3.3 Unity Open Beta UPDATED Feedback Megathread [EXTENDED TO FEB 7]

MrFreake_PDX · Jan 31, 2022

We've extended the close of feedback to Monday, February 7th.

We will leave the open beta available for those of you who are enjoying playing on the open beta until release.

Be sure to read this post in its entirety before responding to this feedback thread. Posts that do not follow the rules will be removed.

Only give feedback on games played entirely on the new version of the 3.3 Open Beta [b02d] and without mods.

Hello Community!

Thank you for your feedback! We are completely overwhelmed by the amount of constructive feedback offered by the Community. As a thank you, and to gather as much feedback as possible on the new Unity mechanics in the time we have available, we've UPDATED THE OPEN BETA! I know, we said we wouldn't. We lied.

This new 3.3 Open Beta should be available now. You can read the additional fixes and balance adjustments below, and as always you can report bugs found in the open beta on the bug report forums.

We are mainly collecting feedback on the balance and the overall feeling of how the unity and influence rework plays. To this end, please only offer feedback from games played entirely on the UPDATED 3.3 open beta branch, and without mods.

You can get all the details about the Unity rework in DD#237 and DD#238, and read the old patch notes here.

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# Feature
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Unity Ambitions and Campaigns now function like Toggled Edicts and last until cancelled with upkeep rather than costs.
Planetary ascension now also reduces the effects of empire sprawl from that planet

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# Balance
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Empire Sprawl has no effects (except for edict costs) under 100 rather than 50.
Removed Machine Intelligence increased size penalties, replaced with -15% size from pops and +50% size from colonies.
Megastructures no longer have a unity upkeep.
Increased Unity production of Bio-Trophies from 1 to 3.
Reduced the costs of higher tier edicts and campaigns.
Leaders have a base cost of 100 unity and cost 50 additional unity for every owned leader, this value starts increasing once you own more than 6 leaders.
Reverted Citizen Service, it now provides unity just like it used to.
Distinguished Admiralty now gain +2 starting level to their Admirals and Generals.
Zombies are now less likely to seek jobs that produce resources.
Servile pops should no longer retain the trait if they become zombies.
Spiritualists are no longer allowed to take Byzantine Bureaucracy since they don't have Bureaucrats.
Trade value is now affected by AI difficulty bonus. This will make non hive mind empires more competitive on higher difficulty settings compared to hive mind AI empires.

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# AI
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AI can now create more specialized planets by switching place of buildings on two different planets with each other
AI is now much more likely to pick cheaper research options when all else equals
AI will now favor the trade policy which generates consumer goods over the default wealth creation policy
Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes try to replace one lost science ship with an excessively high number thereof.
Fixed an issue where repeatable tech were getting an extra chance to be researched as if they were rare techs
Fixed several issues where AI would get stuck and not build any modules or upgrade any starbases when there were open module slots which were unable to be filled according to the AI's starbase template
Improved AI construction ship behaviour, construction ships will now prioritize tasks that are close to them and avoid going to another system that already has a construction ship in it. Heavily increased priority of building starbases in systems with planets.
Reduces AI willingness to take a lot of planets with very low habitability

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# UI
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Added a textbox for Cost in Edicts UI. Also rearranged neighboring elements to align better.
Added column for upkeep (entry as well as sort button) in Leader recruitment UI.
Hid Empire Sprawl impact from top of Edicts UI. Put Edict Fund in its place to keep neat alignment.
Improved legibility of approximate job output indicators on districts and buildings, and made those on buildings also show country modifiers
Optimized elements for leader upkeep and age to fit localization better and avoid UI overlaps.
Technologies which let you clear blockers now give a tooltip which says how many such blockers are on your colonies

