Utterly useless otherwise.
    • Strong
      • 5% worker output, 25% army damage. 2.5% is irrelevant when one support district outweighs that by 8x.
    • Very Strong
      • 2 points, 10% worker output, 50% army damage. Same point as before. Worker output is not a strong stat.
    • Noxious
      • Remove -max habitability, army, and -housing effects, and just make it about happiness per non-noxious pop.
      • Familial exists in the game. Let us use this without all these ancillary debuffs.
    • Inorganic Breath
      • Literally the worst trait in the game right now (including the negative ones). 3 points -> 0.
  • Phenotype Traits
    • Phototrophic.
      • 0 cost, and should just be innate to plantoids & fungoids.
    • Radiotrophic.
      • 1 cost, too situational for 2, but good effects otherwise.
    • Gaseous Byproducts & Scintillating Skin & Volatile Excretions
      • 0 cost, but also increases pop upkeep like inorganic breath.
    • Spare Organs
      • 1 cost, 0 for Organ Ursury Empires. Expensive for the extremely situational effects.
  • Machine Traits
    • Integrated Weaponry
      • It should also provide Soldier Job efficiency.
    • All Leviathan traits
      • Reduce cost by 1 or 2 pts. Leviathan traits should be a reward for defeating a 'boss', not something that costs your empire tons of efficiency to utilize.

MISC

• Storm Influencers Megacorp Civic tooltip still says it provides Merchant jobs instead of Traders.
• I would love if you made Terraforming a monthly upkeep cost instead of a flat fee, so we can begin Terraforming earlier while fitting it more seamlessly within the empire's economy (instead of buying 10000 energy credits with trade all at once). It would also be nice if it was a scientist action (repurposing the old help planetary research ability, for example), giving the whole process more interaction. Also, if Terraforming transitioned the planet through various stages of increasing habitability, you could decide when it was close enough to your world to colonize (perhaps ripping the code from the preftl faction that exists in the Fear of the Dark origin), instead of everything being a boring flat wait time.
• The Imperial Network Government type (which gives you the cyberdome) should allow you make your capital into a resort world. That would be dope. Also the inability to downgrade a planetary capital building is super annoying for making a resort world in tall builds. Thank god for a certain system in the center of the galaxy.

 

[Geoawk]

@Eladrin Also, I have a few AI empire designs that are powerful even in the 4.0 patch (beating me to ascension, high fleet power, etc before mid-game scaling kicks in). DM me if you would like their details for testing purposes.

 

[AnCi420]

The damage to outposts/starbases/citadels from a failed infinity thesis seems to be permanent/only repairs to a certain degree. Upgrading citadels with a new design fixes this.

 

[Cedar Oak]

@Geoawk I agree with a lot of this.

Basic Resource District Specialization cost is too high.

I think it's balanced even if it's expensive, it not only unlocks extra specialized building slots that may increase outputs but it also gives extra jobs that scale with the number of districts, if you have 2 districts of that type the price sounds bad but if you have 10 districts of that type it is going to give +1000 jobs, it does sound a bit ugly if you basically equate it to 1 district = 1 job slot in the previous pop system though, but the jobs generally produce a lot and the buildings themselves improve the output even further.

The initial mineral production of all empire designs is too low.

100% agree, with all the extra civilians at game start you'll want to get the infrastructure to make use of them ASAP (aside from having them immediately colonize a new planet or two), but it's slow with the starting mineral income, meanwhile you have maybe +50 or +60 energy that you aren't really using for anything at the moment when you'll also want to build buildings, districts and resource stations. Food also has a really low number of use cases in general unless you use biological ships or have the Catalytic Processing civic.

Excessive Society research from Genomic Researchers.

I believe that is part of making biological ascension be on par with machine ascension and machines in general, genomic researchers are empowered medical workers and you essentially build 2 society labs per planet by building both the clinic and the genomic research facility. I think the problem here though is more specifically the base value, which is roughly 9 society research for every 100 genomic researchers, which subsequently gets all the extra job efficiency from biological ascension shenanigans. Lowering it to be 6 or so should make it less dominant, but I don't think anyone will complain if it gets lowered to 3 since you are very likely going to build those two buildings on all of your colonies.

Nanotech-Researcher

Nanotech is easily the weakest among the machine ascension paths at this point, the amount of nanites gained from mining and agriculture jobs are very small compared to building a nanite harvester in every starbase, the nanite swarmers are really weak unless you are playing an individualist machine empire with genius armorers in the council, only good thing left about it is the nanotech researchers giving a lot of extra research to researchers, and if you wait a lot of in-game decades you can spam nanite interdictors. I'm surprised the robot pops themselves don't gain traits based on becoming nanomachines either.

Bureaucrats

I think allowing Mercantile for non-megacorp empires is to blame here, the very first tradition in that tree lets you convert 25% of trade into unity and there are many modifiers for improving trade output and efficiency, while a number of unity bonuses benefit overall unity production and unity from jobs rather than bureaucrat output. Traders are generally more efficient when it comes to consumer good consumption ratio per unity compared to bureaucrats thanks to the base tradition effect of less trader upkeep and on top of that you get all the trade to support your planetary deficits and resource purchases, among all the other bonuses. This is probably part of a larger problem when it comes to balancing unity, it's not hard with the right builds to fill all the tradition slots about or before the mid-game year starts, and the ascension paths have become powerful enough to warrant investing into early game unity rushes over early game tech rushes, the irony being that neither of the more powerful paths (marketplace of ideas trade stacking, democratic empire faction unity stacking) really necessitate bureaucrats. Bureaucrat unity in comparison should be bumped to +2 at least.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Basic Resource District Specialization cost is too high. 1000 minerals is a lot of resources in the early-game, easily a year of output. Conversely, building an additional resource district is comparatively (and overly) cheap. Once the economy balance patch is out, this will be an extreme chokepoint in planetary build progression.

