Stellaris: Paradoxian Space Stategy.

[Sian]

Game Site (http://www.stellarisgame.com/)
Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/281990/)
Stellaris forum (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/stellaris.900/)
RockPaperShotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/06/stellaris-paradox-strategy-game/) Press release article.

Anyone else having seen this one comming up? Appearently its going to be 4X from symmetrical positions in the early game, veering more into 'Traditional' Paradox Interactive Grand Strategy as you fill up the Galaxy, with huge lategame events that might tell you the Tyranids or Chaos Demons have found you, or an intergalactical robotic rebellion happens, or even falling into Ian Banks "Culture" or something more Star Trekkie ...

You're going to start as one of 7 Phenotypes (which are somewhat customizable i believe), of which 6 Phenotypes is known ... Molluscoid, Mammalian, Fungoid, Avian, Human, Retilian, and a procedurally generated random galaxy each start, with procedurally generated alien species. Among others select

Going to be interesting to see if they can pull the subgenre-changing gameplay off, and slightly surprised they believe that their Clausewitz Engine can pull it off.

[Narkis]

Wow, this is awesome. Any idea of a release date? Can't wait to play grand strategy In Space.

[Aragehaor]

Paradox? Space? Grand Strategy? Grand Strategy? Paradox? Space? Paradox?


Sold.

If i could pre-order it now i would with zero hesitation.


And then play it two months after release when the game becomes playable.

[Rockphed]

I'm not sold on it. For me, 4X in space will always require the ability to be fiddly with the ships. Somehow, I cannot see Paradox being able to pull that off with their current engine.

[Grif]

Cautiously optimistic. But never a on-launch buy, since this is a new title for them, and HOI IV is looking to be disappointing.

[Rockphed]

Actually read the article. Looks like there will, nominally, be a ship design tool. I'm still looking forward to The Mandate more than to this game. Not least because The Mandate will not require me to get steam up and running to play.

[Waar]

I think it will be good, but I don't trust it to be.

[Martok]

A day-one purchase for me. Can't wait!

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Would be day-one if I could convince my girlfriend that I didn't need to save the money for Germany...

Probably will be first-month purchase anyways! :P

[Sian]

Given the history of Paradox Interactive, i'm guessing that its working but with number of non-gamebreaking bugs on release. But it'll have strong mechanics which becomes great with a bit of polish and that polish will be applied in form of many patches, making it a very strong game a month or two post-release.

[Manticoran]

Honestly, fiddling with space ships tends to be my least favorite part of space grand strategy, and the reason why I could never get into things like Galactic Civilizations, because I felt like the defaults were probably just so much worse than anything I'd design but I didn't want to spend hours and hours learning how to do spaceship design.

[Cristo Meyers]

Given the history of Paradox Interactive, i'm guessing that its working but with number of non-gamebreaking bugs on release. But it'll have strong mechanics which becomes great with a bit of polish and that polish will be applied in form of many patches, making it a very strong game a month or two post-release.

This is the reason why just about any Paradox purchase of mine is done when it goes on sale. They get the time to apply the necessary polish, I get a discount.

Plus I'm just not sold on this one. I want to be. I love CK2 and have EU4 just waiting to be played once I have my gaming PC back, but I think I've just had my fill of space 4x games.

[Sian]

And it got a release date ... May 9th

[Saithis Bladewing]

I'm really looking forward to a new IP coming from Paradox Dev Studio (and not just published by), but it'll probably be really buggy on release. It looks interesting though, and I'll probably be a sucker and buy it on launch anyway...

[OrcusMcP]

I probably won't be getting it right away (more due to lack of money/time than lack of faith) but I am pretty stoked about this. I think what will really make this game stand out is two things:

1 - The emphasis on exploration for the early game. I like how they've made the galaxy very mysterious and wondrous.
2 - The migration of character and POP dynamics from CK/EU/Vic to space empires. This will make the mid-late game of a space 4x so much more interesting.

[Leecros]

i'm certainly watching it as well. I'll likely preorder it and/or buy it on day 1.

Honestly despite some bumps every now and then. None of the Paradox Development Studios games that i have ever bought have been disappointing. I have several hundred hours into most of them and even play the games I don't have that much time in, Vicky II and HoI III, on occasion.

Sure, there may be rocky parts and I may not approve with all of the changes, but as long as I get my money's worth(at least 40 hours of enjoyment is my preferred number. 1 hour/dollar) I will be happy.

[Cikomyr]

Someone knows if it will require pixel shader 5.0 or more?

My vid card is 4.1.. Cant even run BFG Armada :(

[Otomodachi]

Paradox? Space? Grand Strategy? Grand Strategy? Paradox? Space? Paradox?




Horses?!?!? DAN????!!!??? HORSES?!?

[Sharoth]

I am interested.

[Leecros]

Someone knows if it will require pixel shader 5.0 or more?

My vid card is 4.1.. Cant even run BFG Armada :(

Nothing about shaders is mentioned in the system requirements currently posted on Steam


However at least a 1024MB video card is a minimum requirement. Which means my computer is right at the edge of that.


Sigh.

[houlio]

If anyone cares, they were doing a stream of it earlier today (it started at 20:00 CET). Hopefully they'll put it up on youtube pretty soon if you're like me and had to be at work during that time.

[Razade]

Wow, this is awesome. Any idea of a release date? Can't wait to play grand strategy In Space.

It's not going to be 4X, it's going to be like EU4/Crusader Kings.

[Grif]

It's not going to be 4X, it's going to be like EU4/Crusader Kings.

:smallconfused:

But grand strategy isn't 4X?

[Razade]

:smallconfused:

But grand strategy isn't 4X?

No, they're separate sub-categories of Strategy games but Grand Strategy and 4X are separate with focuses on different things.

[Grif]

No, they're separate sub-categories of Strategy games but Grand Strategy and 4X are separate with focuses on different things.

You misunderstand. I know the distinction. Narkis was saying it's grand strategy in space, which is what EU4/CK2 was. He wasn't claiming it to be a 4X. So my confusion comes from your objection, rather.

[houlio]

It's not going to be 4X, it's going to be like EU4/Crusader Kings.

It actually is going to be much closer to a 4x game than being EU4/CK2 in space. Stellaris will have victory conditions, but it is distancing itself from traditional 4x games by incorporating a lot of the things Paradox uses to limit expansion (coalitions, caps on direct territory control, etc). At least, that's what I have been able to glean so far.

[Sian]

From what i can see, its more a 'classic' Paradox Grand Strategy, that incorperates themes from 4x specially in that it have a much more comprehensive eXploration fase, an actual eXpansion fase where you paint a blank canvas and a much more explicit win-condition, than it can be defined as a 4x with Grand Strategy elements...

[Cikomyr]

Yhea, it the feel i also got. Its a 4x game, but with deeper and more complex canvas that yeh average game

[Narkis]

Yeah, from what I've seen the game starts as 4x and morphs into standard paradox fare as the galaxy fills up.

Also, the game looks awesome and I'll almost certainly preorder as soon as I can.

[Leecros]

Yeah, from what I've seen the game starts as 4x and morphs into standard paradox fare as the galaxy fills up.

This was pretty much the idea they implied when they first announced it on the forums. They wanted the 4x experience initially and it eventually evolves into a Grand Strategy game.

If anybody's interested, Quill18,aKiss4Luck, and Briarstone got an early look at the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rmqiyxxjY


At least the initial parts of the game definitely have a very 4x feeling to them it seems.

[houlio]

Here's the stream they recently put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoiYDp7EEA

I think they are planning on doing it every Thursday for awhile.

[Cristo Meyers]

Here's the stream they recently put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoiYDp7EEA

I think they are planning on doing it every Thursday for awhile.

That looks remarkably better than I honestly thought it would. Dang, might have to reconsider waiting and actually get this closer to release.

All hail the Blorg!

[Cikomyr]

Here's the stream they recently put up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoiYDp7EEA

I think they are planning on doing it every Thursday for awhile.

We are the Blorg.
Lower your shields and surrender your ships.
We will hug your biological and technological friendliness with our own.
Your culture will adapt to befriend us.
Resistance is futile.

[Cikomyr]

The thing i love most is the anti-blob features in the game. Things like factions, that will push for independence and civil war. Classic 4x games never have these checks, so its always massive monolithical entities.

The Klingon Empire is a good example of heavily decentralized power, with Noble Houses ruling over ships, ressources and worlds.

[Leecros]

The thing i love most is the anti-blob features in the game. Things like factions, that will push for independence and civil war. Classic 4x games never have these checks, so its always massive monolithical entities.

That largely depends on how they're implemented.

Both Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV have anti-blob features. However, they end up rarely working out. Factions in CKII are easy to deal with and Aggressive Expansion in EUIV is also fairly easy to manage. They do work at slowing the player, but they rarely become a major hurdle, even for large sprawling empires.

[Rockphed]

If the anti-blob features make it so huge empires split up sometimes, then they are good enough. Even if a good player can keep a galaxy wide empire going, I always get bored near the end of space 4x games. Often there isn't enough going on or it is all tedious micromanagement. Also, I hope there is support for races to end up with multiple competing powers, a la Honor Harrington and the peeps.

[Sian]

They have said earlier one that one of their focus points was stuff to do when you had grown big, with the examples shown being sentient robotic rebellion, or W40kesque Chaos or Tyranid attacking

[Inarius]

They have said earlier one that one of their focus points was stuff to do when you had grown big, with the examples shown being sentient robotic rebellion, or W40kesque Chaos or Tyranid attacking

So like comet sighted, except now its also full of tyranids? No wonder everyone in EU4 was so freaked out by those comets.

[Cikomyr]

They have said earlier one that one of their focus points was stuff to do when you had grown big, with the examples shown being sentient robotic rebellion, or W40kesque Chaos or Tyranid attacking

Kind of funny. Materialist can creat robots, while Spirituals can do psionics.

Ai Rebellion and Chaos surge represent the evil consequence of either

[Razade]

Apparently there's a date of May 9th on their website, probably a good guess to the release date.

[Leecros]

Apparently there's a date of May 9th on their website, probably a good guess to the release date.

Indeed that date was also stated in a trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJYRLFvJVFg) released the other day and the posted release date on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/281990/?snr=1_7_15__13).

[Grif]

Apparently there's a date of May 9th on their website, probably a good guess to the release date.

Huh. What a happy birthday present. :smalltongue:

[Cikomyr]

All right. Imperium of Mankind is definitely Spiritual, while Tau are Materialist. Its official.

Materialist gives you access to robot tech, while Spiritual give you Psionics.

Also give you a fun explanation for the Age of Strife following the Dark Age of Technology:

The original Human Empire was heavily materialist. However, some of their population were slowly deviating in becoming Spiritual (probably due to Eldar influence), which led to Human Psionics, and thus fundamental civil strife.

The Human Empire was hit at the same time by a Robotic Rebellion while the Spiritual Faction rebelled.

[Leecros]

I'll be curious to see how the combat looks in-game. I know you can zoom in and see the combat(although you can't order individual ships). I also believe that in a forum post they said that the shots will be simulated. So hits will be hits and misses will be misses...Unlike say...the DPS-based combat system that Sins of a Solar Empire has. However, I'm curious to see how stagnant or dynamic combat is going to be.

Taking Sins of a Solar Empire as an example. Combat in that game always felt sort of...fake. The ships lined up across from each other and "shot" at the opposing forces which caused them. Then of course, the game ran on a damage per second system rather than simulating each shot, so the ships health would just tick down while the firing animation was going.

Comparatively speaking, Sword of the Stars is the opposite. The combat was very dynamic with lots of maneuvering and every shot was simulated. It mattered where your guns were, it mattered where your ships got hit.

I sort of suspect that the combat may be somewhere in between those two examples...

I'll also be curious to see how combat rolls are taken into account. Paradox like their dice rolls and that's not always an entirely bad thing, but if they do simulate every weapon shot that can hit or miss. I'm interested in seeing how dice rolls affect that.

[Grif]

I'll be curious to see how the combat looks in-game. I know you can zoom in and see the combat(although you can't order individual ships). I also believe that in a forum post they said that the shots will be simulated. So hits will be hits and misses will be misses...Unlike say...the DPS-based combat system that Sins of a Solar Empire has. However, I'm curious to see how stagnant or dynamic combat is going to be.

Taking Sins of a Solar Empire as an example. Combat in that game always felt sort of...fake. The ships lined up across from each other and "shot" at the opposing forces which caused them. Then of course, the game ran on a damage per second system rather than simulating each shot, so the ships health would just tick down while the firing animation was going.

Comparatively speaking, Sword of the Stars is the opposite. The combat was very dynamic with lots of maneuvering and every shot was simulated. It mattered where your guns were, it mattered where your ships got hit.

I sort of suspect that the combat may be somewhere in between those two examples...

I'll also be curious to see how combat rolls are taken into account. Paradox like their dice rolls and that's not always an entirely bad thing, but if they do simulate every weapon shot that can hit or miss. I'm interested in seeing how dice rolls affect that.

Are there invisible rivers in space? :smalltongue: Or maybe mountains?

(For those not in the loop, EU4 (and 3) had these random malus to dice rolls during the combat phase to the game. It used to be that each province had "rivers" and percentages of different terrain. Attacking into a mountain, and crossing a river would incur a malus of -3 and -1/-2 respectively, which is a big deal when a dice only goes up to 12.)

[Cikomyr]

Just fyi: the reddit page r/stellaris has been taken over by a hostile moderator who is posting things about child pornography and the likes.

The new Reddit page is r/stellarisgame

[Leecros]

Are there invisible rivers in space? :smalltongue: Or maybe mountains?

There might be like...Nebulous regions that influence combat. Who knows?

I certainly hope that at least some solar systems have different "terrain types" such as being in a nebula, or the center of gravity for the system being like a black hole, or a neutron star instead of a regular star, or something.

[Cikomyr]

Good news. Theres been a Blorgdate, with a full 2 hour stream of gameplay.

I will post a link as soon as i get home.
And i eat my pizza

[Narkis]

For those like me who are too impatient to wait for Cikomyr to finish his pizza, the stream can be found here (https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/v/56330432).

[Cikomyr]

For those like me who are too impatient to wait for Cikomyr to finish his pizza, the stream can be found here (https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/v/56330432).

Thanks a lot. The pizza was good. But then I got distracted by my GF putting on Pacific Rim

And then I got distracted in the bath by reading The Player of Games

I want a Culture Society now

[Cikomyr]

So, anyone here have an idea of the kind of government they will create?

I was thinking of remaking Star Trek's humans. Materialist, Pacifists and Xenophiles.

[Narkis]

Fanatic Materialist and Militarist. Government Indirect Democracy, unless Science Directorate turns out to be better.

Through superior technology and more competent leaders we shall conquer all. I was going to play as humans, but their portraits that I've seen are really ugly, and thus I'm undecided. An I'm not sure on race traits either, probably long-lived and even better leaders, but I might go for even more science.

[Cristo Meyers]

I'll do the same thing I do every first playthrough: try and take over the worldgalaxy!

I'm thinking something militaristic, not sure where on the Spiritual/Materialistic spectrum though. Though for some odd reason just making Wing Commander's Kilrathi and going stomping around the galaxy sounds like a good time. Then when I get that out of my system I'll try something a little more in-depth.

[houlio]

I'm going with humans for my first playthrough. I'm thinking Xenophobic/Militarist/Materialist, aiming for something like the humans in Starship Troopers (the book, not the film). Maybe Individualist instead of Xenophobic.

[Cikomyr]

Individualist, Militarist and Materialist sounds okay. Although they do have chaplains, so its not really anti-religion regime.

Maybe Fanatic Militarist, Individualist? You could have a Military Republic

[dying0d]

Kind of excited for this.. looks interesting

[Razade]

Stellaris just went up for Pre-Order on Steam with some incentives to do so.

[Aotrs Commander]

I've only just started playing EUIV, which is... Different. Lot of sitting around with the equivilent of "next turn" in Civ IV in between doing anything, though it is just about holding my interest for the moment.

