Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Fryjar]

So I'm looking at Endless Space 2 and Stellaris at the moment for a nice Space 4x. Any recommendations which one to get?
From what I heard combat in both games wasn't exactly stellar. Is this correct and if yes did any mods or dlcs since release fix it?

 

[lightbane]

Get E. Space 2. Way more imaginative and fun than Stellaris, no randomly generated races but instead unique civs, for not to mention you won't give your money to Paradox's scammers. Also, ES2 can be played base without installing 1d100+10 DLCs, unlike recent Paradox games.

Combat in both games is weak though, not sure about Stellaris, but ES2 is at least.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

So I'm looking at Endless Space 2 and Stellaris at the moment for a nice Space 4x. Any recommendations which one to get?
From what I heard combat in both games wasn't exactly stellar. Is this correct and if yes did any mods or dlcs since release fix it?

It depends on what you want really. If you want more of an oportunity to create your own story with your own race and everything else being customisable, Stellaris is good. If you want a strong theme with pre defined races that all inherently play differently from one another than Endless Space 2 is for you. Combat in both games is dog shit. Patches haven't fixed this but with Stellaris you have multiple mods to fix and improve on aspects of the game you don't like. It's inherently more customisable. But is also much blander because of that. I'd say Endless Space 2 is good for short fun games whereas if you want a more longform RP like narrative campaign that you control than Stellaris is for you.

 

[Nirvash]

Combat in stellaris is meh, combat in ES2 is a stupid joke.

How to sabotage the fuck out of the entire universe:

Why even?

Ai is 95% unable to use the new system, nearly all the planets are half developed, have average to low pop and still can't put them to work.
The only ones i have seen doing ok are the corporate jew civs as they spam the 10 job commerce building.

Also, the 20+ sizes planets are now... pointless? Gotta run out of jobs way before hitting the district limit cap.

I'm not sure about the robots civs being good or bad, building robots is way slower than organics, you have no trade income but you don't have to bother with consumer goods, the "mechanize world" perk is very nice for removing the mine/energy dis limit but doing so will cut the planet rare resource spots.
I feel my fast breeding slug people made way faster progress.

 

[Norfleet]

Getting free Ringworld means you can get Mega structures tech without wasting Ascension slot on Voidborne.

By the time you can get/build any Ringworlds, the game is over.

 

[Average Manatee]

Getting free Ringworld means you can get Mega structures tech without wasting Ascension slot on Voidborne.

By the time you can get/build any Ringworlds, the game is over.

More importantly, by the time you can actually populate any Ringworlds in Stellaris, we'll have space colonies IRL.

Voidborne might as well be a prerequisite to Ringworlds since the only way you'll populate them is by manually resettling hundreds of pops from dozens of habitats.

 

[IDtenT]

Getting free Ringworld means you can get Mega structures tech without wasting Ascension slot on Voidborne.

By the time you can get/build any Ringworlds, the game is over.

More importantly, by the time you can actually populate any Ringworlds in Stellaris, we'll have space colonies IRL.

Voidborne might as well be a prerequisite to Ringworlds since the only way you'll populate them is by manually resettling hundreds of pops from dozens of habitats.

I find that pops actually migrate quite successfully. In a game where I own say 50 colonies, a new colony gets filled up pretty quickly.

 

[IDtenT]

Speaking of end game, how do you guys transform the buildings on your planet? Unity becomes useless after all traditions are unlocked, research is just never-ending buffs... Just curious what's the strategy, because normally my strategy is just building one of each pretty much - depending on the planet.

 

[thesheeep]

Speaking of end game, how do you guys transform the buildings on your planet? Unity becomes useless after all traditions are unlocked, research is just never-ending buffs... Just curious what's the strategy, because normally my strategy is just building one of each pretty much - depending on the planet.

Usually, if you've reached that far into the end game, shouldn't you have beaten the <insert big evil thing> and are basically done?

 

[Average Manatee]

Speaking of end game, how do you guys transform the buildings on your planet? Unity becomes useless after all traditions are unlocked, research is just never-ending buffs... Just curious what's the strategy, because normally my strategy is just building one of each pretty much - depending on the planet.

