Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Grim Portent]

Slipped into an old empire of mine, but with a bit of a revamp to take advantage of new mechanics that didn't exist when I first made it.

The Shapa Raveners, a Lithoid Terravore Hive Mind, previously with the Calamitous Birth origin. Never did very well as them to be honest.

But now Shapa Raveners 2: Electric Boogaloo is getting a test run. Swapped Calamitous Birth for Necrophage, swapped their homeworld to an Ocean and made them Aquatic, shuffled their traits a bit, and presto chango, we get an empire that wants to eat every planet that isn't an ocean and turn everyone else into more rock monsters.


My first prey were two primitive civilisations near my homeworld, both Oceans, which means they were probably my guaranteed habitable worlds. They made for a nice easy population boost, as I set about eating the four other planets within a few jumps of the homeworld.

Then I met my neighbours. Pacifist Xenophiles, the poor things. I waited a bit to get my economy sorted out, churned out twenty corvettes and swept through their space, claiming their three worlds. None of them Oceans, the aliens seemed to prefer it cold, so I ate their worlds and moved on.

My next two neighburs are the Qvaagh, a hivemind that is less beligerant than me, and the State of Irzk, a bunch of materialist/egalitarian/militarists. The Qvaagh I haven't attacked yet, the SoI however I have. They put up a decent fight, much better than my first victims whose name I have forgotten, and managed to grind me to a status quo after losing six worlds out of eight, including their capital. They rapidly colonised more worlds, but I doubt they'll be able to build up properly before the truce ends.

They favoured dry worlds, so more food for the swarm, and their pops have been converted en masse to Shapa and shuttled away from their worlds as they cracked beneath their feet.

It is 2264 and my homeworld and two colonies have populations of 109, 64 and 60. I've taken Mastery of Nature and Hydrocentric to squeeze as much out of the ocean worlds I find as possible, but I am going to have to start spreading my tendrils to make more colonies. My own homeworld has stability issues due to the large amount of unemployed drones causing trouble and that can't be allowed to continue.

[Silverraptor]

Slipped into an old empire of mine, but with a bit of a revamp to take advantage of new mechanics that didn't exist when I first made it.

The Shapa Raveners, a Lithoid Terravore Hive Mind, previously with the Calamitous Birth origin. Never did very well as them to be honest.

But now Shapa Raveners 2: Electric Boogaloo is getting a test run. Swapped Calamitous Birth for Necrophage, swapped their homeworld to an Ocean and made them Aquatic, shuffled their traits a bit, and presto chango, we get an empire that wants to eat every planet that isn't an ocean and turn everyone else into more rock monsters.


My first prey were two primitive civilisations near my homeworld, both Oceans, which means they were probably my guaranteed habitable worlds. They made for a nice easy population boost, as I set about eating the four other planets within a few jumps of the homeworld.

Then I met my neighbours. Pacifist Xenophiles, the poor things. I waited a bit to get my economy sorted out, churned out twenty corvettes and swept through their space, claiming their three worlds. None of them Oceans, the aliens seemed to prefer it cold, so I ate their worlds and moved on.

My next two neighburs are the Qvaagh, a hivemind that is less beligerant than me, and the State of Irzk, a bunch of materialist/egalitarian/militarists. The Qvaagh I haven't attacked yet, the SoI however I have. They put up a decent fight, much better than my first victims whose name I have forgotten, and managed to grind me to a status quo after losing six worlds out of eight, including their capital. They rapidly colonised more worlds, but I doubt they'll be able to build up properly before the truce ends.

They favoured dry worlds, so more food for the swarm, and their pops have been converted en masse to Shapa and shuttled away from their worlds as they cracked beneath their feet.

It is 2264 and my homeworld and two colonies have populations of 109, 64 and 60. I've taken Mastery of Nature and Hydrocentric to squeeze as much out of the ocean worlds I find as possible, but I am going to have to start spreading my tendrils to make more colonies. My own homeworld has stability issues due to the large amount of unemployed drones causing trouble and that can't be allowed to continue.

Are you going to become the crisis? Can hiveminds become the crisis?

[The Glyphstone]

A Devouring Swarm in one of my previous games became the Crisis. I was penned in by two hostile federations and couldn't stop them before they snowballed out of control.

