Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Still on phase 1 of repairing this broken ringworld.

The entire thing was completely trashed. I went and spent 6000+ energy credits for each of the 12 segments, only to realize that I still need to spend more and research yet another a rare tech before I can use this thing.

Looks pretty though.


As a side note, I conquered one of the fallen empires near me - an islolationist empire that had early on wiped several of my planets out and assassinated my leader for the high crime of letting my borders cross some invisible line that meant I was too close to them. There was plenty of space between us. What a bunch of assholes. They only had 50k of ships and surrendered easy enough.

Anyway, I had to conquer them in order to expand and beef up my military because another, far stronger empire has awakened...just a bit...

Lambchop, is that over 1M of ships?

Yes, Other Lambchop, and I can barely muster 300k right now. Also consider that the balance mod I am using halves the valuation of ship power from vanilla.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

awakened empires are retarded, they build 4x the speed for a part of the cost and suffer nothing for going over the fleet limit. they awaken when another player reaches 60-80k and suddenly they go to 500k.
the only way to prevent them is to know beforehand where they are, focus on building and sustaining an invincible fleet and attacking them before they awaken, or you're done for. if they spawn on the other side of the galaxy and awaken before you can kill them it's game over.
and i can't find a working mod which disables them at all,

 

[Average Manatee]

Seriously? I've never fought one (aside from one that awaked as I was invading it) but I just assumed they'd be able to build their more OP buildings and abuse their repeatable tech advantage.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

awakened empires are retarded, they build 4x the speed for a part of the cost and suffer nothing for going over the fleet limit. they awaken when another player reaches 60-80k and suddenly they go to 500k.
the only way to prevent them is to know beforehand where they are, focus on building and sustaining an invincible fleet and attacking them before they awaken, or you're done for. if they spawn on the other side of the galaxy and awaken before you can kill them it's game over.
and i can't find a working mod which disables them at all,

This one likes me so far. They are the kind of awakened empire that hates weak civs and since I have one of the largest militaries in the galaxy, they are leaving me alone.

Actually, it may be that they are just dumb because they are leaving everyone alone. They could conquer the entire galaxy with a force that size, but there they sit, doing nothing.

Not that I want them to do something, mind you. I just fended off the Swarm and 3 FREAKING WAVES OF UNBIDDEN (seriously, how many are there???) almost singlehandedly. (Which made me totally pissed off when one of the fallen empires declared themselves leader of the new "galaxy defense force", btw.) Oh, and I have an AI Rebelion brewing. Yeah...

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Almost done with the ringworld. Turns out there's another round of purchases and techs I need to research in order to actually have a livable environment. 288,000 energy credits are required in total, I think. That's 3 rounds of terraforming purchases (not to mention about 10000 days of construction time, and waiting while researching techs that each total over 100k research points.)

If this weren't a galaxy with a limited number of planets, I'd say it wasn't worth it. But being that it should give me about 12 gaia worlds in a single system - meaning that all of them can be under my control and none of that sector nonsense, yeah, it's totally worth it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Seriously? I've never fought one (aside from one that awaked as I was invading it) but I just assumed they'd be able to build their more OP buildings and abuse their repeatable tech advantage.

you must be mistaking, they don't awaken during war.

This one likes me so far. They are the kind of awakened empire that hates weak civs and since I have one of the largest militaries in the galaxy, they are leaving me alone.

in all my several games there's never been such thing as "awaken empire leaving alone anybody". they start attacking the nearest enemies, they win because they can't be stopped having x5-x6 the fleet power of the strongest empire, they conquer, because of techs their conquered planets won't ever rebel, they keep conquering and expanding until you die. it was game over since the awakening happened.
in theory you could forfeit your freedom and surrender before being attacked, but it's exactly like a game over because the awakened empire will keep expanding until all the galaxy has been conquered.

 

[Average Manatee]

Hmm, it's possible one empire awakened while I was invading another fallen empire. Wasn't really paying attention, I had conquered most of the galaxy and took all 4 of the FEs out within the span of a decade.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Not that I want them to do something, mind you. I just fended off the Swarm and 3 FREAKING WAVES OF UNBIDDEN (seriously, how many are there???) almost singlehandedly. (Which made me totally pissed off when one of the fallen empires declared themselves leader of the new "galaxy defense force", btw.) Oh, and I have an AI Rebelion brewing. Yeah...

How did you manage to get more than one end-game crisis? It looks like you've triggered all three, which should basically be almost impossible? IIRC.

 

[Preben]

There's also an awakened empire that sits and does nothing in my current game. Xenophiles who awoke in response of me thrashing another FE (in a defensive war). They declared war on an empire they didn't even share a border with and did absolutely nothing so they made a white peace. Ten years have passed since and they still sit with their hands stick in their asses despite having lots of potential targets. Looks like the Swedes forgot how code the AI properly again.

