Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Preben]

In both cases they were Turkics also. Solution? Add Turkic pops that can spontaneously take over government.

IIRC Egyptian Mamelukes were mostly Circassians and Georgians.
There were also Slavic slave-soldiers known as Saqaliba who carved their own states in Al-Andasus.

But the ethnicity meant actually jack shit in the context of the era. It was the slave status that mattered.

 

[FreeKaner]

In both cases they were Turkics also. Solution? Add Turkic pops that can spontaneously take over government.

IIRC Egyptian Mamelukes were mostly Circassians and Georgians.
There were also Slavic slave-soldiers known as Saqaliba who carved their own states in Al-Andasus.

But the ethnicity meant actually jack shit in the context of the era. It was the slave status that mattered.

Depends on the era for Mamelukes. Originally they were Turkics, that is when they took over the government. Eventually towards end of Mameluke state a larger part of them came to be Circassians, although they were still Turkish speakers and used Turkish names. After Ottomans annexed Mameluke state and annihilated most of Mamelukes, they were drawn from mostly Circassians. However those adopted the Ottoman elite culture through there.

Yeah the ethnicity didn't matter, it is the broader class, religion and language. As is was generally the case in this time before nationalism.

 

[Prime Junta]

In both cases they were Turkics also. Solution? Add Turkic pops that can spontaneously take over government.

Are you saying that Identity Evropa is right?

 

[FreeKaner]

In both cases they were Turkics also. Solution? Add Turkic pops that can spontaneously take over government.

Are you saying that Identity Evropa is right?

What did they not account for is that a ridiculous amount of Europeans turned Turk. Meaning Turk is a state of mind. Reading primary sources for travellers to Ottoman empire in 15th through 17th centuries, it is like half the people they meet are renegades. Half of that is Italians.

I wish they could do something like this in Stellaris actually, where you could attract and assimilate pops via some sort of civic or trait. This would be different than migration treaties, as it would not require a treaty. It would also be different in that they would be absorbed into ruling factions. It would also be mainly specialists and rulers.

The game in general requires more ways to manipulate pops. However they only recently changed how pops work so they'll probably add more features regarding them. This game has a lot of potential still, to be space victoria 2.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I returned to the game after a looong break. I enjoyed it for the most part... but man, some mechanics are weird.
So now you can colonize 0% nuclear wasteland and you will get -25% production & hapiness punishment. And pops will need 200% food, goods and amenity. That's... pretty good for a death world.
"This isn't so bad... I just need more food and video games to forget about the radiation!".

Habitable planets should be a bigger deal and a good reason for a war.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Habitable planets should be a bigger deal and a good reason for a war.

One should always reduce both hyperlane paths and habitable planets to minimum when first generating your galaxy.

Limiting hyperlanes creates chokepoints that force war for expansion and make pure defense station upgrade builds actually useful.

Limiting habitable planets helps keep the game running smooth and prevents empire management from becoming a chore. It also helps keep the "value" of a habitable planet high to the player.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I find the deafault hyperlanes to be okay. I usually have 3 gates to the empire. But then again, I've never played an expansionist. Quite the opposite.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i play with .75 lanes and max planets on 1000 spiral, because using guilli's planet modifiers it becomes much harder to get a rock for a focused colony. not .50 lanes because then everything is just a long line. the game needs custom maps.
habitability should be completely changed into barren/molten/frozen/gas/earthlike preferability. i need my aliens to be alien.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I'm irrationally annoyed by the existence of the Global Pacifier. I know, they wanted a World Cracker for pacifist, but this is just the laziest approach possible.

 

[chuft]

There’s an argument to be made that terraforming mechanics destroy the strategic value of good planets for your species, since everything is potentially a good planet. Why fight over that earthlike planet if you could just make one of your crappy planets just as good as that juicy one in alien space. It makes maps more generic and good planets less precious. Gene modification for environments makes it even worse. Everyone can live everywhere.

Ideally you’d want to let lava people into your empire to put those lava planets to good use.

Of course, if species’ environment preferences were really important, and planets couldn’t be changed, it would undermine the “melting pot” societies that the game seems to be pushing.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

they both should be on the same level as megastructures, while megastructures should be on their actual level.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Everyone can live everywhere.

the main problem is the habitability stat.

you just increase it and magically you can breathe poison gas or survive a frozen wasteland.

