Hello again, here’s this month’s instalment of the Empires Expanded Devlog. This was supposed to come out in October, but I was all caught up with a lot of other things, including studies!
Last time I mentioned that we will be going over the other changed origin, but the plan has changed; we will be going over that at a later date! Maybe the next one, but maybe not…
Today, we’re looking at (some of!) the new civics. Remember that everything shown is not final, with details subject to change and improvement.
Cliques of War
Requirements:
– Default
– NOT some degree of Pacifist
The Cliques of War civic focuses on the leaders and rulers of your empire, basing their upkeep largely on energy credits. The idea behind this civic is that the empire you play as is actually composed of many individuals vying for power and riches.
Only some leaders will have the special Influential Warlord trait, so as to not make the task of keeping track of them too hard; the idea is that you keep these more voracious leaders under control. But to truly convey the effect on your society, their effects expand to jobs on your planets too!
Leaders
While all your leaders have a reduced unity upkeep in exchange for energy credits (and remember, upkeep scales with leader level!), your more powerful warlords have entirely no unity upkeep. After all, they’re hardly working for a common good or purpose, they just more and more from you!
If you choose to set them as the governor of a planet/sector, they will provide a moderate boost to Local Warlords, a new Ruler job. This is of course at the expensive of increasing their upkeep; naturally they need more funds to get more out of them.
However, the reduction in crime means that they do overall improve planets with many Local Warlords.
Local Warlords
Below you can see the effect of TWO Local Warlords. As a base, each one produces 4 alloys + 5 unity, with an upkeep of 2 energy + 0.1 influence.
Combining the unity output with the excess unity per month due to reduced leader upkeep, this civic could be quite useful for a unity-focused empire.
While Local Warlords will probably not make up the bulk of unity/alloy production, they provide a good amount in large numbers, which means you can focus on energy credits more than otherwise necessary.
But maybe you don’t want Local Warlords on all your planets. Not only could energy income be getting low, especially in wartime, but you only have a small amount of monthly influence you can afford to spend.
The Encourage Feudalism and Consolidate Order decisions allow you to adjust their numbers a bit more to your liking. The base amount of Local Warlords from the civic is not much, so you can focus on having more on specific planets with Encourage Feudalism; their output is even boosted, at the expense of some unity and pop growth.
Consolidate Order takes a while longer to enact, but every 20 pops, 1 Local Warlord job is removed. The tooltip is not very clear (expect a change in that!), but this effectively allows for the removal of at least half of the Local Warlords on the planet.
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Overall, I’d say this civic could be risky to choose, with its effectiveness largely banking on your influence per month. Some numbers will likely need tweaking and testing to make sure this civic works well without micromanaging and the like.
Let me know what you think on this one especially on the Steam page (or anywhere else I can see).
Hegelian Tyranny
Requirements:
– Default
– Some degree of Authoritarian
You may have noticed that the Cliques of War civic has taken some elements of the old(ish) Anarcho-Tyranny civic, namely the whole shtick with “warlords”. Well, this Hegelian Tyranny is inspired by its focus on using crime to benefit your empire!
This new implementation recquires no overwrites! Plus, I think it’s a bit more intuitive/less messy. Having crime creates more Corrupt Official jobs on your planets, which is the focus of this civic, alongside boosting rulers (and specialists, somewhat). You may find this plays quite well alongside Cliques of War as a result…
Corrupt Officials
You will find that Corrupt Officials actually do not produce much (hardly a surprise), with a base production of 2 unity and upkeep of 2 energy. Not great, but their modifiers are much more important.
Note that the above modifiers have since been changed! Though they are similar. The double trade value modifiers are quite confusing and unnecessary.
However, the Corrupt Politicians’ purpose is to counteract the effects of crime, by somewhat boosting stability, preventing any real problems arising easily; anything that does can be dealt with by the military, of course! Even more importantly is the boost to ruler output, which can have some interesting results, especially with unity (as most ruler jobs focus on that).
Combining this civic with civics such as Technocracy, Merchant Guilds, or Exhalted Priesthood can result in some strong boons to science, trade value or unity production respectively. In the future, I’d like more ruler jobs to be introduced by civics and other means, as I feel it’s a rather barren strata usually.
Other Details
But what if I want more crime? More crime means more jobs that boost my rulers! Now that’s the Hegelian Tyranny spirit.
While crime isn’t a massively difficult thing to increase (unemployment does the job well), having a more intentional and controlled way of doing so (without losing out on valuable pops working in their valuable jobs) is a great way of giving the player more control.
And as a nice little bonus, you get a new trade policy as an option, which plays well with the slight boost to trade value (and again especially with Cliques of War).
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Overall, I like this version of Anarcho-Tyranny a lot better. While it’s not as drastic as it was, I still think it allows for some cool and unique combinations and builds without sometimes being a pain to manage with the high amounts of upkeep and excessive number of criminals.
The many aspects of synergy with Cliques of War is very much intended; try them both out for the true Anarcho-Tyranny v3™ experience.
Subversive Stratagems
Requirements:
– Default / MegaCorp
Inspired by the Behind the Scenes origin from the official modjam of 2020, Subversive Stratgems (or Subversive Syndicate, for MegaCorps) focuses on espionage and some sneaky mechanics.
