Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Camel]

Playing on Admiral, I concur. I think I'm going to have to notch down the difficulty. The AI seems to build bigger fleets now. Corvette spam is as bad as ever, I did have on opponent whose fleets were mostly cruisers and battleships. My standard tactic of super fast expansion and blitzkrieg is not good enough anymore.

You should consider turtling and concentrating on diplomacy in the beginning, join a fedearation or a defensive alliance. AI has insane bonuses to economy on higher difficulties.

I don't like that federations are all locked behind tradition trees now since those trees are generally not good, but not having federations puts you at a disadvantage. I attacked one neighbor without realizing he was in a 5 empire federation, still managed to beat them all but it was rough. While I was chipping away at his systems with claims I took Nihilistic Acquisition and vacuumed pops off his planets. I noticed there's a 100% penalty to making claims during a war, not sure if it was like that before or not.

Picking a Diplomacy tradition tree first or second can be useful to survive in the beginning, which is the hardest part of the game.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

After all of those patches the crisis AI is still literally retarded. The Contingency will not attack planets, they will just sit there for years and do nothing.
I have yet to encounter my first crisis experience, where the swarm just ate the entire galaxy. I don't know why Paradox won't fix the crisis AI.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Dozens of games and I've never had the contingency spawn. Not once.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Set it to all or Contingency. You can now have all of the crisis spawn during your game, and each one is stronger than the last.
Doesn't matter because the crisis is still retarded though.

 

[baturinsky]

Diplomacy seems to be pretty strong lately. I wonder if pacifist expansionist route is viable now. I.e. don't declare war on anybody, but vassalize and integrate empires one by one.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I'm not sure how to use neutron launchers. Are they better on frigates or cruisers?
I tried both combinations and they seem mediocre.

Apparently X weapon slots have been nerfed too? I've been putting tachyons on kinetic battleships and arc lightning on carriers, but apparently there's an angle of fire that conflicts with the rest of its weapons?

 

[darkpatriot]

I start a new game, haven't played in awhile, even though I chose no clustered start I am totally boxed in from three sides with only the starter free planets to settle. No biggie, one of my neighbors is already claiming my systems, so I go to war, smoke his fleet, and rampage through his systems. Now I'm grinding down his colonies, it's barely been a year or two and....

FORCED PEACE. He keeps all his planets. My war exhaustion was 100% despite winning everything and having no substantial losses. He was devastated and only had 50%. Complete bullshit. Ten year forced truce and now he has double my fleet. Well that's what I get for playing on Admiral.

Is there a mod that disables this garbage? I've played this game over the years and they keep tweaking the war system. I remember the old lame warscore BS and while this is an improvement it still sucks. It wouldn't be so bad if the metric they used to calculate war weariness wasn't so stupid. How am I exhausted from winning a super fast and easy war? At least give me the option to spend money to spread propaganda to delay or reduce it, or just crush dissent with an iron fist. America lost wars for 20 straight years and no one even really knew or cared.

I checked the difficulty effects, and I don't see one that gives the AI slower war exhaustion gain to AI. So I think what probably happened is that you were losing a lot of ground troops in invasions which was rapidly increasing your war exhaustion. Lots of boys coming back in bodybags can really reduce your people's appetite for war.

But Stellaris is also balanced like most Paradox games in that you generally aren't supposed to be able to take over enemies in a single war easily. You are often supposed to take them over in multiple wars and smaller bites. To facilitate that the war exhaustion will often tick up pretty quickly in the early game (with policies, techs, and other bonuses you can slow your war exhaustion gain to allow for longer wars later in the game), so you often won't have enough time to completely occupy an enemy before forced white peace kicks in. As others have said, you are expected to make claims, and then gain those claims via a white peace (whether forced or deliberately offered/accepted). Depending on the war justification, of course. Some allow for more easily gobbling up other empires.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Its a lot easier to subjugate empires through the new overlord system.
Its actually stupidly easy to get vassals; as long as you are just stronger than the other empire they'll usually just agree to it.
Feudal Empire is now a really strong pick as it gives bonus loyalty and removes the penalty for having multiple vassals, so you can make more terms in your favor. You start off with terms that favor your vassal, wait 10 months or so and then change them so that they benefit you. I just won my last game by just vassalizing every independent civilization I could, which was the only way to keep up with federations.

