Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Joggerino]

The matrix style machine intelligence is basically a disaster. All the batteries contribute to total empire population and slow down empire growth. Also they suck ass, 5-6 energy per pop, upkeep 1 food and they need lots of amenities. My robo tech workers give 20 energy for 0,5 energy upkeep. This all means... it's time for some good old genocide.

To be fair, using organics as batteries as always been the dumbest thing about The Matrix. A human/organic being is not an effective energy source.

Yeah, the idea is beyond retarded. There's just no way to get more energy out of humans than they expend feeding them and keeping them alive in general. And this pop system is so dumb. It would make so much more sense having to deal with overpopulation because the more people you have the bigger the population growth.

 

[Average Manatee]

And this pop system is so dumb. It would make so much more sense having to deal with overpopulation because the more people you have the bigger the population growth.

It's a dumb system stapled ontop of another dumb system to patch up the hole in one while creating others. Nothing about realism or fun gameplay justifies the growth system, the growth system is justified on the basis that the devs simultaneously can't optimize their own game while also being unable to admit that all of their work into the economic system has improved nothing and merely killed performance and the AIs ability to handle things.

Most powerful now is lithoid hivemind with terravore trait and calamitic birth origin , when you use the (cheap) colonize option by meteor you create blockers on the new planets, you then spam it everywhere . Clear blockers you get extra pops , consume the planets you get a bit of eveyrting , keep a few central well defended good planets, consume everything. When the planets break , all the pop are automatically relocated . So what was a weaker build turns out a godly build completely bypassing pop troubles. Then of course you spec them for mineral and they have volatile mole traits , to help clearing blockers faster
You now have an economy with colosal mineral production and stock, spam the menace ships they only cost minerals, dont even give a fuck about their fits, you will crush eveyrone under the sheer mass.Huge empty space area so they will never reach your core system . Oh and devouring planets even raise your menace score, star eaters are beasts ...

Doesn't that completely screw you in terms of long term pop growth, since you are both destroying pop creation centers (planets) while also unable to assimilate pops from things you conquer?

Think the best build is still some kind of slavery regular empire with Technocracy, which gives you super-scientists as rulers on each planet. This combos well with having lots of low pop worlds (which is inevitable now) and you can still whip all the planets you conquer into the mines to give you more research and alloys.

Also the most powerful build in general, including origin selection, is definitely still anything with Hegemony. Because this way you can abuse the AI's ability to make 100s of corvettes even while on one planet while also abusing the fact that as a player you can order them around competently and conquer the galaxy. You can literally build no fleets as a Hegemonic start if you want and the AIs will still build a federation fleet strong enough for you to conquer other AIs. All you have to do is pick up the one perk that causes your naval capacity to count +100% towards the federation and then spam starbases for more naval cap.

 

[Mortmal]

And this pop system is so dumb. It would make so much more sense having to deal with overpopulation because the more people you have the bigger the population growth.

It's a dumb system stapled ontop of another dumb system to patch up the hole in one while creating others. Nothing about realism or fun gameplay justifies the growth system, the growth system is justified on the basis that the devs simultaneously can't optimize their own game while also being unable to admit that all of their work into the economic system has improved nothing and merely killed performance and the AIs ability to handle things.

Most powerful now is lithoid hivemind with terravore trait and calamitic birth origin , when you use the (cheap) colonize option by meteor you create blockers on the new planets, you then spam it everywhere . Clear blockers you get extra pops , consume the planets you get a bit of eveyrting , keep a few central well defended good planets, consume everything. When the planets break , all the pop are automatically relocated . So what was a weaker build turns out a godly build completely bypassing pop troubles. Then of course you spec them for mineral and they have volatile mole traits , to help clearing blockers faster
You now have an economy with colosal mineral production and stock, spam the menace ships they only cost minerals, dont even give a fuck about their fits, you will crush eveyrone under the sheer mass.Huge empty space area so they will never reach your core system . Oh and devouring planets even raise your menace score, star eaters are beasts ...

