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Stellaris |OT| Imperium Universalis

Well thats the end of my playtime for a few days as its back to work.

The Galactic British Empire made great strides today, founding Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham. I'm at 6/7 planets and have 3 frontier stations. Don;t want to have to hand off controll to the AI for a sector though :(

One thing I'm struggling with is bloody leaders all dying around the same time. Not great when it happens 2 months after building a new outpost!!

I'd also like Military Stations expand your reach like frontier outposts do maybe at some sort of cost like a bunch of energy. If you put a big gun in a sector of space you pretty much own it unless someone comes along with a bigger gun.
 
I wonder what's next for my fledgling galactic materialist empire.

I just won a war and got two for the price of one vassals at the same time since one 'pathetic' empire sought my protection.

I'm thinking I'll just wait to integrate those two races and expanding my colonies prior to attacking more empires.
 
How does bombardment and ground combat work? I haven't looked into any of it, but I realized I should probably start planning that out.
 
Unicorn said:
How does bombardment and ground combat work? I haven't looked into any of it, but I realized I should probably start planning that out.
Click to expand...

Right click a fleet on an enemy planet and it will blockade and bombard it. I'm pretty sure that this stops resource extraction on the planet (it causes starvation, at least). As your fleet bombards the planet you will see its fortification value go down. Fortification causes defending armies to take less damage from attacking armies.

A fleet of transport ships has the option to invade a planet. Once this happens you can see the fight on the planet's Army tab - it seems to work a lot like a simulated battle between fleets of corvettes. If the defending armies are all destroyed then the attacker occupies the planet, but still can't do anything with it and doesn't count as controlling the system. But you get warscore and it lets you demand that the planet be given to you in peace negotiation.
 
Been playing quite a bit of this game for the last two days. The early game feels amazing, and the curve seems pretty smooth, but once I get into the mid-game I lose the same pace of progression, and it's almost entirely down to Influence. Between replacing dead leaders and trying to expand through Frontier Stations, I seem to run out and then the game slows to a crawl. I'm unable to expand, and can't even replace all of my leaders faster than they begin to die off.

Is there something I am doing grossly wrong? How can I sustainably raise my per-month Influence?
 
The more I play the more this feels like a DLC delivery vehicle than a fully content complete retail title.

The framework is there , but those reviews from PCG and IGN seem much closer to its actually quality than not.
 
StMeph said:
Been playing quite a bit of this game for the last two days. The early game feels amazing, and the curve seems pretty smooth, but once I get into the mid-game I lose the same pace of progression, and it's almost entirely down to Influence. Between replacing dead leaders and trying to expand through Frontier Stations, I seem to run out and then the game slows to a crawl. I'm unable to expand, and can't even replace all of my leaders faster than they begin to die off.

Is there something I am doing grossly wrong? How can I sustainably raise my per-month Influence?
Click to expand...

There are some technology to research that raises your monthly influence gain, but you have to be extremely careful with frontier outposts since they cost 200 to set up plus the monthly cost.

I ruined my first play through by trying to expand via frontier outposts. You need to research colonizing other planet types and expand organically.
 
StMeph said:
Been playing quite a bit of this game for the last two days. The early game feels amazing, and the curve seems pretty smooth, but once I get into the mid-game I lose the same pace of progression, and it's almost entirely down to Influence. Between replacing dead leaders and trying to expand through Frontier Stations, I seem to run out and then the game slows to a crawl. I'm unable to expand, and can't even replace all of my leaders faster than they begin to die off.

Is there something I am doing grossly wrong? How can I sustainably raise my per-month Influence?
Click to expand...

There are techs you can research, and don't forget to decommission obsolete Frontier stations.

At the moment, I think they're too expensive, tbh.
 
Grief.exe said:
There are some technology to research that raises your monthly influence gain, but you have to be extremely careful with frontier outposts since they cost 200 to set up plus the monthly cost.

