Stellaris (Crusader Kings in Space)

VinLieger · 15-08-2016 8:30am

pixelburp wrote: »

Being somewhat lazy here so forgive me if this was already answered: I've always been curious to try one of Paradoxes game but found their reputatedly bad UI and learning curve a big turn off. Does Stellaris do anything to cure this? The game looks pretty awesome but I'm totally leery about investing hours just to get to grips with some byzantine interface

Ive never had too much trouble with their interfaces tbh, its better than Crusader Kings 2 as far as simplicity goes theres less menus and sub menus to fall into for things.

The_Valeyard · 15-08-2016 2:40pm

It's a lot easier than Europa IV and earlier games.

It's a good lot of fun. Very detailed game but lot to keep you busy.

pixelburp · 15-08-2016 5:49pm

The_Valeyard wrote: »

It's a lot easier than Europa IV and earlier games.

It's a good lot of fun. Very detailed game but lot to keep you busy.

Bit of a Civ5 (BNW) fanatic myself, so looking for some similar 4X games that might be worth trying (between now and Civ6 anyway!) so been wondering how something like Stellaris might compare.

The_Valeyard · 15-08-2016 7:45pm

pixelburp wrote: »

Bit of a Civ5 (BNW) fanatic myself, so looking for some similar 4X games that might be worth trying (between now and Civ6 anyway!) so been wondering how something like Stellaris might compare.

Big difference would be the research style, governance is massive and it's not turn based. But speed can be controlled so you can more or less go at turn based speed.

It has some cool pop ups and missions throughout your campaign.

Example, I'm playing a Star Trek MOD, playing as The Dominion but some of the original missions and quests/ adventures are there. A scenario has developed where I researched genetic traits upgrades for the Founders. But this has caused a group of founders to refer to themselves as Meta-Founders and want to form there own nation. So they have started a terrorist campaign and street riots in cities. I'm busy trying to keep my population factions happy and united while making sure my slave populations keep up production and keeping an eye on the Dosi confederation who are trying to expand near my border.

It's great stuff.

VinLieger · 20-09-2016 10:11am

Looking at the upcoming patch some nice changes that might get me back in, specifically the War in Heaven feature

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-43-the-fallen.965642/

We've talked about what happens when one Fallen Empire awakens, but what happens if there's two of them? For those with the DLC, two empires of opposing ethos (for example, Xenophobe and Xenophile) awakening can result in the War in Heaven event triggering. This event will cause the two Awakened Empires to go to war over the fate of the galaxy, dragging in the lesser species to fight on their side. All empires will be presented with a choice - join one of the two Awakened Empires and bet on their victory, join a league of non-aligned empires and hope you can stand against them both, or stand alone and risk being trampled underfoot when the war comes your way. Unlike a normal war, the War in Heaven is a cataclysmic event that will not end once a few worlds have been captured or a few battles won - it will be a fight to the death that ends only when one Awakened Empire stands victorious or both have been subjugated. If one of the Awakened Empires wins, they will show favor to those who supported them and be merciless to those who opposed them.

That just sounds like a sh1tload of fun

Kiith · 20-09-2016 1:50pm

Ah man, imagine a Babylon 5 mod which added the Shadow's and Vorlon as the two opposing factions.

VinLieger · 20-10-2016 4:03pm

1.3 Heinlein patch is out as well as the Leviathans DLC pack, some exciting changes in both looking forward to getting back into this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG0rc3x8Aew

Gonzovision · 20-10-2016 4:24pm

Haven't touched Stellaris in ages with HOI4 and EU4:RoM, but definitely looks like some nice changes.

Probably won't get it yet, with Civ6 out tomorrow.

VinLieger · 20-10-2016 11:30pm

Put 4 hours in there and really enjoying it so far. May have made the wrong choices with game setup but I'll sweat this one out for a while longer to see how it goes.

A dimensional horror spawned one system over from my starting system which is kinda cool as I've been throwing fleets at it to test the leviathan strength and so far I haven't even scratched it

ShooterSF · 06-04-2017 4:15am

So anyone excited for the new update? Probably Monday before I get a full day off to sit and play with it (i'll probably install it Friday night and be wrecked tired in work Saturday

)

Gonzovision · 06-04-2017 8:57am

ShooterSF wrote: »

So anyone excited for the new update? Probably Monday before I get a full day off to sit and play with it (i'll probably install it Friday night and be wrecked tired in work Saturday )

It'll have to wait a while for me.... Mandate of Heaven released today also.

Dave_The_Sheep · 06-04-2017 9:51am

Played my first game there in ages a few days ago. Started off with a reasonably stable start with decent expansion opportunities. Allied up early on with two of my neighbours on one side of me so I could concentrate on the lads beside me. That early on, our three-Empire might stomped on a few other races, mainly just humiliating them (an actual official war goal now) and stopping them from using slavery. Eventually I vassalised a few of our foes and then peacefully integrated them.