Doesn't that completely screw you in terms of long term pop growth, since you are both destroying pop creation centers (planets) while also unable to assimilate pops from things you conquer?

Think the best build is still some kind of slavery regular empire with Technocracy, which gives you super-scientists as rulers on each planet. This combos well with having lots of low pop worlds (which is inevitable now) and you can still whip all the planets you conquer into the mines to give you more research and alloys.

Also the most powerful build in general, including origin selection, is definitely still anything with Hegemony. Because this way you can abuse the AI's ability to make 100s of corvettes even while on one planet while also abusing the fact that as a player you can order them around competently and conquer the galaxy. You can literally build no fleets as a Hegemonic start if you want and the AIs will still build a federation fleet strong enough for you to conquer other AIs. All you have to do is pick up the one perk that causes your naval capacity to count +100% towards the federation and then spam starbases for more naval cap.

No, there's no long term growth problem as... there will be no longterm. You will be rolling over everyone ,you just devour everything you conquer , have half the galaxy by 2350 or more. I dont remember having so many fleets in any other builds.Triggered galaxy explosion by 2400. Then i was just discovering the build, you probably can do a lot faster.
Full technocracy , with a bit of slaver still good of course if you pick the crisis. But the terravore will do a better rush.
Would be good to try some multi one day, but with many players , as the AI is completely inept.

 

[IDtenT]

Also the most powerful build in general, including origin selection, is definitely still anything with Hegemony. Because this way you can abuse the AI's ability to make 100s of corvettes even while on one planet while also abusing the fact that as a player you can order them around competently and conquer the galaxy. You can literally build no fleets as a Hegemonic start if you want and the AIs will still build a federation fleet strong enough for you to conquer other AIs. All you have to do is pick up the one perk that causes your naval capacity to count +100% towards the federation and then spam starbases for more naval cap.

The caveat is that this only works when you allow the AI to cheat, by selecting a higher difficulty level.

 

[Average Manatee]

No, there's no long term growth problem as... there will be no longterm. You will be rolling over everyone ,you just devour everything you conquer , have half the galaxy by 2350 or more. I dont remember having so many fleets in any other builds.Triggered galaxy explosion by 2400. Then i was just discovering the build, you probably can do a lot faster.
Full technocracy , with a bit of slaver still good of course if you pick the crisis. But the terravore will do a better rush.
Would be good to try some multi one day, but with many players , as the AI is completely inept.

Having half the galaxy by 2350 isn't that impressive. I think I have ~3/4ths by 2375 and the main barrier is me giving enough of a shit to manage it and move fleets around to conquer more. Though the exact timing depends on the galaxy, I'm assuming medium. Still think you'd be hampered by not growing and not assimilating pops. Also I didn't do the crisis thing, have no idea how overpowered that makes you. Since from what I can tell all you have to do is conquer stuff to get crisis mana I assume if I started it early it'd be completed at this point.

I think MP games ban most of the special empire types since otherwise it's literally just an instant game over if you spawn next to a player with military bonuses.

Also the most powerful build in general, including origin selection, is definitely still anything with Hegemony. Because this way you can abuse the AI's ability to make 100s of corvettes even while on one planet while also abusing the fact that as a player you can order them around competently and conquer the galaxy. You can literally build no fleets as a Hegemonic start if you want and the AIs will still build a federation fleet strong enough for you to conquer other AIs. All you have to do is pick up the one perk that causes your naval capacity to count +100% towards the federation and then spam starbases for more naval cap.

The caveat is that this only works when you allow the AI to cheat, by selecting a higher difficulty level.

True, but then the AI kills itself without you needing to assist.

