Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Which only highlights what horrid designers they really are. You do not prevent people from taking the best build every time by making the bet build a matter of RNG, you do it by creating multiple equally viable builds. The PDX solution only means that one ahead is just the luckiest one of the bunch and nothing else.

Equally? Boring.

One way or another, you're going to climb to the top of the tech tree in one design or another. If you didn't get exactly what you always pick since you're a minmaxer wanted, so what? Make the best of things with what you have.

No, under the current system that would be literary the worst thing possible. Already following a specif tree is enough of a hassle, nevermind trying to get a specific tech. Bloating the tech list further would just make things worse.

>trying to get a specific tech
There's your problem. Embrace RNG or start blowing up ships with the techs you want. those are your choices.

However, I guess another simple solution to the bloat would be to implement an edict system where certain tech types get favored in each tree for some small cost.

A system taken in 2447 must have been chosen for that in 2444

This happens anyway simply because of travel times.

You keep talking about influence and sprawl as if they're extremely limiting, but simply managing your admin level makes it almost a non-issue. I notice the sprawl mechanic, I compensated for it, I kept growing.

No they are bad 100% of the time and had they been removed early on the game would have been better for it.

They didn't exist early on. Or at least, sprawl didn't. Initially, everything revolved around influence, which was an even worse system. Every station costed influence to build, and every upgraded station costed influence to maintain (or something like that).

Limitations and hindrances should come as a natural consequence of pro-active mechanics not as a separate meters that functionally are only there to halt the game at arbitrary points.

They're not really arbitrary. They simulate the real struggles of expansionism. The faster and bigger you grow, the more problems you can potentially have.

I realize you may want the game to be a map painting sim, but imo, it's easy enough already.

 

[Axioms]

See this is why Paradox games will always be second rate and only stand out because of lack of competition. It is also why Axioms will blow away CK3, Imperator, and Vicky 3. No stupid ticking resources. Just simulate the actual stuff those resources fail to properly represent.

 

[Ravielsk]

Equally? Boring.

What even is your point here? How exactly would making missile build equally viable to a laser one make the game boring? And on that same note how is the current state of the game not boring?
Also GG on avoiding my main point about the tech advantage being purely a matter of luck.

>trying to get a specific tech

Do you even play the game? Serious question because you know there are other techs beyond "guns and ships". What if I want to start building habitats, terraform or genemod or pursue psionics or build robots? What those do not count as technologies? What if I am simply trying to get the embassy building or synthesize rare resources? Or or or just maybe I want to avoid some tech. Maybe I dont want robots to take up a slot when I am playing as a spiritualist, maybe if I am pursuing cybernetics I do not care for genemodding. Maybe as a space nomad I have no intention of ever terraforming.

This happens anyway simply because of travel times.

No it happens because the base cost of a station is 50 and every jump adds like 25 on top of that. You get around +3 influence, maybe 5 on average and the cap is set to 1000. You pay with influence for claims, moving pops, edicts and I dont even remember right now for what else. So that system can be only one jump away but I have to wait till a building slot frees up for an administrative building, then I wait for pops to take the jobs and then I wait to have enough influence to take said system. Its not even remotely reactive and requires a fair bit of premeditation.

Also again good job on avoiding my point about the AI not being able to plan for such a large timeframe.

I notice the sprawl mechanic, I compensated for it, I kept growing.

Well, good for you because based on the latest dev blog you wont be able to compensate for shit very soon.

They didn't exist early on.

Yup, and that is the core of the issue. Stellaris was built around that "worse" influence system and the only thing paradox did is that they slapped the sprawl system on top with minimal changes to the overall value of individual systems or stations.

They're not really arbitrary. They simulate the real struggles of expansionism. The faster and bigger you grow, the more problems you can potentially have.

Ah, yes because as we all know science just takes longer if you do not have enough bureaucrats to count the science man every day. Just like commerce suddenly drops off when there is no one to check everyone's papers. Or how automated drones start consuming more power when there is not enough people logging them still existing. Just like in real life.

