Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dunamisdeos]

New strategy for super stronk endgame combat: Go all-in on science for my civ. Get a bunch of vassals, make them into a science federation, attempt to turn all members into super-powered-science civs to prepare.

[Telgin]

A real power gaming move would be to split off vassals to reintegrate for extra pop growth and after they build science nexuses.  The only difficult thing about it is that without other players in a multiplayer game, it's a very long crapshoot if a vassal will ever build megastructures, much less a science nexus, but if you split them off after researching the techs yourself there's at least a chance.

You can also seriously game the victory score system by forking off vassals and forming a federation with them, since tech can count a ton for points and it greatly increases the value of your federation.

[Dunamisdeos]

I nabbed four vassals, two of which have expansive territories.

Hopefully they become stronk. The other two were remnants of a dangerous civ I had to balkanize to survive early wars with, but later absorbed. They've since become xenophile egalitarians, somehow.

[Telgin]

That's one of those things that Stellaris really needs some extra depth to.  It's a bit ridiculous that you can do something like, say, conquer a fanatic spiritualist fallen empire, release them as a vassal and they're magically totally fine with being fanatic materialists.

[forsaken1111]

They're not though. The pops will still have spiritualist ethics and it will be at best an unstable society for a long time. At worst you could see a rebellion.

[Telgin]

That's how it's supposed to work, but I don't think I've ever seen it happen in practice.  I suspect that it's too easy to stack stability bonuses to see significant risk of rebellion if a player is managing the discordant pops, and I'm usually pretty close to 100% stability on most of my worlds.  How much of a stability penalty does the low approval rating apply?

I always try to offload conquered AI systems as vassals ASAP, but even when managed by the AI I don't remember seeing them rebel.  To be fair, the last time I did that was several versions ago and before the big rebellion issues with the AI.

[Criptfeind]

Another week, another weekly dev diary. This time about selectable traditions.

First thought is that going from 7 locked in traditions to 11 to choose from, most additions of which are basically splitting old traditions that were a bit scattered in focus into two more focused trees is... disappointing. The mods I play with have something like 50 traditions to choose from any maybe I wasn't expecting that many I was hoping for a bit more then what we're getting. And most importantly I feel like traditions have always sucked because instead of being a way to differentiate your empire from others and specialize a bit, they were just a set of bonuses that everyone always gets the same of every time, and now instead of fulfilling their potential to add difference to stellaris they are going to be a set of bonuses that everyone mostly gets the same of every time with a few small differences.

As for the changes themselves...

Dominations new finisher is cool, however right now I think there's an issue with ruler production bonuses in the game, most rulers don't produce purely resources that are multiplied by bonuses to job production, the unity they make is and I think research as well. But I think (not totally sure) Amenities Trade Value and Stability added by rulers is added as basically some sort of planetary modifier that doesn't actually work with Ruler pop resource output increases, although currently the only one in game that comes to mind is Shadow Council, making the civic sad. I hope that's fixed or something before this change goes into effect otherwise I'll just become more sad that ruler focused strategies don't really work. (Although that's more of a mod thing since there's pretty limited ways to get more ruler jobs and ruler production increases in the base game.)

Taking the trade out of diplomacy and the starbase stuff out of supremacy seems okay. Specially the trade in diplomacy seemed like it should be 2 trees. Diplomacy unity gains seem like they could be a lot. I think aliens are typically pretty happy to at least make an embassy pact with pretty much anyone. It's a lot of busy work though to actually go and ask everyone.

Removing the merchant from Prosperity for stability... I mean, I guess it's alright since it can take a long time to get planets to that level of population and it kinda sucks for the capstone to do almost nothing. But merchants were more interesting then stability I think. I also do sorta think that this is balancing for the slapdash population lag fix via population reduction they did, which is a bit of a shame since that fix sorta sucks and now balancing around it is going to make the game even worse.

Moving trade value exchanging to it's own tree is going to be a very substantial change to the game, I don't hate the idea though and am interested to see how it works out. The trade tree in general seems like it might be pretty strong if you have a lot of trade focus stuff going on, which is cool since that's always felt like a weak thing to do, well have to see how this tree changes things.

In unyielding Resistance is Frugal is cool and makes me want to try a citizen service build with fleet capacity from soldiers, a bit of a nonbo with the rest of the tree giving you tons of starbases I guess... Also tbh I feel like buffing starbases and weapon platforms is a bit... Who cares? Do they ever actually matter in a war outside of extremely early game ones? I feel like it's sorta rare that they do, and so all the buffs to them in this tree feel a bit wasted. I don't know, other then resistance is frugal I feel this tree is pretty lame and probably always one of the 4 you cut out.

Subterfuge tree... Cool, I've never found espionage actually worth doing, and... This tree doesn't seem like it'll make it worth it, and does the AI even do it? I don't think I recall ever having the AI do anything to me, maybe some really minor things I forgot? Half this tree is a buff to something not worth doing and the other half is defense against something that never happens... So, also seems like a very easy cut. I guess more starbases is cool, but I think it might be hard to justify an entire tree just for 4 more... Although I can see it being worth specifically in like more mid game wars.

