Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[chuft]

I decided to test my first Planet Cracker colossus on the Rak 121-pop homeworld to punish them for becoming satraps.

The other planets are now my vassal. I am very proud of this technological terror I’ve created.

 

[Goliath]

What are you starting moves in 2.3.x?
Because I have noticed mine are kinda the same in every game:

Before I unpause:
- I order the production of a second science ship
- I order the building of a mining station on the unexploited energy resource in the starting system
- I enact "Map the stars", not because of survey speed but because I want my starting region to have as many resources and archaeological sites as possible
- I send my first science ship on a survey route to the nearest choke point
- I switch to "Mixed economy" if my empire starts with something else

Once my second science ship has been build:
- I send the second science ship on a survey route to another choke point. I play with 0.75 hyperlane density so I usually can completely close off my starting region with 2-4 chokepoints

 

[chuft]

I set Default Species Rights to Chattel Slavery, Migration Controls On, and Population Controls On.

Just in case, like a pimply teenaged nerd buying condoms.

 

[Average Manatee]

What are you starting moves in 2.3.x?
Because I have noticed mine are kinda the same in every game:

Before I unpause:
- I order the production of a second science ship
- I order the building of a mining station on the unexploited energy resource in the starting system
- I enact "Map the stars", not because of survey speed but because I want my starting region to have as many resources and archaeological sites as possible
- I send my first science ship on a survey route to the nearest choke point
- I switch to "Mixed economy" if my empire starts with something else

Once my second science ship has been build:
- I send the second science ship on a survey route to another choke point. I play with 0.75 hyperlane density so I usually can completely close off my starting region with 2-4 chokepoints

It's pretty much the same moves every game, for obvious reasons. Some things I'd recommend:
- The most efficient way to get energy early game is to trade food for energy. Trading away starting food immediately for energy is a good idea. One or two extra food districts is more than enough for a long time, though I'd recommend at least one mineral district first.
- Minerals first seems better for stations and, soon, alloys. Having a large alloy surplus (like, thousands) is good for throwing up a quick fleet and/or starbases if you suddenly find yourself rivaled and getting claimed. Being able to throw away 5-10 alloys a month for 30 years is also an easy way to pacify AIs that you're boxing in with your aggressive expansion (and get a defensive alliance when someone else gets angry). Pops working clerks should be moved to these jobs immediately.
- Nutritional plentitude immediately is fine I think.
- The homeworld always has a obstruction to be cleared that will immediately generate a new pop, do that early.
- Map The Stars is pretty weak, you're going to average like 1 more anomaly, maybe two. Having influence to get to choke points is better. Even if you get to immediate chokepoints, you can get to further ones because the AI is awful at expanding. Worst case, part of an edict is probably worth more than an average anomaly.
- I generally wait to get the -starbase influence cost tradition from expansion to actually start throwing down my bases. Have 2-3 constructors ready and in position as soon as you click it though, and have your colony ships already built and going to the colony before the constructors finish claiming the system.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

one of the reasons i insist this game needs, craves, a systems and galaxy maps editor.

 

[Preben]

This game craves for having it's code fixed, so it actually can be played beyond year 2300.

 

[chuft]

So yeah, Fear Campaign, God-Emperor, Deep Space Black Sites, and now Suppress Faction - end result, faction is bigger than before, despite a 1% Xenophile attraction rate.

All this is doing is costing me Influence for the suppression. Doesn't work.

 

[chuft]

Incidentally I am now in 2368 with no performance problems, with gates and wormholes. Maybe the galaxy size is the determining factor (forget mine but it's not the largest).

 

[chuft]

Is there any way to tell which sectors would benefit most from a Trade boosting governor? I don't see any in the Planets and Sectors view. Do you have to look at each planet?

 

[Norfleet]

So yeah, Fear Campaign, God-Emperor, Deep Space Black Sites, and now Suppress Faction - end result, faction is bigger than before, despite a 1% Xenophile attraction rate.

Nerve Staple Everyone. The nerve stapled cannot be faction members, so next month the factions will all disband. Now de-staple them. Factions restored to only your core factions.

 

[Goliath]

So yeah, Fear Campaign, God-Emperor, Deep Space Black Sites, and now Suppress Faction - end result, faction is bigger than before, despite a 1% Xenophile attraction rate.

All this is doing is costing me Influence for the suppression. Doesn't work.

Suppressing a faction has never worked for me either. I keep trying it.. and it never works. The function seems to be completely useless.

 

[thesheeep]

So yeah, Fear Campaign, God-Emperor, Deep Space Black Sites, and now Suppress Faction - end result, faction is bigger than before, despite a 1% Xenophile attraction rate.

All this is doing is costing me Influence for the suppression. Doesn't work.

Suppressing a faction has never worked for me either. I keep trying it.. and it never works. The function seems to be completely useless.

I think it has a minimal effect in reducing its attraction, therefore making it grow less quickly, or in fringe cases, maybe even reducing it.
But for the immense influence cost, it's absolutely not worth it.

 

[chuft]

What is the deal with psionic armies? I recruited a bunch and went to war. They got mostly killed fighting some gene warriors or something. (How do you get xenomorph armies anyway? Got them one game and never again.).

Now I can’t recruit any more psionic armies. Have they permanently been used up?

 

[Olinser]

What is the deal with psionic armies? I recruited a bunch and went to war. They got mostly killed fighting some gene warriors or something. (How do you get xenomorph armies anyway? Got them one game and never again.).

