Stellaris II: I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Fungus Hivemind Overlords

[factotum]

Random thought... can you get enough buildings with enough jobs that you do nothing but city districts for massive output?

I'm pretty sure that buildings with actual output (like mines etc) occupy the same slots as city districts do, so you can't just build a planet full of cities and expect it to produce as many minerals as one full of mines.

[Narkis]

Random thought... can you get enough buildings with enough jobs that you do nothing but city districts for massive output? I mean, the 'cap' is what, 95 pop, for additional buildings?

Of course, that would mean that the buildings would have to have an average jobs provided equal to the average housing provided from the city districts. Not sure if that's actually possible or not.

You most definitely can. You get a new building per 5 pops, upgraded buildings give you 4-5 jobs each, and each city district also gives 1 job. It's enough to max out a planet. You just miss out on food/mineral/energy as these also require districts that are mutually exclusive with cities.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You most definitely can. You get a new building per 5 pops, upgraded buildings give you 4-5 jobs each, and each city district also gives 1 job. It's enough to max out a planet. You just miss out on food/mineral/energy as these also require districts that are mutually exclusive with cities.

So, assuming I had my food/mineral/energy production elsewhere within my empire, I could put together one hell of a second-tier production world using nothing more than city districts and buildings that unlock every five pops? Hmmm...

[Narkis]

So, assuming I had my food/mineral/energy production elsewhere within my empire, I could put together one hell of a second-tier production world using nothing more than city districts and buildings that unlock every five pops? Hmmm...

Precisely. Back-of-napkin calculations: 25x5=125 housing from cities, and 5 more from the planetary administration. 25 jobs from housing, plus 3 from the administration. You can fit 15 more buildings on a planet, independent of size. 130-28=102/15=6.8 jobs per building average. Assuming there are late-game buildings that give even more jobs than the 5 I've seen so far it should be possible to fill a planet with 130 working pops.

[Yuki Akuma]

Alternatively, you can turn on social welfare or utopian abundance and suddenly your unemployed pops are making unity (and research, for the latter) for you anyway.

[houlio]

So, assuming I had my food/mineral/energy production elsewhere within my empire, I could put together one hell of a second-tier production world using nothing more than city districts and buildings that unlock every five pops? Hmmm...

This is also exactly what an ecumenopolis is supposed to do in the game, although those get districts that produce consumer goods/alloys/amenities instead of relying solely on buildings.

[InvisibleBison]

What?! Syncretic Evolution and Slavers guilds can't exist together now?! Why the hell not?!

I'd guess it's because, now that authoritarians can enslave aliens, using both could end up with all your syncretic pops and a bunch of your main species pops enslaved, which would in turn mean you wouldn't have enough free pops to work your ruler and specialist jobs.

[Grif]

Goodness. This new update looks even better than I thought.

I can actually fill planets with everything I want now!

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

After having spent some time futzing around, I can say that the update solidly moves Stellaris from a B+ to a straight A game in my eyes.

[Grif]

I really like that the game has slowed down, the early game used to go by too fast imho. The new mechanics gonna take some getting used to, but it looks good so far. It only grinds my gears that everything space-related requires alloys to be built, other that mining/research stations. I'd have preferred if they costed alloys too, just for consistency's sake.

I thought about this for a bit, and it could be explained away as civilian infrastructure (which these are), costs minerals in game, since consumer goods poach from the mineral supply as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

After having spent some time futzing around, I can say that the update solidly moves Stellaris from a B+ to a straight A game in my eyes.

It is now about where I expected it would be (after about the time I expected it to take) when it was announced. Given the prior record of where I jumped into to CK2 and EUIV, I figured it would take Stellaris a year or three to get to that level and finally, we are about there, pretty much.

Though from the sounds of it, my machine empire run is going to be again delayed until robots are re-balanced to be not suboptimal like they are. (Which Wiz has said they are looking at.)

[Silverraptor]

I'd guess it's because, now that authoritarians can enslave aliens, using both could end up with all your syncretic pops and a bunch of your main species pops enslaved, which would in turn mean you wouldn't have enough free pops to work your ruler and specialist jobs.

Oh, okay. Let me see if I can enslave the 2nd race as designed. I thought the change was you can't have slaves without slaver guilds.

Now, can I get a cheat sheet to amenities and other such civilians need to function? I want to make a new species and some of the old talents I pick, like thrifty and repugnant, I'm not sure I understand what those do currently.