[Grim Portent]

Are you going to become the crisis? Can hiveminds become the crisis?

Didn't bother. Finished up the run about an hour ago, more or less on the backs of battleships.

Was playing on a small galaxy, normally play on a bigger one, reset everything to default and then checked the randomise boxes. Wound up with 5 AI empires, a single Fallen Empire and one group of Marauders.

One empire was already extinct by my hands, which just left the rest of the galaxy.

I finished eating the Irzk, waited a bit, opened the L-Cluster and found Gray. Took him and my cruiser fleets to go kill the Marauders to pre-empt any chance of a Great Khan showing up.

Built up my fleets and dropped myself into the fifth empire through an L-Gate, a bunch of beligerants on the far side of the Qvaagh and their allies. Crushed them easily because they were lagging in tech and had no big fleets.

Spent a while fortifying some systems and shuffling fleets around, then stormed into the Qvaagh, took a long time to put them down because they were able to field fleets as strong as my basic ones and had twenty worlds, so I wound up signing a cease fire with their allies, who survived the war with only a few planets lost. The Qvaagh themselves did not.

Their allies, who's name escapes me, had a machine uprising at the same time as the ceasefire. I took the opportunity to steal a few worlds from the machines, which dropped the meat creatures down to 12 planets from their pre-war total of 23.

Waited a bit, built up some battleship fleets and more armies, then just overran their worlds once the truce expired. Had them dead by 2450 something. Rolled my fleets up to the FEs borders, then rolled through them. Had to train more soldiers to capture their capitol world, but they suicided their strongest fleet against my massed battleships when the war began, so nothing they had afterwards could do more than chip at my battleships.

Once they fell, in 2464, I won the game as the sole survivor. Decided to wait the extra handful of years to see what Crisis was going to pop out. My homeworld rebelled because I had roughly a thousand pops on it, only half of them Shapa, courtesy of the automatic resettlement of everyone from the worlds I was eating dumping large amounts of people who were not yet necrophaged. Reconquered it in short order, because they chose to leave their rebel armies in orbit rather than on the planet. Tens of thousands of army strength, just floating in space doing nothing.

Then the Unbidden arrived. Lost a lot of ground to them, including my homeworld with it's ludicrous number of pops. About four planets in total, and all my initial fleets. I was not well equipped to fight their first wave. I fired up my Mega Shipyard, which I had finished while fighting the FE but didn't actually use yet other than to build some colony ships, jump drived a newly set up battleship fleet to their portal, quickly churned out another strong fleet to chase down their anchors and set about banishing them. Their fleets had scattered through the L-Gates and a few wormholes, so it took a little while to chase down their anchors, but my worlds were so few and far between that they only destroyed four of them. Once I popped through a wormhole and destroyed their last anchor, the fleet I had camping the portal blew it up, and I decided that was a good place to stop.

Every other species is dead, either being necrophaged or dying when the Unbidden destroyed my core worlds, which I am genuinely annoyed about even though it didn't matter anymore. I had so many people on Ith'i, so many Shapa and potential Shapa died there.


It was fun to revisit the Devouring Swarm archetype. For some reason Fanatical Purifiers never click with me in terms of the mechanics, but way back when Stellaris still had tile based planets and warp travel I tried to make the Tyranids as one of my first few factions. Didn't go well at the time, but Terravores gives about as close a vibe to what I wanted at the time as is possible.

[Silverraptor]

I got a hilarious bug in my playthrough. So I managed to get the Head Relic that when used spawns a small fallen empire fleet under your control. I spent some time using that head over and over to get myself a larger and larger fallen empire fleet when the Unbidden spawns in my territory. I try to engage them and they wipe most of my fleets, though it is close and I have the infrastructure and alloy production to rapidly replace my losses. All my fleets managed to retreat in time with some ships left, but the fallen empire fleet was reduced to 2 battlecruisers left. And while I was trying to manage the crisis and maneuvering my ships around, that's when I discovered the bug. Those 2 fallen empire ships, when they got into a fight with any fleet of the unbidden, were un-targetable by the unbidden ships. I had these 2 ships destroying 400k unbidden fleets single handedly. It was absolutely hilarious that I just sent them through and destroyed the Unbidden breach point and then mopped them up by these 2 invincible ships! XD

Spoiler: Proof of invincible ships

Show

[DataNinja]

Glad you managed to get that to happen to you. It's usually the enemy fleets that get that bug.
(Just save and reload if you're a victim of it. It's been in the game forever, and is unfortunately pretty much impossible to diagnose and remove because of the fact that reloading fixes it.)