Now I can’t recruit any more psionic armies. Have they permanently been used up?

Xenomorph is a rare tech that has have full gene splicing to unlock, and I think the Uplift tech.

Psi armies are not unique but can only be recruited from a species that has Psionics perk, which is basically only your own base population.

My guess is you were only looking at planets without Psionic pops on them, or had military service disabled for your Psionic species.

And yeah, Xenomorphs slaughter Psi armies because Psi armies big power is morale damage and Xenos are immune to morale.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

iirc, xenos are vanilla endgame.

 

[chuft]

Nope, my main race (which is on all planets) is all psionic, and the planets I recruited psionic armies at before, I no longer can. There was a limit on how many I could build, and once met, I’ve been unable to recruit any more, even after losing most of them in battles. Guess it’s a bug.

 

[Olinser]

Nope, my main race (which is on all planets) is all psionic, and the planets I recruited psionic armies at before, I no longer can. There was a limit on how many I could build, and once met, I’ve been unable to recruit any more, even after losing most of them in battles. Guess it’s a bug.

Yeah that's either a bug or a recent change. 2 patches ago I was using 100 psi armies to take the stupid annoying Fallen Empire planets back when they were just camping 50 strong armies on all their worlds.

 

[chuft]

Turned out to be a UI issue. I thought this was the end of the list:

But it was this:

Something filled up the list with more stuff and pushed psionic armies to the bottom off the initial view, and I didn't realize the list had grown.

Of course "UI issue" really means "PEBKAC issue" but I prefer to think of it as a UI issue.

 

[Space Satan]

What are you starting moves in 2.3.x?

My starting moves:
1. Order second Science Ship and sell 200 food to buy scientist
2. Orde Map the Stars for +10% anomaly discovery
3. Order science ships to go for nearest chokepoint - it is the most important thing to do - to lock your empire in several chokepoints.
4. Complete building in your home system
5. Locate guaranteed colonizable system nearby and colonize it

I have an annoying faction that gives me 0% approval rating because they are xeno loving scum. It contains over 90 (!) pops.

You have to supress them as well, Are you a monoethnic empire or Sweden?

 

[Goliath]

1. Order second Science Ship and sell 200 food to buy scientist

I always sell consumer goods because I want to get to 1000 food as fast as possible to enact the +25% pop growth decision.

 

[Goliath]

Sweden?

An idea for a challenge run..

I mean how would you represent Sweden in Stellaris: Fanatic Xenophile, Pacifist, Deviants, Slow Breeders, Weak..

God, I would hate to play that. Maybe enough to make it fun.

 

[Average Manatee]

Have to say, I tried starnet, gave it a full playthrough, and its amazingly better than vanilla or glavius at revitalizing the game. The AI actually gets properly aggressive, it's not just "do everything you can to win your first war or two, then quickly snowball out of control", because the AI can do that itself competently.

Also, here's an amazing console command I've never seen mentioned that basically fixes performance: ticks_per_turn x. Set it to 2-10 and experience a massive performance increase. Downside is that the UI gets laggy, you basically need to pause to do most things that can't be done with keyboard shortcuts. Really astonishing that the devs are wasting this much processing time on dumb shit that could be optimized better.

 

[chuft]

Finally played to an interesting end. Was trying to vassalize someone, didn't pay attention and found out they were in a massive federation so the war was not going great and I was deep in enemy territory, and then I got stabbed in the back by an awakened empire. I fell back from my conquests like Germany in 1943 and scrambled to react to the new front. That perk I had been saving? Galactic Contender, stat.

I had been planning to attack them anyway so my fleet was all armor and shield piercing weapons. Forced a status quo on the original target and took on the awakened empire. Managed to take all his stuff before he could force me to a white peace. I was pondering attacking another fallen empire so I kept my fleet in piercing-weapon mode while I tried to vassalize someone else.

As I was deeply embroiled in that, the Contingency decided to appear with 800k of force in each of four different spots, two of which were in my empire. Um. The other perk I had been saving? Defender of the Galaxy please.

Well I went around cleaning them out, liberating planets they were exterminating - the empires being exterminated still hated me - until I got rid of all four of their extermination nodes using my planet cracker colossus. Then their home system appeared, a couple jumps from my homeworld. I sent in a science ship to scout, suspicious, and sure enough they were the reverse of their original fleets - this time they were all hull with relatively little armor and shields. I refit my 1.1m fleet back to regular weapons, then went in there and put them out of business. The rest of the galaxy then proceeded to insult me and close all their borders, but too late - I won the game.

I read somewhere that if you don't planet crack the manufacturing planets, but just bombard them normally, you can get living metal. So I bombarded their final world rather than crack it, but no living metal appeared. Hmm.

 

[chuft]

My empire had become a ridiculous micro hell due to being so gigantic, this despite the fact I planet cracked a bunch of enemy worlds rather than deal with the micro of managing their captured populations. The Contingency was still a challenge to take on. How do people beat it while playing tall/small/pacifist/xenophile etc empires?

I always tend to see xenophiles be pacifists as well, but maybe that's a fluke. Do people play xenophile/militarist/authoritarian empires? You love aliens so much you want to force them to all be in your empire?

 

[Storyfag]

Also, here's an amazing console command I've never seen mentioned

Oh, Stellaris has console commands. Oooh, those might make the game interesting.