One the other hand, SotS 1 and 2 (though the latter only about a year after launch) are, in my opinion, thus far the best 4X games, since they handle the actual starship design and combat the best. GalCiv 1 & 2 (I never played 3) were very good on the campaign end, but so deeply unsatisfying on the combat end (both in terms of the combat and the fancy ship design basically boling down to "magnitude of some numbers"); the rest fall somewhere between.

So, as per usual, for me, I think the starship combat is the make-or-break. Have we seen any of that, or is it just like EU combat? If it's the latter,, sadly, it will get a pass. In my opinion, there's not much point in having starships and not being able to fight with them. (Even MoO3's fairly cursory system was fine; SEV's was a little bit too simple, though. (I never got on woith MoO2's turn-based combat system. I actually wasn't that struck with it, heretical as that is to say...)

I sort of like the idea of late-game events, as SotS 2 in particular - never having been properly finished with scenarios to cut off a late game that was basically just mop-up - could drag a bit.

An improvement on SotS's "yay, you win, click close" win screen would be nice.

The perfect space game would incorporate SotS' 1/2's starship combat, with something between Space Empire V/Moo3's expansive tech trees, GalCiv's planets system (though crossing with EU-style wouldn't uhrt either) and - cautiously, since I've not seen that much of the game - EU's political system.



Not going to rush - since I've been burned enough times now I generally don't pre-order, but I'll certainly keep an eye on it. (Unless the starship combat looks especially stellar, as it were.)

Though, on checking some of the videos, it looks promising. I'll go have a thread on their forums, and see if they can sway me.

Edit: Nope "like EIUV but animated." Something to look at when it goes on sale some time down the line, then.

[AgentPaper]

I think the starship combat is the make-or-break. Have we seen any of that, or is it just like EU combat?

From what we've seen, it's sort of like EU4 in that, once battle has joined, you don't really do anything but watch and decide if you need to retreat. Before the battle is joined, though, you have a lot more control than EU4, being able to set up your ships with specific weapons, shields, armor, and some auxiliary things we haven't seen much of, and you can also research more advanced AI to allow you to set some ships to hang back and attack from afar, while others rush forward. You can apparently design your fleet to counter specific enemies, so you could have an "anti-Blorg fleet" with lots of lasers and armor or whatever, while the rest of your fleets have a more general-purpose design.

But yeah, Stellaris, much like all of Paradox's games, isn't really about battles. It's about managing your empire and treating with other empires to survive in the cutthroat world of international politics.

[Destro_Yersul]

So I sat down and read all of the Dev Blogs paradox has been putting up on their forums, and, umm..

I might need this game now.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I'm trying to resist buying this right now soooo hard. My birthday is in just a few months, I can ask for it then, and I really can't afford it, but omgiwantit.

[Cikomyr]

I'm trying to resist buying this right now soooo hard. My birthday is in just a few months, I can ask for it then, and I really can't afford it, but omgiwantit.

Do you just want the game, or the actual preorder promo? ;)

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Do you just want the game, or the actual preorder promo? ;)

Oh I'm fine with the game, I mean, extra races are fine and all, but I imagine they'll be available later and tons of new race DLCs or mods will come out in fairly short order.

[Corvus]

Looks like the embargo has been lifted as the youtubers with advanced preview copies are putting up their lets plays. If only I wasn't at work so I could watch...

[Aotrs Commander]

Now 130 hours into EUIV - and having got the game's measure to actually not get too frustrated and/or bored at it (which is "easy, save every five minutes and don't give it an inch"), I am more positively inclined to Stellaris. Still probably something I won't get instantly (still probbaly got forty or fifty hours left on this first playthrough of EUIV...), but something to look at down the line and put on my wish list for if it goes on sale or six months down the line ot something.

[GloatingSwine]

Oh I'm fine with the game, I mean, extra races are fine and all, but I imagine they'll be available later and tons of new race DLCs or mods will come out in fairly short order.

Bear in mind the extra races are just extra appearances for races of which there are already many dozens in the base game.

Really, the only thing to preorder for would be if you're on the Paradox forums and you want that sweet Blorg avatar.

(Otherwise the game's out on like monday so it's not too long now).

[Razade]

Now 130 hours into EUIV - and having got the game's measure to actually not get too frustrated and/or bored at it (which is "easy, save every five minutes and don't give it an inch"), I am more positively inclined to Stellaris. Still probably something I won't get instantly (still probbaly got forty or fifty hours left on this first playthrough of EUIV...), but something to look at down the line and put on my wish list for if it goes on sale or six months down the line ot something.

From what I've read it'll be more a mix of EU4 and CK2 with its own flavoring. Certainly excited about it all the same though.

[Manticoran]

Any ideas on what the best Let's Plays are?

[Narkis]

Of those I've seen so far, I liked Quill's the most.

[Leecros]

From what I've read it'll be more a mix of EU4 and CK2 with its own flavoring. Certainly excited about it all the same though.

I don't know if I would really call it a mix of EU4 and CK2...

I mean, yeah your ruler, advisers, and scientists all have traits, but it's not like you can marry them off or start an eugenics program.

It seems more like a mix of EU4 and <insert popular 4x space game here>. It has a lot of stuff that screams Paradox Grand Strategy Game, but unlike a typical grand strategy game; it seems like the goal is going to fall in line with more traditional 4x games: Dominate the Galaxy.

comparatively speaking, EU4 and CK2 are far more sandbox-y where you make your own goals.It's highly unlikely to conquer the world in both games, however it really seems as if Stellaris is going to be more clear-cut. Hopefully they add a large variety of ways to complete that objective.

[Aotrs Commander]

After consideration (and a bit of checking up), I decided that I would give a shot via pre-order, taking advantage of the Green Game Gaming discount.

[Narkis]

it's not like you can start an eugenics program.

Well, you can, but it's just a policy that gives permanent bonuses to your leaders. I agree it's not like CK2 though.

[Corvus]

For those who want to plan races ahead of time there is a race builder available at https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/

I'm thinking of going with http://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=1,6,10&government=9&traits=7,14,28 - a race of peaceful, industrious bugs that bred like crazy. +5% energy, +10% food, +20% minerals, -5% food needed, -10% growth time. Tend to get squashed like, well bugs, in war.

[Mabn]

I am so very exited. I plan to do my first game as brillant, but very lazy slug people (https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=10,12&government=14&traits=8,17,24,25)

[factotum]

comparatively speaking, EU4 and CK2 are far more sandbox-y where you make your own goals.It's highly unlikely to conquer the world in both games, however it really seems as if Stellaris is going to be more clear-cut. Hopefully they add a large variety of ways to complete that objective.

I think that might be why I like the looks of Stellaris. I've not played EU4 but I *did* have a go at CK2, and I just found it too unfocused for me--I can make up my own goals, sure (I've played hundreds of hours of X3:TC), but I always find it more satisfying to fulfil an objective someone else has set for me.

[GloatingSwine]

I have vague plans to start a race of mad scientists. Whatever traits make the most science, wormhole drives, and a personal rule to always meddle with dangerous research whenever it comes up.

[Narkis]

After watching the streams my plan has changed to pretty much the same thing. Intelligent, long-lived and weak, Fanatic Materialist and either Militarist or Individualist, with a Science Directorate Government. Research ALL the things, give full rights to my AIs, etc. Fallen Empires are gonna hate me.

BTW, the linked generator is a bit out of date. A few, mostly minor, things have changed since the Blorg build that it's based on. This one (http://stellarisspeciesgen.com/)has been updated with what's known from the streams.

[GloatingSwine]

After watching the streams my plan has changed to pretty much the same thing. Intelligent, long-lived and weak, Fanatic Materialist and either Militarist or Individualist, with a Science Directorate Government. Research ALL the things, give full rights to my AIs, etc. Fallen Empires are gonna hate me.


If you're not going to meddle with things that man or mushroom was not meant to know, what's the point of going to space?

Our glorious mission, to explore space, find strange new worlds and civilisations, and to poke them with a stick to see what happens!

[Manticoran]

For those who want to plan races ahead of time there is a race builder available at https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/

I'm thinking of going with http://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=1,6,10&government=9&traits=7,14,28 - a race of peaceful, industrious bugs that bred like crazy. +5% energy, +10% food, +20% minerals, -5% food needed, -10% growth time. Tend to get squashed like, well bugs, in war.

This is awesome.

EXPANSIONIST SLAVERS
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=1,5,13&government=2&traits=8,16,21

PEACEFUL LEADERS
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=6,10,14&government=8&traits=5,11,13,28

ETERNAL MONARCHY
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=0,9&government=0&traits=19,21,28

MONEY RULES
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=3,13&government=12&traits=2,18,27

THE GREAT BUILDERS
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=0,10&government=4&traits=7,16,27

HAPPY HOLY WARRIORS
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=1,9,14&government=1&traits=14,15,16,21

ORBITAL WARRIORS
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=4,9&government=0&traits=0,8,23,28

PEACEFUL GROWTH
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=11,13&government=12&traits=1,14,28

SCIENCE FOCUS
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=6,12&government=7&traits=8,12,27

LIVE EVERYWHERE, KILL EVERYONE
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=5,9,14&government=1&traits=6,21,23,27

LIVE EVERYWHERE, LOVE EVERYONE
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=7,10&government=13&traits=6,26,27,28

ALIEN SLAVES ONLY
https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22%22&ethoses=4,9&government=10&traits=20,21,27

Made a whole bunch of different races for funzies.

[Grif]

Since I'm on a Warhammer 40k kick recently, I'm probably going to recreate the Imperium of Man and go to town with it. (I very much expect mods that gives us the ship models from BFG shortly.)

[AgentPaper]

Lots of people focusing on tech, but I think a lot of the non-tech bonuses seem a lot more powerful in the near and long-term, especially considering that there seems to be a lot less of the exponential increase in power offered by tech compared to other 4X games. You get bigger ships, but they aren't actually much better than just more small ones, and actual upgrades to weapons and armor seem to be fairly rare and not massive changes. The actual power of your empire seems much more reliant on simply how large your empire actually is, how many planets and stations you have to increase your forcelimit.

Myself, I'm planning to crease a race of aggressive, imperialistic canaries (https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22Canarian%20Empire%22&ethoses=1,5,9&government=4&traits=9,13,16,21).

[DigoDragon]

Huh. What a happy birthday present. :smalltongue:

I know right? If only I had my birthday money now to preorder.

Haven't even bought the other space conquest/4X games I got on my wish list. Arg, not enough time and money to enjoy all this. :smalltongue:

[Avilan the Grey]

*Homer Drooling Noises*

Low on funds though. Probably wait for a sale. :smallfrown:

[Narkis]

Lots of people focusing on tech, but I think a lot of the non-tech bonuses seem a lot more powerful in the near and long-term, especially considering that there seems to be a lot less of the exponential increase in power offered by tech compared to other 4X games. You get bigger ships, but they aren't actually much better than just more small ones, and actual upgrades to weapons and armor seem to be fairly rare and not massive changes. The actual power of your empire seems much more reliant on simply how large your empire actually is, how many planets and stations you have to increase your forcelimit.

Myself, I'm planning to crease a race of aggressive, imperialistic canaries (https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22Canarian%20Empire%22&ethoses=1,5,9&government=4&traits=9,13,16,21).

Well, traditionally focusing on tech has been a really strong strategy in such games. Even if it's not the strongest here, it's guaranteed to work nicely. Thus it's a very safe choice for most people's first game. I'm sure we'll be seeing more diversity once everyone starts getting the hang of it. I, for instance, am planning to go with some form of spiritual slavers for my second playthrough.

[factotum]

Well, traditionally focusing on tech has been a really strong strategy in such games. Even if it's not the strongest here, it's guaranteed to work nicely.

I disagree somewhat. One of the things Stellaris does is have randomised techs, and since the main reason for focusing on tech in other 4X games is to follow some sort of "perfect research" line to get a game-breaking advantage, that isn't so much the case here because you're not guaranteed to get the techs you need dealt to you. You might thus be better off, for example, choosing traits that give you a military or manufacturing advantage, on the grounds those are guaranteed while tech is not.

[Aotrs Commander]

I disagree somewhat. One of the things Stellaris does is have randomised techs, and since the main reason for focusing on tech in other 4X games is to follow some sort of "perfect research" line to get a game-breaking advantage, that isn't so much the case here because you're not guaranteed to get the techs you need dealt to you. You might thus be better off, for example, choosing traits that give you a military or manufacturing advantage, on the grounds those are guaranteed while tech is not.

I had a long reply typed up, on the lines of "yes, perhaps economics might be the smart move, but I won't make any calls until I can see the mechanics" and on to a long diversion... And then firefox did somemost bizarre - I'm not even sure what I hit and why it did anything and it all vanished. Especially weird considering that the forums saves posts now; it's the first post I've had eaten for years.

Perhaps I'll expound later.

[DigoDragon]

Based on my experiences with every Civ/4X kind of game I've played, Economics seems to be the secret to victory. Money builds your cities/planets/armies/starships, pays bribes to keep neighbors content, and funds the research into better technologies. Though some games may not have "money" (like in Space Empires IV) but have resources you mine which is pretty much like currency.

[Leecros]

I disagree somewhat. One of the things Stellaris does is have randomised techs, and since the main reason for focusing on tech in other 4X games is to follow some sort of "perfect research" line to get a game-breaking advantage, that isn't so much the case here because you're not guaranteed to get the techs you need dealt to you. You might thus be better off, for example, choosing traits that give you a military or manufacturing advantage, on the grounds those are guaranteed while tech is not.

While tech is sort of randomized, it's very much weighted. Especially in the early game. Per the words of the dev diary on the subject:


The deck is very much stacked, so to speak. Especially in the early game, some cards are extremely likely to end up in the top, so that all players get a fair start. What happens in the background is a complex weighting of various factors, like the ethics of the empire, the traits of the scientist character in charge of the department, the techs you already have, etc. I guess you could say the result is something like a fuzzy, hidden tech tree.

I don't really have much to put into this discussion. I'm largely neutral on whether tech will be a good investment or not. Certainly there are arguments on both sides. However, saying that Stellaris has "randomized techs" isn't really true.




Also I was surprised to find that the Yogscast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlORb8m1PMo&index=1&list=PLcHXCoaLlBY5h1O8jiJILSzywOGa36BAZ) did a couple of videos on Stellaris. I'm not a big Yogscast person, but they're certainly bigger than the typical people that Paradox Strategy Games pull in. So i was sort of surprised to see it.

[Eldan]

Since I'm on a Warhammer 40k kick recently, I'm probably going to recreate the Imperium of Man and go to town with it. (I very much expect mods that gives us the ship models from BFG shortly.)

I was trying of maybe building tyranids at some point. Militaristic, xenophilic, spiritualist. Expansionist like crazy. Depending on trait points, repugnant agrarian nomads.

[The Great Wyrm]

I am totally making Kerbals (https://kaisersly.github.io/stellaris_race_maker/?version=1&name=%22Kerbals%22&ethoses=6,10,13&government=7&traits=0,9,28). They will, of course, use the Warp method of FTL, in imitation of KSP Kraken drives. Too bad there isn't a mod yet that adds Kerbal portraits (and also their homeworld Kerbin).

[Manticoran]

I was trying of maybe building tyranids at some point. Militaristic, xenophilic, spiritualist. Expansionist like crazy. Depending on trait points, repugnant agrarian nomads.

...XenoPHILE? I guess technically Tyranids love other aliens... But really only for lunch.

Given how Tyranids work, I'd go for Fanatic Militarist, Xenophobe, or Fanatic Xenophobe, Militarist, for type of Empire.

[DigoDragon]

...XenoPHILE? I guess technically Tyranids love other aliens... But really only for lunch.

It's that sort of love of getting pizza with your fav toppings.

[factotum]

Also I was surprised to find that the Yogscast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlORb8m1PMo&index=1&list=PLcHXCoaLlBY5h1O8jiJILSzywOGa36BAZ) did a couple of videos on Stellaris.

It's actually not that big a surprise to me--the Yogscast do a lot of 4X games, and even have an entire channel (which used to be called Civilization, but I think has changed recently) devoted to them. They did a multiplayer playthrough of the Master of Orion beta recently, for instance.

