Where is this “suggest” button in diplomacy?!
Is diplomacy bugged? Sometimes I add conditions to a trade deal and when I execute it the conditions aren’t part of the deal
tgb123
1663
I’m having a funny relationship with this game. I enjoy it while I’m playing it, but I don’t get the “one more hour” feeling. With a game I really love like Endless Legend or XCOM, I’m thinking about it when not playing, and when I sit down at my desktop it calls to me. With Stellaris I start it up because I can’t particularly think of anything else to play.
I get a sense that this is a game that was generally playtested in multi-player, and most of the criticisms are from people like me who play it in single player.
Multi-player gives you narrative, tension, and diplomacy, and this would be a great single-player game if it had those things. Trouble is, a game of this length and complexity really does not appeal to me as a multi-player game.
It’s a pretty good game, and I am enjoying myself. But it shaped up as one of the greats, and at this point at least, they are well short of that mark.
DeepT
1665
Do you colonize every system you can or are you picky? I am being very picky even though there are a lot of planets available to colonize. My empire is a bit scattered with little bubbles of influence here and there, yet the AIs are all contiguous blobs. I also have not passed my core planet limit. Once I do, how does that work?
Also I just colonized a planet and while the ability is 80% and there are all sorts of happiness bonuses, my first pop is unhappy and it says its max happiness is 10%. Also a faction appeared as soon as I got to the planet. One option is to make them a vassal empire, but what does that do?
I’m somewhat picky about what I colonize, because it is a big resource sink and because the sector AI isn’t the greatest. Mostly the former. In the early stages, 350 minerals (250 with that one rare tech which is pretty cool) is a huge investment to put into a podunk planet or system. I also try to determine if that area of space would be better served by a Frontier Outpost. Finally, I’ve had a second planet neighboring my home system in both my games, but I may stop colonizing it as that will soon be in my territory anyways.
Again, in the early game, most of my resources and research are coming from extraplanetary stations. I haven’t made it to the later stages of the game yet, but I figure that is when planetary resources and infrastructure will really start to multiply.
Finally, I think my pickyness and the fact I haven’t made it too far into the game means my fairly happy pops have yet to become anything other than Loyalists.
I tried the Commonwealth; ie, the red laser lost humie colonists that become evil. And they’re so much more fun thanks to wormhole generators. They’re also the only other ‘faction’ to get a custom solar system at the start. For the space emper^H^H^H director!
DeepT
1668
I haven’t made it very far I do not think. I am thinking about starting a new game, but at this rate Ill get bored without accomplishing anything. I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing other than just expanding. This is a grand strategy game and I have no grand strategy. I am playing a pacifist empire and I do not know how I am supposed to win or anything.
Again i think the way to play Stellaris is to imagine being a German minor, or, maybe better yet, and Eastern European minor, in Europa Univeralis. More or less you’re going to have to come up with your own storylines to follow. If you can’t, won’t, don’t want to, or think there isn’t enough story on the skinny bones that are there (and which would be all fair enough criticisms) then Stellaris isn’t going to work.
I do think this feels like many of the multiplayer focused games, like Napoleon (March of Eagles?) or Senguko.
I am not sure I’ve seen a 4x game hold such a high position on the salesboard of Steam, I remember CIV 5 being up there for a bit, but this long?
I wonder how much they’ve sold so far…good news though, atleast for me.
I expand aggressively in the beginning. In fact my usual opening moves as the Commonwealth are:
- start surveying home system
- build second science ship
- send both science ships scouting at furthest range of wormhole tech
The strategy being to nab the colonizable systems that otherwise would of been nabbed by the AI, once the perimeter systems are gotten, i start focusing on my interior empire and grab all the low hanging fruit that is near your starting system. I started doing this once I realized that a system did not have to be in your territory to colonize (you don’t need a frontier outpost.)
Daily Update on The Stellaris UI Doesn’t Suck As Much As You Assumed:
- On the bottom right of the main screen there is a button that permanently toggles “ALT” view.
