Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[MadMaxHellfire]

right when i finally decided it was time to go back to the game, now i need to wait months for alphamod to catch up again.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Kuattro]

First we almost see a massive war in the middle east, then we get a pandemic, and now it seems Paradox has managed to release a DLC that doesn't destroy your game, or makes your computer explode in a ball of fire, or any other disastrous mishap (it's early hours, some of those might very well be discovered later), and they even seem to have been able to actually improve the game's performance. Are we truly at the end of times?

Still horribly overpriced, still a pretty bland game, but baby steps I suppose.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

So it's not buggy at all?

Also, from what I remember from the dev diaries, they didn't reveal all of the origins pre-release. Could anyone list them all?

 

[Comte]

Did they fix the end game performance on this shit box game?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

or any other disastrous mishap

one of the origins after a few years in might give you a fleet 100 times stronger than antything else available at that time.
this i gathered by looking for the patch notes. i dread what i might discover actually looking for bugs.

 

[Space Satan]

Did they fix the end game performance on this shit box game?

seems so.

 

[Riel]

Did they fix the end game performance on this shit box game?

seems so.

Not really, they talked about a 40% efficiency increase, even if it is not an exaggeration it will still stutter.

 

[Delterius]

So it's not buggy at all?

Also, from what I remember from the dev diaries, they didn't reveal all of the origins pre-release. Could anyone list them all?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...is-dev-diary-160-origins-full-reveal.1279766/

 

[Average Manatee]

Played a bit:

- Performance is still pretty shit. I honestly don't see much of a difference. Medium size galaxy with all default options and its slow as hell unless I use ticks_per_turn which is still pretty slow. It's still nowhere near EU4 or CK2 levels of speed and smoothness. There's also now a thing where the game will lock up for about 10-20 seconds during the end year auto save on Jan 1st once you get past 50-75 years in.
- Origins looks kind of meh. The ones that have you start as part of a federation or with friendly empires look OK and interesting, basically a way to guarantee you have some decent friends (probably a very powerful option on harder difficulties since your federation members would get AI bonuses and love you). Stuff like Ringworld or habitat start is clearly going to be very imbalanced in some variation of: 1. OP, 2. OP if you can get migration treaties to get other pops, 3. Worthless.
- The new diplomat system works pretty well. Basically you need to choose between using your diplomats to improve relations with someone (for agreements like getting a migration treaty so you can settle new planets effectively), improving your federation cohesion which unlocks bonuses and centralization over time, or improving your position in the Galactic Senate. It does kind of make things too easy though I think. As long as you aren't a genocidal race the optimum strategy for everyone is going to be to explore, find everyone, immigrants welcome please turn my pop pie chart into an impossibly grotesque clusterfuck.
- Galactic Senate thing is just annoying really. There is literally around 100 possible laws to pass and virtually every god damned one of them is like "give +2.5% resource production, -1.5% pop happiness, +5% diplomatic power weighting per worker pop, -5% consumer goods required, +5% build cost". That's not 5 separate laws, that's what a single law looks like, a gigantic amount of bullshit that you just end up ignoring because the modifiers are so fucking small to begin with. And the thing is that even proposing a law costs ~200 influence, the most precious resource in the game. I feel that this whole thing is basically a noob/AI trap, you're always better off using that 200-300 influence to run an edict that gains you something like +20% mineral production for a decade and a half rather than taking a chance to pass a law that helps you a small amount while also helping the rest of the universe. It's also really slow to work and get laws through (you have to pass certain ones before more powerful versions unlock) to the point where you'll probably have won the game before you get to the serious stuff about major sanctions for not dotting your i's and crossing your t's properly on the bi-weekly TPS reports.
- The federation additions... didn't really add much. Basically you can eventually change the rules so you are always the leader and so your other federation members donate more fleet power to your federation fleet, but that's about the gist of it. It'd be way more interesting if some of those Galactic Senate laws were available for federations. There's some small bonuses you build up based on the type of federation but there's not really much options aside from building up that meter.
- The new economic/research model is FUCKED. Its absurdly easy to tech way, way faster than you used to be. You now have zero penalty as long as you build those bureaucracy buildings which are fairly cheap and efficient. You'll probably trivially be churning through repeatables in around 6 months to a year each by 100 years in while swatting down FEs without even trying.
- AI is still very much awful. I played on Commodore which has pretty substantial AI buffs and they fell behind so quickly it wasn't even funny. They still build way too much fleet early game and never develop their economy/tech well while also not using the fleet well because the AI can't fight a war effectively to save its life.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Played a bit:

