Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[L'ennui]

That's turn-based, though. Maybe the real-time flow of Paradox games could be broken down into distinct "turns" of a set duration – say, a month passes in real-time, you can input new commands, hit "next turn" and the game unfolds for another month or something. That would totally change how players interact with the game, though, and it would severely hamper the ability to finetune military maneuvers and such. Probably best to just make a new game concept from the ground up.

 

[Xamenos]

Well, paradox games use distinct daily steps for the simulation (except for HoI where the steps are hourly). Theoretically you could use these steps as turns in an asynchronous multi game without affecting the gameplay at all, but I don't think there would be many players interested in a game that would go so glacially slow.

 

[Theodora]

Well, paradox games use distinct daily steps for the simulation (except for HoI where the steps are hourly). Theoretically you could use these steps as turns in an asynchronous multi game without affecting the gameplay at all, but I don't think there would be many players interested in a game that would go so glacially slow.

I think the amount of non-combat mechanics (government, research, etc.) is the biggest reason that wouldn't work.

 

[Delterius]

storm chess grand strategy sounds terrifying tbh

 

[Xamenos]

Well, paradox games use distinct daily steps for the simulation (except for HoI where the steps are hourly). Theoretically you could use these steps as turns in an asynchronous multi game without affecting the gameplay at all, but I don't think there would be many players interested in a game that would go so glacially slow.

I think the amount of non-combat mechanics (government, research, etc.) is the biggest reason that wouldn't work.

I don't see how these mechanics in particular would pose an issue.

 

[Riel]

Well, paradox games use distinct daily steps for the simulation (except for HoI where the steps are hourly). Theoretically you could use these steps as turns in an asynchronous multi game without affecting the gameplay at all, but I don't think there would be many players interested in a game that would go so glacially slow.

I think the amount of non-combat mechanics (government, research, etc.) is the biggest reason that wouldn't work.

I don't see how these mechanics in particular would pose an issue.

I actually think that going from daily turn to a monthly system, wouldn't need any deep changes, i.e: One province moves per month, 1 diplomatic exchange, only one law change.... all of those while not without consequences wouldn't change the game all that much.

 

[The_Mask]

I have no idea if I am on topic here, but I am going to rant a bit, because of dementia:

So, if you're as old as I am (or older) and you like these these kinds of games, you probably played Master of Orion or Homeworld, and so on. Well... I also played a very very tiny game called Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain. The use of the colon there is full frontal to the game's modus operandi - the inevitable result is 1 empire in 1 galaxy. This is only ONE facet of Stellaris, but arguably the most important one, given the scoring sheet, but I'll be back to this in a minute.

In, shall we name this from now on - for the sake of brevity - Pax Imperia the ideas of growth that pushes population that pushes production values and research values is largely similar. Except growth is not there just for show. If you gimp your race to -50% growth rate, you can tell you've played your cards wrong right away.
But what Pax Imperia had different, or shall I say what it tried to have different, was in terms of espionage:

• You could subvert enemy governors and magistrates. Doing so would turn their bonus of X to -X (where X is same value), thus (quietly) gimping your opponent(s).
• You could have ships betray their empire and join your side.
• You could have planets (but not whole systems) turn sides, if you had the espionage gifts and resources.

Problem is that to implement something like that would take away from the visual novel aspect of the game, and would cut deep into snowflakes that couldn't take a challenge.



Is Stellaris a bad game? No. But, there is an argument to be made that videogames made 20 years ago had a better understanding of gameplay than some do today, imperfect as they were. Remember that scoring sheet from earlier.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

no, wait, stellaris IS a bad game. unfortunately it's still enjoyable because it has asbolutely zero competition on the market and because of some truly stunning mods.

 

[Preben]

Johan's influence is absolute cancer every single time. He literally balances the game by having a multiplayer match at the office.
Check out the chucklefuck's view of Imperator at release, his Magnum Opus:

I remember that people were voicing legitimate concerns about the game even during Dev Diaries, all of which was ignored because Johan was so full of himself. You could already smell it in the air that in the very best scenario the game will be completely bare-bones and without most of the content that instinctively should be there.

 

[Norfleet]

That's turn-based, though.

Exactly. Real-time is an EXTREMELY POOR FIT for multiplayer 4X.

it would severely hamper the ability to finetune military maneuvers and such.

...because we have lots of fine-tuned military maneuevers right now, with ships that basically totally ignore our orders the moment battle starts, so we cannot even move them apart instead of having them run forward and knife fight using long-range guns.