By the time the Scourge arrived, we had been victorious in every war we'd been in, added a fourth ally (the most powerful of us actually) and were on course for galactic domination. That all changed in the end-game event, incoming Scourge enemies from outside our galaxy.

My main fleet strength was about 50,000, nowhere near enough to deal with the Scourges 55,000 or 60,000 fleet strengths in multiple locations. Luckily they didn't emerge near me, but on the far side of our powerful ally, who they proceeded to absolutely savage. Annihilated his fleets, started colonising his worlds (or whatever they do). I pulled back a bit to the north and picked a staging point system that I fortified and built up my fleet strength to about 110,000 or so. Easily able to deal with incoming (every few months) multiple 55,000 strength Scourge fleets without taking losses. So I then started building another stack of these to be able to push back/assist my ally. It was epic though, the only point in the galaxy where the Scourge were being held back successfully.

A Fallen Empire decided to get involved but allied with a neutral few Empires, focused on defeating the Scourge ... but then sat on their asses and did **** all. Just built up troops. Thanks, lads. Great job.

And then for some reason, out of absolutely nowhere, my economy collapsed. I was +300 in energy (no trade deals) and was suddenly -500. The only possible reason was that I became 'in charge' of the Federation (alliance) fleet. I immediately ran that straight into a Scourge armada just to kill it off. Still -500. Wasn't that.

I still have no idea what happened. My fleets mostly disbanded due to lack of income, and the Scourge poured through. All that work and buildup, gone.

I mean in one sense, I can imagine the captains and crew on those ships bemoaning the lack of support from their politicians back home while the futiley try and hold back the invading aliens only to fail and go out in a blaze of glory ... but it annoyed me. There was no coming back from it, and if it was my own fault I'd be OK with it, but one turn my economy was strong, very strong, the next it was in the ****ter.

Over all though, I still love this game.

jcrowbar · 06-04-2017 1:50pm

Update 1.5 (banks) is out now. The Utopia expansion will be released at 2pm Irish time.

Zillah · 06-04-2017 4:39pm

So, I played this when it first came out. Enjoyed it a bit, but as my game went on I started getting bored. Once it became apparent I was the top dog I kind of ran out of things to do other than expand, which achieved nothing more than increasing the tedious bureaucracy. I got constantly spammed by friendly nations to form a federation, which I had no interest in, being the local super power. I just felt a bit aimless, and felt like playing on would just result in more tedium from managing an increasingly bloated empire.

Is there any reason to feel my experience would be different now if I went back?

Dave_The_Sheep · 08-04-2017 11:29am

Zillah wrote: »

So, I played this when it first came out. Enjoyed it a bit, but as my game went on I started getting bored. Once it became apparent I was the top dog I kind of ran out of things to do other than expand, which achieved nothing more than increasing the tedious bureaucracy. I got constantly spammed by friendly nations to form a federation, which I had no interest in, being the local super power. I just felt a bit aimless, and felt like playing on would just result in more tedium from managing an increasingly bloated empire.

Is there any reason to feel my experience would be different now if I went back?

There are a lot more mid-end game events now - I'm not sure if you had to deal with the end-game invasion / ai rebellion storyline in your game(s), but that's a galaxy wide threat that will (if left unchecked) wipe out every player in the game. There's also a War in Heaven (where two hyper advanced / powerful empires to go war and you can choose sides or try and stay neutral / take on the victor) event in the end-game as well.

The bureaucracy side of things can be alleviated by forming sectors out of those planets you don't want to have to deal with managing and the AI does a decent job of managing.

It still does slow down a little mid-end game, but that doesn't bother me personally. I'd say give it a go and see, all it costs you is a few hours.

Glebee · 21-04-2017 10:11pm

Always tempt to try this, is it worth it. Not great at strategy games...:(

The_Valeyard · 22-04-2017 12:04am

Glebee wrote: »

Always tempt to try this, is it worth it. Not great at strategy games...:(

yes, yes it is.

You'll laugh, you'll cry it will change your life.

VinLieger · 22-04-2017 11:23pm

Lost 5 hours to this today, ascension perks are a great addition to the game

The_Valeyard · 22-04-2017 11:33pm

VinLieger wrote: »

Lost 5 hours to this today, ascension perks are a great addition to the game

yeah the Babylon 5 war, I mean ascension pack, *cough cough* is pretty cool.

Just need to bring in planet destroyers and game on.

VinLieger · 24-04-2017 6:00pm

The_Valeyard wrote: »

yeah the Babylon 5 war, I mean ascension pack, *cough cough* is pretty cool.

