written by Eladrin

Hi all! Overlord's released!

Thanks for playing it and providing so much feedback.

As our AI programmer likes to say, "This is pretty good, but it can be even better!" and I want to talk about our short term plans on the Stellaris team.

We're planning a hotfix in the short term that addresses primary issues as quickly as we can, and a larger update with more fixes in a few weeks. (The larger update includes localization, I'll talk more about that one in this week's dev diary.)

A sneak peek of some of the things we're looking at for the hotfix include the following:

Stellaris 3.4.3 Partial Sneak Peek
[expand type=details]

• Tweaked AI acceptance of resource contribution terms, making them more likely to accept harsher tithes/subsidies.
  
• AI overlords and subjects will now be more likely to accept specialist subject types that disagree with their ethics.
  
• Rebalance trade weights for specialist subject leaders.
  
• Legacy Human portraits have been re-added as an option in empire creation.
  
• Fixed a bug with Tracking not countering Evasion properly.
  
• Subjects should no longer flip-flop between regular subject types and protectorate.
  
• Subjects should no longer be able to cause their Overlord to declare war against themselves.
  
• Fix for trade deals that are accepted and then canceled immediately.
  
• Fixed it being possible for a Revolt Situation to start and immediately cancel. (They will now only start if the planet is calculated to be currently capable of succeeding the revolt)
  
• Planets with Culture Shock can now only start a revolt situation after 8 years of unrest, rather than 1, as it could be quite hard to avoid a revolt on these planets.
  
• Cleaned up some unclear language in the tooltip for Revolt Situation progress (the one describing what you can do about it) (This only affects English localization until the next patch.)
  
• Diplomatic weight can no longer go negative.
  
• Fix a crash connected with resettling last pop of species.
  
• Fixed an issue where planet automation could not use resources from their local sector stockpile.
  
• Planet automation will now check that the unemployed pops can work the jobs that the automation would build, e.g. preventing specialist job creation for slave pops.
  
• Amenity job management can now activate even when there are no resources available for planet automation.
  
• Progenitor Nest is no longer removed when terraforming a planet into a hive-world.
  
• All resources provided for deficit bailouts now scale with the game year, instead of just those for the situation that completed.
  
• Adjusted the amount of research given by merc dividends.

[/expand]

This is not an exhaustive list of what will be in it, we've got a bunch of additional changes we're working on and investigating.

It's a pretty long list for a hotfix, and to be completely honest, that's my fault.

In our eagerness to get Overlord out to you in the best shape possible, I approved several changes and additions at the last minute that I really shouldn't have. Some of the threads have mentioned that we have some bugs in the launch version that weren't in the prerelease streams - that's completely accurate.

One example is a change that we made on code freeze day that changed how AI acceptance of tithes and subsidies worked in order to close an exploit that we identified - I should have let the exploit ship, known issued it, and given the change a proper QA and balance pass rather than rushing it in. I'll do so in the future.

Thank you for all the feedback, suggestions and bug reports. Please keep them coming.

We'll get this set of fixes (and more!) out to you as quickly as we reasonably can while minimizing the risk of introducing more problems, and will continue to work on making Overlord the best Stellaris expansion since Utopia.

Stellaris: Overlord is now available!

Realize your Grand Design with Stellaris: Overlord, the newest major expansion for Stellaris! Overlord brings with it many new features designed to unlock the next level of your Empire. Experience new Origins, build new Megastructures, interact with new Enclaves, and Specialize your Vassals’ role within your Empire!


Overlord will allow you to assign a Vassal Specialization to your subjects. Each Vassal Specialization has a specific focus: the Bulwark, which focuses on defense and military strength; the Prospectorium, which focuses on resource collection and production; and the Scholarium, which focuses on scientific advancement.

Each of these specializations will level up over time, unlocking unique new abilities available only for their chosen Vassal Specialization for you and your Vassals.

But beware: vassals now have Loyalty, and disloyal Vassals may swear Secret Fealty to another empire — and if you give them the opportunity, you may find yourself in an Allegiance War.


Holdings are buildings that are owned by the overlord but are established on a Subject’s planet. Overlord comes with a plethora of additional holding building options, as well as the ability to build multiple Holdings in a single Vassal’s space.

Holdings also have the ability to change your subject’s opinion of you, so choose wisely: Whether you become a benevolent overlord, or tightly grip the reigns of power, will be determined by your actions.


There are three new enclaves included in Overlord: the mysterious Shroudwalker enclave, the industrious Salvager Enclave, and the enterprising Mercenary Enclave.

The Shroudwalkers will, for a fee, reach into the Shroud to attempt to determine your fate. The Shroud is fickle, however, and whether this proves to be a boon to your empire is not guaranteed. Should they trust you, they may offer you the ability to purchase a Shroud Beacon, which allows your ships to take a shortcut through the Shroud.



Salvager Enclaves pursue Engineering as their natural calling. They will gladly take your “combat-proven” starships, and will even compensate you for the opportunity. They also regularly have many second-hand vessels for purchase, and can offer you a unique starbase building to speed up repairs, salvage your debris, and more!



The Mercenary Enclave is a change from what we normally know as an Enclave. The Mercenary Enclave is an enclave that you decide to host, as opposed to one you find in the unknowns of space. Rather than sending outdated ships for scrap or dismantling them, with Overlord, you gain the ability to form a Mercenary Enclave, who will take your ships and fight for coin instead of country.


