Yeah, it seems that you can get extreme stacking modifiers from year 1 as any empire type. Trade, tech, unity. You'll have an endless supply and outscale every AI in 30 years.

Agreed, trade is very strong right now. I haven't felt it was overwhelming early game - other empires can get similar results with other resources if you stack enough into it. It definitely gets out of control mid-game when you unlock the Economical Ascension trade policy. That will be going away in v13 along with the rest of Unique Ascension Perks mod.

That said, I'm completely open to balance suggestions and further discussion. If you think certain civics, origins, or mechanics are too strong, let me know which ones and why and I can start making adjustments to bring everything in line.

Which particular civics are you using?

Originally posted by Terminator:

Which particular civics are you using?

I used Banking Corporation, Baking Giant and Trading Posts. I wasn't really aware how strong trade value was so I wasn't really min maxing anything. I'm more of a roleplayer

I believe those 3 alone are massive in terms of output.

@Sindusk why remove unique ascension perks? I think it's a good mod :)

Here's what I wrote for the patch notes of v13 regarding removal of Unique Ascension Perks:

Major mod removal that was difficult to make the decision to remove. The problem with Unique Ascension Perks is that it exacerbates some of the most non-performant parts of the game. It can generate huge quantities of new pops with minimal investment (robotic assemblers, reproductive mastery), trivialize some of the management of your colonies (chosen ruler), and even severely increase the power of trade empires (economical mastery). My original intent was to disable everything I felt was out of place, but as I try more and more of the ascension perks, I begin to realize that these perks can be broken in one instance and useless in another. It's going to be impossible to keep this mod balanced while preventing it from being the best or worst mod in the collection. I may end up reviewing it way later down the line, but for now it has no place. I have changed all edits I did to the mod to check if it's active now, meaning it should remain reasonably compatible if added again.

As far as the trade discussion goes, the only civic there that I'm even remotely tracking is Banking Giant. That one can get extremely out of control without even having your empire focus on trade value. This is because it's applied as a planet modifier, meaning any buildings and jobs on the planet increasing trade value will also apply to the Banking Giant income.

I don't want to nerf the value, because any number changes would result in it being useless up to a point, then being insane when enough energy credits were obtained. Moving the number just changes it from 100k to 1 million before it becomes insane, for example. It's conceptually the "rich get richer" philosophy, and no number will make that reasonable once the game reaches a certain point.

Instead, it needs a meaningful downside or counterbalance applied. I'm still thinking of ideas, but perhaps a reasonable size increase in market fee might work (like +30% to +50%). This would make you obtain high amounts of whatever you're targeting through policy, but now to buy lets say alloys, you're spending significantly more. If anyone has ideas on how to counterbalance it, I'm open to it, because I'd like to nerf the civic without reducing the number.

@Sindusk

It's sad to hear that you decided to remove Unique Ascension Perks. I would rather not pick the perk if I felt it's OP. Let other people have fun :(.

BTW, what happened to Utopia starting system, IIRC it had Stahl? planet type. Wanted to play in v12 and it's gone :(

There's a tradition, when you take over a pre-light civilization or just another civilization, you're given unity. In multiplayer, in this way, you can make yourself a huge amount of unity. By giving another player a planet with a population and he gives that planet back to you and you get unity for that

Originally posted by Sindusk:

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Instead, it needs a meaningful downside or counterbalance applied. I'm still thinking of ideas, but perhaps a reasonable size increase in market fee might work (like +30% to +50%). This would make you obtain high amounts of whatever you're targeting through policy, but now to buy lets say alloys, you're spending significantly more. If anyone has ideas on how to counterbalance it, I'm open to it, because I'd like to nerf the civic without reducing the number.

Perhaps something like the more you have saved up the more people dislike for being to greedy, or hoarding too much, so you're much more likely to get declared war on.
I like the idea that saving up is both good and bad so you have to balance it yourself depending on the circumstances

@Nightliss: Yeah, I understand that players enjoy UAP. Which Is why I specifically made sure to keep all compatibility with it integrated, so if it's added again it should just work immediately. I'm not sure what the Utopia system was, but if you know which mod adds it, I'd be willing to look into it.

@Smont: That seems like an oversight. Do you remember which tradition that is? I can add an exception to prevent it from occurring when the planet is traded.

@Southheim: Something like -trust cap per stored energy credit sounds quite severe. It means that the player would be public enemy number 1 in the galaxy later in the game, with no ability to prevent it. If it's happiness, the same problem occurs where your entire empire is at 0% happiness when you get far enough into the game. It's likely better to aim for a static penalty instead, since anything else will scale extremely harshly later on. The one scaling aspect that might make sense is to have a "tax" on energy credits based on the amount of credits stored. So for every 100 energy credits stored, it gives +6 trade value and -3 energy credits or something. Then it provides incentive to scale the trade value high enough to keep it stronger than the energy credit reduction. Value might be too much, but just a thought.

Originally posted by Sindusk:

@Southheim: Something like -trust cap per stored energy credit sounds quite severe. It means that the player would be public enemy number 1 in the galaxy later in the game, with no ability to prevent it. If it's happiness, the same problem occurs where your entire empire is at 0% happiness when you get far enough into the game. It's likely better to aim for a static penalty instead, since anything else will scale extremely harshly later on. The one scaling aspect that might make sense is to have a "tax" on energy credits based on the amount of credits stored. So for every 100 energy credits stored, it gives +6 trade value and -3 energy credits or something. Then it provides incentive to scale the trade value high enough to keep it stronger than the energy credit reduction. Value might be too much, but just a thought.

My thinking was that the ability to prevent it would be to simply spend it, and that's where the self balance would come in, you'd have to decide between - relations or profit. But on second thought maybe it'd just be tedious and not really worth it.
What about the drawback being - storage space? That way you'd need to invest a lot into storage districts, with the right numbers it could strike a nice balance?

Interesting idea but doesn't solve the problem at hand. Banking Giant would still be too useful early when the storage isn't being maxed out, and then proceed to be equally ridiculous later on when the player has enough storage to get proper value from it.

Originally posted by Sindusk:

Interesting idea but doesn't solve the problem at hand. Banking Giant would still be too useful early when the storage isn't being maxed out, and then proceed to be equally ridiculous later on when the player has enough storage to get proper value from it.

I was thinking of a exponential reduction of job production with a maximum at -100% for 1M energy stored (could be fine tuned at playtest). It's well counterbalanced with others modifiers that adds on it while still enabling a trade empire fantasy. What's your thought on that ?