[GloatingSwine]

I disagree somewhat. One of the things Stellaris does is have randomised techs, and since the main reason for focusing on tech in other 4X games is to follow some sort of "perfect research" line to get a game-breaking advantage, that isn't so much the case here because you're not guaranteed to get the techs you need dealt to you. You might thus be better off, for example, choosing traits that give you a military or manufacturing advantage, on the grounds those are guaranteed while tech is not.

You don't understand, the point isn't to optimise tech, the point is to uncover and research all of the techs that have the possibility to doom the galaxy.

[Leecros]

It's actually not that big a surprise to me--the Yogscast do a lot of 4X games, and even have an entire channel (which used to be called Civilization, but I think has changed recently) devoted to them. They did a multiplayer playthrough of the Master of Orion beta recently, for instance.

They do, but rarely is it featured on their main channel(Although I do know that only the first episode is there). That's still more attention from a larger group of youtubers than Paradox typically gets.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

They've been really branching out. Their big multiplayer session had at least one journalist who never played a grand strategy game before.

[Narkis]

So apparently slaves can't currently revolt. At all. DDRJake in his stream was able to prevent factions from rising up by simply enslaving every pop in them. Disappointing, but I guess it wouldn't be a paradox release without a major bug or another.

[Razade]

So apparently slaves can't currently revolt. At all. DDRJake in his stream was able to prevent factions from rising up by simply enslaving every pop in them. Disappointing, but I guess it wouldn't be a paradox release without a major bug or another.

It'll be fixed before the game comes out I suspect.

[Narkis]

It'll be fixed before the game comes out I suspect.

Hopefuly. If not, I bet it's gonna be the very first patch. They have the whole week ahead of them to fix stuff like that.:smallsmile:

[Teln]

The release time is set for 1800 GMT (https://steamcommunity.com/app/281990/discussions/0/357285562487980826/).

EDIT: That's 24 hours and 40 minutes away as of this post.

[factotum]

OK, I just broke one of my rules and pre-ordered the game, I hope I don't regret that decision in 24 hours plus however long it takes to download the thing...

[Sian]

Now matter how much i want to (having seen several youtubers play it), i can't help but be uncertain if I'm going to like Stellaris ... I like 4x (its probably the game genre that I played the most in my youth), and i like grand strategy (the game genre i play the most nowadays), but i just can't help but feel that Stellaris is going to be less than its parts, due to their respective complexity stepping on each others toes. Don't think i can sufficiently articulate exactly whats wrong before actually playing it, but my gut feeling tells me I'm not going to be as impressed as i want to be.

[Eldan]

...XenoPHILE? I guess technically Tyranids love other aliens... But really only for lunch.

Given how Tyranids work, I'd go for Fanatic Militarist, Xenophobe, or Fanatic Xenophobe, Militarist, for type of Empire.

They integrate everyone.

[GloatingSwine]

To be honest, it looks p. simple by Paradox standards, and basically all the concepts in it are already extant in other Paradox games.

Also, the addition of the demense limit to 4x is a great solution to what I've always felt is the weakest element of the genre, that you need some level of planetary micromanagement in the early game to give the player more interaction in the early game, but when you get too large an empire it becomes tedious to click through the same build order over and over but you need to do it because the automation AI will do it wrong every time.

Keeping it down to a few things to personally manage means that it won't become an endless chore to make sure planets are in working order.

[Razade]

Keeping it down to a few things to personally manage means that it won't become an endless chore to make sure planets are in working order.

Pretty sure they're on the record as saying this was number 1 on "We want to avoid" list.

[factotum]

but i just can't help but feel that Stellaris is going to be less than its parts, due to their respective complexity stepping on each others toes. Don't think i can sufficiently articulate exactly whats wrong before actually playing it, but my gut feeling tells me I'm not going to be as impressed as i want to be.

As GloatingSwine says, the game specifically limits how complex the 4X part can be by reducing the amount of planetary micromanagement you have to do once your empire is big enough that the "grand strategy" element comes to the fore, so I don't think they'll step on each other as much as you think. Guess we'll all find out when we get a chance to play it, though!

[Leecros]

Now matter how much i want to (having seen several youtubers play it), i can't help but be uncertain if I'm going to like Stellaris ... I like 4x (its probably the game genre that I played the most in my youth), and i like grand strategy (the game genre i play the most nowadays), but i just can't help but feel that Stellaris is going to be less than its parts, due to their respective complexity stepping on each others toes. Don't think i can sufficiently articulate exactly whats wrong before actually playing it, but my gut feeling tells me I'm not going to be as impressed as i want to be.

I think it's going to be a bit too 4x-y and a bit little Grand Strategy-y for my liking.

I'm going to get my money's worth. It's only $40(USD), but I would be surprised if i got the 2,000 hours that i've gotten out of EUIV and CKII.

The enjoyment of EUIV and CKII is that each game can play out dramatically different. You could have a game of EUIV where Russia dominates Eastern Europe, or a game of CKII where Byzantium inherits the HRE. These things make each game a very unique playthrough and offers varying challenges each time.

I think once all things are said and done, Stellaris will be a bit more homogeneous. After the novelty has worn off. After we run out of ideas for new space empires. We're going to be left with a fairly standard(but enjoyable) 4x space strategy game.

After that, it's largely going to be up to what kind of DLC Paradox decides to make for it that will dictate the game's longevity. The options are almost literally limitless.

However, we'll see. Time will tell.

[factotum]

I'm going to get my money's worth. It's only $40(USD), but I would be surprised if i got the 2,000 hours that i've gotten out of EUIV and CKII.


I wonder why it's so cheap in the States? It's £34.99 in the UK, which is about the normal price for a game.

Question: does anyone know if the game will be pre-loadable at any point, or will we have to wait until 6pm to even start downloading it? My Internet connection isn't the best, and if I don't start downloading until 6pm I don't think I'll have a chance to play it until tomorrow.

[Razade]

I wonder why it's so cheap in the States? It's £34.99 in the UK, which is about the normal price for a game.

Question: does anyone know if the game will be pre-loadable at any point, or will we have to wait until 6pm to even start downloading it? My Internet connection isn't the best, and if I don't start downloading until 6pm I don't think I'll have a chance to play it until tomorrow.

You're probably going to have to wait.

[Sian]

thinking more about it, I'm starting to believe that its probably the pacing of the early (4x) game that concerns me

[Knaight]

Based on my experiences with every Civ/4X kind of game I've played, Economics seems to be the secret to victory. Money builds your cities/planets/armies/starships, pays bribes to keep neighbors content, and funds the research into better technologies. Though some games may not have "money" (like in Space Empires IV) but have resources you mine which is pretty much like currency.
Economics is always pretty important, but there are a lot of games where research accumulated is a much stronger indicator for how dangerous a faction is than how much money they've accumulated, let alone income.


thinking more about it, I'm starting to believe that its probably the pacing of the early (4x) game that concerns me
I'd expect it to be the weaker part, if only because Paradox has vastly more experience as a studio in the grand strategy side than the 4x side.

[Narkis]

I wonder why it's so cheap in the States? It's £34.99 in the UK, which is about the normal price for a game.

Question: does anyone know if the game will be pre-loadable at any point, or will we have to wait until 6pm to even start downloading it? My Internet connection isn't the best, and if I don't start downloading until 6pm I don't think I'll have a chance to play it until tomorrow.

It's been confirmed there will be no pre-loading.

[DigoDragon]

Economics is always pretty important, but there are a lot of games where research accumulated is a much stronger indicator for how dangerous a faction is than how much money they've accumulated, let alone income.

My library of played games isn't grand, so I probably just haven't found one of those yet. I love the games where bankrupting your enemy is a viable tactic. :3

[Leecros]

I wonder why it's so cheap in the States? It's £34.99 in the UK, which is about the normal price for a game.

If i had to guess, probably marketing. They know that the United States is a larger market for their game, so they offer it at a slightly lower price to incite more sales.

It's a bit unfair, but I have seen other companies do similar things where a game will be less expensive in the States, but more expensive in Europe.


My library of played games isn't grand, so I probably just haven't found one of those yet. I love the games where bankrupting your enemy is a viable tactic. :3

This used to be my tactic in the old Warcraft and Starcraft games. I would just turtle until the AI used up all of their resources. It was viable up until Starcraft Brood War where some of the later levels, the enemy had so much of an advantage over you; they could just overwhelm you if you didn't move quickly. After that, Warcraft 3, the AI outright cheated in order to not be forced into bankruptcy and would only use up 1 gold in the mine and get the standard amount in return.

[AgentPaper]

Game is up! Canary empire is a go!

http://i.imgur.com/cwL1oI2.jpg

[Leecros]

finally decided on my first race with the help of my girlfriend(she picked the name and race).

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/263835861945649952/DF8D5B5AF45E148E161C90BBF3F8396336647700/

Basically, a close-knitted Fennec race with a sort of Pharaoh-type divine ruler(If i'm understanding the description of that government right). Also, I took the avian ship design, because I have to say...Of all of the types of ships, I think the avian ones look the most elegant.

I really hope they add more designs later.

[Manticoran]

finally decided on my first race with the help of my girlfriend(she picked the name and race).

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/263835861945649952/DF8D5B5AF45E148E161C90BBF3F8396336647700/

Basically, a close-knitted Fennec race with a sort of Pharaoh-type divine ruler(If i'm understanding the description of that government right). Also, I took the avian ship design, because I have to say...Of all of the types of ships, I think the avian ones look the most elegant.

I really hope they add more designs later.

150% Alien Slavery Tolerance! Could have gotten 100% alien slavery tolerance from just Xenophobe, and then picked up Fanatic Spiritualist or social trait like Militarist. Militarist+Xenophobe+Spiritualist with Divine Mandate gives you 100% Slavery Tolerance for aliens and 100% War Tolerance, letting you be perpetually angry at the universe. :D

[Leecros]

150% Alien Slavery Tolerance! Could have gotten 100% alien slavery tolerance from just Xenophobe, and then picked up Fanatic Spiritualist or social trait like Militarist. Militarist+Xenophobe+Spiritualist with Divine Mandate gives you 100% Slavery Tolerance for aliens and 100% War Tolerance, letting you be perpetually angry at the universe. :D

It's fine, i'm sure. It'll grow back...


Interesting story. My first bit of combat is with basically a bunch of heretics who hijacked a small fleet. So...my first bit of combat is with rebels.


Yep, this is a Paradox game.

[Aotrs Commander]

Almost forgot... Was so busy quest-writing (as I do on Mondays that) I didn't notice the time - so probably as well roleplaying is cancelled today, otherwise I'd have to be leaving right about now. But instead I can stick it on to download.

Though I should finish my first EUIV run first, seeing as I've got meely 70 or years to go before I will have to decide to go into Extra Time...!




Edit: So, Paradox... er... manual?

Or are we supposed to play with no instructions at all aside from the extremely bare (understandably) wiki?

'Cos there's no "manual" link on steam.

[OrcusMcP]

It's fine, i'm sure. It'll grow back...


Interesting story. My first bit of combat is with basically a bunch of heretics who hijacked a small fleet. So...my first bit of combat is with rebels.


Yep, this is a Paradox game.

I can't get Stellaris yet, sadly, but now I know that when I do I will be right at home.

[Leecros]

Edit: So, Paradox... er... manual?

Or are we supposed to play with no instructions at all aside from the extremely bare (understandably) wiki?

'Cos there's no "manual" link on steam.

There are a bunch of tutorial missions at the start of the game that explains a bunch of the basics.

[Avilan the Grey]

I don't think I can afford this this month :smallmad::smallfrown:

My idea for a first race is human though. But alternate future where Soviet won. So basically Stalinists In SPACE!

[Narkis]

Meet the Narkosian Directorate:

http://i.imgur.com/MBAF7MH.jpg

20 years in, we're the top dogs in our parts of the woods, though we're boxed in between the Democratic Crusaders on one side, and the Evangelizing Zealots on the other. Needless to say, we don't get along with the neighbours. Thankfuly right behind them were two races of Fanatic Materialist Erudite Explorers that were more than happy to form an alliance. Only a single rare tech so far, and no dangerous ones, but I have faith. Ethics divergence seems to not be a big deal. It only requires a bit more micromanagement, some of my pops gave up their materialism in favor of pacifism and I didn't notice them and remove them from the research labs for years.

[Leecros]

Sadly, my Fennec race isn't having too much luck with a slow early game due to lack of resources in the surrounding planets...

[Aotrs Commander]

There are a bunch of tutorial missions at the start of the game that explains a bunch of the basics.

Considering how badly useless the EUIV tutorial was, this fails to inspire with any great confidence...

Not even a hotkey list Paradox?

Whelp, nevermind, I'll carry on with my first EUIV playthrough anyway, give the wiki some time to catch up. (I mean the EUIV wiki isn't always right, but it'd be impossible to play without it, but at least there was a manual to show you the buttons and such.

I know Paradox and it's associates generally suck at documentation, but it extracts the urine to have a game as compelx as their gransd strategy ones and to not even bother with any official documentation...

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

The tutorial seems really intuitive at least being somewhat familiar with the genre, and I know a few reviewers not familiar with the genre who did fine with the tutorial as well.

[factotum]

Considering how badly useless the EUIV tutorial was, this fails to inspire with any great confidence...

Can't say how the EU4 tutorial was, but the one in Stellaris is pretty reasonable and the UI is pretty intuitive (definitely compared to the God-awful mess that was CK2). The entire game download was only 1.6Gb and I was able to start it shortly after 5pm (because we're in BST not GMT at the moment), so I've played it for about the last four and a bit hours and so far have not encountered any "huh?" moments.

If I have a criticism, it's that some aspects of the game are lacking polish--I've done a number of research missions so far where the name of the science ship has got substituted for the name of the planet it was studying, which is the sort of basic error that should have been fixed months ago, IMHO.

[Razade]

Considering how badly useless the EUIV tutorial was, this fails to inspire with any great confidence...

Not even a hotkey list Paradox?

Whelp, nevermind, I'll carry on with my first EUIV playthrough anyway, give the wiki some time to catch up. (I mean the EUIV wiki isn't always right, but it'd be impossible to play without it, but at least there was a manual to show you the buttons and such.

I know Paradox and it's associates generally suck at documentation, but it extracts the urine to have a game as compelx as their gransd strategy ones and to not even bother with any official documentation...

Tutorial was actually pretty damn solid. This game is also...so far...not as complex as EU4.

[Leecros]

Currently my biggest complaint is the lack of ability to just zoom out and see everything. You have to hop to the galactic map to see it. The whole thing just feels kind of jarring and bothersome than just zooming out...

Unless i'm doing it wrong :smalltongue:

[Knaight]

My idea for a first race is human though. But alternate future where Soviet won. So basically Stalinists In SPACE!

The Union of Soviet Socialist Planets?

[Narkis]

Currently my biggest complaint is the lack of ability to just zoom out and see everything. You have to hop to the galactic map to see it. The whole thing just feels kind of jarring and bothersome than just zooming out...

Unless i'm doing it wrong :smalltongue:

Yeah, it bugs me too that I have to hit "e" to go from system to galactic map instead of just using the mouse wheel like every other game does.

Also, I kinda take it back what I said about ethics divergence not being that bad. A whole bunch of my pops have turned into filthy neutrals and I no longer have enough materialists to work all my labs. And holy cow is genetic engineering expensive. I have to spend 15 years worth of research to upgrade everyone.

[Leecros]

Also, I kinda take it back what I said about ethics divergence not being that bad. A whole bunch of my pops have turned into filthy neutrals and I no longer have enough materialists to work all my labs. And holy cow is genetic engineering expensive. I have to spend 15 years worth of research to upgrade everyone.

Yeah, i'm only 30 years into the game. I'm playing at a nice, slow pace because I'm getting a new computer tomorrow anyway and will probably have to restart and I want to take my time. So i haven't gotten genetic engineering yet. I am, however breeding space-fungals to be used on my planets as slaves.