One of the big complaints with Megastructures is that they come so late in the game. Overlord addresses this by adding three new Megastructures, with tech requirements that are lower in the tech tree than Mega Engineering. The Hyper Relay allows fast travel across your empire, the Quantum Catapult can send your fleets on a one-way trip to a portion of the galaxy, and Orbital Rings will allow you to have extra starbase capacity in a system, or provide bonuses to the planet it encircles.

Hyper Relays, when constructed in adjacent systems connected by a hyperlane, will allow fast travel across those systems. No longer will your fleets have to slog across an entire system, now they simply enter the Hyper Relay Network, and jump from Relay to Relay across your empire. You can also construct Hyper Relays in your Vassal’s space and travel through your allies’ Hyper Relay Network.



The Quantum Catapult allows its owner to fire selected fleets across the galaxy. Be warned that this process isn’t guaranteed, and sending multiple fleets can result in your forces spread across a sector — or even in uncharted or closed space — rather than orbiting your enemy’s homeworld as you intended.



Orbital Rings allow you to build taller than ever before. Orbital Ring installations can construct ships, optimize production on the planet below and even increase the living space on the planet they encircle.




In the Imperial Fiefdom Origin, your empire was met and subjugated by an advanced species before it developed faster-than-light travel. Now that you’ve discovered how to break the lightspeed barrier, your overlord will offer you the opportunity to choose your specialization. Will you be a loyal vassal and cater to your overlord’s whims, or throw off the shackles and become the overlord yourself?

With the Teachers of the Shroud Origin, your species has lived under the influence of a Shroudwalker Enclave for many years, developing your species’ latent Psionic potential. Now that you’ve taken your first steps out into the stars, they’ve shown you how to build a Shroud Beacon, offering a way to take a shortcut across the Shroud.

Your ancestors spent eons watching mysterious streaks in the night sky before the lights went dark. In Slingshot to the Stars, you can discover the device that caused these mysterious streaks, and bring to light the story of the empire that left the ruined Quantum Catapult behind.

Subterranean starts you off as a species forced to retreat underground. Whether for protection from predators, shelter from harmful radiation, or safe harbor from atmospheric storms: your species has lived underground for generations. Growing tired of just feasting on the mineral wealth of your home planet, now your species has their eyes set on the stars. Whatever the climate of the planets you find, you’ve spent generations preparing, and your species is ready to face the challenge.

Unlock the power of Offspring Leaders, with the Progenitor Hive Origin. Build unique buildings on your starbases, allowing congregations of Overseers to steer your ships and control the battle. Your leaders have the ability to draw on the collective experiences of the hive mind and incorporate this knowledge into their decision-making, giving them skills and depth of knowledge that single-minded species could only dream of. Progenitor hiveminds can also release sectors as vassals, under the guidance of one of their Offspring Leaders.



Realize your Grand Design with Stellaris: Overlord today!

Hello Stellaris Community!

Only two days till Overlord! If you're still dying to take a look at the new features coming in Overlord and the free 3.4 "Cepheus" update, do we have a treat for you:

Four Feature Highlight videos from our friend Ep3o!

Curb your desire to know more about Overlord, and learn more about Vassalization Contracts, Specialty Vassal types, the new Megastructures, a spoiler-free look at the new Enclaves, and finally the free features coming in the 3.4 "Cepheus" update!









Realize your Grand Design with Stellaris: Overlord on May 12th!

Wishlist Now and find out the minute it releases!

Hello Stellaris Community,

Today we have released the full patch notes for Overlord and the 3.4 “Cepheus” update. You can read them here, also happening today on the Official Stellaris Discord, you can join us for a Developer Q&A, starting at 1700 CEST. Ever wanted to ask a Stellaris Dev a question? Now's your chance!

We thought it would be a good idea to catch up with those members of our community who haven’t been closely following our dev diaries.

Today we’ll talk about some of the free features coming in the 3.4 “Cepheus” patch, releasing alongside Overlord on May 12th. This is not a complete list of features, and some features may still be subject to balancing or other changes.


The biggest change you’ll notice from the 3.3 “Libra” update is the new Situations system. This is a new feature that has been in development for a while, and it’s great to finally get to show it to our community.

Situations will progress in stages, and in some cases, each stage will have different or escalating effects. Some Situation progressions are linear, while others will progress depending on the choices you make in events and in your Approach to the current situation.

Current Active Effects by the Situation and the predicted outcome effects are shown along the right side of the Situations window.



The primary use for Situations at the moment is in Resource Deficits, Planetary Uprisings and Machine Uprisings (requires Synthetic Dawn Story Pack). We have also converted several story events to use the new Situations system. Situations are a versatile platform, that we will likely continue to expand on in the future. Situations are also very modder-friendly, and we can’t wait to see what our modding community comes up with!

There are also some new story events that you may have never encountered before, and the Shroudwalker enclave (requires Overlord) uses Situations after you reach into the Shroud.


Previously, when running out of a resource stockpile and having a negative monthly income, you would be hit with massive penalties to your planetary production. This had several negative effects, from initiating a resource spiral, where one deficit would trigger another deficit, and so on until your empire had major issues with just about every resource. The other issue was one of consistency; the old system was not flexible enough to keep up with some of the new Civics (Catalytic Processing is a prime example of this) and combinations thereof, which would result in empires (under some conditions) making resources out of nothing.

With the introduction of Situations, Resource Deficits will now gradually increase in strength as you advance through the stages of the Deficit Situation. Deficit Situations will start with some progress, and larger deficits will progress faster than smaller deficits. If your stockpile becomes positive again, the Situation will begin to slowly resolve itself. It's important to note that having a positive monthly income will make the Deficit Situation resolve itself faster than just having a stockpile greater than zero.

