Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Where are you getting 3000 alloys and 1000 influence from? You don't need alloys to claim systems, and you certainly don't need alloys to capture starbases.

It's the cost of if I just destroy an Empire, thus all their starbases disappear or whatever it is they do, and then I'd need to re-colonize all those tasty, tasty systems of theirs would cost about that much (OK, maybe a bit less, I'd have found some I wouldn't have needed to re-colonize).

If I just claimed the whole thing, it'd cost even more influence, but no alloys, yes. However, influence is harder to get, so that'd be even worse.

Influence I grant you, but it's not a one-to-one comparison either. Annexing means you gain control of the system(s) immediately, and you can set limited goals which is easy to capture.

Integration means you first need to vassalise them (usually in a long drawn out war), then wait for ten years, then wait for relations to tick up (if needed)

Yeah, but then I'm stuck in a ten year truce anyway. Ten years to integrate or ten years until I take another bite is the same to me.

That said, I never had an empire which cost only 30 influence to integrate. Usually it's a percentage of what their empire would have cost had I annexed them outright, but never that low. What were you running, I am curious now.

I think I had the bottom-left corner tree, which gives a 50% reduction of integration cost, IIRC. But other than that, the key thing is that they only had one planet left, I'm guessing that was the reason it was so cheap. The integration itself took about 10 months, I think.

Grey Wolf

[Anonymouswizard]

Bombing into submission and then winning via attrition is possible, but conquering planets with armies gives way more warscore. For the first strategy, you want t set your policies to indiscriminate bombardment, so you can go mini-Exterminatus. (Proper exterminatus requires DLC and later-game tech.)

Yeah, I'm not quite certain which way I'll go, but I'll definitely be bombing some planets.

I'll need to double check the political factions that have sprung up, but I believe I'm going to have trouble if I try to do this peacefully, so it's going to entirely depend on how much of an investment armies are right now. I'm certainly planning to land on and conquer any worlds I plan to colonise, but for others I'll likely just use whatever's quicker. Although I don't want to go full Exterminatus right now, or ever I think, I want to strip the Atmosphere and leave a cratered or strip mined husk, as a warning.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I wouldn't necessarily try to vassalize an empire to bolster my forces; vassalization tends to require you to overwhelmingly beat them, and can even be something you just passively get if they like you enough and you're strong enough. I've had empires come to me begging to be made protectorates.

So the relative power gain you get from succeeding at vassalization is small compared to the armada you would already need to bully someone into submission, from what I can tell. Empires get really stubborn about losing their sovereignty.

I'll need to double check the political factions that have sprung up, but I believe I'm going to have trouble if I try to do this peacefully, so it's going to entirely depend on how much of an investment armies are right now. I'm certainly planning to land on and conquer any worlds I plan to colonise, but for others I'll likely just use whatever's quicker. Although I don't want to go full Exterminatus right now, or ever I think, I want to strip the Atmosphere and leave a cratered or strip mined husk, as a warning.

The nice thing is, if you have a high-enough Governing Ethics attraction, factions which don't align with your goals (assuming your goals align with your species' Governing Ethics) will wither away and disappear on their own, even without you actively suppressing them.

[factotum]

Having a bit of an odd game. Playing the xenophobe human empire, 40 years in, and so far have only met one other empire--who happen to be fanatical purifiers. Keep expecting to run into others anytime, but nothing so far!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I wouldn't necessarily try to vassalize an empire to bolster my forces; vassalization tends to require you to overwhelmingly beat them, and can even be something you just passively get if they like you enough and you're strong enough. I've had empires come to me begging to be made protectorates.

Yeah, but these will never like me - their ethics are polar opposite to mine

So the relative power gain you get from succeeding at vassalization is small compared to the armada you would already need to bully someone into submission, from what I can tell. Empires get really stubborn about losing their sovereignty.

I already have the armada, and I want to keep expanding, so I thought vassalization would make sense, especially since that way I don't have to double to size of my empire to gain four new planets. Yes, I'm sure that if I take the whole thing over, there will be a bunch of other colonizable planets these morons haven't bothered to adapt to, but I'm swimming in planets already.