[Fyraltari]

I got a hilarious bug in my playthrough. So I managed to get the Head Relic that when used spawns a small fallen empire fleet under your control. I spent some time using that head over and over to get myself a larger and larger fallen empire fleet when the Unbidden spawns in my territory. I try to engage them and they wipe most of my fleets, though it is close and I have the infrastructure and alloy production to rapidly replace my losses. All my fleets managed to retreat in time with some ships left, but the fallen empire fleet was reduced to 2 battlecruisers left. And while I was trying to manage the crisis and maneuvering my ships around, that's when I discovered the bug. Those 2 fallen empire ships, when they got into a fight with any fleet of the unbidden, were un-targetable by the unbidden ships. I had these 2 ships destroying 400k unbidden fleets single handedly. It was absolutely hilarious that I just sent them through and destroyed the Unbidden breach point and then mopped them up by these 2 invincible ships! XD

Spoiler: Proof of invincible ships

Show

You just had Wedge Antilles and Luke Skywalker on your side!

[Sholos]

Been playing the new beta and the Unity and Influence changes are huge. Also every edict now being an "On till you cancel" type with a monthly upkeep is pretty sweet.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The new changes are pretty harsh, and will hopefully be re-balanced before they go live. As it stands, Edicts may as well not exist, everything is slowed down, and you may as well not bother changing your play style because it basically hits all playstyles equally. Even 'tall' builds have harsh consequences. I tried a ringworld start, just to see how tall play would work. Just like always, it sucks. You may as well suck it up and pay the admin penalties. It'll slow you down, but given that everyone is slowed down, it effectively amounts to the same.

Honestly, I find it a bit silly. The only thing that really impacts is that now you recruit scientists with Unity instead of Energy, so you have to wait a bit to get your second and third research vessels out and about. And since there's no no way to mitigate penalties from Sprawl, you just have to accept the fact that you'll need that many more researchers and unity producers to keep up with where you used to be, which means rewarding wide playstyles even more.

[The Glyphstone]

I've never managed to make a Tall build work anyways. I always end up starved for something crucial, whether its minerals, alloys, or fleet size to stave off the inevitable Fanatic Xenophobe Whatevers on both my borders.

[Guancyto]

I'm not sure if it's cheating or not, but most of my Tall builds have relied on having a bunch of subsidiaries/tributaries.

Does it count as tall if your empire is small but you still own a good quarter of the galaxy?

[GloatingSwine]

Actually I think tall play got hit harder by this than wide.

Reason being that previously if you went tall there was just an entire class of worker you didn't need, bureaucrats, but now with all the secondary unity production being knocked off you need to spec into Unity to get anywhere with your traditions and to use edicts. Meanwhile the thing that tall builds should be able to focus on that wide can't, getting a few planets ascended good and high, doesn't actually pay out in the critical specialist resources of alloys and science on standard worlds.

200 unity cost for leaders in the early game stings a little and I don't think I'm going to be going up to 8-9 explorers like I did on 3.2, more like 3-4 because of the upkeep delaying early traditions (especially Expansion which you now want more for that big sprawl reduction from systems and colonies.)

There's also basically no competition for energy in the early game, so just put in a monthly trade for minerals to get your early buildings and space mining going.

I've never managed to make a Tall build work anyways. I always end up starved for something crucial, whether its minerals, alloys, or fleet size to stave off the inevitable Fanatic Xenophobe Whatevers on both my borders.

Tall has always been a challenge build, but I think it is more so than ever now because you are going to need to build for unity on top of science and alloys.

[The Glyphstone]

Bits of the beta patch notes that will make me happy on release:

-AI Megacorps should spawn half as often as before now.

I stopped trying to play megacorps because it seemed like half of the other empires ended up being competitors or hive minds.

AI will no longer instantly buy ever single slave pop on the slave market.

Very nice for slaver empires, it was weird to see the market always empty.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, the fact that the game spawned so many megacorps and hive minds was why I made a preset group of empires to always play with. So I have two ideologically opposed megacorps and two hive minds (out of 16 empires).

