You have books for a history lesson on the world of Dominions? Do tell.
For me part of the appeal of games like Dominions, or the Paradox grand strategy games, are all of the “ingredients” even if it makes a weird tasting mess. There just isn’t anything else out there like it. I’m firmly hoping Stellaris does have a bunch of crazy stuff in it.
Honest question, what would be crazy stuff? I mean I am just hoping it’s deep, has a lot of options for starting, a sort of slow and gradual experience similar to their other games now with a pinch of space in it and an imagined background… still expecting background though.
This sounds crazy ambitious. Like the 4X equivalent of Starcitizen. I’ve already accepted the AI will suffer as a result. What I am mainly hoping for is reasonable PVP multiplayer to keep me interested long term. In EU4 for instance PVP is rather silly as it is mostly a question of ganging up on players or exploiting (truce breaks for instance). EU4 multiplayer becomes much more interesting when you use house rules of some sort. I just hope Stellaris doesn’t need house rules or lets the players implement them in game. The problem in my view is single player and multiplayer require fairly different rules to be at their best. Paradox hasn’t shown much willingness to implement specific multiplayer rules or options.
Lack of customization in game is probably the weak spot in Paradox games which makes sense since they are so heavily tied to history. I’m wondering if this game will finally break out in this regard. If you can compare the multitude of options in say Civ5 to EU4 you realize just how locked in place EU4 is. Given how Stellaris seems to have a Civ like start I wonder how heavily you can customize before game start. Randomness seems a big factor in Stellaris which makes me hope it also has more flexibility in regards to customization.
I used “crazy stuff” as a synonym for Alstein’s “too many ingredients in the soup.” Assuming I understood what Alstein meant, the crazy stuff/ingredients would be all of the details they’re known for putting in their grand strategy games. Everything mentioned in the RPS article, plus whatever else Paradox has planned. Like you, I’m also hoping it is deep, has a lot of options for starting, and a gradual experience.
Too many ingredients to me means too many things that don’t add to the design and take away from depth. Often combined with an inability for the AI to handle those things.
Ship designing in particular is raising alarm bells. Unless this game is fun as a pure comp stomp, it’s going to need some coherent design.
Very exciting possibilities, but it’s true as others have already said – there’s something jarring about the mix of small bore decisions with the large canvas. Designing ships and placing planetary sites? I’ll be optimistic and hope they have a mechanic for making this work.
The biggest thing for me, though, is the effort to make the later parts of a game compelling. So many of these games are lots of fun til the territory has been snapped up… and then it’s a boring slog. Do they have the answer? I guess it depends upon the variety of twists. I would think that this aspect of the game would be a real challenge to do well.
Based on how GalCiv does building placement stuff, the equation for perfection is so trivially it seems rather pointless. Honestly a radio button for tech/money/ships could replace the GalCiv system and no one would notice. Given the way they changed/added buildings/development in EU4 I have 0 hype for their building placement stuff. I expect it to be even more pointless than GalCiv. But hey, maybe they finally got non-combat related gameplay right? Maybe.
Paradox also rarely has an answer for the boring slog. If you are any good at dealing with their systems, which aren’t too hard to master, the only reason they last longer than most 4x games is because the world is so large that there is a lot of map to paint. The actual systems they have like overextension and coalitions are famously arbitrary and terrible and the AI cheats amazingly hard with AE reduction and manpower recovery bonuses. Especially lucky nations. The endgame boss nations of EU4 always tend to be France/Austria/Ottomans/Russia/PLC/Spain, because they are buffed with powerful history based event chains and land acquisition decisions plus Lucky Nations. The same thing goes for Greater Germany, China, France, and Great Britain in Vicky2. The game railroads them to power. So I have little faith that Paradox can resolve the endgame issues. Their Catastrophe system is just a slight remix of Sunset Invasion/Mongol Invasion from CK2 IMO. But I guess we will see in February.
Got it. Yeah I enjoy Paradox games a lot, although I could care less if the princess I am looking at wasn’t German but actually from some other small country. This might relieve them of some of that minute detail historical gamers love but maybe still give them a chance to keep up that depth other companies mostly ignore. I’m excited to see what they without restraints but still, hopefully, with that attention to detail.
If they do too much, it could be a problem… but they in their niche, I still think Paradox just dives right in where so many others just sort of scratch the surface when it comes to detail. I also hate that all of them are always so concerned about mainstream quick play when a good game from Paradox can last months.
CK and EU to me about the fact you can’t really take all the map… but if you try it’s kind of fun to watch it fall apart bit by bit and start again from what you have left.
Hey folks, the PR person I’m in touch with said the dev team could take some questions for a written Q&A (sadly they’re too busy to come on a podcast, apparently), so what questions did y’all have? I’ll put together the best ones I get and send 'em over. ;)
That sounds great! A few off the top of my head:
I can’t remember if random research trees are in, are they? If so, to what degree? Do different types of species have unique research options, maybe?
Obviously, a release window would be nice. I know it’s late-alpha but that means different things to different companies. When will we get to see some gameplay footage? More screenshots would be welcome, even!
How serious are they about the diplomacy and making the AI races seem like they have actual goals?
Will the AI properly react to major game changer scenarios?
IE: We are all involved in a typical 4x galactic war. Then some scientist / explorer that disappeared in the early game really was opening a gate to let the elder gods in. He has gone and done that, it’s too late to stop that part of the plan. Now the deal is, if everyone cooperates there is a chance that we can beat them otherwise we are all doomed.
Now will the AI who 1 turn before had definite enemies and whatnot make peace and begin to work together or will the continue on as before and just view the elder gods as another enemy? It would be most unsatisfying if there was no real change of plan to react to whatever cosmic event happened (if any) in the end game.
Will there be ringworlds?
I’d mostly be interested in questions regarding the AI and multiplayer. With such an open ended game how can they keep the AI competitive? Is the AI going to cheat like crazy or did they design certain mechanics with the AI in mind? How will they avoid flaws which wreck the AI competitiveness? Is the game going to be better for PVP multiplayer than EU4 or CK2 (both of which can’t be played seriously without major house rules)? How long will an average full game last at various playing speeds? How asymmetric will various play throughs be? Will there be real victory or just doing your best when time runs out as in other time limited Paradox games?
Will the game also make me coffee? Give me a massage?
I’m sure there’s a button in the options to ensure all endings are happy.
To expand on pg, one of my least favorite elements in a lot of strategy games is that the AI plays an entirely different game, due to free resources/units/tech. Wrecking their infrastructure/supply chain (to me an awesome and time-honored concept) is meaningless, since they get all their stuff automatically, anyway.
With how vast and complex they seem to imply the game will be, I have to imagine programming an AI that can “play it right” will be difficult (even Stardock, with their famously well-made AIs, has trouble even getting GC3’s computer players to lay down buildings in anything but a random vomit of insensibility). Does the team think they can do it, or will it just be “cheaty”? Which isn’t meant as a slur–sometimes, to give players a reasonable challenge, it’s the best option available. I’m just curious if it’s the one they think they’ll wind up with.
How can Stardock not get something as simple as the building system to work for the AI? From what I remember in GalCiv2, it wasn’t exactly complex.
New one features things like adjacency bonuses, plus special tiles that often provide one kind of bonus to buildings on them and another kind to buildings next door. Plus planet-wide bonuses set at time of settlement (e.g., +X% to production-type-A). It’s honestly pretty complex, on the whole–for a 4X of course.
I think I read about some similar ploppable complexity for Stellaris, so of course I get a little worried ;)