Stellaris: Paradoxian Space Stategy.

[Leecros]

Oh well, It's not really important. Looking at other systems, I can't really find a strict pattern that the game follows. I've seen continental and tropical worlds in the first orbit as well. The only thing that threw me off in this case was that the moon is molten which either means that it's close enough to the star for it to become molten, or it's the moon that is weird with its composition. Either an overactive tectonic system or a bunch of other things. Yet, probably none of that matters and when the system was generated, it just had a weird roll.



Also Venus would probably be a toxic world based on the game's definition of them

"A Rocky planet with a thick atmosphere that is lethal to all known higher forms of life."

[DigoDragon]

Venus is covered in sulfuric acid clouds and it rains metal. Pretty sure it meets the qualifications for a toxic world.

[Leecros]

So i'm starting to think that the 1000 star map is just really really much bigger than i first thought it would be. I'm like 180 years into the game and while i am the strongest power in my neighbourhood. I've only taken control of maybe like...10% of the map, if that. On top of that, there are more factions on the map than when i started.

Keep in mind that the two victory conditions right now are control 40% of the habitable planets, or eliminate/subjugate all factions.


I have quite a long way to go yet.

[Siosilvar]

Hm, found another couple of bugs/oversights:

Adding a planet to a sector removes all factions. This is obviously broken as hell.

It also seems that when the AI surrenders, you get all the war goals. As in, your empire, not whoever you promised them to when you started the war. Maybe that was just a one-off, but even once is too much.

[Grif]

Found a funny bug. I had my invasion army get stuck on a planet because peace was declared just as they were mopping up the defenders. Luckily, energy is just flowing out of my rear that it's nothing major.

[factotum]

Hm, found another couple of bugs/oversights:

Adding a planet to a sector removes all factions. This is obviously broken as hell.

It actually tells you it will do that in a tooltip somewhere, so I think that's intentional, not a bug or an oversight. Also, it's entirely possible that the "Make our planet independent!" faction will rapidly become a "Make our sector independent!" one instead, because that's what happened to me when I put my ex-vassal's homeworld into a new sector, so it's not as broken as you might think.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

There, now I have 4 full use able species in my empire! Handily took in some ant-men refugees from the subterranean empire under one of my colonies, so they've been colonizing deserts for me. Plus I have two primitives in my empire, one of which (penguin men) was driven off their building tiles by pre-sentients (canary-men). Funnily enough, the pre-sentients appear to control a large fleet of crystals in the system. Maybe the crystals seeded them? Pretty obviously a bug though considering the crystals are all grouped up and dormant in a corner

[GloatingSwine]

Am still in the grips of alt-itis.

Think I am going to do a happiness empire. Intelligent/Communal/Enduring with Sedentary/Weak (basically the "free" neg traits because they're so easy to overcome), then go Fanatic Materialist/Pacifist and Moral Democracy (or Individualist/Materialist/Pacifist). Pile up the empire techs, expand expand expand and happy everyone up to get +20% tile income, +40% science tile income (Intelligent/F. Materialist/Happy). Would start at base +15% happiness with an extra +10 on advanced government, use edicts to jump it further. Just need to be decisive in wars to get them over quickly.


Super happy pops should also help overcome terrible sector AI...

[Leecros]

Adding a planet to a sector removes all factions. This is obviously broken as hell.

It actually tells you it will do that in a tooltip somewhere, so I think that's intentional, not a bug or an oversight. Also, it's entirely possible that the "Make our planet independent!" faction will rapidly become a "Make our sector independent!" one instead, because that's what happened to me when I put my ex-vassal's homeworld into a new sector, so it's not as broken as you might think.

Indeed. I have had factions show up, they go away when i put planets in a sector, then the pops just join a new faction.

[factotum]

Got a question. Is there any way to upgrade the transport ships that attacking armies get into when you embark them? I couldn't find one, and it's a royal pain that my transports have to lag behind the main fleet because they can't jump as far or as fast.

[Vitruviansquid]

Ugh. I'm finding Sectors really hard to work with. The rule that sectors need to be contiguous star systems with touching borders means I have to give up a lot of my good core planets once I begin to be able to settle many planet types, because I'll be settling planets in between my original core that I can't possibly get rid of without losing those older planets.

So I have to do things like rebuild my spaceports that end up in the hands of sector governors, who I'm fairly certain don't use or develop them.

I'm also losing mostly-built planets that just sits on THOUSANDS of minerals or energy because they don't produce enough of the other thing.