The truth is, Stellaris would lose very little by having its real-time replaced with month-duration turns, since all the major processing is at monthly intervals anyway, and we ALREADY have basically no control over military maneuvering. If anything, this would actually INCREASE our control over military maneuvering if battles were fought using the Dominions-style orders system instead.

 

[Average Manatee]

That's turn-based, though.

Exactly. Real-time is an EXTREMELY POOR FIT for multiplayer 4X.

What? Even Civ has simultaneous turns which is turn based trying to emulate real time.

 

[L'ennui]

I have no idea if I am on topic here, but I am going to rant a bit, because of dementia:

So, if you're as old as I am (or older) and you like these these kinds of games, you probably played Master of Orion or Homeworld, and so on. Well... I also played a very very tiny game called Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain. The use of the colon there is full frontal to the game's modus operandi - the inevitable result is 1 empire in 1 galaxy. This is only ONE facet of Stellaris, but arguably the most important one, given the scoring sheet, but I'll be back to this in a minute.

In, shall we name this from now on - for the sake of brevity - Pax Imperia the ideas of growth that pushes population that pushes production values and research values is largely similar. Except growth is not there just for show. If you gimp your race to -50% growth rate, you can tell you've played your cards wrong right away.
But what Pax Imperia had different, or shall I say what it tried to have different, was in terms of espionage:

• You could subvert enemy governors and magistrates. Doing so would turn their bonus of X to -X (where X is same value), thus (quietly) gimping your opponent(s).
• You could have ships betray their empire and join your side.
• You could have planets (but not whole systems) turn sides, if you had the espionage gifts and resources.

Problem is that to implement something like that would take away from the visual novel aspect of the game, and would cut deep into snowflakes that couldn't take a challenge.



Is Stellaris a bad game? No. But, there is an argument to be made that videogames made 20 years ago had a better understanding of gameplay than some do today, imperfect as they were. Remember that scoring sheet from earlier.

Ah yes, I liked that game quite a bit. I wonder how well it aged...

 

[Theodora]

I don't see how these mechanics in particular would pose an issue.

changes the player makes to laws, advisors, etc. tend to come together in bubbles, which is why i think it'd meld poorly to a direct adaption to a turn based result.

you'd inconsistently (and that's key) be waiting a very long time for people other to finish their turn sometimes. obviously you could rewrite vast amounts of the game to effectively be the same but turn based optimised, but that's basically still a new game and not what we were talking about.

 

[Xamenos]

I don't see how these mechanics in particular would pose an issue.

changes the player makes to laws, advisors, etc. tend to come together in bubbles, which is why i think it'd meld poorly to a direct adaption to a turn based result.

you'd inconsistently (and that's key) be waiting a very long time for people other to finish their turn sometimes. obviously you could rewrite vast amounts of the game to effectively be the same but turn based optimised, but that's basically still a new game and not what we were talking about.

The delay would be horrendous, no arguments here. But it'd essentially work as a normal game where you autistically autopause after every single day. No changes to the mechanics would be necessary at all, that's my point.

 

[Preben]

I don't see how these mechanics in particular would pose an issue.

changes the player makes to laws, advisors, etc. tend to come together in bubbles, which is why i think it'd meld poorly to a direct adaption to a turn based result.

you'd inconsistently (and that's key) be waiting a very long time for people other to finish their turn sometimes. obviously you could rewrite vast amounts of the game to effectively be the same but turn based optimised, but that's basically still a new game and not what we were talking about.

Worst part is the redundancy. Editcs, policies, and traditions are basically the same things, both from gameplay and flavor standpoint. Just bonuses paid for by in-game mana. The only difference is that some expire by their own, some can be changed after a cooldown, the remaiing are going to stay forever. Is it really so hard to implement an unified internal policy mechanic? For example one with laws that are getting harder to repeal when they get older? Or something tied to factions? I can imagine for example the religious nutjobs demanding an AI ban (and provoking a robot uprising) or they go for direct action.

 

[Norfleet]

What? Even Civ has simultaneous turns which is turn based trying to emulate real time.

Dominions has simultaneous turns also. All players can play their turns simultaneously. Where it differs is that Civ has SYNCHRONOUS turns: All players must be simultaneously present in the game to take their turns. The failure to appear of any player blocks the game unless you banish that player from the game. Dominions does not have this: Players don't all have to be gathered at once to take their turns and can submit their turn at any point in the alotted turn cycle. Civ can't effectively be played this way without having the game cut down massively. Thus it suffers from the simultaneous uptime problem.

 

[Average Manatee]

What? Even Civ has simultaneous turns which is turn based trying to emulate real time.

