Well Quill convinced me to give Stellaris another shot.
Figuring out these new planet mechanics is like 90% of the challenge.
That seems kind of like a “well, duh” conclusion. If you’re talking the paid content portion, MegaCorps are the entire focus. So yeah, if you (Edit: Generic you, not you you) don’t want to play a MegaCorp in an expansion called MegaCorp, you may not be getting a ton.
As always, the goods that affect everyone are in the base game update.
Yeah, I am far more interested to hear how the changes are than how the DLC is.
Thanks though @Ironsight, appreciate it.
The adventure of K’tek Cybertronics begins! Resembling a race of spacefaring peacocks, the K’tekari homeworld had been ravaged by centuries of war, eventually resulting in the complete collapse of major nation states after the Thirteenth War of Ruffled Plumage. With society in ruins, it was a near thing that the entire civilization didn’t descend into a dark age.
That fate was averted by the foresight (or blind luck, as subversive elements of K’tek society would tell it) of Chairwoman Bwaakar, having relocated the nest of the nascent Tlokk Cybertronics Company to a largely uninhabited desert island shortly before the war broke out. Her army of primitive robots were not only able to provide necessary foodstuffs and other goods but were also able to operate in war-ravaged (and highly toxic) ruins rebuilding cities, restoring manufacturing facilities, and uncovering a plethora of industrial technologies from former competitors. Tlokk Cybertronics came to be seen as saviors to the survivors of the Thirteenth War and over time the company became the de facto government of all citizens and was rebranded as K’tek Cybertronics.
The K’tek have prospered under the guidance of one skilled Chair(wo)man after another and eventually they set their sights to the stars. Chairman Kaabek – a brilliant engineer in his own right – insisted on commanding the first attempted interstellar voyage of the K’tek people. It has now been 7 years since his last communication and the Board has come to the sad conclusion that he may have been lost and that a new Chairman must be elected to lead the Company.
Through a series of highly unlikely and improbable events brought about by the scheming of the various factions of the Board, Chairwoman Y’Ridaak was elected to lead the company into these uncertain times – an outcome no one expected, nor wanted. Long infamous as the most irresponsible socialite offspring of Executive B’kwal’s third clutch (which really is saying something!), she lacks the knowledge, skills, or temperament for such an important task. Frankly, she has no idea what she’s doing. Profit save us and our beloved Company!
(In game terms, I’ve created an Materialist/Egalitarian/Xenophile avian desert dwelling race with a Megacorp government type. I’ve chosen the Brand Loyalty and Free Traders civics and will be attempting to play peacefully, trying to expand via trade… but I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, so this should be disastrously fun!)
Not so far, but I don’t have a very large empire yet. Has that been an issue for some player? So far it seems very smooth to me.
10 minutes of Quill scared me. I like deep games but … all that stuff on each planet looks painful micromanagement. :-\
I take it you got the DLC?
The game definitely starts to chug earlier than before. I’m getting stuttering around 2260, well before earlier builds. Not unplayable, but worried how it will do in another 100-200 years.
As far as micromanagement - it actually isn’t too bad since you mostly can ignore the planets until a new pop grows that is beyond what you can support already, at which point you make a decision. And, better than before is the decision feels somewhat interesting/strategic, rather than just an obvious tile usage or click to upgrade as before.
I think it might look more micro-heavy than it is. I tend to get annoyed at micro-heavy stuff but thus far I find it less micro than the old system, or at least that’s how it feels. I don’t really know how to play the new system well, though, so take that for what it’s worth.
I did. I need to start a new game, though, I got absolutely clobbered by the map seed. For my first MegaCorp game, I started surrounded by two fanatic purifiers, a gestalt conciousness robo-empire, and a slaving despot. That meant 3 of the 4 neighbors I couldn’t interact with at all with the new corp systems and the 4th rivaled me and hated my guts. :)
These changes are kind of intense. Basically a new game - I have no idea what is going on. I pity any poor sod who doesn’t follow news of the game and booted it up today to find these changes.
Honestly if I hadn’t been following the dev diaries and watching some of the announcement/reveal streams they did I think I would feel extremely overwhelmed. As it is I’m only feeling moderately overwhelmed. Though i can tell you my next game will be a lot better because I’m way better to anticipate shortfalls now.
I also feel like I’m planning my economy really poorly on the first game. But that is also somewhat satisfying - the old system was obvious, while this one is actually a system that needs to be learned.
I very casually watched some videos over the past few months about the changes… I have pretty much no idea what’s happening on my planets.
Minerals are no broken down into consumer goods and alloys, which can then be broken down into things like entertainment?
System sounds like it will be fun to manage once I figure it out.
I made some early mistakes myself – I let unemployment grow in my homeworld when I could easily have created new jobs. Didn’t take long to fix, though.
I found Quill18’s tutorial video moderately helpful here. He suggested constructing one or two districts first, rather than buildings, as district “slots” are usually less scarce than building slots. He pointed out that City districts create fewer jobs (1 clerk here, vs 2 jobs in other districts) but add a lot of housing, if you need that. He also walked through the trade system and piracy nicely. Much of what he said I’d already figured out on my own, but I’m still glad I watched it.
I also found his video useful - not new information, but made me think about the system a bit more logically. Need to break bad habits of rote clicker planet management!
Consumer goods are also turned into amenities, research and unity by various professions. And it’s not like there’s one job for each purpose, e.g. Unity is produced by culture workers (they also produce social research), enforcers (they also fight crime) and I think administrators. Some professions also produce special resources, and you can use said resources for special edicts - I think most are available from the start.
The economy became much more complex and it brought an interesting change. Research is not god anymore. Usually in most 4X games you expand but you can only really exploit with research, you hit soft caps all the time otherwise. Here the most noticeable soft cap is administrative cap, but it’s very soft. You can grow your economy in a variety of way mobilizing the populace.
You also get a lot of tech that just improves specific jobs or space facilties not requiring you to upgrade anything. Meaningful choices without clicker stuff.
I was going to come here and ask for some tutorial videos recommendations. I will watch the two above later on.
I have not played this game since maybe 3 weeks after its first release. Is there anything out there to help me learn this game again? I bought the synthetic dawn pack and want to play as kill bots, but I am playing a normal game now so I can see the in-game tutorial, which so far isn’t that good.
That Quill18 tutorial is excellent. I feel like I can dive right in.
Overall I think this is true, but I did find myself microing a bit to shift workers between jobs to avoid deficits in certain things. I am also keeping a close eye on what’s happening on my planets because I am trying to learn the system.
Right now pop growth seems to be my limiting factor, even though I started with mechanist and that effectively boosts pop growth. Also energy is rather tight due to all the robots (sort of annoying that starting robots can’t work energy jobs).
I’m playing a democracy, but so far the game hasn’t recognised that I’ve been hitting the mandate targets. I’m also not sure I was getting one of the bonuses from egalitarian. So far I’ve encountered few bugs for a change of this complexity.
The market is very handy for evening out early resource imbalances (I tend to have a lot of excess food, again due to robots).