Stellaris III: Shop at the Paradox Megacorp!

[InvisibleBison]

Is there any downside, besides increased influence costs, to acquiring systems that are not directly connected to your empire?

In theory, an AI empire could claim the intervening territory and cut off your access to the remote systems, but how likely that is and how much of a problem it would be depend on the details of any given game.

[Narkis]

Oh wow. Crystal Nidus Origo Ore, what ever that is, is an awesome "friend" to have in early game, in a system right next to warmongering neighbour. They keep smashing their heads against the wall that is our crystal pals.

Is there any downside, besides increased influence costs, to acquiring systems that are not directly connected to your empire?

Empire sprawl gets a bad modifier for unconnected systems. It's not hard to manage, but it can get out of hand if you have too many holes in your territory.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well I've come out of another war with the neighbour (they surrendered almost as soon as I nabbed all my claims), and I have to say that I'm not looking forward to the truce ending. Sure I could do with another system or two (please ignore the fact that my Sprawl is far above my Admin cap), but I need my fleets ready for skirmishes on my other border, not for dealing with empires who didn't field a single ship in the last. Plus for the first time in a while I've got several systems I can expand into peacefully (once I get more Influence, which at this point seems mainly to come from factions).

Although to be honest, I've already got one of the largest empires on the map and no allies (even the UNE dislikes me, apparently the fact I haven't outlawed slavery is causing problems). I guess I should start fighting for Vassals instead of systems, although I only know how to do that because I literally just looked it up. Hopefully that'll help me if this federation comes knocking on my doorstep.

[BannedInSchool]

Started a new game with the tutorial on just in case it mentions some of the changes I missed. As the Commonwealth of Man the first "aliens" I run into is the United Nations of Earth, whom the tutorial still calls hideous creatures.

[Guancyto]

Huh.

I've gotten the UNE to call me "xeno" before in a CWM game, but in complete fairness to them the Commonwealth humans had long abandoned their imperfect flesh for immortal robot bodies, so they can perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the difference.
And by "perhaps" I mean "immediately" and by "forgiven" I mean "ruthlessly subjugated."

[Silverraptor]

So, with the new way districts are set up in Stellaris and after several playthroughs, I have found that minerals are now the bottleneck resource. It took a while to fully adapt to this realization due to energy credits being the bottleneck resource for so long! But they seem to have fixed that up.

[Silverraptor]

So I've got a couple of gripes after playing through Stellaris of this recent play through.

The first is when I start getting flooded by refugees because of war and devastation and what not. I'll allow them, it's my thing after all. And the refugees are all happy, thanking me for providing safe haven and a new home and all that and I had a bunch of vacant housing and jobs to be done as well! So then I show them their new jobs of mines and farms and power plants and they respond with a "That's peasant work! I'm not doing that!" ... So I have to wait for a few years before they demote themselves down to workers from specialists. You would think that refugees running from war and persecution would be grateful for any kind of living they can scrape by and not be picky pricks that try my patience. I'm not xenophile, I don't HAVE to let refugees in you know!

My second gripe is the trade routes. I love what it does so far but my main issue is the piracy. Don't get me wrong, I can handle the pirates, that's the easy part. But what I'm annoyed with is the trade routes display showing where the piracy is. It lists which systems are allowing 0% trade to pass through. However, in the same list, you can't just click the system and have the screen center itself on the system. I have to manually find the system or use the search feature to find it to investigate what happened. Now once I have focus on the system, I can figure out if the trade route changed so my patrol is not covering that system or my corvette numbers are insufficient or what, but this indirect way of trying to find the system, when they have so many other *zoom and focus on this system* mechanics in the game is pretty annoying.

Was thinking of bringing these issues up on the stellaris forum and see what the response is if any, but wanted to refine my thoughts with you guys. What do you all think?

[Artanis]

So I've got a couple of gripes after playing through Stellaris of this recent play through.

The first is when I start getting flooded by refugees because of war and devastation and what not. I'll allow them, it's my thing after all. And the refugees are all happy, thanking me for providing safe haven and a new home and all that and I had a bunch of vacant housing and jobs to be done as well! So then I show them their new jobs of mines and farms and power plants and they respond with a "That's peasant work! I'm not doing that!" ... So I have to wait for a few years before they demote themselves down to workers from specialists. You would think that refugees running from war and persecution would be grateful for any kind of living they can scrape by and not be picky pricks that try my patience. I'm not xenophile, I don't HAVE to let refugees in you know!

