i won a battle pretty decisively where I was listed as weaker because of my setup versus the enemy.
They were relying heavily on shields, but I had disrupters. Their listed strength didn’t match up against the types of weapons I was bringing against them, whereas my shields remained effective against their weapons.
As someone who has beaten the game on insane a few times, let me tell you that the main early game strategy in stellaris (and exactly what the computer does) is spam corvettes with no upgrades whatsoever, well above your fleet cap. Also note that fleet cap is not a hard cap, it is simply a number that beyond you begin paying additional upkeep per ship.
The using no upgrades part is really important. This post would be extremely long and boring to show you all the math, but trust me when I say that in any corvette vs corvette battle, if you both have 2000 minerals to spend on building corvettes, 2000 minerals worth of unupgraded corvettes defeats 2000 minerals of upgraded corvettes, because greater numbers is more powerful than tech advantages. Once you begin to noticeably surpass your fleet cap is when you want to start fielding upgraded ships.
Sorry if that was kind of a long post about a boring game mechanic, but it’s one a lot of newer players don’t really understand and is super helpful for making the game easier to get into when you have aggressive neighbors early.
Edited to add: If you are uninterested in roleplay and simply want to make the game easier on yourself, Mass Drivers are the best starting weapons. The best overall ship is actually a Cruiser with 2 Large Kinetic Artillerys and 2 Medium Plasmas. The best Battlecruiser uses a Tachyon Lance 2 KA and 2 Plasma. There is no point in building point defense because destroying an enemy ship also destroys any missiles or fighters they have in flight, so you’re better off just destroying the ship faster than you are countering some of their attacks. For the same reason, there is no point in using missiles, fighters or bombers yourself.
The devs are aware of all these issues, it’s apparently next on the to-do list.
Thanks for this insight. Even so, I’d rather upgrade, because minerals seem easy to come by to me, whereas energy is precious. I don’t mine mineral nodes unless they’re 3 or more, and even so, I’ve got more minerals than I now what to do with. Theyr’e a one-time sunk cost for ships. But energy is an ongoing cost, and energy deposits seem comparatively rare to me. So as far as I’m concerned, it makes more sense to upgrade all my ships, since upgrading costs only minerals, not energy.
Upgraded ships cost more mineral/energy upkeep in addition to being less efficient. There’s really no math that makes sense in using them until your fleet is capped at the earliest. That being said, once you are out of the first 25 years, the AI’s horrible inefficiency will let you do basically whatever you want and still win :) It’s just advice for people having trouble with aggressive neighbor AI in the early game which is where a lot of newer people have trouble.
Thanks for the tip. For some reason it never occurred to me go over my cap. I guess I just figured it would be cost prohibitive, but my economy was booming in that game anyway, I could have easily afforded it.
The very weak returns and high costs of teching up your ships is one of those areas where Stellaris really departs from standard space 4x conventions… for no apparent reason.
The later in the game you go the more the tech advantage becomes noticeable in combat, but yea, I’m not super crazy about the fact that when you first discover shields it isn’t technically worth using them until you’ve passed your fleet cap.
I thought I had git gud at last, but this comment punted me right over the Chick parabola :(
Any tips on planetary defense, @MisterMourning (or anyone who has an opinion)? I never feel like I know the correct number of defensive armies to build when I go to war. I usually go with around 4-5, which is never enough, but is there a suggested minimum?
Can’t help on planetary defense; I’m curious too.
I guess I’m a rube, because I’ve been using upgraded ships all along, and they’re working for me – and I still have a big surplus of minerals and energy. I haven’t gone over the cap, but it sounds like I should. I’m playing on Normal; maybe it’s easier to afford upgrades at that difficulty level?
Also, I just uplifted my first species; very satisfying! I don’t know if it was worth the ten freaking years of research I devoted to it, but I don’t care – it’s fun.
This game has its issues, but it’s come a long way since last May. I’m enjoying it.
I think MisterMorning was saying to go over your cap if you start near militaristic neighbors. Last game I was stuck between two militaristic races who were quick to build up their fleets and attack as needed. They both had huge fleets and were quick to use them. I had never been in that situation before in the game.
In my current game all my neighbors are peaceful democracies (or close to it) and everyone seems to be friends so far. It’s just a race for expansion so far. The game plays very differently depending who you end up near it seems.
I have been playing a game as fanatic purifiers and the bonus fire rate of 33% has really made a difference. I was able to win early wars where i had lower fleet strength. I’ve now gotten to the point where I have become fully synthetic so it’s like I’m the end game crisis since synths are trying to wipe out all organic sentient life in the galaxy. Unfortunately a fallen empire awakened after I wiped out the other one and the Prethoryn Scourge hit my space at the same time, so I don’t know if my designs will be fulfilled. While I’m dealing with the prethoryns the awakened empire is getting all the other races to swear allegiance to them.
LeeAbe: thanks for the clarification. Hery: sounds fun!
So today I was about to start Stellaris when I was interrupted by something, and so the launchpad stayed up. I’d never really listened to the launchpad music before. Really nice! A lively new-age theme. Hey, it’s a small thing, but I kinda wish we’d hear that music in the game itself.
