Hello! This devlog is a summary of the plans I have for the major 2.0 update for Empires Expanded. This one is quite the doozy, so let’s begin:
What’s the Plan?
EMEX was originally made in 2020, known as Civics Expanded. You can guess what it largely did, but due to both my initial lack of programming knowledge and experience, as well as my very young age, a lot of the mod was… of a low quality, to say the least. At least for me.
In 2021, most of the older parts of the mod were updated, and at the end of 2022, almost all the civics had a major overhaul to bring them to where they are now, pretty much. Newer civics and origins have always shown a disparity compared to the older, less developed parts of the mod, but now, it’s almost all good. Almost.
Firstly, a more minor thing: while some of the newer features especially have some unique effects, the mod is largely “meh” in terms of uniqueness. While my primary philosophy has been trying to match vanilla Stellaris in terms of mechanics and aesthetics, I think it’d be a good idea to try to branch out, akin to the Gigastructural Engineering & More mod.
Furthermore, Seeded Evolution and Plagued Society are the origins which were in mod first. Hell, they even predate origins, being civics in the past. Despite a decent fresh-up in 2021, they remain largely, well, mediocre. So, what are the issues, and what will change?
Seeded Evolution
Problems
– Not a very dynamic origin, remaining boring after several playthroughs
– Written in a lacklustre way
– Very bland mechanically, effectively just being an easier precursor
So what are we going to do?
– Instead of a linear story, as you play through the game, every few years you will be given a choice between 3 event chains out of a possible 6. You choose one of these to complete. Each chain will have branching options, choices and paths.
– Once 4 or 5 are completed, the final event chain to find the Seeder homesystem will commence.
– The story will not be fully clear at first, with each event chain revealing part of the story and events that transpired in the past.
Plagued Society
Problems
– The entire storyline. Yeah, it’s aged, largely irrelevant and realistically is unnecessary.
– The tech-tree related to restoring your homeworld and healing your species is long, convoluted and hard to follow.
– After completing the tech-tree, you had to complete several, boring special projects, and nothing else.
So what are we going to do?
– The new tech-tree will no longer require any vanilla technologies, except for Genome Mapping, which will start off the tech-tree.
– The actual tech-tree is not as long, more clear and requires less time to complete.
– All the previous event chains are removed but there will be several new events relating to completing technologies and restoring your homeworld.
New Mechanic – Background Civics
What are they?
One thing I’ve been pondering over for a while, thanks to the workings of my brain, is how a lot of the origins in the game are less actual origins, but more “backgrounds”.
For example, Mechanists and Galactic Doorstep don’t exactly relate to how a species or empire formed, though they do perhaps make up an important part of one’s history. This was only made more confusing with the whole Eager Explorers civics; these also are not quite origins, yet they’re more close to them than normal civics.
So! Here’s my proposal. Background civics expand upon the history and make-up of an empire, always offering many unique effects.
So give us some examples!
– All versions of Eager Explorers are now background civics
– Existing mod civics such as Sovereign Nations, Planetary Cache and Nanomechanical Innards are now background civics (these all have some variety of new effects)
– Some brand new background civics include Biological History (Machine Intelligence), Interplanetary Monopsony (Corporate) and Synthetic Warfare
New Mechanic – Synergies
What are they?
A passing thought came to me at some point, when lightly pondering about how to differentiate the mod to become a bit more unique. I’ve seen some older mods adding civics have one or two additional effects when combined with certain civics.
What if I developed this into a full mechanic? The main thing to be careful of is synergy effects that somehow replace existing civic effects. Otherwise, players could be dissuaded from using certain civic combinations; so, most of the synergy effects are quite minor, providing a small boon or minor changes as an overall improvement.
As of now, there are 11 planned synergies to be added. More will be added later on once we have gathered some feedback. Thanks to only having to change a civic’s description, vanilla-game civics can be included in synergies without overwrites!
So give us some examples!
1. Supranational Council + Sovereign Nations
– Council Halls provide the Diplomat job instead of the Planetary Councillor job
2. Machine Cult + Machinarchy
– Must have the AI Worship policy option
– Ruler also has the Worshipped trait
– Decadent Overseer jobs also provide +1 Engineering Research
3. Antique Appropriators + Avid Explorers
– Can use the Artifact Research action, spending Minor Artifacts to gain a minor boost to a random technology field
New Mechanic – Radical Civics
What are they?
Old Stellaris players will remember the days before civics, back with the days of the Warp Drive and no alloys. Before civics, there were instead a large variety of governments, such as democracies and kingdoms focused on various ethics. Plus, there were some special government types, known as Advanced Governments.
This returned to my mind one day, and thanks to my conversations with a dev who mentioned ideas about bringing them back somehow, I took the initative to do so myself, in the form of radical civics!
These are civics locked behind the Radical Sovereignty ascension perk (which also adds another civic slot!). They cost 2 civic slots and all match a certain ethic. An empire can choose 1 radical civic, and only those matching their ethics can be choosen (unless you are a gestalt consciousness).
So what’s special about them?
Here’s an the general gist of what each will do:
– Restricts certain policies, such as war or economic policies
– Provides a unique casus belli and wargoal
– Powerful modifiers, but some penalties too
Most of them follow a similar structure in terms of effects and restrictions.
New Unique Civics
Over 12 new “normal” civics (and by that I mean non-radical and non-background) will be added too; these will all have some sort of special or detailed effect. Here are a few examples of the many, you’ll get more details in the next devlog:
- Open Source Software (Machine Intelligence) / Global Relay Synapses (Hive Mind)
- Subversive Stratagems / Subversive Syndicate (Corporate)
- Cliques of War
- Gene Cult
- Educational Zealots / Educational Institute (Corporate)
Miscellanous Additions
- The Master AI has several new outcomes, such as in the form of a paragon
- Minor value changes to several civic modifiers
- The Execute Council Jurisdiction edict is now a policy
- Some civics with previously no unique effects have 1 or 2 new changes/additions
A big change is also coming, code-side. Previously, a lot of civics and other parts of the mod have no sort of identifier that matches them to Empires Expanded. Recent additions have emex_ as a prefix to their IDs, but older content also needs this to ensure compatibility and allow easier debugging. This would break existing saves, but I have accounted for this.
Everything requiring the new IDs have been updated to have them, but the older versions of the features (without the emex_) ID still remain in the code to ensure that existing saves work fine, though these cannot be selected for new games. This is also true for the updated origins: existing saves will use the previous event chains, while new saves will use the updated versions.
Quite a long read, eh? That is the general summary of the content in the new update, but of course there will be a lot more content and details not mentioned here, such as more background and normal civics, or some traits and ascension perks.
Expect another devlog coming soon, which will shed light on some of the actual civics and specific contents of the update.
Thanks for reading, as always. See you later!
-MadeinCanada
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