My second gripe is the trade routes. I love what it does so far but my main issue is the piracy. Don't get me wrong, I can handle the pirates, that's the easy part. But what I'm annoyed with is the trade routes display showing where the piracy is. It lists which systems are allowing 0% trade to pass through. However, in the same list, you can't just click the system and have the screen center itself on the system. I have to manually find the system or use the search feature to find it to investigate what happened. Now once I have focus on the system, I can figure out if the trade route changed so my patrol is not covering that system or my corvette numbers are insufficient or what, but this indirect way of trying to find the system, when they have so many other *zoom and focus on this system* mechanics in the game is pretty annoying.

Was thinking of bringing these issues up on the stellaris forum and see what the response is if any, but wanted to refine my thoughts with you guys. What do you all think?

The first one is definitely a good suggestion. I think they want managing pop tiers to be a gameplay concern enough that they aren't going to make insta-demotion, but I could definitely see them putting in a modifier to make refugees demote more quickly than normal. "I am a landed nobleman!" means a lot less when that land is a radioactive crater full of genocidal kill-bots

The second suggestion is another one I would definitely agree with, except for the fact that I usually play Machine or Gestalt empires, so I only actually have one game with the trade system. As such, I'm not 100% sure that that isn't already in the game with me having just missed it as well



Edit: Addendum.

A refinement on the refugee-demoting idea might be to tie ethics into it as well. Like having Egalitarian pops demote quicker than Authoritarian pops, or having Militarist pops readily demote into jobs like Soldier and Enforcer.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm currently swimming in Energy Credits, but I can only get anywhere near enough Minerals when I'm occupying enemy empires (at which point my Energy Credits go through the roof). I'm also sitting on large stockpiles of Food and Consumer goods, but compared to everything else my Energy surplus is insane. So I find myself having to go to the market to buy Minerals almost once an in-game year.

On the plus side I've started vassalising opposing empires instead of outright conquering them, and it solved almost all of my resource deficits. On the minus side I have to spend at least two in-game years waiting for my fleets to move to the edges of my target's empire, on the plus side I have more fleet power than almost every other civilisation, hovering at around 9k in the 2270s. I've yet to lose a destroyer, every single AI empire I've actually fought against seems to be stuck on corvettes with rank 1 or 2 shields.

While I'm annoyed by piracy, it never seems to come up in my actual Commonwealth of Man systems, I've encountered them in there maybe twice (although I should probably build a fleet of corvettes to patrol the trade routes anyway), and I only have to deal with it when travelling through my vassals on the way to war.

I think the goal at this point is to, directly or indirectly, rule about a third of the galaxy by the time the end-game crisis starts. Although who knows, I could have to deal with rebellions from my vassals (one of which is still claiming some systems I conquered half a century ago).

[Silverraptor]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the starter species you have when you first open the game, do each of those have their own events that happen in game? Because if so, I may try a challenge of playing each default race to see what special events happens with each.

[Narkis]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the starter species you have when you first open the game, do each of those have their own events that happen in game? Because if so, I may try a challenge of playing each default race to see what special events happens with each.

I know for sure the Commonwealth of Man does. I've never tried to play as anyone else of the defaults.

[Guancyto]

I believe it's just the Commonwealth of Man and the United Nations of Earth that do, and the others choose from a random selection (dying world, cult, etc)

[Anonymouswizard]

I believe it's just the Commonwealth of Man and the United Nations of Earth that do, and the others choose from a random selection (dying world, cult, etc)

While it makes sense to limit it to thw two human factions, I think it would be a good subject for a DLC. Flesh out the prebuilts a bit, give a reason to play as them rather than just make your own species (although I do understgand that in many ways the point is to create your own species and civilisation).

[Narkis]

While it makes sense to limit it to thw two human factions, I think it would be a good subject for a DLC. Flesh out the prebuilts a bit, give a reason to play as them rather than just make your own species (although I do understgand that in many ways the point is to create your own species and civilisation).