- Performance is still pretty shit. I honestly don't see much of a difference. Medium size galaxy with all default options and its slow as hell unless I use ticks_per_turn which is still pretty slow. It's still nowhere near EU4 or CK2 levels of speed and smoothness. There's also now a thing where the game will lock up for about 10-20 seconds during the end year auto save on Jan 1st once you get past 50-75 years in.
- Origins looks kind of meh. The ones that have you start as part of a federation or with friendly empires look OK and interesting, basically a way to guarantee you have some decent friends (probably a very powerful option on harder difficulties since your federation members would get AI bonuses and love you). Stuff like Ringworld or habitat start is clearly going to be very imbalanced in some variation of: 1. OP, 2. OP if you can get migration treaties to get other pops, 3. Worthless.
- The new diplomat system works pretty well. Basically you need to choose between using your diplomats to improve relations with someone (for agreements like getting a migration treaty so you can settle new planets effectively), improving your federation cohesion which unlocks bonuses and centralization over time, or improving your position in the Galactic Senate. It does kind of make things too easy though I think. As long as you aren't a genocidal race the optimum strategy for everyone is going to be to explore, find everyone, immigrants welcome please turn my pop pie chart into an impossibly grotesque clusterfuck.
- Galactic Senate thing is just annoying really. There is literally around 100 possible laws to pass and virtually every god damned one of them is like "give +2.5% resource production, -1.5% pop happiness, +5% diplomatic power weighting per worker pop, -5% consumer goods required, +5% build cost". That's not 5 separate laws, that's what a single law looks like, a gigantic amount of bullshit that you just end up ignoring because the modifiers are so fucking small to begin with. And the thing is that even proposing a law costs ~200 influence, the most precious resource in the game. I feel that this whole thing is basically a noob/AI trap, you're always better off using that 200-300 influence to run an edict that gains you something like +20% mineral production for a decade and a half rather than taking a chance to pass a law that helps you a small amount while also helping the rest of the universe. It's also really slow to work and get laws through (you have to pass certain ones before more powerful versions unlock) to the point where you'll probably have won the game before you get to the serious stuff about major sanctions for not dotting your i's and crossing your t's properly on the bi-weekly TPS reports.
- The federation additions... didn't really add much. Basically you can eventually change the rules so you are always the leader and so your other federation members donate more fleet power to your federation fleet, but that's about the gist of it. It'd be way more interesting if some of those Galactic Senate laws were available for federations. There's some small bonuses you build up based on the type of federation but there's not really much options aside from building up that meter.
- The new economic/research model is FUCKED. Its absurdly easy to tech way, way faster than you used to be. You now have zero penalty as long as you build those bureaucracy buildings which are fairly cheap and efficient. You'll probably trivially be churning through repeatables in around 6 months to a year each by 100 years in while swatting down FEs without even trying.
- AI is still very much awful. I played on Commodore which has pretty substantial AI buffs and they fell behind so quickly it wasn't even funny. They still build way too much fleet early game and never develop their economy/tech well while also not using the fleet well because the AI can't fight a war effectively to save its life.