 

[Axioms]

They're not really arbitrary. They simulate the real struggles of expansionism. The faster and bigger you grow, the more problems you can potentially have.

Ah, yes because as we all know science just takes longer if you do not have enough bureaucrats to count the science man every day. Just like commerce suddenly drops off when there is no one to check everyone's papers. Or how automated drones start consuming more power when there is not enough people logging them still existing. Just like in real life.

I see a lot of people complain about the arbitrary mechanics in Paradox like mana or their very heavily abstracted stuff like overextension and the counterparts in other Paradox titles. The latter is something I personally dislike a lot. I'm not sure how large this group is or whether a company could make a profit on their issues. You need to have a more detailed simulation to replace "corruption" and so forth that even other 4X and strategy games use. Total War for instance has their own version of stuff, like Imperium.

Would you or people with similar complaints be willing to pay a detail/complexity tax to get more realistic constraints on map painting? On my project I pursue that path but I am always wondering whether when people actually encounter the trade off they will accept the cost. I personally would but I've never seen a broad discussion among the 4X audience probably because there is no good platform to discuss such issues.

 

[Ravielsk]

They're not really arbitrary. They simulate the real struggles of expansionism. The faster and bigger you grow, the more problems you can potentially have.

Ah, yes because as we all know science just takes longer if you do not have enough bureaucrats to count the science man every day. Just like commerce suddenly drops off when there is no one to check everyone's papers. Or how automated drones start consuming more power when there is not enough people logging them still existing. Just like in real life.

I see a lot of people complain about the arbitrary mechanics in Paradox like mana or their very heavily abstracted stuff like overextension and the counterparts in other Paradox titles. The latter is something I personally dislike a lot. I'm not sure how large this group is or whether a company could make a profit on their issues. You need to have a more detailed simulation to replace "corruption" and so forth that even other 4X and strategy games use. Total War for instance has their own version of stuff, like Imperium.

Would you or people with similar complaints be willing to pay a detail/complexity tax to get more realistic constraints on map painting? On my project I pursue that path but I am always wondering whether when people actually encounter the trade off they will accept the cost. I personally would but I've never seen a broad discussion among the 4X audience probably because there is no good platform to discuss such issues.

Well, like I already wrote the trade off should be the result of mechanical interplay not a separate cost that just pops up. For example in Stellaris that would be the implementation of internal politics. Governors of rich or otherwise important sectors demanding higher pay or highly experienced admirals making demands about policy or getting bribed by other empires to cause some trouble. Something that would organically sync up with the leader and faction mechanic.

I personally never saw any problem with putting constrains on the player but those constrains have work in tandem with the game and not against it. Paying high upkeep for a big flotilla makes perfect sense and presents a fair trade off because ultimately you do need to maintain a huge fleet at all times. Paying cost for having three more or less empty systems is not.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

What even is your point here? How exactly would making missile build equally viable to a laser one make the game boring?

Because I hate balanced gameplay. I find the concept extremely boring. It's something modern multiplayer games do constantly, and it's bad gameplay design.

Everything being the same makes picking different paths cosmetic.

Also GG on avoiding my main point about the tech advantage being purely a matter of luck.

Wasn't my intention. Again, I don't care if the strongest player is the luckiest. So what? Makes things more interesting.

Do you even play the game? Serious question because you know there are other techs beyond "guns and ships".

That's why I said an edict system would help with that. Simply making it more likely to rate up, say, weapons techs would make life easier for a lot of players.

What if I want to start building habitats, terraform or genemod or pursue psionics or build robots?

You mean the rare techs that are supposed to be rare? And they already have a mechanic to ensure you can play a robot civ or whatever from the start in Origins. (The lack of a psionic start is probably due to balance reasons. Meh.)

I get that you want to pick X minmax path to get you to X goal, but that's not the game you're playing.

You're not playing a MOO clone, you're playing a game that's part roguelike. It hasn't been a MOO clone since day one and they're probably not going to change it after 6 years. The best you can hope for is a mod, since the mechanics to create a more standard tech tree do exist in the game.

