The idea of jobs in the “waste management” sector stealing resources from you empire is pretty cool.
4 of 4: Hive Minds and Machine Empire planets (and habitats)
I like the idea of the economies having specific strategic advantages. Hives being built to spread quickly and ME’s being built for efficiency. Will have to see how it all plays out!
Yes yes yes. Greater distinction between those types sound great. They’ve already really improved this over time, but it feels like this will really get things to a good place. It’s an indication how limiting the tile system has been for them, as Martin has been saying.
One thing this brings into focus for me is how much balancing work the dev team has ahead of them. So many new mechanics, the entire economy up-ended. Apart from inevitable bugs, it’s going to take a good while after release for the balance between different approaches to shake out.
Yes. It’s pretty much Stellaris 3 at this point.
Stellaris on sale for $15.99 on Steam this weekend. Worth it? I keep seeing a lot of reviews that say it was a better game when it first came out, but now the recent changes have made it less enjoyable.
Some of the dlc’s are on sale was well. Will probably pass as I have hardly touched the base game so far. Unless anyone here has a strong recommendation for a particular dlc…
Any specifics? Because I would argue pretty strongly against that. Without further information, I’m guessing it was the freak-out brigade over the change to Hyperlanes-only, which drastically improved the gameplay in warfare.
Really, it’s the majority of the top user reviews on Steam that are saying this, including one from our own @robc04
Take a look if you can. They all start out the same way… “I liked this game when it first came out, but…”
Yep, it’s the Hyperlane / I Fear Change reactionaries. The change to hyperlanes was drastically needed as it was a necessary step to fix some fundamental problems with warfare in the game.
The next negative review:
You can kind of look above for @MikeJ’s and my take on the new economic model they’ll rolling out. The tl;dr is that it sounds awesome.
Anyway, I did a quick skim and 5 of 5 negative reviews I saw were all bitching about hyperlanes.
I haven’t tried it out since the hyperlane change - but that does seem like and improvement. From the discussions here it seems like there have been some other changes for the better too, but every time I think of trying it again I can’t forget how boring the game became after a couple hours. Maybe the new changes that @KevinC talks about will convince me to try the game again.
I feel like the main contributors to the midgame drag are the tile economy and thin external/internal diplomacy. The new economy promises to be a lot more interesting to manage and provide a lot more room to grow and develop your planets more deeply and in more unique directions. That should be more engaging.
I do wonder if it is still going to drag a bit without a diplomacy rework.
I think switch to hyperlanes is an improvement but overall I still think the game is weak even with the dlcs. Beginning game is still fun but it does become a slog and diplomacy is terrible. I’m still hoping for CK2 in space. Its better but not by a lot. That price point though is probably not too bad for an ‘ok’ game.
I agree with several others. The game is getting better, but I still find it pretty boring. However, all the times I’ve tried going back, I found the planet management so annoying that it turned me off pretty fast, so I’m pretty excited to see how things feel after the rework.
I recently started it up again.
Gestalt Consciousness type empire. Difficulty somewhere in the middle, can’t remember more precisely.
Yes it is a bit boring in the midgame and lategame. The cause of it is highly in the gestalt’s unique mechanics: no diplomacy, everything is “They are prey.” and no claims for systems, the war drags on until the enemy is conquered totally, or your war exhaustion gets 100% +2 years (or you surrender) as you can grab as much territory as you want. If you play your hands properly, nothing’s gonna stop you.
Yes, the tile system is… The system in general is not so bad, the biggest problem is the AI’s inability to properly use it. It takes me minutes to fix them after each conquest, and it’s a clickfest. The new economy system looks promising in both human and AI usability.
The hyperlanes and everything movement related. I was really sad when I lost my trusty wormhole travel. But got used to hyperlanes fast. I definitely like some of the changes whaat came with this, like the one where ships can go to other systems only when they get to the lane’s exit point, which is actually in the direction of the other system. Yes this makes travel slower, even more slower than just the hyperlane-only change. But I still feel this as a positive in the end.
Oh my.
I hope they also ditch the leader cap.
It’s a stupid remnant of their earlier games, but if you’re managing a galactic empire with dozens of planets and billions of beings, it’s really stupid you’re limited to, like, 15 total governors, scientists, admirals, and generals.
I guess that does make sense! The need for the way sectors work goes away with retirement of the tile system.