Imagine having a leader xp bonus on a tradition tree about leaders.
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Heavily agree with giving Officials more to do.
Ambassador councillors are probably my least used leader specialization, because they fight with advisor Officials for the same council positions, in a council which has only 6 positions max, including other positions limited to scientists and admirals. They're called "Ambassadors", but Ambassadors are supposed to be sent to other nations.
External politics is also really static and kinda unfun outside of wars. Slap down an envoy, ignore them while they slowly build up relations/trust or infiltration, and that's it. Choosing which Ambassador goes to which empire, and having targeted effects depending on what you need from a particular nation would go a long way towards making external politics dynamic and interesting, and even fixing espionage a bit.
Disagree with making Official limit a hard cap, though, don't see why that is necessary. Unity costs scale up over leader cap already as a cost, should be enough of a deterrent.
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And there is the xp reductionif you over cap. But yeah true that making ambassadors non council members makes more sense lore wise, could potentially be game breaking if your alliance with someone only works because you got an official on them and once you move em they hate you again.
But sadly dont really see how they would make it not only work to have officials be assigned to other empires but make it worth while while not fully taking away control from the other empire or disassociating them.
Like if an ambassador has a trait that i dunno gives you a portion of the other empires trade because of "successful diplomacy" it cant feel forced for the recieving empire.
Valid. I only put the hard-cap because of first contacts. But that may not be all that relevant over-all.
Ironically I use Ambassador more than Advisor Veteran class. This is due to two Veteran Traits in Deep Connections(bonus Influence) and Blabbermouth(bonus base intel). Tier 3 Blabbermouth yields 20 base intel that when combined with Sentry array and other sources can yield you 100 intel on the entire Galaxy(making enemy Cloaking useless). Their Destiny Traits aren’t that great unless Authoritarian with Herald of the Empire. Oh and Charmer is quite useful, with or without Diplomacy Tradition.
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Is this something that Ambassadors, in game or out of game, have ever been able to do? Not sure what you're getting at here.
Are you talking about commercial pacts? As far as I'm aware, signing a commercial pact with an empire doesn't actually "take" anything from them, it just gives trade based on, but not from, the other empire's value. The only real cost in game is influence, which is more valuable most times anyways
As far as new traits, these are still Ambassador Officials. Most of the traits would be similar to the current ones, but reworked towards the single empire the official is assigned to, and maybe stronger since it's only given to one empire.
For example, looking at current Ambassador traits,
* Overseer gives maximum .35 loyalty a month to all subjects. If you only have 1 subject, that's .35 loyalty a month. If you have 10 subjects, this would give you 3.5 loyalty spread out over all these subjects, making it more rewarding if you have a vassal swarm. Since many people dislike vassal swarms, we could change this to +.5, then +1 loyalty a month for a single subject, enough to grant an extra holding or contribution, and make players have to think about which vassal they could actually get the most out of by doing so, instead of the current status quo of weakly holding a ton of vassals.
* Charmer is flat out inferior to Deep Connections. Level 1 DC gives .5 influence straight off the bat. Level 1 Charmer gives 10% influence back from treaties, up to 30%, which means you need 5 influence spent on treaties to equal DC. At third level, DC gives 1 Influence, and you'd need to spend 3 on Charmer to equal it out. If first level Charmer instead cut off .25 of all treaty costs with a single empire, a lilttle better than its current level 2, that would save you .5 influence if you signed all treaty types with that single nation. Level 2 might then be 50%, and level 3 100%. Less versatile than Deep Connections, since you still need the original influence tied up in treaties, so purifiers, xenophobes and such can't take it on their spies, but an alternative if you have one nation you really want to sign treaties with but don't want to invest in the entire Diplomacy tradition for its 50% off option, while that remains an option for those with lots of allies to juggle.
If there are any new traits, many would just mostly be filling in gaps, mostly for espionage, like increasing infiltration gain speed, decreasing infiltration or influence cost, etc, outside of just Shadow Broker. Maybe some options might include a trait that increases a fleet attribute when a defensive pact is activated, or returning 50% of favors spent in a transaction, decreasing border friction, cheaper claim cost on a particular empire. Lots of possibilities that wouldn't be overpowered, none of which should directly affect other empire's economy or playstyle. It is politics after all.
Alternatively/concurrently, we could maybe do something similar to the planet/sector governor split, and have weaker empire wide trait effects if a Governor is on the council, and stronger effects if they are assigned to a single nation.