I understand that it's an abstraction, but it's also an oversimplification.

It'd be better if you had to research habitats and construct them for non-native species and that said species wouldn't ever be able to achieve any sort of habitability without constructing these limited complexes unless they had been either genetically or mechanically engineered to do so.

 

[Norfleet]

So now you can colonize 0% nuclear wasteland and you will get -25% production & hapiness punishment. And pops will need 200% food, goods and amenity. That's... pretty good for a death world.
"This isn't so bad... I just need more food and video games to forget about the radiation!".

This sounds like exactly how California works: A hellscape devoid of life where everyone would otherwise naturally die, made sustainable and allowing people to delude themselves into believing this is some kind of paradise rather than a hellscape because of technolergy.

Compare to SEIV which went full weird, even if it had some scientifically-implausible weirdness like aliens who were native to gas planets and "Oxygen Gas Planets", whatever the fuck that is.

It's a planet where everything violently combusts into flames the moment it's exposed to atmosphere.

 

[Average Manatee]

Everyone can live everywhere.

the main problem is the habitability stat.

you just increase it and magically you can breathe poison gas or survive a frozen wasteland.

It's not even that. The issue is that habitability is calibrated to make 0% habitability roughly a 0% RoI (your costs equal the production, the planet produces nothing). But as soon as you add production bonuses even 0% habitability is just fine. You generally start with some kind of resource production bonus and will probably start researching +20% to something in your first few tech. Furthermore pop growth is static across all planets for no good reason. 0% hab planets grow pops just as well as 100%, and lots of them will migrate to the 100% planet anyway where they perform better. The only downside is a very small initial investment in colony ships that is quickly paid back.

By the late game even if you could find a 0% habitability planet with all the bonuses you'll have, it would still produce 2/3rds as much as a 100% habitability just because the costs are static while production hits 200-300%.

 

[Olinser]

Everyone can live everywhere.

the main problem is the habitability stat.

you just increase it and magically you can breathe poison gas or survive a frozen wasteland.

I understand that it's an abstraction, but it's also an oversimplification.

It'd be better if you had to research habitats and construct them for non-native species and that said species wouldn't ever be able to achieve any sort of habitability without constructing these limited complexes unless they had been either genetically or mechanically engineered to do so.

That's basically what it used to be. You were only able to colonize planets of your base type, and had to research the others. You were unable to settle any species below a specific % habitability (I think it was 40%?) and population's max happiness was their habitability for the planet they were on, directly affecting their productivity.

Now habitability is totally irrelevant because your species are so superior to AI species and the penalties for habitability are so small you just colonize every planet in reach regardless of habitability. Sure you'll research the +habitability techs, but they aren't a very big deal.

 

[coldcrow]

So, in effect, MoO3, but without the horrible UI and communication towards the player.

 

[chuft]

I have at least one high gravity planet in my empire and it affects habitability negatively.

 

[chuft]

This is interesting. Pirate Fleets suppress piracy.

 

[Norfleet]

They don't like competition. Once you have an actual pirate fleet, they start shutting out the competing small-fry pirates.

 

[Norfleet]

Furthermore pop growth is static across all planets for no good reason. 0% hab planets grow pops just as well as 100%, and lots of them will migrate to the 100% planet anyway where they perform better. The only downside is a very small initial investment in colony ships that is quickly paid back.

Yes, you'd think that planets which are less habitable would result in more pop growth because people can't go outside, same as happens in real life.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Just opened a L gate for the second time. The first time it was some nanite people who said thanks. This time it was pissed off 53K nanite fleets. Since my combined fleet strength is around 12K and things are not going well.

On the plus side my empire was degenerating into a degenerate race mixing cesspool of half-breed lizards and bugs. Things are better this way.

Speaking of half-breeds how do I get the caravaners to stop date raping my women?

 

[Space Satan]

DD sector and automation

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

First of all I want us to celebrate that today is the 3-year anniversary of Stellaris. Stellaris is such a great game that has changed a lot since its release. Since 1.0 we’ve added Civics, Traditions, Ascension Perks, Fallen Empires, Hive Minds, Machine Empires, planet killers, starbases and much much more.