On another note. Does anyone else have an issue with having a massive glut of energy? At any given time, my Mineral reserves are tapped. Meanwhile my energy is nearly capped. I have compensated by massively increasing my mineral income compared to my energy income, but I'm still dancing around the energy cap.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that there weren't really much in the way of initial resources. So i don't have a massive amount of mining/research stations to burn 1 energy each on. However, even if i had...Everything you build takes minerals. energy just seems like it's mostly used as a maintenance resource. Perhaps that stuff just comes in later. No Idea...

[Razade]

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that there weren't really much in the way of initial resources. So i don't have a massive amount of mining/research stations to burn 1 energy each on. However, even if i had...Everything you build takes minerals. energy just seems like it's mostly used as a maintenance resource. Perhaps that stuff just comes in later. No Idea...

It's basically this when you have a glut of anything I'm finding. I one game I had so many minerals and science but was hurting so bad on money. Now I'm surrounded by...pretty much everything I could want. It's like a buffet in my new game.

[tonberrian]

My first game was apparently Star Trek: TOS, what with spawing some crystalline entities and space amoebas.

[AgentPaper]

Canary empire is coming along nicely:

http://i.imgur.com/pyjFc0P.jpg

14 planets so far, and 3 outposts to help push the border out. I've yet to actually declare war on anyone, but instead just seemed to get fairly lucky in my starting position, everything to my east was empty right up to the Screk Syndicate, allowing me to expand pretty much constantly since the start of the game. Only now am I starting to get hemmed in, and even so there's still a couple planets up north that I can still reach before I'm forced to start conquering to get more land. I'm also running out of ways to spend my minerals on things that give more minerals/other resources, which leads me to believe that I'm reaching the end of the 4X stage and am going to be heading into the Grand Strategy stage from here on, so that's exciting.

While I haven't declared war yet, that doesn't mean I haven't been at war, though. I got a bit over-zealous focusing on expansion early on, and neglected to build a powerful enough fleet to hold off the 3 empires to my direct north, all of whom I had rivaled and had allied each other. Individually they were weaker than me, but together they were confident enough to declare war. It was close, but I just managed to push them away from my homeworld with the combination of my existing fleet, some rushed out corvettes, and my home station. After that, I was able to focus all my resources to building up my fleet to the cap, and proceeded to turn things around and not only avoid losing anything, but in fact turn the war around on them and make the Dominion of Zukai'Mondor (the tealish empire to my north-west) into my delightfully grumpy vassals. I even got a bonus Protectorate out of it: the Human Confederacy which consists of just one system (Sol) which you can kinda see as a blemish on my vassal's west side.

I don't actually have any allies, but I've managed to stay on warm terms with the larger empires to my west and south, making those borders fairly secure. I'm currently building up my forces in perperation for my second war (and first declared) against the Vool United Regions (the whitish empire to my north). They're allied to the Kedeshi Concordat (blue empire north of them), but are at war with the United Ugarlak Planets (green to their north-west), so I figure I'll be able to take advantage of that. I can't quite annex them fully, but I figure I can annex most of their planets now, and then take the rest and vassalize the Kedeshi in the next war, by which point I will probably have already taken over the Ugarlak as well, which I actually need to do in order to get access to the Kedeshi Concordat, since the only hyperlanes into Kedeshi lands runs through them.

[factotum]

On another note. Does anyone else have an issue with having a massive glut of energy? At any given time, my Mineral reserves are tapped. Meanwhile my energy is nearly capped.

I'm generally maxed out on energy, but then, I had a lot of energy resources in my starting system--not to mention that energy isn't really used for that much in the game, and also the mineral cap is much higher than the energy one (8000 versus 3250 for me at the moment). I need to bring more mineral resources online in my first sector, because they only have +7 per turn and they're not going to be developing very fast on that!

[AgentPaper]

I'm generally maxed out on energy, but then, I had a lot of energy resources in my starting system--not to mention that energy isn't really used for that much in the game, and also the mineral cap is much higher than the energy one (8000 versus 3250 for me at the moment). I need to bring more mineral resources online in my first sector, because they only have +7 per turn and they're not going to be developing very fast on that!

I think this varies by starting position. For myself, I had only just about enough energy to squeeze by at the start without having to cut back on station building, and later had to build a lot of power plants on empty tiles to ensure I didn't run out.

Energy definitely is a maintenance thing, though. It doesn't really matter if you're making or losing it at any given moment as long as you don't run out. If you have an excess, then I'd suggest that you build more frontier outposts and prioritize building as many mineral and science producing stations as you can, and also fill any empty tiles on your planets with non-power buildings of course. You may also want to build up your fleet or even build some defense platforms if you can afford it, though that should come after mineral stations unless you're threatened.

[GloatingSwine]

And on this day the United Iskar Directorate looked up from the deserts of their home to the stars and said "I bet there's some awesome stuff out there, let's go and poke it with sticks and see what happens!"

And so they set out, for SCIENCE!


(Only just started before I had to go to work, have found a couple of candidate worlds for colonisation within my initial wormhole range, need to build colony ships, and two races of primitives on Tundra and Arctic worlds respectively, so I will be able to integrate them and use them as science minions to expand my range of colonisation options eventually as they're in the iron age/medieval period so far and do not understand the path of SCIENCE)

[Ailurus]

So, I know this is a very minor thing, but: anyone find a way to enter backstories for custom races into the game yet? The pre-built races all have their histories entered, but I can't figure out how to do it for my races (either in-game or out-of-game).

[Avilan the Grey]

The Union of Soviet Socialist Planets?

The People's Democratic Alliance

[Siosilvar]

I wish this game allowed truce-breaking or enforcing military access for warscore. Not great to have the enemy surrender suddenly and trap 2/3 of your fleet onto one of the planets you took.

Word to the wise for hyperspace nations: make sure you've got a way to get home if you're suddenly peaced out.

Frankly I don't know why they were allowed to instantly peace out in the first place, but there's a whole load of slightly unexpected mechanics that contributed to this situation.

[factotum]

Word to the wise for hyperspace nations: make sure you've got a way to get home if you're suddenly peaced out.


If this was "real world" then going deep into enemy territory while leaving unconquered bits along your supply lines would be a really bad idea anyway...of course, the game doesn't really model things down to that sort of level, so you get away with it!

[Leecros]

Frankly I don't know why they were allowed to instantly peace out in the first place, but there's a whole load of slightly unexpected mechanics that contributed to this situation.

If you crush them, then they'll surrender for your demanded wargoals. I had that happen to me after i destroyed an enemy's whole fleet and half of their space stations while looking for slaves...

Speaking of slaves...I sort of wish you could still relocate pops within Sectors. I had originally planned on putting my Slave worlds in their own sectors, so that I didn't have to manage their planets, but you can't actually do anything to planets within a sector. So i'm going to have to have like just their homeworld stay under my control or something...

I'm also having my first ethic divergence problem. It would appear that some of the backwater hillbillies are starting to have an issue with slaves. It's interesting yet somehow annoying how a race with the Decadent trait(-10% on all income unless the planet has slaves) can have a problem with slavery. I could just purge them i suppose, but the empires in the region already hate my empire of cute fluffy Fennecs for being genocidal slavers.

[Grif]

I... I think the wait was worth it. This is the game of the year for me now.

[DigoDragon]

I wish this game allowed truce-breaking or enforcing military access for warscore.

I'm watching different folks play and a few ended up in bad situations because they can't break an alliance or drop out of a war.

Seems odd not to have espionage.

[factotum]

Speaking of slaves...I sort of wish you could still relocate pops within Sectors. I had originally planned on putting my Slave worlds in their own sectors, so that I didn't have to manage their planets, but you can't actually do anything to planets within a sector. So i'm going to have to have like just their homeworld stay under my control or something...


Couldn't you temporarily remove a planet from the sector, resettle or relocate pops, then put the planet back into that sector?

[Leecros]

Couldn't you temporarily remove a planet from the sector, resettle or relocate pops, then put the planet back into that sector?

You can...

It costs 50 influence to remove a planet from a sector though. So I don't know if it's worth it unless you have a large amount of influence.

[Siosilvar]

If this was "real world" then going deep into enemy territory while leaving unconquered bits along your supply lines would be a really bad idea anyway...of course, the game doesn't really model things down to that sort of level, so you get away with it!

Frankly, I don't think it was possible for me to take anything in one war to NOT get stuck there somehow. But I should have tried killing that frontier outpost first, despite nothing actually inhibiting any ships of mine from coming through. Eh, live and learn.


Speaking of slaves...I sort of wish you could still relocate pops within Sectors. I had originally planned on putting my Slave worlds in their own sectors, so that I didn't have to manage their planets, but you can't actually do anything to planets within a sector. So i'm going to have to have like just their homeworld stay under my control or something...

Sectors are weird. I had a governor seize total control of 75% of my mining bases in one, despite not having any factions or anything. Thankfully it was easy to notice since my income suddenly went negative as Betharian power plants shut down, and the problem solved itself rather quickly after firing (well, executing in that campaign) the upstart.

Also, is there any way to easily access starbases in a sector? I probably shouldn't have built so many since I can't support the full 195 supply limit or really have even two production lines running at maximum capacity, but it was in character so myeh :)


I'm also having my first ethic divergence problem. It would appear that some of the backwater hillbillies are starting to have an issue with slaves. It's interesting yet somehow annoying how a race with the Decadent trait(-10% on all income unless the planet has slaves) can have a problem with slavery. I could just purge them i suppose, but the empires in the region already hate my empire of cute fluffy Fennecs for being genocidal slavers.

Pops should at least not lose Fanatical beliefs in one go, I'm having the same issue with my set of xenocidal bugs.

[Wookieetank]

Saw almost my entire list of friends on steam playing this yesterday, figured it was worth checking out. Almost didn't go to bed last night/this morning(1am counts as night right?).

Things of interest I've found so far:
Inhibitor/Reaper/Vex mining drones and evidence of an omnicidal machine race :smalleek:
Scientists are abject cowards (despite being from the science based race) :smallsigh:
Earth was only 3 systems from my home world in a random map which was fun, subjugation planed, just hasn't happened yet.
Retreating from battles is in fact useful and possible.

[Leecros]

well, as expected, me jumping over to a new computer has not brought my save along. That's okay though, because with 4 mineral resources already found in my starting system; I already have a better start than I had last time.

[DigoDragon]

Retreating from battles is in fact useful and possible.

Really? Oh that I did not know!

Sweet, maybe "hit n run" guerrilla tactics are a viable thing? It was something I liked to implement in MoO2-- attack an enemy fleet with small but fast ships to strike specific targets and then flee before the counter-attack destroys my strike force.

[Otomodachi]

Had just enough time to make my empire and play maybe... 3 years of game, maybe even less, before I dozed off at my computer.

The great race of Durrrrrrr, the reptilian chassis that looks vaguely dumb, has finally broken out of their home system of Buuuuuh? using the finest in Stupid technology. Soon, they will spread the Stupid way of life throughout the galaxy; being Fanatic Xenophiles and Pacifists, they might not be easy to love but they sure are hard to hate.

[Einrikr]

Just noticed that the leader portrait for your custom leaders changes to some default portrait after you reload the game, anyone else have this bug?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I got into a bit of a bind, was stuck in my arm between two empires, controlling the jumps to the other arms, and only 3 Arid planets in the area between, and 2 Desert planets that I could colonize. Luckily managed to Enlighten and then subsume a continental-based species who are at least Pacifist and Xenophile (but Individualist where I'm Fanatical Collectivist, heh), and then make an alliance with one of my bordering empires. Currently I'm exploring the arm to the left/below me, with a fleet going ahead fighting Crystals.

[Narkis]

Scientists are abject cowards (despite being from the science based race) :smallsigh:

You can set their stance on passive. That way they won't retreat at the first sign of trouble. On the other hand, they won't retreat at the first sign of trouble, and that trouble might catch up to them. I do it when I want them to pass through a dangerous system, and set them back to cowardly immediately after.


Earth was only 3 systems from my home world in a random map which was fun, subjugation planed, just hasn't happened yet.

Oh, cool. On what period did you find them? You can find Earth on any period of history apparently, from the home of cavemen to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.


Sweet, maybe "hit n run" guerrilla tactics are a viable thing? It was something I liked to implement in MoO2-- attack an enemy fleet with small but fast ships to strike specific targets and then flee before the counter-attack destroys my strike force.

You don't have that much control of your fleets during battle. You can't prioritize high-value targets within a given fleet. (unless there's combat computers for that that I haven't discovered yet) What you can do is cripple your enemy's infrastructure with hit-and-run raids. Especially if they're using wormholes, you can effectively knock them out of FTL altogether.

I ended up restarting my game. I felt confident enough to try Ironman for the achievements. I got more minerals now, but the nearby planets are much worse. And my neighbours are still Democratic Crusaders. No allies in sight though. This is gonna be interesting.

[Razade]

Found the Sol System and Space-Age Humans but not quite ready for interstellar travel. Slowly expanded around them with the hopes of uplifting but they did it on their own. Then I marked my almost 10K fleet into the system, destroyed their 0 navy and now I control Sol as a Theocratic Oligarchy Mushroom people. Really digging this game.

[factotum]

Well, just ran into my first Fallen Empire--they're the ones who don't like you researching certain techs, but I have no idea what those techs are, so could be interesting! I also uplifted a nuclear-age race to space tech and thus now have a vassal state--they're fanatical pacifists, though, so will be interesting to see what they do if I ever actually declare war on anyone.

I also found that when you build a colony ship at a starport in a sector, that sector then owns the colony ship--but they're perfectly happy for you to send the colony ship off to colonise a planet? Didn't quite understand that, they might as well have had the colony ship appear in the civilian ship list as usual since the ship being owned by the sector apparently made no difference.

[Grif]

So in my bog standard starter default humie game, I found myself sandwiched between a reptile people, who liked me, and slightly less reptile people, who made me my rivals, and bird people, who like me because we both rivalled the less reptile people.

Meanwhile I'm frantically trying to grab more planets before more reptile people outcolonise and shut me out.

[druid91]

One thing I'm wondering is if it's possible to slowly replace your entire species with robots without triggering a robot uprising.

[DigoDragon]

You don't have that much control of your fleets during battle. You can't prioritize high-value targets within a given fleet. (unless there's combat computers for that that I haven't discovered yet)

I consider that a disappointment. Not much of a strategy game in a combat sense if you can't at least give high level commands to prioritize targets, like telling your fleet to shoot smaller frigates first or concentrate all fire on the biggest battleship. Something generalized to give at least the illusion that you're in control of the battle.



What you can do is cripple your enemy's infrastructure with hit-and-run raids. Especially if they're using wormholes, you can effectively knock them out of FTL altogether.

Okay, that's a plus for the game. Targeting infrastructure is great strategy. :3

[Leecros]

Well, I found a lovely little world with 17 tiles


13 of which have tile blockers on them....Yeah, gonna be awhile before i touch that one. Lots of minerals too, which is unfortunate.

[Cikomyr]

A friend had just an XCOM happen to him.

Conquer a race of primitives, and they started a rather effective revolt against him. Funnily enough, industrial civilizations have proven easy to control.

[Grif]

Well, I found a lovely little world with 17 tiles


13 of which have tile blockers on them....Yeah, gonna be awhile before i touch that one. Lots of minerals too, which is unfortunate.

Are.... 16-17 tiles worlds rare? I found like 4 within 4 jumps of Sol, so I thought they were fairly common occurrences.

[Leecros]

Are.... 16-17 tiles worlds rare? I found like 4 within 4 jumps of Sol, so I thought they were fairly common occurrences.

that's probably the average world size and are generally a reliable place to colonize. Which is why I was so frustrated to find one that's almost completely blocked by junk. Eventually it'll make a good world, but who knows how long that'll be.



The largest planet size is 25, just an fyi.



In other news, I'm a little annoyed that you have to be a fanatic xenophile to be able to enlighten natives. I should be allowed to raise them up to be a perfectly obedient slave race. Afterall, I need them to build more monuments to my glorious leaders.

[Cikomyr]

that's probably the average world size and are generally a reliable place to colonize. Which is why I was so frustrated to find one that's almost completely blocked by junk. Eventually it'll make a good world, but who knows how long that'll be.