Also again good job on avoiding my point about the AI not being able to plan for such a large timeframe.

Again, wasn't my intention. As I said, I don't find the sprawl mechanic difficult, so I have a hard time imagining the AI does. And I don't know that what you're saying is even a problem. Was this in a dev diary or something? How do you even know it's what's happening?

Well, good for you because based on the latest dev blog you wont be able to compensate for shit very soon.

Yeah, and it will probably change the balance. Won't know how to deal with it until I see it.

I'm just saying that I've never seen it to be the game-breaking concept that you apparently have.

Yup, and that is the core of the issue. Stellaris was built around that "worse" influence system and the only thing paradox did is that they slapped the sprawl system on top with minimal changes to the overall value of individual systems or stations.

I'll reply to this so you don't accuse me of avoiding your point again, but, again, I really don't think you have a point here. So they added a new system so that influence, which was even more artificially limiting, wouldn't be as much of an issue. Again, I don't view it as a negative.

Ah, yes because as we all know science just takes longer if you do not have enough bureaucrats to count the science man every day. Just like commerce suddenly drops off when there is no one to check everyone's papers. Or how automated drones start consuming more power when there is not enough people logging them still existing. Just like in real life.

Science projects do take longer if your government is a bloated mess, yes. I could point to massive military research spending in the real world with dramatically inflated costs and times, but we'd probably get into the weeds. And we don't have many automated drones in the real world, but I can assume that if an space faring civ were to have a lot of them and didn't have the resources to manage them, they could be a drain on resources too. Suffice it to say, it exists in the real world, yes.

That cover it? Did I miss any points this time?

 

[Axioms]

Well, like I already wrote the trade off should be the result of mechanical interplay not a separate cost that just pops up. For example in Stellaris that would be the implementation of internal politics. Governors of rich or otherwise important sectors demanding higher pay or highly experienced admirals making demands about policy or getting bribed by other empires to cause some trouble. Something that would organically sync up with the leader and faction mechanic.

I personally never saw any problem with putting constrains on the player but those constrains have work in tandem with the game and not against it. Paying high upkeep for a big flotilla makes perfect sense and presents a fair trade off because ultimately you do need to maintain a huge fleet at all times. Paying cost for having three more or less empty systems is not.

No I mean the trade off to use something more organic that the stupid mana and resources is that the game has to actually simulate reasons for that stuff to happen without them. High influence generation and the bonus cuts to influence costs and the ticking influence cost are an abstraction of "good at diplomacy". So you don't have to actually make that state good at diplomacy or even have diplomacy that a state can be good at. A lot of the similar mechanics are the same thing.

In EU4 the infamous mana accomplishes the same purpose. Paper Mana abstracts away a simulation with enough detail for a ruler of a state to be "good at administration". Paradox has some okay mechanics like prestige where it makes a lot of sense and it sort of simulates actions a prestigious state would undertake or w/e. Although in EU4 specifically there is a semi-influence like gain/drain on prestige. It kinda makes more sense in CK2. It is prestigious to own all your claims for instance. That is realistic.

Although the game I am developing was in existence before I had played a Paradox game it has some similarities and one thing I really pushed for was not having mana like mechanics or stuff like influence. The way this works is that the simulation actually allows for characters and states to be good at diplomacy or administration. That takes a lot more work for the designer and programmer and a much more complex simulation to do. It also involves a higher cognitive load and effort from the player. So that is the trade off to get more verisimilitude and organic representation of how things work in real life.

 

[Axioms]

Because I hate balanced gameplay. I find the concept extremely boring. It's something modern multiplayer games do constantly, and it's bad gameplay design.

Another future Axioms Of Dominions purchaser. Single player and hostile to multiplayer design infections generally? Yes. Random worlds where it is relatively hard to min max and where "balance" is not a concern? Also yes.