 

[DesolationStone]

But it's normal that in my second Iron game in a row I easily become the most powerful empire?
And it's normal that the intel mechanics are completely useless?
In my opinion: Stellaris it's gone, there are several problems in the core of the game (first, the micromanagement), so I hope in other 2 years of support, but then Stellaris 2

 

[Xamenos]

But it's normal that in my second Iron game in a row I easily become the most powerful empire?
And it's normal that the intel mechanics are completely useless?
In my opinion: Stellaris it's gone, there are several problems in the core of the game (first, the micromanagement), so I hope in other 2 years of support, but then Stellaris 2

The AI is completely useless and retarded, so unless you are somehow a bigger retard than it is then yeah, it's totally normal if you become the most powerful empire in just a few decades.
New mechanics being garbage is also normal for a Paradox DLC. It's either that, or completely OP.

Man, I liked the game so much better when it still had tiles before the economy rework, when I still held out a small amount of hope that it'd actually get improved at some point.

 

[Mortmal]

No, there's no long term growth problem as... there will be no longterm. You will be rolling over everyone ,you just devour everything you conquer , have half the galaxy by 2350 or more. I dont remember having so many fleets in any other builds.Triggered galaxy explosion by 2400. Then i was just discovering the build, you probably can do a lot faster.
Full technocracy , with a bit of slaver still good of course if you pick the crisis. But the terravore will do a better rush.
Would be good to try some multi one day, but with many players , as the AI is completely inept.

Having half the galaxy by 2350 isn't that impressive. I think I have ~3/4ths by 2375 and the main barrier is me giving enough of a shit to manage it and move fleets around to conquer more. Though the exact timing depends on the galaxy, I'm assuming medium. Still think you'd be hampered by not growing and not assimilating pops. Also I didn't do the crisis thing, have no idea how overpowered that makes you. Since from what I can tell all you have to do is conquer stuff to get crisis mana I assume if I started it early it'd be completed at this point.

I think MP games ban most of the special empire types since otherwise it's literally just an instant game over if you spawn next to a player with military bonuses.

Also the most powerful build in general, including origin selection, is definitely still anything with Hegemony. Because this way you can abuse the AI's ability to make 100s of corvettes even while on one planet while also abusing the fact that as a player you can order them around competently and conquer the galaxy. You can literally build no fleets as a Hegemonic start if you want and the AIs will still build a federation fleet strong enough for you to conquer other AIs. All you have to do is pick up the one perk that causes your naval capacity to count +100% towards the federation and then spam starbases for more naval cap.

The caveat is that this only works when you allow the AI to cheat, by selecting a higher difficulty level.

True, but then the AI kills itself without you needing to assist.

No doubt an ubermensch codexer with every meta knowledge and years on experience on stellaris could do it by 2350 with slaver and technocracy, but i assure you same codexer could probably do it even faster with the terravore build. I was just testing the builds , no offense meant.

 

[Average Manatee]

No doubt an ubermensch codexer with every meta knowledge and years on experience on stellaris could do it by 2350 with slaver and technocracy, but i assure you same codexer could probably do it even faster with the terravore build. I was just testing the builds , no offense meant.

I just kinda doubt it. I mean I guess it depends on the galaxy settings. The advantage of Terravore and similar civics isn't really that they make you much stronger, but that they let you conquer as much as you want immediately without paying the mana cost to claim territory. There's some benefits to just owning more territory (lots of mining stations), but in general it's the pops that matter most and the current system heavily punishes trying to grow your own. Once a normal empire gets conquering through 0-influence methods they tend to snowball much, much harder since there's basically no kind of productivity loss from conquered pops like you'd expect. All you have to do is fix the AI's buildings.

And it's normal that the intel mechanics are completely useless?

Man intel is such an incredible clusterfuck. I can't understand what they are thinking. The benefits are incredibly irrelevant and fiddly to get. If that were all it would be at best bearable, but instead you pay thousands of energy for that crap. Early game that's flat out impossible and even late game it makes way more sense to pay 5000 energy to terraform a whole planet to gaia or something rather than 2k to maybe steal 10% of a random tech. Not that the AI is likely to have any good techs that you don't, and the other espionage missions are worse. lolol pay thousands of energy to maybe eventually destroy a single module on a starbase, wtf.

