Stellaris: New Paradox Sci Fi Grand Strategy

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 12:14 pm

Just a quick note:

1) this is player adjustable, according to the patch notes. The notes also talk about the reduction in habitable planets on the default setting.
2) The notes made it sound like all space monsters have been buffed, including the addition of destroyer and cruiser sized versions. Crystal shard weapons are no longer researchable.
3) No ideaMilitary stations have had their base armour increased, but no change to hps. Space ports have had armour AND hp increases. Research and mining stations no longer count towards war score. Only military stations.
4) Huge amount of changes to fallen empires, including having them "awaken" if a single player empire becomes too strong, at which point they turn into a more aggressive ai, bent on conquering the galaxy. They'll also go to war with each other.
5) No idea. Hope to start a new game tonight. I found the pre-patch starting pace extremely slow, particularly getting your research up and running, but pretty much ALL of it is drawn out over years. Hell, if you start researching colony ships on day one it'll take 5 years before you have the tech, and unless you've been saving up, another few years to gather the resources.

If it's slower, I'm not sure what will occupy your time while you wait for certain milestones to be reached. Better have 1 finger on the speed button I guess.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:12 pm

Despotic government was hugely nerfed from reduced building build cost and +min/food from slaves to reduced colony influence costs and +10% border range.

first 3 tiers of research have had their costs increased. Colony ship (tier 1 lvl 2 tech) has gone from 360 pts to 480 pts. Ugh. Colony ship moved to tier 1 lvl 1, so cost hasn't changed. Still 360 pts.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 8:03 pm

I need to pull myself away from Civ and get back into this.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 8:06 pm

tgb wrote:I need to pull myself away from Civ and get back into this.

Why? Play whatever has your attention. This will be here when you're done.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 8:27 pm

And probably the most important for some players, you can turn off end game crises.

Dogstar · Post by **Dogstar** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 9:07 pm

More notes:

1) I have to look how colonization works, as that has definitely changed. Just because something shows bright green or yellow (or red) doesn't mean you can colonize it.
2) Wars/conquests take longer. Planets have an increased value during war goals, so say goodbye to the days of throwing 4-5 of them in there at a time. If you're looking to take a capital, it will be a capital and one other planet. When you factor in that there's a 10-year waiting period between engagements, estimates of 60-100 years to conquer a 12-planet empire are not unreasonable. And it might be considerably longer if...
3) Your opponent is in an alliance. Seriously, there are defense pacts, alliances, and federations EVERYWHERE. This means there are that many more planets you have to occupy and fleets you have to destroy to get those two planets that are your war goals. They definitely ramped up that part of the game.
4) I've been underwhelmed by the new mid-game content, but this is only my first game. Ran into the artist guild, the merchant guild, and a Specter that randomly cruised around destroying stuff. That being said, everything is just a little prettier, from the ship and planet models to space combat.

The War in Heaven material is spoilered because you might enjoy just the fun of discovering it yourself... (Update: As noted, I set-up a 1000-world game. Once the War in Heaven kicks off, my system began to chug, and it only got worse as the war progressed. The game eventually just crashed. i7-3820 with 16 GB of RAM.)

Spoiler:

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 10:02 pm

Given a patch called Heinlein, I had to pick this up, with both dlc packs (all on sale at gmg)

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 12:02 am

Sorry to hear about the crash.

I've only just plopped down my first colony but it's time to call it a night.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 10:16 am

Trying to figure out if I want to spend the ten bucks. I have the urge to play a game but I'm not sure it's this game and ten bucks is waste if I start it up and don't play. I really wish Clockwork Empires released this weekend.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 11:44 am

That new arrested development leader trait can go to hell.

Prevents leader from gaining any more experience, so it essentially caps the leader at their current level.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 11:59 am

GreenGoo wrote:That new arrested development leader trait can go to hell.

Prevents leader from gaining any more experience, so it essentially caps the leader at their current level.

That's not new. There are several drawback traits that pop up here and there.