 

[BING XI LAO]

See this is why Paradox games will always be second rate and only stand out because of lack of competition. It is also why Axioms will blow away CK3, Imperator, and Vicky 3. No stupid ticking resources. Just simulate the actual stuff those resources fail to properly represent.

paradox makes cookie clicker games.

 

[Axioms]

I guess no one reads my blog. Or they would have informed me that Stellaris put out a DLC, Nemesis I think? last April that almost perfectly replicates my "Intelligence Network" mechanic which is discussed in multiple posts on my blog. Of course looking at reddit and plaza threads it fell short pretty hard exactly as I would expect based on Secrets in CK3 being anemic.

 

[Ravielsk]

I guess no one reads my blog. Or they would have informed me that Stellaris put out a DLC, Nemesis I think? last April that almost perfectly replicates my "Intelligence Network" mechanic which is discussed in multiple posts on my blog. Of course looking at reddit and plaza threads it fell short pretty hard exactly as I would expect based on Secrets in CK3 being anemic.

Well, yes because PDX does not understand that a feature is not just something you include for the purposes of bragging but also for something practical. They do not seem to grasp that the game does not need more windows where you can click to start cooldowns but practical methods of achieving something. Instead they added another cooldown timer for a feature that was previously instantaneous.

 

[Axioms]

I guess no one reads my blog. Or they would have informed me that Stellaris put out a DLC, Nemesis I think? last April that almost perfectly replicates my "Intelligence Network" mechanic which is discussed in multiple posts on my blog. Of course looking at reddit and plaza threads it fell short pretty hard exactly as I would expect based on Secrets in CK3 being anemic.

Well, yes because PDX does not understand that a feature is not just something you include for the purposes of bragging but also for something practical. They do not seem to grasp that the game does not need more windows where you can click to start cooldowns but practical methods of achieving something. Instead they added another cooldown timer for a feature that was previously instantaneous.

The general concept, at least as I plan to implement it, is crucial to many other systems, very integrated, and allows you to take actions that have significant gameplay implications. Who is stopping whatever dev tried to add something similar to Stellaris from taking it to that level? I wonder whether it is the devs doing the feature or if it comes from high up.

 

[Ravielsk]

The general concept, at least as I plan to implement it, is crucial to many other systems, very integrated, and allows you to take actions that have significant gameplay implications. Who is stopping whatever dev tried to add something similar to Stellaris from taking it to that level? I wonder whether it is the devs doing the feature or if it comes from high up.

I suspect a little bit of both and their fanbase. The core issues is that the PDX "fans" have the perfect slave mindset and will defend their master on anything and everything regardless of how it affects them. I took like 2 year for the "community" to acknowledge that the game has performance problems and when I say acknowledge I mean they stopped pretending that anyone complaining just had a shit tier PC. They still have not accepted that its happening because of PDX forcing pop spamming as the games main mechanic. There is no real feedback happening there so when they include a non-addition like espionage there is still a number of clowns defending and praising it.

 

[Axioms]

The general concept, at least as I plan to implement it, is crucial to many other systems, very integrated, and allows you to take actions that have significant gameplay implications. Who is stopping whatever dev tried to add something similar to Stellaris from taking it to that level? I wonder whether it is the devs doing the feature or if it comes from high up.

I suspect a little bit of both and their fanbase. The core issues is that the PDX "fans" have the perfect slave mindset and will defend their master on anything and everything regardless of how it affects them. I took like 2 year for the "community" to acknowledge that the game has performance problems and when I say acknowledge I mean they stopped pretending that anyone complaining just had a shit tier PC. They still have not accepted that its happening because of PDX forcing pop spamming as the games main mechanic. There is no real feedback happening there so when they include a non-addition like espionage there is still a number of clowns defending and praising it.

But why not just have espionage do stuff? Blegh.

 

[Ravielsk]

But why not just have espionage do stuff? Blegh.

Because then you cannot be lazy about it. They would have to make some actual counter play options and costs and worse they would have to actually tweak the AI to do something with them so they just dont. Adding a cooldown and telling the AI to pop one once in a while is quick and easy.