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# Bugfix
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Ascension Tiers on planets are set to 0 whenever a planet changes owner
Bio-Trophies now cost Unity to resettle instead of Influence.
Fixed modifiers for Police State civic
"Synths Scuttle Starbase" now refers to the starbase orbiting a star, rather than a planet.
Fixes to grammar and punctuation.
Added a missing line break in the Take Point button's tooltip
Added missing description for "Precognitive Interface" and "Psi Jump Drive" components in the Technology menu
Added missing description for "The Sentinels" planetary feature.
Added missing galaxy settings tooltips to the galaxy creation screen, both in Multiplayer and in single player.
Added missing header in the description of "Omega Theory" technology
Added missing header in tooltip description of "Defense Platform" and "Habitat".
Added missing information about required DLC for the corporate authority
Rogue Servitors now have access to the correct Unity producing buildings.
Clarified the tooltip for automatic development for when you had it turned on or not
Deluging primitives now removes the observation outpost
Fixed "Tebri" and "Tebiron" (prescripted empire planet and system names) being untranslated in Chinese
Fixed Criminal Heritage Galactic Emperors
Fixed Curators retelling the wrong info when asking again about the Scavenger's origins
Fixed Memorialists seeing that some techs unlocked buildings they could not build
Fixed Planetary Unification tech description overflowing the box
Fixed Sociocultural History tech showing it unlocked the Bounty Sacrifice twice
Fixed a Galcom resolution tooltip saying that the empire was already supporting the resolution when in fact it was meant to say it was already opposing it
Fixed a bug where you could end up with multiple Zroni homeworld systems
Fixed a bunch of issues in various federation law acceptance tooltips (several had missing or hard to interpret and ugly information)
Fixed a missing species name in event The Dragon has Landed
Fixed an issue where scientists would only get expertise traits based on the fields they were not actively working on
Fixed an unlocalised tooltip in non-English versions of the game when hovering over a megastructure's effects
Fixed incorrect description of traits "Inspired Researcher" and "Inspired Surveyor"
Fixed leader sorting by cost in the leader view sorting by energy instead of unity
Fixed some spacing issues in the localisation of the fire event effect in foreign languages
Fixed species modification planetary trait list sometimes overflowing
Fixed the tooltip of Integrated Preservation tradition
Fixed the tooltip of Open Border policies sometimes helpfully telling you that your country was default (in a way that isn't translated to other languages)
Fixed various living standards incorrectly providing unity instead of a happiness penalty for unemployed pops.
Fixed wrong color of font used in the Alien Box event in Brazilian Portuguese
Fixing missing line break for the alert about Necrophyte Shortages in Chinese
Life-Seeded Permanent Employment Megacorps will no longer all be zombies.
Posthumous Employment Centers can now be seen even if you can't build them yet.
Revolts in systems with enclave stations will no longer be granted ownership of the enclave station (it will remain in the hands of the enclave)
Sacrifices now have a unity cost.
The Caravaneers will no longer turn Gestalt Rulers psionic.
The Materialist faction is now happy that you discovered the secrets of the precursors even if those precursors are the Baol or the Zroni.
The project for reanimating Hrozgar now uses the correct art.
Void Dwellers no longer start with a broken Posthumous Employment Center.
Zombies can no longer colonize planets.

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# Modding
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Added error logging for when a window uses a scroll bar but does not have a background
Enabled the use of the "distance" trigger in script maths (e.g. export_trigger_value_to_variable)
Fixed a tooltip crash from firing a nonexistent event
Renamed election cost modifier country_election_influence_cost_mult to country_election_cost_mult to not reference influence, as it now costs unity.
You can now use script values in ships' empire_limit

The updated open beta version will be available until at least February 3rd, and will likely not be updated (for real this time).

Once again, we are looking for directed, constructive feedback on the influence/unity rework as it stands in 3.3 [b02d] Unity Open Beta without mods.

There is a thread for open discussion here.

If you encounter a bug in the 3.3 Open Beta, please do not post it in this thread. Bug reports should be made on the bug report forums, and flag for the 3.3 Open Beta. Due to the changes and the in-development nature of 3.3, the updated 3.3 Unity Open Beta is not guaranteed to be save-game compatible. We recommend a new save for feedback purposes.

