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Not from the Beta, been getting this quite often, it’s due to them contacting anyone within their massive sensor range

True but it's still present and possibly even worse, though I could have gotten unlucky.

Like the vulcans in Star Trek: "Congrats on inventing the warp drive"

Channelling my inner trekkie: the Vulcans had a ship flying right by Sol when they detected humanity's first warp ship and decided to say hello. Even then Vulcan is canonically close to Earth. So it's less like the Vulcan's saying hi and more like if some species from the Delta Quadrant got on the subspace radio to say hello.
 
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Noticed something kind of weird. It might just be because things haven't been pointed right, but could have some implications. Unemployment is being reported very wrong. That some numbers are 2 and others are 200 isn't helping, but it is explaining. Right now I've got 0 unemployment on the summery, unemployment on the side bar, and 73 unemployment in the jobs tab. its kind of confusing.
2025_03_14_3.png

its still causing all amounts of hate to have unemployment on the plant screen knowing that it would be a very bad idea to build any jobs. especially as thoughs 19 elites can't be fixed because I have no way to build elite jobs. This is especially bad as I really need to colonize and have never had any citizens so this is only going to get even worse!

On a related note. Not having all my numbers in the green at the start isn't the worst, but not having accurate numbers on day one is kind of bad. Don't know what is causing it, but everything changed after the first month.

Others have suggested that their blockers didn't disappear and the limits didn't go away. but my sprawling slums have disappeared, and are no longer blocking districts. So I've got nothing.

Now I've got to risk destroying every bit of my economy to replace early industries with a factory district. Yet I still have no civilians, can't get any for years to come, and need a new planet so I can better balance my economy given the new restrictions on my home planet. The early game is ether better--more to do and balance--or worse--have to wait around for technically no reason--depending on how your early game set up is. And this is the Commonwealth. I just prefer the cyber portraits for them. Something is screwed up though, starting with no civilians seems to be quite contrary to the design goals laid out in earlier dev diaries.
 
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Not sure what goes wrong. Colonize Guaranteed two planets, take forever to fill and resettle pop aren't 100 pops per click. Also home world keep spawn unemployed specialist and elite pop without fill the worker job or spawn civilian.

Early industry zone give city district everything, tech, unity, clerks, and labor. Also labor job is worse the clerks. Just figured it out after replaced the zone...

Second colony city specialize zone locked behind planetary capital is quite expansive to do anything further? Early snowball is locked behind support early industry zone city district with consumer good.
 
Just a tip for others: You don't have to stick with the primitive Early Industry Zone. You can replace zones at will by clicking on the City District right under "Districts and Buildings". This will pop a District Details menu to the right side of the planet view. In district details to the right of the menu each zone has a "Replace" button. There's also another "Replace" button right below the Urban district to replace urban districts with the basic resources ones. It took me a while to understand this.
 
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Not sure what goes wrong. Colonize Guaranteed two planets, take forever to fill and resettle pop aren't 100 pops per click. Also home world keep spawn unemployed specialist and elite pop without fill the worker job or spawn civilian.
For some reason we are starting with 0 civilians right now. has to be an issue with how they rebalanced the system, but it makes a lot of things work badly. During the stream yesterday the devs pointed out that growing specialist and elite pops don't lose their strata. this appears to be intended, but it drives me insane to see 'unemployed' on all my planets. something needs to change there. they have to demote.
Second colony city specialize zone locked behind planetary capital is quite expansive to do anything further? Early snowball is locked behind support early industry zone city district with consumer good.
Early snowball being locked up is nice. and it makes sense that it would take different technology to develop colony worlds than the world you already have all your industry on. It is kind of annoying though. Don't think its a bad thing.

Having played a bit, I think the first two tradition picks for me will always be expansion and harmony. Expansion because I like having all the planets. And harmony because all those unemployed pops are killing me and I hate every minute of them being there. I personally believe this will change if we weren't shown that we had unemployed pops at all times. I'd prefer it if the outliner just stopped showing unemployment until it started having an impact. Like, you only saw unemployment when you were getting some level of negative impact from it. don't know exactly what. maybe +10 crime?
 
