Stellaris grand strategy space game by Paradox discussy thingy thready thingy

Games
5067

This is where I’m confused. Do you mean custom races you’ve made yourself, or random races assigned to you in previous games?

I haven’t noticed random races assigned to me in previous games being saved for later games, but I’ve reinstalled a few times so am wondering if I merely lost them.

5068

This.

I tend to create my races randomly, and get some amusing oddballs, so my “stable” of prior races to populate with can be fairly diverse.

5069

Thanks, very clear!

5070

I picked this up in a bundle somewhere and finally got around to playing it. (Base game only, most recent patch.) I gotta say… it was a lot of fun. (Maybe I had low expectations after reading through this thread.)

The exploration part was great, of course, and the fact that they just sort of threw in the sci-fi kitchen sink was thoroughly enjoyable, even if it didn’t have that much of an effect on the gameplay. (Why yes, I will build an army of clones and robots, thank you very much, even though in practice I’m just going to wait for the bombardment to tick by until the defense strength is sufficiently below my army strength, regardless of composition.) I can definitely see how it might not hold up to future playthroughs, especially once you’ve seen the anomalies and events.

I do agree with the recent criticism about races, though. All of the regular species in my playthrough were some flavor of pacifist or xenophile (including me, as the Trekkie federation, er, humans), which made for a rather calm time. Two opposing federations did form, and various players did rival each other, but there was only one war that wasn’t instigated by me. (And, actually, I think that the only militaristic nation (I take back what I said earlier, it was 90% of the regular races) was essentially taken out by it.) Once I got myself into one of the federations I had no trouble subjugating (vassalizing) the members of the other one. My only military challenge was when I rivaled the hostile fallen empire before I was ready. But then I ate the defeat (just a happiness penalty (and they assassinated my president! you shall have a statue in every city on every world, Ira Nayak! (it was actually a great and surprising moment))), redesigned my ships to be counters to theirs, and (ten years later) lured them into attacking a starbase with -enemy shields and +friendly fire rate and that was that.

My other main complaint was that the end game was about 100 to 150 years too late, both the crisis and the victory screen. (I was on default difficulty + 1, which is I guess only the second difficulty?) I had a thorough network of gateways by the time the end crisis showed up, and I swept the floor with the invaders (even though I was somewhat anti-aligned with their weapons–the fallen empires had anti-shield weapons and they the reverse, iirc, and the invaders had all shields and no armor, or something). So that was rather anticlimactic. I then cleaned up the other now awakened empire (and wasted a bunch of (otherwise useless, at that point) influence because it turns out you get a free lets-take-your-stuff CB against them). The biggest challenge was waiting for my laptop to tick through the days to get to 2500. (It really slowed down.)

So I figured I’d try to more carefully specify the enemy races next time and change the difficulty settings now that I know what they mean. And try a less goody-two-shoes (except for that whole vassal thing) approach. And then I thought I’d get some DLC to go further down the kitchen-sink approach, since that was the games best strength. (There were also some noticeable holes, like, I bought some zro and had literally no use at all for it; never saw any nanites anywhere, and living metal was of very questionable usefulness; and the awakened empire had a colossus and a titan (and maybe some other big sounding words–behemoth? mammoth?) that I was immensely jealous of.)

But, instead, somehow, I found myself leading a militarist, materialist, lizard race 30 years into another game… perhaps the other side of the Chick parabola will hit me hard, soon.

There were a couple other factors that I think made me like this a lot more than some others have:

  • I played on ironman, which I usually don’t for a first game, but gotta get those cheevos, right? So I went somewhat RP with it, which is again not terribly common for me in a strategy game, which made the lack of difficulty less of a problem and I think is a better approach to this game in general.
  • I played a lot of it while holding a 2-month old, so again I wasn’t putting in the effort to min-max and just watching cool things happen (I can recruit a giant warbeast for my army? yes please!) was great.

So now the questions: what DLC should I get, and can I expect them to go on sale?

5071

You complaint about the crisis coming too late is a very common one! The game’s default settings are way, way, too easy. I get that they didn’t want to overwhelm people but it instead can lead to boredom or an anti-climatic endgame crisis. Thankfully, both the target dates for the crises and their strength can be changed via sliders in the game setup screen.

For the DLCs, yes you can expect them to go on sale. They tend to be fairly frequent. Distant Stars is a small story pack, but it includes a stack of new anomalies and events which you might like, given your post above.

