Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[DakaSha II]

Hows that mid game going for you guys? Good?

good. good

 

[Lone Wolf]

Depends on how you play it. Sounds like there are a lot of players afraid of the early game tangles, preferring to expand via colonization until they run out of room. And then when it comes time for confrontation, it turns out there's a web of alliances in play.

My new game is a lot of fun. Decadent (role-playing reasons, I don't actually resettle slave pops), imperialistic slavers, subjugating alien scum everywhere they go. I kept colonization to a minimum for ages. Now, in the middle game, I'm laying the groundwork for the campaigns of tomorrow, against all sorts of xeno-filth.

I'm finding it a bit strange that I still haven't seen any fallen empires, though.

Definitely-not-pro-tip: mix up your fleet load-outs, men. A pack of thirty corvettes with fusion missiles will slice and dice half a dozen destroyers and twenty corvettes armed primarily with blue lasers. Sadly, I was on the wrong side of that scuffle. Nothing changed until I started including disruptors, torpedoes and more PD in my fleet.

 

[Inspectah]

Anyone else having trouble figuring out the "differing war philosofy" thing?
Really anoying, playing as a peaceful spiritual race, neighbours are spiritual seekers, 178 positive relations and that is still stopping them from allying me

 

[Average Manatee]

Anyone else having trouble figuring out the "differing war philosofy" thing?
Really anoying, playing as a peaceful spiritual race, neighbours are spiritual seekers, 178 positive relations and that is still stopping them from allying me

You need to match their policies on War Economy and possibly Orbital Bombardment as well I think. Since there's no way to see what policies they have AFAIK you just have to make switches until you find what they like.

 

[Inspectah]

Anyone else having trouble figuring out the "differing war philosofy" thing?
Really anoying, playing as a peaceful spiritual race, neighbours are spiritual seekers, 178 positive relations and that is still stopping them from allying me

You need to match their policies on War Economy and possibly Orbital Bombardment as well I think. Since there's no way to see what policies they have AFAIK you just have to make switches until you find what they like.

That didn't work though, I tried all the combinations. Maybe it's bugged?

 

[MoLAoS]

Well, I finally got a couple hundred years in. Game is still shit. Regret wasting my day.

 

[thesheeep]

Wait 2 years and play again after the 7th expansion. Might be a completely different game, then.
Seriously.

 

[IDtenT]

Why wait for seven expansions? Every early .* patch with CKII added significant changes - so much so that each version plays quite differently.

That said, if you don't lay in bed scheming about your next move then I doubt it will ever happen.

 

[Steve]

Depends on how you play it. Sounds like there are a lot of players afraid of the early game tangles, preferring to expand via colonization until they run out of room. And then when it comes time for confrontation, it turns out there's a web of alliances in play.

Declaring war on everything because you have nothing better to do is not a good thing in a strategy game. This is probably the worst Paradox title at launch, the game is very barebones. Diplomacy and trade are on par with Total war and CiV5, there is no espionage of any kind. If you aren't fighting a war there is nothing to do but busy work microing your science ships and workers. If they had brought the automation features from EU4 there would be literally nothing to do but to stare at your screen until the next war. If it wasn't for the multiplayer I don't see myself sinking the kinds of hours in this that I put in other Paradox titles.

Wait 2 years and play again after the 7th expansion. Might be a completely different game, then.
Seriously.

This. To better or worse, Eu4 and especially CK2 are now very different beasts than what they were at launch.

 

[Destroid]

It's a 4x game too though right? That's what you do in 4x, its war.

 

[varangos]

You really need to mix your fleets,I led 20 destroyers and cruisers against 35 corvettes and got royally rekt,but hard counters are a good think cause otherwise you would only field battleships.

Also guys what's the usage of pre space races you find?you can assimilate them peacefully eventually or its waste of time?

 

[Xeon]

I thought it depended on what kind of things you equipped your ships with, somethings are good against shield or armor.

I watched DDRJake's 2nd playthrough, Unbidden showed up. He gathered his ships to fight them with mixed setup and he got destroyed, The chat said to target their shield I think with torpedoes and he rebuilt and equipped all his ships with that to fight. He did pretty good but there was just too many Unbidden troops for him. AI also didn't help him at all even tho the entire galaxy was being invaded.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I've been rolling over everyone with ships loaded with nothing but lasers so I'm not really buying that you have to mix up your fleet to be effective. I just scrap the old models when I research a bigger ship type and pump those as the ships seem to get exponentially better while making the smaller models obsolete. Just make sure you have deflectors, armor and regenerative hulls and you can eat up any kind of damage no problem.

 

[Quatlo]

You really need to mix your fleets,I led 20 destroyers and cruisers against 35 corvettes and got royally rekt,but hard counters are a good think cause otherwise you would only field battleships.

Also guys what's the usage of pre space races you find?you can assimilate them peacefully eventually or its waste of time?

Thats because corvetes are stupidly strong, not because you need to mix anything. Make a screen of tankvettes and you win everything.

 

[Kazuki]

 

[Turisas]

^ I found a species with irradiated trait that gives them +100% habitability on tomb worlds, those are worth enslaving fo sho.

