Also Montu, you gotta remember, minor artifact ship cost reduction STACKS with normal ship cost reduction.

I think "Politician" would be a better name for them than "Diplomat". It's a more flexible word if they're going to be Governors as well.

If they do merge envoys and governors, I'd definitely call it politicians rather than diplomats. Slight change, but more relevant for both classes

I’d really like governors to apply their traits to every planet in the sector rather than just one planet. I know their level bonus is applied, but applying their trait to the whole sector would be much more rewarding

The 'Enhance' gag is one of my favourite setup-payoffs yet. I am disappointed that the leader cap division was scrapped, as that was something I was positing myself, but if they do rework it into something even better then I certainly won't complain.

I dont mind if leader cap is a drop down menu because unlike strategic resources you don't need to constantly monitor it, only when recruiting someone

i really like how the devs interact with the playerbase. Yesterday i saw the reddit post for Lazy Builds' video that broke the Dacha/Helito system in a hilarious way 15 years into the game, and a dev commented while tagging another dev "You're lucky i'm on vacation, @dev plz fix"

I dislike how governors only apply their traits to a single planet (as oppossed to their level bonusses), but due to the cap you can only have a couple. It makes governor traits rather weak compared to the traits of admiral, scientists, and all councillor traits.

I would like there to be a gain towards leader cap based on empire size. Something like each 100-200 empire size gives +1 leader cap.

I do not think that Commanders will have traits split into Armies/Naval types (hopefully). We will probably see hybrid traits that apply both to ground combat and space combat.

Wait..ux issues? Hasnt this been solved already for rare resources? Just list total leader capacity (x/x) (ignore envoys) and if any of the sub categories are full, make the font yellow, and if you have an overage in any, make the font red. So you could have (4/7) in yellow, conveying one or more leader category was full, or (5/8) red meaning at least one category was in overage although other leader caps are available. The split leader cap would allow for better upgrades in traditons (maybe supremacy gives 2 admiral leaders, aptitude gives one wild card, discovery two scientists, domination 2 generals, prosperity 2 goversnors, etc) and allows punishing overages more precisely. (Going over cap becomes similar to fleet power, so 2/1 is vastly more punishing than 5/4, while also only punishing that leader type). Honestly if paradox cant make something work because of ux issues, it beggars a lack of creativity more than balance…seems like a rethink is worthwhile

The pixelated event screen on the right is the art for the Shroud Reformers event "Door and a Key", the one where they come to one of your worlds and attempt to open a gate to the shroud. Literally just had that turn up today, so still fresh enough to recognise it lol, It's one of the possibilities when asking the shroud witches what your fate is. A bunch of reformers come to your world, the shroud witches tell you to turn them away, if you ignore them and let them in they then trigger the existing event called "The Doorway". Right now it just triggers another event, my guess is they're going to rework the reformer event so it has it's own line of events, rather than simply triggering "The Doorway" event. What might be interesting is if they expand on the schism in the shroud order that is mentioned by the event, but never really built on. "It seems the coven is less united than we were lead to believe" is something that is said, as a means to introduce the reformers, who then do absolutley nothing other than just be a narrative explanation for the doorway event triggering. Perhaps they're creating an event where there actually is a split in the shroud witch order into two halves and we can properly interact with the reformers?

Big part of UX considerations is how the game displays at different resolutions and UI scaling. There is plenty of space when I play at 1440p and I imagine even more at 4k but what is their lowest targeted resolution? 1080p? maybe as low as 720p? How about limiting accessibility options by limiting the UI scaling? Then there is mods. many mods utilize all and then some of that top bar but then I guess modders can just deal with it and get creative once it fills up and they need more space for their stuff. Lastly new or casual players could get so overwhelmed (it's already pretty intimidating) with the number of 'resources' at the top to keep track of.

I would love to see far more statistics, like fougth wars, resource minus/high, lost pops, etc etc. More statistic , or empire data like in CK or HoI would be very nice. For RP and dudes who loves statistics it would be really really nice. I want to see in a timeline what ive done.

