Why is leader lvl hardcap 10?

[Immortalits]

I've just noticed, that there are baseline +6 lvl for leaders if you play the game until endgame... so even the absolute fix upgrades grant you more bonus lvls, than the hardcap lets you use...
(+1 from discovery unity tree for all kinds, +2 for each kind of leader from the specialized trees, +1 from selected lineages and +2 from capacity boosters - society reserches) base lvl cap is 5, hardcap is 10, but you baseline get 6, that adds up to 11...
Why are there specific ascension perk, species trait and government policy for those?
(effectively the max lvl is 15, altho without immortal race trait mod it's close to impossible to reach for most leaders, but there are some, like admirals, that can easily go over 10 in a great war nation through continual battles)
2 of them are even irreversible (ascension and specie trait) if you pick them, because you don't know about the hardcap.
Why is the game designed in so many places in such a sh*tty way? -.-

My main concern is why are there meaningfull gameplay choices, that can only be wasted for that playthrough if chosen, if there is a hardcap, that in itself doesn't even matter in most cases, but when it matters, the bonuses from the permanent picks won't do anything at all... just why do they even exist?

[Anarch Cassius]

Conceivably you may not be ale to get all the techs and traditions or want high levels early. However given the difficutly in getting leaders to higher levels the fact there is a hard cap does seem unnessicary and frustrating.

[The Grand Mugwump]

I've gotten level 11 leaders. Is a mod intefering with your game? Of course, the sheer amount of time it takes means that few leader types will ever live long enough to get above level 10. But I've gotten an immortal chosen one and a lucky general who lead battles across dozens of worlds without dying to 11.

[Danny]

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

I've gotten level 11 leaders. Is a mod intefering with your game? Of course, the sheer amount of time it takes means that few leader types will ever live long enough to get above level 10. But I've gotten an immortal chosen one and a lucky general who lead battles across dozens of worlds without dying to 11.

I play only vanilla and I never seen a level 11 leader...

[cooltv27]

it used to only be possible to reach level 10 by using every possible boost, the base was 5 and there were 5 boosts to it. but now there are many more ways to increase it to the point that many of them are now useless as they do literally nothing else

removing the lvl 10 hardcap would be amazing, and would also make tall builds more powerful

[Immortalits]

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

I've gotten level 11 leaders. Is a mod intefering with your game? Of course, the sheer amount of time it takes means that few leader types will ever live long enough to get above level 10. But I've gotten an immortal chosen one and a lucky general who lead battles across dozens of worlds without dying to 11.

Well, check the 'common' -> 'defines' -> '00_defines' use Ctrl+F and search for:

LEADER_MAX_SKILL_CAP

it says it's only 10, it's extremely easy to mod up, but it's still frustrating, that players have to mod everything in the game for it not to be broken...
if the devs intent is to make only the sceleton of the game working and everything else to be modded, then they should just make a bit more simple mod files, in the current patch, some stuff got just harder to figure out, like ships upkeep cost is now defined through the generators instead of the ships themself, altho it's a good idea to increase stronger ships upkeep, at least they could have wrote it into the ship modding files... almost nothing works flawlessly in the game, there isnt a single mechanic, that doesn't have at least a slight flaw in it, but mostly it's worse.
The game itself has so much potential, but they're wasting it because of their mone hungry timed/ forced out expansions without even fixing the previous expansions flaws.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Having a cap of 10 even though it is possible to stack bonuses to 11 just means that you can get the most out of your leaders without having to take every possible bonus to max level. If the goal is to have the highest max level possible, then there is more than one way to reach that goal because of the cap. Think of it as encouraging build diversity.

[Astasia]

I always use a mod that increases the cap, but it's pretty moot since you basically have to keep your starting leaders alive all the way past the end game crisis to have them hit level 10, and it's kind of pointless and mind-numbingly slow to get them any higher. IIRC for most leaders it's like 200 years to go from 1-7, then 200 more years to go from 7-10, so what's 10-11? I've never played long enough to find out.

[nekoman]

Originally posted by Immortalits:

+1 from selected lineages and +2 from capacity boosters - society reserches)

They are different stages of each other, so you can't add them, meaning your total level cap is 10, not 11. I agree that hardcap of 10 makes little sense, but unlocking all traditions and getting capacity boosters takes some time, so other bonuses still have value.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

There's another +1 available as a trait that wasn't mentioned, so the point that it is possible to stack bonuses in excess of the cap is still valid.

