Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[MadMaxHellfire]

i wish it worked. if you overload your enemy with crime, like building all the buildings, he switches a few law enforcers more and disassembles your huge expense. and even if it doesn't/can't afford to, it doesn't make a difference.

 

[Riel]

I have played a campaign as a Feudal Underling up to mid game and I'll share my experience.

• The 2nd day of game play I got a message from my overlord telling me how wonderful it was of him to give me the opportunity to be his underling, I chuckled at that.
• Then I immediately was given the choice of what kind of vassal I wanted to be: Basically Research, Resource Extraction and Defence Oriented, I choose the later since I was running a Martial Mega Corp.
• I was immediately gifted destroyer tech and even 5 destroyers which basically made me the strongest fish in the local pond other than my overlord on day 2!
• Obviously there's no one to conquer on day 2 other than your Overlord and other vassals and that's impossible so I started doing the usual drill explore and expand.
• Another important thing you Overlord has 3 other vassals, a technological empire that is happy to stay in its system doing research, a religious empire that does very little but it does expand a bit and a martial empire that expands aggressively, this is the other vassal you have to watch closely, it will rival you in power. These three other vassals will have different names and races in different campaigns but will have the same ethos and behaviour.
• So as I was saying, I started exploring and expanding and the first thing I noticed is that my overlord gets a 50% influence tax on every outpost I build, this means a regular outpost costs 112 influence. This is by FAR the worst part of this origin, it will really drag you a lot in the early game. I had been lucky though and the other martial empire, not an actual Bulwark just Martial ethos, was on the other side of my overlord so each of us began expanding its way.
• I secured some juicy systems and I started making first contact with independent neighbours, I was proactive here which proved very useful since completing contact provides hefty amounts of influence which I sorely needed. Anyway soon enough my border contacted with those of my closer neighbour and the initial expansion phase came to an end.
• My neighbour was a Driven Assimilator Machine empire, dangerous but also quite fortuitous, one does not need claims against those, even better their Cyborg race was continental like me and there were a few continental planets within the borders, yummy!
• I had of course completely neglected my fleet during the expansion phase so my 3 corvettes and 5 destroyers fleet was enough to feel safe but not enough to attack so I went into the economic consolidation phase. I developed planets built up research and alloys industries while feeding population. Since I was a Megacorp and I had gotten the free Commercial Pacts ascension perk I begun signing those(before influence was too scarce to afford them) establishing embassies and securing good relations with everyone, then I started my first corporate branches, very quickly I was swimming in space bucks and buying alloys in the local market like crazy. As soon as I filled up my feet capacity I proceeded to demonstrate that Driven Exterminators are right after all and that Driven Assimilators are just pussies waiting to be destroyed by dowing it and well basically I just rolled over it.
• More planets, more pops in the forms of released cyborgs, both original and those of a another independent state that had had a a good chunk of itself bitten of by the Machine Empire, lucky they were tropical preference guys...
• You know a maimed empire, a rival Megacorp, compatible pops, more wet planets.... so yes I basically did as Patton wanted after WWII since the ships were already by its borders... so I annexed that as well only this time I had to actually claim the systems, no problems I had plenty influence available.
• Since I bordered with a Marauder empire, a Fallen Empire and a big Machine Intelligence and there were no more good planets, or even planets in reach I settled for those borders and turned my attention to growth and development. The market was very overheated after me buying tons of alloys, consumer products, minerals and even food with energy so prices were high so having a real production of those by myself was something needed.
• When I was satisfied with the state of my economy and I was self sufficient I started eyeing with envy my overlord. You know the freedom stuff and all.... He was the leading horse in the galaxy by quite a margin and two of its underlings were in the top 5 as well, me and the other martial empire. He had a bigger fleet so I started expanding the fleet to rival it.
• Then I received an event about my overlord, something about an anomalous succession... Then another event and shortly after a third one, this one shattered my overlord into 4 separate pieces and freed me and all its former underlings from its yoke...