The modifiers strongly encourage a diplomatic-focused build, but not necessarily positive diplomacy. Espionage and rivalries are important aspects to utilise too!
Shadow Wars
The Shadows Wars edict costs 100 influence to enact, and has a rather hefty upkeep of 1 influence per month (though this is reduced by the synergy as seen above). As such, you definitely want to toggle it strategically to maximise influence while still making sure you get what you want out of it. Just don’t forget to disable it when you’re not prepared…
As you can see, if a war is declared on any one of your rivals, you have the ability to join (as long as you have communications with the attacking empire, of course).
Joining the war is simple, but if you wish to get your allies involved, then there will be a moderate cost of 200 influence; this number may be changed, as it could be very easily done in the late-game, though it’s a tactical decision earlier on.
Your enemies will no doubt be upset… But at least the empire you’re helping will appreciate your support and like you more.
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Overall, I quite enjoy this civic’s mechanics; it’s relatively simple, but it is can be such a big change in playstyle. More than anything, it goes to show how basic the war system is (war update when?), so allowing new functions like this can make the world of a difference.
Open Source Software
Requirements:
– Hive Mind / Machine Intelligence
The Open Source Software/Global Relay Synapses civic (for both gestalt types) is another diplomacy-focused civic, but with a twist. While your empire has improved relations and trust with other empires (allowing for easier diplomacy), your gestalt intelligence is focused on acquiring knowledge and improving.
As such, research agreements are doubly beneficial, though the influence you save on those will be used up elsewhere!
Collaboration
Your empire relies on improvement gained from the collective knowledge of many individuals. Their diverse knowledge and background makes the best experience!
Do note, however, that this trade action will 100% be changed before release. As it stands, empires will almost always accept (why shouldn’t they? It’s free influence!), but of course this makes it way too easy.
The idea is that the empire is offering some workers and researchers to help you improve, so a small penalty to pop growth and research will make more sense, and make it a decision for any empire that is offered.
But what do you get out of it? The Decentralised Development empire modifier gets stronger! This effect scales with all current collaborations you have. The above is the effect of having a collaboration with 1 empire.
The principal boons are to your research speed and complex drone output, though the reduction the energy upkeep can be quite helpful, especially at larger numbers. The influence penalty, however, can also scale up pretty quick.
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Trade Actions aren’t really something I’ve tried out before, but they can be pretty interesting. While diplomacy modding remains largely implausible or not-very-compatible with other mods, this feature is a (somewhat) recent addition which is easy to do.
Numbers will change as mentioned before, but balancing this might be a challenge! Let me know if you have any ideas for that.
Educational Zealots
Requirements:
– Default / MegaCorp
Another civic for default empires and MegaCorps (as Educational Institution). While the list of effects above is a bit long, in reality this civic is more a passive one, with which the player does not have to interact with much.
Educators
The standard Educator is a specialist job, and is much more common than the High Educators of your empire. As a base, they produce 4 of each research, and 2 unity. Not huge, but consider that they are created every 20 pops per planet (as long as a High University is present).
That means that 4 planets with 40 pops will have a base of 32 research points for effectively free, as these jobs are created without any district/building slots being used (with the exception of the High University of course).
Below is that High Educator job! A small increase in research production, with 6 instead of 4, but a rather large jump to 8 unity from 2! They also produce a small amount of amenities instead of boosting leader XP gain, which can prove useful in boosting stability and happiness.
Though, these jobs are much rarer, with only 1 per 50 pops. On a standard planet, you would probably only have 1, maybe 2.
The High University building, seen below, is of course the reason you can have all these jobs. They also provice an additional Educator job initially, just in case it’s built before you even have 20 pops on that planet.
Only 1 can be built per planet, but they also boost something else. The civic greatly increases the chances of leaders having the Eagerness trait, and that’s in addition to other traits, so it’s not like it replaces another trait the leader may have had otherwise.
The High University building also then boosts the chances of your leaders starting with another trait, the Adaptionist trait, which is a flatout boost to XP gain to that leader. Though, the chances may be quite low.
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But that’s it for this civic. I keep wondering about the numbers, as jobs producing both unity and research in larger amounts could be easy broken, but the somewhat reduced numbers of Educators and High Educators means that the system can’t really be tampered with much.
Either way, do let me know what you think of it!
And that’s all for today. A bit more of a comprehensive look at some of the content coming in the 2.0 update for sure. A really BIG thing I want with the civics of the mod, is some uniqueness. More than just modifiers of course, but even going as far as introducing new mechanics or playstyles.
Civics are at the core of Empires Expanded, so some new ones would be expected. In addition to the new mechanics, of course!
However, this is not all there is. Many of the older civics in the mod have been changed, updated and overall improved (again!). While most of the civics in the mod already are in a good state, there are still a few which lack any sort of unique effect or detail which tend to be present for the newer civics added by both the mod and Paradox.
Plus, some civics are quite redundant, or make more sense when merged with another. So, the list of changes is quite lengthy, and will get its own devlog.
Thanks for reading as always,
-MadeinCanada
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