Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Silverraptor]

There's also several versions of Earth that can be encountered as primitive civilizations. Off-hand, I remember Early Space Age Earth, Bronze Age Earth and Post-Apocalyptic Earth from my previous playthroughs.

I've never seen humans as anything but the post apocalyptic tomb world.

There is also Earth in the middle of World War 2. You have to invade it for an achievement. I was lucky enough to discover it in that state.

[Eldan]

There is also Earth in the middle of World War 2. You have to invade it for an achievement. I was lucky enough to discover it in that state.

Do you get to kill Hitler?

[GloatingSwine]

Do you get to kill Hitler?

That, presumably, depends on your ethics and your reason for invading.

[Silverraptor]

Do you get to kill Hitler?

That, presumably, depends on your ethics and your reason for invading.

Doesn't mention anyone by name on Earth. I was roleplaying a fanatic Xenophobe at the time, so I purged all humans by Forced Labor over 15-20 years.




Edit: Hey guys, I wanted to ask you all. What is your usual build for establishing colonies? Like, what do you build if you want a planet to be primarily agriculture, mining, or energy generation and planets that are consumer goods and alloys focused, and other such planets?

[factotum]

Edit: Hey guys, I wanted to ask you all. What is your usual build for establishing colonies? Like, what do you build if you want a planet to be primarily agriculture, mining, or energy generation and planets that are consumer goods and alloys focused, and other such planets?

I usually just make it up as I go along because I find it way dull to pre-plan everything or just follow the same pattern over and over again. If I have a planet that's specialised for mining, but I'm short on consumer goods and it's the only place I can put a building, then I'll happily place the appropriate production facility there even though it's not the most optimal approach.

[Silverraptor]

Well, what kind of building do you put down with amenities in mind? What do you guys usually go for?

[GameMaster_Phil]

If i have enough consumer goods, gene clinics. If not, commerce megaplexes. Clerks don't use as much. Dedicated planned planet development only happens in the midgame, when I have building slots i don't immediately need to fill.

[InvisibleBison]

Edit: Hey guys, I wanted to ask you all. What is your usual build for establishing colonies? Like, what do you build if you want a planet to be primarily agriculture, mining, or energy generation and planets that are consumer goods and alloys focused, and other such planets?

For basic resource planets, I'll primarily build the appropriate resource district. I build a robot plant as soon as the fifth pop spawns, a unity building some time after upgrading the capital for the first time, the production boost building after building 3-5 districts, a holotheater if amenities are low, and some rare resource buildings once I've run out of basic districts.

For advanced resource planets, I'll build city districts until the capital has upgraded, with a robot plant again going in the first building slot. Then it's just the appropriate building, with a holotheater managing amenities.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Edit: Hey guys, I wanted to ask you all. What is your usual build for establishing colonies? Like, what do you build if you want a planet to be primarily agriculture, mining, or energy generation and planets that are consumer goods and alloys focused, and other such planets?

My two cents:

First off, deal with colony infrastructure before working on specialty. So even if you want a colony producing, say, energy or minerals... make sure you've got your population growth and amenities and such on lockdown first. Because I run robotic races typically, that means a Machine Assembly Complex as soon as I hit 5 population (and generally dumping people on the new colony to hit that immediately) and a Nexus district since robots apparently don't get a building that provides maintenance jobs anymore.

[tonberrian]

Generally my build order on a size 16+ planet is immediately 2 districts of a resource, wait for those to fill, robot lab, 2 more resource districts, and a city district, fill, then upgrade the colony, and depending on what i'm short on, Alloy, Admin cap, Consumer goods, or if it has a bonus, research. Then after that (if i have the tech for it) the resource district booster, and then an amenities producing building - usually holotheaters, but I prefer Nuministic Shrine if you can unlock it. Haven't tried gene labs tho. After that it's filling resource districts up to about 4-6 left for cities, and building any strategic resource buildings, and filling the rest up with the advanced resource of choice.

Smaller planets don't build advanced resources, instead become refinery worlds (except don't use that designation it's not nearly as good as the others).

[Narkis]

My algorithm is very similar to tonberrian's.

I always start with 2 resource districts. If the planet has a big cap of one district type and/or a relevant bonus, then it is to be specialized in that resource and both districts are of that type. Otherwise they're whatever I'm missing most at the moment, which tends to be energy > food > minerals. If I can spare them, I resettle pops from across my empire to make the colony reach 5 or 10 pops asap. When it grows to 5 pops, I build a robot assembly plant, one more resource district and a city.

By the time the planet reaches 10 pops I have to decide what to build there. If it has a relevant bonus, the decision is easy and the planet specialises in that. Otherwise my priorities are: a healthy surplus of alloys, steadily increasing as the game goes by > enough bureaucrats to keep my sprawl comfortably below my admin cap > just enough consumer good factories to keep my balance barely positive > just enough unity monuments to grab a tradition every five years or so > as many research labs as I can fit without violating any of the previous priorities. If it is the early game I don't care about specialization and just built whatever I'm currently missing. A few decades in I always start swimming in minerals, so I I'm not shy about paving over my earlier haphazard construction so I can specialize even the planets that don't have a relevant bonus.