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I’m 30 years into a game and my factions haven’t spawned, still struggling with unity so wondering if that’s why. Also entering a bit of an economic spiral due to lack of civilians to fill jobs.

Something feels off with the demotion times. My homeworld keeps getting into a spiral of -1000s amenities and 60% crime because of tonnes of unemployment. This tanks stability and resources, but since they don’t drop to civilians quick enough I have to build on the home world to give them jobs. Which adds to the issue of non civilians for amenities or growing colonies.
 
Just a tip for others: You don't have to stick with the primitive Early Industry Zone.
The problem is the sheer amount of jobs that zone provides.

As opposed to the indicated 200 Clerks and 200 Laborers per City it is actually:
100 Bureaucrats
100 Biologists
100 Physicists
100 Engineers
200 Clerks
200 Laborers
800 Total per city district

It allso appears like the Unity Zone doesn't work if there is no Early Industrial Zone.
 
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just realized the button to replace zones is above the zone. Doesn't make sense, and confused me to no end. that's going to cause problems when zones are right next to each other in the menu. also, no filter on replacing zones, so everything exists in the menu leaving the entire thing a mess. though I'd guess that's a minor issue.
 
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The zone replacement interface is unintuitive to access. To build a new building, or replace or demolish an existing one, you click on the empty or occupied slot. But to build/replace a zone, you have to click on the district (marked with a red star).
1741988287884.png



It would make more sense to replace zones by clicking on the zone icon (red star)
1741988363526.png

If that's not possible, it would be nice to have "click the district icon to build, demolish, or replace zones" tooltip.

P.S. Thanks, Custodians, for sharing the exciting new work you're doing with us!
 
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The Early Industry Zone is lying about how much jobs it provides - it actually provides every initial job not provided by Rural Districts or Capitol building.
300 Scientists, 100 Bureaucrats, 200 Clerks, 200 Laborers.
That is 800 Jobs per city district (instead of the listed 400).

Compared to the usual 100 or 300 per city district that other Zones provide.

One option could be to split them up into 2 Zones.
"Early Industrial" which provides Alloys, Consumer Goods, Amenities (Clerk and Laborer Jobs)
"Early Societal" which provides the specialist half of the jobs.

The end result is that each half only provides 400 Jobs. So replacing either one is much less disruptive.
But longterm it should probably be adjusted to provide jobs more comparable to other Zones.
 
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The zone replacement interface is unintuitive to access. To build a new building, or replace or demolish an existing one, you click on the empty or occupied slot. But to build/replace a zone, you have to click on the district (marked with a red star).
View attachment 1265802


It would make more sense to replace zones by clicking on the zone icon (red star)
View attachment 1265804
If that's not possible, it would be nice to have "click the district icon to build, demolish, or replace zones" tooltip.

P.S. Thanks, Custodians, for sharing the exciting new work you're doing with us!
In the stream they noted this. think its just that the UI guys haven't gotten there yet.
The Early Industry Zone is lying about how much jobs it provides - it actually provides every initial job not provided by Rural Districts or Capitol building.
300 Scientists, 100 Bureaucrats, 200 Clerks, 200 Laborers.
That is 800 Jobs per city district (instead of the listed 400).

Compared to the usual 100 or 300 per city district that other Zones provide.

One option could be to split them up into 2 Zones.
"Early Industrial" which provides Alloys, Consumer Goods, Amenities (Clerk and Laborer Jobs)
"Early Societal" which provides the specialist half of the jobs.

The end result is that each half only provides 400 Jobs. So replacing either one is much less disruptive.
But longterm it should probably be adjusted to provide jobs more comparable to other Zones.
The tool tip needs to be accurate, but I'm not convinced it needs less jobs. I'm pretty sure it is intended to be BAD in every sense. I just replaced mine, and all the unemployment is annoying. but it's actually not as bad as I thought. The loss of amenities is the worst part. the change to luxury accommodations helps.

I'll have to argue--yet again--that making amenities zones requirements for any fully developed planet kind of sucks. Like, I'm hoping that I can add something like a gen clinic and get at least some production based on city districts without the zone. I shouldn't be able to support a full city planet this way, but something. Then again, I think civilians should be producing some amenities, so maybe that will handle it.
 
