Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[Kaptin Keen]

He said that occupying planets raised his exhaustion more than theirs, and that's entirely possible if his armies are significantly weaker than theirs, because he'll lose more armies in the landing and that will mean significant war exhaustion. Of course, the answer there is to either beef up your armies or not bother occupying the planets.

No - I literally crushed them in every regard. No exceptions. But I'm pretty sure I had none of the two techs to reduce exhaustion, and they may well have had both. That doesn't change anything, however. If there's a tech that allows a civ to just shrug their shoulders at being mercilessly crushed with absolutely zero chance of turning it around - that's a problem. By the end of that way, I had taken every station throughout their territory, mainly because I needed to deal with some pirates too, and I didn't want to have to also bother with them building new fleets.

[tonberrian]

Aww! Today I had an event where a baby Amoeba followed me home. It grew up so fast, and helped me easily crush the neighbor.

[Silverraptor]

Aww! Today I had an event where a baby Amoeba followed me home. It grew up so fast, and helped me easily crush the neighbor.

That was a shock when I encountered it. And it was really useful! I would send in my main fleet to crush their fleets and capture their planets, and for the outposts of the rest of their territory, I would send it in to singlehandedly take them over!

[Olinser]

Aww! Today I had an event where a baby Amoeba followed me home. It grew up so fast, and helped me easily crush the neighbor.

I hate that event with a passion. It's ludicrously overpowered if you can get it in the first few systems you explore, can let you curbstomp the first empire you come across, and yet is totally and utterly useless past about year 15 or so.

[The Glyphstone]

I hate that event with a passion. It's ludicrously overpowered if you can get it in the first few systems you explore, can let you curbstomp the first empire you come across, and yet is totally and utterly useless past about year 15 or so.

Why do you hate Bubbles? It is adorable, and all other names selected are proof of deep-seated emotional problems.

[tonberrian]

Moreover, Bubbles gets a big 10x upgrade come his centennial, too. He's about as strong as my main fleet, which is non-trivial and can definitely stomp all over the AI well into the Midgame. I'm going to keep him around until the end, to see if he gets even bigger.

[Olinser]

Moreover, Bubbles gets a big 10x upgrade come his centennial, too. He's about as strong as my main fleet, which is non-trivial and can definitely stomp all over the AI well into the Midgame. I'm going to keep him around until the end, to see if he gets even bigger.

If 5k is as strong as your main fleet after 100 years... then you're seriously behind the power curve. The AI is still horrible on all settings and presents no challenge to any player. Amoeba shouldn't be as powerful as even a single battleship with upgraded weapons, and it doesn't get upgraded drives so it's pathetically slow.

[Kaptin Keen]

Um - I'm propably just super bad at planet management, but my populations seem to be outgrowing my ability to create jobs. Is there some sort of fix for this? Not counting a ban on population increase and expelling the excess.

[Guancyto]

Two words: commercial zones.

Clerk isn't a great job, but if you're shy on technology or exotic materials to upgrade your buildings, a commercial zone provides 5 jobs per building with no exotic materials required (or 10 for a crystal), and unless you're rocking Utopian Abundance it's better than being unemployed.

[Kaptin Keen]

Two words: commercial zones.

Clerk isn't a great job, but if you're shy on technology or exotic materials to upgrade your buildings, a commercial zone provides 5 jobs per building with no exotic materials required (or 10 for a crystal), and unless you're rocking Utopian Abundance it's better than being unemployed.

Hm. Ok, thanks.

I've been demolishing my commercial zones because I was short on other things - gas, crystals, and so on.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

And there's always colonizing new worlds and distributing luxury goods on them to increase immigration pull. Though, from what I hear, unemployment isn't the worst thing in the world, and some policy decisions can let unemployed pops produce stuff for you.

[Silverraptor]

I hate that event with a passion. It's ludicrously overpowered if you can get it in the first few systems you explore, can let you curbstomp the first empire you come across, and yet is totally and utterly useless past about year 15 or so.

It's not useless. You can use it to mop up outposts of your enemies while your main fleet focuses on the planets and starbases.