REALLY PARADOX! I had chosen that origin expecting to have a problem to gain my freedom not just an influence tax and a lot of free goodies and protection.

 

[Fedora Master]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

The retarded policy of prioritizing multiplayer over singleplayer in grand strategy games is retarded. If it's uNbAlAnCeD, then just fucking set house rules for your MP games. But no, Paradox has to do even fucking bug (& feature) testing with MP in mind.

 

[Fedora Master]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

The retarded policy of prioritizing multiplayer over singleplayer in grand strategy games is retarded. If it's uNbAlAnCeD, then just fucking set house rules for your MP games. But no, Paradox has to do even fucking bug (& feature) testing with MP in mind.

It feels like they're making games for themselves and not anyone else.

 

[Riel]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

The overlord won't join your offensive wars though, only if they attack you. It is nonetheless very helpful because he even subsidises you as a bulwark or research empire with minerals, energy and food, he also taxes you which is a bit awkward since he pays and taxes you simultaneously. Anyway it's quite overpowered because just being defended is huge in the early game, you can really focus on everything else, that said influence is a big problem. I didn't sign any deal until ascension perk that makes them free for megacorps because those 0.25 in from Commercial Pacts felt hugely expensive.

Anyway from a larping perspective it was nothing at all what I expected and I can see the problems for multiplayer.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

The retarded policy of prioritizing multiplayer over singleplayer in grand strategy games is retarded. If it's uNbAlAnCeD, then just fucking set house rules for your MP games. But no, Paradox has to do even fucking bug (& feature) testing with MP in mind.

It feels like they're making games for themselves and not anyone else.

Won't stop them from sucking people dry with all their DLCs.

And speaking of DLCs, another retarded design choice by Paradox is to keep a lot of mechanics self-contained by DLC. And in EU IV in particular you can see how this leads to a disjointed mess of half-assed mechanics since they can't be bothered to significantly improve them down the line.

 

[Ravielsk]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

The retarded policy of prioritizing multiplayer over singleplayer in grand strategy games is retarded. If it's uNbAlAnCeD, then just fucking set house rules for your MP games. But no, Paradox has to do even fucking bug (& feature) testing with MP in mind.

It feels like they're making games for themselves and not anyone else.

Won't stop them from sucking people dry with all their DLCs.

And speaking of DLCs, another retarded design choice by Paradox is to keep a lot of mechanics self-contained by DLC. And in EU IV in particular you can see how this leads to a disjointed mess of half-assed mechanics since they can't be bothered to significantly improve them down the line.

There is no need to go the EU IV to see it. Stellaris is already at a point where it has a bunch of DLC mechanics that can never go beyond pretending they have some sort of depth. Just from the top of my head: Necroids, megacorps, espionage, archeology, L-gates are all DLC mechanics that only pretend to have depth but are usually just collections of nothing that went through 0 changes since the moment they were added and will continue to be that way because PDX has no reason to change anything thanks to its sla... I mean "costumers".

 

[Fedora Master]

It's telling that you end up in a certain mid-game slump where you're the biggest dick on the bloc and can't do much beyond waiting around for something to happen in every single PDX game.

 

[Axioms]

It's telling that you end up in a certain mid-game slump where you're the biggest dick on the bloc and can't do much beyond waiting around for something to happen in every single PDX game.

Is snowballing to top dog really the midgame? Isn't it the end game?

 

[Fedora Master]

It's telling that you end up in a certain mid-game slump where you're the biggest dick on the bloc and can't do much beyond waiting around for something to happen in every single PDX game.

Is snowballing to top dog really the midgame? Isn't it the end game?

Not Top Dog of the entire game, just your local area. Which is in some ways even worse.

 

[Axioms]

It's telling that you end up in a certain mid-game slump where you're the biggest dick on the bloc and can't do much beyond waiting around for something to happen in every single PDX game.

Is snowballing to top dog really the midgame? Isn't it the end game?

Not Top Dog of the entire game, just your local area. Which is in some ways even worse.