Ultimately... Not impressed. Trade tree is cool most other tree changes seem lame, on the whole I just feel like this isn't enough "stuff" to make it meaningful. Although at least the DLC trees seem to suck, so not much loss there

[Telgin]

I agree that the implementation is a bit underwhelming right now but I'm just glad that they're doing this at all.  It leaves room open for improvements in the future, and some of the mods I've seen that add tradition trees just go too far.  I agree with grekulf in that having way too many choices is a bad thing too.

I'll probably end up taking adaptability instead of domination now, so at least there's that option.

[Criptfeind]

It's true that it's better then nothing for sure. Too many choices... can be bad. But I'm not sure if that is the case for traditions. Or, that is to say, it could totally be the case for traditions and probably would be the case if they implemented like 40 of them, but I think that traditions at their best can afford to have a lot of options because what (and this is just my opinion of course) they should be doing is selling the fantasy of how your nation changes over time, specializes, what it focuses on, how it is. If traditions are just a pack of mechanical bonuses you pick to make a build (as of course, they are and always will be) then you can too much choice when trying to decide what's the best to pick if you're a new player or whatever... But I think if they ALSO robustly sold a fantasy of how your nation is developing you wouldn't need to worry too much about the mechanics as a new player if you can choose traditions to fit the fantasy of your nation. This assumes of course that paradox is able to make lots of traditions that are both flavorful and at least somewhat balanced, which might be quite difficult to be fair.

[Telgin]

Yeah, ideally I think there would be meaningful choice in that there are more trees than slots, which we are getting, and trees that are mutually exclusive from each other and / or tradition picks that are exclusive.  The first thought that comes to mind is locking militarist and pacifist style traditions and trees as being mutually exclusive, but really that's what ethics are for.

I don't know.  I think it would be better if there were maybe 15 trees, where you have twice as many trees available as you can take, but that would be difficult to make the flavor and balance work out for.

Another thought strikes me: exclusive traditions or trees that you can spend unity on to respec might be a new way to spend unity late game.  Not sure that there would ever be a reason to do this, but maybe there could be.  Spending unity to respec ascension perks is probably impossible to do sensibly on the other hand.

[Rolan7]

Domination: My friend who plays authoritarian empires with precint houses, and enjoys using edicts, will probably like this even with the loss of the +1 influence capstone.  Since I don't care about existing bonuses of level cap, blocker cost, or slight extra housing, I look forward to giving this tree a miss.  Even the 5% worker bonus (half of what slaves get) is meh since I prefer a specialist-focused economy

Diplomacy: I like this a lot!  Getting favors from envoys could save some bribe materials, and is more interesting than dumping them on the GC directly to boost diplomatic weight.  The unity from embassy pacts might be kinda nice, mostly early on.  And heck, a flat +5 acceptance points is like a free favor, not bad at all when it matters.  Definite pick.

Harmony: I like the changes, but I don't value what this tree provides.  I'll miss the +5 stability and that's it.

Supremacy: Ouch, were starbases considered OP for some reason?  Instead of getting a substantial cost discount, they'll now take +20% damage?  alrighty.  I'll still take this because a better military is always important.

Prosperity: Oh hey it's my +5 stability bonus!  And a *general* pop resource output of +5%, yum!  A fancy bonus job per 50 pops was always pretty meh.  Anyway, a solid tree is better now.

Mercantile: ...wait, seriously?  uh... woah...  Yeah this looks fricken amazing as someone who highly prioritizes trade value.  That's a 25% boost to base clerk output before multipliers (if it's like Mining Guilds and I'm not crazy), a *lot* of bonus merchant jobs with my typical build style... plus another juicy +10% modifier to trade value, can never get enough of those.  Obviously this is a must-have for Megacorps, but even for regular empires this seems pretty nice.  Like... clerk jobs were always most useful as make-work program, so really suffered hard from the population nerf, but those precious pops will largely be working as merchants instead which is amazing!  I can't wait to try this out, I'm picturing a nice voidborne megacorp that really late game might end up having more rulers than workers (lots of unfilled clerk jobs, and lots of specialists of course).
(Plus when I'm in a trade federation, enjoying that amazing unique trade policy, I'll get the +50% federation fleet contribution!  Which is a massive effective boost to naval capacity for the endgame)

Unyielding: I guess this is why they nerfed starbases in Supremacy, huh.  Most of this seems pretty irrelevant, but -50% starbase upgrade cost could be kinda nice for late-game fortifying.  Starbases don't win fights on their own, but they can make a pretty significant difference to a fleet battle (and they're a place to dump alloys on defense without exceeding your fleet cap).  Gotta get those modules that grand system-wide bonuses, and some ion cannons.

I can't decode that last new tradition, probably isn't important (I really haven't bothered with espionage even in the multiplayer games where I can experience the DLC)

Edit:  I think they've edited the post a couple times - Domination's finisher is 20% more admin cap instead of +10% ruler production, which seems less janky for reasons y'all pointed out.  And Unyielding is unlocked by Apocalypse, not Nemesis as they apparently said at first.

