Under One Rule event chains, thoughts? (2024)

The first big choice seems to be whether to stay as dictatorial or go imperial. I heard that staying as dictatorial would cause all events to dead end, but i dont think that entirely true, because you can still get the luminary ascension events. Going imperial has a reformist situation and a potential civil war though, but these do not really benefit you unless you want to use it to switch to a democracy, which kind of defeats the point of picking Under One Rule, since you lose the big luminary traits.

For the reformist situation, it seems like there are a couple of routes :

• If you choose "Maintain Control" as your approach, you can force a civil war when the situation ends and you negotiate with the reformists. You can end it by letting the progress bar finish or doing the council agenda.
• You can choose to compromise with the reformists, this avoids the civil war, makes workers have more political power, gives more happiness to workers + specialists but less happiness to rulers.
  • If you have been taking oppressive event options like purges and you are considered a bad ruler, you get additional penalties, such as being forced to revert to dictatorial rule, having some of your civics changed, etc.
  • If you are using stratified, subsistence or academic privilege standards, you are forced to switch to social welfare.
  • If the situation ended early by either doing the council agenda, the reformists demand less and the happiness modifier and worker political power modifiers are less.
• You can choose to force the civil war by switching to a democracy. You become fanatic egalitarian and your civics switch to idealistic foundation + shared burdens. Your luminary ruler dies, which means losing all those valuable luminary traits.
• If you have been taking a lot of autocratic event options like purging dissidents, you may also get the option to execute the rebel leaders during the negotiations. This avoids the civil war and increases your luminary trait by 8 stacks, 0.75 stability and 0.015 unity from jobs per stack.

If you win the civil war as either side, you get a small bonus. For the rebels, it depends on their ethics, for the luminary, you get a small +5% ship weapon damage/fire rate modifier.

Looking at all this, there doesnt seem to be much of a point in doing the civil war as the luminary and switching to the rebels seem like you lose the biggest bonus of the origin : the luminary traits. I'm not sure if you are permanently locked into social welfare if you compromise with the rebels though. Staying as dictatorial also seems like a good idea if you dont need the extra influence to go on a conquer spree, since it side steps the reformists situation entirely.

And no matter what path you choose, you can get the special luminary ascension traits if you finish an ascension path at least 20 years before the luminary reaches their max age. After you finish an ascension path, the event that triggers the special luminary ascension traits will fire 10-30 years later.

Edit : Oddly enough, the event chain sets a variable called paragon_origin_max_ascension a lot but it doesnt appear to be checked anywhere, im guessing its left over from something PDX had an idea for but never fully implemented.

Staying dictatorial as far as i know would end the event chain indeed, at least thats been my experience and i mostly play under one rule these days.. In some ways its kind of better to just stay as a dictator one, because no civil war, and two because dictatorial government bonus is just kinda better with the reduced amenity usage. Possibly the biggest plus is that you don't have to deal with the paranoid tyrant trait getting stuck permanently on your leader which unfortunately is the case if you go imperial and try to execute the rebels.

Cant say if still stays if you do the rebellion as I've always done it the other way. As a matter of fact the entire kill the rebels path is broken last i checked, with you getting stuck with the paranoid tyrant trait (supposed to go away after event chain) and also it claims it will execute all your egalitarian pops but every time I've done it no pops die, the event chain just freezes or stops completely it seems.

dawedqafdAD said:

Staying dictatorial as far as i know would end the event chain indeed, at least thats been my experience and i mostly play under one rule these days.. In some ways its kind of better to just stay as a dictator one, because no civil war, and two because dictatorial government bonus is just kinda better with the reduced amenity usage. Possibly the biggest plus is that you don't have to deal with the paranoid tyrant trait getting stuck permanently on your leader which unfortunately is the case if you go imperial and try to execute the rebels.

Cant say if still stays if you do the rebellion as I've always done it the other way. As a matter of fact the entire kill the rebels path is broken last i checked, with you getting stuck with the paranoid tyrant trait (supposed to go away after event chain) and also it claims it will execute all your egalitarian pops but every time I've done it no pops die, the event chain just freezes or stops completely it seems.

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Theres no code at all to remove the paranoid tyrant trait or kill all egalitarian pops. Not sure what is intended here.