6:00 The empty space at the UI has a purpose. It is to make it compatible with smaller resolutions. If you want to check the real available space, you can see it changing your resolution to the lowest possible.

On the topic of general traits being mostly useless... exploration traits on scientists are almost as bad, given that you run out of uses for those traits pretty early on.

8:32 i can see them reworking traits to effect both ship and ground troops kinda like how "Logistic Understanding" effects army and ship upkeep.

The leader pool interface is easy to solve: instead of showing numbers, just show a pip for every leader similar to the Cloaking levels. Show empty colored pips for available slots, and full and pips for each leader slot filled, with a dark-red-tinted version for leaders over the cap. No numbers or icons.

The limited space isn't due to future content using the space, but instead that they have to design the UI to fit in the lowest supported resolution settings. Which it currently only just about does.

8:15 I'd actually imagine that the traits a "Commander" would get would have bonuses to both Fleet and Ground combat; for example Trickster and Carefulness are basically the exact same trait, Unyielding and Glory Seeker are pretty similar, Organizer and Logistician do similar things, Zealot and Crusader, Pioneer and Recruiter, Military Overseer and Herald, Tech Scavenger and Intellectual Espionage, Annihilator and Fortress Cracker, etc.

How about you could choose if your envoy was either scientist/admiral/governor/general and would get traits/diplomat bonuses depending on which one you pick e.g. governor would be easier to build stronger relationships quicker / general would be easier to intimidate / kidnap! Good for roleplay but not sure how efficient it would be

Leader cap should go and just have an upkeep.

with the image at the end, I believe the planetary management and the one you couldn't figure out are the same picture - it looks like they're teasing a planetary decision.

I appreciate the frequency in which you directly cite Futurama.

Interesting Idea. One thing I would change about the leaders is that instead of breaking them out to gov/scientist/general/admiral, have a 'civil leader' and 'military leader' cap, with governors and scientists going towards the same cap and admirals/generals going towards the other. that way there is a choice between hiring more governors/going wide and having more scientists. It also makes it so you dont have to leave resources on the table if you play a one planet challenge

Thank you for your community advocacy. I jumped in a year ago and recently bought Overlord and Paragons. The Vassel and Espionage mechanics have been terribly disappointing. But the continued efforts to improve with each update is encouraging.

The icon in the bottom right one looks like the void dwellers origin, which makes sense considering that they are changing habitats

Maybe for leaders they could add sub-leaders. Keep the info at the top the same but in a drop down when you hover over it we could get like two or three additional leaders in each sub group. Example, the minister of defense could have a fleet admiral and a Commanding General. The Head Scientist could have three sub scientists, etc...

Archeo parts should be buffed version of your current tech. So i spend minor artifacts to get additional bonus, but there is a limit of how much improved ships u can have because of artifacts being rare

Hoping they address the vassal spam as well. Maybe making vassal acceptance at least tied to trust so it requires good relations over a long time rather than instantly

There needs to be additional leader slots for achievements in the game. Such as with the existing each 10 systems you gain 1 Starbase Cap or where you are restricted to 1 titan per 200 naval cap. I think we should be able to hire say more Admirals every 100 naval cap or each ship class you unlock, or 1 Scientist Leader per 200 empire research, maybe 1 envoy per border friction empire, 1 governer per sector you create, and maybe 1 general for every 1k of army strength you have.

On the left second from middle looks to me like terraforming planet for Lithoids. The orangeish picture shows planet/district however it got both time that appears to be quite high and minerals usage, so maybe new district transformation but more likely - lithoid planet terraforming in my opinion

"I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work." - Thomas Alva Edison

A new Montu video means it's going to be a good day.

The last blurry image is the same icon as the Yuht Atmospheric Cleansing edict, the +10hab+50%destruction one. It is also the same icon as used for the dangerous wilflife research (not the blocker, they are different). My guess it could me some way to create Natural Sanctuaries, to let Enviromentalists make use of the civic that gives unity from uncleared blockers. Could be something akin to the mod that lets you play as druids.