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I'll have to argue--yet again--that making amenities zones requirements for any fully developed planet kind of sucks. Like, I'm hoping that I can add something like a gen clinic and get at least some production based on city districts without the zone. I shouldn't be able to support a full city planet this way, but something. Then again, I think civilians should be producing some amenities, so maybe that will handle it.
I think some jobs should just be open ended, but with a defined goal.
Like "have enough entertainers to reach +0 Amenities". "Have enough Enforcers to get crime down to 30%".
And the system will just spawn jobs until there are enough to reach that goal.

Upgrades would be about increasing the yield per pop, so you need less overall people to maintain those targets.
 
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Having played the beta for a few hours today, 3.99.1 is SO much better than 3.99.0, actually mostly playable. I do feel a bit more cramped for building slots than I would like, particularly for 'special' buildings that don't fit in a zone. I think that the government zone should have 6 slots instead of 3. With the next three slots unlocked by tech/capitol building upgrades. This would also make the government zone feel more like a true planetary capitol, being much larger than a regular zone.
 
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I'll likely be re-iterating thoughts I have about the new system that I already posted in the other thread, but I feel it's necessary to post them in the new thread too.

Just wanted to first say, tooltips are already a little bit clearer which is nice. Still a long way to go, but I at least could understand what each Zone and Building were doing so that's nice.

Unfortunately the system still just doesn't function well. Again this is not because it's Open Beta, the core mechanics simply do not work well. There's a few reasons this currently isn't working, and why at year 28 my Capital is sitting at -4,584 Amenities, 46 Stability, and 58% Crime. So lets go through the underlying problems here:

First and foremost Buildings should be largely unlocked, and provide a scaling bonus with the District (The way Zones do) and not just a flat bonus where applicable. Buildings like Luxurious Housing and Precinct Houses should have a Zone Limit 1, and add a small amount of Housing/Amenities and Enforcers that scale with your Districts. Buildings like these should be a smaller customization you make to the District inside the larger customization you're picking due to Zones. Buildings like Automation, which I'm still not 100% sure what they do but I believe are supposed to free up some of your pop from working jobs, should also be Zone Limit 1. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to Automate both my Factory and Foundry Zones. So much is locked to specific Zones that most of the time every Zone is going to look almost identical because there's little to no options on what to put in there.

City Districts need to be producing Entertainer jobs. From an RP perspective it's weird that they don't as generally people go into the Cities either for work or entertainment. From a mechanical perspective this feels absolutely necessary with the way the game now works. Amenities does not work as a Zone. Zones are an incredibly limited "Resource" that you need to use to benefit your Empire as a whole. Amenities are strictly a planetside resource that doesn't transfer over from planet to planet. As it stands, you may as well lock one Zone away simply as an "Amenities" Zone because every planet needs Amenities, but the only way to get Amenities currently is use of a Zone ON that planet. Now if Amenities were an Empire wide resource, it could work as a Zone, but as it stands it is silly to have an entire Zone that only helps that one specific planet with a resource it NEEDS to have. However, this would ALSO be fixed with the above suggestion if you could build Holo Theaters as a building in multiple Zones to give those Districts a few Entertainment jobs.

There needs to be an "Industrial" zone that splits the work of Factory and Foundry like we used to have. Before I could finally build a Foundry Zone on my Capital, I was making a whole 4 Alloys per month. That is absurd. Mind you I also needed a Factory Zone. To reiterate, Zones are a very rare "resource". You get three per City. I don't count the Zones for Energy, Mineral, or Food Districts as those barely interact with the rest of the planet. Without an Industrial Zone, you HAVE to have a Factory and Foundry Zone leaving you with only one Zone left on the Capital until the rest of the Empire is up and running. This is going to make every start for non-gestalts feel exactly the same.

The system as it stands right now is honestly very boring. Due to the limitation of buildings, every Zone feels identical. I build a Factory Zone, and my options are limited to the Factory Buildings, or Strategic Resource Buildings. I build a Foundry Zone, and my options are limited to the Foundry Buildings, or Strategic Resource Buildings. I build a Research Zone, and my options are limited to the Research Buildings. These are not "options". They may as well be passive unlocks from the tech, and have no Building options at all as it would make literally no difference in how the game is played. This is even more obvious early game where you don't even have the tech for these extra buildings, so you're just sitting there with nothing to build at all. That simply doesn't feel good from a gameplay perspective.
 