[Leecros]

Ugh. I'm finding Sectors really hard to work with. The rule that sectors need to be contiguous star systems with touching borders means I have to give up a lot of my good core planets once I begin to be able to settle many planet types, because I'll be settling planets in between my original core that I can't possibly get rid of without losing those older planets.

So I have to do things like rebuild my spaceports that end up in the hands of sector governors, who I'm fairly certain don't use or develop them.

I'm also losing mostly-built planets that just sits on THOUSANDS of minerals or energy because they don't produce enough of the other thing.

I've learned to just not really care about what my sectors do. I've taken into a habit of colonizing a planet, building it the way I want to, wait until it gets 50-60% full of its pops and then giving it over to a sector to control and move on.

This way, I build the planet up the way I like and can sort of control what the sector does with it.

The problem with this tactic is that It's slow. Even with my fast breeding fennecs, I can't colonize planets as quickly as I may have wanted to.

[Driderman]

Found a funny bug. I had my invasion army get stuck on a planet because peace was declared just as they were mopping up the defenders. Luckily, energy is just flowing out of my rear that it's nothing major.

That happens. Troops should find their way home eventually, they're just MIA for a bit.

[Corvus]

After a few tests starts, I'm having my first proper game. Realising that at some stage they will be nerfing slavery, I'd thought I'd give a slaver race a go. It is not my normal style of game-play. I tend to be a nice guy (well as much as can be in 4x style games).

I'm playing as the Holy Bakturian Order. Mulluscoid (mindflayer portrait) race of decadent, communal and adaptive members. Their ethos is fantatic spiritualism/collectivism. Government is Divine Mandate. That gives them 100% slavery tolerance, +15% happiness and +10% habitability. I set up a ring galaxy with everyone using hyperlanes.

I got a pretty amazing start. My starting leader had +10% happiness/+10% minerals so my starting planet was already at +20% production. Oh, and there were three other species within my starting borders.

The first lived just one jump away, a mammalian race on continental worlds. As I live on arid, this was very handy. Oh, and they were steam age, ticking over to industrial as I readied to invade. As a race they were communal and expert engineers and their ethos was fanatical collectivist/spiritual. They had no problems with being enslaved - in fact they were happier as slaves than free to start with, though I have since emancipated some to work on power plants and labs.

One jump away from them was a world with five inhabitable worlds, though only one initially. Of them one had a pre-sentient race of arthropoids living on a desert world. At some stage I will uplift them into perfect slaves. On the arid world was another race, at atomic age. Also arthropoids, they weren't quite as accepting of slavery, being spiritualists/individualists/xenophobes. They are extremely unhappy at being slaves but there isn't much they can do about it. On the positive side, they are charismatic rapid breeders. Given they live on the same world type as my race, this is perfect. I force settle them on my worlds to do the slave labour and my race also receives happiness for having charismatic slaves. Double win.

Having three worlds before I'd even finished researching colony ships has given me a massive boost to industry right out of the gate.

[Grif]

That happens. Troops should find their way home eventually, they're just MIA for a bit.

Nah, they're premenantly stuck. (That game also had the AI's planet permanently occupied by another power even after the war, so that shouldn't be happening.)

Anyway, anyone know how the "Terror bombing" malus is triggered? I got it after bombarding and invading some planet, but I cannot figure out how.

Got a question. Is there any way to upgrade the transport ships that attacking armies get into when you embark them? I couldn't find one, and it's a royal pain that my transports have to lag behind the main fleet because they can't jump as far or as fast.

Set the design to auto-update. They'll automatically use the latest FTL tech.

Ugh. I'm finding Sectors really hard to work with. The rule that sectors need to be contiguous star systems with touching borders means I have to give up a lot of my good core planets once I begin to be able to settle many planet types, because I'll be settling planets in between my original core that I can't possibly get rid of without losing those older planets.

So I have to do things like rebuild my spaceports that end up in the hands of sector governors, who I'm fairly certain don't use or develop them.

I'm also losing mostly-built planets that just sits on THOUSANDS of minerals or energy because they don't produce enough of the other thing.

I usually gotten into the habit of injecting energy/minerals to compensate for any deficiency in the sector. They STILL overwrite tiles, which makes me sad.

[Madcrafter]

Anyway, anyone know how the "Terror bombing" malus is triggered? I got it after bombarding and invading some planet, but I cannot figure out how.

I believe, though I'm not certain, that it comes from killing a pop during bombardment (which only has a chance of happening at the higher two settings AFAIK). If you want to avoid it, try setting your bombardment strategy to the lowest one.