The largest planet size is 25, just an fyi.

About those size 25 worlds...

http://1un1ba2fg8v82k48vu4by3q7.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Admiral-Ackbar-Its-A-Trap.jpg

[Teln]

Had just enough time to make my empire and play maybe... 3 years of game, maybe even less, before I dozed off at my computer.

The great race of Durrrrrrr, the reptilian chassis that looks vaguely dumb, has finally broken out of their home system of Buuuuuh? using the finest in Stupid technology. Soon, they will spread the Stupid way of life throughout the galaxy; being Fanatic Xenophiles and Pacifists, they might not be easy to love but they sure are hard to hate.

Should we tell him about Fanatical Purifiers?

[Leecros]

I'm not entirely sure if i understand Ethic Divergence. At first it seems pretty simple. A positive number means that a pop may change away from your ethics and a negative number means that a pop may change towards your ethics.

Yet, i'm still finding pops drifting away from my ethics, even in places that have negative divergence.

[Manticoran]

I'm not entirely sure if i understand Ethic Divergence. At first it seems pretty simple. A positive number means that a pop may change away from your ethics and a negative number means that a pop may change towards your ethics.

Yet, i'm still finding pops drifting away from my ethics, even in places that have negative divergence.

Pretty sure it's... "There's a chance that populations change away from your ethics, places with negative divergence change away slower and shift back more, while places with positive will change faster and maybe never shift back."

[AgentPaper]

One useful thing about science ships, at least a bit later in the game when you've got enough of a navy that you don't need it all in one place to be of any use: While you can't arm your science ships, or attach a fleet to them, you can get similar results by setting the science ship to neutral, and having a decent-size (300-500 strength) fleet set to follow them. That way, the science ship can fly around surveying systems inhabited by hostiles, and if anything does engage them, the following fleet will be close enough that it automatically engages and defends the science ship.

Haven't been using this tactic for long, so I'm not sure how reliable it is, but it should save a lot of hassle when exploring large areas with lots of weak hostiles, as I've been doing.

One hassle that I am having some trouble with, though, is trying to pin down all of the colonizable worlds in my empire, and fill them with colony ships of the appropriate pop to maximize habitability. I really wish there was a ledger in this game, so I could see stuff like "all uninhabited planets in my system".

Also, does anyone know if sectors will build and upgrade space stations if you give them enough minerals?

[Leecros]

Pretty sure it's... "There's a chance that populations change away from your ethics, places with negative divergence change away slower and shift back more, while places with positive will change faster and maybe never shift back."

I suppose it is a pipe dream to have a mostly homogeneous race when you're spread out among the stars. I mean that's the very idea of it...At least not without purging the insolent fools. Still it was a nice pipe dream.

Of course, that doesn't mean the Fennec Pharaohs will give up so easily. They shall cover the galaxy in monuments built on the back of slave races.

[Cikomyr]

I think there is an inherent positive modifier to divergence (more likely) the farther you get from your capital.

[Grif]

One useful thing about science ships, at least a bit later in the game when you've got enough of a navy that you don't need it all in one place to be of any use: While you can't arm your science ships, or attach a fleet to them, you can get similar results by setting the science ship to neutral, and having a decent-size (300-500 strength) fleet set to follow them. That way, the science ship can fly around surveying systems inhabited by hostiles, and if anything does engage them, the following fleet will be close enough that it automatically engages and defends the science ship.

Haven't been using this tactic for long, so I'm not sure how reliable it is, but it should save a lot of hassle when exploring large areas with lots of weak hostiles, as I've been doing.

One hassle that I am having some trouble with, though, is trying to pin down all of the colonizable worlds in my empire, and fill them with colony ships of the appropriate pop to maximize habitability. I really wish there was a ledger in this game, so I could see stuff like "all uninhabited planets in my system".

Also, does anyone know if sectors will build and upgrade space stations if you give them enough minerals?

The lack of a easy colonizable worlds display cost me a Gaian world which I didn't spot until my "friendly" neighbour already planted his grubby hands on it. :smallannoyed: Now I scrutinise each system that is surveyed and note it manually.

[Avian Overlord]

It's kind of sad when your first set of leaders starts dying off. :(

[Thanqol]

In other news, I'm a little annoyed that you have to be a fanatic xenophile to be able to enlighten natives. I should be allowed to raise them up to be a perfectly obedient slave race. Afterall, I need them to build more monuments to my glorious leaders.

You can; it's in the empire policies (basically laws), hit F1 and allow native uplift. Xenophiles just start with it on by default. Alternately just, y'know, conquer them by landing troops.

My favourite aliens story was when one of my shapeshifting infiltration agents went rogue, decided his true identity was as a fourteen foot tall mushroom, fell in love with a mushroom girl and began waging a counter-campaign against my infiltrators.

You are not feeling well. Come home to us.

[tonberrian]

You can; it's in the empire policies (basically laws), hit F1 and allow native uplift. Xenophiles just start with it on by default. Alternately just, y'know, conquer them by landing troops.

My favourite aliens story was when one of my shapeshifting infiltration agents went rogue, decided his true identity was as a fourteen foot tall mushroom, fell in love with a mushroom girl and began waging a counter-campaign against my infiltrators.

You are not feeling well. Come home to us.

I've been wondering where the empire policies were hiding.

[factotum]

The lack of a easy colonizable worlds display cost me a Gaian world which I didn't spot until my "friendly" neighbour already planted his grubby hands on it. :smallannoyed:

There *is* such a display? If you click the checkbox at the left-hand end of the menu sitting at the bottom right of the screen it enables additional map information, and any easily colonisable world will show up as a green planet icon to the left of the system name (amber planets are harder colonisable targets, and red means planets you don't have the tech to colonise as yet). The only caveat is that the planet in question has to be surveyed by one of your science ships, but that seems a reasonable restriction.

@Avian Overlord: I lost my last starting leader when she topped 100 years old (she had the long lived trait). You could always set up a race with the Venerable perk, though, which means they live much longer... :smallsmile:

[GloatingSwine]

The lack of a easy colonizable worlds display cost me a Gaian world which I didn't spot until my "friendly" neighbour already planted his grubby hands on it. :smallannoyed: Now I scrutinise each system that is surveyed and note it manually.

There's a little ticky box on the left end of the set of controls in the bottom right of the galaxy map. Shows colonisable planets and resources in systems on the galaxy map.

I need to sort out some irritating mushroom people next to me. I've boxed them in so they can't expand (and the only "free" side they have is the edge of a spiral arm with a fallen empire on the other side) but there's science in their space that I want to do, and they're fanatic xenophobes so they won't let me in to science things. (the much politer species to the south did, so they get to live, also they're all mates and are likely to ally even if I'm bigger than any of them individually)

[JennifeBroflo]

The world heals precious joy: A single particle imparts reality to incredible neural networks

[Aotrs Commander]

I consider that a disappointment. Not much of a strategy game in a combat sense if you can't at least give high level commands to prioritize targets, like telling your fleet to shoot smaller frigates first or concentrate all fire on the biggest battleship. Something generalized to give at least the illusion that you're in control of the battle.

I entirely concur. But when, before I'd played enough EUIV to be certain I'd give Stellaris a shot, while asking about the Stellaris combat on the Paradox forums, I espoused that opinion, one gentleman was really rather rude about it. The mildest thing he ascerted was that tactical combat had "no place" in 4X or similar games and that all games that included it sucked by default.

[GloatingSwine]

I entirely concur. But when, before I'd played enough EUIV to be certain I'd give Stellaris a shot, while asking about the Stellaris combat on the Paradox forums, I espoused that opinion, one gentleman was really rather rude about it. The mildest thing he ascerted was that tactical combat had "no place" in 4X or similar games and that all games that included it sucked by default.

I don't think there's ever been a 4x where tactical combat ever added anything to the game. If you're not relatively evenly matched there's no need to do any tactics, you just steamroll hapless opponents* that never stood a chance and 90% of the point of the rest of a 4x/Grand Strategy game is making sure you have enough strategic advantages that you aren't evenly matched.



* Via endless tedious clicking that the AI can't be trusted to automate, probably.

[Cikomyr]

I don't think there's ever been a 4x where tactical combat ever added anything to the game. If you're not relatively evenly matched there's no need to do any tactics, you just steamroll hapless opponents* that never stood a chance and 90% of the point of the rest of a 4x/Grand Strategy game is making sure you have enough strategic advantages that you aren't evenly matched.


Counterpoint: Sword of the Stars

But only because the strategic game was just an excuse to design, build and send star fleets in battles.

[GloatingSwine]

Counterpoint: Sword of the Stars

But only because the strategic game was just an excuse to design, build and send star fleets in battles.

I distinctly remember 90% of fleet combat in SotS being "build five of the biggest hardest things I can with doom lasers, A move them at the enemy and watch the fireworks". (But then SoTS committed the deadly error of having a 3D space map plus range limits, making it a fiddly chore to figure out which systems were actually in range unless you played humans and had space lanes to make it obvious, which is why I think I played The Pit more than the actual game).

Nothing was regularly gained by me being able to A move them myself, if it had been a noninteractive replay that showed how my doom fleet had doomed the enemy it would have done the same job almost always.

[NichG]

I don't think there's ever been a 4x where tactical combat ever added anything to the game. If you're not relatively evenly matched there's no need to do any tactics, you just steamroll hapless opponents* that never stood a chance and 90% of the point of the rest of a 4x/Grand Strategy game is making sure you have enough strategic advantages that you aren't evenly matched.

* Via endless tedious clicking that the AI can't be trusted to automate, probably.

Tactical combat in MOO-I was great, primarily because technologies didn't just adjust raw numbers like damage output or victory chance, but actually created qualitatively distinct effects. Things like how the black hole generator, stasis fields, teleporters, radius effects, etc all interacted made for an interesting dynamic. Basically, if you understood the tactical combat well enough, there were ship designs that you could take advantage of which would be useless in the hands of someone who didn't understand the tactical combat system. Furthermore, there were ways to have pyrrhic victories and secondary objectives - maybe you have more military might, but if you don't stop the enemy from dumping bioweapons on your planet before you manage to take them out then you're still going to suffer a permanent loss of maximum population. Raiding was a good force multiplier too, especially with missiles having a non-zero flight time to target (and having things like asteroid fields provide partial cover from missile salvos).

I think the reason why tactical combat systems have been pretty bad in other 4x games is primarily the uninspired ship systems and technologies. The new tech adds +5% to damage, or +5% hull points, or whatever. It's easier to do theorycraft balance on things like that, but the actual experience of using things that only shift around relative numbers is pretty boring, and so the tactical combat ends up not really rewarding the work it took the player to grab all those techs, make a bunch of shipyards, etc, etc, all to have some crazy behemoth of a warship to swing around. If that warship amounts to just 'the numbers are bigger', then all of that effort didn't really translate into an increased feeling of accessible power. But if the warship has all sorts of ship systems that do different things and combo in ways you couldn't have space for in a smaller, cheaper ship then it can be very rewarding (even if it ends up being suboptimal).

[DigoDragon]

The mildest thing he ascerted was that tactical combat had "no place" in 4X or similar games and that all games that included it sucked by default.

I don't think there's ever been a 4x where tactical combat ever added anything to the game.

Counterpoint: Sword of the Stars

I'd like to throw my hat in for Master of Orion 2.
There was ship initiative, where smaller faster ships shoot first. Combat made your starship facing an important tactical aspect-- Your weapons had limited arcs they fire from and shields only drained on the side where it was being struck. Getting shot at from behind increased the chances of your engines exploding. Tactics also mattered when the enemy fleet has a single specific battleship with shield piercing phasors, energy webs, or massive missile silos that would wreck your fleet if you don't kill it first. I thought combat was one of the best parts of MoO2. The icing on the cake was that you can toggle the tactical combat on and off at any time during the battle, so if you didn't want tactical fights, you could skip them with the push of a button.

I found tactical combat to be one of the defining points of this game.

[Wookieetank]

"In space, no one can hear you cry over your pitiful borders"

Thanks to the wonderful joys of hyperdrives, I find myself trapped in a tiny little corner of the galaxy. To my east I have an enormous Fallen empire, to the north, xenophobic arsehats who even with a full embassy modifier, hate my alien guts and have some sort of grudge against my civilians. At least I'm swimming in resources, so I've managed to build up a full fleet (1/3 of which are destroyers), and have two planets getting rather nicely colonized. Didn't quite have the time to instigate a conquest against the xenophobes to procure a spacelane to the rest of the galaxy, but its on the to do list for today :smallbiggrin:

@Narkis: not sure where earth was at, the Xenophobes kicked me out before I got a chance to survey the system :smallfrown:

[Knaight]

I don't think there's ever been a 4x where tactical combat ever added anything to the game. If you're not relatively evenly matched there's no need to do any tactics, you just steamroll hapless opponents* that never stood a chance and 90% of the point of the rest of a 4x/Grand Strategy game is making sure you have enough strategic advantages that you aren't evenly matched.
Age of Wonders 3 counts regardless - part of building those strategic advantages is consistently playing smart tactically, first when beating down the independents who are occupying resource sites, then when fighting other players. Consistent loss minimization is a major part of getting bigger military forces without having to tank long term economic development to do so.

If simple target prioritization and scripting counts, then the Dominions series combat also adds a lot to the game. You don't have direct control, and the AI automates all the battles. However, you control troop positioning, troop targeting, and can script the first five turns for commanders, including mages.

It is worth observing that both of the listed games are low tech fantasy games and not space games, and that neither have unit customization per se (although both have commanders that can be given items, and the Dominions series has entire strategies built around kitting out heavy commanders with magic items and letting them wreck raiding forces all by their lonesome, conquer territory all by their lonesome, and then show up en mass with mage support to blow up actual enemy armies). It's often a lot easier to create more intricate unit interactions with that than with space games, which just gets further emphasized by the existence of defined factions with access to different things. Still, look at something like Starcraft, which has a pretty decent troop variety that enables more interesting tactical combat - and which could have yet more interesting tactical combat were it turn based. It's absolutely doable in a space game, you just need to build the game for a solid tactical layer from the beginning instead of having it as an afterthought for the strategic layer.

[GloatingSwine]

I'd like to throw my hat in for Master of Orion 2.
There was ship initiative, where smaller faster ships shoot first. Combat made your starship facing an important tactical aspect-- Your weapons had limited arcs they fire from and shields only drained on the side where it was being struck. Getting shot at from behind increased the chances of your engines exploding. Tactics also mattered when the enemy fleet has a single specific battleship with shield piercing phasors, energy webs, or massive missile silos that would wreck your fleet if you don't kill it first. I thought combat was one of the best parts of MoO2. The icing on the cake was that you can toggle the tactical combat on and off at any time during the battle, so if you didn't want tactical fights, you could skip them with the push of a button.

I found tactical combat to be one of the defining points of this game.

Ship Initiative broke MoO2. Shield Piercing Rapid Heavy Phasors, stack Hyper X, Achilles Targeting, structural analyser, time warp device.

Congratulations now as long as you move first (because ship initiative) no enemy ship (except antarans who have inherent Hard Shields and a fleet of about three ships) will ever get to take a turn against you. The AI can send max size fleets of doom stars every turn (and will) and you can destroy them all every time with five of your own ships and none of them get a turn ever. None of the combat mechanics matter because tech refinements and sensible builds make them go away.

But you still have to do all the clicking yourself. Which is tedious.

Early game build large numbers of cheap fast rack missile boats with 2 shots each and the AI will always run away as soon as you launch and they see how much damage is on the field.

This is what I'm talking about with tactical combat not adding anything to 4x in the long run. It's always super trivial to break it, either by just having overwhelming numerical or tech advantage. In order for it to add anything to the game you have to have played the 4x part wrong enough that you don't have a massive advantage when the battle starts.

4x/Grand Strategy games are about economic strategy, about being able to out-expand, out-tech, and out-industry your opponents. You win military engagements in these games before you even declare the war, let alone fire the first shot. You don't win them with tactical finesse, you win them with economic, technological, and industrial might.