Dominions has simultaneous turns also. All players can play their turns simultaneously. Where it differs is that Civ has SYNCHRONOUS turns: All players must be simultaneously present in the game to take their turns. The failure to appear of any player blocks the game unless you banish that player from the game. Dominions does not have this: Players don't all have to be gathered at once to take their turns and can submit their turn at any point in the alotted turn cycle. Civ can't effectively be played this way without having the game cut down massively. Thus it suffers from the simultaneous uptime problem.

Notice how Dominions is an incredibly niche game? Fact is that people generally don't like asynchronous games like this that can regularly stretch out for weeks and can easily be held up by players not being available. The ideal MP is a game where you can load into a lobby with a bunch of random people and knock out a game in 2-3 hours. Same as other MP games.

Also I wouldn't really call Dominion simultaneous turns either. Players can simultaneously plan moves but actual execution of those moves happens when the host says so (which in some scenarios is simultaneous and in others depends on your nation's order, at least from what I recall in Dom 3). So its kind of inbetween really.

 

[Norfleet]

Notice how Dominions is an incredibly niche game? Fact is that people generally don't like asynchronous games like this that can regularly stretch out for weeks and can easily be held up by players not being available.

As opposed to Stellaris, which is held up similarly by players being unavailable? If you have a N-man Stellaris game going, any one of the N individuals being absent brings the game to a screeching halt unless you eject them from the game, and, as mentioned in the math above, this is exceedingly likely.

The ideal MP is a game where you can load into a lobby with a bunch of random people and knock out a game in 2-3 hours. Same as other MP games.

And this is fundamentally at odds with the full 4X experience, which means that in multiplayer, you can only enjoy curtailed experiences of it.

Also I wouldn't really call Dominion simultaneous turns either. Players can simultaneously plan moves but actual execution of those moves happens when the host says so (which in some scenarios is simultaneous and in others depends on your nation's order, at least from what I recall in Dom 3). So its kind of inbetween really.

Well, it's simultaneous as opposed to sequential, in that players aren't sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for another player to make their move constantly, whereas in older titles, each player took their turn in sequence and thus you had to wait for that player to finish their entire turn before you could do anything, as opposed to only waiting on whoever is slowest.

 

[Theodora]

I wouldn't put it in such bleak terms, but I agree with you in regards to the inherent shortcomings of multiplayer 4X gaming. Still, to me it seems that the 'loyalized' Stellaris playerbase tends to be MP-oriented.

Would be curious to see how fun it is in multiplayer if people here were interested tbh.

 

[Xamenos]

Dominions has simultaneous turns also. All players can play their turns simultaneously. Where it differs is that Civ has SYNCHRONOUS turns: All players must be simultaneously present in the game to take their turns. The failure to appear of any player blocks the game unless you banish that player from the game. Dominions does not have this: Players don't all have to be gathered at once to take their turns and can submit their turn at any point in the alotted turn cycle. Civ can't effectively be played this way without having the game cut down massively. Thus it suffers from the simultaneous uptime problem.

I don't know about 6, but you didn't need all players gathered at once in older Civs. They had the option to play by email. It worked like a hotseat game where each player took his turn and passed the save off to the next one. Games took a while, but it was pretty fun.

 

[Average Manatee]

Notice how Dominions is an incredibly niche game? Fact is that people generally don't like asynchronous games like this that can regularly stretch out for weeks and can easily be held up by players not being available.

As opposed to Stellaris, which is held up similarly by players being unavailable? If you have a N-man Stellaris game going, any one of the N individuals being absent brings the game to a screeching halt unless you eject them from the game, and, as mentioned in the math above, this is exceedingly likely.

Stellaris games are short and you don't care about replacing a player with an AI. Doing so doesn't completely screw up a grand month-long game like it does in dominions. When games are about an afternoon you can be more flexible about just dropping in or out of a game.

The ideal MP is a game where you can load into a lobby with a bunch of random people and knock out a game in 2-3 hours. Same as other MP games.

And this is fundamentally at odds with the full 4X experience, which means that in multiplayer, you can only enjoy curtailed experiences of it.

