Stellaris grand strategy space game by Paradox discussy thingy thready thingy

Personally I always enjoy the journey of seeing Paradox games change over time, because they tend to evolve quite a bit over their iterations. Stellaris is unquestionably quite a bit better than it was at release, though still obviously plagued by many problems.

With Stellaris in particular it seems very clear to me that Wiz (if you don’t know, he’s the main guy in charge of design now) inherited a game and had a very, very different vision from the guy who originally designed it.

I’m pretty enthusiastic about the games future, but I’ll happily tell anyone who asks that unless they actively enjoy going through what still feels a bit like a beta development cycle, go ahead and check back in a year or two when the game has a big sale and you can get it and all but the newest DLC for $50. It’ll probably be worth it then. EU4 is one of my more played games, and I don’t think it actually got to the point where I would have recommended it to someone before Art of War. Still not there with Stellaris yet.

I read your posts. All you have accomplished is proving that you cannot actually substantiate anything you claim.

Just for future reference, you are not “most people”. While your massively inflated ego may somehow recoil at this revelation it sadly a fact of life that your opinion is not fact. Furthermore, extrapolating a personal opinion to others against all empirical evidence is at best a poor logical approach. Please resist the temptation to project your feelings to others in an effort to justify those opinions. It is not required. We understand you do not like Stellaris. You are entitled to that opinion. Your attempts to somehow dramatize this dislike into a belief that somehow, heaven forbid, that the majority of people do not enjoy the game is what I find laughable. Despite your best attempts to convince us otherwise, it continues to be one of the top 30 or so games played on Steam a year and a half after release, with numbers comparable to HOI 4 and EU IV. It continues to have very positive reviews on Steam. The state of the game has never been nor currently is “terrible” by any measurement of the general game playing public.

Does Stellaris suffer from the endgame sickness almost any 4x game has, yes, is doomstacks an issue, not at all for me, is strategy a big part of the game, fuck yes, just not maybe in the way you want. This game is mostly for me making some whacky race and seeing how they fare.

The exploration, strong early game and decent mid-game means every fresh start is a joy.
That core mechanics are changed is not a problem for me, improving the game is just natural, look at Eu 4.

Just give my warships auto explore buttons, and last niggle I got is fixed

How is stellaris in its current state? I only played it in the first few weeks of release. Is it fun, or is it still just fun in the early game and then ends up in a big mess in the mid game? Any must have DLC?

I find the empire side of the game to be a lot of fun after Utopia. Customizing my race feels very impactful and I feel like I’m making more interesting decisions than I did in 1.0.

Generally, I have a lot of fun with the game but as my empire grows, so does my annoyance level with each war. Not being able to lock down any part of my border, chasing enemy fleets around, and wrangling armies to invade planets all start to irritate me and suck some fun or out of the game. Thankfully for me, so are the kinds of things the next update is addressing.

Kevin’s comments pretty much echo mine - the game has gotten a lot more fun with new DLC. But the end game still ends up dragging badly - mostly related to how war is waged, and how little else there is to do at that point in the game. Still, there is plenty of fun to be had in the early-middle/late game, until the last slog begins.

Looks like claims cost influence now:

So you need influence to build outposts (and thereby claim systems). It looks like you also need influence to claim systems that you can later take in a war (probably you hold on to claims if someone takes a system from you). I guess you also need influence to integrate a vassal.

Since influence is not a resource that scales with empire size, it seems like this is a pretty strong brake on expansion. Frankly I’d like a more dynamic approach, where the problem with rapid expansion is external hatred and internal disintegration. This is a lot more predictable though.

True, unless there are Influence changes as well like a structure you can build on an Outpost that generates it or something. I don’t have a problem with using influence for claims as I think managing resources like that is an important part of a strategy game, but hopefully it’s not too restrictive. I’d want it to be a constraint and have an opportunity cost, but I’d hate for it to be so strict at to be completely binding and predictable.

Managing resources is definitely important, and you should never have enough of X to go around. Having a non-scaling (or very weakly scaling) critical resource like influence (or EUIV’s ruler mana) is an important innovation to prevent or slow down snowballing.

Still, my original impression was that Stellaris, with it’s pops, sectors and internal politics, would go a different route to prevent snowballing. The bigger you get, the more you have to fight just to keep your empire together, the more internal plots and so on.

I’d much prefer having a non-scaling resource that is a hybrid of influence and unity, that small empires use for external diplomacy and large empires use to try to keep a lid on the internal scheming and independence movements.

I really like that approach. It makes playing as a smaller empire (that depends heavily on diplomacy to survice) viable, while giving new gameplay options and opportunities to big empires.

This was the original premise. It doesn’t appear to have unfolded that way. Instead, as far as I can see, it’s become a fairly mediocre 4X with some nice quest text from time to time.

What would the end game goal be? Is there anything like a science victory or you build the artifact of antioch? Or do you just decide that you did enough and start a new game?

I kind of thought there would not be an end game, although achieving peer status with a fallen empire might be enough.

Right now in typical Paradox fashion, it’s mostly just “I’m done with the game now”, although I believe there is an actual victory condition for conquering a bunch of stuff. Martin mentioned he wants to add real victory conditions, like you would expect to see in 4X games.

Fallen Empires can become Awakened Empires, which are much tougher (but can then slip back into decadence). Generally people end up on a power level where they can beat Awakened Empires, though so far I haven’t lasted that long. There are also the end-game crises.

I’m not as down about the current state as you seem to be, but it does seem like some aspects of the initial vision for the game (or at least what I TOOK to be the vision of the game) have fallen by the wayside. Utopia was more about fleshing out options for how to build your society and less about trying to keep your society together. Factions are usually bonuses, and not hindrances.

I imagine that a game with engaging internal politics is pretty hard to make.

Isn’t this a major goal of the pop/faction system?

Aren’t internal politics a big part of other PDX games (Victoria 2, CK2)?

It seems odd they have soft balled this system so far, it was one of my most anticipated features…

Yeah something with a bit more flair than Vic2 and more pop/ideology based than CK2 would be amazing. I’m not sure you can just port over elements and have it gel though. I am surprised that this hasn’t really been pursued. Maybe it’s just lower on the priority list than fixing warfare?

The thing is… the overall design is such a mess that they have to focus on what they will fix.

As I said before, Stellaris is what happens when you get a lot of ideas from other games (without understanding what made them good or great), add some quasi-original (mostly good) ideas, toss it all in a blender, and see what comes out.

Can such a thing be “yummy”? For some people, yeah. It’s no less of a mess, though.

Wiz is taking it now and trying to change it into a proper “meal”, so to speak (and Paradox will make sure you have to pay $180 to get the “full meal” in the end, of course). Here’s hope he’ll succeed, but I’m not holding my breath.

Claims aren’t cores, and influence has to be rebalanced anyway. We’ll see the design soon enough.

I don’t know anything about Wiz’s plans for that, but it sounds about right, It needs it’s own thing that isn’t quite what they, or anyone, thought.

I think it had to be. You can make a solid 4X-ish game without internal politics and strife, but if FTL (and hence warfare) have serious issues, those have to be tackled. I was surprised it wasn’t the focus of the first major expansion, but perhaps they were still trying to figure out a solution or hoping there would be a way to modify the existing system to make it work well.

If their team can nail this expansion, the sky is the limit for this game, at least for my tastes.