[2023] Stellaris Dev Diary #299 - Civics, Origins, and Traditions

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Hello and welcome back to my little corner in the Arctic! It’s Marek again, and today I will showcase some of the new empire creation stuff we made for you. I bet you already suspected from the title that it will be about Civics, Origins (or, Origin to be precise) and Traditions!

Watch the video Dev Diary:


Civics focused on leaders… but not always
Doing our design run on the potential civics, we had to take into account a few different things:

• We should focus on civics, effects and modifiers targeting leaders in some way
  
• We also want to add new ways for players to play their empire
  
• We need to remember to strengthen the fantasy for certain playstyles, that are still not present in the game

So we decided to do everything - instead of being content with just going 1-2 civics per empire type. That’s why we ended up with… 8 unique civics (if you count copies of civics which are just an adjusted version for different empire types - then the number is 12), sprinkled around Standard Empires, Megacorps, Hive Minds and Machine Intelligence.

Vaults full of knowledge
For our most iconic civic, we picked the one which allows you to store the knowledge of your leaders, to enhance your future leaders. To sum it up a bit, every leader who manages to survive up to level 8, will give a bonus to the unique building provided by the civic - where the story, experience or knowledge of this leader will be stored for future generations.


All this knowledge, just enter the vault and search for it

They will be like us… either they like it, or not
The next civic, we decided to make something which would showcase some of our more fancy traits as soon as possible. But I also wanted to play an empire which embarks on a holy war to turn everyone into a proper clone of my ethics. And to have some war civic, which would not be useful for expansionists, conquer everything empires.

The whole idea around this civic is not being religious (hence you don’t need to be spiritualist to take it), but more a fanatic towards proselytizing your ethos to others. After all, they were converting people to their moral values on their planet, why would they stop doing that when in space?


Zealot trait is one of my favorite Veteran Traits, and it’s the only reason I made this civic, so I will get it on every Admiral - the above is just an excuse

But what about the profits?!
Let’s not forget about these players who like to play the MegaCorp, as we also have something fancy. Megacorp themes are usually centered around dystopian corporations running the country, either at the forefront, or from the shadows. Here we wanted to add a new brick to this player fantasy, which we felt was lacking.

And this is how Pharma State was made, giving a boost to Medical Workers and also unlocking a new Corporate Building for your fancy Branch offices! Be it an illicit place making people go bankrupt by providing aesthetic surgeries for credit or a company focused on making lives better (with a hefty profit margin, of course), the choice is yours to take.


We just invented new ways of preventing coughing! Instead of standard 7 days treatment it will take only 1 week to get rid of it, so definitely worth the 50% increase in price!

Profits are not everything! (what?)
The efficiency of the processes is also critical for any MegaCorporation success.
Inefficient work can lead to serious mismanagement, loss of profits (well, so there is the profit part) and a potential loss of “worker of the month” status. After all, you are not just a cog in the machine. You are a very precise cog, which keeps the company afloat!


The superb organization skills of this MegaCorp allows it to hire more cogs, er I mean leaders.

Something for Gestalts?
Gestalts are, in a way, the opposite of Galactic Paragons DLC - which is centered around individuals, their growth and path to glory / power / wealth / levels. So we came with these two civics, focused on making their leaders a bit more “individual” compared to other gestalts. Both Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences with these civics will give more freedom of thought to their leaders, allowing them to focus their consciousness on different matters - which should also help a bit with leader Unity upkeep, as the base change from 2 to 1 is effectively 50% leader upkeep reduction (which is then put into easier to get resources).

It’s almost like delegating by consuming more nutrients!


There is clearly no modifier after the upkeep change.


This one was easier to make then the previous one, the hidden modifier is less obvious.

But that’s not 8 civics!
Well, where is the fun of speculating or exploring the civics by yourself? Here are some teasers about the missing ones (but also let me tell you that Vaults are present for every type of empire, just adjusted a bit for them).

There is no reward for guessing the civic and its effects, but you can always brag about it if you put your prediction in post and then it turns out to be true.

Can you spot what is wrong with this planet? I’m not asking about the Aristocratic Elite civic buildings.


Perfectly balanced building composition, as all things should be.

Here are some more, which we won’t go over super tiny details.
[EFFECT.RandomizeNamesOrder] Letters of Marque, Neural Vaults and Heroic Past.