What we are looking for:

Feedback on your playthrough from the UPDATED 3.3 “Libra” Open Beta, regarding balance and overall feeling

Not Useful replies

Do not reply to other users. Reply to other users in the discussion thread here. Encourage them to change their mind and edit their post, in the discussion thread. Be nice with your replies in the discussion thread. Did I mention the discussion thread?
Your perception of the changes, without actually playing the open beta
Posts attacking the Stellaris team members
Off topic/Not applicable posts will be removed.
Feedback from playthroughs using mods.

To opt-in to the Steam open beta branch, right-click Stellaris, click Properties, Beta tab, and choose “Stellaris_test” from the drop-down.

Please only reply to this thread once, with your feedback on the 3.3 Unity Open Beta, any other discussion should happen in the discussion thread.

Thank you in advance for your interest and feedback!

bipocni · Jan 31, 2022

Planetary ascension now also reduces the effects of empire sprawl from that planet

Now that this is a thing can we get a tooltip in the planet view screen to show total sprawl from the planet? Individual pops only show the effects of traits and governor skills (which don't show up in the actual sprawl tooltip on the topbar but that's a different thing) but I was thinking it would make the most sense in the pop counter just under the stability tooltip. Just a simple one line addition showing total sprawl after traits and governors and planetary ascension is applied would be nice and much appreciated.

Pancakelord · Jan 31, 2022

I'm interested in trying out some of the other changes, but this really jumped out at me right away.

MrFreake_PDX said:
Reverted Citizen Service, it now provides unity just like it used to.

Distinguished Admiralty now gain +2 starting level to their Admirals and Generals.

I am not sure this was the right call. Distinguished admiralty was already a "decent" pick. Getting level 3 admirals on top is pretty damn strong now, +10%(+20%) extra fire rate from (Fanatic) militarism. Whilst citizen service doesnt have much going for it, once again.

It sort of feels like they're being distinguished as the Combat military civic (Distinguished admiralty) vs the Economic military civic (Citizen service),

Unity bonus from Citizen service: is really only useful in the mid-late game when you can afford to dedicate "spare" colonies (a less enticing proposition under scalar pop growth, but doable) to fortress worlds.
+15% Fleet cap bonus from Citizen service: negligible early on (% working off a low base) and if your economy is strong enough in the mid/late game the +15% from fleet cap on citizen service, is really not that relevant as you can eat the extra EC cost (or if you're snowballing you've got ample space to just throw down more forts/anchorages).

Perhaps, for citizen service, you could consider

increasing the celling for influence from fleet power projection? or
increase the happiness + Political power of pops working soldier jobs? To increase colony stability indirectly. or
reducing leader costs/upkeep for admirals and generals - making them increase at 25 unity per leader or something? (less relevant with the 3.3 beta update changes to base leader costs) or
make each military academy add a little stability, or pop output? [teaching the pops to do their duty etc etc] So you have some incentive to build those on multiple colonies, for a change. [sort of like a militarist noble estate] or
- I think I usually build 1-2 military academies per game. on average. The only thing I build less frequently, is probably the resource silo lol.
pops set to full military service + full citizenship have (e.g.) 10% less pop sprawl.

Edit:
Looks like the tooltip doesnt break out the new scaling costs for leaders.
I would have expected it to say Base: 100, number of leaders 150 (or 3 * 50 - something like that).
Might be confusing for a new player, or one that hasnt read patch notes.

Similar to how the leader traits are factored in to tooltip costs.

Ep3o · Jan 31, 2022

Loving the AI changes, have noticed a potentially small oversight with the script early game. When AIs get new colonies they like to optimize and not work colonist jobs (see below). This is great because it increases their production faster.

However, some AIs do this but then build no buildings, so they just have unemployed pops on a new colony, wasting precious resource potential.