99% of players don't care about "the full 4x experience", whatever that is. They want a game they can start and finish (either to a victory condition or to all but one player tapping out) within a long afternoon, maybe two in a row on a weekend. It's up to devs to deliver this gameplay. That means games that start quickly, run quickly, and finish quickly regardless of how many players are available. This is why I believe HoI4 is so successful in MP despite having such absolutely trash mechanics, balance, and only one starting scenario. It just manages to be the only game in its class that can easily fit into an afternoon or weekend, which means you just can play it every weekend or a certain day of the week like clockwork and with no messing around. Stellaris fails thanks to generally awful slowdown, lag, excessive micro, completely useless AI and automation, and a lack of any real win condition. Dominions I just don't ever see coming close to being quick enough to even be playable within a short week timeframe like Civ. You'd need to do a lot of work on the UI, mechanics, and generally working to speed up gameplay.

Would be curious to see how fun it is in multiplayer if people here were interested tbh.

Tried it twice, not much. Wars are about how makes the biggest doomstack and if you lose a fleet you lose the war and the game. There's no real ability to resist if you lose your first battle and buy yourself time to make a better fleet, and the attacker kind of just bulldozes around until they take your homeworld and 80% of your pops. There's no real terrain or attrition or static inhibitors to attackers aside from starbases which are woefully inadequate past the early game. Granted I joined a random match with no rules so I'm not sure if there's some kind of rules meta that changes things, but in both games I won a first one or two wars (complete landslide after first battle) before being stomped by another person who probably minmaxed better than me.

It'd probably work better as a co-op game.

 

[Theodora]

Tried it twice, not much. Wars are about how makes the biggest doomstack and if you lose a fleet you lose the war and the game. There's no real ability to resist if you lose your first battle and buy yourself time to make a better fleet, and the attacker kind of just bulldozes around until they take your homeworld and 80% of your pops. There's no real terrain or attrition or static inhibitors to attackers aside from starbases which are woefully inadequate past the early game. Granted I joined a random match with no rules so I'm not sure if there's some kind of rules meta that changes things, but in both games I won a first one or two wars (complete landslide after first battle) before being stomped by another person who probably minmaxed better than me.

Yeah, I was going to say, would friends and maybe even house rules add to it?

I assume there's something there given how much some people like it.

 

[Latelistener]

Does it worth purchasing base game for mods? I doubt they use DLC. Heard some good things about the Star Trek one.

 

[Raghar]

This is why I believe HoI4 is so successful in MP despite having such absolutely trash mechanics, balance, and only one starting scenario. It just manages to be the only game in its class that can easily fit into an afternoon or weekend, which means you just can play it every weekend or a certain day of the week like clockwork and with no messing around.

HoI4 isn't sucessfull in MP, from what I see on Twitch. I heard bokuen saying vanilla HoI4 is a trash, and they typically play either mod, or rebalance of the week. HoI4 is one of FEW strategies that allows both building units on strategic long term scale, and some more detailed combat. Last week I seen Dankus being murdered by France who was microing like crazy. He had better air, thus he should eventually get it, I watched only few minutes. (IIRC he pushed through Maginot. *1 Which if French would expect main German attack through Belgium, or around Maginot, wouldn't be exactly absurd real tactics, just hard to do without absurd loses.)

*1 or he sneked around Maginot, and French player was prepared. Was kinda hard to tell from envelopments and counter envelopments.

But HoI4 community is made from teenagers who have time, and is TOXIC.

 

[Average Manatee]

This is why I believe HoI4 is so successful in MP despite having such absolutely trash mechanics, balance, and only one starting scenario. It just manages to be the only game in its class that can easily fit into an afternoon or weekend, which means you just can play it every weekend or a certain day of the week like clockwork and with no messing around.

HoI4 isn't sucessfull in MP, from what I see on Twitch. I heard bokuen saying vanilla HoI4 is a trash, and they typically play either mod, or rebalance of the week. HoI4 is one of FEW strategies that allows both building units on strategic long term scale, and some more detailed combat. Last week I seen Dankus being murdered by France who was microing like crazy. He had better air, thus he should eventually get it, I watched only few minutes. (IIRC he pushed through Maginot. *1 Which if French would expect main German attack through Belgium, or around Maginot, wouldn't be exactly absurd real tactics, just hard to do without absurd loses.)

*1 or he sneked around Maginot, and French player was prepared. Was kinda hard to tell from envelopments and counter envelopments.

But HoI4 community is made from teenagers who have time, and is TOXIC.

Everyone in a reasonably complex strategy game is using mods for MP I think. At least Dominions always used mods back when it was Dom 3, and I know Civ generally uses mods for any kind of competitive MP. The fact that there is an MP community and they are playing it means its successful, and Hoi4 has much more players. You can only get away without mods in a game like Starcraft.

Similarly the fact the hoi4 is so toxic and still has people playing mp shows how its the kind of mp people like: short, easy to pick up and play, etc.