- The sector screen - click the sector to expand the list of planets. Click on the sector name to rename it.
My fun was in exploring, finding primitives, uplifting them, keeping up with the Joneses. Once you’ve seen all events it’s going to be dump the game till a good batch of DLC comes out like in CK2. Painting the map is boring.
There are a ton of bugs, which is starting to seriously put me off. Example with ethics drift:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ethics-divergence.930286/#post-21164217
This game is great. Bugs aside, the game has repeatedly surprised me as I work towards the enslavement of all sentient life. The galaxy is much more dynamic and alive than any space 4X I have ever played. The game has also done a pretty good job of pushing back as I expand, though I think there are definitely AI issues. And my vast empire is starting to feel many internal tensions; I am excited to see what happens next.
Definitely needs some interface love. I would like to see some customizable options put in the outliner, like maybe being able to have a list of “favourited” planets you can choose for quick access.
Pod
1675
Personally, I prefer sending out fighters. You just need to fly them through all of the systems and you’ll see which ones have planets. Then send the science ships to survey ONLY the planets you can live on. After you’ve surveyed all of the closest ones you can go back to surveying everything.
Also: Never research alien communication. Let them do it, or if you do it, wait until you’ve got like 15 and do them all at once. As far as I can tell there’s no advantage to talking to aliens at the start of the game, but many disadvantages (i.e. it wastes society research time, their borders are visible, and they can declare war on you now).
It’s actually a bit of a shame and counter-intuitive that ignoring aliens is the “best” strat. I think that highlights just how useless diplomacy is in this game. Which, pre-release, I was hoping would be it’s most successful area.
ps: If you want spoilers on the semi-broken fleet combat system:
combat
Personally I can live with the bugs, from the falsely displayed offers in diplomacy, missing embassies or almost game breaking never ending wars started by alliance members due to broken victory conditions.
What I cannot live with is that I cannot end the game. Two days in, conquered like 1/3 of the galaxy, most of the AI is at war and the game came to a stop.
Slow, normal, fast, fastest speed, everything is the same - slow, with seconds of delay where nothing happens. This is a small galaxy, with the default number of empires. One CPU core (i7-6700k) is fully utilized the others are almost idle.
Maybe I’m playing this game wrong and one shouldn’t go with the default number of empires, but then I wonder why do they offer such settings at all. Why let someone play a normal/medium let alone small map If you cannot realistically finish it.
I remember with Sins of a Solar Empire, someone found that a fleet of really cheap scouts could take out a leveled-up capital ship because of some balancing factors built into the engine (iirc, at that time scouts did 175% damage against cap ships, while cap ships only did around 60% against them). “Scout Swarm” was a viable tactic to win games with until a patch hit later on and Ironclad nerfed the matchup advantage.
In a defensive war, only the “main defender” can offer a peace agreement. Who the heck is the “main defender” and how are they so designated?
I really not finding the game all that fun. It has lots of wonderful features, and some rather innovative design decision. I like the concept of sectors, but the implementation is so awful that I feel when I hand over a nicely developed planet to the sector AI, I’m been forced to give my children to child protective services to be placed with to drug addicted foster family. The alternative is to give the newborn child to the foster service knowing that they’ll never learn to read.
On the other hand when I see the victory conditions requiring colonizing 200 planets and I have less than 20. I don’t know what else to do.
It would be nice if the AI did something like declare war, so I guess since I’m bored I’ll attack some independent emperor eventhough I have no need for more resources.
JoshoB
1680
I guess it depends on setup. I’m playing a militaristic race in a smallish galaxy with 11 opponents and it didn’t take long before a neighbour declared war on me, destroyed my defence fleet, and began bombing my homeworld. I’ve got some pretty good planetary defences up, so it’s taking forever for him to punch through, but I was surprised by this: it’s my first run through the game and I’m playing on one of the lower difficulties! Very pleased with this so far.
So if the AI seems passive: perhaps it’s because of what picks you gave your faction at the start of the game and/or the size of the galaxy?