[Ryika]

It's perfectly normal for games to have a hardcap for something and then effects that, if they're all chosen at the same time, hit that hard cap - that's what it's there for after all, to prevent players from stacking too much of the same thing on top of each other. The idea is that you pick and choose which effects you want to use instead of just picking all of them.

The exact reason for why the devs decided that a hardcap is necessary I don't know, but if you actually look at what leaders does, some stuff just gets wonky without a cap. Governors that can fight all planetary crime on their own for example.

Overall, I think the hardcap here is reasonable and not "broken" as you call it. It should be documented and clearly visible in the game UI though, ideally whenever you're about to pick up extra max levels for your leaders.

[Azunai]

i don't think the hard cap at level 10 makes much sense tbh.

if someone goes out of their way to stack all the buffs they may end up at 12 or something. but some of them comes with tradeoffs that are already balanced by being tradeoffs.

for example the ascencion perk that adds leader cap has a big opportunity cost since there are only 8 slots max and more than 8 decent perks, so you have to skip something else to get it.

it's not like a highly stacked leader cap does much good. you pretty much have to also stack bonus lifespan and bonus XP stuff to even reach the higher levels.

so an artificial limit doesn't really do much other than piss off the people who tried a high leader level playthrough and stacked all the buffs without knowing that there's a hardcap

[Immortalits]

Originally posted by Azunai:

i don't think the hard cap at level 10 makes much sense tbh.

if someone goes out of their way to stack all the buffs they may end up at 12 or something. but some of them comes with tradeoffs that are already balanced by being tradeoffs.

for example the ascencion perk that adds leader cap has a big opportunity cost since there are only 8 slots max and more than 8 decent perks, so you have to skip something else to get it.

it's not like a highly stacked leader cap does much good. you pretty much have to also stack bonus lifespan and bonus XP stuff to even reach the higher levels.

so an artificial limit doesn't really do much other than piss off the people who tried a high leader level playthrough and stacked all the buffs without knowing that there's a hardcap

exactly this, especially the ones, that are tradeoffs and are non-modifyable, like the racial trait and the ascension perk, they're only there to fk up someone's gameplay if they don't know about the lvl 10 hardcap.

[Immortalits]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

Having a cap of 10 even though it is possible to stack bonuses to 11 just means that you can get the most out of your leaders without having to take every possible bonus to max level. If the goal is to have the highest max level possible, then there is more than one way to reach that goal because of the cap. Think of it as encouraging build diversity.

the problem is, that in a long way, where you just want to max out everything and reach the repeatable techs, have all unity stuff etc, you baseline go over the cap, but there are important picks, namely the ascension perk one and the racial trait (talented), that are even non-refoundable... well, the only refoundable one is the government one, but still, the ascension ans racial ones are practically blocking a certain resource from the player permanently on a playthrough and it's quite important to know, that one of the most (for first sight) usefull picks for someone who wants to go tall is the ascension perk, because most truly good endgame ascension perks need 2-3 to be picked in the first place, so there are 2 slots practically for the early game, where it looks like a good lategame pick, but you'll only find out it's useless, when you get to actually use it, because as some already said, getting high lvl leaders also require long life for them.
Same goes for the racial, it's a 'cheap' lategame securing pick, because if you chose biology path, you won't pick 2nd best stuff, like 20% army str and bonus mineral, but you go for the 40% one, when you get the biological ascension, so you pick the cheap, but non-upgradeable traits for start and that 1 point also will be wasted and you can't even remove it, because only negative traits are removable...

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Stellaris is full of things that will mess up your game if you don't know about them. When you get in that position you learn and avoid the problem in your future games. Stacking all the leader level bonuses might ruin one game that you play, but it doesn't ruin Stellaris. Removing the level cap isn't really necessary, because while trying to get a leader up to level 11+ might be fun for some people it isn't a key component of victory in the game. I suspect it is even counterproductive, because even if all of your leaders were level 11 you'd have given up more to get to that point than you would gain from the extra level. This is the sort of niche gameplay change that is best addressed with a mod.

[cooltv27]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

I suspect it is even counterproductive, because even if all of your leaders were level 11 you'd have given up more to get to that point than you would gain from the extra level. This is the sort of niche gameplay change that is best addressed with a mod.

not everyone minmaxes (though I do), and I suspect that enough people would be interested in level 11+ leaders despite not being optimal