Once the Situation reaches the end of the last stage, it will result in a Default. Defaulting removes upgrades to buildings and applies modifiers to your empire to make combat less effective and constructions cost more. On the flip side, downgrading your buildings will result in a lump sum payment of the resource(s) you previously had a deficit in, giving you the opportunity to recover your economy and potentially play on.


In the free 3.4 “Cepheus” patch accompanying Overlord, there have been significant changes to not only subjects in the Overlord DLC, but in the base game as well.

For starters, every subject now has a Vassalisation Contract, which can be customized to individual Subject empires. For example, you can choose whether the empire can be Integrated (now disabled by default in most cases), whether they have Diplomatic Freedom, whether they can expand, the level of subsidy they receive or tribute they pay, as well as whether they join in their Overlord’s wars, or whether the Overlord joins their wars.



This is all balanced by Loyalty, which is the measure of how Loyal a Subject feels to their Overlord. More Loyal subjects will be more inclined to agree with less favorable terms than less Loyal subjects. Subjects with low Loyalty may also break away via an Allegiance War if given the opportunity.


Holdings are a new type of building that can be constructed on Subject’s planets. There are currently 27 holdings in total, with 6 Holdings being included in the base game. Holdings can be built on a subject’s planets in addition to Branch Offices, and similar to Branch Offices will provide resources to the Subject, Overlord, or both. Unlike Branch Offices, however, Holdings can also have a positive or negative effect on a Subject’s Loyalty to their Overlord.


In addition to these new features, Overlords who release subjects will now get 100 Intel on their subjects, which will slowly degrade over time to their normal base level. Sectors released as subjects will also now take the Origin of their Overlord, where appropriate. AI Subjects of Player Empires now receive AI bonuses as if the difficulty level of the game were one level lower, rather than losing their bonuses entirely. It is also now possible to build Gateways and Hyper Relays (requires Overlord) in your subject’s space!


AI empires will be less inclined to split their fleets into hundreds of tiny fleets, in the 3.4 “Cepheus” patch, the AI will attempt to use a full fleet as their smallest unit to carry out military objectives. During peacetime, the AI will actively attempt to merge all fleets, and during wars will try to merge two nearby fleets when possible.

We’ve also reduced the likelihood of AI fleets getting stuck in a loop and going back and forth from system to system while attempting to group up their fleets.

The “Take Point” functionality has had some more attention as well, reducing the chances that AI will suddenly stop following player and AI fleets, and they will now try even harder to have all their fleets follow the “Take Point” fleet.

There has also been a new notification added at the point where the 3.3 “Libra” military AI would’ve declared war. This new notification will trigger provided you have enough Intel on the target empire, and while the notification is active the AI will begin gathering their available fleets and moving towards the border. Depending on your level of Intel, you will also get an estimation of when the AI is planning to strike.

The AI will now also better handle conflicts with Crisis-type empires. We’ve added a new war state to the AI, which is activated when the AI or its allies fight a mid or end-game crisis. This means that AI empires will obey players’ “Take Point” commands during crises, as well as help out their other allies if they’re attacked, and will be better at seeking out and destroying systems controlled by crises.


In 3.4, we’ve also done another pass on Sector and Planetary automation. The design philosophy for the new automation system is that “most players will be able to use some parts of it”. So the intention is not that all players will always use this and that it will be able to satisfy all players, we hope everyone will find something that they feel is worth using.

The planet automation will have an additional settings UI where players can toggle components on/off for each planet individually as well as setting default values for newly colonized planets.

The most impactful setting is Designation, which will cause the planet to only build structures associated with its planetary designation. For example, a Mining World designation will only construct Mining Districts and the Mineral Purification plant, and nothing else.

The other settings are:

• Amenities: Build new amenities buildings and also micromanage the priority of amenity-producing jobs to minimize unnecessary amenity jobs
  
• Rare resources: Build new rare resource-producing buildings to target a +3 monthly income of all rare resources.
  
• Pop assembly: Build spawning pools, cloning vats, robot assembly et cetera.
  
• Housing: Construct additional housing, either in districts or buildings when needed.
  
• Building slots: Automatically build a new housing district for the +1 building slot whenever there are no free building slots, especially useful to enable on automated planets like Science designation since they require many building slots.
  
• Crime: Build new crime prevention buildings when crime reaches dangerous levels.
  
• Clear blockers: Automatically clear blockers when it is preventing the construction of new districts.
  
• Posthumous Employment: Builds the Posthumous Employment Center on planets with a raw resource focus.
  
• Psi Corps: Build the Psi Corps building on all planets when possible.

Sector automation is now a system built on top of the planet automation. Setting the sector focus will now change which designations planets will select when they are using the “automatic designation selection” in order to make them respect the sector automation.

We’ve also added an option to set a Unity Focus for a Sector since Unity is far more valuable since 3.3.


For the 3.4 “Cepheus” update, we’ve also addressed some concerns and Quality of Life issues with Auto Resettlement. "Ideal" worlds such as ring worlds, Gaia worlds, Hive worlds and Machine worlds now have a higher score when pops are deciding where to automatically resettle. Capital world planet designations also have a smaller increased score, and freshly founded colonies have 25% from their designation.

Pops will now pick which planet to auto-migrate to based on which planet has the most free jobs, rather than the least. They also now take free housing into account better.

The Outliner will now differentiate between unemployed pops that are migrating and those that are not. A yellow briefcase will be shown for planets that have unemployed pops that are in the process of migrating to another planet. A red briefcase will be shown if your attention is required to resolve the unemployment. On the planet view, the tooltips will now show where the pops are most likely to move to or explain why they are unable to move.


