Last week developers talked about the basics of the Unity Rework. This week, they bring us a way to spend that Unity on a planetary and galactic scale, with the new Planetary Ascension Tiers update.
Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by expending Unity. In normal empires, they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well-oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.
In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.
Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks, you do not need to actually spend them for this feature, you can Ascend each of your planets to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.
Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend planets up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.
Screenshot from Stellaris: Apocalypse showing an incoming space battle between two fleets with massive ships in them.
Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Currently, it costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, so you’ll want to pick and choose which planets you want to improve and decide whether you would rather raise all your planets to low Ascension Tiers or focus on reaching the heights of Ascension on your most productive core world
