Ventessel
Literate
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2017
- Messages
- 36
So, I played a game today and it went fairly well. I started off easy: 50 star map, average number of opponents (turned out to be 3), AI set to dynamic "relaxed", with no production bonuses. I was Human.
I'll break this into two posts, one of my overall impressions fo the first game and another with some specific points I think could bear improvement (mostly UI related, some gameplay).
The game went fairly smoothly, I scouted aggressively and then scrapped my fleet. Not having to build colony ships was interesting, and honestly very enjoyable. I made expansion flexible and added an interesting layer when deciding where to move population. I enjoyed peace for a while with the Zero to my south west, and later on ran into the Reptar to my north west. Hostilities broke out with both roughly simultaneously, but using a combination of frigate gunboats and a small handful of shielded destroyers I was able to take one colony (a fertile artifacts world!) from the Zero and they sued for peace. Shortly thereafter the Reptar gave up after some inconclusive maneuvering (I don't think we ever actually fought, just moved fleets around some border worlds and maybe skirmished).
After that, the game was mostly just 200 turns of development and research. I think I had a moderate material advantage over both AI, and my industrial base grew exponentially. I stopped the game at 2572 after bombing the last Reptar colony into the stone age (they declared war, citing a need for more colonies). The Zero still exist, with a dozen or so colonies, but I have about 3 times that number and my industrial base is probably an order of magnitude larger (for reference, their homeworld has 703 factories and my average colony has something like 2000). The compounded tech advantage means that I think my fleets would be able to easily roll them up, if the Reptar were any indicator.
Given that I played on Relaxed, and a small map, I'm not too surprised at this outcome. For an intro game, it was very fun. I will try the next game on a larger galaxy with tougher settings, and try out the other playable species.
A few things I especially enjoyed:
1. The system of colony production allocation, and the option to automatically order terraforming and factory upgrades from the research screen.
2. The system of colonization, in particular the ability to order from multiple sources simultaneously. This is GREAT user-focused design, and I wish that whatever masochistic bastard at Paradox is making the Stellaris UI would take note of this kind of thing.
3. The AI was wonderful, and the ability to both auto resolve battles and to switch CPU control on and off during tactical combat was a huge relief.
I'll break this into two posts, one of my overall impressions fo the first game and another with some specific points I think could bear improvement (mostly UI related, some gameplay).
The game went fairly smoothly, I scouted aggressively and then scrapped my fleet. Not having to build colony ships was interesting, and honestly very enjoyable. I made expansion flexible and added an interesting layer when deciding where to move population. I enjoyed peace for a while with the Zero to my south west, and later on ran into the Reptar to my north west. Hostilities broke out with both roughly simultaneously, but using a combination of frigate gunboats and a small handful of shielded destroyers I was able to take one colony (a fertile artifacts world!) from the Zero and they sued for peace. Shortly thereafter the Reptar gave up after some inconclusive maneuvering (I don't think we ever actually fought, just moved fleets around some border worlds and maybe skirmished).
After that, the game was mostly just 200 turns of development and research. I think I had a moderate material advantage over both AI, and my industrial base grew exponentially. I stopped the game at 2572 after bombing the last Reptar colony into the stone age (they declared war, citing a need for more colonies). The Zero still exist, with a dozen or so colonies, but I have about 3 times that number and my industrial base is probably an order of magnitude larger (for reference, their homeworld has 703 factories and my average colony has something like 2000). The compounded tech advantage means that I think my fleets would be able to easily roll them up, if the Reptar were any indicator.
Given that I played on Relaxed, and a small map, I'm not too surprised at this outcome. For an intro game, it was very fun. I will try the next game on a larger galaxy with tougher settings, and try out the other playable species.
A few things I especially enjoyed:
1. The system of colony production allocation, and the option to automatically order terraforming and factory upgrades from the research screen.
2. The system of colonization, in particular the ability to order from multiple sources simultaneously. This is GREAT user-focused design, and I wish that whatever masochistic bastard at Paradox is making the Stellaris UI would take note of this kind of thing.
3. The AI was wonderful, and the ability to both auto resolve battles and to switch CPU control on and off during tactical combat was a huge relief.