[Silverraptor]

So I'm starting to get back into Stellaris and the last I played was the tile system. I played a couple of exploratory games and I understand the new mechanics well enough now. My only question is what happens when you run out of space to build more housing for your pops? What do you do then? I know about relocating and forcing a planet to stop making more pops, but I want to know all the mechanics about over-population. Such as, what if you allow it to continue, what happens? What are your suggested strategies to over-population? Stuff like that.


Also question I just realized. Someone told me that if you focus a planet to a specific resource (Like say you restrict all the buildings of a planet to either mining and foundries for alloys) that planet will generate bonuses of that resource. Is that true?

[The Glyphstone]

Overcrowding reduces Stability, which can penalize resource production.

[tonberrian]

So I'm starting to get back into Stellaris and the last I played was the tile system. I played a couple of exploratory games and I understand the new mechanics well enough now. My only question is what happens when you run out of space to build more housing for your pops? What do you do then? I know about relocating and forcing a planet to stop making more pops, but I want to know all the mechanics about over-population. Such as, what if you allow it to continue, what happens? What are your suggested strategies to over-population? Stuff like that.


Also question I just realized. Someone told me that if you focus a planet to a specific resource (Like say you restrict all the buildings of a planet to either mining and foundries for alloys) that planet will generate bonuses of that resource. Is that true?

According to the wiki, each pop beyond your housing limit gives the planet a cumulative -1 to happiness and a +30 emigration push. Essentially, it's self-limiting to a certain respect, but since happiness contributes to stability, an overpopulated planet will start producing less resources for the same people than one not overpopulated. Strategies for dealing with it? Build city districts. Luxury housing buildings are a trap. Overpopulation is really only a problem late in the game for all but the smallest of worlds with the fastest growing pops. Much more relevant is unemployment - pops without jobs. Unless you're running Utopian Abundance (which is expensive and also only open to egalitarians), high unemployment triggers an event which either results in a bunch of crime or using up lots of consumer goods for 10 years - your choice. And high crime triggers events that increase crime higher so it's harder to get out of the cycle and also impacts stability and resource generation.

Planets, after they've grown past the colony stage, will have a specialization on them depending on their total job makeup. It's always a positive, and a bonus that applies to multiple things is always smaller than one that only applies to one. So it's best to focus a planet on one thing rather than many. On one resource (or all research), it's +5%, and on mixed worlds it can be +2.5% to all specialists or +2.5% to all workers (classes of jobs). Next major patch it will be by choice rather than what you build on it, and it looks like also increased greatly.

Edit: What I originally wanted to post! You know what's great? Tomb-world preference Nivlacs. Base 110% habitation on everything.

[PopeLinus1]

I hate that event with a passion. It's ludicrously overpowered if you can get it in the first few systems you explore, can let you curbstomp the first empire you come across, and yet is totally and utterly useless past about year 15 or so.

If you talk smack about bubbles, I will reduce your family to ash.

[tonberrian]

Alright! I think I'm getting the hang of this, finally. Managed to crack Mega-Engineering in early 2300's this game (generic hive mind robots). Early game robots is hard, you're hard pressed for minerals and alloys, which means my mad dash to claim everything possible left me without enough alloys to make a fleet even if I wanted to. Stabilized before anyone could fire shots at me, at least. Do not like having to pay 150 alloys for outposts instead of 100. On the plus side, I managed to score the hidden weapons anomaly and get the GOOD result - free particle lances, before I even have Battleships or X-Ray Lasers! I spent my first Megastructure on rebuilding Cybrex Alpha ringworld, and while it is HUGE, I think i'd have been better off with a matter decompresser or a dyson sphere. FINALLY got to see the results of a planet cracker, though.

[Silverraptor]

Alright! I think I'm getting the hang of this, finally. Managed to crack Mega-Engineering in early 2300's this game (generic hive mind robots). Early game robots is hard, you're hard pressed for minerals and alloys, which means my mad dash to claim everything possible left me without enough alloys to make a fleet even if I wanted to. Stabilized before anyone could fire shots at me, at least. Do not like having to pay 150 alloys for outposts instead of 100. On the plus side, I managed to score the hidden weapons anomaly and get the GOOD result - free particle lances, before I even have Battleships or X-Ray Lasers! I spent my first Megastructure on rebuilding Cybrex Alpha ringworld, and while it is HUGE, I think i'd have been better off with a matter decompresser or a dyson sphere. FINALLY got to see the results of a planet cracker, though.

