Stellaris: Paradoxian Space Stategy.

[Thanqol]

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own. This has a lot of flow-on effects: my mid-game micro is mostly about building a bajillion starbases the AI isn't doing for me, and part of the reason for the AI going passive is that their sectors aren't being developed as well as they could be. This is good news because it sounds like the problem isn't something fundamental to the game!

My first day playing it was a little 'buh?' but by the midgame in yesterday's session I finally really started to get it; how colonization works, how navies work, it started to click together. Invasions are cool and fun, the AI can actually put up a good fight and demonstrate flashes of brilliance (One AI jumped me when I was tied down in a war and came at me with 5K worth of ships to my 4K. I was really lucky that my ships countered theirs and I had surrounded my homeworld with defense platforms). I figured out how robots work and I'm super keen to make a heavily robot focused corporate dystopia.

Playing with All-Hyperlanes and on a Spiral map is also a great idea - it forces you to start some sh*t if anyone gets in your way and adds much sharper strategic objectives.

[Mabn]

my first game has been weird. Its over 130 years in and I have yet to have a faction. I have only gone to war 3 times, always because one of my allies has a burning hatred of some pathetic friendless civilization they still somehow haven't significantly weakened despite repeated annihilations. There is this one rare tech that the game has asked me if I wanted about half a dozen separate times (I still don't).

[Artanis]

The best review on Stellaris's Steam page was posted yesterday:

"12.4 hrs on record"

It's currently 13 hours after release.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Driderman]

The best review on Stellaris's Steam page was posted yesterday:

Considering I've been working full time every day since it released I think my 21 hours so far is pretty well done. Also, oh god I have work in 6 hours, should really go to bed

[Leecros]

28 Hours here...

I am such a scrub

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I've been at work most of the time, and had to go out to see Civil War, so I'm only counting up 7 hours.

On that note, just came off my first war. The Tal-Akkur have taken one Yakmen Orrassian planet (giving them access to the Hyperlane between arms of the galaxy), but the Temmlar Democratic Crusaders are pissed that, unlike what I promised, the new country I set up in the Orrassian's other planet is in fact an Enlightened Kingdom like myself, so they broke the alliance. Plus a major mistep led to the damn Yak-men destroying my army after I had captured the planet I wanted. Sooooo, I guess time to enslave a whole pile of Yakmen and maybe I should enslave some of the Turkeys I enlightened earlier. Eh, my Pacifist pops aren't too keen on war anyways, I'll just use this as an excuse to avoid war even more now.

[tonberrian]

Comet sighted.

[Siosilvar]

So on my third empire (I'm playing through a bunch of early games in different styles), an anomaly gave a planet near me an ancient factory with +12 minerals for 3 energy upkeep. Doubling my mineral production with my first colony was sweeeeeet.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Wow, that IS lucky! I haven't had much luck with anomalies.

I just got into my first actual major war. Turns out that the Themlar, those goddamn capitalist beetles, have an army as big as mine and my allies combined. Luckily by the time they could bring it to bear, I had already taken the capital of their ally, which was enough to White Peace out before I lost the chance due to losing the battle. Managed to destroy a frontier outpost which gave me a nice system, 2 energy and 7 minerals, not bad. It was fun looking at all the varied ships though; The Themlar and I were both Insectoid ships, my allies are Fungoid, both of us have vassals who are Mammals (mine are the Orrassian ox-men, theirs are some sloth-men), and the Themlar's allies were Mammals (the original Orrassians). Somehow my allies managed to snag a single Mammalian Destroyer in their fleet, and I have a smattering of Avian corvettes from when I took over the Qix'Lufrans. My initial plan was to unite the Orrassian under the Empire as opposed to their silly democracy, and then take one of the Themlar's many systems, specifically the one that would give me more rare resources, but alas, I must rebuild. Really should get that defensive station tech.