My plan was to take over this guy, then turn around and take two allies (who also hate my guts) on the other side, and that'll solidify my control over the top quarter of the map.

I mean, the other alternative is I just put the game on fastest and leave to do something else, but at that point, I'm not sure this is a game as much as a film I'm not interested in watching.

LATE ETA: OH, I check, and I do indeed have 2.2.2, but my admin cap (now renamed to sprawl) is still god-awful - I'm still paying 103% extra on techs, and I don't see any difference to the bonus from techs - 20 each for like 4 of them, so I have like 140.

Grey Wolf

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah that makes sense. I think the hard part is that the vassalization casus belli imposes a hefty penalty to their acceptance of terms that can only be counteracted with a huge navy advantage.

I was reading up on it, and apparently you can turn your own planets into vassals? I had no idea. (It's supposed to be accessible from the Planet Summary screen.)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Yeah that makes sense. I think the hard part is that the vassalization casus belli imposes a hefty penalty to their acceptance of terms that can only be counteracted with a huge navy advantage.

I was reading up on it, and apparently you can turn your own planets into vassals? I had no idea. (It's supposed to be accessible from the Planet Summary screen.)

I believe you can turn a sector into a vassal, yes. If I could still collect a % of its trade & resources it might not be a bad idea for some of my bigger sectors with just one planet in it. But vassals don't quite work like that, I don't think.

I've been trying to understand, though, what Grif meant about vassals loosing their bonuses before I make a final decision on what to do, though.

There is weirdly little clear information about this on the internet, given how much people know about it when I ask. Presumably there is a reddit about it, but that's a place I'd rather not enter, for sake of my sanity.

Grey Wolf

[factotum]

AFAIK, the only direct benefit you get from a vassal is 25% of their energy credit production--all minerals, alloys and food they produce stays internally. Of course, you also don't have to pay for their ships and stations, and they'll send their fleets to help you if you get into a scrap.

[Grif]

I believe you can turn a sector into a vassal, yes. If I could still collect a % of its trade & resources it might not be a bad idea for some of my bigger sectors with just one planet in it. But vassals don't quite work like that, I don't think.

I've been trying to understand, though, what Grif meant about vassals loosing their bonuses before I make a final decision on what to do, though.

There is weirdly little clear information about this on the internet, given how much people know about it when I ask. Presumably there is a reddit about it, but that's a place I'd rather not enter, for sake of my sanity.

Grey Wolf

Oh that. Let me clarify. As per all PDX games, enemy AI gets a bonus to their production, ship cap, etc, to help them compete with the typical human players. Now, I don't know if normal AI gets these bonuses (fairly certain they do), but on higher difficulties, the bonus gets noticeable. (Pre 2.2, on higher difficulties, it's not uncommon to run into AI empires with double your fleet cap.) When you vassalise an AI, however, they lose these bonuses, presumably to discourage players from abusing super vassals. In turn, it makes taking vassals less valuable than it would appear to be. As a rule of thumb, I expect a vassal to field 50% of the fleet capacity of what I can field with that same amount of resources, with inferior technology and ship design.

EDIT: https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Settings#Difficulty if you wish to read more on this

[Grey_Wolf_c]

AFAIK, the only direct benefit you get from a vassal is 25% of their energy credit production--all minerals, alloys and food they produce stays internally. Of course, you also don't have to pay for their ships and stations, and they'll send their fleets to help you if you get into a scrap.

Yeah, I though it'd be something like that - i.e. similar to how sectors used to be in the prior version, maybe with a screen somewhere were I can set what they send to me (maybe with increasing penalties to loyalty as I squeeze them harder), but then I came across the wiki page, which explicitly mentions which subjects join your wars (vassal) and which give you stuff (tributary), and it turns out that the one I'd create (protectorate) does neither.

So yeah, gobble up and deal with 300% cost of tech will be the way to go, I suppose.

ETA: Thanks for the info, Grif.

Grey Wolf

[Silverraptor]

Having a bit of an odd game. Playing the xenophobe human empire, 40 years in, and so far have only met one other empire--who happen to be fanatical purifiers. Keep expecting to run into others anytime, but nothing so far!