Nothing being built either:

My theory is the AI wants to build research labs (or other buildings that require a planetary administration) but can't because it doesn't have the correct capital yet, so it's just building nothing. I think the script needs a condition that if it can't have a planetary administration it builds something else that it can.

somerandofromreddit · Jan 31, 2022

I had just played another Game on the last Beta and wanted to report and then there is a new one xD. But non of the Changes in the Changelog seam to really effect the 3 things i have observed, so i think its fine if i report them here. Settings: Large 1000 Star Galaxy, 22 AIs(6 advanced), 4 FE, 3 Marauders, 1.5 Tech/Tradition Costs, Captain, 1.75x Hyperlanes, 2x Habitable planets, rest standard.

I Played Void dwellers and tried to maximize my economy inside the smallest Area reasonable (aka play tall). I have 52 Colonies in 32 Systems with 2k pops, i get the same Sprawl than i got when playing wide. Its still possible, but still weaker than just blobbing out. But if Sprawl effects my small 3% of the Galaxy Empire just as much as one that has its 2000 pops across 15% of the Galaxy than what good is it?
1. Also as many already said, Void dwellers really suffer from the loss of Amenities of Politicians. Its ok once the colonies are up and running, but having negative Amenities at the start of the Void dweller origin on 2/3 of Habitats is bad.
Autochthon Monuments are to week to be useful. 5% more Unity from Jobs + a couple Unity? I just build another Administrative office, and get more. In fact until a planet has less than 20 Admin Offices (on its 11 build slots), just build more Admin offices. Even the 10% of a Heritage Site is not worth it because you will always have to sacrifice 1 Building slot to Amenities production and 1 to the Curator Vault that gives 15%, and 8*110% < 9.
Speed of progress for the Galaxy is to fast. It was already fast before all the AI improvements, but now the standard 2300 for midgame start and 2400 for endgame start are completely unreasonable. The lazy solution would be to set all the dates forward but me and many people like the slower flow of the Game where first there are smaller local wars while 3/4 of the Galaxy are unknown, then the Galaxy comes together in a Galactic Community and only then the midgames treats start showing up. Things that therefore need some changes so the galaxy does not feel rushed:
1. Raise tech costs progressively. Level 2 techs by 25%, level 3 by 50%, level 4 by 100% and level 5 and repeatable by 200%.
2. Slow down the first level engines and early survey scanning to make exploration a bit slower.
3. Buff the Khan a bit (maybe dependent on Galaxy size), if he does not show up immediately at the midgame start year he gets stomped by any random AI. With how good the AIs have become he just died after taking only 4 systems.
4. Buff Fallen Empires by 2x or something (+ longer time till decadence). I am still a bit away from the Endgame but already AIs have casual 30k fleets roaming around. In the next 60 years the 4-5 stronger AIs will definitely overtake the FEs.

The third point is actually a great thing. The AI is finally playing good enough to hold their own against the threats of the Galaxy, but this also means that some Threats like the Khan and FEs need a buff, and that Techs need to cost more to compensate for everyone now having better economies and teching faster.

nikkythegreat · Jan 31, 2022

I really like the Citizen Service reversion and giving the starting leader bonus to Distinguished admiralty. The change fits the themes of the civics more than previous iteration of the beta.

Also, I think instead of just increasing leader cost based on the number of hired leaders. It would be better to increase leader upkeep as well. Cause currently when youre in mid game the leader cost is just negligible and the equivalent of something like 2 pops worth of unity production. It would also fit role play wise since more leaders in an empire means more people doing their own agenda.

Keith_C · Jan 31, 2022

If UI changes are happening, can we please have the number of industrial zones on a planet be displayed in the expansion planner?

Merch991 · Jan 31, 2022

Hi all! I'm here after some hours of both beta versions.
First of all, in general I think we are on the right track with all the various changes. Now, let's take a look at them one by one.

1. Empire Sprawl: in my opinion, tech penalty should be harsher because, as someone other have written in the other feedback thread, Tech rush is still possible. In second place, size 8 Habitats cannot count the same as a (medium) size 16 planet in terms of base colony sprawl. 10 for normal planets is ok but for Habitat needs to be cut down to 5 or 4 while sprawl from Systems can be increased to 2 or 3. The idea is that, as I've noticed after some tall playthroughs, the difference between tall and wide is merely a fact of Systems, as the center of production in this game are Pops.