[Cikomyr]

I distinctly remember 90% of fleet combat in SotS being "build five of the biggest hardest things I can with doom lasers, A move them at the enemy and watch the fireworks". (But then SoTS committed the deadly error of having a 3D space map plus range limits, making it a fiddly chore to figure out which systems were actually in range unless you played humans and had space lanes to make it obvious, which is why I think I played The Pit more than the actual game).

Nothing was regularly gained by me being able to A move them myself, if it had been a noninteractive replay that showed how my doom fleet had doomed the enemy it would have done the same job almost always.

Well, apologies for being blunt, but i think you just hadnt grasped the tactical layers of SotS ;) i understand why, because its easy to have everything fall into a massive chaotic mess

[GloatingSwine]

Well, apologies for being blunt, but i think you just hadnt grasped the tactical layers of SotS ;) i understand why, because its easy to have everything fall into a massive chaotic mess

Well yes, but it was a chaotic mess that I won with trivial ease every single time because I had bigger and better stuff and "warfare" was just grinding through all the enemy's planets as they became less and less capable of resisting as their economy broke down.

[DigoDragon]

Ship Initiative broke MoO2. Shield Piercing Rapid Heavy Phasors, stack Hyper X, Achilles Targeting, structural analyser, time warp device.

To be fair, much of that tech is found in the late-game where most fights are pretty much a battle of "rocket tag" anyway. That's a common thing with top-tier tech in all the space strategy/4X games I've played. But Tactical combat is fun for the early game, where you can do rush battles to crush opponents without loads of tech supporting you. Tactics make up for a lack of numbers when played well.


4x/Grand Strategy games are about economic strategy, about being able to out-expand, out-tech, and out-industry your opponents. You win military engagements in these games before you even declare the war, let alone fire the first shot. You don't win them with tactical finesse, you win them with economic, technological, and industrial might.

As the great Tony Stark once said-- "Is it too much to ask for both?"

It's not that a lack of tactical combat would deal-break Stellaris for me, however. I'm still interested. I just like to ask the industry why not make a game that's both strategy and tactics. I like having it all.

[Knaight]

This is what I'm talking about with tactical combat not adding anything to 4x in the long run. It's always super trivial to break it, either by just having overwhelming numerical or tech advantage. In order for it to add anything to the game you have to have played the 4x part wrong enough that you don't have a massive advantage when the battle starts.

Again, Age of Wonders 3 and the Dominions series stand out here. Age of Wonders 3 has a few units that can punch way above their weight in the right circumstances, along with an army size cap. I've seen cheapo spider and spearman armies beat the snot out of expensive fliers multiple times; along with clever spell casting and fortification use squish really expensive armies. As for the Dominions series, the best counters to a really expensive supercombatant are a much cheaper one designed to kill the specific one that's causing you problem, or a handful of much cheaper mages with the right spells.

In both cases, economic strategy counts for a lot, but efficient military strategy is at least as important, largely because a lot of the economic side gets tied up in either permanent infrastructure that can get taken or destroyed, or in extremely expensive militaries which will suffer attrition. It's also something that shows up a lot more in PvP in both cases, as the AI in AoW3 is mediocre at best, and the AI in Dominions while probably a lot better is dealing with an extremely complex system and is unable to mount effective mid-end game strategies at all.

[GloatingSwine]

As the great Tony Stark once said-- "Is it too much to ask for both?"


You're still missing the point that being sucessful at the 4x part of the game makes the tactical combat irrelevant because you engineered in such a massive advantage that it doesn't matter what the enemy does, you win because you had tanks and he only has pikemen.

[NichG]

I find the kind of scripting tactics of Dominions to be pretty unsatisfying, personally. I want to be able to say things like 'crap, those archers are more powerful than I thought and I'm losing units, stop casting offensive spells and switch to armor buffs to slow down the attrition'. Scripting is too impersonal for me to feel like the units are actually an extension of my will.

[Cikomyr]

Well yes, but it was a chaotic mess that I won with trivial ease every single time because I had bigger and better stuff and "warfare" was just grinding through all the enemy's planets as they became less and less capable of resisting as their economy broke down.

Yes. Bigger, better warships will often make the difference. With better techs.

Still, i loved the game's use of weapon firing arcs, miss chances, stray shots, etc.. Had i been allowed to properly command these vessels, it would have been better.

Just FYI: i myself usually used a two-layer tactic of tank melee vessels and a number of Spinal-mounted supercanons or torpedoes that stood back from the fight and took pot shots. Usually managed to hold off powerful fleets.

But battles usually devolved into one big mess where the better built ships won the day. True.

[Knaight]

You're still missing the point that being sucessful at the 4x part of the game makes the tactical combat irrelevant because you engineered in such a massive advantage that it doesn't matter what the enemy does, you win because you had tanks and he only has pikemen.
A lot of the time it's more about engineering incremental advantages, and repeatedly capitalizing on slight edges, particularly when up against other capable players, and in that context tactics matter a great deal more. Tactics aren't going to get around a pike-tank disadvantage, they might get around a 1.3 tanks/turn vs. 1.7 tanks/turn advantage. If you can reliably blow up 7 tanks per 3 lost, you can hold parity, and force them to keep a tank production advantage while you boost your economy to take the economic lead. If you're skilled at defensive tactics, you can expand and hold more territory cheaply, which is really useful in games where territory is the biggest economic source, and where you have to build wide because tall and narrow doesn't cut it.

Essentially, military activity in a 4x is just another form of focusing on efficiency, and winning by being incrementally more efficient. How much can you minimize military spending in favor of permanent economic bonuses? How well can you translate a military budget to acquisition of economic resources? How much more efficiently can you drain an opponents economic standing with a military that drains yours? It ties into the economic victory, and remains relevant at all times. On top of that, it provides interesting game play in its own right, while also preventing the competitive solitaire phenomenon.

It's similar to diplomacy in that way.

I find the kind of scripting tactics of Dominions to be pretty unsatisfying, personally. I want to be able to say things like 'crap, those archers are more powerful than I thought and I'm losing units, stop casting offensive spells and switch to armor buffs to slow down the attrition'. Scripting is too impersonal for me to feel like the units are actually an extension of my will.
There's a reason I listed it as a maybe. I think it does a fairly good job at representing giving orders to your commanders to relay, while leaving them their personal field duties, but the level of control over the pretender themselves does seem odd at times. Still, the tactical combat matters, even if the implementation is a bit impersonal.

[factotum]

As the great Tony Stark once said-- "Is it too much to ask for both?"


It very well might be. Game development is generally a zero-sum process--there's a limited amount of time and resources to produce the game, and time spent building the tactical side will necessarily impact on the time available for the strategic side of things. There are games that attempt both--I'm thinking of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, mainly, where you have a strategic world map element and then tactical battles when you fight stuff, but both aspects of that game are far simpler than the full-on versions you get in dedicated strategy or tactics games.

I would personally rather have a game that does one thing really well than a game that does two things in a mediocre fashion, so I'm happy with Paradox not attempting to insert a tactical element to things.

[Knaight]

It very well might be. Game development is generally a zero-sum process--there's a limited amount of time and resources to produce the game, and time spent building the tactical side will necessarily impact on the time available for the strategic side of things. There are games that attempt both--I'm thinking of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, mainly, where you have a strategic world map element and then tactical battles when you fight stuff, but both aspects of that game are far simpler than the full-on versions you get in dedicated strategy or tactics games.

Them being simpler is a good thing though - it's very possible for a game to be overcomplicated*, and simplifying both ends works well, as neither has to support the game on their own.

*Yes, I realize I'm saying this after singing the praises of the Dominions series, but seeing as this is a Paradox thread I suspect everyone here high a high complexity tolerance.

[Ronnoc]

Would Rome Total War count as a good example of a strategy/tactics game?

[Darth Mario]

So I've been playing as the Google Megacorporation after their domination of the world. :D

I've run into a couple of strange glitches, one annoying and one hilarious. Despite having enslaved entire alien races, low happiness in places and putting no effort into curtailing Ethics divergence, I've never seen a single faction arise in any situation. Is anyone else seeing this issue, or am I just exceedingly (un)lucky? The game feels kind of really easy when I'm not facing slave uprisings on a constant basis.

The fun one: I started in the Sol system, but not 10 planets away from me was an identical system with an Earth destroyed by nuclear warfare, which leads me to suspect that somewhere out there in the universe, the Magretheans realized we blew them up before they could find the Question and started again. Google Megacorp has since completely flipped into exploration mode to find the people who have been manipulating Humanity's fate and perform a hostile takeover.

[Wookieetank]

So I've been playing as the Google Megacorporation after their domination of the world. :D

I've run into a couple of strange glitches, one annoying and one hilarious. Despite having enslaved entire alien races, low happiness in places and putting no effort into curtailing Ethics divergence, I've never seen a single faction arise in any situation. Is anyone else seeing this issue, or am I just exceedingly (un)lucky? The game feels kind of really easy when I'm not facing slave uprisings on a constant basis.

The fun one: I started in the Sol system, but not 10 planets away from me was an identical system with an Earth destroyed by nuclear warfare, which leads me to suspect that somewhere out there in the universe, the Magretheans realized we blew them up before they could find the Question and started again. Google Megacorp has since completely flipped into exploration mode to find the people who have been manipulating Humanity's fate and perform a hostile takeover.

You should definitely keep a keen eye on any spacefaring rodent species you come across :smallwink:

[Siosilvar]

Ship Initiative broke MoO2. Shield Piercing Rapid Heavy Phasors, stack Hyper X, Achilles Targeting, structural analyser, time warp device.

Congratulations now as long as you move first (because ship initiative) no enemy ship (except antarans who have inherent Hard Shields and a fleet of about three ships) will ever get to take a turn against you. The AI can send max size fleets of doom stars every turn (and will) and you can destroy them all every time with five of your own ships and none of them get a turn ever. None of the combat mechanics matter because tech refinements and sensible builds make them go away.

The fact that the system can be broken via specific combinations of options (time warp + phase cloak is another one) doesn't mean the system isn't good. See also: nearly every RPG ever. Last I checked, people are still playing MoO2 over 15 years later with some balance mods.

I fundamentally disagree that 4X is all about winning wars before starting them. There is enjoyment, but very little replayability, in a game where your biggest challenge is optimizing an economic engine. You also lose player agency if war gets declared by a bigger AI - loss mitigation is an important part of making a game that doesn't feel frustrating if you get slightly behind. This is why I no longer play Risk; whoever gets big enough is nigh-guaranteed to win unless they get incredibly unlucky, and there's not usually anything to do about it.

It doesn't take tactical combat to make a game replayable and less snowbally - EU4 does a good job at the diplomatic and strategic level - but it is one of the most obvious ways to give a player a direct hand in their own fate (as opposed to an indirect hand via the stat check of economies).

Without something to reign back the deathball in this game, I'm probably going to cap out on fun at a couple hundred hours (since there is limited diplomacy and the armor/shield/weapon intricacy). But that's what Paradox uses DLC for.


So I've been playing as the Google Megacorporation after their domination of the world. :D

I've run into a couple of strange glitches, one annoying and one hilarious. Despite having enslaved entire alien races, low happiness in places and putting no effort into curtailing Ethics divergence, I've never seen a single faction arise in any situation. Is anyone else seeing this issue, or am I just exceedingly (un)lucky? The game feels kind of really easy when I'm not facing slave uprisings on a constant basis.

Slaves can't revolt at the moment. Factions can, but if you slap chains on everybody they stop being able to do anything about your evil enlightening ways. Hopefully they can decide how to implement that and patch it in soon, it's honestly gamebreaking to be missing that feature.

[AgentPaper]

As the great Tony Stark once said-- "Is it too much to ask for both?"

It's not that a lack of tactical combat would deal-break Stellaris for me, however. I'm still interested. I just like to ask the industry why not make a game that's both strategy and tactics. I like having it all.

There are games that try this. Total War is probably one of the biggest. They all run into a big problem though, in that this kind of game is self-defeating. In a strategy game, your aim as the player is to maximize your local superiority in any battle as much as possible to ensure victory with the least casualties possible. For tactical battles to be interesting, though, you need your forces to be relatively evenly matched. Obviously, this creates problems, since anything you do to try and cause battles to be fought more evenly most of the time, will pull away from the strategic game because the player isn't able to gain as much advantage from playing it well. And vice versa, trying to improve the strategic game by adding more ways for the player to play well and gain an advantage, hurts the tactical battle side because now there are less even fights.

[NichG]

One thing I'm really enjoying so far is the early-game feel of science and exploration. Not the specific mechanics of sending around science ships, per se, but the way that the things you encounter create new projects for you to pursue as you go, and that they're not entirely standalone but can actually create things that stick around for a bit as goals or cross-references to keep an eye out for or bits of technology you can scavenge together the pieces for. I also love the fact that you don't just get to know who an alien ship is when you run into one, but you actually have to go and research the aliens; its a nice touch.

I guess this will go away when I've become familiar with all the various anomalies and events you can have, but for the time being it makes it feel like you don't necessarily know what will be possible until you get out there. I think that's something that a lot of space 4x games haven't really tried to capture at all; maybe Ascendancy was the last one in which I had that feeling, though there's bits of it with Star Drive 2. Fantasy 4x games kind of do this with quests, to varying levels of quality, but often the fantasy quests don't really feel like 'discovery' or 'exploration' per se.

I guess the thing that will determine if it has staying power is whether or not you get significantly different event exploration when you play with different ethics - so you could think about exploring the Militant storyline or the Spiritual storyline or whatever. Also, mods and DLCs could do a lot here. I could imagine a community anomaly pack or things like that as being really helpful in making subsequent plays feel fresh.

Makes me want to try to figure out how to gamify more aspects of actually doing science...

Now, for the tactical battle thing: for making the tactics interesting, I think you can help the problem of overwhelming force by having a large grey zone where the winner may be a given but the cost of victory can vary. Basically, design the tactics to still be interesting in a highly asymmetric battle, rather than try to force everything to be symmetric. An example that comes up a lot in 4x games is, my big fleet is 5 turns away but the enemy is here at my planet now - can I hold out for 5 turns? Some games the answer is just going to be yes or no, with no ability to influence it. But if the game lets you do things like gain a large power advantage against a foe who tries to be hasty, it means you can use tactics to draw out losing fights until they can become winning fights. Sort of like army-dance in EU - you know that huge stack is going to crush the forces you have right now, but if you split up your armies and kite it around in high attrition territories a bit, maybe the big stack you've got marching from across the continent will be able to do something about it when it gets there.

[Leecros]

One thing I'm really enjoying so far is the early-game feel of science and exploration. Not the specific mechanics of sending around science ships, per se, but the way that the things you encounter create new projects for you to pursue as you go, and that they're not entirely standalone but can actually create things that stick around for a bit as goals or cross-references to keep an eye out for or bits of technology you can scavenge together the pieces for. I also love the fact that you don't just get to know who an alien ship is when you run into one, but you actually have to go and research the aliens; its a nice touch.

I enjoy the early exploration bit, but one thing that i have noticed in the two games that i've played....well one and a half-ish. On the default settings, the universe feels a bit too...crowded.

Just as an example. In my current game, There are five empires wedged between a Fallen Empire and a powerful nation that have just stagnated They're about the same strength and none of them are powerful enough to feel confident in attacking the others. They're in almost a perfect equilibrium and they're all very close together. This is very much what happened to me in my first game.

Of course you also get situations like what I ended up being in now where there's only two empires. You and another in the near vicinity and you just gobble them up and blob out of control, but this i feel is sort of an anomaly. In the future, I'm certain that I'm going to tone down the number of space empires around, because the default just feels like too many and to get more variable-sized empires.

[DigoDragon]

For tactical battles to be interesting, though, you need your forces to be relatively evenly matched.

This is not necessarily true. You could have interesting battles facing a superior foe if you develop a tactic that exploits an Achilles heel in their fleet. Maybe your enemy has large shiny battleships with big capital weapons, but they have poor maneuverability or difficulty hitting very small targets. If your fleet is comprised of smaller 'obsolete' ships compared to your enemy, perhaps you find yourself with a new advantage by getting up close to their fleet.