Clearly you were right not to trust the xenos. They wish nothing short of humanity's complete extermination!

[The Glyphstone]

I decided to Uplift some pre-sapients and vassalize them for kicks. Turns out that doesn't just release their home system, but multiple additional adjacent systems - I lost both my Rare Crystal mine stations and some Trade value. Now I have to wait 10 years to Integrate them again.

[Kaptin Keen]

So my empire was chugging along happily, everything going smoothly.

My neighbor - who's always hated me - finally declared war, and I proceeded to politely hand them their rearsides in a goodie bag. But at the end of that war, everything was red. Across the board. Even with production targets and capacity overload and everything running - deficits in everything. And I have no idea why, it looks like my population just doubled in the couple of years the war lasted. Which is absurd.

So ... I actually think I'm done with Stellaris - unless they decide it might be useful to be able to figure out WTF is wrong.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Did it happen gradually or suddenly? If suddenly, it could be a visual bug that fixes itself in the monthly income update.

[Anonymouswizard]

Did it happen gradually or suddenly? If suddenly, it could be a visual bug that fixes itself in the monthly income update.

I'm going to note that I've noticed this with my Energy surplas, it'll drop to the negatives only to jump up at end of month (fifteen points once, which I suspect is massive for this point in the game). Seems to be something like updating upkeep in real time but not generation, because it's generally just after I've gone on a building spree in a new system.

[Grif]

Tried to play a robot empire in the new patch. They seemed to have buffed the nr of replicator jobs you can have, which is good, so you start off with a normal-ish 3/month growth like organics. Expansion is still slow, of course, since colonies get 1/month till pop 5, then its 2/month, and only get their 3rd replicator job with the planetary processor upgrade.

Still not beating my hivemind start with rapid breeders, alas.

[Kaptin Keen]

Did it happen gradually or suddenly? If suddenly, it could be a visual bug that fixes itself in the monthly income update.

It's an ongoing thing. It's actually getting worse as I build new districts and buildings to try and compensate.

[The Glyphstone]

It's an ongoing thing. It's actually getting worse as I build new districts and buildings to try and compensate.

Have you considered applying for a job with Paradox in their QC department? You appear to be some sort of voodoo magnet for every weird unique bug possible.

[Kaptin Keen]

Have you considered applying for a job with Paradox in their QC department? You appear to be some sort of voodoo magnet for every weird unique bug possible.

I'm by no means sure it's a bug. There's every reason to believe there's something terribly wrong with my economy - I just can't pinpoint what it is. And by now I believe it's too late, I don't have the ressources left to fix the problem. I believe I'm actually dead in the water.

[Guancyto]

Can you upload your savefile somewhere? I'm curious about this.

[Kaptin Keen]

Can you upload your savefile somewhere? I'm curious about this.

Um ... I'm sure I could, and I'm at least slightly curious myself. But I wasn't kidding, I uninstalled the game until further notice, and it seems a lot of effort for a play I'm not likely to return to.

Would be different if I uploaded files with any sort of regularity, but I never have, and I don't really want to sign up for anything just for this.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I actually think I'm done with Stellaris

Don't feel bad. I am too, for the exact opposite reason. I went back to the game, and determined that I couldn't possibly win a vassalization war even if I wanted to (literally it would take too much time even if they had no opposing fleet - which they don't), and I can't win a claim war (it takes more than a 1000 influence to claim the 6 systems to their first planet, nevermind everything else), so the "best play" for my game is to do nothing until the final crisis, just accumulate tech improvements.

What a strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I'll just have to wait for patch 3.3, see if by then they've coalesced all these fun mechanics into a game that can be played all the way through, rather than stalling the moment you meet the neighbors.

Grey Wolf

[Grif]

Don't feel bad. I am too, for the exact opposite reason. I went back to the game, and determined that I couldn't possibly win a vassalization war even if I wanted to (literally it would take too much time even if they had no opposing fleet - which they don't), and I can't win a claim war (it takes more than a 1000 influence to claim the 6 systems to their first planet, nevermind everything else), so the "best play" for my game is to do nothing until the final crisis, just accumulate tech improvements.