[Criptfeind]

I wasn't sure if there would be another dev diary this week or if the patch release counted, but here it is. Changes to the humanoid pack.

Masterful crafters seems strong. Just a good buff to a common job and extra building slots.

Pleasure Seekers is a bit weird. I don't really want to think on what the buff to entertainers could mean, but it seems strange that it comes with a bonus that allows servants to somewhat replace entertainers. A bit of a nonbo there I feel. Also it's made to be used with slaves, but doesn't allow the slavery civic... Uhhhhh. What the heck??? It's also a bit strange that decadent lifestyle has less upkeep (for most) then utopian abundance, but makes everyone just as happy, especially since the flavor text seems to imply a somewhat stratified society but it makes the lower classes just as happy as the upper ones? Seems like it could be an okay civic, allowing you to have a more happy authoritarian society but I'm unsure if it's enough to be worth a civic slot compared to just having a normal Stratified Economy... Well... I kinda like the idea of a flavorful civic like this, but the mechanics behind it are so weird that I'm unsure about it.

Clone army is cool. Clone vats seem... Strong? You start with 14 monthly pop assembly? And can build up to 21 more? That seems very strong for a huge early game population burst, although you can't grow pops naturally but that's pretty trivial of a thing to fix. Low leader lifespan sucks I guess. And I guess eventually you max out on pop, have to see what that max is. It's at least sorta cool I guess and sounds like it comes with some sorta storyline events thing which might be cool.

[Iceblaster]

Gonna be honest I hope these new species pack specific things are going to be optional, I like the lithoid one but it feels like forcing them to play a specific way removes some interesting species variations. I don’t really follow the dev blogs too much tho so if that’s been confirmed or denied let me know

[Rolan7]

I wasn't sure if there would be another dev diary this week or if the patch release counted, but here it is. Changes to the humanoid pack.

Masterful crafters seems strong. Just a good buff to a common job and extra building slots.

Pleasure Seekers is a bit weird. I don't really want to think on what the buff to entertainers could mean, but it seems strange that it comes with a bonus that allows servants to somewhat replace entertainers. A bit of a nonbo there I feel. Also it's made to be used with slaves, but doesn't allow the slavery civic... Uhhhhh. What the heck??? It's also a bit strange that decadent lifestyle has less upkeep (for most) then utopian abundance, but makes everyone just as happy, especially since the flavor text seems to imply a somewhat stratified society but it makes the lower classes just as happy as the upper ones? Seems like it could be an okay civic, allowing you to have a more happy authoritarian society but I'm unsure if it's enough to be worth a civic slot compared to just having a normal Stratified Economy... Well... I kinda like the idea of a flavorful civic like this, but the mechanics behind it are so weird that I'm unsure about it.

Clone army is cool. Clone vats seem... Strong? You start with 14 monthly pop assembly? And can build up to 21 more? That seems very strong for a huge early game population burst, although you can't grow pops naturally but that's pretty trivial of a thing to fix. Low leader lifespan sucks I guess. And I guess eventually you max out on pop, have to see what that max is. It's at least sorta cool I guess and sounds like it comes with some sorta storyline events thing which might be cool.

Unlike lithoids and plantoids, these additions to the humanoid pack are not actually limited to humanoids.  So that's kinda cool!

I pretty much agree with Criptfiend's analysis.  Additionally there will apparently be a megacorp version of the Mater Crafters civic which frankly sounds pretty useless to me, heh.  Why would a megacorp need CG or even more bonus amenities when there is trade? I exaggerate a little, but only a little

Apparently the Pleasure Seekers thing is supposed to represent pre-Slaanesh Eldar, to the point that a dev agreed that there ought to be a special interaction with Slaanesh's expy in the Shroud.  I *guess* that's why they can't enslave themselves via Slaver Guilds, only enslave xenos?  Or they can have no slaves at all and just get the benefits of Utopian Abundance through, uh, hedonism.  To be fair it does cost a civic in exchange for its much lower CG usage.  It also doesn't have the UA unemployment benefits but those obviously barely matter anymore.

Clone army sounds particularly wonky to me, designed for early game rushing.  Incredible population assembly but permanently limited to 5 planets vats, and cannot be genetically modified?  Very short lived leaders but a base +25% fire rate from every admiral?  Sounds like a pop designed to be cast aside after you've used them to acquire better ones.  And to be a worrying early threat in the hands of an AI neighbor.

Oh and +50% army damage is usually a joke, but in the early game it's a lot less so.

[Telgin]

I really like the new artisan civic, and I'll probably end up trying it out with a life-seeded or ringworld run first thing with the new patch to see how much it helps with the absurd CG costs those builds can have.  The extra engineering research is nice too since it'll help close some of the gap that the engineering tree has on the others, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it'll make in practice.  Especially since there will be some modifiers and bonuses that apply to researchers that won't apply to it.

The rest of the dev diary is okay and interesting, even if I probably won't make use of the new origin or other civic.  The clone army origin is interesting, but I think maybe it would have been better to be a generic engineered species origin instead of being military specific.

I'm also a tad disappointed that there weren't more civics and no new traits, but it's all free stuff if you have the DLC so I won't complain too much.