Just this phrase right here tells me you are in the south western portion of your galaxy.

Edit: In other news, I opened the L-gate with 40k fleet power thinking I had enough. NOPE! They have 100k sitting on the L-Gate system. I took 1 down at the cost of my own. Also, it's interesting. Despite the flavor text saying we stopped the enemy Gray Tempest from using my L-Gate, they still came through the L-Gate, killed everything in the solar system of the L-Gate, then went back into the L-gate. Any attempts to reclaim the system results the same. So, apparently they won't go beyond the range of my L-Gate. In the meanwhile, the rest of the galaxy is SUFFERING! And given I'm a devouring swarm, I am a-OK with that result! I know I'm a bastard in this game sometimes.

[Olinser]

Just this phrase right here tells me you are in the south western portion of your galaxy.

Edit: In other news, I opened the L-gate with 40k fleet power thinking I had enough. NOPE! They have 100k sitting on the L-Gate system. I took 1 down at the cost of my own. Also, it's interesting. Despite the flavor text saying we stopped the enemy Gray Tempest from using my L-Gate, they still came through the L-Gate, killed everything in the solar system of the L-Gate, then went back into the L-gate. Any attempts to reclaim the system results the same. So, apparently they won't go beyond the range of my L-Gate. In the meanwhile, the rest of the galaxy is SUFFERING! And given I'm a devouring swarm, I am a-OK with that result! I know I'm a bastard in this game sometimes.

If you're in a tiny galaxy with only 1 Gate it will be open automatically.

In a bigger galaxy it's still not permanent. I think it stays closed for 3-5 years, and then they can come through the first Gate as well.

Why would you think 40k was enough? 40k is barely enough to kill some of the Leviathans. L-Gate is a mid-game crisis on the same tier as the Khan. Grey Tempest isn't even the highest power - Dessanu is much stronger and harder to kill, although they are at least non-hostile until you actually go for their core.

On the plus side because all of their fleets are the same configuration they're highly vulnerable to big weapons. My usual configuration of KA battleships shreds them apart.

[Silverraptor]

If you're in a tiny galaxy with only 1 Gate it will be open automatically.

In a bigger galaxy it's still not permanent. I think it stays closed for 3-5 years, and then they can come through the first Gate as well.

Why would you think 40k was enough? 40k is barely enough to kill some of the Leviathans. L-Gate is a mid-game crisis on the same tier as the Khan. Grey Tempest isn't even the highest power - Dessanu is much stronger and harder to kill, although they are at least non-hostile until you actually go for their core.

On the plus side because all of their fleets are the same configuration they're highly vulnerable to big weapons. My usual configuration of KA battleships shreds them apart.

I haven't played in a long time, and only opened the L-gate once and it was empty. So I didn't know what to expect on the other side and thought maybe 40k would do it with null beams and plasma weapons (the good ol' wipe out their shields instantly, then hit them with plasma cannons).

I am in a medium sized galaxy, and they came through my gate after it was finished researched immediately, destroyed the outposts and all the mines and research posts in the system, then went back into the L-gate. It has been 10 years since then and they only come out of the gate to clean up the system of any made structures or ships, then go back through the gateway. so pretty much I've been able to by pass around them for the time being. and enjoy the sight of everyone else's territory shirking bit by bit every month.

[Olinser]

I haven't played in a long time, and only opened the L-gate once and it was empty. So I didn't know what to expect on the other side and thought maybe 40k would do it with null beams and plasma weapons (the good ol' wipe out their shields instantly, then hit them with plasma cannons).

I am in a medium sized galaxy, and they came through my gate after it was finished researched immediately, destroyed the outposts and all the mines and research posts in the system, then went back into the L-gate. It has been 10 years since then and they only come out of the gate to clean up the system of any made structures or ships, then go back through the gateway. so pretty much I've been able to by pass around them for the time being. and enjoy the sight of everyone else's territory shirking bit by bit every month.