Oh wow, proof that if you have a suggestion paradox like, they will implement it. I was the guy who made the suggestion to lower the faculty or archeostudies upkeep to 10 energy on their forums. Nice to see it implemented as part of a contextual archaeotech overhaul.

That bit at the end you couldn't figure out kinda looked like the a tool tip for the image above the jobs on the planet manager because it has the same mineral cost and looks like it might have a time it takes for the task

12:31 Very nice! The high EC Upkeep was indeed brutal!

Next to the shroudwalker that you mentioned kinda looks like a mega structure select screen from the constructor ship when right clicking a planet. or perhaps a building tip when hovering in the planet view.

Nice. I'll watch this on my way home from work after finishing overtime

I am surprised you didn't mention the lithoid previews from dev diary #305 where they made consuming a planet a situation and vastly improved calamitous birth.

I would personally like to see changes to make the aristocratic elite civic have more flavor to it, like letting you have more leaders or majorly empire size

I think with the specific leader cap change that would make it significantly easier to implement a scaling cap system. Like the governor leader cap could increase similarity to the starbase capacity since you’ll have more sectors to govern. Admiral cap could increase with naval cap similar to the Titan cap. I think it’s weird that if you have the naval capacity for 5 or more titans that you wouldn’t be able to comfortably fill each fleet with an admiral. (Even if you’d have to use some of the wildcard leader cap to do so) Scientist capacity could scale off of research production since even in the modern day a lot of our research comes out of universities, thus producing more scientists. Generals could scale based off of number of planets or the number of pops, since most armies are also limited by the number of pops you have. All this would hopefully address the issue at the endgame of needing to go way over leader capacity to either put admirals on all your fleets, to put governors on your growing empire, or even to put scientists on assisting research once you have ring worlds going. To do all three of these things simultaneously should put you over leader capacity, but it really doesn’t feel good having to go well over capacity just to have 5 sectors with governors, all the while only having a couple of admirals to command the million plus fleet power I need to face the crisis. It really feels like paradox over corrected for leaders not feeling special, just an extra energy cost to ensure your getting the most out of your resources, to them being so rare and valuable that only a small portion of your empire can benefit from them.

Definitely going to have to start a new universe on this patch.

In the pixelated image to the left of the minerals and above planetary management is the image they use for life-seeded origin I think, the two lizard things standing on a cliff looking at the sun

The issue with the top UI bar is also smaller screen and consoles, I don't think they can fill the whole thing up without creating problems for some users

I think they should give dual traits for the admiral/generals. For example aggressive increases ship fire rate by 10% AND increases army damage by 10%

Great video as always. I'd really wish the devs would focus on changing up ground combat before they start tinkering with brand new systems they just put in. A change to how generals function would make people see them as valuable so they wouldn't have to add individual leader caps. It would help fix the habitat issue you mentioned in a previous video as well. Here's hoping you can help twist their arms Montu! :D

A part of wonders why not make envoys something all leaders could engage in. Think of the Federation in star trek where captains and admirals and scientists also do diplomatic work as inspiration here. Also it would make sense for a warrior based society to have admirals and generals engaged in diplomatic envoy type work. In terms of traits, we already have something like this for councilors. Where I can pick/choose between more councilor leaning traits or more pragmatic fieldwork type traits. So here I can also pick some more envoy type traits open to all classes. This will give weaker leaders of any class something to do if they are not sitting on the council.