One thing that was pretty immersion-breaking when playing a MegaCorp was the Impose Ideology war. Why a MegaCorp would willingly create competition was always a little confusing.

In 3.4 “Cepheus”, successful Impose Ideology wars launched by empires with the Corporate authority will result in the target (or created) empire having the Oligarchic authority and the Merchant Guilds civic. This is also true for Status Quo resolutions of Establish Hegemony, Subjugation, and the Scion’s Bring into the Fold wargoals with Corporate Aggressors.

Additionally, Corporate subjects can now open branch offices in subjects of their shared overlord, as long as their overlord is not also a MegaCorp.




In 3.4, we’ve also expanded our in-game localisations to include Korean and Japanese. We hope that this results in a more immersive and consistent experience for those communities. Issues, grammatical errors, and literally unplayable typos found in these localizations can be reported here!


We are introducing a series of new emblems that will allow you to customize your Empires even further - 72 new icons, 45 new backgrounds, and 50 more colors.. Including.. Wait for it.. WHITE!






Celebrating the anniversary of Stellaris, we have added a series of new Human phenotypes, new outfits for rulers, governors, admirals, scientists and generals.

Additionally, we have added new human animations, hairstyles, beards, and eye colors allowing you to further customize your Human leaders!



Whew! That was a lot of stuff to get through. You can read the full changelog here (in English only, sorry). Just a reminder that this is not a full list of changes, and some features may undergo balance changes between now and release.

Realize your Grand Design with Stellaris: Overlord and the free 3.4 “Cepheus” and 6th Anniversary update on May 12th!

Wishlist Overlord Now!

written by Obidobi, Caligula and Eladrin



Hello everyone!

I hope you are all excited to get your hands on our next expansion ‘Overlord’ next week! Expanding on the Subject/Ruler dynamic has been something that we know a lot of you (and us, internally) have been wanting for a very long time, so it’s really amazing to finally see it come to fruition!

So to hold you over until Overlord release, here is the usual Dev Diary containing the changelog for you to read!

But first, we have a few Community events to talk about:

Today at 1700 CEST (UTC + 2), join us on the Official Stellaris Discord for our Overlord Dev Q&A! Have a question about something in today’s patch notes? Stop by and ask!

As well, join us starting at 1400 CEST on May 7th and 8th, for our Content Creator Multiplayer Showcase. We’ll be streaming Overlord all weekend on Twitch and YouTube, with some of our favorite community content creators!


Wishlist Overlord today!


I’m going to keep this one fairly brief, by my standards. Recent updates have given modders plenty to get their teeth into, and 3.4 is no different. We already described the Situations system a few weeks back, which will doubtless see much use and abuse from modders, so I’ll focus on other scripting language changes.

The biggest improvement that springs to mind is in the field of modifiers. In triggered modifiers, you can now define a “mult” value, which lets you apply a modifier or script value to that triggered modifier:


As you can see, I’ve defined a modifier that we do not have in the game there. That is because we can now define our own ad hoc modifiers in script, for instance:


This modifier will of course only do something so long as it is applied somewhere, but nowadays there’s plenty of places where that is possible (everywhere that script values are valid). For instance, we have refactored species traits’ amenities and trade output from jobs to use this system, which cut down on the effort it takes to tweak their numbers (and let us track down a few bugs in that regard).

As a low-key but quite nice improvement, you will also no longer get load order errors where certain modifiers do not work in certain contexts (e.g. ethos modifiers in traits).

That’s not all we have done. Developing Overlord naturally provided some opportunities to rework old systems. For instance, thousands of lines were saved in the scripts for enclaves by using the new “event inheritance” system. With this, an event can be specified to inherit properties from another via “base = <some_event_id>”. Then, various properties can be overwritten via “desc_clear”, “option_clear”, “picture_clear” and “show_sound_clear”. Basically, this lets us inherit the behaviour of a given event while changing its flavour.

The list goes on. A new common/tradable_actions folder now lets you define custom actions that you can trade with other empires. For instance, subjects can pledge loyalty to their Overlords in return for other benefits. The folder is also extensively documented:


Speaking of the AI and diplomacy, diplomatic actions are now a little bit more controllable from script. While they (and AI logic surrounding them) are still handled to a significant degree in code, additional reasons for the AI to accept or decline the proposals can now be scripted in an “ai_acceptance” field, while a “should_ai_propose” field lets you block the AI from proposing it.

Finally, something that modders need to know about is our changes to synced localisation. Or rather, the fact that we have completely removed it. This means that, everywhere where it was used, we now use the normal localisation system instead. There are several advantages of this:

Multiplayer will now work, even if one player is playing in Chinese and one player in English (this does not currently work)
It is theoretically possible to translate all names into other languages now. (Unfortunately, however, I can’t promise that we’ll ever do that, because European languages all have complicated grammar rules, and we have yet to work out a reasonable way to deal with them. But still, the possibility is pretty cool).

Unfortunately, there are also some complications, which can be summed up as: we need to save a property as it is at the time something is named (i.e. the property may change later - but this should not affect what it localises as), and also make sure that it is localising correctly no matter which language you are playing in.

Basically, this means that if you want to use bracket commands in setting names, you need to register it in the place where you are setting the name, e.g.:


Empire names in the random_names directory have a new “lookups” line to serve this purpose:


In cases where names were defined inline in script, which is quite common in mods, it will likely continue to work as it used to (so long as no square bracket commands are used). I can’t entirely vouch for this, since we don’t use this functionality inhouse as it would break Chinese (and now also Korean and Japanese) translations, since they have always translated names. It may also cause issues if the name you are setting something to is a key that is localised, but which you did not intend to refer to… (N.B. name lists now also use localisation keys).