[Grif]

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own. This has a lot of flow-on effects: my mid-game micro is mostly about building a bajillion starbases the AI isn't doing for me, and part of the reason for the AI going passive is that their sectors aren't being developed as well as they could be. This is good news because it sounds like the problem isn't something fundamental to the game!

My first day playing it was a little 'buh?' but by the midgame in yesterday's session I finally really started to get it; how colonization works, how navies work, it started to click together. Invasions are cool and fun, the AI can actually put up a good fight and demonstrate flashes of brilliance (One AI jumped me when I was tied down in a war and came at me with 5K worth of ships to my 4K. I was really lucky that my ships countered theirs and I had surrounded my homeworld with defense platforms). I figured out how robots work and I'm super keen to make a heavily robot focused corporate dystopia.

Playing with All-Hyperlanes and on a Spiral map is also a great idea - it forces you to start some sh*t if anyone gets in your way and adds much sharper strategic objectives.

Huh. Really? That'll explain why sectors are so passive. I actually don't really like the half-hearted attempt at taking away micromanagement atm, and there's this annoying thing where you can technically build a civilian ship from a sector shipyard, but it won't show in your unit list, but you still can order it around. It's especially annoying when there's that one race you have in your borders (but already assigned to a sector) that's especially suited for colonization of a certain planet, and you want them to be the one colonizing, not your primary species of your core worlds.

Also, anyone got this weird thing where the allied AI will always stack itself on your largest fleet and follow it around like a cute alien companion, instead of going off to do its own thing? It made wars trivial since our combined might smashed anything.

[Corvus]

Really not a fan of sectors as they currently stand. I suspected that might be the case going into the game but have had it confirmed with the bugs affected them currently.

Doesn't help when they make dumb building options. Had respect tile resources turned on but on a mineral rich world they still decided to build a power plant on a 4 mineral tile. Idiots.

Anyone know the console command to increase your planet limit or some other work around? I'd rather micro-manage than deal with the anchor that is sectors at the moment.

[Leecros]

Wow, that IS lucky! I haven't had much luck with anomalies.

The best anomaly I found gave my leaders +50 year lifespan(elixer of life). Which is admittedly pretty darn good...Except I was kind of hoping to build more Grand Mausoleums and I can only do that once per ruler... The other option was +10% happiness which is admittedly good as well, but neither did i know whether it was permanent or not and I'm roleplaying a strong aristocracy who doesn't really care about the peasants and slaves of the empire.

Really not a fan of sectors as they currently stand. I suspected that might be the case going into the game but have had it confirmed with the bugs affected them currently.

Doesn't help when they make dumb building options. Had respect tile resources turned on but on a mineral rich world they still decided to build a power plant on a 4 mineral tile. Idiots.

I would like it more if the techs to increase the number of planets that you currently control showed up more often. I have yet to see a single one. The AI will always manage planets the player can.

[Razade]

I'm having problems builing Spaceports. Can't ever seen to draw Nuclear Missles even though there's no unlock for them. So got into a situation where every enemy has a Starport on every planet and I'm still sitting at one.

[Grif]

I'm having problems builing Spaceports. Can't ever seen to draw Nuclear Missles even though there's no unlock for them. So got into a situation where every enemy has a Starport on every planet and I'm still sitting at one.

You can build spaceports with the tech that unlocks lasers or autocannons as well, IIRC.

EDIT: Since there's a distinct lack of empires in this thread atm, let me share mine:

Spoiler

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(Yes, that's another human clone in this game as well. Twas' amusing, and we quickly allied up too.)

[Teln]

Also, anyone got this weird thing where the allied AI will always stack itself on your largest fleet and follow it around like a cute alien companion, instead of going off to do its own thing? It made wars trivial since our combined might smashed anything.

Sounds like typical Paradox ally behavior. Few things are more heartbreaking in CK2 than seeing an island count raise all his levies to join a Crusade, only to discover his navy is slightly too small for him to fit his meager stack aboard. They usually end up bankrupting themselves because the AI just can't quite wrap its head around the concept of disbanding the military while in the middle of a war.