[Grif]

I believe, though I'm not certain, that it comes from killing a pop during bombardment (which only has a chance of happening at the higher two settings AFAIK). If you want to avoid it, try setting your bombardment strategy to the lowest one.

Reading the wiki, even the lowest setting has a 5% chance to kill a pop on bombardment. Which is unfortunate for my race of fanatically peaceful space fungi.

[Leecros]

Reading the wiki, even the lowest setting has a 5% chance to kill a pop on bombardment. Which is unfortunate for my race of fanatically peaceful space fungi.

You could just try and brute force it with armies. It would take a lot of troops to do it though.


I've...seen the AI do it to me...

[factotum]

Set the design to auto-update. They'll automatically use the latest FTL tech.

But that's the problem--there is no design for transport ships in the ship designer. If there were, I would have upgraded it myself.

So I have to do things like rebuild my spaceports that end up in the hands of sector governors, who I'm fairly certain don't use or develop them.

I'm also losing mostly-built planets that just sits on THOUSANDS of minerals or energy because they don't produce enough of the other thing.

You can still use a spaceport that's in a sector if you want to, just as you can still build stations yourself in sector controlled space--the only thing you can't do in a sector is move pops or build on a planet surface. As for the minerals thing, not sure what that means? You specify in the sector setup how much of the minerals and energy the sector produces goes to your global treasury--you could, if you wanted, set this to 100%, although you'd then have to manually feed energy and minerals back to the sector to allow it to keep running.

[Vitruviansquid]

You can still use a spaceport that's in a sector if you want to, just as you can still build stations yourself in sector controlled space--the only thing you can't do in a sector is move pops or build on a planet surface. As for the minerals thing, not sure what that means? You specify in the sector setup how much of the minerals and energy the sector produces goes to your global treasury--you could, if you wanted, set this to 100%, although you'd then have to manually feed energy and minerals back to the sector to allow it to keep running.

Ah, I think I'll start doing these.

[Grif]

You can still use a spaceport that's in a sector if you want to, just as you can still build stations yourself in sector controlled space--the only thing you can't do in a sector is move pops or build on a planet surface. As for the minerals thing, not sure what that means? You specify in the sector setup how much of the minerals and energy the sector produces goes to your global treasury--you could, if you wanted, set this to 100%, although you'd then have to manually feed energy and minerals back to the sector to allow it to keep running.

There is no option to set it to 100%. Only 75%.

[GloatingSwine]

I've learned to just not really care about what my sectors do. I've taken into a habit of colonizing a planet, building it the way I want to, wait until it gets 50-60% full of its pops and then giving it over to a sector to control and move on.

This way, I build the planet up the way I like and can sort of control what the sector does with it.

The problem with this tactic is that It's slow. Even with my fast breeding fennecs, I can't colonize planets as quickly as I may have wanted to.

I think the best thing to do with sectors is, basically, the opposite of that.

Colonise a new world and immediately sector it out and not worry about it. Just make sure your sectors have a permanent ~1000 mineral surplus and a small energy income (otherwise buildings and mining stations stop working) and they'll do "fine". (By which I mean they'll still be stupid but you'll be able to expand fast enough to overwhelm the downside of their stupid).

Then just keep the 5-9 depending on tech/government best planets that will benefit most from minmaxing in your core worlds (core worlds do not have to be contiguous)

But that's the problem--there is no design for transport ships in the ship designer. If there were, I would have upgraded it myself.

No, but if you tick the auto generate designs button then untick it again, the hidden transport design gets updated.

Or, and this is the real advice, never play Warp civs. Wormhole and Hyperlane are both so much better it's not even funny, and don't have that issue with transports (because upgraded hyperlane drives just go faster not further, and upgraded wormholes upgrade the station and don't require a new ship design). Also both use less ship power than warp.

[Leecros]

I think the best thing to do with sectors is, basically, the opposite of that.

Colonise a new world and immediately sector it out and not worry about it. Just make sure your sectors have a permanent ~1000 mineral surplus and a small energy income (otherwise buildings and mining stations stop working) and they'll do "fine". (By which I mean they'll still be stupid but you'll be able to expand fast enough to overwhelm the downside of their stupid).

Then just keep the 5-9 depending on tech/government best planets that will benefit most from minmaxing in your core worlds (core worlds do not have to be contiguous)

Eh, I disagree. I think the much better efficiency is worth the little bit of extra time that it'll take for you to develop that planet.