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Ok i went about explaining it wrong. Essentially my biggest issue is that making ambassadors someone you send to each individual empire would make officials too limited in what they should be doing. Currently they can be assigned to council, planet, federation and galcom. Federation is pretty important if you want your federation to actually grow, gal com meh, council can be very good but their main draw is the economic bonuses for planets which you will never have enough leaders to cover all sectors so if on top of that now you gotta individually assign officials to diplomatic stuff PER empire i feel you will quickly run out of officials and either gotta sacrifice the economy for the diplomacy or do diplomacy with a couple of empires. (Unless its a group thing like one ambassador can handle several empires)
Also feel like even if boosted only a select few ambassador traits would be worth pursuing if it applies to only one empire, so they prob would add new ones and can imagine some influencing the target empire in some way like the extra intel thing. Well what if i want to kick out that ambassador if hes gonna do that.
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Yeah, Officials having field roles as ambassadors as a replacement for envoys would force some really hard choices upon us when dealing with other empires. I don't know if it would be the kind of limits that would create interesting choices, or if it would feel too much constraining. Alternatively, if they ever want to give more bite to espionage, I can totally see a leader-focused espionage system that would see Officials having some action, perhaps some field role in "ambassador" ships that could doble as spyships, even.
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I think it would probably be good, but of course I can't guarantee it.
From the envoy side, they would be more interesting and potentially more functional, plus they'd have a soft cap instead of a hard cap.
From the Official side, it makes a degree of sense, gives them an active role like other leader classes, and they'll no longer be trying to compete for two different Council roles while competing for space on it at all in the first place.
It might actually improve game balance as well, to constrict diplomacy a little if you want Officials for every sector on a wide enough empire/every planet for a smaller one. Right now, you get a similar amount of official cap compared to other leader types but you just end up with an abundance of governors, and the "use for anything" governors at that.
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There are some elaborated and well thought out propositions of how to combine envoys and officials or leaders at all (make envoys a job like governors each leader can fill out but with different skills).
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Feel it would make more frustrating than anything, take the commanders for example, you only really use them for fleets nothing else. If suddenly you were hard pushed into using them for other things but that didnt feel worth the investement would be more frustrating.
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There should be civics like Distinguished Admiralty for officials and scientists. It's weird that there aren't. And for that matter, why do commanders get a +1 to starting level from Superiority and Martial Alliance when other traditions and federation types don't have an equivalent for the other leaders? It's weird that only commanders get this kind of treatment.
I would say Philosopher King could easily add +2 to official's starting levels. It's a pretty terrible civic as it is, and officials starting at a higher level is totally in keeping with what Plato had in mind.
Technocracy or Civic Education would be the obvious choices for +2 scientist starting levels, but both are already pretty good, so meh. Maybe they could each start them at +1 level (with Technocracy's bonus trait taking the place of the selection they would normally get for starting a level higher) and we would call it close enough.
I would say Philosopher King could easily add +2 to official's starting levels. It's a pretty terrible civic as it is, and officials starting at a higher level is totally in keeping with what Plato had in mind.
Technocracy or Civic Education would be the obvious choices for +2 scientist starting levels, but both are already pretty good, so meh. Maybe they could each start them at +1 level (with Technocracy's bonus trait taking the place of the selection they would normally get for starting a level higher) and we would call it close enough.
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This is due to Commanders being put into situations that Scientists and Officials simply do not face. If your fleet is destroyed, your Commander in command often goes with it. In a Land Invasion, should you have a Commander acting as a General, there's a chance of them dying should one of your Armies be destroyed. Scientists only face oblivion should they enter a system with a Leviathan(or other hostile actors and can avoid it if they're Cloaked) or via certain Dig Sites/Astral Rifts(wherein if you know ahead of time, you can typically avoid it) while Officials will **NEVER** die from anything that I'm aware of. Meaning when it comes to Scientists and Officials, they simply expire from Old Age so because the attrition is greater for Commanders, they have generous starting level bonuses.
Each Leader class also has a corresponding Tradition to boost starting Leader level and certain Civics apply to all three(outside of certain ones for Commanders exclusively). The only reason we make a big stink about it is because leveling up Leaders is a royal pain outside of Statecraft Tradition's Agenda perk.
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Could keep envoys around as is and have officials as basically super envoys. So you can either send an envoy to get the job done fine or an official to get it done better.
Pr they could even rename to something more generic and make that their whole thing. Broad but unspecialised minor leaders (forebeings?) who can take any role in any discipline except council positions. No inherent levels or traits but can maybe get job-specific boosts from empire techs, ethics, and traditions, e.g. Gestalts could flavour them as directly controlled dromedary clusters and gain direct boosts based on government node levels.
XP they "should have" gained goes into a research-style XP bank that other leaders consume to level faster. Going over the soft cap in a main leader type could eat into your generalist cap instead of a direct XP penalty, so you get to choose between having a few superstars and a bunch of generalists or eat your entire cap and go full level spam.
First contact is the big outlier for a bunch of reasons but you could keep that to envoys only.
E: that was supposed to say drone not dromedary. I'm leaving it though.