I ruined my first play through by trying to expand via frontier outposts. You need to research colonizing other planet types and expand organically.
Click to expand...

Poodlestrike said:
There are techs you can research, and don't forget to decommission obsolete Frontier stations.

At the moment, I think they're too expensive, tbh.
Click to expand...

I am aware of the techs, but they aren't enough to sustain everything even at replacement levels. =/

My home star clusters were extremely rich in minerals, but low on energy, so I had to expand aggressively to claim major energy hubs. There weren't really any hospitable planets in those areas, so I had to plop down a couple of Frontier Stations to support my industry. For Colony Ships I've prioritized high habitability and a big planet with room to grow over using it to claim territory.
 
StMeph said:
I am aware of the techs, but they aren't enough to sustain everything even at replacement levels. =/

My home star clusters were extremely rich in minerals, but low on energy, so I had to expand aggressively to claim major energy hubs. There weren't really any hospitable planets in those areas, so I had to plop down a couple of Frontier Stations to support my industry. For Colony Ships I've prioritized high habitability and a big planet with room to grow over using it to claim territory.
Click to expand...

Sometimes it's worth colonising a small planet just to get the territory without the influence cost of a frontier outpost. Just hand the planet over to a sector and then let them deal with it. Alternatively, negotiate open migration with another empire which has a different planet preference to you, and once even one of their pops migrates to one of your planets you can use them to colonise that type of world (so long as you've researched the necessary colonisation tech).

The other thing that helps with this is droids, which have 100% habitability on every planet type. Again, you still need to research colonisation for that planet type, but once you have you can start out a droid colony wherever you like without having to care about habitability.
 
So in an effort to try to figure out what migration can really do I made a race with all the migration bonuses, rapid breeding and crazy food bonuses. Once I was able to, I opened the flood gates with every single race to allow for migration.

The end result is quite hilarious.

Turns out any time anyone else who has a migration agreement with me opens a new colony on a continental world it gets instantly flooded with my race.

I wish there was a way to really turn this to my advantage though.
 
Not Spaceghost said:
I wish there was a way to really turn this to my advantage though.
Click to expand...

I wonder if it isn't easier to integrate a planet if a lot of the pops are "your people". You should try it. Instead of sieging it directly go for some other planets without your people until they capitulate. See what's the difference in terms of happiness and likelihood to revolt for your migrants versus the natives.
 
pigeon said:
Depends if you mean for the quest chain or in general.

Killing them lets you research special technology from them, but it is not very good technology in general.

Observing them gives you access to edicts that might be a little stronger.

Ethics also come into play -- if you are spiritualist don't shoot the void clouds.

Once the quest chain is over, though, you can just kill them all so that you can survey their systems.
Click to expand...
As a fanatic spiritualist, I shot down void clouds and later it gives Grand Design traits, which gives 5% happiness to everyone in my empire.
 
Haly said:
I wonder if it isn't easier to integrate a planet if a lot of the pops are "your people". You should try it. Instead of sieging it directly go for some other planets without your people until they capitulate. See what's the difference in terms of happiness and likelihood to revolt for your migrants versus the natives.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure exactly how the calculations work, because some of these integration numbers are ridiculous.

My human empire has a vassal that's maybe a dozen planets and half the population is human due to having migration agreements for a hundred years, but it's still going to take 2000 months to integrate.
 
Haly said:
I wonder if it isn't easier to integrate a planet if a lot of the pops are "your people". You should try it. Instead of sieging it directly go for some other planets without your people until they capitulate. See what's the difference in terms of happiness and likelihood to revolt for your migrants versus the natives.
Click to expand...

Ooooh, I'll see if I can vassalize them and see if integration becomes easier or something.

I wish that there was a more direct benefit to this though, like because it's my pops on their worlds I would get a % of their production on those worlds or something. Maybe even the ability to start revolutions there and eventually have the world get ceded to me without going to war. It would make for a really interesting way to expand into other races without having to resort to full on war, especially if you're playing with peaceful traits that gimp your ground army.
 