As a planet grows bigger, I pay attention only whenever it unlocks a new building slot. I then queue whatever building I'd already decided to build on the planet or a theater if it's getting close to 0 on amenities or a rare resource extracting building if it has a deposit or a refinery if it's a small planet and I don't have enough of that resource. I supplement with a resource extracting district if it doesn't have enough jobs to unlock the next slot without unemployment, and a city district if it doesn't have enough housing for it. When I unlock one of the buildings that boost specific jobs I build on the planets where it fits, replacing one of the previous buildings if the planet already has ~10 pops working on those jobs. When I unlock advanced buildings I reduce my building of resource districts on mature planets anymore, and I start slowly replacing them with more cities.

Ecumenopolises, Ringworlds and habitats follow the same algorithms when evaluating what to build next. Only the specific buildings change. And I never build gene clinics. They give far too little to be worth the pop, the slot, and the consumer goods.

[Silverraptor]

So what I'm hearing is, generally no one goes for amenities in the first 2 building slots. Interesting.

For me, I always kind of decide each planet I see and figure out how I want to specialize it. Usually I'll grab a few early resource districts of one kind (about 3) and then try to grab some amenity type thing (I don't usually go for robots unless I'm materialist). For the specialized planets of consumer goods and alloys, the amenities I tend to get are usually trade districts, with the mining and energy and food planets getting the theaters since those types of planets have a lot of jobs used with not alot of housing (Whereas the specialized planets have a bunch of housing with not a lot of jobs, so the extra clerks fill in the missing jobs role).

I was trying to see what everyone else did to see if I could better optimize my builds in the future.

[Driderman]

How I build my planets really depends on what stage of the game we're in.
Early game I just build whatever I need on an empire-wide scale, and make sure individual planets have enough housing/amenities. Later game I usually have surplus population that I can resettle somewhere, so I go all-in on specialising planets from the moment I colonize them and also re-tool my earlier settled planets

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, early game I just build what the empire needs without thinking too hard about optimisation. That can come later when I manage to get some dedicated specialist planets like an ecumenopolis set up.


I have started a game with the Common Purpose origin to check out the new federation options (and to make more friends by force of arms as a Democratic Crusader type, and the game has dropped me with both a ruined Strategic Coordination Centre right next to my home system and Dyson Sphere within 5 jumps.

I'll need to be tall for a bit, all the planets I'm finding are small and only 60% habitables, but I'm positioned for a stronk megastructure and habitats game.

[Maryring]

'lo folks. New Stellaris player here with a single match under the belt. A match which left me... honestly a bit tepid on the game as a whole. I was left with the feeling that you win the game long, LONG before the game acknowledges your victory. That being said, I was wondering if there are mods or DLC that would be recommended. Especially that which extends the game and don't force me to spend the last half watching nothing of interest happen until the game decides it's victory time.

[Eldan]

For lategame stuff, I recommend Utopia, which adds megastructures and Ascencion. That at least gives you something to do. Also, Distant Stars, which has more stories and adds a potential midgame-crisis. Maybe Apocalypse, for Marauders and Great Khans. Depends on how much money you have to throw at it, really.

But yeah, it's still a thing that endgame crises often just sort of fizzle out, even on higher difficulties. There's no shame in quitting the game early if you think you've won anyway.

Mods might be difficult at the moment, it's just after a major patch and DLC, so things might be broken. Better give it a bit, then go hunting on the steam workshop.

[Eldan]

On an unrelated note, I just found a mod that gives you "XCOM" as an origin. As in, you defeated an alien invasion and retro-engineered their tech. It even selects a nearby Advanced Civilization to be your invaders and has an event chain for that. I'll have to try it.

[Narkis]

On an unrelated note, I just found a mod that gives you "XCOM" as an origin. As in, you defeated an alien invasion and retro-engineered their tech. It even selects a nearby Advanced Civilization to be your invaders and has an event chain for that. I'll have to try it.

Sounds interesting. The XCOM chain of events in the game was very underwhelming.

[Thufir]

'lo folks. New Stellaris player here with a single match under the belt. A match which left me... honestly a bit tepid on the game as a whole. I was left with the feeling that you win the game long, LONG before the game acknowledges your victory. That being said, I was wondering if there are mods or DLC that would be recommended. Especially that which extends the game and don't force me to spend the last half watching nothing of interest happen until the game decides it's victory time.

I had a somewhat similar experience and responded by reducing the game length and upping the AI difficulty (both in the options when you start a game).
The recent patch is supposed to have improved the AI, but I haven't paid enough attention to it to really know if its helped that much.