Becoming a vassal of an awakened FE isn't game over, as you can still find a way to eat them from within. Xenophiles are actually the worst overlord since they bar you from waging wars leaving you little room to expand. Fuck them.

 

[kris]

There's also an awakened empire that sits and does nothing in my current game. Xenophiles who awoke in response of me thrashing another FE (in a defensive war). They declared war on an empire they didn't even share a border with and did absolutely nothing so they made a white peace. Ten years have passed since and they still sit with their hands stick in their asses despite having lots of potential targets. Looks like the Swedes forgot how code the AI properly again.

they just coded them to be like Swedes.

 

[Preben]

Returning to that stupid FE that pick up fight with me. I beat them so hard that I researched three techs solely from debris of their wrecks. Among them is the Psi Jump Drive. I know that researching and using this stuff the normal way can trigger the Unbidden crisis, but what will happen now? Am I safe or will the Unbidden come to rape me? I didn't spend a second researching it in the research panel.

On an unrelated note, there are several issues that make Stellaris a mediocre experience despite clearly having perhaps the biggest potential among 4x games since Stars!. Among them is abysmal AI, poor optimization and very rudimentary internal empire management. I somehow think that a CK2 - like system of planetary governors, feuding families and imperial councils would be a perfect match for this game.

But the worst thing is how soulless this game is. I like the idea of procedurally generated empires but they lack any lore, a story of how they took to the stars and became what they are. Why, for example, a race is made of enslaving militaristic assholes? Did they evolve as such, or maybe they themselves were enslaved by some other assholes in the past like the Ur-Quan from Star Control? Why can't we have a little chitchat with them that will explain their culture and motivations? It isn't that hard to make such lore, even procedurally generated lore can be good. When I think of it, all Paradox games were severely lacking of any explanations, but it wasn't necessary since those were historical games and we know what Nazi Germany, Mongol Khorde or the Spanish Empire really were.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

in all my several games there's never been such thing as "awaken empire leaving alone anybody". they start attacking the nearest enemies, they win because they can't be stopped having x5-x6 the fleet power of the strongest empire, they conquer, because of techs their conquered planets won't ever rebel, they keep conquering and expanding until you die. it was game over since the awakening happened.
in theory you could forfeit your freedom and surrender before being attacked, but it's exactly like a game over because the awakened empire will keep expanding until all the galaxy has been conquered.

I honestly have no idea why they haven't attacked. It could be my military size, or it could be that the swarm and the unbidden alerted their behavior somehow. Another fallen empire just awoke, immediately declared war on an ally and I singlehandedly had to kick their teeth in - and also beat down half the galaxy because suddenly everyone decided it was time to declare war (probably had something to do with me killing the second of 4 fallen empires just before that).

I agree fallen empires are a little heavy-handed - as the swarm and the unbidden can be, but it depends on the empire's attitude. And personally, I find it an interesting challenge. The fact is, before the swarm, unbidden and the awakened empires, I had conquered half the galaxy and virtually no one had the power anymore to even slow me down. The first of the unawakened empires I killed had only 50k of ships.

tl;dr: whaever, it gives me a excuse to use on of the star-destroying "Sun Crushers" in my arsenal.

How did you manage to get more than one end-game crisis? It looks like you've triggered all three, which should basically be almost impossible? IIRC.

I have no idea. Probably because I meet the qualifications for all of them and defeated one after another. They didn't happen all at the same time or anything. And the AI Rebellion still hasn't reached it's boiling point yet. I'm just getting the story events leading up to it.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Returning to that stupid FE that pick up fight with me. I beat them so hard that I researched three techs solely from debris of their wrecks. Among them is the Psi Jump Drive. I know that researching and using this stuff the normal way can trigger the Unbidden crisis, but what will happen now? Am I safe or will the Unbidden come to rape me? I didn't spend a second researching it in the research panel.

The way it works is if you have the tech researched, you are now 90% more likely to have the unbidden in your game.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

But the worst thing is how soulless this game is. I like the idea of procedurally generated empires but they lack any lore, a story of how they took to the stars and became what they are. Why, for example, a race is made of enslaving militaristic assholes? Did they evolve as such, or maybe they themselves were enslaved by some other assholes in the past like the Ur-Quan from Star Control? Why can't we have a little chitchat with them that will explain their culture and motivations?

At this point, everyone is familiar with sci fi tropes. Would it really have made so much difference to write an entire backstory for each of the races when in the end, you're basically fighting the klingons etc? I know GalCiv went to the trouble of creating entire story campaigns in their games. I never played them and I own all 3 games.