[houlio]

Now, can I get a cheat sheet to amenities and other such civilians need to function? I want to make a new species and some of the old talents I pick, like thrifty and repugnant, I'm not sure I understand what those do currently.

A few big changes to species traits:

Thrifty: Now increases trade value. Given that the base building gives you 5 trade value jobs, this doesn't seem too bad. Trade value can be transferred 1:1 to energy, or as an increase to a few other values. The other options didn't seem as good to me considering the new market and all, but that might be incorrect in this case. Keep in mind too that this now adds +25% instead of the previous 10-15% for the equivalent production increases for other resources. E.g. Ingenious only gives +15% to energy jobs.

Solitary/Communal: No longer affect happiness but the amount of housing you take up. The bonus in either direction doesn't seem that big until the mid game when your first few planets start to either fill up and need a district converted to city space.

Strong/Weak/Decadent: Strong and Weak both affect the outputs of workers. Given that your primary species will be workers for a long time even if you are mechanists means that you will have to deal with the -2% or so negative. I threw Decadent here too because Weak and Decadent are basically resolved by the same thing: pushing those pops into the specialist class over some kind of underclass (either robots, aliens, or gene-modded species). Strong, alternatively, will only affect worker outputs such as energy, food, minerals, trade value, and amenities.

Nomadic/Sedentary: This is one of the really big changes. Previously, rapid and slow breeders were the place to go for pop growth. Now, the increase that nomadic gives helps out new colonies quite a bit as it provides a bonus over the natural immigration from the base emigration from already established planets. Sedentary OTOH reduces the growth output from immigration, so it is only a strict negative. These are both a bit like mini-versions of rapid/slow breeders except that immigration reduces pop growth somewhere to increase it elsewhere. Nomadic is pretty good considering the importance of pops overall to progressing in the game.

Charismatic/Repugnant: No longer affects pop happiness directly. Instead it modifies amenities, which are, along with housing, local to planets. It can technically mean the difference between a building slot between the two, but the difference isn't as big as between Nomadic/Sedentary imo.

Industrious/Intelligent/Natural X: These seem much less helpful in general. It doesn't take long to generate extremely large mineral incomes and reach the resource cap. Besides that, the research abilities require building/civic slots to really take advantage of, and those buildings in turn require some good tech draws/other buildings. It is much harder to capitalize on these compared to more energy or faster pop growth.

I think those are the big differences in species traits. Civics have also changed a lot (like Technocracy/Exalted Priesthood seem like pretty big deals for the civs who can take them).

[Yuki Akuma]

Ameneties are stuff your pops need to have a happy life unrelated to their job - public transport, entertainment, healthcare, government support and information, and so on. It's produced by your capital building and things like entertainers and doctors. If you don't have enough ameneties for all your pops, you get happiness penalties. If you have way more than enough, it boosts happiness and adds to immigration pull.

Consumer goods are mostly made by artisans, and are used as pop upkeep. Certain jobs, like researchers, use a lot more of them than average, so be sure to have plenty on hand. By spending 250 consumer goods you can perform a Decision on a plent to increase happiness and immigration pull.

Trade value is produced by certain pops and gathered by starbases and trade hubs, and is by default converted 1:1 to energy credits, or you can go to policies and change it to produce 2:1 energy credits and also either consumer goods or unity.

[Aotrs Commander]

Hooray. I have one side a hostile materialist crowd who hate me because I'm spiritual, directly next to a Rogue Servitor Sol, a load of Maruaders on the next, one friendlt civilisation, immediately followed by two more MegaCorps, a xenophobe empire and a fallen machine empire! Everytime I finally gte a new contact, it makes my situation worse! Yay!

So, I have exactly ONE lot of people I can trade with and put Branch Offices on and because of the closed borders and pacifism, I am completely and utterly stuck and unable to do diddly-squat!

[Yuki Akuma]

I find a good way to make other nations like you is to bribe them. Open a trade deal and just offer them a thousand consumer goods or something, then when their opinion is still high lock them down with research agreements and non-agression agreements and so on for the tasty, tasty Trust.

Megacorps should focus on the Diplomacy tree, so you won't even be spending much influence.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

So I found an interesting bug. Turns out if you hit "random empire" when starting a game, currently you can randomly role a Corporate Empire even if you don't have the Expansion yet.

That's a pretty important bug for them to fix you'd think.