Usually, if you've reached that far into the end game, shouldn't you have beaten the <insert big evil thing> and are basically done?

Nowadays the <big evil thing> only shows up around 2450 or so by default settings while you finish the tech tree around 2300-2350. I don't know what to do, game is so laggy its not worth playing.

 

[Space Satan]

Losing your fleet now is a problem. Alloys are not that easy to produce and when you lose a lot you often have to sell all your resources to but enough alloys. And specialization is needed - agri-worlds, industrial worlds etc. Building slots are very limited and you'll need civilian goods mega-factories because A LOT of stuff uses them

 

[Talby]

Bros, any tips for developing planets since the new patch? It seems like pop growth speed is a lot slower now, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or if I'm doing something wrong like not building enough farms or whatever. It seems like my colonies stagnate while my homeworld is the only planet that really develops.

 

[ThisNameIsFree]

Hive have insane development speed right now - absolutely op and ME the worst.
Science race traits seems pretty much useless because they are additive with "+science from jobs" tech and bonuses.
For standart races: Migration trait - seems strongest through most of the game. +15% food good for early/mid game. +25% trade and -10% housing - good mid/end game. Venerable decent pick as well. Didn't liked +10% growth - 2 points too costly, +migration a lot better, you can also boost growth speed by other ways easily.

Space Satan
Consumer goods hardly big deal thanks to consumer benefit trade policy. Trade scales very good during mid/end game, you can cover majority of your needs for consumer goods. To mitigate alloys drain - don't spam starbases and rush cruisers/battleships.

 

[baturinsky]

Speaking of end game, how do you guys transform the buildings on your planet? Unity becomes useless after all traditions are unlocked, research is just never-ending buffs... Just curious what's the strategy, because normally my strategy is just building one of each pretty much - depending on the planet.

There is a late game tech that allows using Unity for pretty powerful edicts. Such as +5 Influence/month. https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Edicts#Ambitions

 

[baturinsky]

Bros, any tips for developing planets since the new patch? It seems like pop growth speed is a lot slower now, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or if I'm doing something wrong like not building enough farms or whatever. It seems like my colonies stagnate while my homeworld is the only planet that really develops.

You can speed up head count growth by making robots on all planets.

 

[Nirvash]

Bros, any tips for developing planets since the new patch? It seems like pop growth speed is a lot slower now, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or if I'm doing something wrong like not building enough farms or whatever. It seems like my colonies stagnate while my homeworld is the only planet that really develops.

New colonies have half growth for some time.
If you go Engineered Evolution perk you get clone vats building for +33% growth.
Just resettle 5-10 people fast and get that and gene clinic on.
You can also use decisions on planets: Encourage Planetary Growth for 1000 food boosting +25% pop gro and Distribute Luxury Goods for +25% immigration

Specialize planets, also ring worlds/habitats can't produce minerals.

The faster way to fill worlds is the same as before, the "resettle manually" from full ones.

 

[Mortmal]

Bros, any tips for developing planets since the new patch? It seems like pop growth speed is a lot slower now, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or if I'm doing something wrong like not building enough farms or whatever. It seems like my colonies stagnate while my homeworld is the only planet that really develops.

You can speed up head count growth by making robots on all planets.

You can but robots are not so viable, organic pops with high growth are ton better . Plus the robot uprising can kick in later.A very strong option, is marauder allowing to subdue populations, its extremely strong as you can even sell pops on slave markets when you have too much.

 

[Average Manatee]

Robots for normal empires are basically the best pops available since they only require .5 housing and amenities, which doesn't increase for poor habitability. Machine Empires lose this, so they have the worst pops in the game that also takes minerals to grow while having the worst Amenities production.

Robot servitude and/or bio slaves (starting perk that lets you have a slave species) are the strongest builds, next to the Assimilation machine empire (which basically breaks all the rules of balance since its the Borg).

