This is an interesting take. What are some 4x space games you do like, for instance?
Like apples and oxen. In space, though.
That’s a really good question. Space grand stategy games sound like a genre that should be completely in my wheel house, but I can’t think of one I really like without caveats.
I played Star Wars: Rebellion (the video game) last year, and it’s quite a bad game but I enjoyed playing it. I loved Alpha Centauri, but it’s not actually in space. I never played a huge amount of Masters of Orion, but I did quite enjoy it. Back in the day I played a lot of Imperium Galactica II. Emperor of the Fading Suns fascinated me, but I never played it enough to figure out if I liked it.
And although I say I don’t like Stellaris, my Steam account claims I played it for almost 300 hours.
I’m actually so annoyed by not liking any of these games, that I’m vaguely designing my own.
Honestly it sounds like we’re in the same boat. I should adore space empire strategy games, but for some reason they are never my favorite genre, no matter how good something is. Stellaris is great, I like it, but I don’t really play it until a big patch comes out and reminds me it’s a thing. Same with Endless Space 2, and on and on.
I think for me at least it’s that while I love sci-fi and space, my heart really belongs in the land of swords and sorcery and as such, stuff like Age of Wonders 3 or Total War: Warhammer really are elevated above other strategy games, even great ones, just because of the subject matter.
Perhaps you also have a preferred genre, and while you enjoy sci-fi and games that take place in space, it’s just not quite your bag, baby.
That makes no sense to me. How could you play a game that much if you didn’t like it? Even if you mastered the game and can see all the flaws after so much play time, which made you dislike it now, you still must have enjoyed getting to that point, right?
I think people play games in different ways and for different reasons. I didn’t play Stellaris to have fun.
Well, what did you sink 300 hours of your life into it for? Genuinely curious!
This sounds psychologically juicy. Please elaborate.
Last night I watched an episode of The Shannara Chronicles, I suppose you could say that was fun or something. For me, playing games is something more meaningful, at least that’s what I’m looking for. I’d happily play 1000s of hours of a game I though was good, even if it was not really fun. My disappointment with Stellaris isn’t that I didn’t have fun, it’s that I’m not convinced it’s systems hang together in a strategically interesting way.
But you don’t think the lack of systems hanging together in a strategically interesting way was the reason you didn’t have fun?
Not directly. I’ve definitely had fun playing strategy games before. But I’m happy to skip the fun if I get something interesting. I’d pay any price for interesting.
In fact I’ve had some fun playing Stellaris, that initial expansion into the unknown blackness of space is something that feels fun to me. But then, so does playing those stupid clicker games, and I’d pay money to not play one of those things again.
I like your thought-waves.
I’m a big fan of Stellaris, and a little surprised at how much it gets ragged on here. I liked it quite a bit from the start even, although the late game does completely bog down. Still, i find the early and mid-stages completely engrossing until we finally hit that stage if micro-management hell.
If I had to make two drastic changes to the game, I would do the following
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Get rid of planetary tiles. Most of the time this is not-interesting tedium that gets especially bad when you have more than 5 planets in your control or you have to upgrade.
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This one will probably be hated, but I will immediately get rid of the ship designer. I know, I know, a staple of space games - but it is almost never pulled off effectively. Instead I have to go in there and fiddle (or in my case do auto-best) with the whole thing, which gets even more painful in the rock/paper/scissors setup of Stellaris. Just get rid of it and adopt a system more akin to Sins of a Solar Empire (my absolute favorite space game… by a country mile)
Still, I love how Paradox nurtures and grows their games, so I am very excited for the next expansion.
I’m not going to disagree too much. It’s fun to optimize a bit and be able focus on your wants and needs, but there’s too much to do. You should be able to properly tell your sector/planetary AI to do it for you, but you can’t quite do it. Yet, hopefully.
Agreed! So long as they keep the pop management.
Yes! This should be done to all grand strategy games with a unit designer. Being a engineer is not part of the fantasy of running a space empire.
Despite not like Stellaris, I have no beef with Paradox’s business model.
Most people are, if review aggregates, Steam user reviews, etc are any indication. This tends to be an older community of strategy grognards than your typical forum so while being more critical is completely understandable, I do wish they’d stop acting like Stellaris was an unmitigated disaster at launch that was universally hated and Paradox should be in the midst of a 5-year self-flagellation period for it. :)
Not from me, I agree completely. I probably shouldn’t say I haven’t like them in any 4X game because there’s probably one I’m forgetting, but I don’t like them in the vast majority of them. They tend to either be completely irrelevant or worse, so important that you need to micromanage the hell out of them and the AI can’t compete against your ships. I just find them tedious, whether it’s Stellaris, GalCiv, or any other game.
I’ve said for years the worst thing about space empire strategy games is they always want me to make the ships. It’s fun, but it’s busy work and I’d vastly prefer a list of ships available based on tech I’ve researched with clearly defined roles, and upgrades to those ships I can retrofit as I research.
That said, I do think Stellaris is the least annoying in this regard, I find it pretty easy to outfit a ship and update them, and I assume that will be even easier with the changes to the game (only one power reactor now, statically placed; fleet manager screen; setting up auto-replacements for fleets, stuff like that).
Yes, hopefully those things help. I wish they could just pull out the designer, but I don’t think that’s feasible (ex: the tantrums still being thrown about the FTL changes).
I think I would prefer a more doctrinal approach, where you choose the overall type of navy and how they are used. This decision would be made at the strategic level, as opposed to individually designing each ship type. A carrier-based doctrine may excel in certain areas, but require a massive industrial base to support. Energy weapons might bypass a lot of supply constraints, but it requires a lot of extra tech and the ships are extremely costly to build individually. Kinetic weapons might be cheap to produce and field, but suffer in prolonged battles and have difficulty operating deep in enemy territory as their supply lines get stretched.
I’d find that sort of thing a lot more interesting than whether to slot a Blue Laser or an Autocannon on my frigate.
I would subscribe to your newsletter.
See, this is what I’m talking about, this design sounds interesting.