I agree with that. I'd also like a canon galaxy scenario, to bring Stellaris more in line with the fixed start of Paradox's others games.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm currently swimming in Energy Credits, but I can only get anywhere near enough Minerals when I'm occupying enemy empires (at which point my Energy Credits go through the roof). I'm also sitting on large stockpiles of Food and Consumer goods, but compared to everything else my Energy surplus is insane. So I find myself having to go to the market to buy Minerals almost once an in-game year.

Well the great thing about the market system (even before it becomes the full Galactic Market) is that you don't need to do well in all facets of your economy. You just have to be gaining more than you're losing.

If you have an energy surplus, it's easy. If you don't, but you still have surplus in other areas, you can get the money to buy what you need more of.

For me, it's usually consumer goods that I'm short on, but I can just sell food and/or minerals in order to buy more.

[Artanis]

It's disappointing to hear that the Blorg don't get something special.

[factotum]

For me, it's usually consumer goods that I'm short on, but I can just sell food and/or minerals in order to buy more.

You can change your trade policy so that, instead of getting 100% energy credits, you get 50% energy credits and half that of consumer goods? That's far more efficient than spending the energy credits from your trade network on CGs from the market. Relying on the market generally is a bad idea, because if you're constantly buying something from it the price will shoot up and your economy will collapse trying to support the purchases!

[Silverraptor]

So, in my current game, I'm playing a crime syndicate. I'm working on trying to get the achievement on having 5 branch offices in 5 different homeworlds at the same time. I have the opportunity to do so, however situations have diverted my attention to getting more then 3 branch offices at a time.

First off, I'm in a MASSIVE advantage position in the northwest. I used map the stars and 4 science ships with discovery perk to quickly scout in all 3 directions. This gave me the intel quickly to expand and cut off some honorbound warriors to the north and confine them to a small area. This has lead to on-again off-again relationship of if they like me or hate me. At the start, they were superior to me in fleet power. Knowing they are honorbound warriors, and they would likely hate me for boxing them in, I tired to bribe them with like 400 units of food, while also building up my fleet to match them and building a defensive station on their borders. This worked less than a year before they declared me my rival and became hostile. I then said, "Screw you for taking my food!" and set up a crime branch on his capital and managed to get to 88% crime on his homeworld at some point later down the line, when he stopped declaring me his rival and wanted to be friends, reducing tensions, until he destroyed my branch office, then we was right back to be hostile.

To the south, I meet a hivemind. Firstly disappointed with not being able to setup a crime branch, several other factors made me nervous about this hivemind.
1) It has never been anything short of Overwhelming in fleetpower, even though it has been equivalent in everything else.
2) It got the grand herald archeology.
3) It's a hivemind, so it will eventually default to "We don't like you because you're not a hivemind," state of relationship that every hivemind in all my playthroughs inevitably fall under.
Thankfully, he's mostly kept to himself for the time being, but I got a bunkered up starbase on the chokepoint to his territory.

To the south-east, there is an elven autocracy that hates me. Hated me since we first met. Been my main focus of my crime branches. Built a fortress system along their borders. Bribed the marauders to raid them twice to glee, and did all else to screw them over.

I had a lot of room to expand and did strategic system claiming. I would rush to specific systems to claim to cut off the AI, leaving LARGE swaths of territory unclaimed, only to slowly come back and survey/claim them later. I managed to meet the whole galaxy and got invited to be an associate to a federation and formed defense pacts with now 5 different civs thanks to me being fanatic xenophile (Yes, my criminal megacorp is fanatic xenophile. They love new species. Means they have more people to steal from!) And here our story begins:

The elves declare war on me. I was surprised, so I checked their fleet power, it was equivalent. Never had I seen an AI declare war on me without being atleast superior in fleet power. Oh well, I have the defense war harmony unity perk, I wasn't worried. I send my main fleet to counter attack them. They over run my fortress station on their border, but their fleet takes significant damage that they have to retreat, allowing me to immediately take their system back and counter attack into their space. I was initially low on influence (And was planning on saving it since I recently got the extra government perk for reformation that I wanted to use, something I haven't been able to reform yet due to influence contraints from the wars) but I managed to claim a number of systems of theirs after invading them. Halfway through, the marauders inform me that they are done raiding. I thought perfect and tried to hire them to raid the guys I was counter-invading, but they said no for some reason. I then decided to hire a mercenary fleet, and they said yes. I then regretted doing that because I was already losing credits and that would make me approach the red sooner, but I had the fleet, so it was done. I started to move them from my capital towards the enemy, when after moving 2 systems, the cornered honorbound warriors to the north declared war while equivalent fleet power with me. I was definitely surprised as another empire was doing such a thing, but I said, "Hey, look at this mercenary fleet I conveniently accidentally bought and thought they were going to go to waste, guess what they can do, and I sent them north.