[factotum]

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own.

Is it actually confirmed that's a bug? Because I remember that point coming up in one of the Blorg videos pre-release, and I'm pretty sure Martin (the AI programmer) said that sectors weren't supposed to do their own shipbuilding or colonisation.

Mind you, AIs can be extremely passive themselves--I'm 75 years into my game and I have a neighbouring empire (now a protectorate of mine after a very short and decisive war) who still haven't expanded beyond their home system--they've only just put down a frontier outpost. It was almost as if they couldn't be bothered to do anything until I kicked the tar out of them, and it wasn't down to lack of opportunities to expand, either! You expect that sort of behaviour from fallen empires, not regular AIs.

Speaking of fallen empires--I have a fallen empire neighbour whose entire population is housed on Ringworlds (e.g. artificial ring habitats encircling the central star). Those look so cool, is it possible to build those yourself in the late game?

[DigoDragon]

I'm a bit puzzled - did anyone expect anything out of Stellaris but automated combat?

Not really, but whether tactical combat belongs in the entire 4x genre is a much broader argument

What Knaight said. I don't expect it in any 4X games these days, but I personally find it to be a really nice addition to a 4X game. Seems more like a dying art.

Though without focus on combat, I expect that these games are putting more effort into making smarter AI opponents. Though... not sure that they are for some games.

But that's not where you're aiming for the interest for - it's for the pre-end-game phase where the player has not yet achieved the point of "basically, we've won and the rest of the game is mopping up." (Very few 4X have interesting end-phases; Stellaris seems to be making some attempt at it, what with what I've heard mentioned.)

That is something interesting Stellaris does. Give you some end game 'test' to keep it interesting. Unfortunately I've been seeing a lot of games end in stalemates because the AI will not help the player fight off the end game beast/invasion/whatever, and more often hinder if not allied with the player.

So apparently the buzz is that sector automation isn't working correctly; sectors are supposed to be building their own civilian ships (colony, construction) and be colonizing new worlds and building mining starbases on their own. This has a lot of flow-on effects: my mid-game micro is mostly about building a bajillion starbases the AI isn't doing for me, and part of the reason for the AI going passive is that their sectors aren't being developed as well as they could be. This is good news because it sounds like the problem isn't something fundamental to the game!

But... it's still a bug and should get fixed, right?

28 Hours here...
I am such a scrub

Pffft. I don't own the game yet. You got 28 hours over me.

[Leecros]

(Yes, that's another human clone in this game as well. Twas' amusing, and we quickly allied up too.)

This is why I'm really hoping for some good, cheap DLC's for more races.


I too had a clone of my race and it was my neighbour at the start of the game! Needless to say that they were quickly subjugated and put into reeducation programs. Granted I feel like it's a waste of Influence, because I've yet to see a single one of them drift towards my ethos, but you know: it's the thought that counts

Mind you, AIs can be extremely passive themselves--I'm 75 years into my game and I have a neighbouring empire (now a protectorate of mine after a very short and decisive war) who still haven't expanded beyond their home system--they've only just put down a frontier outpost. It was almost as if they couldn't be bothered to do anything until I kicked the tar out of them, and it wasn't down to lack of opportunities to expand, either! You expect that sort of behaviour from fallen empires, not regular AIs.

The AI seems to expand in bits and spurts. I was watching an empire sit around for 30 years after I discovered them, before they suddenly started colonizing two planets in quick succession. They AI also seems to be bad at handing random hostiles that can appear in systems at the start. Another AI kept sending their science ship to survey a system with hostiles in it. Which of course, it immediately turned tail and fled.It probably entered the system three or four times before I finally cleared the hostiles for it. So they may get "stuck" in an endless cycle until someone breaks them out.



Also don't send a Science ship to investigate an event/anomaly if it has a level requirement and the scientist doesn't reach it. It'll go to scan it and get stuck at zero and not progress at all. So stuck that you won't be able to order it to move or anything whatsoever to break it free. The only way to fix it is to go into the situation log and hit cancel from there. However, I had one stuck for the greater part of a year, because it required a skill level 5 scientist and the one I sent mistakenly was only 4.

