Watch out for when they become awakened. By all reports, “you are not prepared”.
In my last game (which was my first game), I had a FE get all awakened and mean. It was across the galaxy from me so I didn’t pay it much mind, not realizing how freaking dangerous an awakened empire was. But they grew and grew fast, so I figured they must have some mean fleets.
Then just when I was approaching the 40% threshold of planets to seal my victory, I decided to declare war on them as they were starting to get close to my borders. I was pretty cocky at that point because I had a 170k fleet-of-doom at my disposal. I thought I could take them. I won a couple early victories against 100k stacks but when the 200k stack showed up my fleet bugged out promptly. Luckily I had jump drive and they didn’t. So I could hit them but I don’t think they could get to me, or else the AI didn’t want to jump over the intervening empire to do so. I was just planning out how to grind them down slowly and crush their infastructure with jump drive raids when I suddenly won the game. Apparently that last colony was the last one I needed.
I’m on my second game now and sandwiched between fallen empires in my starting position. I’m just getting to the point where I can muster 30k in fleet strength and I’m getting half tempted to pick the fight before they can awaken on the grounds that it might be more manageable.
Factions are a-changin’ in the expansion. WIP interface sneak peek:
Yeah, in the mid game there need to be more ways to subvert alliances and diplomacy. Spies,rebels, saboteurs, assassins, etc.
Is there a way to tell the game to pause when certain message come up like you can in other Paradox games?
Hmmm, different strokes for different folks I guess. I like the EU diplomatic model in EU, but don’t really feel its a good fit for the 4x space genre either thematically or for gameplay reasons.
Thematically, it models a period in human history where states were fighting for control over regions and peoples in the nearly sure knowledge that people would go along with whoever the new ruler was, and the states and dynasties knew they’d have to find a way to co-exist because total dominion was outside the realm of the practical. None of that applies in a 4x setting between alien races in any thematically-sensible fashion. I’ve often wished in Stellaris that I could go to war with an alien species to just have theme cede control of the uncolonized system right on the edge of their empire that was the wrong planet type for their species but perfect for me. I’ve never pressed a war in Stellaris because I thought it would be nice to have a bunch of space elves integrated into my insectoid empire. Quite the opposite in fact. If purging didn’t have such a heavy penalty I’d do it on almost every conquest.
From a gameplay perspective I do like some of the diplomatic intrigue in terms of which coalition might emerge to oppose an obvious mutual threat, but mostly it’s just super annoying and fiddly having to micromanage wargoals and relationships. It doesn’t feel natural or organic or like gameplay with interesting choices. It’s just a needlessly complex system one has to learn to game to really do well at harder difficulties.
The only thing i want is a way to see the enemy drive tech and their last seen ship designs.
The 1.4 “Kennedy” polish patch is coming out on Monday, along with a hitherto unannounced free story DLC, Horizon Signal. This content was written by Alexis Kennedy of Sunless Sea fame, who has been freelancing for Paradox on Stellaris.
More details should be out tomorrow, it was only announced at the Paradox fan gathering this weekend.
EDIT: From Alexis’ blog:
Curious of what 1.4 changes, really haven’t heard of anything planned. Think Wiz has mentioned some balancing and small adjustments, that’s about it.
Horizon Signal is out now.
I’m going to have to take another run at this. I have a hard time with Stellaris sometimes because they built in a hard clock-based counter to my playstyle. I tend to play 4x games in a slow and cautious manner, which is fine if one has enough of an economy/research basis to stay ahead of the neighbors. Works great in most 4x games, but in Stellaris not staying ahead of the clock can mean that a promising position goes south fast when the late game weird stuff happens.
In my last attempt I defeated the unbidden and my neighboring fallen empire. I had all the tech toys and a 250k fleet and was feeling unstoppable. Then the awakened fallen empire from across the map showed up with a 750k fleet and just crushed me easily. I ragequit after that, but I may be sufficiently calmed down to try it again.
I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for either, but the game setup screen will now give you the option to turn off endgame crises, if they’re not your bag.
So how long do I have before weird end game stuff shows up? Is it just triggered at a given year or range of years?
I jumped back in with the latest patch and the Leviathan’s dlc for the 1st time since around launch. So far I’ve watched a lesser species nuke itself into a tomb world, and got into war with a neighbor. I eventually wiped out their fleets, spaceports, and improvements, but we ended up with a white peace since I don’t think I could’ve beat their more powerful neighbor who was fighting my partner on the other side of him. A couple of things, for negotiating peace does the warscore have to be in a certain range? I don’t think I saw a button to do it. My opponent offered peace and I accepted because my assault armies couldn’t land on his planets. I guess I need to be able to colonize the planet to be able to assault it? Or I guess maybe I was missing some other tech? Entertaining so far, but still trying to remember how to do things and get up to speed.
Edit: I must have just been tired. I see the negotiate tab now when looking at it for another war I’m involved in. It was probably there last night and I just missed it. Good thing I didn’t find it, because I would have tried to negotiate peace with my neighbor when it seemed like his fleet was bigger than mine.
I think it’s a chance to start happening after X years. I won’t spoiler the late game events, but most of them are fairly manageable if pounced on quickly when they start happening. If they happen across the galaxy or when you are busy in a war with a neighbor then things can spiral out of control.
I’m not sure if it’s this patch or the previous one, but missiles start off with such a light power rating now. I started a new game with my old spiritual/warmonger Space Chicken race, which has missiles as their starting weaponry. Mining stations have a 20 combat rating, the starting 3 ships were at 63 (I believe). Pretty sure it used to be 32 for stations and 90-something for the starting fleet.
Not sure if missiles got reduced in power, or the way they calculate firepower has changed. Maybe I need to start a new game as a laser race to see what those ratings look like post-patch…
There are gigantic threads on Reddit from folks who have analyzed the hell out of the missile mechanics, and the overriding conclusion is that they are screwed. Stick to kinetics or lasers.
Wow I must have missed a patch. Missiles went from the best thing ever to the worst?
Mining Stations for civs with Lasers as their start tech are 21 combat rating post patch.