Just need to bring in planet destroyers and game on.

Yeah bring in doomsday ultimate weapons and espionage and this game might be damn near perfect

The_Valeyard · 24-04-2017 7:04pm

VinLieger wrote: »

Yeah bring in doomsday ultimate weapons and espionage and this game might be damn near perfect

you just want your own Death Star.

VinLieger · 26-04-2017 10:50pm

Current game i basically had one quarter of the galaxy to myself with 2 fallen empires on either side of me, was pottering along heading for some mega structure construction as happy as larry, even made friends with one of the FE's who was helping out with my research when suddenly they stopped... Both empires awoke within a year of each other and remembered they were long lost sworn enemies.

Now remember i was literally occupying the exact space in between both of them which is about 1/5 of the galaxy, the FE who i had befriended suddenly demanded my vasilisation, i coulsnt say no as they still were rated as overwhelming compared to me in everything, less than a year later the war in heaven event triggered and my empire dragged in as a vassal is now the front lines of the fight. All but one other empire has joined the third faction who are all quietly sitting well out of the way of any action as they trade blows through my space.

Im hopeful however as the ai isnt really that smart so im playing a bit of cat and mouse with the enemy FE and spliting their fleet while my overseer pounds their worlds with their doomstack. Both of them have similar sized fleets so i think if i can keep them running around with a split fleet our doomstack will be able to wipe theirs out. God knows how long it will take though.

VinLieger · 09-05-2017 10:04am

So Both the Awoken Empires decided to turtle up and snipe each other ineffectually every so often.

While they did that I set about grabbing all the systems of the largest ally of the enemy AE and was doing pretty well, I had about 60% of all enemy systems, my systems were largely ignored so I was able to keep production and research going pretty nicely too.

Eventually I had good enough tech to take out the enemy AE fleets, albeit i would generally have to sacrifice an entire fleet to take down one of theirs and they don't rebuild their fleets, so while it was effective it wasn't a perfect strategy and was gonna take a while as I needed to pretty much rebuild entire fleets after each fight.

However then some fvcking moron empire decided to research jump drives as well as use them and managed to summon the unbidden who's portal spawned right next to me and that was the end of the game as I had no chance against their 3 60k doomstacks they appeared with.

Also fair warning to anyone playing while they fixed the bug so now when a crisis spawns everyone in the galaxy joins an alliance to actually try stop the threat, if the War in Heaven is still ongoing they do jack **** and just sit there getting eaten by whatever the crisis is.

And I still haven't managed to build any mega structures.......

Maguined · 09-05-2017 2:51pm

Finished my first multiplayer game last night. It was just myself and two friends playing. I was going for an aggressive conquest style while one friend was going for a more diplomatic xenophile and the last a research focused pacifist. The other two spawn at the top of the galaxy while I was on the bottom so by the mid game they had formed a federation to help each other while there was no point in me joining since I was too far away to get any advantage from it.

Towards the end game I had no intention of joining their federation as the pacifist player had convinced the xenophile to constantly go to war. The pacifist could not use the cede war goal so he convinced the xenophile to declare the war, cede the planet form the enemy and then gift them to the pacifist. So the pacifist is getting all the lovely pacifist advantages while none of the disadvantages while the poor xenophile player is a lot less liked in the galaxy considering he is constantly starting wars on behalf of the pacifist.

The pacifist tech player also giggled with glee as he researched every dangerous tech he was offered which resulted in the Unbidden whom spawned in the Xenophiles territory bordering on my own so we both comitted to taking them down. The pacifist said he would help and bragged about how fast him shiny new jump drive ships were yet mysteriously despite us coordinating our jumps to assault the gate his fleet arrived conveniently late in the battle after the xenophiles had born the brunt of the damage while my fleet concentrated on the gate. He was not so chirpy when I got most of the salvage research so had my own jump drives after to help me win the game.

It was great fun though barely counts as multiplayer when we are all too busy managing our empires to actually engage and chat much on COMMS.

Kiith · 26-01-2018 12:14am

Another DLC was announced earlier today - Apocalypse. Cool trailer.

ShooterSF · 26-01-2018 2:39am

I keep buying The dlc and playing like one game.

Kiith · 26-01-2018 12:36pm

I just keep starting over again. Don't think i've ever gotten into late game, and just hit a point where i feel like i could do better if i restarted.

The_Valeyard · 27-01-2018 9:08pm

Im definitely going to build a super death star

The_Valeyard · 22-02-2018 8:23pm

New DLC released. Time to build a Death Star.

Wetbench4 · 22-02-2018 10:17pm

Started playing this for the first time last week and i keep running out of influence. I can manage away grand with everything else. Any pro tips?

Stellaris (Crusader Kings in Space)

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