What a strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I'll just have to wait for patch 3.3, see if by then they've coalesced all these fun mechanics into a game that can be played all the way through, rather than stalling the moment you meet the neighbors.

Grey Wolf

I think you must have miscalculated somewhere, because it shouldn't take 1000 influence to claim their planets. (Although, there is a compounding penalty to claiming systems deeper in their territory, +25 flat per jump, and claiming starbases/planets also take extra. In addition, claiming during a war takes DOUBLE cost, so remember to always map out what you need beforehand. It's why taking the ascension perk to reduce influence claims is always good, as well as the tech for it.)

In other news, I tried machine empires in the new patch. To say they have a rough start is an understatement. 1.0/month growth till 5 pop, then 2.0 till 10 pop, and needing to spend minerals to upgrade to standard 3.0/month. Never mind the energy and minerals already spent in job and pop upkeep... At least the ability to completely ignore habitability is cool.

That said, once they get going, they really can get going. Not needing to spend anything on consumer goods/food means a lot of empty building spaces, so you can fill those out with rare materials production if you like.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I think you must have miscalculated somewhere, because it shouldn't take 1000 influence to claim their planets. (Although, there is a compounding penalty to claiming systems deeper in their territory, +25 flat per jump, and claiming starbases/planets also take extra. In addition, claiming during a war takes DOUBLE cost, so remember to always map out what you need beforehand. It's why taking the ascension perk to reduce influence claims is always good, as well as the tech for it.)

No, the 1000 is to claim the systems to get to the planets. And I do have the 50% off ascension perk. First system is like 40, then 60, but soon I'm looking at 120-180 cost. Sure, I can pay 250 or so to just grab the planet, but then I have a planet surrounded by enemy territory. I know bordergore is something of a tradition in Paradox games, but, again, I'm looking for entertainment, not logistical nightmares.

ETA: I think the cause here is the reduction in planets. The empires are so empty that it takes like 7 or so systems to even create a path to the first planet from my border, which completely disincentivized the attack by making claims expensive beyond the cap (of the seven systems, there is one that is worth grabbing for its own sake, with 10 or so resources, but the rest are trashy sub-5 ones)

Grey Wolf

[factotum]

No, the 1000 is to claim the systems to get to the planets. And I do have the 50% off ascension perk. First system is like 40, then 60, but soon I'm looking at 120-180 cost.

Prior to 2.2 I recall that claim cost depended on how far from your borders the planet was, *and* if you had any neighbouring claims--so if you tried to just claim your enemy's homeworld without also claiming the systems leading to it, it would cost a fortune. Claim those systems first and the cost was far more manageable. Does 2.2 not work the same way? Or is your 1000 cost including that reduction?

[LuckGuy]

I finished a fun game trying to go ultra-tall: Life-Seeded and Inward Perfection, and then Agrarian Idyll. I finally managed to stay within my administration, and teched up very fast. Y'all may already know this, but I was pleased to find that planet destroying weaponry (or in my case, planet encasing weaponry) can be used just fine by pacifists. So when my people had enough insults, I could bubble all their worlds to eliminate their empire, then claim it normally.

My original plan was to keep my main species on my Gaia world only, and colonize other planets only with robots. Then, habitats and a ringworld. This immediately went off the rails, because right away I found the old terraformer which gave me a second Gaia planet. Then I got the ecumenopolis from the First League. Then I got another Gaia planet, just sitting there! Plus, robots build very slowly compared to pops, so that wasn't really working either.

I started a new game today, my first ever Devouring Swarm. All was going well until my first war started, and I found a new bug. The enemy starbases turned invisible. Can't see them, can't fight them. This means I can't get rid of their hyperspace blocker, which means I can't do diddly squat. The starbases were present as normal until my fleet entered the first system, then they all disappeared. I'm on the Stellaris_Test, so I suppose this sort of thing is par for the course. Annoying though.