Apparently they made energy miners produce 50% more energy so you could spend some on these missions, but the obvious choice is to just produce more fleets because fleets are actually useful.

 

[BrotherFrank]

I just don’t get how stellaris keeps getting worst with time, the intel rework was needed and should have been there from the start as it was a larp killer but then they just had to fuck with energy costs and pop growth too? The best version of stellaris was somewhere around the apocalypse expansion.

 

[Norfleet]

I just don’t get how stellaris keeps getting worst with time

Why would it NOT get worse with time? The entropy of a closed system must always increase.

 

[Mortmal]

No doubt an ubermensch codexer with every meta knowledge and years on experience on stellaris could do it by 2350 with slaver and technocracy, but i assure you same codexer could probably do it even faster with the terravore build. I was just testing the builds , no offense meant.

I just kinda doubt it. I mean I guess it depends on the galaxy settings. The advantage of Terravore and similar civics isn't really that they make you much stronger, but that they let you conquer as much as you want immediately without paying the mana cost to claim territory. There's some benefits to just owning more territory (lots of mining stations), but in general it's the pops that matter most and the current system heavily punishes trying to grow your own. Once a normal empire gets conquering through 0-influence methods they tend to snowball much, much harder since there's basically no kind of productivity loss from conquered pops like you'd expect. All you have to do is fix the AI's buildings.

And it's normal that the intel mechanics are completely useless?

Man intel is such an incredible clusterfuck. I can't understand what they are thinking. The benefits are incredibly irrelevant and fiddly to get. If that were all it would be at best bearable, but instead you pay thousands of energy for that crap. Early game that's flat out impossible and even late game it makes way more sense to pay 5000 energy to terraform a whole planet to gaia or something rather than 2k to maybe steal 10% of a random tech. Not that the AI is likely to have any good techs that you don't, and the other espionage missions are worse. lolol pay thousands of energy to maybe eventually destroy a single module on a starbase, wtf.

Apparently they made energy miners produce 50% more energy so you could spend some on these missions, but the obvious choice is to just produce more fleets because fleets are actually useful.

Theres a bigger advantage you forget, the synergies with the crisis , eating a planet gives 100 points something fanatic purifier dont get early, killing all the pops give points too. You will get all the crisis bell and whistles very fast.
As for espionnage, at this point its a shame to even point it as a main dlc feature, its so poorly though and useless it show they arent making the minimum efforts anymore. 10% on a ech you dont have... when you are probably already swarmed on options and just want to do repeatables.
AI economy completely collapse , i am going to use starnet AI which was updated to fix it. You need mods to make it playable now.

 

[Storyfag]

instead you pay thousands of energy for that crap. Early game that's flat out impossible and even late game it makes way more sense to pay 5000 energy to terraform a whole planet to gaia or something rather than 2k to maybe steal 10% of a random tech. Not that the AI is likely to have any good techs that you don't, and the other espionage missions are worse. lolol pay thousands of energy to maybe eventually destroy a single module on a starbase, wtf.

PDX, PDX never changes.

 

[Ravielsk]

I just don’t get how stellaris keeps getting worst with time, the intel rework was needed and should have been there from the start as it was a larp killer but then they just had to fuck with energy costs and pop growth too? The best version of stellaris was somewhere around the apocalypse expansion.

Because PDX and its DLC model are antithetical to improvement. Improving a game means that sometimes you have to add stuff, subtract and sometime you need to spend time with the old stuff. But when your bread and butter is constantly releasing new "shiny" DLC content then the only thing you can is add stuff, you cannot really remove parts of DLC content or migrate some of it into the base game. You also cannot spend lengthy periods of development on overhauling already "implemented" systems because that is a patch not a DLC you can sell. Building higher on top of a unstable foundation is not going to fix the foundation, its only going to make it even worse.