The shroudwalker picture could also be relating to the knights of the toxic god, as they have an encounter with a similar looking portrait

The more I see about leaders, the more I'm convinced that Galactic Paragons was rushed out the door before it was ready so that it would at least exist before Paradox Arctic was shut down, rather than shift the project to another group who were already busy with something else, putting it on the backburner for too long, or potentially abandoning it. It just really feels like between the major trait rework, various number modifications, swapping leader experience gain in places with leader upkeep reduction, and the summer experiment of a feature that was so recently added to the game, that the leader rework and Galactic Paragons was released too soon, but their hands were forced in making it happen. I really, really hope they can find stable ground for it and find what it should have been had it been allowed to have the time it needed. Consolidating Generals and Admirals into a single role, along with Envoys and Governors into a single role, seems interesting, and I'm really interested in learning more, as such a crossover implies there'd be a potentially serious overhaul in how Commanders and Diplomats function, as I don't see them simply being as they are now, just pooled together. If Admirals and Generals become a singular role, ground combat may be forced into a minor rework so that a Commander doesn't have to choose between being a ground general or a navy admiral and can work equally in both roles. Same with Diplomats, as if Envoys are becoming actual leaders now and not simply a limited resource of pegs you put into slots, how their role meshes with how assigning governors to planets works would also be interesting to see. Consolidating the leaders seems like it would necessitate a rework of some core systems of the game, as if you had to select traits to make a Commander into either a General or an Admiral, or between a Governor and an Envoy, you're really just exacerbating the issue that's currently in place (by making envoys full leaders) and only cleaning up the UI, which seems counter intuitive. The adjustments to archeotech are interesting. If you want to go all in on archeotech, you really have to specialize in it. Comparing the new expertise trait to the others, this seems to only be level 1. Now, that doesn't mean that levels 2 and 3 will reduce the artifact cost by -10 and -15 (though that would be really nice), but between that, the ascension perk cost reduction, and general ship cost reduction, there should be enough stacking (depending on how ship cost and artifact cost reductions actually interact with each other) to get your minor artifacts per ship pretty low, and potentially 0. So a normal empire can maybe put out a few archeotch ships, likely just some battleships and titans, while a Remnants origin empire who goes all in on archeotech focus could reduce the cost enough to actually be affordable at full fleet size. Given how strong some of the archeotech options are, if you had the ascention perk, the Rubricator, and and admiral/commander with that trait (especially if that was an upgradable trait), a Remnants origin fleet could be rather terrifying with all those stacking bonuses.

Ngl I rly hoped for the habitat changes but it's very understandable that massive changes like those need some more time

I wish Stellaris would look more into accessibility and font changes and breaking up text

That mineral one looks like station building, my guiss it's related to habitat rework. Habitat expansions built with minerals perhaps?

Well, i think picture is some state model, maybe Mining Guilds? About envoys, i think we will use scientist for first contact things and diplomats (not very sitting name) for improving relations and etc

Maybe they can just give to the generals some bonuses that make them useful also in peacetime like a planetary stability boost or a slight increase to habitability.

UX issue. How about locking the screen when I try to scroll down the outliner and end up in the far east of the galaxy. Talking about the outliner, have some option to deploy the outliner to full screen, or in multiple columns. About the top bar, there's a mod to expose the strategic resources into their own icons, how this is not in the vanilla game is beyond me.

I would combign the admiral and general traits. It would make admirals a bit more powerful but it would be pretty simple and easy to understand

My recommendations would be the following: • Remove envoys • Give first contact responsibilities to scientists • Give espionage responsibilities to generals & admirals • Give galactic community / federation responsibilities to “governors” • In the future, rework GC/Fed assignments to be an active assignment rather than passive (like espionage, but call it “politics” or something) with active “operations”. • Rename governor to commissioner or politician. Each of these are secondary assignments and can be done along with their primary duties. They could also split them into four separate caps which have different methods of being increased. Frankly i don’t see the problem with a drop down menu for the leaders. You don’t have to constantly check leader capacity, only when hiring a leader.

for commander I think they would have to combine the traits for admirals and generals. ie. fleet damage +10% and army damage +10% Fleet disengagement stuff and army morale damage army health and ship hull etc etc

Regarding the issue displaying all elements on the bar, I would assume they also take into account people which use lower resolution/bigger interface symbols like laptop users. So while you may have lots of space there, not everyone else might have as well.

