Is this on the latest beta? The last beta has a 2-year grace period before you are forced to declare a status quo peace, but IIRC, the AI will accept status quo as soon as it hits 100%. So you might be able to force them to 100% even if you have more war exhaustion than them.
Edit: Of course, I haven’t had coffee. I guess hitting 100% won’t matter to you since you already hold all the systems you are going to get in this war.
So, surprisingly, this worked! Even though I was ahead on war exhaustion, these jerks sent a few more fleets through the wormhole and I was able to do more damage than I took. Victory! (of a sort)
It’s funny - Stellaris is the game that has finally led me to simply write off Paradox. I won’t buy another game of theirs until I know their DLC policy has changed. And I am almost certain it won’t, which effectively means I won’t buy another Paradox game.
Being a PDX fan, but not fanboy, does feel like an unhealthy relationship or addiction - you just keep going back, even though you know better.
I’m having fun with 2.0.2, but wow do the games really drag on. I guess that’s a feature rather than a bug, but I’d prefer to have somewhat shorter games but on the same galaxy size. What are everyone’s game settings? Or just feedback on the current version?
I’m still having fun with it. The first 100 years are great. The next 100 years, though, I’m just trying to build my fleet as large as possible for the endgame crisis. After that, I usually start a new game. I think I’ve only reached the victory screen once, and that was by accident.
I’m thinking I may set the endgame crisis to start earlier, like 2350, because things really start to drag on after that.
I’m having fun with it too. There are things that I wish were better and faults I can complain about, but that’s the case for every game I’ve ever played.
This forum overall is very negative of the game, so I just typically take my discussion of it elsewhere these days. :)
Exactly how I feel about ES2! It’s interesting how wildly different everyone’s opinions are on this.
DLC is such a boogeyman here, it’s almost comical. Paradox started up a new IP to try something they had never done before and they didn’t knock it out of the park by Qt3 standards. Nevermind that the game sold well and was well-reviewed both by critics and users (until the recent review bombing due to the change to hyperlane-only, anyway). It’s as if there was never a poorly received 4X game on Qt3 before those dang kids and their dastardly DLCs came!
The DLC ghost stories would carry at least a little more water for me if they were gating the core improvements behind a paywall, but they’re not. 2.0 represented an enormous amount of development effort, yet about the only thing they sold was a couple toys to play around with, everything else was given to those who bought the original game. Their major crime here appears to be continuing to work on and release free updates to a game (which appears to be their best-selling, according to Steamspy) that Qt3 doesn’t happen to like. Those bastards!
I mean, if you don’t enjoy the game, that’s understandable. I just think it has little to do with DLC. @Fifth_Fret brought up ES2, which a lot of people here also didn’t like. Somehow it can just be a game people don’t like, though, and isn’t because they released a DLC and a patch after release.
I’d never consider the DLC the reason I dislike Stellaris. The DLC has been a big improvement to the base game, if a bit expensive.
No, I mean I’m interested in at least three Paradox games - Hearts of Iron IV, Europa Universalis IV, and Stellaris. But I do not want to play games where there is a bunch of added content/functionality that I do not have.
At the same time, I do not want to pay $500 for those three games by the time they’re done, so I’m just passing on Paradox games from this point forward, as I said.
Paradox really needs to start bundling the core game with a bunch of the critical expansions for a reasonable price. If you’ve purchased each of the expansions as they release over years the cost isn’t as noticeable. For newcomers the Steam pages can be eye watering; even during a sale.
I know the go-to advice is to tell people to just pick up the core game and maybe 1-2 important expansions and then go from there, but that probably seems unsatisfying to a lot of people. It leaves people looking at that long DLC list wondering what elements they are missing.
CKII and EUIV really need to be bundled into “Essential Collections” for a very affordable price. It would address much of the DLC pushback.
Thanks for laying that out like that, SlyFrog. I actually find that a little fascinating and maybe helps me understand a bit more.
If you don’t mind me picking your brain, can I ask you a question to see if I’m on the right page? Say they release… EU5. At release, it’s received in the same manner than EU4 was (considered a very good game, feels complete, etc). After release, they come out with maybe 2 or 3 expansions along the same scope as EU4 did, but they call it quits there and move on to another project. Roughly, it’s in parallel to what EU4 was up until the release of Art of War or so. But the game gets a big fat “DONE” stamped on it, and isn’t touched thereafter.
Would that be the model that you would find more appealing, because the product has a clearly defined finished state where there won’t be additional items added you wouldn’t have access to (without ponying up, I mean)?
This, a thousand times. It would actually help their development model as well, because they could continue expanding on paid-for features from previous expansions. They’ve done so in the past, but they’ve always had to include those features into another expansion to do so (I believe El Dorado did this with the RNW feature in Conquest of Paradise). Better to just roll up a bundle every year or two, IMO!
They do have bundles that they occasionally discount. I got CK2 plus a ton of DLC for $40 in 2016. I think it was all the DLC except for the 2 or 3 newest at that time.
That would certainly be better, and it would also help me figure out what the expansions really do. The way they do it now, it feels like there’s a billion expansions, but it is hard for me to see (as a casual) what material effects they really have on the game. I think the expansions seem “bigger” to the hardcore fans than they do to casual fans.
I compare that, for example, to the X-Com expansion, where there is a material change to the game that is immediately apparent. Yes, it costs a little more, but honestly, not that much more considering that it was available at a sizeable discount (I got it for around $23-24 on release).
It also let’s me feel like I’m playing a complete game, and that I’m not literally having the game changed on me every 3-6 months (or however often Paradox releases expansions - it feels like at least 2-3 a year for EU IV for example).
But then, I’ve always hated collectible card games too, while some people love constantly ponying up additional cash to keep it “fresh.” I’ve always been in the camp that I’d just rather just play a complete game - it doesn’t really bother me that there’s not constantly “new” things in it, but it does bother me when the game never actually feels “done” because they’re constantly adding things that tweak this or that.
There have been some bundled sales before I think. Pretty sure I got the entire ck1 collection that way.
I think they need to differentiate between :
DLC (low cost small add-ons such as portrait packs, small functionality changes etc.)
and
Expansions (significant changes to functionality and game play).
Personally, I would never buy the former (but maybe that’s why they don’t differentiate!?)
Paradox’s policy has always put me off. I bought CKII and enjoyed it, but because I haven’t kept up to date with the DLC, I don’t play the game anymore. Hate playing when I don’t have all the functionality! Stellaris is probably the only game I’ve kept giving a chance without having the latest DLC and each time it disappoints.
I’m pretty much in SlyFrog’s corner here, three strikes and you’re out. Paradox have had numerous chances to show that their policy is about enjoyable games and not just milking the cash cow and have failed. I’d just love to know how much of the SOTS II shambles was down to them or Kerberos, because if it was all them I’d never touch them again.
So in your world you’d deny us all the expansions after Art of War? Boo!
As a ‘casual’ that’s kinda sefish to those that are deeply involved in the game and love the new content. And all because it’s difficult for you to work out what to buy?
the DLCs also lead to a lack of focus in regards to their whole development process and to me it feels like they often think “we will just do or fix that later on”.
So maybe they are not cutting out content from the core game but there is certainly less incentive to get it right from the start.
It’s now two years and this game still doesn’t feel “finished”, just look at the mess that 2.0 was. Good intentions are nice, good results are better and imo Paradox fails to deliver on the later.
I’d rather have a planned, intelligent design. The way they do their DLC seems like it’s just piling things on haphazardly and pellmell until there is so much it starts to break things.
It also seems like their DLC tends to introduce new problems as much as solutions, but that’s admittedly from others who play more intensely than I do.