 

[Camel]

You start off with terms that favor your vassal, wait 10 months or so and then change them so that they benefit you.

I tried to do that in my One rule playthrough in 3.8 and it didn’t work out at all. Granted I tried to make them satellites with unfavorable conditions and it has stupidly high influence cost of about 900 influence.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

losing a lot of ground troops

Didn't even get a chance to invade. It was corvette losses. Probably lost too many fighting starbases.

The main issue is the nonsensical concept of having a foe totally defeated in space and yet you decide to pack up and go home like the great Khan just died. Unless there is some kind of diplomacy or espionage event, the player should never be forced to quit a war they're clearly winning. Shit, ukraine has been defeated for months now and they still won't quit, and my economy was a helluva lot better than theirs.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I'm not sure how to use neutron launchers. Are they better on frigates or cruisers?
I tried both combinations and they seem mediocre.

Apparently X weapon slots have been nerfed too? I've been putting tachyons on kinetic battleships and arc lightning on carriers, but apparently there's an angle of fire that conflicts with the rest of its weapons?

Neutron launchers and giga cannons are awful now. Tachyon Lance is the only decent thing and that's even if you want to bother with X slots. Missiles, carriers, and laser boats are top tier now.

 

[darkpatriot]

losing a lot of ground troops

Didn't even get a chance to invade. It was corvette losses. Probably lost too many fighting starbases.

The main issue is the nonsensical concept of having a foe totally defeated in space and yet you decide to pack up and go home like the great Khan just died. Unless there is some kind of diplomacy or espionage event, the player should never be forced to quit a war they're clearly winning. Shit, ukraine has been defeated for months now and they still won't quit, and my economy was a helluva lot better than theirs.

I like war exhaustion as a mechanic. It is certainly arbitrary and weighted towards making it difficult to completely occupy enemies, probably more so than is realistic. But I prefer the Paradox style of having some difficulty completely defeating and absorbing enemies in a single war rather than that being the norm like it is in most strategy games.

War exhaustion is based entirely on losses taken, ground and space, and time. It doesn't consider at all whether you are winning or losing, and to be fair it also gives you an additional year to wrap up the war, or achieve the best peace you can, once you hit 100% war exhaustion. Whether you are winning or losing comes into play with the up to 50 war score you can get for having a bigger fleet.

More often than not, the wars I fight against larger enemies are to white peaces that see me gaining systems or some other advantage. The key is to make sure you have claims that let you gain systems, or use a war goal that allows something else beneficial to happen with systems you occupy. White peace is winning the war if you are in a good position.


I think the problem is that you were just taking too many losses. If your fleets aren't strong enough to take out a basic station without taking losses, you will take a lot of attrition just advancing through enemy space as you mentioned.

It is always best to make sure that your fleets are strong enough to not take losses against a basic station to avoid war exhaustion creeping up too fast. Especially early game when you don't need a ton of ship losses to really ramp up the war exhaustion. So I always make sure I have at least some point defense on my fleets. The missiles the basic stations fire is one of the bigger components of a basic stations firepower. If you can reliably knock out those missiles, that greatly reduces how much damage they can inflict on attacking fleets before they are destroyed

I am also pretty anal about repairing damaged fleets before continuing to advance, even if it slows down my advance. If corvettes and destroyers get low health/armor you will start taking losses.

If you hadn't succesfully invaded any planets by the time you hit 100% war exhaustion + 1 year, it sounds like it was probably a bit of a grinding war even if you were winning. While it can be frustrating to have the forced white peace just as you finally get the enemy where you want them, I think it is semi-realistic that your people may be tired of fighting the war if you took a significant number of losses to get to that point.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It might be more intuitive if the game didn't have the distinction between neutralizing a planet militarily (starbase capture) and subduing it completely.