2. Unity: I've not that much to say about it. I'm happy that now it is a very useful resource. Planetary ascension is a good idea but maybe the bonus should be raised to +33% or 40% for each level (with a little increased cost or an higher impact of sprawl to balance it). In addition, it would be interesting to see an unity upkeep for unhappy pops.

3. Civics: personally, I don't like civics changes as they are now. Dist. Admiralty is already a powerful civic. Maybe you can remove the +10% fire rate and leave the +2 levels in place. Also, give the +5 stability back to Police State. Without that, it's not worth it. Same goes for Merchant Guilds. I know that you want to remove incidental sources of unity but without that it's not viable. Make that it gives more TV or amenities from Merchants.

Edit: as a very side note, I want to bring (again) your attention to this bug:

Stellaris - [3.2.2] checksum [abcc] - °In Breach Of The Galactic Law° doesn't work properly

Description [3.2.2] checksum [abcc] - °In Breach Of The Galactic Law° doesn't work properly Game Version 3.2.2 What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? Synthetic Dawn, Utopia, Leviathans Story Pack...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

which is around from 3.0 and after many reports from me and others is still not fixed. Please, fix it

Archael90 · Jan 31, 2022

Im launching Stellaris right now to see what actually has changed, but i have to ask:
You havnt touched anything related to spiritualists and sprawl? Priests produce same sprawl as burocrates, death priests are worst than regular even tho they req civic, and pops produce most sprawl in empire? Hives still works just like regular empires?
I also dont see fixed bug with memorialist hive not being able to build sanctuary of repose, but maybe i missed it. Edit: and i confirm - it has not been fixed.
Okay. I just checked things that was most important for me (dedicated spiritualist player, at least since 1.4), and... nothing has changed (except sacrifice edicts with dead cult civic now actually costs unity), so my feedback from previous verion does not changed except two things*:

my additional thought about spiritualists balance:
especially death cult civic:
Temple of grand sacrifice which is lvl3 equvalent of temple (sacred nexus to be presize) - it costs 8 energy, 1 volatale mote and 2 exotic gases to maintain, and provide 15 unity, 6 soc research, 12 amenities.
While lvl2 of regular temple needs 5 energy and 1 rare crystal to maintain and provide:
16 unity, 8 amenities, lvl 3 of temple needs additional 3 energy and 1 rare crystal, and provide 24 unity, and 12 amenities.
That means you are screwing yourself choosing dead cult for one of your civics.
And yes, with dead cult you have additional soc research and can sacrifice your mortal initiates to produce additional unity. But downside of that is this few points of soc research is nothing, and with edict... you have to sacrifice your pops...
My ideas to make it a little more balanced, you may choose how many you want, i think that all of them should be applied at once, but just one is enough to make a difference:
- Makes death preiests produce 8 unity each, or at least 6, so that with mortal initiates they would produce the same amount of unity as regular temples.
- Mortal initiates should get bonus to unity production from exalted priesthood.
- Increase soc research that temple of sacrifice provide to at least 4 (either 3/1 or 2/2 for priests/mortal initiates).
- Dead cult edicts should not kill all mortal initiates, but only all from one temple from every planet.
- You may leave cost of 0 for those edicts :x
I would also ask for a dead cult equivalent of high priest, called prophet of faith that replaces some politician jobs. It would have same resource output as high priest, but would increase bonusses from dead cult edicts, or lower the number of mortal initiates that are killed by edict.

