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Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

mbv123

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Started watching Star Trek TOS and I'm in a mood for space strategy games. Never played Stellaris (nor any 4x game for that matter). Is this a good entry to the genre?
 

Norfleet

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Probably not, since Stellaris is full of counterintuitive sadistic Paradox mechanics, where doing the right thing results in the wrong outcome or punishment for doing that thing.
 
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Probably not, since Stellaris is full of counterintuitive sadistic Paradox mechanics, where doing the right thing results in the wrong outcome or punishment for doing that thing.

Tons of strategy games are like that, but Stellaris AI is poor enough to survive and win almost regardless of how badly you play, and you'll never be caught off guard by some paradigm-shifting weapon or ability like in MoO or even a ship that really hard counters you like in Distant Worlds. Which is also one of its weaknesses.
 
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whatevername

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Started watching Star Trek TOS and I'm in a mood for space strategy games. Never played Stellaris (nor any 4x game for that matter). Is this a good entry to the genre?
Play Master of Orion 2.
Stellaris is not a 4x game because you're penalized for expanding in every version; eXpand is one of the x in 4x. The game gets worse with every update and the AI is terrible.
 
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The expansion penalties are so small now they might as well not be there. Alpha Centauri has harsher expansion penalties.
 
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Problems I have with Stellaris so far:

1. You know, I wish they got rid of the Pop Grid system and replaced it with something else, maybe something more like Victoria, I dunno.
As it is, most worlds end more or less the same thing. You can't, say, make a world into your Tranton/Coruscant by stuffing it with billions over billions of people, with enough infraestructure and food to sustain it. Which is weird because Precursor civilizations clearly did that in the Stellaris universe.

At some point, if you don't expand, your food production ends up being worth shit because you have no space to grown. What the fuck are those people even doing with all that food that just hits the max limit? "Fuck, our food reached the arbitrary limit, thrown it into the sun". "Wait we could use it feed even more population in our super-techno advanced star-nation that powers itself with Zero-Point Energy" "Shut up and load those crates into the rocket".

It also means stuff like Barbaric Despoilers and Nihilistic Acquisition is immensely pointless, because you can't just take most of your enemy's population and turn your planets into huge slave camps, or sell all those slaves into the galactic slave market.

Historically, population was very rarely limited by space. Fuck, we could cram trillions on Planet Earth if we had enough energy and food.


2. Pirates are retarded. They spawn on one of your border systems, destroy some of your mines for teh lulz, and then go back to their stations to await death.
Honestly, if I handled pirates:
a) Pirates would be a non-state diplomatic factor, akin to Stations and Marauders, but with options more akin to normal states. They have the race of the nation that spawned them, using ethics of dissent groups within (except Pacifist), but their civics attract dissidents from other nations. I'm thinking they would be a far weaker, more unified version of marauders.
b) Pirates "raid" stations in hit-and-run attacks to steal their wealth, avoid armed stations unless they know they can take them and there is no player fleet nearby.
c) Pirates don't have territory or stations, they hit-and-run constantly in any nearby nations.
d) Pirates can be paid off not to raid (space Danegeld), or given "Pirate Haven" territories inside a nation's borders, allowing it to use that nation to as a haven from pursuing forces, while raiding everyone else.
e) Attacks on stations give minerals, energy, food and research to pirates, allowing them to get stronger, build habitats, etc.
d) Eventually Pirates can start vassalizing or even taking over entire nations, if they have enough strength.


3. Too many damn "+%something" civics, governments and traditions. We need less "MOAR NUMBERS" and more things that allow you to do things that bend or change the rules.

4. Related: The Traditions trees are too small, which means your real choice is which ones you will adopt first.
Traditions are meant to be the Ideas from EUIV, right? Ideas in EUIV work because you can't have ALL of them, and National Ideas/Traditions make it so that every nation is unique. They should just expand the Trees deeper, or make more. Oh yeah, we need more and better Ascension Perks, half of them are useless shit lke "Enigmatic Engineering".
 

whatevername

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The expansion penalties are so small now they might as well not be there. Alpha Centauri has harsher expansion penalties.
You're right, +330% is so small it might as well not be there.
ape8v6.jpg
 
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So you have 16600% as many systems compare to start but tech costs are at 430%. Wow so horrible.

Maybe stop intentionally sabotaging yourself by playing with one planet? You know, like expand?
 

whatevername

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So you have 16600% as many systems compare to start but tech costs are at 430%. Wow so horrible.

Maybe stop intentionally sabotaging yourself by playing with one planet? You know, like expand?
Playing with 1 planet is like shooting fish in a barrel with a 16" gun. Playing with more than 1 planet would be like nuking an ant hill. You know, that shitty AI.
 

ilitarist

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4. Related: The Traditions trees are too small, which means your real choice is which ones you will adopt first.

And there's the right answer there; the one that boosts exploration and gives you science for surveying.