[Aotrs Commander]

I find a good way to make other nations like you is to bribe them. Open a trade deal and just offer them a thousand consumer goods or something, then when their opinion is still high lock them down with research agreements and non-agression agreements and so on for the tasty, tasty Trust.

Megacorps should focus on the Diplomacy tree, so you won't even be spending much influence.

Well, I immediatly tried that, because I have at least pennies coming in now i can afford to burn a load.

After 2500 consumer goods and 2000 credits... Able to max out their opinion... to 80.

And I STILL can't form any agreements with them, due to the distance penalty. So I can't build any trust.

FRAG. DAMMIT.

...

And those two MegaCorps I mentioned, between my one friendly dudes and this xenophobe empire?

Also xenophobes.

Of course they are.

[Yuki Akuma]

Ouch.

Um. Maybe try grabbing a system close to them to lessen the distance penalty? It'll cost a ton of influence but it might be worth it in the long run.

[Aotrs Commander]

Ouch.

Um. Maybe try grabbing a system close to them to lessen the distance penalty? It'll cost a ton of influence but it might be worth it in the long run.

Can't - given all the other powers between them and me. And I'm pretty sure distance is measured in jumps, not as the crow flies, right? So while there may be geographically closer stuff...

Could really use some gateway/wormhole tech about any time this entire game...

(My allies, at least have an L-Gate, for all the help that isn't, given that researching the secrets comes up rarely and I kind of can't spend the time on it and my exploration options are once again... Narrowed.)



Finally remembered I'd got Crystal Pacification research and thus allowed my poor stuck science shop to the north (the other side of the Sol machine empire that's a vassal of my rivals...) to go out an explore.

First new power we discover?

Fallen Empire isolationist. I.e. another xenophobe.

So that's 50% of the powers I've met.

Oh, and aside from a small cluster... They are ALSO blocking the way to the rest of the galaxy.

*skulldesk*

*skulldesk*

*SKULLDESK*




At least if I ever get around to researching Mega-Engineering, I found the ruined Cybrex ringworld agaes ago, so there's that...



Edit: Finally rolled Wormhole tech!

And then? To balance that out>

That little cul-de-sac between the rival allies and the isollationist FE?

ANOTHER set of Marauders. (And they even have the same name as my species (Yldar) - that's not confusing at all...)

RAAAAAAAAAAARGH!



Edit edit:

So, I discovered at long, long last, the Royal Elven Kingdoms (one of my races I force-spawned, the Yldar Communion being supposed to be an offshoot. They are, of course, the LITERAL OTHERSIDE OF THE GALAXY, and of COURSE they have loads of pacts and with the stupid distance, no chance of getting any agreements.

Okay. Okay. There are two atural wormholes in their space, and two near me, which my science ships are just about to explore.

So there is a very slim chance that these will leed to each other and that my science ships won't met each other in the middle. Maybe that will cull the distance thing down...?



Edit edit edit: Hooray! One did! And the other lead to that xenopobe power I found earlier.

And first new races found around Elven space? Xenophobe megacorp (spiritualist) and Authortarian Materialist.

*skulldesk*



Edit edit edit edit: So, finally thanks to the wormhole the distance modifer to the REN vanished, so I could establish commerse/research/etc agreements... And, of course because there was ANOTHER megacorp, another church which had, of course, completely taken over all the Elven colonies. And pacifist, so I can't declare war on them. And the other little non-corp nation I found is an enclave in the middle of Elven space and thus again too far...

And we just found a Hivemind, so that's ANOTHER race I can't trade with...

MOTHERF-

[Narkis]

I got a couple questions: If a Megacorp establishes a branch office on one of my planets, do I get anything other than the jobs it generates? And what's up with sectors now? The game auto-generates a whole bunch of 1 and 2-planet sectors and it's really annoying to need so many governors suddenly.

[Silverraptor]

*Reads long winded Rant*

*Smirks*

You know, if you're not enjoying a game, you can reroll a new one.

[houlio]

I got a couple questions: If a Megacorp establishes a branch office on one of my planets, do I get anything other than the jobs it generates? And what's up with sectors now? The game auto-generates a whole bunch of 1 and 2-planet sectors and it's really annoying to need so many governors suddenly.

I think the planet hosting a branch office gets extra trade value and shares in some of the building benefits, but I could be wrong. As a normal empire, I haven't been able to meet a megacorp yet who likes me enough to setup a commerical pact.

Sectors now are now set at game start I believe instead of by the player. I think they wanted to de-emphasize the amount of planets that mattered compared to the actual space you control. With the leader cap now being a soft cap, it isn't terrible, and I have found myself colonizing less planets overall.