The line between what was included in the free patch (usually the lion’s share of the new features) vs the paid DLC blurs for me, but from looking at the Wiki I think I would recommend Utopia for the megastructures, habitat stations, and ascension perks. Apocalypse was a very important expansion, but from a glance at the wiki I think you get most of the good stuff in the free patch that went alongside it. I enjoyed playing corporate empires in the MegaCorp expansion as well, and building McDonald’s Trantor was fun.

5072

Thanks! I ended up putting all the DLC on my IsThereAnyDeal account, so having some knowledge / opinions about their contents will help me decide when to pull the trigger.

5073

I’m perhaps a tad more of a relaxed gamer than average here, and play some games on Ironman, but are more likely to do that as a second pass (though if an easier mode seems too easy, I’ll abandon that save and quickly up difficulty rather that get bored). Oddly as I’ve gotten older, and am at the age my generation is starting to die of natural causes I’m getting more into the mode that my time, even leisure, matters now.

So with that snapshot. Stellaris is one of the games I played Ironman from save #1, and was just fine with it. The RP angle is more hilarious, and as already mentioned (agree with everything @KevinC said), the difficulty settings are separate. Ramp those to suit, stay on Ironman would be my take.

If you like more flavor in the opponents, try what I described hand creating them, and locking them in (like in Civ, but you have to make them first). I think there are several random events that get you cool beasts, one is a ship. Enjoy that age, my granddaughter is the same age, and I will probably be trying that trick (gaming while holding toddler) this summer.

5074

Thanks! I really regret starting my next game so quickly without locking the species in–and I don’t know how I missed it because I’ve been keeping up with this thread! Still, I found a third savanna planet for my lizards in the immediate area, and both the early event chains (precursor and find-em-all) are different so I want to see them play out, so I probably won’t be starting over…

We have a four year old, and when she was little we had a hard rule about not being on devices while she was even paying attention to us. For a while now she’s been old enough that playing games with her anywhere in the vicinity is an immediate no-go (we still have a rule about her not being on devices). For the new guy, though, we’re considerably more relaxed about, well, everything. Poor second children…

(So I guess for slightly different reasons I’m also very much in the mode that my leisure time matters.)

5075

The DLC is a bit lackluster since most things were revamps that were added to the base game, which made me buy them quicker because that’s a fair thing to do. And with 2.0, some of the DLC things still need a bit.
On that note, Mods are more likely to change up the game in big ways, though they probably necessitate more restraint in not min-maxing all the things. Even without bigger mods, things like more UI improvements for 1080p (or more), more events and more planet modifiers add spice without changing much.

5076

I recently jumped back into this after not having played since… forever. Utopia is the one with Ascension Perks? I think maybe I played it then. I’ve not picked up Mega Corps yet. I think it has improved a lot. The new economy system is really good. The game feels more complete, it could basically be a sequel.

My first game was pretty uneventful as I played fanatic pacifists. Two Fallen Empires awoke, and started a War in Heaven. I got hit pretty bad by the bad ones, but managed to consolidate and keep alive. This was very close to the end date, so I researched some of the dangerous techs to see if I could get an end-game crisis to happen. Well, it did, but it didn’t end the war between the fallen empires. Some dimensional invaders did jump in on the bad Fallen Ones though. Then I got a machine uprising to keep me busy. I killed off the dimensional invaders after that, but apparently the game won’t end until the War in Heaven is concluded. Which can take a while, since apparently I need to conquer all their worlds. I’ve mopped up the fleets of the bad fallen empire, but taking over their planets takes som much time. And I can’t bombard since I’m a nice pacifist. I’ve decided to park that save and see if I return. I did get the Horizon Signal-event too, so I guess I’ve gotten enough achievements from that run.

I’ve started a new game as a hive mind empire, which feels like it plays a lot differently. Again, the new economy systems adds different flavor. Not having to deal with consumer goods or trade is different, but I have trouble getting enough jobs. Especially on one of the initial habitable worlds, which only had city districts. I didn’t prioritize military tech and build up a decent deterrent fleet early enough, though, so the fanatical xenophile bird-empire decided to attack me. After the first battle it looks like I am in good shape, but another fleet jumped in. I thought our military might was equal! I’ll reinforce with the fancy AI ship I found drifting. I knew I should have upgraded the station in that border system…

5077

I think it’s worth noting that even seemingly simple mods like “More Events” can drastically alter the vanilla balance. For example there is an event in said mod that spawns at 12.5k strength prethoryn fleet for you. I once found this as my second anomaly as a Devouring Swarm, and an 800 star galaxy game ended before 2300. The AI can get them, too. It’s a pretty rare event, but utterly game changing if it pops early.