Also every 4X has anti-blobbing mechanics of some sorts. Few go as far as Civilization 5 (it had an optimal number of cities, you get 4 ASAP and then you can relax) but still making expansion potentially dangerous is a good way to limit it.

In current Stellaris I'd say that expansion is not punishing enough. Because when you have influence and unclaimed system you build a station there. Otherwise you'll be pestered with pirates and will give allow someone to get it and move border closer to your core worlds. You blob at all directions till you hit other empires or a system with some sort of neutral monsters. This is boring.
 

ilitarist

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Well if any of the players thinks for a second that bonus to research, speed and quality of surveying (and therefore speed of expansion and quality of your systems, sometimes better bonuses) and better leaders are not the automatic straightforward choice then I guess Paradox did a better job than I thought to make Traditions look like a real choice.
 

Norfleet

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even a ship that really hard counters you like in Distant Worlds. Which is also one of its weaknesses.
Heh, Distant Worlds Space Combat had one rule: Range + Speed = Autowin. If they can't catch you and they can't outrange you, then they can't do diddly shit to you and you can just rip them apart from outside their ability to retaliate.
 

whatevername

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And yet you keep playing... Makes you think
I tried every major update to see for myself what kind of incline most of you Paradoxbois were spreading lies about. Almost finished 1 game in 1.5, but was so bored I couldn't mop up 2 remaning pathetic FEs. That screenshot is as far as I got in 2.0.
 
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Well if any of the players thinks for a second that bonus to research

Research has always sucked compared to production in 4x games. That's like the first rule of MoO2 in fact. Sucks even more in Stellaris because research is so neutered.

speed and quality of surveying

Irrelevant because you can just buy more scientists and space stuff is completely irrelevant compared to developed planets.

(and therefore speed of expansion and quality of your systems, sometimes better bonuses)

Speed of expansion is limited by influence and minerals. Good traditions give you these.

better leaders

wow, 2% more resources after a decades of leveling up.
 

Grinolf

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Discovery is literally one of the worst trees to start with.
Unity from assist research perk was (and still is in live version) very powerfull. Also some anomalies are very strong in early game, so it doesn't hurt to have more of them. Additional research alternatives are also nice. The rest of the tree, I agree, is garbage
 
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Discovery is literally one of the worst trees to start with.
Unity from assist research perk was (and still is in live version) very powerfull

u wot?

Wow 10 more unity per month when my empire is at 200+. Get the unity power plant, unity capital, unity farm and -unity from colonies from all of the other trees. Or get the +x% unity bonuses from the others. Assist research is crap unless you are in the very early game with few planets, which is exactly when you should be exploring.

Anomalies are OK early game though. Fact of the matter is you should really dip into every tree and get the obvious strong starter bonuses rather than finishing trees up, and its right near the top. Opening with map the stars + Discovery is fine (prosperity or harmony are also excellent contenders), just don't waste your time with the rest.
 
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Grinolf

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Assist research is crap unless you are in the very early game with few planets, which is exactly when you should be exploring.

That's exacatly when it should be used, as it doubles unity gain at this stage for most empires, just tush through traditions. And having more traditions is worth more than having fewer ships on explore and energy required for hiring additional scientists. Worth a try before next patch would turn this perk into a joke.
 
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]That's exacatly when it should be used, as it doubles unity gain at this stage for most empires, just tush through traditions. And having more traditions is worth more than having fewer ships on explore and energy required for hiring additional scientists. Worth a try before next patch would turn this perk into a joke.

Oh wow, so you're using 1/2 skill leaders that give 1 or 2 unity? That's even more of a joke.

Traditions base cost goes up exponentially. It doesn't help in the long run at all to "double" your unity gain from 4 to 8, it weakens you by taking away from your economy. You want more pops, minerals and influence to expand as fast as possible because lots of planets with lots of stuff generate unity and everything else best.
 

Grinolf

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Traditions base cost goes up exponentially. It doesn't help in the long run at all, it weakens you by taking away from your economy. You want more pops, minerals and influence to expand as fast as possible.

You should have lvl 2-3 scientists by the time you unlock this. And you use low lvl scientist for exploration instead, switching only temporaly for anomalies. Science ship is also worth as much as 1st tier of unity building, while not requiring space and pop, and with 3 lvl scientist 1,5 time more effective than non spiritualist one. All this advantages for 200 energy for scientist, which doesn't matter much.
 

baturinsky

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Early unity boost can allow you to get first two or three trees faster, which in turn can allow you to have some ascendancies that are useful early game faster. Such as fleet cap upper.
But yeah, assist research is still pretty meh.
 
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And there's the right answer there; the one that boosts exploration and gives you science for surveying.

I think its a split between Discovery and Expansion, in case you find a pretty good lot of planets nearby and get boxed in by a lot of nearby civilizations that don't want to open up the borders..
 

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