Well whatever, usually war exhaustion isn't so bad, it was an edge case. Though another issue is with war goals and running out the clock. In another (defensive) war i had 70 exhaustion vs the enemys 100, fleets gone, half systems caputred and claimed. Plenty of time to grind influence and claim the rest of his systems before the forced peace. But because I hit all my  current claims, the game says great you won and ends the war. Sigh.

You avoid that by leaving at least one system claimed but uncaptured, which, again, is stupid. Generally any time the game takes away your decision making power sucks.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Wow, Xenophile is super boring. I'm playing a xenophile spiritualist death cult megacorp and you get such a massive bonus to relations that no one wants to attack you. It doesn't help that the game spawned like 1 xenophobe empire and they immediately got subjugated by a xenophile militarist empire. The Prikki-Prikki also spawned but they remained inferior for like the entire game and I'm wiping them out now.

 

[baturinsky]

Peaceful subjugation experiement. Goes pretty well so far, has one integrated already and three vassals. No wars so far. But there is a problem with diplomacy-immune empires, empires which are already lords/vassals, and soon with federation, I expect. So, expansionistic pacifism is a pretty strong path early game, but may be problematic later on.

Update:

Is there a point of playing on?

 

[thesecret1]

It's super OP, because the AI is retarded. You can subjugate even pretty strong empires by bribing them with deals where you give them some of your income, only to then quickly reverse course the moment the cooldown ends. There's ways to farm loyalty points even without necessary traditions (though those speed things up a lot). Basically offer them anything they want (and that you can afford) in exchange for building stuff on their planets. Then spam the building that produces loyalty points. GGWP.

 

[thesecret1]

The only upside I can think of regarding the mechanic's current implementation is that if you wreck an enemy empire enough, it'll willingly become a vassal of a stronger empire so that you can't just finish it off when the truce ends. Which is fairly sensible and presents natural complications to a player on the warpath. Unfortunately, this whole mechanic becomes a trainwreck the moment the player starts using it, whether by diplovassalizing retarded AIs or himself entering vassalage only to suck his master dry (by giving terms that basically have the overlord subsidize everything, while the player provides nothing).

 

[darkpatriot]

The only upside I can think of regarding the mechanic's current implementation is that if you wreck an enemy empire enough, it'll willingly become a vassal of a stronger empire so that you can't just finish it off when the truce ends. Which is fairly sensible and presents natural complications to a player on the warpath. Unfortunately, this whole mechanic becomes a trainwreck the moment the player starts using it, whether by diplovassalizing retarded AIs or himself entering vassalage only to suck his master dry (by giving terms that basically have the overlord subsidize everything, while the player provides nothing).

I have found that the way it makes other empires clump together makes the mid game a bit more challenging as you run out of small easy prey more quickly. Previously the mid game consisted of just picking people smaller than you and picking on them (if you were going expansionist) and there was always someone much smaller than you to pick on.

That is not the case any more by the mid game, and most wars after that involve having to fight much larger coalitions of enemies that were created via combinations of alliances and vassalage. And sometimes federations.



I would like to still see it harder for the player to vassalize other empires, though. I think one solution is to get rid of the ways you can get rid of penalties for having multiple vassals, as well as some of the other ways to get cheap/easy loyalty. That way if you get too many vassals at the same time you will be much more likely to face some kind of revolt.

 

[Average Manatee]

There are speedruns where players go all-in rushing 3-4 nearby AIs in the first 10-15 years, then demand peaceful vassalization of the whole galaxy. It's really dumb.

The only upside I can think of regarding the mechanic's current implementation is that if you wreck an enemy empire enough, it'll willingly become a vassal of a stronger empire so that you can't just finish it off when the truce ends. Which is fairly sensible and presents natural complications to a player on the warpath. Unfortunately, this whole mechanic becomes a trainwreck the moment the player starts using it, whether by diplovassalizing retarded AIs or himself entering vassalage only to suck his master dry (by giving terms that basically have the overlord subsidize everything, while the player provides nothing).