And for the bigger mods like New Ship Classes you need to spike the AI difficulty to the max, because your ships will be orders of magnitude better than the AI that just designs at random and doesn’t even use the bonus slots added by the mod.

Even stuff like Guilli’s Planet Modifiers change the balance because it introduces a larger RNG element because some planets are soooooo much better than vanilla planets, and some of them are worse.

5078

You can convert districts if you find yourself in need of a specific one and full on district slots. Unless you just mean the planets had no Energy/Mineral/Agri district possibility, which sounds like a pretty massive bug.

5079

Yup. Only city districts. There was an odd factory that spawned, though.

5080

I think I am done with my hivemind game now. I fought back the space birds that attacked me, and upgraded my military to avoid further hostilities. I had a good time managing my empire, taking over a federation and generally doing stuff. Two fallen empires awoke and started another War in Heaven, which I stayed out of. I am ready for them if they try getting me involved. Sadly, the game can’t end while it goes on, even when I am not part of it. Not sure if I will bother slogging through ending it.

The same end game crisis as my last game occurred, The Unbidden. I had hoped to see something new. Their spawn point was connected to a natural wormhole right next to one of my gateways, so my three fleets beat them up within a month. Yay for the Defender of the Galaxy-perk.

I’ll see if I have the time for another game, maybe try a Machine Empire.

5081

I generated a bunch of empires with this, picked out the ones that I liked and made them fixed spawns in all my games.

5082

I’ve sunk about 30-40 hours since 2.2.7 and am still going strong; for reference, most earlier major patches could hold me for about 10 hours before I hit an unbearably boring portion of the mid-game or saw enough of the warts via bugs/bad design. While it remains far from perfect, and there are some very obvious design fixes (to me), the game is quite fun/captivating/engaging at this point.

Why it’s better:

  • Economic model - I prefer the new planet system far, far more than the old one. While there are very obvious decisions early on, around mid-game it does become more interesting to decide how and why to specialize certain planets. I suppose for some players it might just be obvious then, as well, but I find myself pausing and thinking over how I’m going to sequence upgrading a few generalized planets into something specialized and avoiding shortfalls in the interim. There are just enough variables across resources of production and those for pop productivity to be interesting to consider but not overwhelming.
  • AI - on max difficulty, max aggression with no advanced AI I find the vanilla AI reasonably challenging/aggressive. It isn’t perfect but it also pushes back enough to make the game interesting through 2400 (around then things seem to snowball out of control, still). I haven’t tried any AI mods yet - vanilla is enough while I achievement hunt.
  • Galaxy settings - at someone’s suggestion, I’ve started playing only medium and smaller galaxies, with default or lower numbers of planets. This helps reduce the amount of planet micro, which I recognize would be out of control if I had dozens and dozens (instead of around 10) planets by the end of game. Maybe bigger galaxies will be more interesting once there are better sector/planet controls, but for now smaller galaxies are just right, and never feel like a slog to either explore or especially conquer/manage.
  • Research settings - I set research to 2-3x normal cost. At 1x I get into repeatable techs by 2350-2400, well before the default game is ending, which is a bad (de)sign IMO. At 2-3x I won’t, and so it because more interesting to chase down a single line of advanced research (if lucky draw permits) as a gambit. This makes each tech (combat/economic) feel like a bigger improvement, given it was awhile since the last one, rather than them coming so quickly they all blur together; scavenging also feels weightier. I also suspect this helps aid the AI, given there is a longer period of the game reliant on lower tech econ buildings, where the AI is probably on more even footing in planet management. Probably also helps with upgrade spam in making the planet management system more tolerable.
  • Time settings - I set the various crises 100 years earlier than default, and game end 50 years after the last crisis. So far I consider the game end, the end. This prevents the awful grind of conquering the whole galaxy as I was tempted to in the earliest versions. I wish there were better victory / loss screens (a map replay, charts, etc), but this improvement is mostly one of my own discipline (or, boredom with the unstructured point past domination).
  • Empire settings - I’m carefully building my empires to try to mimic something I have in mind. I’m also saving the ones I play (even for a short trial run) and forcing them to spawn in future games, with at least 1-2 randoms still. Initially it doesn’t help much, but after a few rounds it makes a very big difference.
  • Varying play styles - at the least I’m finding the difference between standard and Gestalt empires very interesting. I’m hoping more of the ethics/civics/unity are further and further differentiated both to play and play against - originally it all felt near identical to me.