I think the developers are over complicating leaders. Just increase the base leader capacity from 6 to either 9 or 12 and scale leader capacity based on pops. For example +1 leader capacity for every 50 pops.

I was hopeful that the 3.9 change would be more of the habitat stuff they were talking about.

Regarding the top info bar, is there a reason it can't be made to function like the outliner? Make each data point a separate UI entity that you can choose to display or not, choose the order, and whatever else may be useful. It's very odd to me the outliner is so very customizable but the top info bar is essentially a completely non-interactive picture in comparison.

The image in the center-left with the mineral cost, may be a temporary planetary decision that lets you speed up the planetary building speed.

I hope Generals both get serious overhauls to work in/with the Espionage and Stealth Detection features, unless they are going to give each leader type its own slots that can only be filled with that leader type. I have always loved the concept of generals and with Paragons they got a lot cooler, so having them be devalued by leader cap sucks just as much as having to mod out the leader cap altogether.

The way I see it, leader cap just needed to be slightly fixed, something like scaling logarithmically to empire pops and maybe a higher upkeep will do, first time ever to experience a patch for me, excited to see what’s in store :D Though envoys and generals definitely need a fix maybe later on for sure

I kind of like the condensing of admirals and generals into a single "commander" class SO LONG AS the traits they gain over time reflect the actual job they're doing. For example, if a commander is posted to a fleet, they should pick up traits like gale speed or fire speed bonuses, whereas in command of armies they'd pick up army health or morale bonuses. This would discourage shifting them around, which makes sense; you wouldn't put General Patton in charge of a carrier battle group anymore than you'd put Admiral Nimitz in charge of the 101st Airborne, regardless of how "good" of a leader they may be. One other idea is you could "promote" a general to a diplomat. This has plenty of historical precedence and would allow you to take a seasoned military leader and make better use of them in peacetime. Some non-applicable wartime traits could be auto-translated into diplomatic-specific traits, basically capitalizing on the commander's leadership and organizational experience but applying it to a diplomatic post.

How would seperate leader caps be any harder to understand than a single leader cap? I don't understand this explanation at all, to me it actually makes more sense, and the UI showing the first number as what you have and the second being the cap is as clear as everything else they display. I really don't understand this, other than they've been extremely resistant to any kind of significant change to this system in general. It's still very unsatisfying to a lot of players, yet for some reason they refuse to change it.

My hopes for the general/admiral merge is that they make most traits affect both. Though honestly, I wish they did the same for senate traits. I really dislike that senate traits become dead traits if the leader gets reassigned.

divide ship captains for science and fleets. use leaders for war that does both general and space bonuses

I wonder if a system where you can hire unlimited governors, scientists, admirals, etc. and let them do their more traditional job of buffing sectors, fleets, armies, survey, etc would work as a foundation -- I.E. similar to what we had before.. When you spot a basic leader with potential [I.E. a base councilor trait that's useful] you could promote them to one of your limited COUNCILOR spots. If for example they are still a working Scientist and have been promoted to Councilor then they could gain scientist XP separately from Councilor XP. As for traits the scientist could get whatever "Scientist" traits that they would normally get on level up ... As for their Councilor levels I suspect they should ONLY be able to get Councilor traits and new traits should be relatively rare as leader also gets traits for their Scientist job. I think everything -- except possibly the UI -- would work perfectly fine.

That thing left of the shroudwalker 19:05 is a tooltip of an option in an event I am pretty sure.

Image between shroudwalker and planetary management looks like a new planetary decision that costs minerals.

They're not "filling the open and empty space in the top bar" because they have to take other resolutions and UI scaling into account. At 4:3 resolutions or high UI scaling, there _is_ no empty space.

For the pixelated image you asked about, my guess is it's a building

I wish you could have "sub leaders" ie admirals that you can put on fleets that work like they used to work pre paragon and "grand" admirals that work as current leaders, same with scientist and govs

Here's an idea: what if leader cap were based on TOTAL POPS...which actually makes sense. The more pops you have, the greater the chance is you'll have effective leaders somewhere in the masses.