The only nitpick I have is that the events happen after a set amount of time instead of being tied to mid- and late-game sliders.

And I kind of miss how the One used to be tied to the planet capital but I can see why PDS changed it so you do not lose your ruler when your capital gets conquered or you simply change it to another planet.

dawedqafdAD said:

Staying dictatorial as far as i know would end the event chain indeed,

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This has always felt like a weird choice. I don't know why most of the writing and events for the origin are locked behind the role play of a leader that wants their family to inherit. Why can't we have interesting mechanics based on a leader who thinks their hand is the best to have at the wheel, while recognising that hereditary government has significant flaws?

It always felt like an origin deeply based in 40ks Emperor (hence the golden throne) so requiring imperial to get the most story out of it is odd.

imperial event line seem to be such a hustle

would be nice if there are other possible event line

maybe one focused on administration

Question said:

Theres no code at all to remove the paranoid tyrant trait or kill all egalitarian pops. Not sure what is intended here.

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Finally got to the point in my game where the event fired again. Here is the event i was talking about and what it says.

As you said there is no code for this so as such i suspect this path must still be broken. Unless it means something else, but i fail to see how it could.

Question said:

Im thinking going imperial might be good if you are willing to go full delusional and take all the autocratic options, then execute the rebel leaders. This will buff your luminary trait to the max.

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Unfortunately without it removing the paranoid tyrant trait it may be slightly worse because the paranoid tyrant trait somewhat counteracts the luminary trait benefits. Of course it adds stability as well but drastically reduces happiness and unity from jobs. So depending on how quickly you can get the resolution done its potentially a bit worse.

If you save a load of unity though and only do the bare minimum of tyrannical actions required in order to trigger the kill the rebels option, then i would be in agreement it would indeed be good to go imperial.

dawedqafdAD said:

Finally got to the point in my game where the event fired again. Here is the event i was talking about and what it says.

View attachment 1086825

As you said there is no code for this so as such i suspect this path must still be broken. Unless it means something else, but i fail to see how it could.

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You are half right.

You are right that the execution of egalitarian POPs doesn't happen. In fact, there's no code for it at all either in /events/ or /scripted_effects/ which are the two places with scripts for handling the paragon situations.

You are wrong about expecting the event to remove the Paranoid Tyrant trait. Not only would it be a silly thing to do - you are literally going full psychotic paranoid tyrant here - the event states that the Paranoid Tyrant trait worsens. And that is exactly what it does.

The event is paragon.5210 and choosing that option immediately adds 5 stacks of delusion, so that part is working as intended. It then invokes paragon.5222 for cleanup 15-30 days later.

There are only two ways to remove the Paranoid Tyrant trait:

1. End the conflict by negotiations rather than war while having at most 5 stacks of Paranoid Tyrant (handled in the conflict resolution script for paragon_origin_reformists_negotiations_effect in /common/scripted_effects/paragon_effects.txt)
2. Having exactly 1 stack stack of Paranoid Tyrant when completing the immortality project, since apart from giving the Luminary a nifty trait and marking the Luminary as immortal, it removes the Paranoid Tyrant trait if the Luminary has exactly 1 stack and otherwise reduces it by 1 (paragon_origin_delusion_trait_lowerer in the same file)

Peter Ebbesen said:

You are wrong about expecting the event to remove the Paranoid Tyrant trait. Not only would it be a silly thing to do - you are literally going full psychotic paranoid tyrant here - the event states that the Paranoid Tyrant trait worsens. And that is exactly what it does.

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Must've misremembered.

With regards to negotiating with rebels, a few comments:

1. You are not permanently locked into the changes imposed (unless something has changed recently in that regard)
2. You are permanently saddled with the negotiated empire modifier
3. The terms from negotiations are more in your favour if you have negotiated a deal with the Forgotten in the earlier situation (giving them +15% political power)
4. Likewise, the terms are better if you negotiate from a position of strength by using the Total Crackdown agenda to arrest the ringleaders to negotiate with you rather than letting the situation spiral out of control leading to forced negotiations when you are all on the brink of civil war.

For the very least intrusive result of negotiations, you need to both negotiate a deal with the Forgotten at the end of that earlier situation AND to end this situation with a Total Crackdown followed by negotiations.