Dogstar · Post by **Dogstar** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 12:52 pm

If it seems like I'm negative about this game, I'm not, or else I wouldn't keep at it. Started a new game with only 600 worlds to hopefully make things a little easier on my system for the mid-to-end game. If you do get to the War in Heaven on an 1000-world map without it chugging, I'd be curious to hear what your processor/RAM set-up is.

1) I bumped the habitable worlds setting to 150% given what happened last game. In retrospect, this is way too much. 125% might be a more realistic setting.
2) I got the "Substance Abuser" trait for both my explorers which shaves 20 years off their lives. Maybe there's something about getting to the edge and staring into the abyss...
3) I took the "Extremely Adaptive" trait for my race. I might pay for it later, but just about everything is colonizable right off the bat. I'm expanding like it's the old U.S. land rush. It's definitely made things more fun.
4) Remember how you could ignore factions for just about forever? No longer the case. Suppression then begins to eat into the influence you've been accumulating.
5) Getting a few more new randoms and event chains this time around.
6) I've also discovered two fallen empires -- one on each border actually. That is... sub-optimal. One already made off with my best scientist.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 4:38 pm

LordMortis wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:That new arrested development leader trait can go to hell.

Prevents leader from gaining any more experience, so it essentially caps the leader at their current level.
That's not new. There are several drawback traits that pop up here and there.

I kind of thought that might be the case. When I first started playing I saw lots of traits added when leaders leveled, but my last game which was my longest, saw at least 20 leaders reach level 5, and not one gained a trait.

Now with the patch I get 2 leaders in the first 10 years who gained the arrested development trait. So in less than 10 years and with less than 8 leaders only one of which is max level there have been 2 negative traits versus hundreds of years and 20+ maxed leaders with no traits at all.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 22, 2016 8:07 pm

Playing my first game on hard, and have been having some fun back and forth with a near neighbour. First with border pressure, then with rivalry, now he's declared war on me and it's an actual fight for my survival, which is cool. Despite having approx. the same ratings in military, his fleet had 50% more military power than mine (and nearly twice the # of corvettes). Luckily spaceports were buffed and I sandwiched his fleet between mine and my space port. He bailed after losing about 1/4 of his fleet, so we've got some fun cat and mouse with our fleets.

It's good. It's the first time time the game has got me solving military problems beyond just tech, production and fleet size.

It's the first game where I decided a military base would be useful. Not having the tech for them yet was actually cool too, because then I felt some pressure for specific tech, which is almost non-existent in the game. You just tech and tech and tech and use what you get. Barring the initial tech for colony ships, I don't think I've ever felt like I needed a tech and couldn't get it right away.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Sun Oct 23, 2016 7:33 am

The updates definitely gIve it new life but I still don't feel any reason to build anything but corvettes yet. I am seeing something odd thpugh. I started right on the core and got a lot of expansion in quickly. I found out I was penned in by passive pirate fleets all around me. I'm 25 years in now, pirates enveloped by a Stellar Union of 30 worlds, and the pirates are just peacefully sitting around with huge fleets.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 23, 2016 1:29 pm

I have fleet capacity of 30 and that's not enough to kill 1 star port. Not sure if it's level 2 or 3 (they can build destroyers) but I can't quite kill it.

Hilarious.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 23, 2016 10:57 pm

So if you're a xenophile for example, this gives a -5% xenophobia stat.

What the hell does it do? I'm relatively clear on what the ethos xenophobia and xenophilia do, but there is also this xenophobia stat that is sometimes modified by other parts of the game. If I'm -10% xenophobia, what does that mean?

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Mon Oct 24, 2016 9:00 am

GreenGoo wrote:So if you're a xenophile for example, this gives a -5% xenophobia stat.

What the hell does it do? I'm relatively clear on what the ethos xenophobia and xenophilia do, but there is also this xenophobia stat that is sometimes modified by other parts of the game. If I'm -10% xenophobia, what does that mean?