In the meanwhile, the elf autocracy had expanded further north then I noticed and started hitting me in the far north east of my borders where a large swath of space was unclaimed, or so I thought. Turns out they had expanded there without me noticing (I'm going to claim the fact my empire is massive and so spread out that I am constantly moving my camera around and not paying attention to outside my borders except for branch offices). My empire is so big and spread out that I find out it would be faster for my main fleet to travel through their space and hit the enemy from behind then go through my space and engage the enemy from the front. So I pincer them from behind, only for their vanguard invading fleet hits one of my anchorage starbases, and gets ripped apart despite the star fortress not having any extra guns or defense platforms, much to my pleasant surprise.

Then the notification started letting me know about approaching fleets. I looked and it said it was the hivemind. I double check and it turns out, I was at war with him too. Surprise twist, I failed to notice the honorbound warriors and the hivemind was in cahoots! I panic, I don't know what to do. The marauders were underperforming, losing to the invading fleet from the warriors to the north, my main fleet was in the other war terriotory to the east, and the hivemind had fleets approaching to the south. I decided to grab all my anti-piracy corvette fleets, merge them into a super corvette fleet, and rally them for home defense. Then I noticed that the fleets of the hivemind on my border were under powered. They would not get through the fortress station with what they had. I checked their fleet power, and they were indeed overwhelming, so that didn't make sense. I then notice that one of my defensive pack allies who were bordering on the Hivemind's south were the ones bearing the full brunt of the hivemind's advance. The fleets he sent to the north were nothing more then border guards, which was fine. Wasn't planning on attacking him anyways.

I decided I needed to cut down on the number of wars I was fighting. I moved the marauders back to another station to aid in the defense of the north while sending my super corvette fleet to the east to help my main fleet pick apart the elf autocracy. I claimed a few more systems and engaged them stragically, once again engaging them from behind when they tried to hit my north eastern territory and tearing apart their fleet. I managed finally force them to surrender and took a huge chunk of their territory, allowing me to redirect my main fleet and my corvette fleet back to my home system, where the honorbound warriors were approaching. I was getting nervous as he managed to get a number of systems under his control, and I was dangerously high in war exhaustion with him (I'm sure the continued punches to the face my ally was receiving from the hivemind was contributing to that). The marauders wanted another 3000 credits to continue fighting, but they had under performed and were not even at 1/3 the original starting strength and I was so deep in the red and trying to delicately balance my economy through the market that I told them to get off my property, meaning I had less fleetpower to deal with the northern invaders. But fortunately they loitered in a system long enough for my main fleet and my super corvette fleet to pincer them and rip apart their invading fleet and allowed me to counter-attack and get all my territory back. No sooner that I did that war exhausion hit 100% and the 48 month until surrender had begun. Thinking quickly, I continued my push and claimed as many systems from him that didn't have a habitable world from him (I wasn't ready for extra planets). I finally reach all the way to his capital, effectively reducing his territory by half, before his war exhaustion hit 100% and the war ended.

It was then that I called it a day. My territory has drastically increased into that of my enemies. I didn't need this territory yet because their are still systems behind my territory I could expand to (naturally that stopped during the war). All my planets are neglected and have varying degrees of unemployment, overpopulation, and extra buildings to construct. Piracy is running rampant as I pulled ALL of my anti-pirate corvettes to deal with the second war. All my ships are outdated as I unlocked several research improvements, but was unable to upgrade my ships due to the constant attacks. After the hectic pace of fighting 2 defensive wars at once, I decided to take a well deserved break for a win well deserved. Fixing the sorry state of my empire is a future me's problem. I'm just going to revel in the win.