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Exploration is generally the thing everyone is required to do at the start to make things happen so it makes sense for it to start out that way until you’ve got the territory to develop and discover some enemies to fight
 
I'll likely be re-iterating thoughts I have about the new system that I already posted in the other thread, but I feel it's necessary to post them in the new thread too.

Just wanted to first say, tooltips are already a little bit clearer which is nice. Still a long way to go, but I at least could understand what each Zone and Building were doing so that's nice.

Unfortunately the system still just doesn't function well. Again this is not because it's Open Beta, the core mechanics simply do not work well. There's a few reasons this currently isn't working, and why at year 28 my Capital is sitting at -4,584 Amenities, 46 Stability, and 58% Crime. So lets go through the underlying problems here:

First and foremost Buildings should be largely unlocked, and provide a scaling bonus with the District (The way Zones do) and not just a flat bonus where applicable. Buildings like Luxurious Housing and Precinct Houses should have a Zone Limit 1, and add a small amount of Housing/Amenities and Enforcers that scale with your Districts. Buildings like these should be a smaller customization you make to the District inside the larger customization you're picking due to Zones. Buildings like Automation, which I'm still not 100% sure what they do but I believe are supposed to free up some of your pop from working jobs, should also be Zone Limit 1. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to Automate both my Factory and Foundry Zones. So much is locked to specific Zones that most of the time every Zone is going to look almost identical because there's little to no options on what to put in there.

City Districts need to be producing Entertainer jobs. From an RP perspective it's weird that they don't as generally people go into the Cities either for work or entertainment. From a mechanical perspective this feels absolutely necessary with the way the game now works. Amenities does not work as a Zone. Zones are an incredibly limited "Resource" that you need to use to benefit your Empire as a whole. Amenities are strictly a planetside resource that doesn't transfer over from planet to planet. As it stands, you may as well lock one Zone away simply as an "Amenities" Zone because every planet needs Amenities, but the only way to get Amenities currently is use of a Zone ON that planet. Now if Amenities were an Empire wide resource, it could work as a Zone, but as it stands it is silly to have an entire Zone that only helps that one specific planet with a resource it NEEDS to have. However, this would ALSO be fixed with the above suggestion if you could build Holo Theaters as a building in multiple Zones to give those Districts a few Entertainment jobs.

There needs to be an "Industrial" zone that splits the work of Factory and Foundry like we used to have. Before I could finally build a Foundry Zone on my Capital, I was making a whole 4 Alloys per month. That is absurd. Mind you I also needed a Factory Zone. To reiterate, Zones are a very rare "resource". You get three per City. I don't count the Zones for Energy, Mineral, or Food Districts as those barely interact with the rest of the planet. Without an Industrial Zone, you HAVE to have a Factory and Foundry Zone leaving you with only one Zone left on the Capital until the rest of the Empire is up and running. This is going to make every start for non-gestalts feel exactly the same.

The system as it stands right now is honestly very boring. Due to the limitation of buildings, every Zone feels identical. I build a Factory Zone, and my options are limited to the Factory Buildings, or Strategic Resource Buildings. I build a Foundry Zone, and my options are limited to the Foundry Buildings, or Strategic Resource Buildings. I build a Research Zone, and my options are limited to the Research Buildings. These are not "options". They may as well be passive unlocks from the tech, and have no Building options at all as it would make literally no difference in how the game is played. This is even more obvious early game where you don't even have the tech for these extra buildings, so you're just sitting there with nothing to build at all. That simply doesn't feel good from a gameplay perspective.

Very much agreed with all of this. I think the zones have a lot of potential because I've already found some planets feeling more different to before. Like rather than just slapping down an industrial district or lab wherever I can now choose whether I boost my pure science planet or my CG/Science world. The combinations seem like good grounds for making some oddities, though I expect specialisation will win out in the long run.

But the strong competition between zones and current balance means we're blocked from that because you have a very small number of zones that you must build.
 