[Cikomyr]

Apparently, if the Stellaris AI personnality does not register, it defaults to "Despicable Neutrals" with a glorious futurama reference

[Cristo Meyers]

Speaking of fallen empires--I have a fallen empire neighbour whose entire population is housed on Ringworlds (e.g. artificial ring habitats encircling the central star). Those look so cool, is it possible to build those yourself in the late game?

I don't think so. I think they're exclusive to fallen empires. Only way to get one is to capture it.

[Wookieetank]

So the not so glorious Chinorr are in the midst of a great decline. After their first (and only) war to date they've lost their home world and their first colony world. Left with only colony world 2.0 and 2 frontier outposts, the Chinorr have decided that revenge is best dished out by AI-controlled robots.

Mad dash through tech ahoy!

[Flickerdart]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

[Grif]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

I can list out a few cons (some personally experienced, some told by others.)
- AI is currently a mixed bag. They range from strangely passive, to outright unhelpful (to both yourself and themselves). Especially seen in whatever they use for combat AI.
- Sectors are currently bugged, and thus, you may actually spend more time micromanaging because the AI/game doesn't do everything they should.
- Unlike other 4X games, the only victory conditions so far are domination
- Espionage, trade and even culture is non-existent, as far as I know
- Factions are a good idea, but in practice, they pose no threat to a big empire, so essentially you're free to do whatever you wish. This may change in upcoming patches.
- The usual assortment of bugs, but this release is probably even more polished than EUIV. But still, there are bugs, all mostly minor, but they do add up. (Most egregious so far is relating to sector management and you interact with them)

[Cikomyr]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

I would say that unless you are a Paradox Junkie, its worth to wait a little bit so they debug the current problems, like Lazy Sectora

[Leecros]

What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

I don't like how sectors are handled. I would like it if I could at least move pops around within the sectors without having to spend the influence to remove them and then put them back in. I also feel like things like Observation posts(to observe native races) should never be controlled by your sector.

The mid-game seems to just be a massive arms race, because there's no real way to know how powerful your foes are outside of the very broad scales based on you. This is even worse because it's not really accurate. I've been kicked in the face by equivalent and crushed by inferior ones.

The tech system is different, but oftentimes I see the game give me the same options over and over again with one new one to replace the tech that I just researched. The same goes for the supposed "rare" techs. The game's been trying to shove Psi Warriors down my throat for the last 50 years.

Ethic Divergence just isn't clear whatsoever. I know what the tooltip says and what it should do, but there's no way to see if a pop is going to change ethos or not. I have spent 450 influence on reeducation programs on my worlds that have pops with the wrong ethics and nothing to show for it. Despite being a hundred years in and near constant negative ethic divergence. My former neighbour's capital is still full of Xenophile/Fanatic Militarists rather than my own Xenophobic/Spiritualists. There's been no change in any of them towards my government's ethics. There's also the fact that despite my race being Decadent(Need slaves to work at 100% efficiency), I have had pops flip straight out of Fanatic Xenophobe to either neither, or Xenophile with no warning and suddenly be mad because slavery is bad.

There's no real migration to speak of...If a pop is happy, then they'll stay on the planet. This means that even galaxy-spanning, all inclusive, xenophilic empires with free migration will be nearly completely segregated. Nothing like say...Mass Effect where the various races mix and mingle on nearly every planet.

Also I find it weird that a science ship in the backwater places of the universe researching an anomaly or alien language or other project takes up the entire science division of whatever class of research it's considered. Including the occupation of the scientist back on your home planet. However, I expect this is for balance purposes.


also Hotfix 1.02 is live with one change that i'm very happy with:

Spoiler

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- 'Hostile fleet detected' is now only shown when the fleet is heading towards one of your colonized systems, preventing massive spam in large wars.