That last pixelated bit definitely looks like a building to me, either planet or starbase

I got from the dd that all new Leader classes can govern planets and then have additional abilities to command other stuff.

Hopefully Commanders will have traits which fulfill both the role of admiral and general at the same time. Such as Logistician reducing ship upkeep or army upkeep depending on what it's assigned to. That way you don't have to make sacrifices on picks and can move commanders freely between fleets and armies as needed.

I don't understand why they don't just tie leaders to unity upkeep. The more leaders you hire, the greater the upkeep on all leaders. To make it so you can't spam leaders in the mid or late game, make this scale exponentially. This would create a "soft cap" for leaders. Techs, traditions, and ascenions would be able to modify the scaling to allow more leaders before unity costs become egregious.

Stellaris stuff, and even Endless Space 2 stuff (FINALLY) coming. Pretty sweet time to play space gencide simulators

What of the commanders have 2 separate trait pools so like a level 1 commander has 1 admiral trait and 1 general trait. On level up you pick one of each.

Honestly, having a split leader capacity would be better than how it is now, but I would probably consider putting it under you leader recruitment tab or on your main empire tab. Actually with the latter you could change the empire tab to show empire wide effects from councilors in a collated form.

Or they could just rework the abilities to work with both ground units and ships. And burocrat would probably be a better name because envoys fall under that far better than governors would fall under diplomats.

Appreciate the enhancement joke. I gotta say I liked that quite a bit.

Just make every commander perk to give both admiral and general bonuses. This way all perks will be useable.

The UX issue is probably something that heavily affects those with (a) accessability needs, (b) those who cannot have a smaller UI for other reasons, such as monitor size, and (c) to help reduce onscreen clutter and noise

Was the drop down menu for leaders really that bad? How often do you need to check leader capacity? Rare resource consumption is constantly updating and it is hidden away as Montu mentioned. One type of leader will always be the best so we need some way to deal with shared leader capacity.

8:51 new drinking game: take a drink every time montu says "than ever before"

6:10 Open space on the top bar may not be filled up because this game is playable on laptops and other limited screen size devices.

3.8 was the first I'd played Stellaris and I'm hooked but I'd recognized a lot of these issues with leader cap. The fact they recognized some issues as well and have worked to fix it is really satisfying. Though I love my Generals

I wish PDX would use some of that topbar space to display rare resources and minor artifacts instead of having to click a separate dedicated resource menu next to the basic resources like the UI Overhaul Dynamic Extended Topbar mod does

When the leader cap was introduced, I simply decided "well, I guess my leaders max rank is now around 4-5. Sucks to suck lol." and hired about 15 admirals, 3 scientists and however many governers I had sectors. the civics and other stuff that give you a higher starting leader level are now key to my stype of play since I expect them to never level up naturally during standard gameplay. its amazing really, in trying to put more emphasis on leaders, Paradox ended up making me pay virtually no attention to leaders.

Stellaris devs could really use some work done by "UI Overhaul Dynamic" developers (Extended Topbar specifically). Top panel fits all of resources perfectly, if you want to fit them. There would be enough place for separate leaders too.

Been missing my Stelly news

The only issue I see with the potential Leader rework may only effect me, but I like having as many potential envoys as possible in the GalCom, especially between Military Build Ups to keep my Diplo power High.... It really feels like the rework may have a major effect on that aspect, unsure at this time need more info. tl:dr Envoy changes may mess with Galactic Community interactions Also Montu, When are we getting more Ship Build and Fleet Comp Vids, Please?

I'm a Remnant Origin player and I like the Archeotech stuff from an RP standpoint. So I am looking forward to the 3.9 changes.

If they want to keep the cap, they need to change tiers. So 1 of each powerful class position: Then have lots of generals and governors for lower tier stuff but less powerful.