Hmm. What you say sounds plausible but its hard to trust the word of someone who advocates open borders.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, I'm definitely not an advocate. It basically nullifies your all of your racial traits (which are already fairly weak in Stellaris) since you end up with random crap AI races over at least 2/3rds of your climates. But the alternative is very lategame tech and expensive, slow terraforming or genemodding. Before this patch it was at least somewhat hard or chancy to get migrants, there would always be a good chance that you spawned among a bunch of ethically-opposed AIs that just wanted to kill you, but with Envoys to smooth over relations you can get migrations with pretty much anyone so its a no-brainer.

Ironically the ideal way is to have open borders but controlled migration in your empire so that the arctic races don't go full retard and decide to start displacing the arid races on the arid worlds.

 

[Riel]

I don't know, 3 federated space empires are certainly a strong start compared to just one but then you have to look at the future, you will be competing for the most basic of breathing room with your allies, your success means your allies are diminished or worse their success means you lose in favour of stupid AI. Because of this I think the two kinds of federation starts are actually very weak in the long run.

Syncretic evolution is on the other hand quite strong early game and costs you nothing in the long run, if you can slave your proles (xenophobe/authoritarian) empire and design them with strong bonuses for worker jobs (you can stack very strong race drawbacks that harm them nothing as slaves for hefty bonuses) you will really stack some juicy bonuses that will kick start your empire's economy very strongly. I know proles aren't as sexy as ring world, gaia worlds and what not but I think they are actually the strongest origin.

I designed my proles with serviles (base trait) + strong + industrious = +37.5% mineral production at the cost of Fleeting and Quarrelsom, both meanignles as worker slaves.

 

[Average Manatee]

The advantage of the federation is that its easy to get AIs to fight your wars for you, and the AIs you get from the origin are fully-powered AIs with populated homeworlds and powerful system resources. This means you can easily just declare war on someone and let the AIs 2v1 the first enemy AI you contact and snatch up enemy capitals which are, again, fully developed AI homeworlds that have 40+ pops, a way better deal than building colonies from scratch. And it scales to the highest difficulties since your AIs will get difficulty bonuses. Playing on the highest difficulty normally you have to turtle because AIs will have 15k fleets by 30 years in but can't research for shit, this way you get a 30k fleet to help you annex land. Eventually you can turn on them if you want, kick one and let the other help you annex it (can do this from day 1 I guess, getting yourself up to 100 pops by the time the rest of the universe has 40).

That said this is theory crafting, haven't tried it yet. Just wrapped up my Habitat start game.

The problem with Syncretic is often that robots are just too good to pass up since they add a separate pop growth meter, but when you get them then you'll have roughly 33% robots 33% serviles 33% rulers, ending up with too many workers and not enough specialists.

I will say that the mechanist start is complete trash. Starting 4 pops lower means less production for the first 40 or so years and a prosperous unification start will research robots before then. Also Prosperous Unification has an unmentioned capital bonus which is pretty strong.

 

[Average Manatee]

Can confirm that federations work pretty much as I stated. Just dogpile shit to get more pops and run away with the game. Do Hegemony and change the laws immediately to selection based on tech power (assuming you are playing on higher difficulties this is the one thing you can assuredly keep up on). Save up your influence, rival, have -claim cost from militarist and interstellar dominion, start sniping capitols. Past the first one or two you can start fighting 1v1 and roll over people. Your allies will give you a Federation Fleet for no maintenance that can do a lot of work too, and their personal fleets are nice for mopping up random systems that branch off from the planets.

Use the Humiliate CB to make back a bunch of the influence you used for claims. Honestly I'm fine with the allies going off into their own neck of the woods to claim land, not gonna complain as long as you have an open path through a bunch of other AIs. With your -claim cost bonuses you can claim an AI province far away from your borders to get ahead of them if you want. Unfortunately the AI empires you start with are completely random, ideally you get lucky and roll a megacorp that can put branch offices in your colonies.