Grey Tempest is actually the best outcome. All you have to do is kill the hub base in their home system in the cluster and they all instantly vanish, and then you get teraforming for Nanite worlds at only 1k energy each. There's always 16 Nanite worlds in the 7 system cluster and they all go in 1 sector as long as you colonize the Terminal Egress first.. It's actually ludicrously OP how many worlds you get from it.

The Dragons and Gray (where the cluster is empty) are almost totally worthless. Dragons are either kill them for negligible boosts or capture them for crappy ships.

Gray you find a single person you can turn into either a level 10 governor (decent but not much impact with the current sector system) or a single mediocre ship or army.

Dessanu or the Grey Tempest you get 16 colonizable worlds in a single sector.

[tonberrian]

I downloaded the Nvidia driver, and then suddenly all my paradox games ceased working! And then reverting back didn't fix it. Trying a clean install of stellaris right now.

[Kaptin Keen]

So ... I think we have an established tradition of games - this one among them - being rudely buggy for me. This, apparently, doesn't seem to ever affect anyone else.

Just now, I was upgrading a group of defense platforms. Now, I was quite thorough. Upgrading all 6 would cost me 317.6 alloys. When I clicked the upgrade button, I lost just over 1100. I called my girlfriend over to check. She confirmed - while also being slightly miffed at having to devote a moment of her attention to this game she never plays.

I swear to you, I'm not mad. It debits me almost 4 times the amout advertised.

If there were elves in this game, I'd blame them.

[Sian]

So ... I think we have an established tradition of games - this one among them - being rudely buggy for me. This, apparently, doesn't seem to ever affect anyone else.

Just now, I was upgrading a group of defense platforms. Now, I was quite thorough. Upgrading all 6 would cost me 317.6 alloys. When I clicked the upgrade button, I lost just over 1100. I called my girlfriend over to check. She confirmed - while also being slightly miffed at having to devote a moment of her attention to this game she never plays.

I swear to you, I'm not mad. It debits me almost 4 times the amout advertised.

If there were elves in this game, I'd blame them.

Considered visiting an exorcist?

[InvisibleBison]

So ... I think we have an established tradition of games - this one among them - being rudely buggy for me. This, apparently, doesn't seem to ever affect anyone else.

Just now, I was upgrading a group of defense platforms. Now, I was quite thorough. Upgrading all 6 would cost me 317.6 alloys. When I clicked the upgrade button, I lost just over 1100. I called my girlfriend over to check. She confirmed - while also being slightly miffed at having to devote a moment of her attention to this game she never plays.

I swear to you, I'm not mad. It debits me almost 4 times the amout advertised.

If there were elves in this game, I'd blame them.

One of the recent updates overhauled the upgrade system. One of the changes was that a large part of the cost of an upgrade was refunded when the upgrade was completed, and the displayed upgrade cost showed the cost after the refund. Try letting the game run and paying attention to your alloy stockpile - it should grow as each platform upgrade is finished.

[Kaptin Keen]

One of the recent updates overhauled the upgrade system. One of the changes was that a large part of the cost of an upgrade was refunded when the upgrade was completed, and the displayed upgrade cost showed the cost after the refund. Try letting the game run and paying attention to your alloy stockpile - it should grow as each platform upgrade is finished.

You know, you might be right that most of the cost is refunded. What an absurd thing to do, deliberately, though.

But hey, Eureka! It's not a bug - call off the exorcist =)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

One of the recent updates overhauled the upgrade system. One of the changes was that a large part of the cost of an upgrade was refunded when the upgrade was completed

...

Why?

Grey Wolf

[Eldan]

Who knows, basically seems to be the answer. It's a complication for no good reason.

[Aotrs Commander]

...

Why?

Grey Wolf

I believe it was to address issues such if the process is interrupted part-way through or if not all a fleet was finished or possibly even to allow paralellel upgrades, something along those lines. It may not be working perfectly.

[hajo]

Which DLC are worth getting?

I haven't played any space-4X-games for 10+ years,
and GOG has Stellaris on sale now.

So, what addons can you recommand ?