Okay. I was playing f.spiritualist/xenophile death cult, exalted priesthood empire, and i have ended test campain in 2360, when grey tempest destroyed whole galaxy...
i know its not strictly the part of beta test, but i hope that in released version difficulty of mid-game crisis would be adjusted somehow. Empire sprawl slows research, and yet AI empires can open L-gates, while at the same time none, including 5-state federation fleet, and awakend great khan, could stand a chance to all of those grey pests. Grey tempest strenght should either be adjusted to galaxy settings like tech cost and mid-game year, or makes them a swarm of 1-5k fleets (depending on year), with heavly defended bases in L-cluster: 50k in terminal egress, and 200k in their mother system, with ability to rebuild base in TE.
Lets move on:
- Leader higher price seems weird, in early game its too high, in mid game its more-less okay, but as someone posted it could cost consumer goods insead of unity, with unity/ec upkeep.
- Sprawl frm pops, and colonies is extremally high, maybe 10x lesser for pops to boost tall playstyle, and as someone posted - multiplanet system could count as one colony instead of each planet separately.
- I almost didnt use planetary ascension, it was too expensive and not enough impactfull. And as someone said it before - it could be sector ascension rather than planet.
- AI was expanding extremally fast... i think its okay?
- There is too much unity sinks and not enough influence ones, or i havnt seen such. Relic activation at least could use influence as their was.
- power projection... i dont really know how it works. it seems like it is taking my ships naval count, but dont know compared to what... there should be some tip for that so that i easly know how to increase my early influence production. but i think it should use my actual fleet firepower, or better - sum of my fleet and starbases firepower compared to other galactic nations, and unyelding tradition and eternal vigilance ascension perks could rice starbase count.
Now i have to test some hive mind... and im really afraid

Okay, i have started second test campain as hivemind with catalitic processing, and memorialist civics, and tree of life origin.
1. First is a great bug here - memorialists does not provide sanctuary of repose building (im gonna see if techs to develop or upgrade it will shows up and then post a thread in a bug subforum)
2. Now my impressions so far:
- As Hive mind, this empire is very little united, unity producion is not as big as i had in spiritualist play, yet it should be at least the same if we assume that hive mind is all about being one.
- Because of previous, hive mind empire does not feel anything unique - i just have to build same buildings with different names.
- Gestalts have no factions, so they cant get additional unity from them, but their passive is +1 influence, and im not complaining about that... but especially hives should be more oriented on their internal, not external.
3. Possible changes:
- Remove/reduce unity output of synapse drones, and remove autochton monument (i forgot hivemind name for this building) which is btw unavailable for memorialists.
- Add some other bonusses to synapse drones, like menial drone output, amenities, stability etc.
- Make pops with "hive mind" trait produce passively 1 unity.
- Make deviancy on planets reduce unity production from pops, and deviant drones actually "drain" this unity instead of producing it.
- Make some civics and techs increase pop unity producion.
- This way hives would feel unique, and unity production could be greater than spiritualists (because it should imo)

And btw. About psionic pops - "psionic" trait bonus should be tweaked and instead of energy, they should produce more unity.

Also, i have posted a bug in bug-subforum.

And please, if anyone wish tu put reaction on any of my previous post, please go to that post, and here react only to what is below:

And my thoughts:
1. Not enough places to spend influence on, especially in empires that rarely claims. Maybe planetary ascension would drain influence instead of unity, and some higher lvls would require multiple stages of donation, like 3000 influence for lvl 10, when you have to spend full pool of influence for 3 times?
2. Too much penalizing tall play. As i said - tewak numbers of sprawl from pops and colonies.
3. Too much penalizing from taking small systems with few research points. Maybe increase bonusses from techs, and instead of +10% research from constructions, to +10%/+15%/+20%/+25%/+30% for total of +100% but for base production, so that additional +10% from tradions etc. would also means something.
4. Unity is needed everywhere but it looks little forced, especially that tech is still a king, and traditions means very little. Maybe each started traditions tree gives ablity to increase admin capacity for X costing unity, and being affected by sprawl so that this few points of admin cap would be cheaper for tall players and more expensive for wide players, but allow for save the same amount of sprawl penalties (remember that wide empires will have more unity production overall than tall ones).
5. I will repeat - i love amenities changes, this way its much harder to keep planets stable and i would love to see other changes going this way.
6. Rebellions would be nice.
7. For those who complain about sprawl - its not new feature it was in game since i can remember, but in previous versions it was hidden value it became visible when admin cap became a thing, i think in 2.2... So its return to roots which i love (im waiting for wormhole and warp ftls tho).
8. Simmilar to planetary ascension, there could be a feature like sector ascension. Basically it would work like sectors further from capital sector has stability and production penalties, and investing some resourcess (unity/influence) you can build your power there so it became more stable.
9. I would see leader rework, to both - prevent leader cycling, and make this part of the game more fun.
9,5. I havnt play with zombies (tho i was hoping that spiritualist/psionic empires would get some assemble options) yet they seems too penalizing - they should get additional bonusses and weights for specific jobs - clerk/soldier, and maybe some techs/ascension perks that boosts them in that niches?
10. And other things i have said in previos posts