In this case you have already performed changes favouring the people and and under the circ*mstances they are satisfied with a few minor constitutional changes.

This replaces the forgotten deal with a half-strength reformist deal, giving +15% political power (same as the old forgotten deal that is removed), workers and specialists +2.5% happiness, rulers -5% happiness, and no other changes at all.

Question said:

[*]If you have been taking a lot of autocratic event options like purging dissidents, you may also get the option to execute the rebel leaders during the negotiations. This avoids the civil war and increases your luminary trait to the max value.
[/LIST]

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1. Specifically, the option is available if you have 10 or more stacks of Paranoid Tyrant
2. It does not "increase the Luminary trait to the max value". It gives you 5 stacks of Paranoid Tyrant and 8 stacks of the Luminary growth trait, in other words 5*(+0.5 stability, -1.5 crime, -0.5% unity from jobs, -1% happiness ) + 8*(+0.75 stability, +1.5% unity from jobs) = 8.5 stability, -7.5 crime, 9.5% unity from jobs, -5% happiness.

Now, on the face of it, this might seem like a very desirable choice purely from a mechanical perspective, roleplaying be damned, and if you offered it in the first place - it is.

But in order to be offered it in the first place, you need to have played the situation long enough to gain at least 10 stacks of delusion (+5 stability, -15 crime, -5% unity from jobs, -10% happiness), with each option increasing the natural length of the situation. Even if you play the situation long enough to gain 10 stacks of delusion and then pursued a total crackdown, that is a considerable slowing down of the progression of the story compared to doing a total crackdown in the first place and then negotiating a deal with minor penalties. This might well not be worth the effort.

Question said:

I was under the impression that 8 stacks was the max but i guess im wrong, I wonder if its better to be delusional or not then.

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There is no maximum listed in the files, and I haven't observed one either.

I find roleplaying it to be the most satisfying, but if you want to go by mechanical merits, then go for paranoid tyrant and a bloodbath if you had a poor start and only scored low during the unifying promise, since in that case the stability increase probably makes it worth the effort, and otherwise go for the peaceful path without taking any tyrant option and terminating the situation ASAP using the Total Crackdown agenda.

The most I've managed in the game was one where I ended up with 23 or 24 stacks of the growth trait and no tyrant stacks, due to playing a benevolent empress becoming galactic custodian with all other empires being protectorate-vassals in her Holy Covenant federation and having an exceptionally good start with around 240 points at the end of the unifying promise situation through excessive expansion (that game was bonkers). I don't remember exactly how much, could be a bit less, could be a bit more.

That gave me 15 or 16 stacks from the promise, as I then gained all the positive increases except for the 8 from bloodbath, the 2 from galactic emperor, and the 1 from the immortality event (since my ruler was already immortal from being Chosen of the Composer and thus didn't get the event), while gaining none of the decreases.

Let me list write them out for you copied from my UOR strategy document back when I was seriously experimenting with them in 3.8 and 3.9 for you to incorporate in the first post, should you so desire.

Increasing growth trait:
2 initially
1 per 15 point of unification score at the end of the situation
1 for first colonization if you choose building option #2 or #3
1 for going imperial after the unification situation
8 for being an exceptionally paranoid tyrant engaging in a bloodbath
1 for the Luminary immortality event
1 for making a federation for the first time
1 for becoming an overlord for the first time
1 for winning a war for the first time
1 for becoming custodian for the first time
2 for becoming galactic emperor for the first time

Decreasing growth trait:
-1 for each of the three checks during the forgotten situation if you cannot afford to or choose not to pay energy and unity for passing them
-2 for losing a war for the first time
-3 for becoming a vassal for the first time

Question said:

How do you get more unification score in the initial situation anyway?

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Primarily by getting a lot of planets. Any colonized planet as well as planet undergoing colonization counts for 5 points.

For the complete score breakdown start out at zero and then add:

5 per owned planet
1 per owned system
1 per defensive pact
1 per federation ally
1 per vassal

At this point halve the accumulated score if your empire is the vassal of another empire - that's not the way people expected to be unified.

Finally add:

4 for being in a federation
10 for being federation leader