We will have to see how the trade between empires will work, but overall I think the proposed system is a tad less dynamic than I would find ideal. Though balancing and teaching the AI to use a more dynamic system could easily take way too much time or be infeasible.
Edit: I wonder how much higher trade value from pops can compensate for higher living standards? Especially if trade can be converted directly into consumer goods.
Ahh, I was wondering how that was going to work given that they use Steamworks for multiplayer.
I probably knew that at some point, but must have forgotten. Good to see it available outside Steam, in any case.
I know it’s a work in progress, but many of the tradition effects seem pretty small. 10% here, 5% there, +1 housing, etc. I think Stellaris has way too many tiny modifiers.
Does it bother anyone if I post a ink to the Twitter announcement of a dev diary, rather than a direct link (the latter is included in the tweet)?
I find it often has a useful summary of the topic and provides screenshots, but I could see it being potentially irritating to people to see a link to a link with the details, if you know what I mean.
I don’t see a problem with it.
On the DD itself, I am glad that there will be less micro for basic resources, though the techs are indeed a bit boring now.
Micro possibilities remain in the specialist building upgrades. It looks like special resources are going to be very important if you want to concentrate your specialist population on a few worlds. I’m not quite clear whether actually spreading out your specialist population among more medium-sized worlds won’t be the better choice though.
The specialised planets look like they will be an important part of the expansion (e.g. fortress worlds, ecumenopolis, etc). I guess we will find out next week.
Yeah, +10% techs aren’t too exciting but they do have their place. I’m fine with it as long as they have some spicier ones in there as well.
I’m really glad they’re scaling the effectiveness of mining/research stations. They really started to lag behind once you hit the mid-game or so.
If this expansion and Man the Guns comes out before the end of the year, I’m going to have a busy holidays (and a very neglected SO :)).
I hope one of them makes it out before the holidays, but there still seems to be a lot of work to do.
Well speak of the devil.
They usually do this when they announce the name of the expansion and release date.
I really enjoyed the 2.1 series once it finally settled into a stable form over this past summer. This 2.2 stuff looks great, but I worry I’ll have to wait 6 months after release to really get it in a form I want to play.
I think that is a very rational worry. They are upending a core component of the game, so I expect there will be some bugs and lots of balance issues all over the place. Still very much looking forward to it though.
Yeah, definitely a sensible concern. I’m expecting the issues Mike mentioned but I’m not overly worried about them. I know they’ll be on top of the issues as they crop up.
Put another way, I’d much start a new game of 2.2 with warts and bugs than polished 2.1. The changes and additions look really good to me.
I don’t mind, because it gives me an excuse to start a new race when a new patch comes out. I’ve never made it past the mid-game.
To each their own, I find i can’t invest in a game (especially not something on the scale of a Stellaris playthrough) if I’m not certain of the stability of the product. Getting 20 hours into a game only to have it wrecked by bugs is no fun, and for that matter Paradox tends to churn out savegame-breaking patches faster than I can play the game during these “clean up” periods (the patch rate is a good thing, to be clear, but not good for me actually playing the game at the time!). I’ll stick to 2.1 until 2.2 gets an all clear.
Wait, does that mean you’ve never seen a crisis? Never built a megastructure? You’re missing a lot of good stuff! I’ve played 5 games to what could reasonably be called completion (2 to victory states on 2.1, 3 on earlier patches to either stalemates or losses) and have generally enjoyed the late game (especially on later patches w/ DLC).
I’ve built a couple megastructures, but no crises yet. I keep meaning to get to a crisis, but I get distracted by other shinies.
Part of the problem is that I play really slowly. I don’t really start speeding up the game until the mid-game doldrums hit.
Disappointing. Feels like more + / - upgrading rather than real gameplay changes…
Have you been following the dev diaries?
EDIT: Now that I’m not on mobile anymore, let me clarify on why I asked. They’ve completely ripped out and replaced the entire economic underpinnings of the game. The planetary rework alone (which includes the complete removal of the Tile system) took four dev diaries to cover itself. Pops are now much more prevalent, belonging to different strata and performing different jobs. There is stability and crime.
They also have added a galactic market, internal markets, reworked Sectors, reworks Faction Happiness, introduced a Trade mechanic to the game (with traderoutes and a piracy rework).
The features announced in the DLC are in addition to those coming in the free update. Like usual with Stellaris, it’s the free update that has 90% of the goodies.
Seems like it’s going to be a completely different game. I just hope it’s going to be one I like more…