I could be faster in my methods if I didn't have to wait until I had to upgrade the planetary capital once so that I could transport some slaves. I haven't seen the Sector AI do it which causes me to lose an extra 10% from Decadent on top of the 25% that the sector gets to keep if there are no slaves on the planet..

If i didn't have to wait, I could just build the planet up without the pops and let the Sector AI handle it from there. You don't need to have a pop to build a building. So even if there's only one or two pops on the planet, you can clear/build on all of the tiles however you want before throwing it over to the AI to manage it. Obviously you would disallow Redevelopment.

[GloatingSwine]

If i didn't have to wait, I could just build the planet up without the pops and let the Sector AI handle it from there. You don't need to have a pop to build a building. So even if there's only one or two pops on the planet, you can clear/build on all of the tiles however you want before throwing it over to the AI to manage it. Obviously you would disallow Redevelopment.

If you do that, the sector AI goes mental shuffling pops around between buildings. I've seen it starve colonies every other day because it can't decide where to put people and it keeps moving them off either the only farm on a planet (that will only need one) and the sector capital and moving them back the next day because it notices the planet is starving now.

It's far better mass blob and grab all the space money, remember that a planet occupied doesn't just give you that planet but all the space money in the zone it expands your borders into. (also spread out colonies early on to get the most space, this is where Hyperspace is at its most useful because you can do a super fast galactic tour and find all the habitable worlds even if you don't stop to survey them, Wormholes are a little behind early on because you have to build stations, but as soon as you unlock tier 2 they get silly range)

[Leecros]

If you do that, the sector AI goes mental shuffling pops around between buildings. I've seen it starve colonies every other day because it can't decide where to put people and it keeps moving them off either the only farm on a planet (that will only need one) and the sector capital and moving them back the next day because it notices the planet is starving now.

I'll have to put it to a test. It's not something I've noticed in the brief experiments that i've done.

It's far better mass blob and grab all the space money, remember that a planet occupied doesn't just give you that planet but all the space money in the zone it expands your borders into. (also spread out colonies early on to get the most space, this is where Hyperspace is at its most useful because you can do a super fast galactic tour and find all the habitable worlds even if you don't stop to survey them, Wormholes are a little behind early on because you have to build stations, but as soon as you unlock tier 2 they get silly range)

yes and no. you don't blob to get all of the space money. You blob to get as large of an area of influence as possible so that the AI can't weasel in and steal them. The extra space money is a bonus. On average, Planets can give you far more resources than the average area around that planet can provide. On average, a cluster of stars may only have 10-20 energy credits, 10-20 mineral credits, and maybe 1-5 of each of the research resources. Often there will be less, sometimes more. There are exceptions. I've seen systems with 10 energy credits or more and one system that's unfortunately right against the border of a Militant Isolationist Fallen Empire has 9 minerals on a single planet. Those systems are uncommon to rare.

Comparatively speaking, I have planets that make 70-80 energy credits and 70-80 minerals. My home planet has 10-15 of each research resource that it produces. Now this is very much in the mid to late game, but even if you consider a third of that. Your planets making 30 energy 30 minerals or 5 of each research resource. It doesn't take much optimization to reach those kinds of numbers in at least one resource, probably multiple if it is a slightly above average planet.

I don't think I have a single planet that's making less than the resources its area of influence is producing. Granted, that doesn't mean it's not important. The non-planetary resources probably encompasses roughly 15% of my income and it's crucial to subsidize your early game where it may encompass 40% or 50% of your total income, but outside of the early game a well built planet trumps just about anything that you can get off a planet.

[Artanis]

Having not had the chance to get Stellaris yet, I was wondering if anybody could answer a couple comments/questions regarding the recent discussions. Basically, the discussion is really reminding me of aspects of Crusader Kings and Space Empires, and I would like to find if and/or how close Stellaris gets to certain mechanics in the two.

In Crusader Kings, you can't manage everything yourself, forcing you to hand off areas to AI minions to control. The bit about planets making factions to ask for independence is very much a thing in CK2. Also, the stories of AI derping also sound a lot like exaggerated versions of standard-issue Paradox AI problems*.

The talk about "pops", world types, armies, and (what sound like) references to a ship design/customization system sounds a lot like Space Empires IV. In SEIV, each planet has one of three types and one of five atmospheres, and failing to match the colonists with the right atmosphere causes SIGNIFICANT penalties to that planet. Another Space Empires mechanic is that things like ships are custom-designed component-by-component, and ground forces are ferried around in ships specifically build to transport troops.


...sooooo...can anybody elaborate please?