As a word of caution, each square bracket command we make available has to be defined to work in the C++ code. We have tried our best to cover all the cases which one could want to use, but there may be some we’ve missed (in this case, the error log will complain about invalid property “GetXPersistent”). If there are any particularly egregious cases we turn out to have missed, please file bug reports and we’ll see what we can do!


This week’s origin reveal from Nivarias is the Progenitor Hive!



In the beginning, the Progenitor was.

Life on your homeworld was harsh and competitive, yet still the mighty Progenitor expanded its territory. Running such a vast dominion soon grew untenable, so the Progenitor created the first Offspring. In time, it became apparent that the Offspring could not manage alone. In turn, they produced menial drones to assist in taming our home.

As you took your first tentative steps across the stars, the Progenitor sequestered itself into a specialized nest. Endowed with greater, streamlined control, you are now ready to spread the Progenitor's influence to all the stars of the galaxy - for the Progenitor was, is, and will be.

The Progenitor Hive origin is a new Hive Mind origin coming in Overlord, and as such it also requires Utopia to play.

The hive relies heavily on the presence of powerful Offspring. While they are near, the hive thrives and functions with great efficiency.

Offspring Vessels can be included in your fleets, providing an aura that cancels out the inherent penalties of your ships, providing a net small bonus. You are limited in the number of Offspring Vessels your empire can support at any given time, based on your overall naval capacity, similar to the Titan limit. The Offspring Vessels share a pool, with larger ships taking a greater portion of the pool.



There’s also a starbase building to protect your empire space, which provides greater benefits than the ships.



The Offspring Nest replaces the Spawning Pools of regular hives, providing additional bonuses. You’ll want one of these on each of your planets.



Make sure someone is working the Offspring Drone job, since otherwise the directionless menial drones on your colonies face difficulties.



All employed leaders within a Progenitor Hive, passively gain experience at a steady rate, gaining skill levels at a much faster rate than leaders of other empires. On average, with no experience boosts or other sources of experience, they will passively gain a level about every (1.5 * level they’re going to) years.

Unlike other hives, the Progenitor is able to release sectors as vassals, placing the fate of the sector in the tendrils of an Offspring which is promoted to Progenitor status and becomes the ruler of the new empire. Progenitor subjects released inherit the Progenitor Hive origin from your empire, with all the bonuses and penalties that it entails.



Should you have a subject that is not a Progenitor Hive, you can build an Offspring Nest on their world, providing some much needed oversight to their dro- er, workers. They’re basically the same thing, right?



There’s also one other (non-Progenitor Hive related) holding to reveal!

Overlords with the Environmentalist civic can build a Ranger Lodge, which reduces consumer goods usage on the subject planet but also creates a Nature Preserve blocker, which cannot be removed as long as the lodge exists.



The Ranger Lodge can only be built on natural planets that have districts available to block, and cannot be built on Ecumenopolies, Hive Worlds, Machine Worlds, or Relic Worlds.



Wishlist Overlord today!

Today we're taking a First Look at the Progenitor Hive Origin with Nivarias!

Your hivemind has gained an evolutionary advantage through semi-independent leaders. These Offspring greatly improve overall proficiency but require constant oversight.

Wishlist Overlord!

written by Offe the Human and Eladrin





Hello everyone, it is me Offe, one of the Humans working on Stellaris. Today I will bring you an update from the Custodian AI initiative. Before we dive into today’s dev diary let’s do a quick recap of the AI work that went into the 3.3 patch.

If you have been following the AI dev diaries you probably know that our main objectives for the 3.3 Libra patch was to improve the economy management of the AI, especially with a mid and late game perspective in mind. The reason for this was to establish the AI empires as relevant actors beyond the early game and give their interactions with the player more impact.

Following some of the discussions here on our own forums and also on Reddit, my favorite topic has been seeing people react to AI empires suddenly being much stronger in the Galactic Community where they are passing resolutions against the players' will.

While the AI economy management still has areas which can be improved, we felt satisfied with the changes made in 3.3 to the point where we wanted to move our focus to other areas of the AI.


As the AI economy improved other areas of the AI started to become more obvious targets for improvement, namely the AI military fleet management and their diplomacy interactions with the player.


First I would like to say that the changes coming to military fleet behavior in 3.4 are mostly bug fixes rather than improvements on their decision making, so while there should be a very noticeable difference, the work made so far on the fleet behavior will not be as encompassing as the work made for the economy.

Let’s start with the Elephant in the room: AI splitting their fleets into tiny pieces.



While there were issues where AI would split their fleets too much, fundamentally this behavior of AI splitting fleets was by design. The AI would allocate just enough fleet power (with a +25% margin) to their objective in order to carry out as many objectives as possible. The main issue came from the amount of low fleet power targets such as unupgraded starbases which caused the AI to frequently split their fleets into 1000~ fleet power pieces.

In theory this approach is quite good, however, the main two main issues with this approach are that the player can easily just take one of their bigger fleets to go around and defeat the AI’s smaller fleets one by one which makes the AI somewhat incompetent, as well as that this playstyle from the AI can be quite frustrating to play against.

In 3.4 the AI will aim to have full fleets as their smallest unit to carry out military objectives, AI will actively try and merge all possible fleets during peacetime and the AI will during a war try and merge two nearby fleets when possible.