[Manticoran]

Is this game worth getting now, or should I wait for sales/expansions? Reviews seem to be mixed so far.

I know that the pros can be summed up with "it's Paradox grand strategy, buy it already you fool." What are the cons? What do you - presumably ardent fans of this game - dislike about it?

The lack of options on race creation is a little frustrating. It seems like there's 3-4 "Best Way To Do Things" that are pretty dominant. A lot of the traits seem really unbalanced compared to each other, and it'd just be nice in general if there were more of them.

Ethics divergence can be a mediumish problem depending on how focused your strategy is.

Having super old dudes seems really awesome but actually doesn't seem to be very much of a benefit, and in fact if you're playing any of the Monarchy-types is pretty bad as you don't get to change rulers very often, and you actually want to have as many different rulers as possible in order to get all the nice one-offs like tombs and giant space stations. It could be nice to have some kind of ability to replace your ruler for a bunch of Influence if they don't give you anything you're interested in.

Slavery is overpowered as hell. My current favorite build is Fanatic Collectivist/Something with a Despotic Empire, Agrarian/Industrious/Sedentary/Decadent. You get +25% to mineral and food growth with slaves, which means any square that makes food or minerals 3 or greater makes one more, and any square that makes seven or greater makes two more. Find as many Native populations as you can to XCOM, usually find that trying to Uplift them isn't worth it, you just take your 6 society research per turn from your lookouts, and for use it's just significantly easier to XCOM them. When colonizing you enslave everyone who works food/minerals, with power/science workers staying around.

Often have large problems with just running out of power in early colonization. Think I need to emphasize power generators on my planets more often, as it's often really easy to find research labs and minerals in space but I run into "Not enough power" all the time.

USE THE TECHNOLOGY BOOSTING EDICTS. +30% sociology research at the beginning of the game is ABSURD and lets you boost into early colonies MUCH faster than anyone else can to grab the juiciest areas.

Sectors are awful and I hate them. Always take 75% of what they make because they don't know how to use it and you're going to have to invest a bunch in the area anyway.

Wish that there was like a "Frontier World" thing, where you have your 5 core planets and then you can have X more planets that aren't really very developed yet. This whole "Having to let the AI handle colony growth(Which they're REALLY BAD AT) or only have 2-3 core planets(Remember one of them is your capital) while I try to build colonies up is really frustrating, to the point where I find you're better off going to something like 7-8 worlds and losing resources to inefficiency in your empire rather than losing them to sectors which will then also use them counter productively. This would be less of a problem if the technologies to allow growth of your core sectors popped up more often.

Economics is king. Technology is ok, but due to how research works in this game, I find a nation with lots of minerals and power to put into research labs will be better at research than a poor nation focused on research.

It feels like Spiritualist, Pacifist, and Xenophile get a lot of interesting event chains they can pick from to do things, and everyone else kind of just gets to choose "Look at them or take samples".

I wish the starbeast types were a little more varied. After the tenth game practicing early expansion running into Space Amoebas or Mining Drones loses a lot of their luster.

I wish there were more ways to deal with space beasts than "Shoot them all!". Even if you are a fanatic spiritualist pacifist you can't figure out a way to not kill crystals if you want the planets they're around, it'd be nice to have event chains that let you make them deaggro your units, and it'd be interesting to see how that could fold into ally mechanics where going through an ally's territory who has done this and you haven't could be really dangerous, and invading the peaceful nations could have random stacks of terrifying void cloud monsters sitting around their colonies guarding them.

I wish nuclear missiles were less "The best option to kill neutral things in space". I feel like if I'm starting with any offense tech other than nuclear missiles I'm going to lose more units to neutrals, which will slow my expansion/research/etc.

I wish that Wormholes weren't so absurdly awesome. PvP they're theoretically abusable since they can be sniped out, but PvE the AI isn't smart enough to do that. The mineral cost keeps you from building a bunch at first, but later in the game when you're getting 200-300 minerals a month(Not even that far in, if you're running the Slavery build), it's a drop in the bucket and lets you have really really absurd amounts of mobility compared to the other factions.