Pr they could even rename to something more generic and make that their whole thing. Broad but unspecialised minor leaders (forebeings?) who can take any role in any discipline except council positions. No inherent levels or traits but can maybe get job-specific boosts from empire techs, ethics, and traditions, e.g. Gestalts could flavour them as directly controlled dromedary clusters and gain direct boosts based on government node levels.
XP they "should have" gained goes into a research-style XP bank that other leaders consume to level faster. Going over the soft cap in a main leader type could eat into your generalist cap instead of a direct XP penalty, so you get to choose between having a few superstars and a bunch of generalists or eat your entire cap and go full level spam.
First contact is the big outlier for a bunch of reasons but you could keep that to envoys only.
E: that was supposed to say drone not dromedary. I'm leaving it though.
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I feel that the "problem" of councilors getting too much XP could be solved by having their XP gain halved if they do two jobs. With that, passive XP of governors could indeed be brought to normal levels. Playing as a gestalt recently where you can't even put leaders on the council to train them, my governors never went over level 6. Even as a virtual empire with immortal leaders.
I think that at some point, either envoys will get more things to do (I myself envisioned that they could mesh really well with a "cultural system", as a vehicle for cultural exports) or they could be merged with officers if they decide to remodel espionage.
The choice between diplomatic heft VS governor economic bonuses seems meaningful, it would give officers a good chance of getting XP out there "in the field", and it would make diplomacy certainly trickier, forcing you to focus on a reduced number of empires, but perhaps, with better relationships and far more impactful bilateral treatries.
Something along these lines:
It could work, I think.
The choice between diplomatic heft VS governor economic bonuses seems meaningful, it would give officers a good chance of getting XP out there "in the field", and it would make diplomacy certainly trickier, forcing you to focus on a reduced number of empires, but perhaps, with better relationships and far more impactful bilateral treatries.
Something along these lines:
Officials merging with envoys, acting as appointed ambassadors on a per-empire basis
+0.1 opinion per month per LV / -0.2 opinion per month per LV ---> That is, a LV 10 ambassador would be the equivalent of assigning 4 envoys to a single empire
A spy network will be automatically established as well, at a rate of +0.4 infiltration / day per leader LV ---> Ambassadors have always doubled as spies, that is a time-honoured tradition
During wartime: Punchier espionage operations are unlocked, with a deadly risk for your leader
During peace time: +5% trade treaty efficiency, +5% research treaty efficiency per leader LV, +5% fire rate inside the empire's borders per LV if you have defense obligations with it ---> You might want to keep high-ranking officers on ambassador posts after they have maxed out opinion with their empire
Needless to say, officers would also be in charge of initiating first contacts, their speed depending on their level as well.
+0.1 opinion per month per LV / -0.2 opinion per month per LV ---> That is, a LV 10 ambassador would be the equivalent of assigning 4 envoys to a single empire
A spy network will be automatically established as well, at a rate of +0.4 infiltration / day per leader LV ---> Ambassadors have always doubled as spies, that is a time-honoured tradition
During wartime: Punchier espionage operations are unlocked, with a deadly risk for your leader
During peace time: +5% trade treaty efficiency, +5% research treaty efficiency per leader LV, +5% fire rate inside the empire's borders per LV if you have defense obligations with it ---> You might want to keep high-ranking officers on ambassador posts after they have maxed out opinion with their empire
Needless to say, officers would also be in charge of initiating first contacts, their speed depending on their level as well.
It could work, I think.
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good idea but doesnt adress the bigger problem of not enough xp for passive leaders.
First contact is always going to be a problem. Since it's an all or nothing head to head race for the rewards and those rewards snowball introducing any way to make it go faster is going to make things a bit screwy. For xenophiles to stay able to xenophile they need more bodies to throw at it, which means more officials who will then either sit around eating unity waiting for a first contact to show up or have to be hotswapped in and out of "real" jobs. First contact is based around envoys being free, identical leaders with no other early game jobs. That's not to say a full envoy replacement solution is unworkable it's just that first contact is the one bit you can't leave to "eh it'll sort itself out".
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My preferred solution would be that simple standard tasks could be done without an envoy, perhaps based on the skill of your secretary of state (which should be swappable with comparable civic council positions without punishment, but that’s another matter), but could be done with a regular leader (official or any class) better or with secondary benefits. First contact, improving and harming relationships could be such tasks. Perhaps limit the number of utilizable simple tasks without leader to the level of the appropriate council member if you want it to be restricted.
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I think that most of those problems could be solved by giving xenophiles a +1/+2 effective official skill level (thus speeding up the first contact process and putting xenophiles ahead of the pack when it comes to diplomacy, as they should be), while allowing empires the possibility to initiate first contact without assigning an officer to them. It would be a much slower process with greater failure probability, and you won't gain hefty XP rewards afterwards, but hey! At least you can avoid leader vivisections!.
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