Stellaris grand strategy space game by Paradox discussy thingy thready thingy

Y’all need to look at Stellar Monarch, definitely the closest thing to CK2 in space right now apart from the ancient-yet-still-awesome Star Wars: Rebellion.

As soon as the price dips for the holiday sale I’m picking Stellar Monarch up (because of our last conversation in the other thread where you made the link between CK2 and space for it). I don’t have time to play it until the holidays start anyways. :)

Wait. What is this?

Space Emperor simulator.

Made by one guy.

I like Stellar Monarch, but I don’t think it’s accurate to call it CK2 in space. There’s none of the actual interpersonal drama. From the perspective of the player, the personnel management stuff is all just numbers shuffling, literally. I never got attached to any of the characters.

I don’t fully disagree, but I kinda make up stories for 'em in my head so it works out. It’s tough to do this because it’s not historical using actual people, you know?

And Star Wars:Rebellion is even less so - it’s all about shuffling people around like pieces on a game board. It’s a fine game and hasn’t aged too much, other than the presentation, but it’s almost nothing like CK II.

Brian, you’re slipping. :)

I’d still say either of those games are closer to CK2 in space than Stellaris.

Well,art is art, isn’t it? And water is water. And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

I know I guy that swears triskets and grapes eaten together taste like apple pie.

Dammit, now I have to try this when I get home.

It’s true!

(that he knows that guy)

Has anyone tried any of the mods yet? Any good ones out there?

What flavour Triskets?

… Sure?

When I first read that Stellaris was going to include ethics in a more complicated way than just good and bad. I called it intriguing but ambitious. Which really meants “Paradox do you have a fracking clue how here it is to make a space game that is better than MOO or Reach for the Stars, and now you want to include space opera elements from Foundation and Star Trek.”

I have not played the game since 1.2. Is the core mechanics finally gotten to the point that is as good as the classics?

Traditions also seem interesting.

Hard to say but overall I’d say not quite. I only got the game recently so I’ve done 1.3 and 1.4. It definitely shows it’s paradox roots as it has a bit of EU in space feel. There’s more diplomatic maneuvering and long grindy wars to grab a scant handful of provin . . . planets. I quite like the economy, especially with the 1.4 tweaks to maintenance. The events, differing government and ethics types, and Fallen Empires keep the game feeling more lively and science-fictiony than the standard eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate cycle of a MOO game.

It’s still obnoxious that fleet combat is so opaque though. The game allows ship design but since there’s so little feedback on the effectiveness of different ships and weapons against enemy ships that ship design is nothing more than tedious exercise in slapping the best current weapons on some ships and cranking them out en-masse. Stellaris does a lot of things right but no interesting ship combat takes away something that should, in my mind, be a core feature of a 4x space game.

New dev diary has me pretty excited.

I’m with you 100% on that one. I really wish they would address this and I can’t understand how they can seem so clueless that it’s a problem. Combat is a huge part of the fun of 4X games and in theirs it just isn’t very fun.