After having made the AI fill up their fleets, the next issue to tackle was AI fleet order cycling where the fleets get stuck alternating between two orders indefinitely. One common cause for this was when the AI assigned several fleets to carry out an objective together, the fleets would try and regroup with each other by moving to the system of the other fleets causing them to switch places over and over.




In 3.3 we made the AI obey the Take Point behavior again, but it didn’t work quite as well as we wanted. For example allied AI fleets would sometimes follow the players fleets when they shouldn’t. There were also issues where the AI would suddenly change their mind and stop following the player, and they would also not always follow the player with all their fleets.


During a war with several involved AI Empires on the same side, one of the AIs will be considered leading the war (may be different from diplomatic war leader) and the other AIs will put their fleets to follow the “AI warleader”. This suffered from a similar issue as previously mentioned where the AI fleets which were supposed to follow would change their mind too often and never reach their intended target.


In 3.4 we are adding an AI war state which becomes activated when the AI fights a mid or late game crisis, this state of war will continue until the crisis has been defeated. This means that AI will now enable their normal war behavior against targets like the Great Khan even though they do not have a diplomatic war if they or any of their allies get attacked.

This has many side effects, for example:

• AI empires should now obey the players Take Point if the player is fighting a crisis
  
• Allied AI empires should now help each other fight crises when one of them are attacked
  
• AI empires will now seek out and destroy systems controlled by crisis empires et cetera.

We also addressed the issue where an AI empire would fight a neutral target such as a leviathan during an ongoing war.


In 3.4 we are adding a state of war preparation for the AI which they will enter when they would have immediately declared war in 3.3. During this phase the AI will gather their available fleets and move them towards the border of their target.

If you have enough military intel you will be notified via an alert that hell is about to break loose and depending on how much intel you have you will get a more accurate estimation on when the AI will strike.




Now that we have covered military changes coming in 3.4 lets go over the diplomacy changes


One of the biggest complaints regarding being in a Federation with the AI has been the unrelenting bombardment of proposals of changing the same federation law over and over again. Often resulting in AI empires stacking the negative opinion modifier on themselves and eventually leaving the federation altogether.

In 3.4 we are introducing a 10 year AI vote cooldown for each law category. So let’s randomly select a federation law to use as an example: Free Migration. When an AI proposes to change the law of Free Migration then it will add a 10 year AI only cooldown which is shared between all AI federation members. This means that each time Free Migration gets voted down it will now take at least 10 years before it is proposed again.

Coincidentally this also fixes an exploit that the player could use against AI federations where the player would repeatedly ask to initiate a vote to invite the player into the AI federation. This allowed the player to repeatedly stack the negative opinion modifiers between the AI federation members causing their federation to break apart.


Another common complaint regarding AI federations is how the AI would often not put any envoys into the federation. This was a symptom of a bigger problem which was the overall AI envoy usage.

The AI empires would frequently reassign their envoys to the same task, knocking out the envoy who was already assigned to it and starting the reassign cooldown. As a result the AI would often have all but one of their envoys on cooldown and not assigned to any task.

In 3.4 the AIs should be able to handle their envoys in a much more appropriate manner, both in terms of Federation and Galactic Community assignment as well as other diplomatic actions and espionage operations.


While AI voting for seemingly completely irrelevant resolutions in the Galactic Community gave it a sense of uncomfortable realism there were a few issues that stood out to us:

AI would sometimes propose resolutions that were completely against their core beliefs, for example, a slaver empire would sometimes propose to ban organic slave trading. This was due to a missing willingness check when AI would propose resolutions, so they AI would propose the resolution they liked the most but wouldn’t check if they liked it enough to be worth proposing in the first place.

The AI was explicitly forbidden to withdraw their proposed resolution, while most of the time this does not make sense, there are situations where this may be the best course of action. For example, the AI may propose to reduce the council size but by the time the resolution is about to enter the floor their diplomatic weight has been reduced to the point where they would propose themselves out of the council.

Similarly the AI was also forbidden from opposing their own resolution, but the above situation could happen in a similar way where, for example, the player would enact the Emergency Measure to move the resolution to the floor before the AI has time to withdraw their resolution. In that situation it would make sense for the AI to oppose their own proposed resolution.

Additionally if you have enough intel on the AI you will now be able to see why they are voting the way they do in the Galactic Community. While this tooltip was already quite big, I knew I could make it even bigger.




While planet and sector automation isn’t necessarily AI, we have seen a lot of requests for previous AI improvements to also be available for the player. And even though the planet/sector automation uses a different system than the AI’s economy system we still felt that improving this would hopefully add a lot of quality of life value to our players.

The design philosophy for the new automation system is that “most players will be able to use some parts of it”. So the intention is not that all players will always use this and that it will be able to satisfy all players, rather that hopefully everyone will find something that they feel is worth using.



So how does it work? In 3.4 the planet automation will have an additional settings UI where players can toggle components on/off for each planet individually as well as setting default values for newly colonized planets.

The most impactful setting is this one, the Designation



This will cause the planet to build new jobs in accordance with the designation when there are no free jobs available. This setting is now much more restrictive in regards to what is considered to be in accordance with the designation, for example, enabling this for a mining designation will only construct the mining districts and the mineral purification plant and nothing else.

The other settings are:

• Amenities: Build new amenities buildings and also micromanage the priority of amenity producing jobs to minimize unnecessary amenity jobs by using the same system as the AI has been using since 3.3.
  