[factotum]

So I found an interesting bug. Turns out if you hit "random empire" when starting a game, currently you can randomly role a Corporate Empire even if you don't have the Expansion yet.

That's a pretty important bug for them to fix you'd think.

Does it actually allow you to *play* as the randomly-generated Corp, though? One would assume it would be missing vital parts necessary for that style of play, like the option to put branch offices on other civs' planets and the like.

[houlio]

Does it actually allow you to *play* as the randomly-generated Corp, though? One would assume it would be missing vital parts necessary for that style of play, like the option to put branch offices on other civs' planets and the like.

That's possible, although this kind of bug wouldn't be unprecedented. I remember many years ago (like pre Legacy of Rome), the CK2 demo had a bug that let you select any ruler by doing some control fiddling at the selection screen.

[Kaptin Keen]

So I fired up the old Stellaris wagon, to check out the new planet system. I find it annoying. It's way, way less intuitive than the old one, and I can't see it brings anything interesting to the game, it just makes it feel more like work. I have to spend much more time on the part that really never wasn't interesting at all, and on top, they made it less interesting.

I guess I'll just much rather do diplomacy and fly fleets of spaceships than micro manage an empire of little planets.

[houlio]

So I fired up the old Stellaris wagon, to check out the new planet system. I find it annoying. It's way, way less intuitive than the old one, and I can't see it brings anything interesting to the game, it just makes it feel more like work. I have to spend much more time on the part that really never wasn't interesting at all, and on top, they made it less interesting.

I guess I'll just much rather do diplomacy and fly fleets of spaceships than micro manage an empire of little planets.

That's an interesting take to me. Granted, I've had ttrpg players complain about my games being a little too much like sim city for them, but I like a lot of the management aspects added in. I can understand how some folks aren't a fan though. The new system no longer has straight answers with all the choices presented to you. The old tile system was pretty easy to just automatically optimize, while the new has much more complicated answers that depend a lot on what you are doing overall.

While the current economic system isn't opaque like Vic2 is, it does take some getting used to. I've noticed a few phases where resources become more and less important. The very earliest really likes raw minerals which quickly get eclipsed by energy/alloys. Around the time the market hit though, it became a lot easier to grab the amounts of things I needed and otherwise trade. With the increasing pop levels, the basic food/energy/mineral incomes began to get a lot more important. Now that I've hit megastructures, habitats and ecumenopoles, alloys have been my main goal just because you need such massive amounts.

[Rockphed]

*Reads long winded Rant*

*Smirks*

You know, if you're not enjoying a game, you can reroll a new one.

I suspect that Aotrs Commander wants to see how far he can take the game. It does sound like the game has decided that this run will be filled with un-fun things.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Does it actually allow you to *play* as the randomly-generated Corp, though? One would assume it would be missing vital parts necessary for that style of play, like the option to put branch offices on other civs' planets and the like.

TBH I was still experimenting to try to learn how the new trade route system worked with that game (basically adding and removing trade hubs to figure out if they only gathered from inside your territory or from neutral space too, turns out only your systems) so I didn't actually get far enough to reach another civ's planets to find out. But the tab on my own home planet was grayed out so I suspect it wouldn't have worked. But again, I don't have the expansion to check if that's how it would normally work so.

Current game is going much smoother. I think I'm overly cautious of going over my Administration Cap, and none of my games have seen any tech or anything that would increase it, but this time I randomly genned a race with the Bureaucracy civic that adds 20 Admin Cap, so I feel like I can expand without worrying about efficiency.

[Narkis]

TBH I was still experimenting to try to learn how the new trade route system worked with that game (basically adding and removing trade hubs to figure out if they only gathered from inside your territory or from neutral space too, turns out only your systems) so I didn't actually get far enough to reach another civ's planets to find out. But the tab on my own home planet was grayed out so I suspect it wouldn't have worked. But again, I don't have the expansion to check if that's how it would normally work so.

Current game is going much smoother. I think I'm overly cautious of going over my Administration Cap, and none of my games have seen any tech or anything that would increase it, but this time I randomly genned a race with the Bureaucracy civic that adds 20 Admin Cap, so I feel like I can expand without worrying about efficiency.

The Administration Cap is more of a suggestion. It works almost the same as the penalties you used to get for expanding, only the started on the first planet. It's like every game played before this patch was with Admin Cap of 0.