Best example of this would be the Megacorp DLC and patch 2.2. It was a complete overhaul of planetary management done mainly to facilitate the building of corporate branch offices on planets. Problem is that it was nothing more. The sole purpose of 2.2 was to make the Megacorp DLC possible because in the old tile system getting 4 extra tiles on any planet would be broken as hell. So the AI remained the same with some minor tweaks to make it fake working within the new system when it was supposed to be rewritten from scratch. This was in 2018 and the best PDX could be bothered to do was to incorporate some of the tweaks from the Glavius AI mod. Seriously even the current pop growth issues come from that one patch being a complete shitshow, because before that patch you did not need to spam pops to win but again fixing that would mean invalidating the 2.2 rework and going back to change how megacorps are integrated.
Speaking of which, megacorps have been left to rot as since their release they have been more or less untouched. So the same hacky solution of spawning a bunch of other megacorps when you play as a megacorp is still in the game because giving other government types to... I dunno open embassies or build spy networks on those extra corporate building slots is too much work.

 

[thesecret1]

Not only can they only add stuff, you gotta keep in mind that this shit has to work with any possible combination of DLCs. If the game has 10 DLCs (as Parajew games tend to), then there is the very real possibility that the player only has DLCs 3,6 and 9, and the game should not only work, but also have some semblance of a balance. So of course any new mechanic will be very modular and self-contained, so that they can turn it on and off easily enough without having to reach into other parts of the code. Obviously, this results in big problems down the line that just get bigger and bigger the more DLCs they release, but that's the model they've chosen.

 

[thesecret1]

I don't blame them for using the DLC model, myself. If that's what makes them money and keeps them developing the games, so be it. Its just that these DLCs are so... overpriced for the content they give. Paradox really needs to find a better model, or the only people able to enjoy their games in full will be pirates and the rich.

I wouldn't have any issues with the model if they actually delivered something worthwhile in their DLCs, but most of the time it's just content bloat. If each of their DLCs added a proper mechanic that is simulationist rather than going for abstract points, that actually added depth to the game rather than just something to distract the player with for a little longer before he gets bored. But they don't. They've pretty much abandoned simulation as a concept and transferred everything into some stupid fucking points in all their games (because points are independent on anything, whereas simulation requires different mechanics to interact with each other and have some manner of balance, which is much harder to achieve). Every DLC they put out tends to just be some low effort shit like "hey we added a big money sink that makes you OP if you build it" or "Collect points, press buttons, win!", shit that really shouldn't be the focus of an entire expansion. The few times they do add mechanics, they are either broken as fuck, or they copied them from modders.

 

[Ravielsk]

I don't blame them for using the DLC model, myself.

DLC model on its own is a fine concept. Its the way PDX bastardized it that makes it bad. Basically if you go through the list of features that each patch adds and then read the DLC additions its becomes glaringly obvious that well over half the games "features" are effectively disabled unless you have the right DLC. Again the best example is 2.2 patch as its main addition is just more busywork(and by proxy worse AI) for people without the megacorp DLC. Same thing with 2.1 where without apocalypse its essentially just a gimped 1.9 version. Same with 2.8 where without the Federations DLC its basically adding one button to make the AI like you.
The DLC is not a addition to the game, its the second half of the patch it came out with. Worse yet, its usually a unfinished patch. Either because of a lack of content or being broken. My favorite example of this is the 2.6 patch that introduced archaeology as new mechanic but the base game and the DLC have so few digs to find that within the span of like 2-3 games you have seen everything the game has to offer. That was over a year ago and PDX has not bothered to add new digs or expand on the mechanic(by for example using it hide certain technologies) in any way shape or form.

The sad part is that they can make DLC that is not just the second part of a patch, like Distant Stars or species portraits packs but simply choose not to make them.

 

[thesecret1]

That was over a year ago and PDX has not bothered to add new digs or expand on the mechanic(by for example using it hide certain technologies) in any way shape or form.