What makes tactical combat interesting is having tactical options. Is a fleet's formation important? Can tractor beams be employed in combat to hinder ship speed? Does fighting in a nebula render my superior shields useless?

[Cikomyr]

One of IGN's criticism is the lack of.. low-scale warfare. There's no simple border skirmish over a single mining star system. there's no mere forcing right of passage on your neighbor. There's no way to exchange colonising rights between Empires..

[Silfir]

I'm a bit puzzled - did anyone expect anything out of Stellaris but automated combat? That's what I expected and went in for. I played the crap out of Sword of the Stars and automated every battle. For that matter, I did the same in Medieval: Total War. (The first one, in times before Autoresolve became basically an "Bend over and take it" button.) I think AgentPaper hits the nail on the head about the contradictory priorities of strategy layer vs. tactical combat layer.

To me Sword of the Stars is the only game so far that made me feel like I was actually exploring, navigating, colonizing and fighting in space. It's fiendishly hard to get 3D right and SotS did. Not perfectly - yes, it was a bit hard to navigate without nodelines - but well enough. What Stellaris gets right is what my favorite unplayable game (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/) ever provides: A thrill of exploration. In SotS, every time you found something with your scout ships other than another planet (colonizable or not) you cursed your terrible luck, since it would almost inevitably murder your ship and halt exploration until you've painstakingly directed a replacement to the region. Surveying planets in Stellaris can result in anything. It's awesome.

I wouldn't be that surprised if the game does get weaker the less exploration is a part of it, just because it's done so well.

[Knaight]

I'm a bit puzzled - did anyone expect anything out of Stellaris but automated combat? That's what I expected and went in for. I played the crap out of Sword of the Stars and automated every battle. For that matter, I did the same in Medieval: Total War. (The first one, in times before Autoresolve became basically an "Bend over and take it" button.) I think AgentPaper hits the nail on the head about the contradictory priorities of strategy layer vs. tactical combat layer.
Not really, but whether tactical combat belongs in the entire 4x genre is a much broader argument, as is whether Stellaris could have used tactical combat. As for these contradictory priorities:

The priorities of the tactical level change when there's a bigger strategic context. If it's a one and done tactical battle, then evenly matched armies are generally a good thing, and much bigger or much smaller armies throw that off. With the strategic backdrop though, there are suddenly different goals. Sometimes you have a tiny army that you know is going to be obliterated, and your goal is just to do as much damage as you can first, to make sure that replacing casualties costs them more than it does you, or to trim the army down enough that city/planet defense can take it later. Sometimes you have a big army, and you're trying to win without taking too much attrition that would leave you vulnerable in the future. Sometimes you're deliberately throwing troops away at a superior enemy just to take out a single unit that could cause problems against your bigger main force. You don't need the evenly matched forces, and thus the tactical side doesn't get in the way of the strategic side. It just gets more interesting because of it.

[factotum]

I'm about halfway through absorbing a vassal state into my empire, and still not sure if it's actually a good idea to be doing that or not...I just really want the nice juicy continental world in their home system, alright, and I ain't getting it any other way! :smallsmile: (It's not like they need it, their preferred world type is Arid so it'll be a long, long time before they think about settling a continental).

[Aotrs Commander]

SotS and SotS 2 are currently the gold standard for 4x games in my opinion, with a runner up prise to Empire at War for "best attempt to integrate ground combat" and to Space Empires 5 for trying - and it's BECAUSE of the tactical combat. Nohing else has thus come close. (Not started on Stellaris yet, not until I finish EUIV, but working late I don't have time to play that today...)



To critism that tactical battles aren't doing anything other than stretching out the numbers game, it would also be easy to change combat increase the vlaue of good tactics: for a kick-off, stop setting up the traditional wargames/computer game paradigm for two fleets/armies/etc moving relatively slowly towards each other relative to battleand shooting each other, because that offer advantages to "biggest numbers." Instead, make the maps large relative to how many ships can be deployed at once (and cap that via supply limits), and make movement speed much higher (and have speed affect accuracy (both ways), so that stationary targets are automatic hits, for example) and drastically chop turning ability with regard to time. The battles would then become all about manuver, a series of quick, brutal passing exchanges of fire interspersed with with periods of jockying for prime position for the next attack. Aim for Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet, rather than Star Wars. (Or, and I'm totally not biased here, my own tabletop starships rules Acclerate & Attack1.) A well-flown fleet culd take apart a larger one flown poorly by picking the right spots to attack from.



As to the curb-stomping, always fight we=ou-will-win thing: regardess of 4X, either at at some point all you'll be doing is curb-stomping people on a strategic/economic/tactical level (so the lack or presense of tactical combat makes no odds); or you haven't reached that point yet, so you'll be fighting on more even terms anyway. A late-game 4X where you're winning is generally duck-shoot regardless of whetehr you click the shooting as skip button or play through it; but so is a late-game RTS, really. By that sort of point you've basically won, and the presense or absense of tactical combat merely determines how much you want to drag it out. (I am all in favour for having an auto-resolve if tactical combat is present, because even I can sometimes get board of crushing something trivial.)

But that's not where you're aiming for the interest for - it's for the pre-end-game phase where the player has not yet achieved the point of "basically, we've won and the rest of the game is mopping up." (Very few 4X have interesting end-phases; Stellaris seems to be making some attempt at it, what with what I've heard mentioned.)



1Which I would totally make into a computer game if I had any kind of programming ability, which I do not.

[Thanqol]

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own. This has a lot of flow-on effects: my mid-game micro is mostly about building a bajillion starbases the AI isn't doing for me, and part of the reason for the AI going passive is that their sectors aren't being developed as well as they could be. This is good news because it sounds like the problem isn't something fundamental to the game!

My first day playing it was a little 'buh?' but by the midgame in yesterday's session I finally really started to get it; how colonization works, how navies work, it started to click together. Invasions are cool and fun, the AI can actually put up a good fight and demonstrate flashes of brilliance (One AI jumped me when I was tied down in a war and came at me with 5K worth of ships to my 4K. I was really lucky that my ships countered theirs and I had surrounded my homeworld with defense platforms). I figured out how robots work and I'm super keen to make a heavily robot focused corporate dystopia.

Playing with All-Hyperlanes and on a Spiral map is also a great idea - it forces you to start some sh*t if anyone gets in your way and adds much sharper strategic objectives.

[Mabn]

my first game has been weird. Its over 130 years in and I have yet to have a faction. I have only gone to war 3 times, always because one of my allies has a burning hatred of some pathetic friendless civilization they still somehow haven't significantly weakened despite repeated annihilations. There is this one rare tech that the game has asked me if I wanted about half a dozen separate times (I still don't).

[Artanis]

The best review on Stellaris's Steam page was posted yesterday:


"12.4 hrs on record"

It's currently 13 hours after release.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Driderman]

The best review on Stellaris's Steam page was posted yesterday:

Considering I've been working full time every day since it released I think my 21 hours so far is pretty well done. Also, oh god I have work in 6 hours, should really go to bed :smallbiggrin:

[Leecros]

28 Hours here...

I am such a scrub :smallfrown:

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I've been at work most of the time, and had to go out to see Civil War, so I'm only counting up 7 hours.

On that note, just came off my first war. The Tal-Akkur have taken one Yakmen Orrassian planet (giving them access to the Hyperlane between arms of the galaxy), but the Temmlar Democratic Crusaders are pissed that, unlike what I promised, the new country I set up in the Orrassian's other planet is in fact an Enlightened Kingdom like myself, so they broke the alliance. Plus a major mistep led to the damn Yak-men destroying my army after I had captured the planet I wanted. Sooooo, I guess time to enslave a whole pile of Yakmen and maybe I should enslave some of the Turkeys I enlightened earlier. Eh, my Pacifist pops aren't too keen on war anyways, I'll just use this as an excuse to avoid war even more now.

[tonberrian]

Comet sighted.

[Siosilvar]

So on my third empire (I'm playing through a bunch of early games in different styles), an anomaly gave a planet near me an ancient factory with +12 minerals for 3 energy upkeep. Doubling my mineral production with my first colony was sweeeeeet.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Wow, that IS lucky! I haven't had much luck with anomalies.

I just got into my first actual major war. Turns out that the Themlar, those goddamn capitalist beetles, have an army as big as mine and my allies combined. Luckily by the time they could bring it to bear, I had already taken the capital of their ally, which was enough to White Peace out before I lost the chance due to losing the battle. Managed to destroy a frontier outpost which gave me a nice system, 2 energy and 7 minerals, not bad. It was fun looking at all the varied ships though; The Themlar and I were both Insectoid ships, my allies are Fungoid, both of us have vassals who are Mammals (mine are the Orrassian ox-men, theirs are some sloth-men), and the Themlar's allies were Mammals (the original Orrassians). Somehow my allies managed to snag a single Mammalian Destroyer in their fleet, and I have a smattering of Avian corvettes from when I took over the Qix'Lufrans. My initial plan was to unite the Orrassian under the Empire as opposed to their silly democracy, and then take one of the Themlar's many systems, specifically the one that would give me more rare resources, but alas, I must rebuild. Really should get that defensive station tech.

[Grif]

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own. This has a lot of flow-on effects: my mid-game micro is mostly about building a bajillion starbases the AI isn't doing for me, and part of the reason for the AI going passive is that their sectors aren't being developed as well as they could be. This is good news because it sounds like the problem isn't something fundamental to the game!

My first day playing it was a little 'buh?' but by the midgame in yesterday's session I finally really started to get it; how colonization works, how navies work, it started to click together. Invasions are cool and fun, the AI can actually put up a good fight and demonstrate flashes of brilliance (One AI jumped me when I was tied down in a war and came at me with 5K worth of ships to my 4K. I was really lucky that my ships countered theirs and I had surrounded my homeworld with defense platforms). I figured out how robots work and I'm super keen to make a heavily robot focused corporate dystopia.

Playing with All-Hyperlanes and on a Spiral map is also a great idea - it forces you to start some sh*t if anyone gets in your way and adds much sharper strategic objectives.

Huh. Really? That'll explain why sectors are so passive. I actually don't really like the half-hearted attempt at taking away micromanagement atm, and there's this annoying thing where you can technically build a civilian ship from a sector shipyard, but it won't show in your unit list, but you still can order it around. It's especially annoying when there's that one race you have in your borders (but already assigned to a sector) that's especially suited for colonization of a certain planet, and you want them to be the one colonizing, not your primary species of your core worlds.

Also, anyone got this weird thing where the allied AI will always stack itself on your largest fleet and follow it around like a cute alien companion, instead of going off to do its own thing? It made wars trivial since our combined might smashed anything.

[Corvus]

Really not a fan of sectors as they currently stand. I suspected that might be the case going into the game but have had it confirmed with the bugs affected them currently.

Doesn't help when they make dumb building options. Had respect tile resources turned on but on a mineral rich world they still decided to build a power plant on a 4 mineral tile. Idiots.

Anyone know the console command to increase your planet limit or some other work around? I'd rather micro-manage than deal with the anchor that is sectors at the moment.

[Leecros]

Wow, that IS lucky! I haven't had much luck with anomalies.


The best anomaly I found gave my leaders +50 year lifespan(elixer of life). Which is admittedly pretty darn good...Except I was kind of hoping to build more Grand Mausoleums and I can only do that once per ruler... The other option was +10% happiness which is admittedly good as well, but neither did i know whether it was permanent or not and I'm roleplaying a strong aristocracy who doesn't really care about the peasants and slaves of the empire.


Really not a fan of sectors as they currently stand. I suspected that might be the case going into the game but have had it confirmed with the bugs affected them currently.

Doesn't help when they make dumb building options. Had respect tile resources turned on but on a mineral rich world they still decided to build a power plant on a 4 mineral tile. Idiots.


I would like it more if the techs to increase the number of planets that you currently control showed up more often. I have yet to see a single one. The AI will always manage planets the player can.

[Razade]

I'm having problems builing Spaceports. Can't ever seen to draw Nuclear Missles even though there's no unlock for them. So got into a situation where every enemy has a Starport on every planet and I'm still sitting at one.

[Grif]

I'm having problems builing Spaceports. Can't ever seen to draw Nuclear Missles even though there's no unlock for them. So got into a situation where every enemy has a Starport on every planet and I'm still sitting at one.

You can build spaceports with the tech that unlocks lasers or autocannons as well, IIRC.

EDIT: Since there's a distinct lack of empires in this thread atm, let me share mine:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/276221328429579042/BF02BACE7233562B4CA720B287CF070042E94A5A/

(Yes, that's another human clone in this game as well. Twas' amusing, and we quickly allied up too.)

[Teln]

Also, anyone got this weird thing where the allied AI will always stack itself on your largest fleet and follow it around like a cute alien companion, instead of going off to do its own thing? It made wars trivial since our combined might smashed anything.

Sounds like typical Paradox ally behavior. Few things are more heartbreaking in CK2 than seeing an island count raise all his levies to join a Crusade, only to discover his navy is slightly too small for him to fit his meager stack aboard. They usually end up bankrupting themselves because the AI just can't quite wrap its head around the concept of disbanding the military while in the middle of a war.

[factotum]

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own.

Is it actually confirmed that's a bug? Because I remember that point coming up in one of the Blorg videos pre-release, and I'm pretty sure Martin (the AI programmer) said that sectors weren't supposed to do their own shipbuilding or colonisation.

Mind you, AIs can be extremely passive themselves--I'm 75 years into my game and I have a neighbouring empire (now a protectorate of mine after a very short and decisive war) who still haven't expanded beyond their home system--they've only just put down a frontier outpost. It was almost as if they couldn't be bothered to do anything until I kicked the tar out of them, and it wasn't down to lack of opportunities to expand, either! You expect that sort of behaviour from fallen empires, not regular AIs.

Speaking of fallen empires--I have a fallen empire neighbour whose entire population is housed on Ringworlds (e.g. artificial ring habitats encircling the central star). Those look so cool, is it possible to build those yourself in the late game?

[DigoDragon]

I'm a bit puzzled - did anyone expect anything out of Stellaris but automated combat?

Not really, but whether tactical combat belongs in the entire 4x genre is a much broader argument

What Knaight said. I don't expect it in any 4X games these days, but I personally find it to be a really nice addition to a 4X game. Seems more like a dying art.

Though without focus on combat, I expect that these games are putting more effort into making smarter AI opponents. Though... not sure that they are for some games.


But that's not where you're aiming for the interest for - it's for the pre-end-game phase where the player has not yet achieved the point of "basically, we've won and the rest of the game is mopping up." (Very few 4X have interesting end-phases; Stellaris seems to be making some attempt at it, what with what I've heard mentioned.)

That is something interesting Stellaris does. Give you some end game 'test' to keep it interesting. Unfortunately I've been seeing a lot of games end in stalemates because the AI will not help the player fight off the end game beast/invasion/whatever, and more often hinder if not allied with the player.



So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own. This has a lot of flow-on effects: my mid-game micro is mostly about building a bajillion starbases the AI isn't doing for me, and part of the reason for the AI going passive is that their sectors aren't being developed as well as they could be. This is good news because it sounds like the problem isn't something fundamental to the game!

But... it's still a bug and should get fixed, right?



28 Hours here...
I am such a scrub :smallfrown:

Pffft. I don't own the game yet. You got 28 hours over me. :smalltongue:

[Leecros]

(Yes, that's another human clone in this game as well. Twas' amusing, and we quickly allied up too.)

This is why I'm really hoping for some good, cheap DLC's for more races.


I too had a clone of my race and it was my neighbour at the start of the game! Needless to say that they were quickly subjugated and put into reeducation programs. Granted I feel like it's a waste of Influence, because I've yet to see a single one of them drift towards my ethos, but you know: it's the thought that counts


Mind you, AIs can be extremely passive themselves--I'm 75 years into my game and I have a neighbouring empire (now a protectorate of mine after a very short and decisive war) who still haven't expanded beyond their home system--they've only just put down a frontier outpost. It was almost as if they couldn't be bothered to do anything until I kicked the tar out of them, and it wasn't down to lack of opportunities to expand, either! You expect that sort of behaviour from fallen empires, not regular AIs.