When we started developing Stellaris, I don’t think we could ever foresee what Stellaris would become this many years later. It’s really become its own thing and it’s really fun to see how many new players – many of who may never have played any of our other games, or any other strategy game for that matter – have found their way to Stellaris. Stellaris is such a great game for telling your own stories and in general just enjoying the awesomeness of space.

A big thanks to our awesome community for making this game even better!

Alright, let’s move on to talking about sectors & designations. This will be a followup to Dev Diary #142 and I will try to outline what we’ve done so far.

Designations
Previously planets would automatically assume a role depending on what was built on it. It’s now possible to set this manually, if you wish to. Having played with this myself, I must say it feels pretty great to be able to make that choice directly yourself.

Automation
A new neat feature is that it’s now possible to decide which planets, regardless if they are in a sector or not, should be automated. Automated planets will build things according to a certain build order, which is set up per designation. For example:

• Build all district types of its designation
• Build the buildings following the build order of its designation
• Remove Blockers
• Repair Buildings
• Upgrade all buildings

This will happen every time it has less than 3 open job slots.

If crime is high this will trigger a crisis that will build a Precinct House, ignoring the normal build order.

If a building in the build order can not be build, e.g. because you lack the technology, it will be skipped.

Automation will try to use its own Sector Stockpile if possible, otherwise it will use the Shared Stockpile. You can read more about the sector stockpiles further down in the dev diary.

Because we deemed the risk to be too high right now, AI empires will not manually set designations or use the build orders. Our goal is for that to be improved in later updates, however, and when it’s had more time in the cooker we will be deploying those changes.

Sectors
In the new system, sectors will be created by making a planet a Sector Capital. This will immediately form the sector and include all systems within 4 jumps of the Sector Capital. We originally had thought to make the range 6 jumps, but we feel like 4 jumps feels better.

It becomes very easy to create a new sector. Simply click the flag on the galaxy to open the planet view.

In the planet view we have a create sector button. Once clicked, it will immediately create the sector.

Boom! Sector created. It’s just as easy to delete the sector as it is to create a new one. The sector capital is also visible on the map with its own icon.
Sectors now also have a Shared Stockpile, in addition to their Local Stockpiles. It is possible to set monthly subsidies for your Shared Stockpile. This should make it a lot easier to manage larger empires.

What remains to do
We didn’t want to try to do too many things at once, so we will be going with the safer option of deploying these changes in increments.

Left to do:

• Have AI empires set manual designations
• Have AI empires use build orders for designations
• Allow players to have control over the build orders for the different designations
• Add nudging of systems between sectors
• Allow you to create new sectors from within a sector
• Display non-sector systems as a “Frontier Space” sector
• Rework Governor traits to be more widely applicable
• Look into automation for construction ships

When we’ve looked into more of these things we may want to start exploring ideas like adding more mechanics to “Frontier Space” or if we can tie faction to sectors somehow. Those are only some thoughts we’ve had though, and it's too early to say if that will come to fruition or not.

---

That is all we had to share for this week’s dev diary. I’m really looking forward to next week’s dev diary, when I’ll be sharing something awesome.

Thanks again to all of our community, and let’s look forward to the next 3 years!

 

[Olinser]

Just opened a L gate for the second time. The first time it was some nanite people who said thanks. This time it was pissed off 53K nanite fleets. Since my combined fleet strength is around 12K and things are not going well.

On the plus side my empire was degenerating into a degenerate race mixing cesspool of half-breed lizards and bugs. Things are better this way.

Speaking of half-breeds how do I get the caravaners to stop date raping my women?

Those 2 are actually the best possible L-Gates. As soon as you destroy the hub on their home system they all disappear, you get the ability to terraform nanite worlds, and as long as you colonized the cluster, there are always SIXTEEN nanite worlds in the cluster to terraform very cheaply (they only cost 1k energy each) that can all be put in 1 sector as long as you colonize the first system in the right spot.

The other 2 are worthless. You either get a single entity that can be either a governor or a single ship and isn't particularly better than a normal one, or you get small groups of random weak dragons that settle by L-Gates and either give small bonus when you kill them or can be tamed for weak ships.

 

[Norfleet]

Speaking of half-breeds how do I get the caravaners to stop date raping my women?

Build a wall. When the Caraveneers send their people, they aren't sending their best. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But you can't take that chance. That is why you must build a wall.

 

[Plaguecrafter]

I am yet to play this game. Any tips for new players? I'm familiar with the RTS genre.