I kind of wish the defaults had fewer nations? I wish the exploring phase was a little longer, but if I put the nations to not being terribly many the AI isn't smart enough to expand terribly fast, and so you end up bigger than everyone else by a wide margin.

I wish that if you have a subject nation that's native to Arctic Territories, you didn't have to research Arctic World Expansion just to stick them on the planets they're already adapted to. Was running a game with a Desert race, found Ocean and Arctic natives to XCOM/Uplift, and then couldn't get colony ships filled with their race to actually colonize the planets they're pre-adapted to.

Similarly, wish being Super Adaptive let you colonize things that you were already at 80% for.

Wish I could tell what kind of population is inside a colony ship by clicking on them.

Wish I could use the scroll key to zoom in and out from system/galactic view.

Most of this is stuff that only annoys you after playing for 12 hours in a row because this game is amazing and consumes my soul.

[Siosilvar]

My biggest problem with the game as it stands is that there's no reason not to just deathball in wars with one massive fleet, which ends up meaning they're decided in a single battle that wipes out all offensive capacity of the loser.

Plus there's some missing diplomatic options from previous Paradox games, like smaller war goals.

Despite this and what everybody else has mentioned, I sunk 14 hours into the game on release day and look forward to making time to play it again for more than an hour at a time. I don't know if it'll be as replayable as I'd like but I'm definitely still getting my money's worth out of it.

[Madcrafter]

I have found sectors to be building things. Mine at least built spaceports on their own, and one sector even built a construction ship which I didn't realize wasn't mine. (I kept sending it across my territory to go build things, then wondered where it had gone off too when it went back home after finishing). Eventually found out because, annoyed it wasn't on the outliner, I disbanded it and they built another one.


I had trouble with early expansion in my game. I didn't really pay much attention to my FTL tech and chose a race with hyper-lanes. Ended up with all my routes going through the territory of the two surrounding nations, both pacifistic harmonious collectives. Harmonious collectives appear to not give border access to anyone for any reason, so I ended up having to got to war and take out one of their home worlds just to get out. Only to run into a fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire, who immediately declared war and forced me to abandon half my colonies because I was too close to their borders . At least I got some nice tech out of the few of their ships I managed to take out.

My biggest problem with the game as it stands is that there's no reason not to just deathball in wars with one massive fleet, which ends up meaning they're decided in a single battle that wipes out all offensive capacity of the loser.

I've found the AI will always try and outmanoeuvre me and rush my home world, and I've had trouble catching them to force deathball fights.

[GloatingSwine]

Wish I could tell what kind of population is inside a colony ship by clicking on them.

You can actually work around this. Go to the planet you want to colonise, hit the colonise button and it shows you a list of all the active colony ships and that does show you what pop's on them, you can click on it and it automatically orders the ship to colonise that planet and lets you place the initial admin structure.


You want to watch out when using slaves in sectors, because the sector management AI is rather dim and will move them out of the salt mines and stick them in the labs.

Which is obv. not ideal.



(I am going to reroll science empire tonight, going to go Thrifty/Intelligent and use robits for mining and later on going to specialise planets to different type of research, and genemod their pops into science castes based on the different research types so they're getting +35% after Intelligent and Fanatic Materialist)

[Aotrs Commander]

Must admit, looking at the noted issues, not all that sorry to be missing the initial release play! I got the preorder specials, it ain't going anywhere, and it'll only get better as time goes on. From the EUIV dicussions on their forums, Paradox does tend to do a lot of fixing and tweaking with their games over time.

(I mean, how many games get to a version 16?)

Out of interest, then, how is play-time shaping up compared to EUIV's "couple of hundred hours to get to the end" duration. I mean, I guess it depends largely on the galazy size, but...?

Edit: Seventeen, apparently EUIV 1.17 went up yesterday (the only day for about a month I havem't booted up EUIV, 'natch...!)