The song is The Birth of a Star, you should just be able to select it via the music player they added with the Utopia update whenever you want to hear it (I have heard it during gameplay, so it should be there).
Andreas Waldetoft did the music, I think he does the music for all their games. I am not a big fan of music in games (too distracting in a strategy game), but he is pretty awesome. Never played a Paradox game and not been impressed with the music.
His twitter: https://twitter.com/composerandreas
Thanks for the info on the music, guys! I do have “Birth of a Star” in the music player; I hadn’t noticed because I turned down the volume of the music when I first started playing and wanted to concentrate on the tutorial, and I forgot to turn it back up. Nice tunes!
My game (as the United Nations of Earth) has largely been peaceful, but the Netraxi Stellar Council is growing fast, vassalizing neighbors and acquiring territory. It’s ahead of me on tech (though not naval capacity), but it’s on the other side of the galaxy. I’m keeping a watchful eye on it.
So I’ve got about 10-12 colonies, and I’m wondering what sort of new colonies are worth colonizing, given the increased research/unity costs that accompany growth. I’m thinking anything 15-20 or above. Does that sound about right?
To be honest with you, I only use defensive armies to reduce the unrest mechanic. Wars are won and lost in space in Stellaris. Even if one of your worlds does get invaded, you can take it right back. The thing is that the AI does this terribly predictable thing where once you have conquered one of your worlds and left the system, they will basically drop everything to attempt to take it back. You can use this knowledge to set a trap for them if you want, or you can just out-race the AI to 100% warscore, because it isn’t very good.
But as far as defensive armies go, I don’t use them for war personally. You might be able to tell but I’m not super crazy about a lot of the war stuff in Stellaris and feel like it needs a major, major overhaul.
It’s like how they made this whole system for army attachments to make your armies stronger. Neat idea. Except adding each one is multiple clicks, and the UI for it is terrible. And, since there is no such thing as combat width and army upkeep is completely minimal, it turns out army attachments are pointless because you may as well just build 40 of the things and instant-win all invasions.
Well, I don’t think playing in a way that isn’t 100% optimal makes you a rube :P But LeeAbe is right, this sort of information is really only relevant if you start very close to aggressive neighbors. It’s a bit on the unusual side, but with advanced starts on, you can get an advanced start fanatic purifier neighbor which can be incredibly hard to survive. Fortunately, if you start next to non-genocidal neighbors and aren’t playing genocidal yourself, you don’t have to focus so much on an early game cold war.
As far as difficulty level goes, it doesn’t have any bearing on you, the AI just gets a flat +50%/+100% to all resources on hard and insane. The AI also makes its war declarations based on fleet strength comparisons, so you are going to get declared on a lot more if your fleet is weak. If you are the strongest player the only time you’ll get declared upon is by multi-species alliances, which will only happen if you have been playing Space Hitler.
If you can’t guess, I play kind of an unfortunate percent of games as Space Hitler. Probably says something unflattering about me.
I have a feeling that is the more interesting way to play. Developing a space federation, especially xenophile egalitarians or something, who can not demand ceding of worlds means basically bullying large empires to splitting into smaller ones in order to reach a victory condition of hopefully acquiring those smaller released states into said federation. Rinse and repeat, and continue to colonise while at it.
I ended up basically pressing Alt-F4 last night after what felt like a marathon slog with this game. Few quirks that bother me:
If a nation has closed their borders, there is no way to gather information. And with the absence of a ledger like in CKII or EUIV, it gets difficult to work out what my neighbours are doing or how well they are going.
Diplomacy is dry. I expected more. It doesn’t help that I’m trying to remember different nations around the place, and given the names that they’ve developed, it all becomes meaningless. I wish there was a way I could nominate the names of the nation states myself. Of course, compounding it is that the diplomacy screen is the least visited screen I go to, and rarely do I go out of my way to make deals with neighbours. Defensive pacts are a sure fire way to be dragged into war with a fallen empire and have to rebuild all over again.
Research still bothers me. When it comes down to click the next research button, it’s a choice of “Eh, that one is cheap” or “ok, that’s the particular area that I need to develop with my nation.” I’m guessing that having particular scientists in charge doesn’t influence the sorts of techs that come up? So if I recruit a biologist for instance, I’m not getting weighted choices for biology techs to develop my habitats or engineer my people.
Everything about this game on paper is great, but I don’t think Stellaris, even with the expansion has the same magic that draws me in like either EUIV or CKII. Maybe part of it is context. But more than anything, there’s always multiple goals I can pursue in the latter two games in a much more streamlined manner.
I basically agree with this. But a lot of it has to do with EUIV being the 4th iteration on its what, 15th major patch and as many DLCs? Stellaris just needs a lot more filling in. It’s satisfying to me on a number of levels, and there are some mods that really shake stuff up, but the truth is that it just needs more. More diplomacy and espionage, ways to interact with other empires that are non-violent. War being more than just wormholing into their homeworld with your entire fleet and wiping it out in one engagement and spending 15 minutes conquering worlds 1 by 1 even though you can no longer actually lose.
I feel like they are headed in the right direction, but that it’ll be over a year before it really becomes more than just a good 4x and actually lives up to its potential is something special.