You think that's bad? CK2's DLC The Republic came out in 2013 and allowed you to play as a patrician in a merchant republic. Except it's been mired in bugs since the start, as in frequently game breaking ones. I've tried many times, and I've never managed to actually finish a merchant republic playthrough even once, because I always got fucked over by bugs. Paradox never bothered to fix this shit. Never. CK2 is no longer even being developed anymore so those bugs are there forever.

 

[Raghar]

I tried Stellaris, and well...
Things went badly. I'm only empire that didn't allow migration and situation in Galaxy changed from... Empire nearby where they are looking like horses, went into federation, and then for some reason started absorbing other empires by vassalization. Thus it become really big.
Then I tried to do diplomacy with founders of that federation, and the diplomat that represented them was a horse.
Then I tried to do diplomacy with my most friendly neighbors who ran away from my federation because I voted no to joining new member who would overrule my decision during voting about stopping disallowing migration, and I'd be in problems. And I found the diplomat that represented species that were basically voidborne space elves was a fungi.
I'm not completely without problems even with closed borders, because some group decided to modify themselves to be able to live on arid world, few months before I finished terraforming of their planet. Of course they managed to get rid of venerable trait, and add rapid breeders, then I had mishap when I didn't check if they are frobiden to migrate within empire, and they spread to two more planets. Now if they interbred with the rest of population theirs lack of venerable genes would be catastrophic.

Galactic senate has full hands with trying to abolish resolution they tried so hard to vote for 200 years ago. Of course calling crisis a stuff that flew out of L-Gates was completely out of question.

Thus it's an interbred "multicultural" difunctional galaxy where an empire which did stuff if it got becoming the crisis perk it would be crisis level 5 already, would likely have to get guardian of the galaxy to save everyone from multicultural federation that screwed up everything before REAL crisis.

 

[Raghar]

Basically current version of Stellaris is as dysfunctional as EU.

 

[Storyfag]

I tried Stellaris, and well...
Things went badly. I'm only empire that didn't allow migration and situation in Galaxy changed from... Empire nearby where they are looking like horses, went into federation, and then for some reason started absorbing other empires by vassalization. Thus it become really big.
Then I tried to do diplomacy with founders of that federation, and the diplomat that represented them was a horse.
Then I tried to do diplomacy with my most friendly neighbors who ran away from my federation because I voted no to joining new member who would overrule my decision during voting about stopping disallowing migration, and I'd be in problems. And I found the diplomat that represented species that were basically voidborne space elves was a fungi.
I'm not completely without problems even with closed borders, because some group decided to modify themselves to be able to live on arid world, few months before I finished terraforming of their planet. Of course they managed to get rid of venerable trait, and add rapid breeders, then I had mishap when I didn't check if they are frobiden to migrate within empire, and they spread to two more planets. Now if they interbred with the rest of population theirs lack of venerable genes would be catastrophic.

Galactic senate has full hands with trying to abolish resolution they tried so hard to vote for 200 years ago. Of course calling crisis a stuff that flew out of L-Gates was completely out of question.

Thus it's an interbred "multicultural" difunctional galaxy where an empire which did stuff if it got becoming the crisis perk it would be crisis level 5 already, would likely have to get guardian of the galaxy to save everyone from multicultural federation that screwed up everything before REAL crisis.

Hey, sounds like you got some nice emergent gameplay.

 

[Raghar]

Hey, sounds like you got some nice emergent gameplay.

I wanted to play space empires with decent space battles, not a multicultural migration simulator.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

change your empire accordingly.
one of my proudest creations (through mods): a society of masochists with extremely happy slaves and a very unhappy minority of rulers, because they all like the whip way more than the office desk.
find your own fun, larping is the limit.

 

[thesecret1]

larping is the limit

More like larping is the only fun to be had in this game. At least it lets you set up a really wide variety of scenarios – I modded in an anime race, made it necrophages with human slaves, and every couple years, a couple human pops ascended to weebdom. Too bad there's no point in playing further once the novelty wears off

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

because you chose a retarded subject for larping.