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

1st time played until 400 and each day was still around 1/3 of a second, guess performance is better, still very dull mid game after all exploration is done, made worse by diplomatic corp I was playing, there simply isn't much to do in consolidation phase and planet micro is what it is, I'll reduce end game crisis date next time around to finally see what it's about. Funny thing Stellaris always makes me want to play Distant Worlds for some reason.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it should have more internal struggle, but even the mod "potent rebellion" set to its harshest doesn't make a difference. what's worse is that the code is already there but it's not used.

 

[Riel]

Can confirm that federations work pretty much as I stated. Just dogpile shit to get more pops and run away with the game. Do Hegemony and change the laws immediately to selection based on tech power (assuming you are playing on higher difficulties this is the one thing you can assuredly keep up on). Save up your influence, rival, have -claim cost from militarist and interstellar dominion, start sniping capitols. Past the first one or two you can start fighting 1v1 and roll over people. Your allies will give you a Federation Fleet for no maintenance that can do a lot of work too, and their personal fleets are nice for mopping up random systems that branch off from the planets.

Use the Humiliate CB to make back a bunch of the influence you used for claims. Honestly I'm fine with the allies going off into their own neck of the woods to claim land, not gonna complain as long as you have an open path through a bunch of other AIs. With your -claim cost bonuses you can claim an AI province far away from your borders to get ahead of them if you want. Unfortunately the AI empires you start with are completely random, ideally you get lucky and roll a megacorp that can put branch offices in your colonies.

You are probably right, I mean it does make a lot of sense specially in high difficulties with all those AI bonuses. The question though is: Why the hell would you want to play a game so the AI plays for you even if you win? I mean this is no PvP game, the only aim is to have fun isn't it? Winning is irrelevant.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can't really do it forever, the AIs will have their fleets ground down after a few wars. Which is when you annex them and invite new empires into your federation.

 

[Riel]

How do you annex them? You kick them out of the federation and DOW them?

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah. Don't annex the last one until you've invited someone else to make sure you keep the federation bonuses and fleet.

 

[Riel]

Not saying it doesn't work, but playing the rules in such a way is not my idea of fun in single player game. Honestly I don't see much difference between abusing the system like that and using console commands to cheat.

 

[Average Manatee]

Its not essential that you kick them and consume them, they'll just become mostly deadweight after a time. The AI invests way too much into its navy rather than its long term research and economic growth, and if you simultaneously force it to fight a lot while taking most of the spoils it will end up fairly weak.

 

[Average Manatee]

OK this was pretty funny. Started a game to go purely for Habitat spam. Just generally being nice to people and min-maxing alloys and influence.

I spawn immediately next to an AI who has the Hegemony origin. And 2 out of 3 of them are absolutely boxed into a corner. I butter them up with Envoys to avoid being attacked even though I have no fleet and am obviously squishing them into the corner. The leader of the federation went hyper aggressive on two neighbors and now has 140 pops where most of the rest of the galaxy has ~70 and is the second strongest after the fanatic purifier. You know, like I said Hegemonies should do.

Then when they are at peace, I join up. And I can immediately propose changing the succession laws to Technology, which immediately makes me the leader of the federation. This also gives me a federation fleet that is free upkeep, built by the other AIs of the federation for me to use, and which is stronger than most other empires.

I dunno what to do. I just wanted to play a nice, cozy, peaceful campaign, but its like the game wants me to conquer the galaxy.

Spoiler

Me and the boys in the bottom left. I'm red and the federation is purple.

 

[Mortmal]

No such thing as playing small and cozy , 2.6 is "i dont give a fuck about admin cap version," you have to pick everything . Just build a planet with admin building and you are good to go, in fact negative traits on your pop for admin cap is even mandatory now.Origin starts are very asymetrical, some being absurdly OP, the ringwolrd one yes , but even better the Fallen empire scion as it shower you with gifts and fleet.
Wish there was real different way to play the game, but its pure map painting more than ever now.Oh and machine empire are lame unless you cheese it by colonizing for 3 pops and Moving back the pop to your machine world, colonize-depopulate rince and repeat you won stellaris.