• Rare resources: Build new rare resource producing buildings to target a +3 monthly income of all rare resources. Additionally this will now take into consideration empire wide buildings in the building queue and only build one building at a time.
  
• Pop assembly: Build spawning pools, cloning vats, robot assembly et cetera.
  
• Housing: Construct additional housing, either districts or building when needed.
  
• Building slots: Automatically build a new housing district for the +1 building slot whenever there are no free building slots, especially useful to enable on automated planets like Science designation since they require many building slots.
  
• Crime: Build new crime prevention buildings when crime reaches dangerous levels.
  
• Clear blockers: Automatically clear blockers when it is preventing construction of new districts.
  
• Posthumous Employment: Builds the Posthumous Employment Center on planets with raw resource focus.
  
• Psi Corps: Build the Psi Corps building on all planets when possible.

The Designation automation setting is extra careful to not overbuild buildings whereas the other settings will build buildings even when there is no need for additional jobs.

All the automations except the Amenity automation (uses AI behavior in code) are fully scriptable for anyone interested in making their own automation mod, the files are found in:



Sector automation is now a system built on top of the planet automation. Setting the sector focus will now change which designations planets will select when they are using the “automatic designation selection” in order to make them respect the sector automation.



Additionally there is now a Unity focus available for sector automation since Unity is now more important after the 3.3 patch, together with new Unity automation for planets to go along with it.



The requirement to have an upgraded capital building in order to construct Research labs and rare resource producing buildings has now been removed in order to make the planet automations function properly for newly founded colonies with these designations.

We have also added several missing designations to different planet types in order to allow for more automation, for example, Ring World can now use factory/forge world designation and Hive Worlds can now use the fortress designation.

Lastly, I am sad to say that my designated time on the Custodian team has already been over for a while now, which means that this will be the last AI dev diary from me. But the AI initiative lives on and next time there is an AI update you may get the chance to meet a new Human. Again I want to say a special thank you to all the community members who have engaged in meaningful discussions regarding the AI improvements in the past months and tirelessly reporting the AI issues on the bug forum.

Thank you!


Hi! Eladrin tagging back in for a bit.



This week Nivarias revealed the Subterranean origin. Tunneling underground is a bit more expensive than building on the surface, but has its advantages, especially when a hostile force attempts to bombard your cities.


Lithoids are unaffected by the pop growth penalty

The primary species of a Subterranean empire gains the Cave Dweller trait, granting additional mineral production at the cost of pop growth and empire size from pops, as well as a new Minimum Habitability trait. Cave-Dwelling pops are well sheltered from the environment on the surface, and treat any habitable planets below 50% habitability as if they were 50%.


I am a dwarf and I’m digging a hole.

Living underground, Subterranean empires have a unique city set that replaces the normal view on planets.


Are you the king of the mountain?

One of the achievements revealed last week, named Underlord, has to do with answering the question “Is it possible to dig too deep?”


Well look at the time, we’re coming right up to the release of Overlord, aren’t we?

The Stellaris 3.4 “Cepheus” patch notes will be coming next week, alongside details of the Progenitor Hive origin. After the patch notes, join us on the Official Stellaris Discord for a Dev Q&A, starting Thursday at 1700 CEST!

See you there!

Today we're going to be taking a first look at the Subterranean Origin with Nivarias!

Whether you were avoiding predators or seeking easier access to resources, your species evolved to live under the surface of your homeworld, leading to a more environmentally versatile society.

Wishlist Overlord today!

Realize your Grand Design with Stellaris: Overlord on May 12th for USD 19.99/GBP 15.49/EUR 19.99!

In Overlord, the next full expansion for Stellaris, gain access to new features designed to unlock the next level of your Empire. Guide a galaxy full of potential subjects to victory - or subjugation. In Overlord you will gain access to new mechanics to specialize your Vassals’ role within your Empire, new Origins to explore, new Enclaves to meet, and new Megastructures to build for the glory of your Empire.

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Use new vassalization mechanics and specialize your subjects into economic powerhouses, defensive bulwarks, or technological masterminds. Negotiate the terms of your subjects’ Vassal Contracts, with the ability to subsidize their income, restrict their expansion, construct buildings on their worlds, and more.

Explore five unique Origins, opening up more roleplay possibilities than ever. Start as the subject of an advanced AI empire with Imperial Fiefdom, or release your mind with the Teachers of the Shroud origin, where you start as a Latent Psionic species and contact with a mysterious Shroudwalker Enclave. Discover the source of ancient lights in the night sky with Slingshot to the Stars. Subterranean allows you to start as a civilization that excels at mining and archaeology, and thrives underground, or unleash the power of the progenitor with the Progenitor Hive origin.

Meet three new Enclaves, who will offer unique abilities in your galaxies. The Shroudwalker Enclave allows you to pull back the veil of the Shroud. What will be your fate? Meet the Salvager Enclave, who can offer to scrap ships for resources or debris. Perhaps you might be interested in some combat-proven starships? Or choose one of your own fleets to lease out to other Empires as a Mercenary Enclave, and be rewarded with dividends on your investment as they fight alongside the highest bidder.

Construct three new game-changing Megastructures. Build taller than ever before by constructing an Orbital Ring around your habitable worlds. Use it as extra starbase capacity, or to further boost your planetary economy. The Quantum Catapult sends fleets on a one-way trip across the galaxy, ignoring closed borders and hostile empires that would stand in your way, to launch the ultimate surprise attack. Or build a Hyper Relay network, allowing you to rapidly transfer fleets and resources across your empire.

Whether you rule from the bridge of your flagship or from the lavish capital of your homeworld, Realize your Grand Design with Stellaris: Overlord!