[Eldan]

Sounds interesting. The XCOM chain of events in the game was very underwhelming.

What it seems to do is that you start with quite a lot of technology already unlocked, but also massive devastation and unrest and there's an advanced start empire somewhere near you that has a -200 diplomacy modifier towards you. I'll see how that turns out.

[Maryring]

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into Utopia when it goes on sale, and try for mods in a couple weeks.

[Eldan]

I already reverted back to version 2.6.1 to get some mods working. But mining the workshop for stuff that looks interesting is definitely worth it.

[Aotrs Commander]

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into Utopia when it goes on sale, and try for mods in a couple weeks.

It's on sale now (has been for a few days), until 17:00 CEST (whatever tme region that is, I'm British, I only "get" GMT and BST...!) today.



Whelp, 2452 and no sign of any crisises.

Wait, no hang on...

Spoiler

Show

I AM the crisis! Muahahahahahaha!

So, the collosus is largely pants. It used it maybe twice, but found it was actually quicker to just use my armies to capture planets (As the neutron pulse basically just wipes the colony out, not wipes it out buit leaves stuff I can occupy like I'd hoped.)

But nevermind, because by far the best way of dealing with the organics is just to use Machine World terraforming, and then careful dump a few organic pops (or a lot, if there are lots spare) onto the planet a month oir few before it rterraforms, leaving you with a nice organic slurry to use your bioreactors on!

[houlio]

'lo folks. New Stellaris player here with a single match under the belt. A match which left me... honestly a bit tepid on the game as a whole. I was left with the feeling that you win the game long, LONG before the game acknowledges your victory. That being said, I was wondering if there are mods or DLC that would be recommended. Especially that which extends the game and don't force me to spend the last half watching nothing of interest happen until the game decides it's victory time.

As far as the DLC goes: Utopia and Federations are both top tier imo. They give you options which can really change how you okay the game throughout.

After that, Distant Stars, Leviathans, and the megacorps dlc would be after those two. These ones offer a lot of stuff, but none of it really changes anything.

Plantoids, lithoids, the machine empire one, and apocalypse are all low tier stuff to me. They add some good stuff so long as you're interested im the material to begin with. I'd put apocalypse above the others, but it really lacks compared to the other big dlcs (utopoca, federations, megacorps) imo

Otherwise, I've always found Stellaris to have a big "you've won or you've probably not won" element while still in the early game. DLCs and whatnot add extra options and ways to play, but I think any experienced paradox player can tell when they are gonna snowball to win or sit on the knife's edge.

[Eldan]

Some origins have some quite annoying aspects, I've found. Like, I've had to restart Hegemony/Federation starts three or four times because I was boxed in by my allies on the outer rim with no way to expand.

[Guancyto]

So, the collosus is largely pants. It used it maybe twice, but found it was actually quicker to just use my armies to capture planets (As the neutron pulse basically just wipes the colony out, not wipes it out buit leaves stuff I can occupy like I'd hoped.)

The real use of the Colossus is the Total War casus belli, which saves you about a hojillion Influence because you no longer have to bother with Claims.

Other than that I pretty much only used it three times - once for each of the weapons, to see what they did.

Oh, I guess using the Planet Cracker on Contingency Worlds saves you some time and grief?

[The_Snark]

The special colossus available only to Driven Assimilators is reasonably useful, I think, it instantly gives you the planet and turns all of its pops into cyborgs. The rest of them are cool but impractical, I think. You can do things like use the spiritualist one to brainwash your own population, or get mineral/society research deposits by blowing up or shielding worlds you don't care to occupy, but I wouldn't expect the benefits you get to come anywhere close to the cost of building the thing in the first place.

(In the old planetary management system, the neutron sweeper would wipe out the enemy pops but leave their buildings intact, but it sounds like it doesn't do that anymore.)

Honestly, though, I kind of like the idea of the Death Star being a giant military boondoggle. Blowing up planets is just not practical.

[Eldan]

I did once play democratic crusaders who went to bring liberty to any authoritarian regime in the galaxy. Then, a xenophobe (I think, might have been militaristic) fallen empire declared war on me, and I actually managed to sneak a colossus around their fleet and shield their main world. It was hilarious. Good justification, anyway. You want to be left alone, now you are alone.

[Aotrs Commander]

The real use of the Colossus is the Total War casus belli, which saves you about a hojillion Influence because you no longer have to bother with Claims.

Other than that I pretty much only used it three times - once for each of the weapons, to see what they did.

Oh, I guess using the Planet Cracker on Contingency Worlds saves you some time and grief?

I 'spose that DID let me declare on the machine empires (one FE, one rebellion) without having to arse about with claims, otherwise for a Determined Exerminator, it doesn't give you a whole lot since you can do that to organics anyway.

[Silverraptor]

Thought I should share.