The AI seems to expand in bits and spurts. I was watching an empire sit around for 30 years after I discovered them, before they suddenly started colonizing two planets in quick succession. They AI also seems to be bad at handing random hostiles that can appear in systems at the start. Another AI kept sending their science ship to survey a system with hostiles in it. Which of course, it immediately turned tail and fled.It probably entered the system three or four times before I finally cleared the hostiles for it. So they may get "stuck" in an endless cycle until someone breaks them out.



Also don't send a Science ship to investigate an event/anomaly if it has a level requirement and the scientist doesn't reach it. It'll go to scan it and get stuck at zero and not progress at all. So stuck that you won't be able to order it to move or anything whatsoever to break it free. The only way to fix it is to go into the situation log and hit cancel from there. However, I had one stuck for the greater part of a year, because it required a skill level 5 scientist and the one I sent mistakenly was only 4.

[Cikomyr]

Apparently, if the Stellaris AI personnality does not register, it defaults to "Despicable Neutrals" with a glorious futurama reference

[Cristo Meyers]

Speaking of fallen empires--I have a fallen empire neighbour whose entire population is housed on Ringworlds (e.g. artificial ring habitats encircling the central star). Those look so cool, is it possible to build those yourself in the late game?

I don't think so. I think they're exclusive to fallen empires. Only way to get one is to capture it.

[Wookieetank]

So the not so glorious Chinorr are in the midst of a great decline. After their first (and only) war to date they've lost their home world and their first colony world. Left with only colony world 2.0 and 2 frontier outposts, the Chinorr have decided that revenge is best dished out by AI-controlled robots.

Mad dash through tech ahoy!

[Flickerdart]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

[Grif]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

I can list out a few cons (some personally experienced, some told by others.)
- AI is currently a mixed bag. They range from strangely passive, to outright unhelpful (to both yourself and themselves). Especially seen in whatever they use for combat AI.
- Sectors are currently bugged, and thus, you may actually spend more time micromanaging because the AI/game doesn't do everything they should.
- Unlike other 4X games, the only victory conditions so far are domination
- Espionage, trade and even culture is non-existent, as far as I know
- Factions are a good idea, but in practice, they pose no threat to a big empire, so essentially you're free to do whatever you wish. This may change in upcoming patches.
- The usual assortment of bugs, but this release is probably even more polished than EUIV. But still, there are bugs, all mostly minor, but they do add up. (Most egregious so far is relating to sector management and you interact with them)

[Cikomyr]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

I would say that unless you are a Paradox Junkie, its worth to wait a little bit so they debug the current problems, like Lazy Sectora

[Leecros]

What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

I don't like how sectors are handled. I would like it if I could at least move pops around within the sectors without having to spend the influence to remove them and then put them back in. I also feel like things like Observation posts(to observe native races) should never be controlled by your sector.

The mid-game seems to just be a massive arms race, because there's no real way to know how powerful your foes are outside of the very broad scales based on you. This is even worse because it's not really accurate. I've been kicked in the face by equivalent and crushed by inferior ones.

The tech system is different, but oftentimes I see the game give me the same options over and over again with one new one to replace the tech that I just researched. The same goes for the supposed "rare" techs. The game's been trying to shove Psi Warriors down my throat for the last 50 years.

Ethic Divergence just isn't clear whatsoever. I know what the tooltip says and what it should do, but there's no way to see if a pop is going to change ethos or not. I have spent 450 influence on reeducation programs on my worlds that have pops with the wrong ethics and nothing to show for it. Despite being a hundred years in and near constant negative ethic divergence. My former neighbour's capital is still full of Xenophile/Fanatic Militarists rather than my own Xenophobic/Spiritualists. There's been no change in any of them towards my government's ethics. There's also the fact that despite my race being Decadent(Need slaves to work at 100% efficiency), I have had pops flip straight out of Fanatic Xenophobe to either neither, or Xenophile with no warning and suddenly be mad because slavery is bad.

There's no real migration to speak of...If a pop is happy, then they'll stay on the planet. This means that even galaxy-spanning, all inclusive, xenophilic empires with free migration will be nearly completely segregated. Nothing like say...Mass Effect where the various races mix and mingle on nearly every planet.

Also I find it weird that a science ship in the backwater places of the universe researching an anomaly or alien language or other project takes up the entire science division of whatever class of research it's considered. Including the occupation of the scientist back on your home planet. However, I expect this is for balance purposes.


also Hotfix 1.02 is live with one change that i'm very happy with:

- 'Hostile fleet detected' is now only shown when the fleet is heading towards one of your colonized systems, preventing massive spam in large wars.

[Manticoran]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

The lack of options on race creation is a little frustrating. It seems like there's 3-4 "Best Way To Do Things" that are pretty dominant. A lot of the traits seem really unbalanced compared to each other, and it'd just be nice in general if there were more of them.

Ethics divergence can be a mediumish problem depending on how focused your strategy is.

Having super old dudes seems really awesome but actually doesn't seem to be very much of a benefit, and in fact if you're playing any of the Monarchy-types is pretty bad as you don't get to change rulers very often, and you actually want to have as many different rulers as possible in order to get all the nice one-offs like tombs and giant space stations. It could be nice to have some kind of ability to replace your ruler for a bunch of Influence if they don't give you anything you're interested in.

Slavery is overpowered as hell. My current favorite build is Fanatic Collectivist/Something with a Despotic Empire, Agrarian/Industrious/Sedentary/Decadent. You get +25% to mineral and food growth with slaves, which means any square that makes food or minerals 3 or greater makes one more, and any square that makes seven or greater makes two more. Find as many Native populations as you can to XCOM, usually find that trying to Uplift them isn't worth it, you just take your 6 society research per turn from your lookouts, and for use it's just significantly easier to XCOM them. When colonizing you enslave everyone who works food/minerals, with power/science workers staying around.

Often have large problems with just running out of power in early colonization. Think I need to emphasize power generators on my planets more often, as it's often really easy to find research labs and minerals in space but I run into "Not enough power" all the time.

USE THE TECHNOLOGY BOOSTING EDICTS. +30% sociology research at the beginning of the game is ABSURD and lets you boost into early colonies MUCH faster than anyone else can to grab the juiciest areas.

Sectors are awful and I hate them. Always take 75% of what they make because they don't know how to use it and you're going to have to invest a bunch in the area anyway.

Wish that there was like a "Frontier World" thing, where you have your 5 core planets and then you can have X more planets that aren't really very developed yet. This whole "Having to let the AI handle colony growth(Which they're REALLY BAD AT) or only have 2-3 core planets(Remember one of them is your capital) while I try to build colonies up is really frustrating, to the point where I find you're better off going to something like 7-8 worlds and losing resources to inefficiency in your empire rather than losing them to sectors which will then also use them counter productively. This would be less of a problem if the technologies to allow growth of your core sectors popped up more often.

Economics is king. Technology is ok, but due to how research works in this game, I find a nation with lots of minerals and power to put into research labs will be better at research than a poor nation focused on research.

It feels like Spiritualist, Pacifist, and Xenophile get a lot of interesting event chains they can pick from to do things, and everyone else kind of just gets to choose "Look at them or take samples".

I wish the starbeast types were a little more varied. After the tenth game practicing early expansion running into Space Amoebas or Mining Drones loses a lot of their luster.

I wish there were more ways to deal with space beasts than "Shoot them all!". Even if you are a fanatic spiritualist pacifist you can't figure out a way to not kill crystals if you want the planets they're around, it'd be nice to have event chains that let you make them deaggro your units, and it'd be interesting to see how that could fold into ally mechanics where going through an ally's territory who has done this and you haven't could be really dangerous, and invading the peaceful nations could have random stacks of terrifying void cloud monsters sitting around their colonies guarding them.

I wish nuclear missiles were less "The best option to kill neutral things in space". I feel like if I'm starting with any offense tech other than nuclear missiles I'm going to lose more units to neutrals, which will slow my expansion/research/etc.

I wish that Wormholes weren't so absurdly awesome. PvP they're theoretically abusable since they can be sniped out, but PvE the AI isn't smart enough to do that. The mineral cost keeps you from building a bunch at first, but later in the game when you're getting 200-300 minerals a month(Not even that far in, if you're running the Slavery build), it's a drop in the bucket and lets you have really really absurd amounts of mobility compared to the other factions.

I kind of wish the defaults had fewer nations? I wish the exploring phase was a little longer, but if I put the nations to not being terribly many the AI isn't smart enough to expand terribly fast, and so you end up bigger than everyone else by a wide margin.

I wish that if you have a subject nation that's native to Arctic Territories, you didn't have to research Arctic World Expansion just to stick them on the planets they're already adapted to. Was running a game with a Desert race, found Ocean and Arctic natives to XCOM/Uplift, and then couldn't get colony ships filled with their race to actually colonize the planets they're pre-adapted to.

Similarly, wish being Super Adaptive let you colonize things that you were already at 80% for.

Wish I could tell what kind of population is inside a colony ship by clicking on them.

Wish I could use the scroll key to zoom in and out from system/galactic view.

Most of this is stuff that only annoys you after playing for 12 hours in a row because this game is amazing and consumes my soul.

[Siosilvar]

My biggest problem with the game as it stands is that there's no reason not to just deathball in wars with one massive fleet, which ends up meaning they're decided in a single battle that wipes out all offensive capacity of the loser.

Plus there's some missing diplomatic options from previous Paradox games, like smaller war goals.

Despite this and what everybody else has mentioned, I sunk 14 hours into the game on release day and look forward to making time to play it again for more than an hour at a time. I don't know if it'll be as replayable as I'd like but I'm definitely still getting my money's worth out of it.

[Madcrafter]

I have found sectors to be building things. Mine at least built spaceports on their own, and one sector even built a construction ship which I didn't realize wasn't mine. (I kept sending it across my territory to go build things, then wondered where it had gone off too when it went back home after finishing). Eventually found out because, annoyed it wasn't on the outliner, I disbanded it and they built another one.


I had trouble with early expansion in my game. I didn't really pay much attention to my FTL tech and chose a race with hyper-lanes. Ended up with all my routes going through the territory of the two surrounding nations, both pacifistic harmonious collectives. Harmonious collectives appear to not give border access to anyone for any reason, so I ended up having to got to war and take out one of their home worlds just to get out. Only to run into a fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire, who immediately declared war and forced me to abandon half my colonies because I was too close to their borders :smallfrown:. At least I got some nice tech out of the few of their ships I managed to take out.


My biggest problem with the game as it stands is that there's no reason not to just deathball in wars with one massive fleet, which ends up meaning they're decided in a single battle that wipes out all offensive capacity of the loser.I've found the AI will always try and outmanoeuvre me and rush my home world, and I've had trouble catching them to force deathball fights.

[GloatingSwine]

Wish I could tell what kind of population is inside a colony ship by clicking on them.


You can actually work around this. Go to the planet you want to colonise, hit the colonise button and it shows you a list of all the active colony ships and that does show you what pop's on them, you can click on it and it automatically orders the ship to colonise that planet and lets you place the initial admin structure.


You want to watch out when using slaves in sectors, because the sector management AI is rather dim and will move them out of the salt mines and stick them in the labs.

Which is obv. not ideal.



(I am going to reroll science empire tonight, going to go Thrifty/Intelligent and use robits for mining and later on going to specialise planets to different type of research, and genemod their pops into science castes based on the different research types so they're getting +35% after Intelligent and Fanatic Materialist)

[Aotrs Commander]

Must admit, looking at the noted issues, not all that sorry to be missing the initial release play! I got the preorder specials, it ain't going anywhere, and it'll only get better as time goes on. From the EUIV dicussions on their forums, Paradox does tend to do a lot of fixing and tweaking with their games over time.

(I mean, how many games get to a version 16?)

Out of interest, then, how is play-time shaping up compared to EUIV's "couple of hundred hours to get to the end" duration. I mean, I guess it depends largely on the galazy size, but...?

Edit: Seventeen, apparently EUIV 1.17 went up yesterday (the only day for about a month I havem't booted up EUIV, 'natch...!)

[Leecros]

[QUOTE=Aotrs Commander;20770824Out of interest, then, how is play-time shaping up compared to EUIV's "couple of hundred hours to get to the end" duration. I mean, I guess it depends largely on the galazy size, but...?[/QUOTE]

Well, I have 35-ish hours in my first game and i'm nowhere near the end conquest goals on the largest map.


But i've yet to really expand aggressively and play on the normal speed setting. Mainly due to fears and my own ignorance.

[Grif]

I've found the AI will always try and outmanoeuvre me and rush my home world, and I've had trouble catching them to force deathball fights.

I wish the AI did that to me that. (Warp drive tech are probably the least mobile, because of the warp cooldown) As it stands, all I need to do is to rush one of their worlds, bombard it for a bit, then laugh when they hurry back to defend it.

[factotum]

I have found sectors to be building things.

Yeah, I noticed one of my sectors had built a construction ship and was placing mining stations when I played earlier, so either they fixed it or it was never broken in the first place.

[Narkis]

Yeah, I noticed one of my sectors had built a construction ship and was placing mining stations when I played earlier, so either they fixed it or it was never broken in the first place.

There's something odd going on for sure. I had two sectors, each of them with 4-5 planets and assorted mining bases. One of them built up, and even placed a spaceport on its capital. The other did nothing of the sort, with pretty much the same amount of resources.

[tonberrian]

Just FYI: Sectors will build armies, and they shove the maintenance on to you. Sounds like a bug to me.

[Grif]

Just FYI: Sectors will build armies, and they shove the maintenance on to you. Sounds like a bug to me.

Only if set to military focus, I found. Luckily, that can be remedied real quick.

[Leecros]

http://oi68.tinypic.com/148zztg.jpg


And so begins the Great War of our Time. The God Emperor Modreg l and the Blessed Wubblan Empire against the dangerous heretics of the Ziiran-Kroll Concord.


The winners shall become the Great Power in the region while the losers will have to taste the sour taste of defeat.



Despite the numbers advantage and the large number of factions teaming up on one. My money's on the Wubblans.

[Mabn]

dozens of hours later I have no idea what a sector will or wont do. Their ai seems to be a cat in a box with a bunch of buttons.

Keeping on with my first game, it's the middle of the third century, weird invaders of a particularly alien nature have been expanding across the galaxy for almost a century, and I still can't get to them because hyperlanes are silly and no one relevant will grant me military access because I don't border them. The galaxy at this point is four federations that all love each other but can't work together against the massive existential threat because there isn't a diplomatic option for that and a xenophobic fallen empire that's inferior to me militarily.

[Leecros]

Keeping on with my first game, it's the middle of the third century, weird invaders of a particularly alien nature have been expanding across the galaxy for almost a century, and I still can't get to them because hyperlanes are silly and no one relevant will grant me military access because I don't border them. The galaxy at this point is four federations that all love each other but can't work together against the massive existential threat because there isn't a diplomatic option for that and a xenophobic fallen empire that's inferior to me militarily.

I've seen this a couple of times. People being frustrated that the AI nations don't rally against the late-game threat.


The late-game threat is there to give the player(s) one last challenge before they clean up the remnants of the game and win. It's not there to unite the galaxy against them. They're there for you and only you to defeat. It could be seen as an "end date" of sorts. You have until that point to become powerful enough to handle the threat and after that you "Win". Sure, you may not be at the winning state of the game, but you've conquered the (probably) hardest challenge the game is going to throw at you.

At least, that's my interpretation.

[Siosilvar]

I've seen this a couple of times. People being frustrated that the AI nations don't rally against the late-game threat.


The late-game threat is there to give the player(s) one last challenge before they clean up the remnants of the game and win. It's not there to unite the galaxy against them. They're there for you and only you to defeat. It could be seen as an "end date" of sorts. You have until that point to become powerful enough to handle the threat and after that you "Win". Sure, you may not be at the winning state of the game, but you've conquered the (probably) hardest challenge the game is going to throw at you.

At least, that's my interpretation.

I haven't gotten there yet but that sounds incredibly immersion breaking. We're talking extradimensional invaders and other galactic scale threats here. Everybody should care.