I think it's mainly just another happiness modifier regarding how much your species will like or hate the idea of mixed species planets. I think it also affects the options you get regarding how to respond to events, and how much other-species slavery will or won't work for you.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 24, 2016 6:38 pm

Started a new game to test out some race design theory. I needed some negative traits so I picked fleeting for the first time. Having your leaders die before they hit 60 (fairly often) is actually really interesting. Of course it is a negative over all but it makes leadership management much more dynamic. You need to make sure you have a decent influence income just to replace all the corpses, for one thing.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 12:16 am

Lol, fuck you, combat ai.

tl;dr - my fleet can't decide between two targets, ping pongs between the two and gets chewed to death by weaker forces.

So I'm sitting on the edge of an enemy system, drawing out the enemy fleet. I outgun it about 2.5k versus 1.3k. No problem, right? There is no rock/paper/scissors here so I'm not worried. I'm trying to stay out of range of the enemy starport. Did I mention these things are monsters now? They are. It's only rated at about 769 combat strength, but they punch way higher than their weight class.

So the enemy fleet flies out to meet me, and my guys charge in. It's going well. but then the battle creeps too close to the star port, so my fleet engages the port. It flies away from the furball it's currently in to take on the starport. Not ideal, but I still outgun and outnumber them, so ok.

My fleet burns the enemy starport down to about 25% health. I believe damage does not affect combat effectiveness, so even at 25% it's fighting at 100% capability. So of course my fleet reverses course and fights the enemy fleet again, leaving a fully operational battle station to blow huge chunks out of my fleet while it furballs with the enemy fleet.

I let this go for awhile to see what happens, but my fleet is dying and I want to save my admiral. I bail. So I lose the battle, lose a HUGE amount of heavy metal (mineral cost of fleet was significant) and lose war score.

Meanwhile the enemy's defensive pact partner decides to hit my other border (which is good, I was willing to accept this damage for the damage I was going to do to my target.).

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:17 am

You can't direct the targets of your fleets in combat in this game?

Leaning towards picking this game up, although wondering whether I should wait for a great sale price, especially combined with expansions / DLC.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:33 am

No. You can emergency warp out (I.e. run away) or fight to the death once engaged.

Grand Strategy, or something.

NickAragua · Post by **NickAragua** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 10:45 am

El Guapo wrote:You can't direct the targets of your fleets in combat in this game?

Leaning towards picking this game up, although wondering whether I should wait for a great sale price, especially combined with expansions / DLC.

Right, you're in command on a strategic level only. In my experience from the most recent patch, hostile fleets will engage each other pretty much the second they wind up in the same system. At that point, your main options are a) grind your teeth and hope the guys in command of your fleet aren't drooling retards and b) hover the mouse over the retreat button until it becomes available ("emergency FTL" takes a bit of time to charge up).

That being said, I pulled what I thought was a pretty sweet trick the other day. My fleet was all short range lasers while the enemy fleet was all long range missiles. The enemy fleet was parked on top of a planet opposite from the side of the system where my fleet would have come in, so I had my guys go around the long way and warp in from a system on the other side of my target system. Worked perfectly, we warped in right on top of the missile fleet, and even though they had about a 1.5x higher combat rating, my guys chewed right through the bastards. I kind of regret not setting more severe war demands, I could have easily squashed them the rest of the way too.

I would suggest waiting for a sale, but, if you do wind up picking it up, let me know, I'd like to try some multiplayer.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 11:59 am

I'd consider some multi too, but stellaris pace makes mooII look like StarCraft, speed wise.

There is a period of inactivity after warping into a new system which leaves you vulnerable if you drop in on top of an enemy fleet. Just an fyi for those new to the game.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 12:22 pm

Just a quick note.

My incursion into a neighbour's territory and subsequent destruction of most of my fleet led to a years long defense as his defensive partners roamed around my territory killing spaceports. Despite their (spaceports) increased toughness, 1 ai had a large enough fleet that he suffered very little attrition while killing stuff. I spent 8k in mineral stock and probably another 4k in mineral income trying to stay alive. It was...exactly what was missing in my previous games of stellaris. I was fighting for my life against 3 ai, and since I started the war and didn't invite anyone, my defensive partner (he invited me to the pact) was not helping me. Things finally reached a turning point just as I dropped below 1k minerals and I've just started a small counter-counter-counter-offensive while rebuilding my stations.