The annoying thing is how wars get really fucking retarded when they are vassalized by someone not bordering them. AIs end up being in a stalemate war 20 years when empires at war can't reach planets they need to occupy to cause war exhaustion.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Is it normal for xenophiles to get stupid number of pops? In my xenophile game I'm getting a lot more pops a lot faster than usual. Are migration treaties really that good? Only problem is that my Empire species list is massive because of the AI's obsession with making 3 different variants of the same species, and this is without that stupid xeno compatibility traits.

 

[darkpatriot]

Is it normal for xenophiles to get stupid number of pops? In my xenophile game I'm getting a lot more pops a lot faster than usual. Are migration treaties really that good? Only problem is that my Empire species list is massive because of the AI's obsession with making 3 different variants of the same species, and this is without that stupid xeno compatibility traits.

In my experience, yes it is.

The large number of different aliens and subspecies is annoying, but I find the way robots are treated is even more annoying. Each species/empire (I am not sure how it tracks it) also gets their own set of robots. And you can't just upgrade other species/empire robots to your own robots. They are forever a separate pool of robots that you have to manage.

 

[IDtenT]

This is why xenophobe is the only way to play.

 

[Caim]

Play xenovore instead.

Eat the alien motherfuckers.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

This is probably the biggest battle I've ever seen in this game. It did not go well for me.

I don't know what you guys are talking about because the entire galaxy pretty much is out to get me. They're all belligerent posture and were all -1000 on all trades all the time, could not bribe anyone around me to do anything. I'm Authoritarian Materialist, not xenophobe, don't purge, and I'm not the crisis. I did enslave one race but in my defense they were fanatic purifiers and totally deserved it. I should be thanked! But a stupid FE complained and made me ban slavery, so I nerve stapled them instead which is pretty much the same thing. I don't want to kill all the xenos, I just want to rule over them, fill their worlds with lovely water, and genetically modify them all into fish people to live under the sea together as obedient worker-castes. Sheesh!

I keep getting wars non-stop against huge fleets, but stupid goals. I've been grinding down this federation for 50 years, and in the mean time this empire on the other side of me keeps declaring a Humiliation war with a giant doomstack from his vassals that I can't fight. So I say, fine, I'm humiliated, take the L, and they go away. Eventually I got one of their vassals to declare secret fealty to me and then went to war against them with their buddies on my side. How the turns have tabled. But in the end I got a vassal that gives me resources and takes my science, which sucks because I have tons of resources but really need my science. I had to turn them into a protectorate with no real benefits to me just to stop them from going back to their former masters.

Amusingly, while this was going on I defeated a motion to denounce me in the senate. Suck it, haters.

The above screenshot is the second attempt to fight off the biggest dog in the galaxy. He is a megacorp with six vassals. They all have Equivalent fleets. They keep attacking with no claims, just a plunder goal. He wanted 50k energy and 10k minerals. Bro I make that in under 6 months! How about 200k? It also reduces production by 20% for basic resources for a decade, which kind of sucks, except I have my Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor going so no, it doesn't. I fought him for lulz and lost badly, even after recovering and rebuilding my fleet a second time in less than a year (Mega Shipyard). So I'll reload and eat the cost.

My only real hope with this guy is to try to pick apart his vassals, but I may just shelve the playthrough. This wasn't that good of a run, I got the Baol precursor which is okay, and I boxed in an early neighbor and expanded pretty well. But I got no curator or artisan enclave early, no leviathans nearby at all, no good events, anomalies, or digsites. I didn't realize until embarrassingly late how the new unity mechanics work, the entire list of high powered edicts with stuff like 40% fire rate for defensive wars, or the benefits of specializing planets and reducing empire size. There's also all these supergood modifiers that the new leaders can get but only if they're old enough; I had all my leaders drop dead constantly and never got those bonuses. I kinda want to try venerable lithoids and see if they can live until actual high levels. Stellaris has been such an easy game for so long I was really not prepared to have to sweat this much for one playthrough.

 

[Space Satan]

Huge success!