In terms of traits what you want to go for is just pure production. Production bonuses will outweigh habitability penalties or almost anything else. I don't think the growth or migration bonuses are really worthwhile, getting 1 free pop every 30 or 50 years isn't going to compare to your whole planets producing 15% more shit straight from the beginning. This is of course where the perk that starts you with slaves comes in handy, you can stack up to +35% mineral and energy production on those bad boys while specializing your ruling class for amenities/science.The next race to come under your control, turn into livestock and breed them to serve all your food needs (only .25 housing each).

 

[Space Satan]

Best game

Also about ship costs. One battleship now costs about 1200 alloys. So losing it is a huge blow

 

[Stefan Vujovic]

Game unplayable for me since 2.2. Stuttering even on normal speed from day 1. Tried disabling wormholes / gates, no go. Has there been any fixes / workarounds because i would like to try MegaCorp but camera stuttering makes me sick.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Game unplayable for me since 2.2. Stuttering even on normal speed from day 1. Tried disabling wormholes / gates, no go. Has there been any fixes / workarounds because i would like to try MegaCorp but camera stuttering makes me sick.

I haven't been getting stuttering, but yeah the game is slower. I'm using two or three performance-enhancing mods, barely doing a scratch.

Try this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1592074962&searchtext=reade

(I didn't try it yet, dunno if 2.2 solved the bug entirely)

Further suggestions:
Change galaxy to have less Habitable Planets.
No Gateways helps.
I generally play Small Galaxies and my game starts lagging in 2250.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I'm not gonna touch this game until they take another pass at Performance and AI. Performance got better in 2.2.2 but its still inferior to what it was before Megacorp, and we were promised better performance with the end of tiles.

I heard something in Stellaris' code is kind of fucked up, I don't remember - something about Threading and how the game aparently pretty much dumps both running the game and the graphics on the same thread. I'm hearing gringos with super-computers complaining about this game.

Its kind of glaring, considering how CKII Holy Fury runs great, even on my potato.

The AI is also completely braindead, even with Glavius' AI. I got attacked... ONCE, even through my starts usually have me as pretty damn weak. I recently played a game on Grand Admiral with Glavius' AI, and by 2250 I was stronger than all the Nomads and non-Fallen AIs. My fleet power was 1.5k so what the fuck.

Also, Anomaly science boosts are severely underpowered because they increased tech costs.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

One idea I saw to both play differently and play faster, is to play a Precursor game:

- No other civs, except maybe STL colonies of your race
- Only Fallen Empires and/or Nomads
- Grand Admiral dificulty
- Boost Fallen Empires and Crisis to the maximum
- Minimal Habitable Planets.

The idea is that you are the Precursor (or at least the latest ones) and you get to fight the Fallen Empires and Crises. After all, the AI is braindead anyway, might as well fight something that can fight back a bit.

Then again, the Crises are kinda bugged right now.

 

[Destroid]

Seems like the job micro is just as bad or worse than the tile micro since you need to click through more screens to get to the jobs :S

 

[ThisNameIsFree]

I'm not gonna touch this game until they take another pass at Performance and AI. Performance got better in 2.2.2 but its still inferior to what it was before Megacorp, and we were promised better performance with the end of tiles.

I heard something in Stellaris' code is kind of fucked up, I don't remember - something about Threading and how the game aparently pretty much dumps both running the game and the graphics on the same thread. I'm hearing gringos with super-computers complaining about this game.

Its kind of glaring, considering how CKII Holy Fury runs great, even on my potato.

The AI is also completely braindead, even with Glavius' AI. I got attacked... ONCE, even through my starts usually have me as pretty damn weak. I recently played a game on Grand Admiral with Glavius' AI, and by 2250 I was stronger than all the Nomads and non-Fallen AIs. My fleet power was 1.5k so what the fuck.

Also, Anomaly science boosts are severely underpowered because they increased tech costs.

Seems like Glavius and mods screwed you over. I play test branch with zero mods and in my current game by year 2260 i have 8k+ fleet, my neighbour with whom i at war have equivalent and some purifirer i see have superior fleet power. From my experience standart empire AI fall short quickly starting from 2300, and AI hive seems doing pretty well up to 2400. AI ME just a joke. If you want ultimate challenge try play as ME vs multiple AI hive.
My usual game config: 1000 systems, 11 empires, max FE, max marauders, grand admiral, progressive.