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I think some jobs should just be open ended, but with a defined goal.
Like "have enough entertainers to reach +0 Amenities". "Have enough Enforcers to get crime down to 30%".
And the system will just spawn jobs until there are enough to reach that goal.

Upgrades would be about increasing the yield per pop, so you need less overall people to maintain those targets.
I don't know. Being able to ignore amenities doesn't make sense. And even less for crime. Something is off. I just don't know the best way to fix it exactly.
Having played the beta for a few hours today, 3.99.1 is SO much better than 3.99.0, actually mostly playable. I do feel a bit more cramped for building slots than I would like, particularly for 'special' buildings that don't fit in a zone. I think that the government zone should have 6 slots instead of 3. With the next three slots unlocked by tech/capitol building upgrades. This would also make the government zone feel more like a true planetary capitol, being much larger than a regular zone.
Maybe. I don't mind being cramped on development choices. not being able to do something isn't entirely bad. But it does feel a little much. Adding extra buildings to the government zone might work. Don't really know, need to bounce this around in my head for a bit I think.
First and foremost Buildings should be largely unlocked, and provide a scaling bonus with the District (The way Zones do) and not just a flat bonus where applicable. Buildings like Luxurious Housing and Precinct Houses should have a Zone Limit 1, and add a small amount of Housing/Amenities and Enforcers that scale with your Districts. Buildings like these should be a smaller customization you make to the District inside the larger customization you're picking due to Zones. Buildings like Automation, which I'm still not 100% sure what they do but I believe are supposed to free up some of your pop from working jobs, should also be Zone Limit 1. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to Automate both my Factory and Foundry Zones. So much is locked to specific Zones that most of the time every Zone is going to look almost identical because there's little to no options on what to put in there.
as I understand it from yesterday's stream: They stated that zone limits haven't been implemented yet, and that such a thing is set to be fixed. I am disappointed it's not in the current build.

I am in 100% agreement that we need a way to build amenities into a planet without needing the zone. On the other hand, I also think it makes sense that a specilized world with all industry or research or whatever might struggle with aminities without a zone built. But those are different things. maybe the zone should be a tech further down the tree.
There needs to be an "Industrial" zone that splits the work of Factory and Foundry like we used to have. Before I could finally build a Foundry Zone on my Capital, I was making a whole 4 Alloys per month. That is absurd. Mind you I also needed a Factory Zone. To reiterate, Zones are a very rare "resource". You get three per City. I don't count the Zones for Energy, Mineral, or Food Districts as those barely interact with the rest of the planet. Without an Industrial Zone, you HAVE to have a Factory and Foundry Zone leaving you with only one Zone left on the Capital until the rest of the Empire is up and running. This is going to make every start for non-gestalts feel exactly the same.
Oh so very much want this! It wouldn't even need to be that good: Same total jobs split between alloys and CG. Just needs to do both in a single zone. As it stands if you start gai world or something similar you are in real trouble for decades of game time just trying to produce the alloys/cg needed. I expect this want be looked into until they start trying to implement origins that trap you on a single planet.
The system as it stands right now is honestly very boring.
This seems both harsh and unnecessary. we have been told that only a fraction of planned buildings are in the game. that zone limits have been coded yet. that automation doesn't work. Not certain about that last one. Its a beta that is feature incomplete, I'd expect it to be boring.
There's a few reasons this currently isn't working, and why at year 28 my Capital is sitting at -4,584 Amenities, 46 Stability, and 58% Crime. So lets go through the underlying problems here:
This is interesting because I've yet to experience this kind of crime death spiral. Maybe I'm expanding slower, so I don't have the high unemployment? I'm certainty not building automation or robots, last I heard they were broken. Maybe I should build the robots and see what happens. I'll probably wait until I can pick up some pop demotion time in case that is the cause.

I just junked my space industry zone so I have 1.1k workers unemployed. but the small burst of crime didn't cause any problems cause it bare breached 20%. I have luxury apartments for the amenities, which is currently the only way I know to get amenities without the zone. what little civilians I have are to small to have much help.

Only one colony at year 10 or something? I'll have my second one pretty soon, probably closer to year 20 though. At least that is what I'm getting from this build.