I've been rolling over everyone with ships loaded with nothing but lasers so I'm not really buying that you have to mix up your fleet to be effective. I just scrap the old models when I research a bigger ship type and pump those as the ships seem to get exponentially better while making the smaller models obsolete. Just make sure you have deflectors, armor and regenerative hulls and you can eat up any kind of damage no problem.

Meh, I've had pretty much the same experience and I've got nothing but nukes. The latest enemy did have a point-defense module in its destroyer loadout, but that one pathetic turret wasn't enough for my divine barrage - fucked their fleet up in no time.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

I had an apostasy happen in my wh40k themed game and the entire calaxis sector revolted. Good so far, problem is they are led by a species that did not exist on any of the planets. Instead of Imperials (my race) it had some alien race as "founding" race despite all the pops on their planets being imperial.

Immersion status: broken. Still went for exterminatus solution.

 

[MoLAoS]

In my last game I finally made some observation posts for non-spacefaring races. I kidnapped 2 genius scientists which was cool. I tried to infiltrate Earth as they were an early space age race but they ended up trying to go ex-comm on me and one of my agents betrayed me for some human on alien sex. I ended up just going back to passive observation so they didn't actually do anything with their global anti alien world government thing. Even without Earth Sol was an amazing system for mining stations.

One thing I learned was that you should never make your home planet your capital because some actions are limited to your single empire capital building and you're home planet is shit. I couldn't max out my amazing 25 tile research planet because you need the empire capital to upgrade to the highest level buildings. Also somehow one of the non fallen empire nations had better tech than me. WTF? I was maxed out on crystals and energy with a huge territory and dozens of planets with a dedicated 25 slot research world.

Also the only war I fought was to be able to destroy a frontier station that was hogging 3 planets with good research station locations. I literally didn't want to attack anyone because no one had anything I wanted. There's just no point to wars.

Oh, and there are very clearly certain techs that are infinitely superior to others. The influence gain techs and the border expansion techs are insanely OP.

 

[Ludovic]

I had an apostasy happen in my wh40k themed game and the entire calaxis sector revolted. Good so far, problem is they are led by a species that did not exist on any of the planets. Instead of Imperials (my race) it had some alien race as "founding" race despite all the pops on their planets being imperial.

Immersion status: broken. Still went for exterminatus solution.

Know the Mutant; Kill the Mutant.

The alien was either a mutant governor or some xenos scum subverting your planets from the light of the Emperor.

 

[Talby]

Planet Australia.

I heard terraforming a planet removes all barriers, but I haven't tested it myself.

 

[Quigs]

The exo-galactic threat showed up. Invaded the space of a neighbor who wouldn't let anyone in to his territory. Made the decision to split the fleet to handle all the incursions. 5 different 30k+ invading forces. Bought myself some time, but the fleet is in ruins. Worst part is, I'm doing all the fighting. No one seems to give a fuck. Vassals that supported me against galactic enemies haven't sent a single ship over. Their tech seems to be worse than what I'm using, but they're kicking my ass. Using mixed tech weapons (t3 heavy torps, t4 lasers, t5 railguns, t3 bombers) was less effective against them than just pure railgunboats.

If 2k space stations are a problem then yeah, they've beaten you.

Odd. Invading Battlestations are 3k in my game, and have some bullshit regen power. I'm using t5 railguns in a fleet of 11k, (all that's left of Alpha Fleet ) and it takes a long time to kill them because they regen almost as fast as I hit them.

Edit : Ah. There's Invader invaders, and there's the swarm. I'm fighting the swarm.

 

[Space Satan]

More Paradox for the Paradox God!

There is a rather serious bug in the game currently where Pops mostly only lose Ethics when they are diverging. This problem (and some related issues) has been fixed but not yet thoroughly tested, and will be included in the first proper patch, which we plan to release later in May. With the fix, when a Pop diverges it tends to retain 3 spent Ethics points, and never fewer than 2.

Defence modules

Them staying too far behind is a bug that will be fixed.

Carriers:

Strike Craft engagement range will be buffed significantly in the future.

 

[Spectacle]

Also somehow one of the non fallen empire nations had better tech than me. WTF? I was maxed out on crystals and energy with a huge territory and dozens of planets with a dedicated 25 slot research world.

That must have been an "advanced start" civilization. When you start a game you can pick how many aliens get to start out a bit ahead, the default is 4. I believe the start the game with 3-4 planets and some basic thech, enough that they have a chance to be more challenging mid-game opponents.

 

[MoLAoS]

Also somehow one of the non fallen empire nations had better tech than me. WTF? I was maxed out on crystals and energy with a huge territory and dozens of planets with a dedicated 25 slot research world.

That must have been an "advanced start" civilization. When you start a game you can pick how many aliens get to start out a bit ahead, the default is 4. I believe the start the game with 3-4 planets and some basic thech, enough that they have a chance to be more challenging mid-game opponents.

Oh! I thought that meant how many fallen empires you got. That makes sense.

 

[Inspectah]

Colonized a planet, found out it had atrition with an isolationist fallen empire a few months later.
Having no way to purge my own planet, just sold it to a friendly neighbor