Stellaris is more like Civ than like EU. Randomly generated “terrain” with randomly generated civs make it very hard to expect the kind of sophisticated geopolitical fine tuning you can get with a EU style board game. By this standard Stellaris might be more successful than Civ VI, since a find slot of the supposed complexity of Civ VI get smoothed out in medium to high level play (I think there are some dinky specific strategies some Civ VI factions can do).
The only Paradox series I’ve spent significant time with is Crusader Kings, but I have a hankering for a space strategy game. How similar/different is this from that?
I haven’t played much CK2, but I think they are pretty different. I mean they are both Paradox games, but Stellaris doesn’t have the character personalities that CK2 has. On the other hand, it does have more of an emphasis on random events and small storylines than most space strategy games.
So I guess my answer is that it’s not much like CK2, but also more like CK2 than a typical space 4x game.
Someday, if it becomes more CK2-like, this will be my favorite game of all time. Probably.
You’ll see a few commonalities in certain game systems, but for the most part they are very different.
You and me both, my friend.
Yeah. I’ve already had the same thought a few times while playing Stellaris. I thought it was just because I only recently got into CK2 for the first time. But oh man what I’d give (probably $20 knowing Paradox) for an expansion that adds CK2-like levels of character development, intrigue, politics, etc. OH MAN.
Yeah, I think Stellaris would be well-suited to the CK2 treatment. It’s already got individual leaders, in relatively small and manageable numbers. Imagine if we could marry aliens, or grant fiefdoms to pops, or see our ruler give birth to an heir utterly ill-suited to governance.
Question: if I start a new Ironman game, will my existing Ironman.sav be preserved, or will it be overwritten? I’m enjoying my current game, but I gather that achievements are now working, and I might like to try a new Ironman game without destroying my current game.
You can have multiple in parallel. Ironman just means 1 save file per race.
Awful and amazing.
Hahaha, that is so awful.
That is kind if motivating me to play this again.
Soylent Green.
I don’t remember seeing anything like this one I played it at release, but doe the AI cheat much? My neighbor is about the same size, we have equivalent fleet sizes, I have superior tech, but he has a superior military. He passed through my space early in the game with a fleet power of 600+. At that point, the best I could do was maybe 300. If I have superior tech, seems odd he could have that much stronger of a fleet if we have the same size navy.
How is this possible? Do AI get anomalies as well? I suppose he could have got one where you recover a large ship early on.
He’s militaristic as well, he just took out our other neighbor relatively quickly. Waiting for him to go after me since our borders are pushing up against each other.
AFAIK, the AI doesn’t get cheats outside of the difficulty setting bonuses.
Ethics and Traditions can have a big impact on fleet performance now, though. I was playing a game with a friend where he went Fanatic Militarist and focused on Supremacy as well as military-related civics. Combined with skilled admirals, his fleet strength was significantly higher than mine. The AI could also have a significant boost to the displayed fleet strength if they were able to salvage a cruiser from an anomaly and you’re only running corvettes/destroyers, etc.
When the game tells you something is equivalent it can be a fairly wide range. If their fleet cap is 1.3x and their tech was 1.3x and they threw in a few bonuses they can reach twice your strength.
Thanks guys. Lost the game. Had two neighbors with twice the firepower of me each. The one who got me wasn’t running anything special either. Cutting lasers and third gen shields. 60 corvettes for over 3000 strength. I made a fleet to counter it, but I couldn’t compete on sheer numbers. Even at max fleet of 40, I only had 1500 strength. He did have better shields than I did.
Never had something like that happened in the original game. Obviously I am missing something with my strategy.
Equivalent is the new “you’re gonna get your ass kicked and lose your whole fleet”.
-Tom