So far it feels less different than I expected.
bought it during the recent sale…played 2 hours with 2.0…the boredom factor/micro management/tediousness hit me right between the eyes…refunded
I’d rather play eu4 or ck2 or even, (gulp) civ 6
space strategy games have never been high on my fun l list anyway…patiently waiting for distant worlds 2…(never played 1 due to font issues)
Doesn’t sound like you would have liked it much in any case.
Have you played Distant Worlds? It has very little micro management.
A couple of noteworthy bugs: don’t try to be too clever with the fleet manager, like building and upgrading at the same time. A winning side can force a status quo peace by quickly losing ships and forcing their own war exhaustion to 100%.
Woof. Yeah, I’ve played Distant Worlds. Just not my bag. No micro is also the same as no gameplay, in some cases.
You can have as much or as little micro in DW as you want, but whatevs. ;)
All we’ve seen is a photo taken from an conference in which it looked like DW2 was on the projector, but nothing confirmed. Trust me, as soon as it’s announced I’ll be screaming from the mountaintops.
I’ve seen the fleet manager issue reported multiple times so I know it’s there, but thankfully it hasn’t bit me yet. The manager is a really nice addition which alleviates one of my complaints, but it could stand to use a few UI tweaks. For the status quo, sounds like an exploit that I can safely ignore, thankfully.
I’m still early game (sacrificed some sleep so I could play a little last night, since I won’t get a chance to play until Saturday) but so far I’m liking the slower pace at the start. As stated upthread, expanding is a lot more deliberate and I don’t feel like I’ve met everyone right off the bat, like I did previously. It feels more like a gradual expansion of control instead of a mad dash for territory. Combined with slower fleet movement it’s makes for a slower start, but I prefer that. I could see how others might have issues with it, though.
In my limited playtime, my favorite combat change thus far is how fleets retreat and disengage instead of one side being annihilated. I had to push through a system full of space crystals and I couldn’t really take them all at once, but I was able to whittle them down. I’d lose ships each engagement, but the bulk of them would be able to break off and head home to repair and fight another day. Combined with what I’m seeing in how you can fortify Starbases, I’m hoping it’ll be like EU4 where my beaten army can retreat behind forts and regroup, rather than just losing the war in the first battle like Stellaris previously was.
Still not a fan of planetary buildings, but then that was never in scope for this patch/expansion anyway. I hope they do something with it in the future to provide more interesting decisions.
Same here. Expansion is definitely more deliberate and gradual. Playing in a large galaxy, that pace started to get boring until everything started happening at once – more pirates, warlike neighbors, gigantic space monsters, etc.
So far, this seems like a great improvement.
I’m liking it so far in the few hours I’ve played with 2.0. I really like the new edicts system, so much so that I find I’m using them more now than I ever did in 1.0. Influence is a much more valuable commodity for me now but I’m not sold on the opinion that expansion is less hectic.
I’m finding that I’m more stressed out now in the expansion game. In pre-2.0 if I found a planet I liked, I’d send off a colony ship in hopes it would get there before my neighbors, but now I have to really plan ahead with my expansion. In my 3-4 early games with 2.0 (I played the first 30-45 minutes for a few different maps/factions), I would discover neighbors who have expanded much faster than me, snatching up the better planets first. By my 4th game I’ve learned to expand quickly… basically as soon as I’ve amassed enough influence. Because of the new hyperlane connections, I’ve been forced to take poor systems just to build a bridge to that shiny continental world. Not sure if I’m loving it yet but I do like that I’m only meeting my immediate neighbors and not races from across the galaxy in my early game. In addition, discovering the galaxy around me seems more interesting now.
That sounds odd. Are you certain that the losing side is not also at 100%? Once the losing side is at 100%, the winning side just needs to offer to get a status quo peace. Driving your own war exhaustion to 100% is pretty optional.
It was a couple of people on reddit, who knows. I just thought it was one of the most funny and bigger ones there. It’ll be gone soon enough.
I won’t be playing 2.0 for a bit yet, myself.
I’d been holding out for 2.0 before diving back into this game. Picked vanilla Commonwealth of Man, got hemmed in by a fanatical purifier five jumps away from my home system. 90 minutes in, I was in a shooting war that lasted all of five minutes before I ran out of ships and decided maybe I should start over. Whee! :)
I’m thinking about starting my next game in a large galaxy and really dropping the number of AI down so I can hopefully play for a fairly long stretch without having to worry about war/invasions.
Lower the hyperlane density can create more chokepoints, which makes getting invaded a bit easier to handle.
I’ve really enjoyed what I have played so far…basically a couple of games to the 30 to 50 year mark. I think this game really needs some type of intelligence/espionage UI on enemy fleet composition and some tools to wargame results. I’ve won battles when I thought I would lose and lost ones that looked like sure things. The AAR UI is trying to be helpful but I just find it confusing and I think it’s got some problems reporting data accurately. Or I could just be a moron. LOL.
The Fleet Organizer screen is a good start. It is a little wonky though.
I’ve been trying a strategy where I use the Discovery tradition to super charge research by pumping out science ships and auto explore. 800 stars vs. 600 is a much slower game.
My 800 star game is locked in a brutal conflict with the Contingency. I got lucky and only had 1 of the Purge Worlds appear in my territory (out of 4), which I managed to destroy with major losses. I don’t think I would have been successful had I not taken the Defender of the Galaxy perk for the +50% damage to Endgame Crisis enemies.
They appeared right after I destroyed the Awakened Empire, and in retrospect I should have maybe waited on conquering them so they could help with the struggle. The prospect that three Purge Worlds are still churning out fleets is daunting.
I’m having a blast (I haven’t even seen an Endgame Crisis in over a real life year, the game in 1.9 was almost impossible not to have won a century before they were set to begin triggering), but I do have a complaint. I hate, hate HATE the seemingly arbitrary hard-caps. 3 Titans, 50 Starbases, and 1000 Fleet Cap. The Titan one is an absolute hard-cap, unless there is a rare tech I haven’t seen. The starbase and fleet caps can be gone over, but you start paying absurd penalties if you go much beyond them.
I feel like the game would benefit greatly from the removal of these caps, and giving a Titan cap depending on your fleet cap (I’d say ever 200 fleet cap = 1 Titan is about right). While I’m on the subject, I think the game could also use a 20-30% increase in sublight travel speed across the board, as the travel times are pretty crazy; and I say that with Jump Drives, 8 gateways and several wormholes in my Empire.
Also, as a PSA: don’t start a Determined Exterminator or Devouring Swarm run until the hotfix next week, they are badly bugged.
I am thoroughly enjoying my game playing as an alien loving democracy. I like the slower expansion phase and the little UI changes since v1.0. It’s also been long enough since I last played, and with the DLC, the story encounters are entertaining again.
My borders just collided with a fanatic purifier, so I am about to find out how war has changed.
Really? Not seeing any major bugs with them in 2.0 so far.
I had a fanatic purifier who I got the immediate closed borders message. So I closed mine and then about 20 years later I get the message that the borders are now open. Somehow he had changed his society type to something more normal and tolerant. Can’t remember the exact description. Is that possible or was it some type of bug? He was on the other side of a neighbor of mine so we eventually became friends and both beat up on the guy in between us. Don’t think he will be very happy when we share a border in the future. :)