Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's the new monthly subscription without being a monthly subscription.

 

[Vic]

How dare these developers not work for free.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Honestly, I'm actually surprised they haven't made a Stellaris 2. Stellaris always felt to me like a bunch of interesting ideas shackled to the dead corpse that is the HOI4/EUIV/Imperator era iteration of Clausewitz engine. The engine got significantly improved since CKIII.

I suspect Paradox plans a Stellaris 2, but first they will do sequels of the titles that are more popular and need more updating. So we will probably get EUV first then HOI5, then Stellaris 2. CKIII and Victoria III are relatively young games and I doubt they will get sequels until next decade.

(they might do an Imperator 2 before or after Stellaris 2, probably after. I feel like "Grand Strategy Game set in Diadochi Era/Roman Conquest Era" is a concept they know has good marketing reach and good potential, they just haven't been able to do it justice and they know it)

Stellaris DLCs allow Paradox to:
- Keep the Stellaris audience interested, instead of going away to the competition (Like Endless Space 2 or Distant Worlds 2).
- Use fixes from older Clausewitz titles still being updated
- Experiment design-wise, see what works, jolt it down for Stellaris 2
- Make some money

I think EUV is going to be very telling as to where future Paradox titles will head.

 

[thesecret1]

Honestly, I'm actually surprised they haven't made a Stellaris 2. Stellaris always felt to me like a bunch of interesting ideas shackled to the dead corpse that is the HOI4/EUIV/Imperator era iteration of Clausewitz engine. The engine got significantly improved since CKIII.

I suspect Paradox plans a Stellaris 2, but first they will do sequels of the titles that are more popular and need more updating. So we will probably get EUV first then HOI5, then Stellaris 2. CKIII and Victoria III are relatively young games and I doubt they will get sequels until next decade.

(they might do an Imperator 2 before or after Stellaris 2, probably after. I feel like "Grand Strategy Game set in Diadochi Era/Roman Conquest Era" is a concept they know has good marketing reach and good potential, they just haven't been able to do it justice and they know it)

Stellaris DLCs allow Paradox to:
- Keep the Stellaris audience interested, instead of going away to the competition (Like Endless Space 2 or Distant Worlds 2).
- Use fixes from older Clausewitz titles still being updated
- Experiment design-wise, see what works, jolt it down for Stellaris 2
- Make some money

I think EUV is going to be very telling as to where future Paradox titles will head.

EUV is already in the works, so that's what will come next. No way they're doing Imperator 2 - they tried that game formula twice now (Imperator is just EU: Rome 2 in all but name) and it bombed each time. If they try again at all, it'll be in a long, long time, once the trauma heals.

Victoria 4 is similarly doubtful. Took them ages to do a sequel to V2, and the result was abysmal.

With Stellaris, I think they're waiting until they figure out how to actually make it work, hence the frequent massive redesigns of core mechanics

 

[Storyfag]

Is there perhaps a way to mod notifications? I would dearly like to hear when a planet finishes its construciton queue, and when a fleet arrives at its destination.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Honestly, I'm actually surprised they haven't made a Stellaris 2. Stellaris always felt to me like a bunch of interesting ideas shackled to the dead corpse that is the HOI4/EUIV/Imperator era iteration of Clausewitz engine. The engine got significantly improved since CKIII.

I suspect Paradox plans a Stellaris 2, but first they will do sequels of the titles that are more popular and need more updating. So we will probably get EUV first then HOI5, then Stellaris 2. CKIII and Victoria III are relatively young games and I doubt they will get sequels until next decade.

(they might do an Imperator 2 before or after Stellaris 2, probably after. I feel like "Grand Strategy Game set in Diadochi Era/Roman Conquest Era" is a concept they know has good marketing reach and good potential, they just haven't been able to do it justice and they know it)

Stellaris DLCs allow Paradox to:
- Keep the Stellaris audience interested, instead of going away to the competition (Like Endless Space 2 or Distant Worlds 2).
- Use fixes from older Clausewitz titles still being updated
- Experiment design-wise, see what works, jolt it down for Stellaris 2
- Make some money

I think EUV is going to be very telling as to where future Paradox titles will head.

EUV is already in the works, so that's what will come next. No way they're doing Imperator 2 - they tried that game formula twice now (Imperator is just EU: Rome 2 in all but name) and it bombed each time. If they try again at all, it'll be in a long, long time, once the trauma heals.

Victoria 4 is similarly doubtful. Took them ages to do a sequel to V2, and the result was abysmal.

With Stellaris, I think they're waiting until they figure out how to actually make it work, hence the frequent massive redesigns of core mechanics

Imperator didn't bomb because of the concept, it bombed because they keep failing to make it work. Ignoring the concept is leaving money on the table and opening space for a competitor - for example, a second Field of Glory: Empires.

(personally I think they fail because they keep doing it Nation-Focused not Character-Focused)

They're still developing Vicky3, so I doubt we will see Vicky 4 anytime soon. I can't say anything about its quality, but I hear its bad.