It seems weird that Hives cannot get psionics. Also, why do Machine Empires get the -1000 reaction to Hives? Can my lobsters eat the toasters?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Prior to 2.2 I recall that claim cost depended on how far from your borders the planet was, *and* if you had any neighbouring claims--so if you tried to just claim your enemy's homeworld without also claiming the systems leading to it, it would cost a fortune. Claim those systems first and the cost was far more manageable. Does 2.2 not work the same way? Or is your 1000 cost including that reduction?

The 1000 cost was determined by me going to the diplomatic communication screen, selecting "lay claims", and selecting the closet system to my borders (across from it), then the next one down the line, and so on and so forth until I reached their first planet. Except I couldn't select it because I didn't have enough influence, because despite me being within spitting distance of the cap (930 or thereabouts), it was greyed out. Some math later told me the total cost was like 1030.

Yes, I could de-select the last couple of systems and take the planet instead, leaving it isolated, but as I said, I'm not interested in border gore. I didn't actually verify if that made the planet more expensive to claim, I was just going by whether it was greyed out as a selection or not.

Grey Wolf

[NEO|Phyte]

My understanding of claims is that they persist until you unclaim them or win them in a war, couldn't you just plop claims on the first batch of systems, wait for your influence, then claim up more, until you have enough to decide you're ready to start the fireworks?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

My understanding of claims is that they persist until you unclaim them or win them in a war, couldn't you just plop claims on the first batch of systems, wait for your influence, then claim up more, until you have enough to decide you're ready to start the fireworks?

At 3-4 influence per month (what can I say, trade deals and tech deals are expensive influence-wise), I'd take 285 months to refill - that's 23 years, give or take. And that still wouldn't get me much further into that particular conquest.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying that there is nothing for me to do in what should be a game. I don't enjoy sitting there letting 20 years pass, and thus I don't enjoy Stellaris, thus I stopped playing.

And it's weird, because Paradox knows how to do this - they could simply copy-paste from EUIV and give us various soft caps on expansion (overextension, aggressive expansion, coalitions, rebellions, etc), together with multiple ways in which to spend warscore, instead of it being "all or nothing war" or "minuscule bite war". So when they figure out what they want to do, I'll give it another try. But as I said, when the correct answer to a scenario is to not play, but sit back and watch numbers go up, it baffles me. The bottom line is that I have a kid, I don't have a lot of time for videogames anymore, I literally can't afford to play a game that will take a couple of hours to get to the point where I can do something, because I don't have two hours to spare.

Listen, guys, I'm not trying to bring anyone down or suggest the game is broken or stupid. I like the game. I like the mechanics of it (other than ship design, that's just crying for a better UI). But warfare continues to be limited, broken and generally not worth it. Which is weird, because it's a 4X game, so you'd think that they'd want you to have something to do when you're done with the Expansion phase.

Grey Wolf

[Grif]

I finished a fun game trying to go ultra-tall: Life-Seeded and Inward Perfection, and then Agrarian Idyll. I finally managed to stay within my administration, and teched up very fast. Y'all may already know this, but I was pleased to find that planet destroying weaponry (or in my case, planet encasing weaponry) can be used just fine by pacifists. So when my people had enough insults, I could bubble all their worlds to eliminate their empire, then claim it normally.

My original plan was to keep my main species on my Gaia world only, and colonize other planets only with robots. Then, habitats and a ringworld. This immediately went off the rails, because right away I found the old terraformer which gave me a second Gaia planet. Then I got the ecumenopolis from the First League. Then I got another Gaia planet, just sitting there! Plus, robots build very slowly compared to pops, so that wasn't really working either.

I started a new game today, my first ever Devouring Swarm. All was going well until my first war started, and I found a new bug. The enemy starbases turned invisible. Can't see them, can't fight them. This means I can't get rid of their hyperspace blocker, which means I can't do diddly squat. The starbases were present as normal until my fleet entered the first system, then they all disappeared. I'm on the Stellaris_Test, so I suppose this sort of thing is par for the course. Annoying though.

It seems weird that Hives cannot get psionics. Also, why do Machine Empires get the -1000 reaction to Hives? Can my lobsters eat the toasters?

Devouring swarm gets -1000 to everyone they meet. No exceptions.