Megacorps creating new megacorps when they spawn vassals is still annoying though because they're competitors even as subsidiaries.

[KillianHawkeye]

Very nice for slaver empires, it was weird to see the market always empty.

It'll be nice when I keep getting notifications of a member of my species on the slave market, too.

[Eldan]

Yeah, the fact that the game spawned so many megacorps and hive minds was why I made a preset group of empires to always play with. So I have two ideologically opposed megacorps and two hive minds (out of 16 empires).

Megacorps creating new megacorps when they spawn vassals is still annoying though because they're competitors even as subsidiaries.

Heh. Nothing more fun than playing on a small map as a megacorp and finding out you're between a hive mind and a purifier at the start and can't go anywhere exploring.

[Avaris]

Just reached the crisis in my first game: got the Unbidden. Who unfortunately for them showed up next to an Isolationist Fallen Empire, and in a region of space with few other directions to advance. So what ended up happening was the Fallen Empire swatted away the various Unbidden fleets, while I cut them off at the only way into wider space, and then just rolled up all their fleets while my Federation allies took out the Dimensional Portal. I think the war was over in less than five years!

Edit: in fact, fairly certain it finished just as the senate vote on uniting against the threat was about to close, which is kind of hillarious.

There are about 50 years left until official game end, but I'm not sure there's much to do now...

[DataNinja]

Just reached the crisis in my first game: got the Unbidden. Who unfortunately for them showed up next to an Isolationist Fallen Empire, and in a region of space with few other directions to advance. So what ended up happening was the Fallen Empire swatted away the various Unbidden fleets, while I cut them off at the only way into wider space, and then just rolled up all their fleets while my Federation allies took out the Dimensional Portal. I think the war was over in less than five years!

Edit: in fact, fairly certain it finished just as the senate vote on uniting against the threat was about to close, which is kind of hillarious.

There are about 50 years left until official game end, but I'm not sure there's much to do now...

Ah, well, that's always anticlimactic. ...though, unless you kill the Fallen Empires, guaranteed they're probably the ones with the highest score on the Victory board, especially with the points from killing Crisis fleets. So... you could put taking out the Fallen Empires as your goal?

[Avaris]

Ah, well, that's always anticlimactic. ...though, unless you kill the Fallen Empires, guaranteed they're probably the ones with the highest score on the Victory board, especially with the points from killing Crisis fleets. So... you could put taking out the Fallen Empires as your goal?

I’ve actually overtaken them, even with the points from the crisis! I suspect I’ll leave this game here, as it’s been mostly a learning experience in base Stellaris, and I’ve now bought a load of the expansions for my next run! Of course, next game I will have to learn the whole new unity system as well as things like relics and the wider selection of megastructures! Base only has gates!

[DataNinja]

I’ve actually overtaken them, even with the points from the crisis! I suspect I’ll leave this game here, as it’s been mostly a learning experience in base Stellaris, and I’ve now bought a load of the expansions for my next run! Of course, next game I will have to learn the whole new unity system as well as things like relics and the wider selection of megastructures! Base only has gates!

Welp! I mean, uh, you could show them what for anyways?
(But, yeah, I getcha. The game tends to peter out once the crisis is gone.)

Oh man, if you were playing without Utopia, you were missing out on like... at least half of what I'd consider to be the 'true' game. Stuff that I forget are from DLC, because it seems so... empty a game without them. It'll get so much better with that stuff.

[Avaris]

Welp! I mean, uh, you could show them what for anyways?
(But, yeah, I getcha. The game tends to peter out once the crisis is gone.)

Oh man, if you were playing without Utopia, you were missing out on like... at least half of what I'd consider to be the 'true' game. Stuff that I forget are from DLC, because it seems so... empty a game without them. It'll get so much better with that stuff.

I’m very much looking forward to it! The base game was good enough to make me see the potential, and the glimpses of what else is available are really enticing. I think I was just base game, theoretically with the Horizon Signal dlc, but that doesn’t add much!

I think my one disappointment so far is that there was no way that I could see to look back at the anomalies on worlds I had explored. It would be nice to be able to look back on the history of each system somehow. Maybe even have a record of other notable events such as battles in each system! Is there anything out there that does this?

