There is something that I noticed. There seems to be more ascension point slots then there are tradition trees. How does one get ascension points outside of completing tradition trees?
I believe there’s a tech that gives one (Ascension Theory, maybe).
Playing Rogue Servitors, I got into a sort of Trouble with Tribbles situation. It’s amazing how expensive those biotrophies are to maintain once you work it all out. I expanded to too many planet too quickly and set up biotrophies on most of them. Problem is that you have to pay for robot construction, but those cute little butterflies keep multiplying and multiplying. That becomes quite a weight on the economy considering you need drones to build the consumer goods, drones to mine the minerals for the consumer goods, drones to grow the food, drones to provide the energy for the above drones and buildings AND drones to provide the amenities for the trophies and drones involved in supporting them.
I mean, I am flying through the ascension perks, but I should have put these guys on no reproduction some time ago.
I suppose that is a good idea. They generate ascension points, right? However, will stopping pop growth also stop servitor growth? You may be screwed if it does.
Right now in my killbot campaign, getting traditions is very slow. I think its up to 180 months to unlock the next tradition. I have not built any of those structures that make ascension points. Killbots are power hungry, so I am just going nuts with the power generation, even growing food to turn into energy.
Yeah they generate 2 Unity. You can stop pop growth on a species-by-species level by adjusting their rights, though it does come with a hit to happiness. In my case, that will knock down production a bit because biotrophies have a high weight in the planetary happiness (and drones are always neutral).
In any case, you need to build robot drones, not grow them, so even shutting off all natural growth wouldn’t affect the drones.
Most of my problem comes from grabbing too many planets at the start. With organic pops, you get free pop growth at every colony. With machines, growth is not free, so it’s probably better not to go too crazy. For an organic, having 3 planets is 9 pop growth per month. For a machine, 3 drones building pops will go just as fast if they are on one planet or 3. Actually faster if they are on one planet.
Thus far, the patch seems to have really helped the AI. I think there must have been a couple bugs that were really crippling it, like not upgrading their buildings. And of course, Glavius’ mod is quite nice. With the combination of the two, I’ve found my Cartel has falling dangerously far behind my neighbors. I think I may get smooshed this game. :(
The Glavius mod really makes me question why companies like paradox don’t hire guys like him.
It clearly makes the game better. I just don’t get it.
They do. Martin Anward got started as a modder, was hired as AI developer for EU4 (did an amazing job, btw), took over that project entirely, and is now the lead for Stellaris. DDRJake was famous for breaking and exploiting systems to the max in EU4, was hired as QA, and now leads that project.
I think the issue is that the number of developers assigned to a project is quite small. Those developers have to code all the new mechanics, features, engine improvements, fix bugs, work on engine optimization… and work on AI - including the core AI functions that they expose for modders to work with and take advantage of. Modders have the luxury of not have to deal with any of that and instead can iterate like crazy with the systems provided. They also don’t have to get changes through the QA process in order to get it out. If a modder breaks something no one really cares.
Of course, there’s also the fact that the modders don’t get paid and donate their time to this, which I’m forever grateful. I wish every strategy game had a dedicated AI programmer that didn’t work on anything but that, but it doesn’t appear to be economical since no one seems to do it, even huge projects with massive budgets like Civ5/6.
In this particular genre it seems like a more rational, consumer friendly model would be to sub contract AI to someone like Glavius in the weeks before and after a given big update.
The difference with the current system would be early access to avoid brain-dead AI on release; clear benefit to ensure it is done, rather than just hoped for; and better access to the guts of the game to allow greater fixes than allowed by simple modding. PDX could avoid a full time AI person who normally would be pulled in too many other directions by the broader dev process.
As it stands it feels like PDX is cheap on this particular issue. But this is just me venting / speculating.
I was having real issues with… basically everything with my trading company the other night.
All the dials just ended up in the red, seemingly at random some times. I wasn’t expanding or anything really beyond the growth that just comes from existing. But suddenly I have no materials. Or food. Or energy. Oh and also now you need these rare materials to even have a fleet or use most of your buildings.
Probably just me not understanding it, but I was constantly having to fiddle with like 15 different things to try to make ends meet and still failing. Then random raiding fleets come in that out gun me 8:1. I’ll build up my fleet, oh wait I can’t because I’m already broke and have nothing to build them with anyway.
Maybe the Alloy change will help that since I know I spent A LOT of early game resources on the Market just getting freaking Alloy to build… well… anything.
Also the trading company thing barely works imo. So I have to kiss this species ass to even have a shot at getting a company in there. I need a treaty and oh someone else got there first. And literally nothing can make them leave apparently? I mean I found new allies, were bringing them into my Federation, they hated the guys who had companies all over the place, cancelled basically all relevant treaties, but their companies were still there.
That coupled with literally over half the galaxy being trading companies made the experience incredibly shitty. I had one company the entire time I played. One. Everything else I was blocked out of or someone else build there already. I feel like the criminal method is way more effective and enjoyable from what I’ve seen of it.