• Resolution: Adjust cost to match city district specialization ratio; 2x the basic district cost (versus the over 3x cost it currently is). City = 500, City specialization = 1000. Basic = 300, Basic specialization = 600.

Strong disagree.

A basic resource specialization unlocks a building slot for your boosting building, and gives you 1.5x jobs/housing on your already built districts. 1 building slot was worth 500 minerals in 3.14, and if you've got 3 districts built, the specialization gives you another 1.5 districts immediately (equal to 450 minerals), and a 1.5x multiplier on any further districts.

And it also gives you an extra 2 building slots that you can use for e.g. Surface Quarries, if you don't want to build any further districts (or can't because there's no more room on the planet).

Its mineral cost reflects its value.

• General lack of designations for Capital Planets and specialized planets. Ex: no unity designation for your capital, which makes already weak civics like Imperial Cult feel extra bad, since you can't double down with a specialization.
  • Resolution: Go through every planetary type and make a standard list of designations that all should have. Default, Trade, Science, Unity, Mixed Industry, CG, Alloy, Food, Mineral, Soldier, and Basic Resource.

This hasn't changed with 4.0.

The capital designation is already superior to the unity one (~18% resources from jobs is better than +10% output and -10% upkeep) except for Holy Covenant, and the other designations were for fixing the fact that CG/alloy job distribution previous came through designation or that trade wasn't a resource (and wasn't buffed by the standard capital designation).

I would say they should do the inverse: remove all specialized designations, and bring us back to just having the one all-around-good capital designation.

• Research Institute, Galactic Stock Exchange, Citadels of Faith/Auto-Curating Vault.
  • Provide zero jobs. Whereas buildings that were previously considered in an equivalent tier in previous patches still do. Military Academy, which gives 200 soldier jobs, and Ministry of Production, which gives 200 politician jobs.
  • Note: These buildings used to be a consistent source of Elite pops, which were otherwise hard to obtain.

They're boosting buildings, like all the others. There's no reason why these should have jobs.

• Nanotech-Researcher.
  • Doesn't job swap with engineers, and doesn't get bonuses from science buildings.

They fixed this one.

• Reassigner.
  • Either swap with doctors, or make it a building without jobs like a clone vat.

Nope. It's a Roboticist replacement. Jobswapping doctors would make this job go bananas.

• Bureaucrats are now probably the worst regular job in the game. Not even the best way to produce unity, unless you spec into two civics and the correct ethics to do so.
  • Resolution: Increase the base unity production of bureaucrats by one.

'Twas always thus. They've always been meh.

• Excessive CG upkeep for Dimensional Portal Researchers. They can single-handedly put your early CG economy into deficit.
  • Resolution: Adjust the cost so they are only 1.5x the cost of normal researchers. You should feel excited to get them, not annoyed.

It's still a net profit. I think this is fine.

• Excessive Society research from Genomic Researchers. Having double to triple society research over other techs for typical ascension investment is a little out of wack, especially since a lot of society tech has nothing to do with genetics, and they give a ton of other great benefits as well.
  • Resolution: Have Genomic Researchers increase the empire's research speed for genetic technologies instead.

STRONG disagree. A % research speed buff that scales with your planets would be crazy, even if it's only for Biology.

SPECIES LEVEL

• Traits that are way too strong for their rare resource upkeep:
  • Exotic Metabolism
  • Exotic Fuel Consumption
  • Rare Crystal Exterior
  • Volatile Mote Reactor
  • Biomimetic Assembly
  • Mote Powered Tools
  • Matrix Trading

These are supposed to be net profitable.

Also, Biomimetic Assembly (unless you can somehow get those pops into your roboticists jobs and nowhere else) is a terrible trait. It also has 3x the upkeep of all the other ones listed here (as it has 1 food in addition to its exotic gas upkeep).

I'm not sure why Dark Matter Engines isn't in here, it's the one most deserving of a nerf.

• Conservationist
  • Let it affect job usage

Not possible in 4.0. A better buff (IMO) would be to make it reduce all upkeep (food and CG). That would roughly double its effect for most empires.

• Inorganic Breath
  • Literally the worst trait in the game right now (including the negative ones). 3 points -> 0.

This doesn't go far enough. It should be -2 at least (if not -3).

• Gaseous Byproducts & Scintillating Skin & Volatile Excretions
  • 0 cost, but also increases pop upkeep like inorganic breath.

These traits are fine. They're for unlocking things that need strategic resources early.

They would really suck if they increased pop upkeep.

• Spare Organs
  • 1 cost, 0 for Organ Ursury Empires. Expensive for the extremely situational effects.

0 cost for Organ Usury empires is a great idea.

Not sure if it otherwise has to be cheaper: having leaders not die is great.

• I would love if you made Terraforming a monthly upkeep cost instead of a flat fee, so we can begin Terraforming earlier while fitting it more seamlessly within the empire's economy (instead of buying 10000 energy credits with trade all at once). It would also be nice if it was a scientist action (repurposing the old help planetary research ability, for example), giving the whole process more interaction. Also, if Terraforming transitioned the planet through various stages of increasing habitability, you could decide when it was close enough to your world to colonize (perhaps ripping the code from the preftl faction that exists in the Fear of the Dark origin), instead of everything being a boring flat wait time.

I would also like this, but it needs to come with removing most/all of the terraforming cost reductions (since speed will effectively reduce costs).

---

Mostly agree (without comment) to the rest.