[DataNinja]

I’m very much looking forward to it! The base game was good enough to make me see the potential, and the glimpses of what else is available are really enticing. I think I was just base game, theoretically with the Horizon Signal dlc, but that doesn’t add much!

I think my one disappointment so far is that there was no way that I could see to look back at the anomalies on worlds I had explored. It would be nice to be able to look back on the history of each system somehow. Maybe even have a record of other notable events such as battles in each system! Is there anything out there that does this?

Yeeeeah, I've never managed to stumble upon the Horizon Signal, and... well, they've reduced the chances of it happening now, so I doubt I ever will.

And I don't think there's a way to look back on that history, I'm afraid. Dunno if there are mods that would do it, but I doubt it. Just because there are a lot of pop-ups.

[Avaris]

Speaking of mods, are there any that anyone would recommend as 'must haves' in order to get an enhanced experience? Not looking for stuff that is obviously additional like the Star Trek mod, more things which enhance what is there already in a more seamless way?

[Artanis]

Speaking of mods, are there any that anyone would recommend as 'must haves' in order to get an enhanced experience? Not looking for stuff that is obviously additional like the Star Trek mod, more things which enhance what is there already in a more seamless way?

One of the More Colors mods immediately springs to mind. There's no actual gameplay change, but going back to the stock color choices feels borderline unplayable.

Edit: If the Selectable Starting Ruler Traits mod still works, that one is great too.

[The Glyphstone]

Almost my entire mod list is stuff that adds content, so I can't really help here. Only 'mundane' thing is a UI-fixing mod. I load my games up with extra anomalies, extra events, extra archaeology sites, extra traditions, extra ascension perk options, extra trait/civic choices...anything to add more variety to the RNG and have games be a little different each time.

[InvisibleBison]

I'm a big fan of the Planetary Development Notification mod, which provides a notification whenever one of your planets needs attending to (and it's fairly customizable as to what triggers the notifications, too).

[Avaris]

Almost my entire mod list is stuff that adds content, so I can't really help here. Only 'mundane' thing is a UI-fixing mod. I load my games up with extra anomalies, extra events, extra archaeology sites, extra traditions, extra ascension perk options, extra trait/civic choices...anything to add more variety to the RNG and have games be a little different each time.

This is actually the sort of thing I was meaning! Extra anomalies etc is all the sort of stuff I want, but in a way that is seamless to the game. So not stuff that is ‘this is Star Trek’, or entire new systems to try and learn, but stuff that adds variety within the existing Stellaris framework.

[The Glyphstone]

This is actually the sort of thing I was meaning! Extra anomalies etc is all the sort of stuff I want, but in a way that is seamless to the game. So not stuff that is ‘this is Star Trek’, or entire new systems to try and learn, but stuff that adds variety within the existing Stellaris framework.

Ah, so you want extra content, but not a 'total conversion' mod. In that case, let's see:

-More Events Mod
-Expanded Events
-Extra Events 3.3
-Endless Frontier: An Event Mod
-Archaeology Story Pack
-Precursors Story Pack
-Gods and Guardians
-Wiirlack Additional Civics and Origins
-Trait Diversity
-Trait Diversity -Trait Points Traits
-Expanded Stellaris Traditions
-Empires Expanded
-Machine & Robot Expansion
-Legendary Worlds
-Ancient Systems
-L-Cluster Plus
-One More Civic Slot
-!!!Universal Resource Patch (required for):
-Planetary Curios
-Ancient Empire 1.6
-Fatal Foundations Story Pack

Plus, I have Gigastructures but not really using it in my current mod-pack. I might add it back in and trim down so only the planetary terraforming megastructures are available

[Silverraptor]

Yeeeeah, I've never managed to stumble upon the Horizon Signal, and... well, they've reduced the chances of it happening now, so I doubt I ever will.

And I don't think there's a way to look back on that history, I'm afraid. Dunno if there are mods that would do it, but I doubt it. Just because there are a lot of pop-ups.

They had for a couple years the horizon signal popping up in almost every one of my playthroughs. It was so annoying I actually consciously had to ignore it.

[The Glyphstone]

There is a 100% Horizon Signal mod, specifically for that. Never used it so I don't know if it is current for 3.3.