I’m in the year 2299 with my Human Representative Democracy - fanatical egalitarian xenophile.
On one side I have a peaceful spiritual race. We’ve had some trading agreements. On my other border is a fanatical purifier, who I rivaled. They’ve insulted me and relations are bad, but there hasn’t been any military conflicts. I’ve been claiming the systems around them. I bumped into a fallen empire who is significantly stronger than myself. I’ve found two gaia worlds that are religious holy lands for them, but I’ve left them alone. No need to spoke a sleeping lion.
I’ve been thinking about attacking the fanatical purifiers. My military strength is stronger than all other civs except for the fallen empire. I also have more points than everyone except the fallens. If I attack a civ that others don’t like, will that anger the peaceful civs I’m friendly with?
I’ve just been building and researching and it’s getting a little dull. It’s funny - I can do this is a game like civ and it just seems more interesting. I think there are 2 reasons. First, having actual terrain to explore just seems more interesting. Second, I just think I like the familiar terminology in a game like civ.
I mean, there shouldn’t be that much of a difference in building up my economy on Stellaris as there is in Civ - but it just seems more dull. The events do a nice job adding a bit of narrative. I think Stellaris and Crusader Kings seem to appeal to people who can get enjoyment from roleplaying and aren’t so focused about ‘winning’. Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis seem to have a bit more strategy game in their DNA.
Pacing. The amount of interesting decisions in Civ vastly exceeds that in Stellaris. The bulk of the options in Stellaris even after the patches appear - at least to me - trivial.
Speaking of which, my biggest wish from the genre in general is a Civilization-theme 4X/PDX game that is real time. “Take my money” etc.
I’ve been dreaming of that for a while. I’d love something of that scope where the player gets to start small and explore the world and build an empire.
I am feeling the same way. My murder bots are just walking over the enemy. I have a bunch of research that I do not care about. I am not sure what to do other than slowly take over the galaxy (except for the fallen empires, whom of which I can’t even begin think how I would get that strong to take over one).
About what year does the big game events start to happen? I think I am on year 2350 or something. Life is a bit dull.
Also, I am thinking the economy must have some kind of bug. So I am at war, and my income has dropped from +145 credits to -80 a turn for no reason I can see. This goes on for several months, and then it suddenly becomes +45, and soon becomes +225 and then a bit later is now at +450. I am not building much at all, I just do not understand what is going on with the credits.
Also I am a bit unsure on KevinC’s technique of shipping undesirables off to my home world. I have captured so many meat bags, that my home world is full up. I need other worlds to ship people to now. My crime is 100%, although I am not sure that is actually affecting anything that I can tell.
The crises kick off dependent on your game settings, I don’t remember what the defaults are but it should be happening soon.
I usually bump them up 50-100 years earlier or so, increase their strength, turn on aggressive AI, and the difficulty up to whatever feels right. I feel like that gives some needed pressure, the default settings I feel are tuned far too conservatively and can lead to the game being dull. It’s fine for a tutorial game where you’re just figuring out how things work, but after that I’d recommend some combination of the above.
When your energy income fluctuates, you should be able to tell from the tooltip if it’s expenditures that went up or income that went down. If there’s any enemy ships in your territory at all, it can cut off trade routes even temporarily and that will cause a sharp drop until they move or are killed.
Is there any way to see the settings after the game has been started? I just used whatever the defaults were.
Not in game as far as I know, but if you go to New Game from the main menu you should be able to see them there without actually starting a new one.
Oh, and the game has an end date of 2500 at which point scores are tallied for a timed victory. You have the choice to play past it.
Now that I’m in war the game is a little better. The enemy surprised me by showing up with a fleet more powerful than mine after I took over a couple of their systems. I rebuilt my fleet and made another push, but my alloys are low. I didn’t build up a stockpile of resources to rebuild ships as mine were lost, and being in peace for so long I didn’t make a big alloy economy. So I’m trying to rectify that while at war.
I now split into 2 fleets to take their territory a little faster, with some troops on the way to try and take a planet. This is at least giving me something new to think about and breathing some life into the game. The peaceful stage in this game is pretty dull.
I need to understand the combat model so I can more intelligently decide what ships to build. I didn’t see any screen to look at the stats of enemy ships I’ve encountered - I only could look at them during battle. So it looks like the player needs to keep notes to keep track of enemy ship designs unless I missed a screen.
The after-battle report is the best source of info I’ve been able to find. If you’re running Glavius, I’ve noticed that the AI seems to be adapting more to what I build as well. Not sure if that was my imagination or what, but something to keep your eye on if you’re running that mod (which I highly recommend to everyone).
Bigger ships have a hard time hitting high evasion vessels like corvettes which makes torpedoes very effective except if the AI is running heavy PD. Strikecraft also seem to be in a bad spot right now, even without the PD saturation so I stay away from those.