A brief summary of Megacorp and 2.2 just posted today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p0HXI63Ll0
Well given two sticks many young boys can event an elaborate western, or gangster movie. But I generally expect designer to do most of the work and not make me come up with the story.
As you said in another post the cool thing about SOTS is you had some generally expectations about how the different race ships would be designed. The AI personalities in MOO were even more pronounced. One of the problems with Stellaris is you can share stories. It is not, I had this epic battle with the Alkari in MOO, or I was doing great until the Hivers took out 2 of my best worlds…
In retrospect, it turns out procedural generated maps, and even tech trees are create. But procedural-generated races is just an awful idea for the purposes of adding flavor or making stories.
Maybe add a bit of randomness to the race characteristics to make it fresh, but if I ever designed a 4x Space game, I’m going to start with the races.
If I were to do a traditional 4X, I’d definitely have it be hand-crafted races. That changes a bit in the scale of a Paradox GSG, though. It’s one thing to design 6-8 races with unique ships, techs, FTL drives, etc. A typical Paradox game can easily have 30+ “players”; I believe Stellaris is around 20 or so? Yeah, you could eliminate all that and reduce it to 6-8 players, but that pretty dramatically changes the game. One thing that I find pretty difficult to go back to in 4X games is the lack of diplomatic options that present itself with a small number of players. You can do a team or two or FFA, but other than that your hands are tied. You don’t have options to form coalitions or federations of smaller nations to combat the larger.
The thing with Paradox is they’ve been able to rely on historical context to fill in a lot of that flavor in their past games. When you pick France in EU4, you already have an image in your mind. Seeing an Ottoman colony in Brazil would make you do a double take. I think that was a blind spot for them in the original release of Stellaris and it was indeed bland. I find things are more interesting now, though, with the variety of races you can construct. Playing a terrorizing race of Robot Servitors that want to herd up all the organics and keep them in zoos to pamper them and keep them safe or whatever is colorful to me, but that might just be due to the type of player I am. I’m the sort that tends to hate narration and stories in games and instead want to blaze my own trails and make my own stories as I go.
I will say, one area where I do dislike procedurally generated races is how it ties into the ship design aspect of the game. This very much needs to be redesigned, IMO. I know that the Hivers will likely have heavy armor and ballistics in SOTS, but there’s nothing that says what a Robot Servitor will be using in their fleets. Even if there were a way to know, it’s irrelevant because of the scale of the game (20+ players).
I have a bad 4x itch and so I really want to play either Stellaris or Civ VI. But I’ve given both several shots and I always end up deeply disappointed in the experience. I get mad at the sheer incompetency of Civ VI AI. In the case of Stellaris, I just get bored.
I liked your suggestion earlier to just play the 2.2 patch before I go out and get the DLC since much of the patch is free. When are both supposed to be out?
I do prefer procedurally generated races over cheap photocopies of aliens and human civs from the sci fi literature. VGA Planets wore that as a badge of honor rather than hiding it. When there were two or three space 4x was kind of cute. Now it grates my nerves.
The unpredictability of what you can find in each game is for me what has made Stellaris a real time sink for me. It took a long time for the game to get old on me.
Last, Paradox had the good sense of allowing you to pin down pre generated races during game setup. That allows me to play with specific foes - or friends - when I feel like. Sometimes random generation produces rather peaceful setups. So it is good to make sure there are going to be in the game some baddies to keep things dynamic and interesting.
Next Thursday (December 6th).
Yeah, this can really be used to create some context/lore. I’ll play a race with a theme in mind and roleplay my game. At the end of the campaign, they go into galaxy for my next game.
Maybe when I’m feeling particularly grim, there will be a Kardashian megacorp of humans to plague my galaxy after 2.2. I’ll throw them in when I feel like playing a Fanatic Purifier. :)
Yeah the last game I played I populated with Stellaris equivalents of MOO2 races plus a few others to fill in the gaps.
They have a lot of rebuilt races as well, though the lore isn’t as well known.
Just getting back into this with the pending expansion. Bought all the others on sale. Haven’t played it since launch pretty much.
Seriously, 2 years on and no in-game key rebinding or options to disable stuff like edge-scrolling. I have to use mods for that. Crikey!
If you’re looking for a new 4X, check out the Database of 4X games by Explorminate which categorises and groups over 300 4X games including up and coming titles. Seriously good resource.
Thanks Sam that’s a pretty good resource. I agreed with the last review of Gladius: Relics of war.
The dev team has a good sense of humor. Like the rest of you, I’m getting refresher of Stellaris with the latest DLC before the Le Guin is released, and my first game as the United Nations of Earth has a nearby system is named Covfefe.
The deal you mentioned above @vyshka is tempting. It may be half price in 6 months but that would only save a few more bucks so I may cave and order it now.
Patch notes for next Thursday’s release
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Civilian ships are now constructed at starbase rather than planets
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Added technology Resort Worlds that unlocks the ability to designate a colony as a Resort World. This colony will be unable to have districts and most buildings built on it, but will increase amenities and immigration pull across the empire.
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Added tech for Penal Colony worlds which have high crime rates but decrease crime on other planets
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Added a tech for slaver empires to designate a world as a Thrall-World. Thrall-Worlds cannot support city districts or manufacturing/research buildings, but get vastly increased growth rate and access to special buildings and jobs for slaves
- Added empire development based on owned systems, districts, and colonies. It is a soft cap that, when exceeded, applies scaling penalties to leader cost, edict cost, research speed, etc. This replaces the old system of static penalties based only on systems owned, and more accurately reflects the size and complexity of your empire. Development cap can be increased with techs and ascension perks
I like that change.
Yes, there will definitely be some emphasis on production per district. It’s good that people will no longer shun smaller planets due to the research and unity penalty.
- Added new ascension perk: Xeno-Compatibility, which allows cross-breeding between species
Oh, my.
Asari here we come!
- Leader Capacity has been removed from the game and replaced with energy credits upkeep for each leader
Huh, that’s an interesting change. I got tired of almost completely maxing out my leaders on scientists (1 each for the three tech schools, plus 1 for each science ship), and almost never getting a general until right before I was about to invade or be invaded.