Stellaris (Crusader Kings in Space)

Niska wrote: »

As you start on a single planet (rather than have control of a small empire) should make the game more entry -friendly.

Might be different to ruling an empire in Crusader Kings, but every single space 4X I've ever played starts on one planet.

I watched the trailer on Steam yesterday. Paradox have been involved in a bunch of good games, but A) Nothing about this stood out, it looks like a super generic space 4X, and I didn't see anything that made it Crusader Kings-like.

Paradox have done fantastic grand strategy games with EU4, CK2 and HoI3. Very interested on their take of the 4X genre.

It is very definitely 4x but its a very well done 4x. The game seems built to continue stories, with large empires breaking up over time into sectors, factions and civil wars/robot/slave rebellions. No default races - large variety of species and political ideologies. Technology is a deck of cards, involving a choice: if you don't choose a certain technology now, it may not be drawn again for a long time so forces a decision every time. There are 3 standard approaches to interstellar travel: warp drives, hyperspace, or wormhole travel which have immense effects on how a faction plays. Plus a 4th interstellar approach, jump drives which might unleash a galactic invasion from another dimension. You can either play a Imperium of Man "Suffer not the Alien to live" style faction with alien slavery and "purges" or go to the other extreme with a Star Federation with rotating presidencies between AI/player factions and free migration of aliens between planets and civilisations. Your science ships serve as a Starship Enterprise, seeking out new life and new civilisations, digging up mysteries and events which you can follow as "quests". You can choose to exploit, enslave or kidnap and probe minor races or to uplift them in Space 2001 fashion.

And that is just on launch. PI are well known for their DLC and mod support. The Blorg (even our planet rejected us) is a day 1 mod in the steam workshop.

Has been on my radar for a while but havent really looked into it at all. Finally starting to read up on it and im actually pretty excited for it now, especially after watching that paradox Blorg stream, this looks like it could be a lot of fun in multiplayer as well

Sand wrote: »

Complexity was not the issue with games like EU4 and CK2 imo. For a new player it could be a bit hard to figure out what you *do* and how to prepare to do it. In CK2 especially, starting as a count on tutorial island, you have no money, no army or navy worth speaking about and its hard to know what you're supposed to do except wait.

The good thing about 4X games is that its fairly clear what to do early on, having started with a single ship, an explorer and a colony ship. The complexity comes later once you have multiple planets, relations with a few different aliens, more complicated technology choices and so on.

Good point in CK2 the easiest way to start was a small lord cus you only had so much to take care of but even then relationships and other mechanics at that level still required a good amount of knowledge to understand how they worked.

4x generally starts out slow enough that you can build and get used to things as they come along and from what I've see stellaris seems to start out like this

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Interesting.

But I want to become a super galactic overlord and conquer my way to glory. While avoiding a robot revolution.

It sounds like you can lead whatever sort of interstellar civilisation you want: from a WH40K warlike and xenophobic Imperium of Man to a Star Trek federation with peace, love and fraternity amongst the stars and lots in between. The main strength of Stellaris seems to be that it doesn't railroad you by mechanics into particular styles of empire as being clearly the right choice.

As for robot revolution - if you don't have robot slaves you wont have that problem. Other civilisations who have robot slaves might, which means ultimately you will have that problem if robots win their rebellion but that just gives you casus belli. Your conquests will save the galaxy from the robot rebellions - even if they haven't occurred yet.

Streaming NDA is lifted today so let's plays and first impressions should start popping up from the usual culprits

No. Some of us plebs work all weekend as bartenders and want to nerd out Monday and Tuesday and this is my first ever preorder so tough titty

Looking forward to this.

Can see some crazy mods coming out down the line. Already see talk of an eve one. Hope it's true as the ships in eve are great

FYI anyone who preordered off sites like greenmangaming etc the keys wont be going out till it releases, also theres no preload