Other civics, should be easy to connect them to the names below

To give them some descriptions:
Heroic Past puts the empire into something like legendary / heroic figure worship, which is focused on creating better leaders faster than other empires. Taking this civic, the empire shows that it’s dedicated to growing their citizens into exceptional individuals who will lead it to a great future! (or to die when entering the system with Ether Drake by accident - we do not promise that your leaders will actually survive to become true legends)

Letters of Marque is our take on the fantasy around pirates working for big MegaCorp, helping them in dealing with anything which requires firepower. Why spend money on fighting piracy, where you can spend money on hiring pirates to do your bidding? Be it raiding your neighbors or… keeping other pirates in check.

The Neural Vaults are an adjusted version of Vaults of Knowledge, so you can extract memories from efficient drones and then use these memories in creating more powerful leaders.

Yes, I thought that giving 1 screenshot per civic would bloat the DD with too many pictures. And yes, I know that you can guess the MegaCorp civic by its color.


One to Rule Them All - Galactic Paragon ruler origin

Under One Rule is a semi-story origin, with a lot of different outcomes based on the empire composition and in-game choices. If someone asked me what was the inspiration, I would say a certain person from the Invincible series (his name starts with O) - and some historical characters, like Charlemagne.

But the main theme is about an empire interconnected with an exceptional individual who, instead of unifying peacefully, unified the planet by… other means. Imagine the New World Order First Contact event, but at a later date, with a ruler who actually succeeded in staying in power. This exceptional leader is the Luminary of the empire, the one who brought the new age, and promised the glory of the stars to his or her people (or it). I guess you get it by now ;)


Beware of your actions!

As we had time to do only one Origin, we decided to follow the more story-like approach BUT! We tried to not go the way of the story-story only. It’s more of a road of the Luminary leader to fulfill his destiny, which is in the player's hands. There are 4 (or more, depending on how you count it) different outcomes based on the player choices, with a special route which I used to call “I don’t care about the story that much”, which bypasses a lot of story content by also bypassing a lot of potential power gains.

For those who will see the Dictatorial requirement and are baffled why they can’t be imperial with this Origin - as every story goes its own path, there are possibilities in game to pursue different goals than staying true to the Founding Myth (yes, this means that there are events which allows to change the Authority Type, and I’m not afraid to spoil them as they happen fairly quickly).


This isn't even my final form.

But let’s talk about more mechanical aspects - the main feature of the Origin is to give the player a strong starting ruler, with a unique set of powerful starting council traits (all can be tiered up to tier III, so there is room to grow the leader). These traits, in opposition to standard council traits, are not based on Leader Class, but instead on Empire Ethics. To say it short - there are 14 traits to choose from.


There are also unique negative traits which might put some “bad mojo” into your Luminary - and they are tied to Empire Ethics as well.

And remember to not be overly tyrannical to your people… or maybe there is a hidden power in being the evil ruler? Or maybe that’s just a trick from me so you will use colossus on your capital planet (but seriously, don’t do that)?

We are close to the finish line now, so as tradition would make us do, let’s talk about our last feature in this Dev Diary.

Tradition Trees, Aptitude and Statecraft

Our choice for themes of the tradition trees was quite easy, and let’s be honest with that. We have leader rework and new Council features. I bet you already see where it is going.

Let’s start with the Leader Tradition Tree, our Aptitude


This was supposed to be a funny Aptitude-Altitude pun, but I deleted it and forgot how it went.
With the new Aptitude, your empires will focus themselves on leaders, giving them bigger and smaller buffs, with the EXP rate being the most obvious one. It's a solid tree if one wants to focus on leaders, but if it’s not your thing, then the tree is possible best to stay away from.


Starting Traits make up for a potential stronger leader at the end, as they will be able to get 1 more trait compared to leaders without this bonus.


Champions of the Empire is the fanciest one you can unlock from the tree.

Next one is the Statecraft tree!


I see 5 pictures, and in 4 of them someone is doing something with their hands. I petition the 5th picture to also include at least one hand.

It’s easy to pinpoint it to Council feature, having stronger councilors and, somewhat, also boosting leaders. Although, if your empire is not focused on leaders, it might still profit from the non-leader oriented effects and modifiers to build up a strong government to run the show. So, to sum it up, it’s about… leading a state. Fitting name, is it not?


Effective Councilor Skill is my favorite modifier in the whole DLC. I want to thank Karl who fought for this modifier.


This bonus is pretty nice when you have a lot of leaders and play around with Agendas.

So! We are at the end of the road for this Dev Diary. And we are pretty close to the release date, there are a few things I would like to say to you: Speculate! Write posts on forums! Play Stellaris! And have fun doing so! :D

By the way, a gentle reminder to Wishlist Galactic Paragons[pdxint.at] on Steam!