Thank You very much for letting us test this game, i always wanted to be betatester (i heard they get payment for that

), and i feel fullfilled

Overall changes feels great, but tweaks are necessery, i hope you will not shallow it like espionage

i know that time is running, but try to take your time, and pamper this version

edit - i forgot about one thing - Hives should be about unity, and machines about research. Hives should produce much more unity, like i said in previous post - for every pop with hivemind trait (this trait would also add -20% empire sprawl from pops), while machines should produce it less, but instead got smaller penalties to tech cost from sprawl.

Last edited: Tuesday at 11:15

*- Now when sacrifice edicts costs unity i feel no urge to use them. They provided very little, require to sacrifice pops, and now it also costs unity, which means i cant spend it for anything more viable... not dead cult civic is purely roleplay one with no pros at all - dead priests are weaker than regular priests, death temples uses more resources for maintenance, acolytes are sacrificed each time you use special edict, and dead cult has no alternative for high priests which breakes also this roleplay whenever you will build temple of faith or takes exalted priesthood civic. Shame...
*- Spiritualists -5%/-10% for edict costs does not include toggled edicts, so it works only for sacrifice edicts... nice.

And about the sprawl - This thread has a very good idea about how sprawl can be changed to favor tall, and not destroy wide at the same time.

Unseelie · Jan 31, 2022

Love the way unity costs grow.
Getting the second science ship, pretty cheap. Third, still acceptable. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh? Well, for that sort of scaling, I'm really making choices. Explore the whole sector...ooor get some traditions. Very nicely played.

yarpus · Jan 31, 2022

Since Robots got free dispense from empire sprawl penalties could we look for something similiar for Megacorps?

fourteenfour · Jan 31, 2022

Campaigns still do not have a appropriate costs.

Recycling campaign would set me back 86 energy per month current prices because my Edict penalty is 330% mostly because I have 200 pops. Those 200 pops consume 90 Consumer Goods (CG) and I use about the same for jobs. CGs cost about 2.4 on the market meaning the campaign cost me 35.4 CGs equivalent.

So buying a ten percent reduction in CG usage is four times the cost of the consumer goods I would save.

No, sprawl penalties are still too extreme across the board. You really need to go back to square one and determine what you are trying to do. If you are trying to reign in tech rushes then focus on tech and only on tech.

Go look at your own wiki, there are TWENTY TWO bonuses you can acquire to boost empire wide tech and while you certainly won't get them all its very easily to net +20 to +40 percent tech boost just from those! This on top of leader bonuses of +5 to +15 and assist research bonuses.

No, if you want to reign in tech rushes then reduce the bonuses to much smaller amounts. Really, between leader and empire bonuses I have some at +100 total at only year 54. That kind of makes a tech rush the best use of my resources.

Example

Leader specialties. Maniacal currently +5 + leader level*2 . Spark of Genius is +10 and having the right specialty is +15
So to reign them in I suggest the following

+1% per level
Maniacal adds +1 per level
Spark of Genius +1 per level
Specialty is +3 per level

so while they start out much lower if you reach peak leader level you would have a higher bonus but this would later in the game.