*This isn't to rag on Paradox's ability to make AI. AI is going to derp no matter who makes it, and Paradox AI is actually fairly impressive when you consider just how many things they have to make it do. What's more, Paradox is actually pretty good about improving AI as time goes on. I simply mean that the problems mentioned sound like they tend to fall into the same categories as their various other games' AI deficiencies

[tonberrian]

Having not had the chance to get Stellaris yet, I was wondering if anybody could answer a couple comments/questions regarding the recent discussions. Basically, the discussion is really reminding me of aspects of Crusader Kings and Space Empires, and I would like to find if and/or how close Stellaris gets to certain mechanics in the two.

In Crusader Kings, you can't manage everything yourself, forcing you to hand off areas to AI minions to control. The bit about planets making factions to ask for independence is very much a thing in CK2. Also, the stories of AI derping also sound a lot like exaggerated versions of standard-issue Paradox AI problems*.

The talk about "pops", world types, armies, and (what sound like) references to a ship design/customization system sounds a lot like Space Empires IV. In SEIV, each planet has one of three types and one of five atmospheres, and failing to match the colonists with the right atmosphere causes SIGNIFICANT penalties to that planet. Another Space Empires mechanic is that things like ships are custom-designed component-by-component, and ground forces are ferried around in ships specifically build to transport troops.


...sooooo...can anybody elaborate please?


*This isn't to rag on Paradox's ability to make AI. AI is going to derp no matter who makes it, and Paradox AI is actually fairly impressive when you consider just how many things they have to make it do. What's more, Paradox is actually pretty good about improving AI as time goes on. I simply mean that the problems mentioned sound like they tend to fall into the same categories as their various other games' AI deficiencies

On the first, yeah, sectors are basically ck2 vassals, except they don't build navies, but they can be taxed more. Currently they are not performing everything they were promised to and are a little buggy. On the second, there are 9 planet types - 7 basic (Tundra, Arctic, Ocean, Continental, Arid, Desert, and Tropical), Gaia, and Tomb. Each species has a preference for a planet type, which determines how compatible they are with other planets in a Habitability rating, which acts as a cap on the pop (unit of population)'s happiness (which in turn affects how efficient the pop is at working a tile). Races you create have preferences for one of the basic types, and the further away the planet is from their preference the less habitable the planet is. Gaia planets are automatically set at 100% habitability for all races, and tomb worlds are experiencing nuclear winter and are generally habitability 0 for everyone, but may have a race on it that have a preference for tomb worlds (not that I've found one). Each individual planet can have a modifier on it that effects habitability for it, and there are techs that increase habitability in general.

Ships are designed using one of 4 sizes (Corvette, Destroyer, Cruiser, and Battleship). Each one has a number of segments which determines what components you can attach to the ship, so you cant just build a ship out of what ever willy nilly. Transports are a part of armies and you can't really modify them beyond setting it to automatically update its drive.

[GloatingSwine]

and tomb worlds are experiencing nuclear winter and are generally habitability 0 for everyone, but may have a race on it that have a preference for tomb worlds (not that I've found one). Each individual planet can have a modifier on it that effects habitability for it, and there are techs that increase habitability in general.

You probably won't find a tomb world habitable race.

You may be able to make one by finding some pre-sentients on a tomb world and uplifting them via genetic fiddling though.

[factotum]

No, but if you tick the auto generate designs button then untick it again, the hidden transport design gets updated.

Yeah, that worked, thanks...although I still think it would be easier to have the transport as a configurable design so the player can modify them as they wish!

Alliances work really oddly, I've found. I'm in an alliance with an AI, and twice now he's asked me to declare war on another AI to liberate some of their worlds. No idea why the AI wants to do that, but c'est la vie. Both times I voted yes to the proposal, at which point the AI set their fleets to follow my strongest fleet rather than, I dunno, actually trying to attack themselves? Didn't really understand that. Then, I decided to declare war on a race who's been my rival since pretty much the beginning of the game, and my ally voted no on the proposal? So, let me get this straight, Republic of Zramas: if you declare war on someone you expect me to to do all the legwork for you, and if *I* declare war on someone, you're going to come over all pacifist all of a sudden? You really start to wonder exactly what advantage you're getting from being in this alliance in the first place!

[NichG]

You can bribe allies into a war by offering them war demands rather than taking all the war demands for yourself (also, the game is bugged right now and gives you all those war demands anyhow...).

The thing that I can't quite figure out is what the best way to deal with existing alliances is. If you're in an alliance and someone else is in an alliance, it doesn't seem like there's a way to merge the alliances without e.g. conquering the other guys and releasing them or something screwy like that.