The one major thing Star Dynasties did right is that power projection is hard. Once you dominate local area you can't just snowball across the map. Well militarily. Using diplomacy strat you can just roll the whole map.

 

[Fedora Master]

Machine Intelligence empires are peak Paradox. They make the game better by letting you ignore half the mechanics.

 

[Delterius]

Look, you can't just have a big overlord AI empire like that. It might be unbalanced in multiplayer.

The retarded policy of prioritizing multiplayer over singleplayer in grand strategy games is retarded. If it's uNbAlAnCeD, then just fucking set house rules for your MP games. But no, Paradox has to do even fucking bug (& feature) testing with MP in mind.

I highly doubt any part of imperial fiefdom was designed with balance in mind. Much less multiplayer balance.

My foray into imperial fiefdom entailed being a bulwark who conquered the three capitals of a nearby hegemony ai start. I renegotiated the vassal contract to force my overlord to subsidize my research by 45% so I tech rushed with minimal effort. And when my overlord fell I just conquered the size 30 Gaia homeworld for my self.

All of which just pales in comparison to a trade xenophile build.

 

[my calculator!]

The AI that suggested this resolution is retarded!

 

[Average Manatee]

The senate epitomizes the paradox AI logic of "I have resource so I will randomly hit button that spends resource".

 

[Fedora Master]

Looks like the Fleet Manager is buggy as fuck. I have two admirals supposedly leading the same fleet. Reinforcing doesn't work right because the game thinks my fleet is below capacity when it really isn't.

 

[thesheeep]

Looks like the Fleet Manager is buggy as fuck. I have two admirals supposedly leading the same fleet. Reinforcing doesn't work right because the game thinks my fleet is below capacity when it really isn't.

Do you have the dynamic UI mod?
Because I do and I have a similar or at least fleet-related issue where a fleet is a combined single fleet on the actual map and in the right-hand navigation.
But in the fleet manager, it's actually two separate fleets, one of which cannot be modified.

Might be a bug in the mod, or of course just one of many "native" bugs in Stellaris.

 

[Fedora Master]

Looks like the Fleet Manager is buggy as fuck. I have two admirals supposedly leading the same fleet. Reinforcing doesn't work right because the game thinks my fleet is below capacity when it really isn't.

Do you have the dynamic UI mod?
Because I do and I have a similar or at least fleet-related issue where a fleet is a combined single fleet on the actual map and in the right-hand navigation.
But in the fleet manager, it's actually two separate fleets, one of which cannot be modified.

Might be a bug in the mod, or of course just one of many "native" bugs in Stellaris.

I HAD the mod but went back to the regular UI. Seems to me like a base Stellaris bug.
The AI is as good as ever in PDX games, seeing how my neighbors can't deal with hostile critters or pirates properly.

 

[Raghar]

The AI that suggested this resolution is retarded!

Frankly that's smart, there is delay before they can vote on new topic, and putting crap like that to the top of queue prevented voting on more harmful resolution.

Great work AI.
BTW these abstaining have about the same diplomatic power as these who are voting no. Looks like galactic war is brewing.

 

[my calculator!]

The AI that suggested this resolution is retarded!

Frankly that's smart, there is delay before they can vote on new topic, and putting crap like that to the top of queue prevented voting on more harmful resolution.

Great work AI.
BTW these abstaining have about the same diplomatic power as these who are voting no. Looks like galactic war is brewing.

It seems I might be the dumb AI in this case!

 

[Average Manatee]

The way the galactic council generally works makes that not accurate. The voting list already sorts so that the issues that lots of empires preemptively agree with go to the top, and unpopular issues go to the bottom. Therefore every issue lower than that on the list is likely going to be rejected just as hard if not harder. The only way to pass through these unpopular issues is to spam favors or get really lucky with the AI's "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic.

 

[Fedora Master]

Good to see the mid-game slowdown is still there.

 

[The_Mask]

Delt corrupted me into trying this again, and the game is different: both better and worse.

>.<

 

[Fedora Master]

AI is as good as ever in PDX games.