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written by Eladrin

Welcome back! We hope youve all had a wonderful few weeks.

Today well start with some more information about the goals of the Unity Rework mentioned in Dev Diary 215 (and briefly in 234), some updates on how things have been going so far, and our plans going forward.

Please note: All values and screen captures shown here are still very much in development and subject to change.

[h3]Identified Problems and Design Goals[/h3]

Currently in Stellaris, Unity is an extremely weak resource that can generally be ignored, and due to the current implementation of Admin Capacity, the Empire Sprawl mechanic is largely toothless - leading to wide tech rushing being an oppressively powerful strategy. Since Unity is currently very easily generated through incidental means and provides minimal benefits, Empires have little need to develop a Unity generation base, and Spiritualist ethics are unattractive.

Influence is currently used for many internal and external interactions, making it a valuable resource, but it sometimes feels too limiting.

Our basic design goals for the Unity Rework can be summarized as:

• Unity should be a meaningful resource that represents the willingness of your empire to band together for the betterment of society and their resilience towards negative change.
  
  
  • Unity should be more valuable than it is now, and empires focused on Unity generation should be interesting to play.
    
    • Spiritualist empires should have a satisfying niche to exploit and be able to feel that they are good at something.
      
    • The number of sources of incidental Unity from non-dedicated jobs should be reduced.
      
    • Empires that do not focus on Unity (but do not completely ignore it) should still be able to acquire their Ascension Perks by the late game.
    
    
  • Reward immersive decisions with Unity grants whenever possible.
    
  • Internal empire matters should generally utilize Unity.
    
    • Provide more ways to spend Unity.
      
    • Rebalance the way edicts work (again).
  
  
• Reduce the oppressive impact of tech rushing by reintroducing some rubber-banding mechanics.
  
• Make tall play more viable, preferring to balance tall vs. wide play in favor of distinctiveness, and emphasizing differences between hives, machines, megacorps, and normal empires. (This does not necessarily mean that tall Unity-focused empires will be the equal of wide Research-focused ones, but they should have some things that they are good at and be more competitive in general than they are now.)
  
• In the late game, Unity-focused empires should have a benefit to look forward to similar to the repeatable technologies a Research focused empire would have.
  

• The Capital designation, for instance, now also reduces Empire Sprawl generated by Pops on the planet.

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
  
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
  
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.