Excellent game so far. After umpteen combats, warscore is sitting at 3% for me.

edit: Oh, and during this time I finished the old gods chain, and "accidentally" switched most of my pop from collectivist/militarist/spiritualist to collectivist/fanatic spiritualist, which, somehow, resulted in unhappiness from being in an offensive war. I picked militarist just so I could get a happiness boost from being at war. Gah.

Also, a jumped up luddite planet somehow lifted itself out of the early space age and became space faring (i.e. a former young sentient planet-bound race became an interstellar race). Which is fine, except they are in my territory and unfriendly to me. I conquered them because I didn't have time to mess around and he was building space port which would have been hard to dig out. I now have a lot of unhappy arid dwelling (I'm ocean) dudes ready to be assimilated with ethos buildings/edicts and then shipped all over the galaxy. Colonizable planets just doubled for me.

Also also, just to note that with the game start settings of 100% for colonizable planets, this results in a SIGNIFICANTLY lower number of colonizeable (for *any* race, of any planet type) in the galaxy, than before the patch. This has made conflict over the planets available much more serious than in my v1.2 games. Luckily I had a cluster of 3 ocean planets at the start, and I've reached 5 now (well, 6 with the conquered newbies), but if I were to colonize another I'd have to travel almost to the outer rim (I'm at the inner rim). It's that far away.

Dogstar · Post by **Dogstar** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 2:06 pm

An update on that second game:
1) Finished with a Federation victory. One of the FE's became active and decided to fanatically purify the galaxy. Didn't come after me as I probably had the biggest fleet and the biggest empire. I kept waiting for the other FE to become active, but it never happened -- so in a way, it's good that the game isn't predictable. The active FE overran just about a third of the galaxy, sending a ton of small empires to me begging to become vassals. I then allied with the existing federation so it would be the FE versus the rest of the map... and ten years later, Federation victory through colonization. Yay?
2) While it's nice that the game doesn't play out the same way each time, it still leaves vast swathes of time where you're just waiting for the next scientific discovery.
3) The Fortress was a cool extra event in my game. No spoilers.
4) The guilds that you find, especially the merchant and the curator ones, help manage your mid-to-late game energy and mineral income plus give you something to spend it on besides more ships.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 4:32 pm

#2 was hell in my last v1.2 semi-peaceful game.

This time around I'm really having a lot of fun trying to conquer 1 guy while his 2 partners fought guerilla warfare on my other border. I'm winning, but it's a slow grind, in a good way.

This is probably the most fun I've had with the game yet.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:53 pm

If you recall I mentioned that my last v1.2 game never had any leaders gain traits, either positive or negative. I also never got any achievements after my first few trial games (probably another patch version, possibly v1.1. What I mean is that I got a few achievements in v1.1 but none in later games, probably v1.2), and yes, I was playing Ironman.

Now with v1.3 I'm getting all the achievements I should have gotten in earlier games, so that's working again. I'm also getting traits at random intervals, not just on leveling up. I've had several leaders with 3 traits each.

If I'm not mistaken, habitability only impacts the maximum happiness of your pop. It also determines the minimum habitability of a planet you can colonize, which is 30%. Anything below 30% cannot be colonized. But after that, all it does is cap your happiness. And it doesn't even affect the happiness of the people on it.

For the average citizen who roams around between 50% and 70% happiness, having a gaia planet with 100% habitability is no different than having a tropical world of 70% habitability. That's pretty unintuitive and kind of sucks, actually. Sure if you're playing a high happiness race or it's late game high habitability might matter, but for the vast majority of races and vast majority of play time, it's almost, but not quite, irrelevant. That's disappointing.

The excitement of finding and colonizing a gaia planet that you experience in other games just doesn't exist in this game. A HUGE world at 50% habitability is way, way better than an average sized gaia one. I mean, it's not even close.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 12:11 pm

And things have turned dry again.