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written by Eladrin

Hello again!

Last week’s dev diary examined the Orbital Ring, Quantum Catapult, and Scholarium. Today we’re going to look at another construction that has a massive impact on the game, the Hyper Relay. After that we’ll look at some other changes coming in Cepheus and Overlord, and finish off with another origin that was revealed yesterday by Nivarias.

As with all previews, numbers, text, and so on are not quite final and are still subject to change.


Long ago, back in Dev Diary #243 we showed you some concept art of Hyper Relays, and told you they had greebles, and were game changing. Now it’s time to fully reveal them.

Hyper Relays are a rare Tier 2 technology that require the Hyperlane Breach Points technology and access to Rare Crystals to discover. Once you have observed a functional Hyper Relay in use by another empire, the technology will appear much more frequently, causing them to spread in a pleasing manner across the galaxy.



Hyper Relays can be built by your Construction Ships outside the gravity well of systems, just like Gateways. They’re useless on their own, but a chain of Hyper Relays built in adjacent systems dramatically speeds up travel, allowing you to jump from Relay to Relay after a short windup rather than having to travel across each system at sublight speed, as long as neither endpoint is controlled by a hostile empire.




Once two Relays in adjacent systems have been linked, the hyperlane between those systems will become bolder, and ships traveling along them will show the route plotted in blue as they are using the bypass.

Hyper Relays can be built in your own space, or that of your subjects. For convenience, Relays can also be built directly from the Galaxy Map.



If an Empire’s capital is attached to the Hyper Relay Network, additional effects can be projected through the network using several Network Edicts. These add strategic resource upkeep to your Hyper Relays and an effect on all of your colonies that are connected to your capital.




Gestalts have a reflavored variant of Networked Amenities.

Specialist subjects each have a Network Effect available at Tier 1, which becomes active in the overlord’s Relay Network if a continuous chain connects their capitals.






As one could imagine, an expansive Hyper Relay network makes travel much faster during the mid-game while you do not yet have a comprehensive Gateway system built, and since such travel is permitted in neutral empires that have open borders, navigating the galaxy and responding to distant threats is easier than ever before.

As a personal anecdote, after playing with these and the new subjugation mechanics internally, it was almost difficult to go back to 3.3 for the Dev Clash. Made me almost want to blow up the galaxy.


As with every update, there are a number of balance or quality of life changes and adjustments in Cepheus. Here’s a handful of interesting changes:

• Successful Force Ideology wars with a corporate aggressor now result in the target (or created) empire having the Oligarchic authority and Merchant Guilds civic. This is also true for Status Quo resolutions of Establish Hegemony, Subjugation, and the Scion’s Bring into the Fold wargoals.
  
• Corporate subjects can now open branch offices in subjects of their shared overlord, as long as their overlord is not also a MegaCorp.
  
• AI Subjects of Player Empires now receive AI bonuses as if the difficulty level of the game were one level lower, rather than losing their bonuses entirely.
  
• The Parliamentary System civic now allows factions to be generated much earlier in the game.
  
• You can now nominate other empires to Custodianship, provided they meet the requirements.
  
• The Unbidden can no longer spawn in pulsar systems (as the star will disable their Dimensional Portal's shields - Heavy Metal, Inc. sends its regards…)
  
• Low Military Intel is now gained at 30 Intel instead of 40 and Medium Military Intel is now gained at 60 Intel instead of 70. The effects of Medium and High Military Intel have been swapped. Medium now allows you to view ship loadout. High now grants visibility of location of military fleets.
  
• Gateways (and Hyper Relays) can now be built in vassal space.
  
• The Grasp the Void Ascension Perk now grants increased draw weight for FTL travel techs.

Some improvements have been made to automated migration:

• "Ideal" worlds such as ring worlds, gaia worlds, hive worlds and machine worlds now have a 50% higher score when pops are deciding where to automatically resettle to. So they are more likely to want to move to your newly-founded ring world, for instance. Capital world planet designations also have a +10% score, and freshly founded colonies have 25% from their designation.
  
• Pops will now pick which planet to auto-migrate to based on which planet has the most free jobs, rather than the least. They also now take free housing into account better.
  
• The Outliner will now differentiate between unemployed pops that are migrating and those that are not. A yellow briefcase will be shown for planets that have unemployed pops that are in the process of migrating to another planet. A red briefcase will be shown if your attention is required to resolve the unemployment. On the planet view, the tooltips will now show where the pops are most likely to move to, or explain why they are unable to move.

We have eleven new achievements in Overlord. Here are the icons, I’m curious what people think they are.


Cheevos!


Some eagle-eyed readers have noticed some flags that aren’t possible in 3.3. You’re correct! The art team has added some new colors to the flag palette…



…over seventy flag emblems…



…and forty-five new flag backgrounds.



These will all be part of the Cepheus update as part of the May anniversary celebrations.




Bordergore? Bordergore.

Those born under the Slingshot to the Stars find their desires to explore fulfilled by a nearby Quantum Catapult, which replaces one of their Guaranteed Habitable Worlds. Their eagerness to explore into the unknown reduces the distance penalty for building starbases in remote systems by 75%.


Next week the totally human programmer Narkerns will take over for an update on AI and automation improvements coming in Cepheus, and I’ll add a little bit about a fourth Origin at the end.

Video versions of these dev diaries are available at the Stellaris Official YouTube Channel. Subscribe so you don’t miss them, and wishlist Overlord if you haven’t already!

In the meantime, keep your eyes on our social media channels. There'll be an announcement later today.