I agree about them waiting until they figure out how to make it work. They're definitively testing out concepts for Stellaris 2.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Ignoring the concept is leaving money on the table and opening space for a competitor

Unfortunately competitors are few and far between for grandstrat stuff. Outside of more indie style stuff, Paradox does a good job of keeping their monopoly over the genre.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Gameplay for Imperator and related games (Sengoku) are bad. Then having engine/implementation issues are just the cherry on top.

 

[thesecret1]

Imperator didn't bomb because of the concept, it bombed because they keep failing to make it work. Ignoring the concept is leaving money on the table and opening space for a competitor - for example, a second Field of Glory: Empires.

They tried twice, and it bombed both times. However good the concept may be, they are clearly unable to execute it well, hence they won't try again for a good while.

(personally I think they fail because they keep doing it Nation-Focused not Character-Focused)

I think that instead of combining CK with EU (as they're clearly trying to) they end up with a game that suffers from schizophrenia. All the character shit they have there boils down to maintaining decent loyalty and then forgetting all about it – what pointless busywork. Nation-wise there's little to nothing to even do. All you can do is map-paint, and map-paint you shall at a rapid pace, against dumb as fuck AI that cannot oppose you and without mechanics that could slow you down like EU has. The fact that the game has virtually no flavor and that the mission trees are perhaps the worst implementation Paradox ever made is just a cherry on top. It's like they only took the worst parts of both games and combined them. So much for Johan's magnum opus.

They're still developing Vicky3, so I doubt we will see Vicky 4 anytime soon. I can't say anything about its quality, but I hear its bad.

You haven't tried it? It's super bad. Way worse than even Imperator. And unfixable – the concept itself is utter dogshit (goods don't exist, only their surplus/deficit does. War is a joke. Politics are a joke, etc. etc.). They'd have to basically throw the whole thing out and try again. Most likely, we'll be hearing about them abandoning ship in a year or two like they did with Imperator.

I agree about them waiting until they figure out how to make it work. They're definitively testing out concepts for Stellaris 2.

I think it's more that they're trying to find the identity for the whole franchise, because right now it's a game whose game loop is kind of fluid and gets carried HARD by content (Stellaris is the one Paradox game that one can't fault for having too little content). This of course causes other issues, as at times it feels like going from one set piece to another rather than playing a strategy game. More importantly, they've already thrown every sci-fi trope and reference out there into the game, so what are they gonna do for the sequel? Copy it all over? Doesn't sound like a smash-hit in the making...

 

[Fedora Master]

Honestly, I'm actually surprised they haven't made a Stellaris 2. Stellaris always felt to me like a bunch of interesting ideas shackled to the dead corpse that is the HOI4/EUIV/Imperator era iteration of Clausewitz engine.

You know, they said the same things about Vicky 3.

 

[Average Manatee]

My guess is that Stellaris still sells really well and Paradox doesn't want to risk that on a sequel. That's why Paradox is willing to spend a lot of time reworking major game features rather than make Stellaris 2, people are paying enough to support that. The DLC treadmill will continue until revenue drops below targets at which point its time for a shake up to hopefully bring new people in.

 

[Dvd22]

One thing i see with stellaris is railroaded events and mechanics vs emergent gameplay. Usually the type of player who likes one dislikes the other, many people prefer a sandbox like experience where their and other empires decisions shape the galaxy, that feels alive, with dynamic relations between power blocks, alliances and the like.

Stellaris tries to do both, bouncing between favoring one or the other at different times, with story packs and events DLCs focusing on one and gameplay focused DLCs on the other. The problem is the more content of the first type they add to the game, the more "rigid" it becomes.

In the begining they said they had two visions for the game, and they choose one "The Galaxy is vast and full of wonders", i think they have incorporated more of the discarded one after how empty and simple Stellaris felt in its early days.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

Honestly, I'm actually surprised they haven't made a Stellaris 2.

In the past you could easily sell sequel with better graphics. While making strategy game with graphics visibly better than stellaris is possible it would require stuff like mesh shaders or ray-traycing which would massively increase system requirements and paradox seems to prefer making their games possible to run(badly) on potato pcs.

 

[Fedora Master]

In the begining they said they had two visions for the game, and they choose one "The Galaxy is vast and full of wonders", i think they have incorporated more of the discarded one after how empty and simple Stellaris felt in its early days.

What the galaxy is actually full of is random events you click away with slight annoyance.

ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
LEADER LEVELED UP
ANOMALY FOUND

 

[Dvd22]

In the begining they said they had two visions for the game, and they choose one "The Galaxy is vast and full of wonders", i think they have incorporated more of the discarded one after how empty and simple Stellaris felt in its early days.

What the galaxy is actually full of is random events you click away with slight annoyance.

ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
LEADER LEVELED UP
ANOMALY FOUND

I really dislike the events and the event spam in general. I want to play the game, stop constantly spamming me with the same sci-fi tropes over and over. The early game is also full of possibilities for your fledging empire or nation, usually the strongest part of 4Xs. At least they should add a slider for event frequency or an option to filter out the inconsequential events (Just what they are planning, after so many complaints).

They add flavor, but flavor wears off fast when you have seen the same events 10 times.

Also, EUIV is even worse in this regard, with the "event pulses", several "queues" of forced events every X months, some make sense because at least they are related to your current situation, some queues are completely random and just spam a random event every two years.

 

[Fedora Master]

Due to all the bloat there is rarely if ever a second of breathing room for the player. You're constantly clicking something, giving the illusion of gameplay.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Also, EUIV is even worse in this regard, with the "event pulses", several "queues" of forced events every X months, some make sense because at least they are related to your current situation, some queues are completely random and just spam a random event every two years.

I think that the main issue is that there are too many broad (or outright universal) events and not enough particular ones tied to various tag specifics. Some degree of repetitivity is unavoidable, but the content should at least be different from game to game depending on what tag you are playing and how you are playing it.

 

[Average Manatee]

The writing in Stellaris events is actually quite interesting the first time you read them and gives you a wide swathe of mini Sci Fi stories. Lots of them could easily be the plot to a Star Trek episode. I'm sure its a major reason for the popularity and reception of the game, it just doesn't hold up past 2 or 3 playthroughs.

 

[Dvd22]

Due to all the bloat there is rarely if ever a second of breathing room for the player. You're constantly clicking something, giving the illusion of gameplay.

Agree in my opinion, i find Hoi4 or even EUIV for example are much more elegant in this aspect. Much less clicking required.

Also, EUIV is even worse in this regard, with the "event pulses", several "queues" of forced events every X months, some make sense because at least they are related to your current situation, some queues are completely random and just spam a random event every two years.

I think that the main issue is that there are too many broad (or outright universal) events and not enough particular ones tied to various tag specifics. Some degree of repetitivity is unavoidable, but the content should at least be different from game to game depending on what tag you are playing and how you are playing it.

Yes, some event queues in EUIV are cool in my opninion, the corruption, overextension or disaster event queues for example generate events depending of the situation of the country, they are interactive you, as a player, can do things to avoid them or provoke them. Also they are inmersive, relatable with the situation you are dealing in game at the moment. A few countries like Ming have many particular events unique to them.

 

[thesecret1]

The writing in Stellaris events is actually quite interesting the first time you read them and gives you a wide swathe of mini Sci Fi stories. Lots of them could easily be the plot to a Star Trek episode. I'm sure its a major reason for the popularity and reception of the game, it just doesn't hold up past 2 or 3 playthroughs.

That's what they are, sometimes literally. Virtually none of the "stories" are Paradox's own (hence their better writing), they're all ripped from actual sci-fi. Only they need to fit them into a short blurb for the event, hence they sometimes come out flat out retarded.

It's cool the first time or two, but becomes pretty insufferable pretty fast. Especially the ones that happen in the early game virtually every single time.

In the begining they said they had two visions for the game, and they choose one "The Galaxy is vast and full of wonders", i think they have incorporated more of the discarded one after how empty and simple Stellaris felt in its early days.

What the galaxy is actually full of is random events you click away with slight annoyance.

ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
ANOMALY FOUND
LEADER LEVELED UP
ANOMALY FOUND

That's the early game, when you get spammed. Then you get penned in by other empires' borders and are never going to find an anomaly ever again.

It's a large issue of the game loop. Early game is decidedly content-driven with many quests and events and all that shit. Midgame you're working through the backlog of all that crap. Late game, there is little to no content left, the only remaining thing being the actual mechanics of the game, which is when their poor quality really gets to shine, making endgame pure masochism.

 

[CrusaderTemplar]

I love buying all the newest DLCs at a discounted preorder price and then being the bitch host for my friends because apparently they don't have the money to get all the DLCs. Chumps they are or smart???

 

[Fedora Master]

I love buying all the newest DLCs at a discounted preorder price and then being the bitch host for my friends because apparently they don't have the money to get all the DLCs. Chumps they are or smart???

Never buy PDX DLC. Always use Cream.

 

[CrusaderTemplar]

It's okay. Not like that money is going anywhere useful.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I love buying all the newest DLCs at a discounted preorder price and then being the bitch host for my friends because apparently they don't have the money to get all the DLCs. Chumps they are or smart???

Never buy PDX DLC. Always use Cream.

How does Cream handle updates? Do you have to update everything when a new patch is released?

 

[Fedora Master]

I love buying all the newest DLCs at a discounted preorder price and then being the bitch host for my friends because apparently they don't have the money to get all the DLCs. Chumps they are or smart???

Never buy PDX DLC. Always use Cream.

How does Cream handle updates? Do you have to update everything when a new patch is released?

Patching replaces the Steam_API so you have to overwrite it again but that's it.