I don't play games like this or Master Of Orion to find out about NPC race number 5 and their garbage-tier generic sci fi story, I play it to create my own race's story.

Besides, sometimes you can see a race's backstory. Why are they xenophobic assholes? Well, because you abducted them for generations, put microchips in their heads that made them kill themselves and almost caused their planet to decend into global thermonuclear war.

 

[Norfleet]

Besides, sometimes you can see a race's backstory. Why are they xenophobic assholes? Well, because you abducted them for generations, put microchips in their heads that made them kill themselves and almost caused their planet to decend into global thermonuclear war.

Sometimes you can see the backstory...sometimes you ARE the backstory.

It certainly would be funny if the game had an actual Dwarf Fortress-esque history to some of these races, and for some of the more recent arrivals, YOU are in the story...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

you get no techs from wrecks if not enough ships using them were destroyed. you need to actually do something.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Well, time for a reload. I'm playing the LEX mod.

Wow. I mean, I expected <a certain system> to be trouble, but man was I not prepared for the kind of trouble. The swarm, etc was nothing compared to this. I had the entire system fortified will over 1M of ships too.

Spoiler

I kind of suspected that that was what it would be, but I didn't think the mod maker would have the balls to do something like that.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

At least I finally got this finished:

Best 288000 energy I ever spent.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

you know, by the time i have that kind of income i've long conquered half the galaxy.

what do you use to unlock the hard fleet limit? last time i checked, vanilla had 1k and some of my mods raised the limit to 2k.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

you know, by the time i have that kind of income i've long conquered half the galaxy.

I have conquered more than half the galaxy already. I've also limited the planet count to 25%, so 12 gaia-class worlds in a single system is really kinda awesome even now. And I need all the worlds I can to generate the roughly 2M+ fleet I'm going to need to take down that awakened empire.

Though granted, the same effect could probably be achieved by simply conquering the other half of the galaxy, this is a lot less tedious and a lot more cool.

what do you use to unlock the hard fleet limit? last time i checked, vanilla had 1k and some of my mods raised the limit to 2k.

It's probably the Improved Space Battles: Balance mod - the mod I mentioned earlier that also gives me doomsday superweapons. It comes in two versions, one with only the weapons and one with balance changes that I quite like so far.

Speaking of, I'm constructing my own blackhole-powered death star as we speak.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

As I mentioned before, I'm also really liking the LEX mod. (Even though it's responsible for me having to backtrack 6 years of game-time.)

Basically, it takes the idea of the Leviathans DLC and creates a few superb scripted encounters as challenging late-game events with cool rewards.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=792416294

As an example, one of the rewards (which takes a lot to get mind you) is a unique 130K ship with advanced precursor tech.

 

[thesheeep]

The AI sucks so much that I was able to execute a deviously modified "Bonehead Maneuver" while being the "Heir to the Throne of the Kingdom of Idiots" on insane with just 1 planet and reverse Minbari'd the AI. BRICKBAT LINGERIE! I hope it's not too cryptic?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

It's probably the Improved Space Battles: Balance mod - the mod I mentioned earlier that also gives me doomsday superweapons. It comes in two versions, one with only the weapons and one with balance changes that I quite like so far.

same as me, but i haven't been playing for a while, it must have changed in the meantime.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

The AI sucks so much that I was able to execute a deviously modified "Bonehead Maneuver" while being the "Heir to the Throne of the Kingdom of Idiots" on insane with just 1 planet and reverse Minbari'd the AI. BRICKBAT LINGERIE! I hope it's not too cryptic?

zooty zoot-zoot!

 

[HAL 9000]

tip for keeping large galaxies manageable and with less late-game slowdown: set habitable worlds to 25% on world gen.

I did this on my most recent game. Keeps fleet sizes from ballooning out of control early on and, frankly, it makes the game more fun. I like having to actually fight to expand my empire. Worlds feel like something valuable and wars aren't bogged down as much by the warscore mechanic.

I did not play Stellaris for quite some time now, but I noticed while experimenting with EU4 that using 5-10x speedhack via CheatEngine helps with performance (for the first 200 years I could easily play on speed 5x with stable 60fps, when normally that would drop to like 30 and be very jumpy, in the endgame it still felt like 50fps instead of 10; mind it's about felt fps, because once you used speedhack on a game the fps counter should crush and display 0), even though it makes the animations run faster and the camera to move ridiculously fast, perhaps it's worth to give a shot of that solution with Stellaris. I don't have the game installed at the moment, so perhaps someone else will test it if they feel like it.

Obviously that "fix" should only work on PCs that vastly surpass the game's hardware requirements.