I won the little war I started, got my 2 extra planets, and now I'm one of the largest and most powerful empires in my part of the galaxy. I gobbled up 2 pre-space planets shortly after they became post-space planets inside my borders. I have trouble with the transition from micro management (your first 5 systems) to macro management (every system after that). It's a distinct transition in game style and play and I am still learning to do it more smoothly. I'm sitting around 13 planets and 150ish pop. If I had a better handle on macromanagement I could and should be exploding in size to double that, easily.

Now I'm just sitting around, waiting for build queues to finish and research to be completed.

Yawn.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:14 pm

Apparently you only get steam achievements if you are playing Ironman without any mods, in case any other n00bs are just starting like me.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:20 pm

Pyperkub wrote:Apparently you only get steam achievements if you are playing Ironman without any mods, in case any other n00bs are just starting like me.

Lol, I think my son installed mods. That would explain that.

Thanks for the info.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 3:43 pm

GreenGoo wrote:And things have turned dry again.

I won the little war I started, got my 2 extra planets, and now I'm one of the largest and most powerful empires in my part of the galaxy. I gobbled up 2 pre-space planets shortly after they became post-space planets inside my borders. I have trouble with the transition from micro management (your first 5 systems) to macro management (every system after that). It's a distinct transition in game style and play and I am still learning to do it more smoothly. I'm sitting around 13 planets and 150ish pop. If I had a better handle on macromanagement I could and should be exploding in size to double that, easily.

Now I'm just sitting around, waiting for build queues to finish and research to be completed.

Yawn.

Isn't that what the time speed buttons are for?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:06 pm

Sure. Then some tech is researched I pick a new topic and hit the time button again. Assuming the build queues aren't dinging repeatedly as they finish. Which they are.

Whether time is fast or slow, gameplay right now is making changes to build queues and picking new research topics.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:08 pm

I actually quite like the tech tree and system in Stellaris, but one of the downsides is that it is very difficult to actively pursue certain technologies. You can't "Beeline" for Virtual Combat Arenas (not that you'd want to) for instance.

It's very much "take what you can get" with some "I'll veer in this direction and hope for the best" tech tree management.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:31 pm

Is anyone getting an issue where the current hotfix patch constantly is validating and, once finished, just repeats validating again?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:03 pm

baelthazar wrote:Is anyone getting an issue where the current hotfix patch constantly is validating and, once finished, just repeats validating again?

I'll let you know when I get home tonight (assuming the patch is new today).

Dogstar · Post by **Dogstar** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 8:19 pm

GreenGoo wrote:Whether time is fast or slow, gameplay right now is making changes to build queues and picking new research topics.

So much this. I'm hoping the next patch and full expansion, which isn't due for quite some time (there's not even an estimate yet I believe), helps fix this.

It's not all bad -- it's fun to discover the big wonders and monsters and figure out what to do with them. There just needs to more content. I'm wondering if, in the interim, the best way to mix things up to create the biggest challenge, is to just play a completely random empire with characteristics and government.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 9:11 pm

GreenGoo wrote:
baelthazar wrote:Is anyone getting an issue where the current hotfix patch constantly is validating and, once finished, just repeats validating again?
I'll let you know when I get home tonight (assuming the patch is new today).

Installed without a hitch.

Whatever the hotfix was for, my fleets and stations are now reporting much higher combat power.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Oct 27, 2016 10:43 pm

If someone trades me star charts, do I lose the possibility of surveying those systems and/or finding anomalies? That would seem to be a really large negative from trading for star charts.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Fri Oct 28, 2016 3:40 pm

GreenGoo wrote:
Pyperkub wrote:Apparently you only get steam achievements if you are playing Ironman without any mods, in case any other n00bs are just starting like me.
Lol, I think my son installed mods. That would explain that.

Thanks for the info.

Confirmed (at least the Ironman part). Got 3 Steam Achievements in the new Ironman game I started last night for basics such as colonizing a planet, etc.

Theory from one of the forums (paradox, I think) is that any mod which add/changes files in the "Common" folder will trigger the blocking of Achievements, but not say language mods...