Then take all the empire wide bonuses and halve them.

then finally take base research from each job to +2 instead of +4 .... then walk back the anomaly bonus research or reduced how fast stored research is consumed.

Just lay off this sprawl crap, please. I want to expand in my 4x game and not be given the impression I am playing it wrong

Numida · Jan 31, 2022

Planetary ascension levels are garbage:
With the current effects of planetary designations, you are limited to half of options, because the most important, namely industrial, forge, factory, tech, and fortress worlds, do not provide any production bonuses. The upkeep reduction is laughable, and build speed is and always has been a joke. And I haven't even touched the ring world designations. The only exception is tech designation on habitats, and only on habitats. Why do habitats have it and planets don't, and why only tech is a mystery to me.

Unseelie · Jan 31, 2022

The planetary ascension sprawl reduction doesn't make any sense to me.

Every planet is worth 10 sprawl from colony, 20-50 sprawl from districts, and up to..oh, call it 80 sprawl from pops.

that's a total sprawl potential of 140...and we can use the ascension to reduce the colony sprawl....which is already the lowest sprawl available. If it reduced the sprawl contribution of the planet as a whole, including pops and districts, that would be one thing. As it is, I can't see it ever being a useful way to reduce sprawl.

Sumutherguy · Jan 31, 2022

So long as research remains the best means of increasing production of almost everything (minerals, energy, food, research, alloys, consumer goods, even unity with the capital techs and auto-curating vault) tech-rushing will always be the optimal strategy. Adding more uses for unity is nice, but unity and tech will remain imbalanced until production boosting techs are nerfed.

finifef · Jan 31, 2022

Good changes. Finally Rogue Servitors got some attention but still, only way to produce unity as a non RS ME is to get MP civic and spam uplink nodes (They have ridiculous upkeep). Please rework ME unity production. It is very bad in it's current state.

MGONG · Jan 31, 2022

So Robots get boosted slightly. can we get some love for megacorps?

Dementor4 · Jan 31, 2022

Did you guys fix the hivemind memorialist bug? I don't see it explicitly in the patch notes anywhere, though I concede that the one note about a memorialist fix may have also included the hivemind issue. I'll go ahead and give it a try.

EDIT: Nope! Still broken. Which sucks because the game I started to test it out I found three relic worlds pretty quickly. Please fix this you guys!

Eddi · Jan 31, 2022

My game is now approaching midgame, so this is my impression of the early game:

i really like the change that moving pops now uses unity, using influence was always such a high cost that usually put me off from ever using it.

what i don't like is the complete removal of empire sprawl mitigation. it's now (again) just a number that keeps growing, it doesn't offer me any player involvement, so i just ignore it. having to build infrastructure to maintain a large empire gave some sense of fulfilment that is now missing.

Feynvask · Jan 31, 2022

Unseelie said:
The planetary ascension sprawl reduction doesn't make any sense to me.

Every planet is worth 10 sprawl from colony, 20-50 sprawl from districts, and up to..oh, call it 80 sprawl from pops.

that's a total sprawl potential of 140...and we can use the ascension to reduce the colony sprawl....which is already the lowest sprawl available. If it reduced the sprawl contribution of the planet as a whole, including pops and districts, that would be one thing. As it is, I can't see it ever being a useful way to reduce sprawl.

After some testing it does appear to reduce all sprawl generated on planet (the colony, districts and pops).

But at 5% reduction per ascension level it's hardly worth it, especially if you already get sprawl reduction from other sources as it is multiplicative reduction. I'm playing a pacifist, beacon of liberty game got psionics and harmony tree complete (total -50% pop sprawl), and from my 61 pop 19 district capital each ascension level removes just over 2 sprawl, without those reductions it would be 3.46 sprawl reduction per ascension.
Much like the bonuses to designations it leaves a lot to be desired.

3.3 Unity Open Beta UPDATED Feedback Megathread [EXTENDED TO FEB 7]

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