Where it could improve:

  • Migration / growth design - I dislike how migration is built into birth rate - I think the two should be separated. For birth rate, have it rely on all other factors already in besides migration. For migration, have it resemble an automated version of the resettle system on some ticker. At a minimum there should be some sort of toggle (using influence etc) to enable unemployed pops to move each period of time (frequency perhaps ethics/civics/tech determined), rather than having to use the manual system. The algorithm could be very simple; in fact, simple might be more interesting/challenging/approximating reality - i.e. rather than a complicated ideal sorting to all open slots, all unemployed or homeless pops move to the single planet with the most availability. This could creating challenging situations where a small unemployment problem on many planets becomes a large one on one attractive planet (at least until the next countdown). This would be the biggest/easiest quality of life change in game, and seems pretty obvious how to fix - I know they’re planning on it but I’m not sure why they feel the need to wait so long on it (as with many of the easy fixes that seem mechanically straight forward).
  • Migration UI - a band aid fix until then is that when I force resettle a pop, it should open with a ideal candidate planet already selected as the destination. Normally all I’m doing is clicking that second list to a planet with ample housing/jobs and repeating as I clear out the excesses.
  • Colony list UI - the sector list should have a toggle to show it as only planets, rather than sectors. I should be able to sort all colonies by a specific resource output, criminality, species, factions, etc. Just make this list much more useful.
  • Science ship UI - allow me to right click on open space, assist research, but then pop up a list of planets sorted by current science output to select from, rather than me doing this process in reverse from the mediocre sector list.
  • Planet development notifications - add many, many more planet notifications/events to ease the burden of managing them on my own if I choose. Make them toggleable. For example, alert me anytime a planet has only 1 free job or housing left after the most recent pop growth/migration, so I can work ahead of an upcoming problem.
  • Factions - this system mostly confers benefits, even on hard play settings, but I think it should also bring enormous challenges/risks. Across many plays and civics I’ve never had a rebellion, just some petty crime. Entire sectors peeling off if you fail to satisfy their dominant ethics should be a real risk that grows over time as the empire becomes wealthier - unless you invest accordingly in rebellion suppression (at a cost, obviously). Given how rich the risk of rebellion is in EU4 and CK2, and the ethics/faction/pop system already ripe for this, this feels like a major gap in the game that would help the mid/late game enormously.
  • Market - I find the market pretty lame, as well as the general surplus of most items past a certain point in the game. The market shouldn’t be available initially, should be higher cost at first, etc etc. It shouldn’t be available, period, for Devouring Swarms. Maybe make availability and pricing based on number of empires that have a positive opinion of you and how average positive/negative it is overall.
  • Game setup - allow me to designate default, built-in empires as must spawn without copy/pasting them. Allow me to setup specific forced spawn empires to be at differing settings (advanced, fallen empire, difficult bonuses, aggression, scaling, etc). For example, I’d love if I could force the victor of my last game to spawn as the advanced AI or fallen empires of my next game.
  • Save opposing random empire from in game - if I’m playing against a random empire that is really interesting, given me a button somewhere to save them for a future play through.
5083

Thanks so much for the detailed writeup! I’ve been off to other games since 2.2.2 or so, so I appreciate you giving a breakdown on how things are right now. Sounds like they’ve put in some work through 2.2.7 (as they should, they really upended the chess board with MegaCorp).

I’ll be off to Rome (figuratively speaking) starting Thursday, but sounds like I need to circle around back to Stellaris at some point.

5084

For those that still haven’t dove back in, I think the sweet spot will be at (or 1-2 minor patches after) the next DLC’s release - it sounds like it will be another story pack to allow for more mechanic refinement, rather than a complete rework like 2.2 was. That’s when I think at least a few of the gripes I mentioned (especially migration) should be a bit better. Plus AI, always AI (I’d like to be able to play without a staggering bonuses for the opponent!).

But, it’s good enough already to have it’s teeth deep in me!

5085

Good, I want to love this game again, but was struggling at 2.2. And thanks for the detailed write up.

5086

New Dev Diary about the Archaeology feature:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-145-archaeology.1170190/

More exploration stuff is always nice.