Their current framework does not support these inclusions so all they can do is fake them. Problem is that at this point they are faking about 80% of their feature set.

 

[Axioms]

But why not just have espionage do stuff? Blegh.

Because then you cannot be lazy about it. They would have to make some actual counter play options and costs and worse they would have to actually tweak the AI to do something with them so they just dont. Adding a cooldown and telling the AI to pop one once in a while is quick and easy.

Their current framework does not support these inclusions so all they can do is fake them. Problem is that at this point they are faking about 80% of their feature set.

Actually that is a great explanation. I sorta thought about the AI part but I haven't played since Jan, 2019 so I forgot how stacked the game was with facade mechanics.

 

[IDtenT]

I prefer the new unity-based system. Already made me a better player than I was under the old system.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah I also noticed the AI is a lot harder and advances faster than the player. I had to drop down the difficulty from Admiral because the AI kept rushing Supremacy and instantly attacking me with huge fleets within 10 years.

 

[Riel]

Yeah I also noticed the AI is a lot harder and advances faster than the player. I had to drop down the difficulty from Admiral because the AI kept rushing Supremacy and instantly attacking me with huge fleets within 10 years.

I agree I read the patch notes about AI in end game so I gave a try to scaling difficulty, approaching late game I am only the second star power, the other one keeps growing and shows no sign of collapse. This is anecdotal evidence but of the good kind.

Also I kind of like the change to admin and unity, now empire growth punishes you yes or yes, that said the punishment is limited to science and unity itself and it's not big enough to actually make not expanding ever the good choice.

Probably the only thing that doesn't work at all is the edict funds you get for free to pay for edicts, the problem is that they don't scale to empire size but the upkeep of edicts does and by end game your free edict fund is irrelevant compared to actual empire production.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So what does Scaling difficulty do? Apparently it makes the AI easier?

 

[IDtenT]

Difficulty scaling is cheats for AI. Basically normal 4x difficulty settings. Every AI level is actually the same AI, just with different cheats.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Was there a new patch or something? Haven't played since federations, is it worth it jumping into the game again?

 

[IDtenT]

Depends on your appetite. However, they've changed the team structure a bit and there is now a refinement / refactoring / patching team that's been doing a pretty good job over the last year or so and not just pumping out new DLC.

Game has changed quite a bit.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

I recall my biggest gripe with Stellaris being the absolute lack of challenge, even with self imposed challenges and obstacles. Like, my games would always devolve into this race for huge ass numbers that one could easily liken to some manner of "I win" button. The AI was very underwhelming difficulty-wise, to say at least.

 

[Riel]

Difficulty scaling is cheats for AI. Basically normal 4x difficulty settings. Every AI level is actually the same AI, just with different cheats.

That's not correct. Difficulty is just a set of modifiers to production, fleet capacity and fire rate indeed but scaling difficulty is not what you say it is, it is the scaling of said modifiers so the bonuses AI gets increase as the game advances beginning at 0 at game start and capping at ADMIRAL difficulty level by late game start(*).

Previously Scaling difficulty was just easy difficulty, because in the absence of production modifiers AI's empires economy collapsed to some or other basic resource deficit rather early, and playing in admiral difficulty allowed the AI to keep a working economy until close to late game at which point it would ruin its economy one way or another anyway, but kept the game interesting longer. Now I think scaling difficulty is legit to avoid your typical Stellaris game where you really have a bad time in early game The Brazilian Slaughter above but if you survive it without being crippled in the process you would inevitably become first one dominant power in the galaxy and alter win easypeasy.

Anyway I have to play a non scaling difficulty game, now not in ADMIRAL, because honestly I hate seeing 1.5-2K AI fleets not even 10 years into the game... the dance of STAR FORTRESSING and turtling until economy gears up to conquer hostile neighbours and become a major galactic power gets stale quickly.

* Do note you decide when mid game and late game should start in the game option just before you start, so scaling difficulty scales according to the dates you set.