[factotum]

Well, that was a bit unfortunate. In my current game I've been friends with a neighbouring empire pretty much since the beginning of the game, even to the point of having a defensive pact with them--which has dragged me into a couple of wars where I seemed to be doing all the heavy lifting, but such is life. Anyway, they had a system deep inside their territory with an unexplored natural wormhole in it, and it turns out the other end of that wormhole is in one of the systems of the Fallen Empire that just awoke--so my neighbour, and by extension myself, were their first targets! Managed to deal some heavy damage to the AE fleets and have learned dark matter thrusters and reactors from it, but the war ended with several of my friend's systems in the hands of the AE and myself needing years to rebuild my own fleets. Oh, but believe me, when the truce with the AE expires there will be a reckoning...

[KillianHawkeye]

You can change your trade policy so that, instead of getting 100% energy credits, you get 50% energy credits and half that of consumer goods? That's far more efficient than spending the energy credits from your trade network on CGs from the market. Relying on the market generally is a bad idea, because if you're constantly buying something from it the price will shoot up and your economy will collapse trying to support the purchases!

I'm already doing that, and I STILL run short on consumer goods most of the time. Thanks anyway.

But I have to say that I don't think using the market for its intended purpose is a bad idea. What the heck would I do when I max out on food/minerals if I wasn't (effectively) trading them for goods? I guess I could run promote growth on all my planets, but the bottleneck on expansion for me is usually influence rather than minerals or alloys.

[tonberrian]

Geez, what kind of living standards are you running?

On a semi-related note, I've found that if you're egalitarian and give synths citizenship, you gotta go and kick them out of utopian ideal. Just because you're citizens doesn't mean you're better than anyone else, you get Social Welfare just like the organics.

[BannedInSchool]

My first game with the new economic/goods system was with a hive mind. My second game is still with the CoM, and I just cratered my economy badly not being aware of all the interaction between shortages and happiness and production and so forth. The beatings will continue until morale improves!

[KillianHawkeye]

Geez, what kind of living standards are you running?

In my current game, the utopian one? Basically Star Trek living standards. Everything is awesome for everyone. The one where if you don't have a job, nobody cares.

I've got robots (but NO synths) and species migration and city planets and I'm working towards mega structures. I'm playing as the Lokken Mechanists or whatever they're called (a built-in species of lizard guys who built robots before they figured out space travel), albeit on relatively easy difficulty because I don't really care to challenge myself.

I really, really want to build a complete ring world and/or a Dyson sphere.

[sihnfahl]

I really, really want to build a complete ring world and/or a Dyson sphere.

They really did make a change to the ring world system, didn't they.

Although it does make sense that you don't mine a ringworld...

[BannedInSchool]

So I'm at war with the two Awakened Empires on my borders, along with the Unbidden, and the Unbidden again because they have a wormhole from one edge of my empire to the other. Annoying that I can't concentrate my forces anywhere because I've got at least three fronts, but I have one AE and its accompanying Unbidden bottled-up enough I can spare something from there to retake ground elsewhere.

[BannedInSchool]

So I'm at war with the two Awakened Empires on my borders, along with the Unbidden,

Shoot! Shoot at the extra-dimensional horror. With your space ships. It's what the lasers are for!

[tonberrian]

Shoot! Shoot at the extra-dimensional horror. With your space ships. It's what the lasers are for!

No, you shoot at the extradimensional horror with lightning. And disruptors. Also possibly void beams. Lasers deal less damage to shields, those are bad for Unbidden!

[BannedInSchool]

No, you shoot at the extradimensional horror with lightning. And disruptors. Also possibly void beams. Lasers deal less damage to shields, those are bad for Unbidden!

Yeah, I was just riffing off of Doctor Strangelove, and picked "lasers" because it sounded better. Same number of syllables as "bullets"?

The AA that I caught finally attacking the Unbidden seems to have a heavy KE loadout, which is okay, but they did it outnumbered three-to-one. No, not like that!

[Guancyto]

No, you shoot at the extradimensional horror with lightning. And disruptors. Also possibly void beams. Lasers deal less damage to shields, those are bad for Unbidden!

I think you mean "giant cannons" and "bigger giant cannons."

[tonberrian]

I think you mean "giant cannons" and "bigger giant cannons."

Energy weapons 4 lyfe.