I hit 2 mental blocks last night and decided to pack it in.

- How do I bombard a planet? Do I need to have an army to do so?

- I spent all my influence and 'm not earning any. I'm in an alliance out of necessity (evil neighbour) and that's costing me -4. What to do?
 
RulkezX said:
The more I play the more this feels like a DLC delivery vehicle than a fully content complete retail title.

The framework is there , but those reviews from PCG and IGN seem much closer to its actually quality than not.
Click to expand...

The game certainly has issues but hyperbole like this is just tiring to read, there is a ton of content in the game as is and apart from some stuff that will be patched the game feels "content complete". That doesnt mean it cant be expanded in interesting ways but the idea and implication that its some kind of shady cash grab is idiotic.

bonesmccoy said:
I hit 2 mental blocks last night and decided to pack it in.

- How do I bombard a planet? Do I need to have an army to do so?

- I spent all my influence and 'm not earning any. I'm in an alliance out of necessity (evil neighbour) and that's costing me -4. What to do?
Click to expand...

To bombard a planet, select a fleet, right click on that planet, thats it. -4 is a fairly hefty ongoing cost, researching tech, upgrading planetary centres, declaring rivalry are the main (only?) ways to up influence gain
 
Not Spaceghost said:
Ooooh, I'll see if I can vassalize them and see if integration becomes easier or something.
Click to expand...

By integrate I mean taking control of the planet directly then waiting for them to stop revolting/striking.
 
The game feels very 4x to me, something I do not like. Random start, seemingly a one set path to play the game (get production to spam colonies, spam colonies, faceroll), the differences between empires don't feel notable at all, diplomacy exists only to trade extra creds for minerals and vice versa, fallen empires do fuck all unless you do the one thing they hate... Where is the replay value supposed to come from?

Music is cool though and space is doublepluscool so at least there is that.
 
I have the Sol system within my borders and earth is
a Tomb World
entirely populated by
cockroaches
. I have the option to uplift them, but I'm kind of wary of it. Has anyone encountered this? Did you uplift them, and what happened? Spoiler tag your answer just in case.
 
Kyanrute said:
The game feels very 4x to me, something I do not like. Random start, seemingly a one set path to play the game (get production to spam colonies, spam colonies, faceroll), the differences between empires don't feel notable at all, diplomacy exists only to trade extra creds for minerals and vice versa, fallen empires do fuck all unless you do the one thing they hate... Where is the replay value supposed to come from?

Music is cool though and space is doublepluscool so at least there is that.
Click to expand...
Roleplaying
 
Do you automatically get the resources of the tile you land your colony ship on or are they "obliterated"?
 
zer0blivion said:
I have the Sol system within my borders and earth is
a Tomb World
entirely populated by
cockroaches
. I have the option to uplift them, but I'm kind of wary of it. Has anyone encountered this? Did you uplift them, and what happened? Spoiler tag your answer just in case.
Click to expand...

I've seen a certain
racist anime
to know exactly how this will end.

On topic: I've lost all my custom empires after 1.0.2, sigh.
 
Wes said:
Do you automatically get the resources of the tile you land your colony ship on or are they "obliterated"?
Click to expand...

In my tests they are still Available, I've only managed to land on food/minerals so far, so I wonder what happens of you land on science or energy.
 
Pro-Tip: explore the surroundings of a possible location for a colony before you colonize it. Don't be me.

wqGeWmd.jpg
Click to expand...

GAF, fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire. Fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire, GAF.
 
I finally found a downside to putting all of your systems in a single sector: the game chugs down to a standstill! :D

Nete said:
Pro-Tip: explore the surroundings of a possible location for a colony before you colonize it. Don't be me.

GAF, fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire. Fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire, GAF.
Click to expand...

Hahaha
 
Uthred said:
Is there any way to speed up Integration, make a big empire a vassal but it'll take 200+ years to integrate
Click to expand...
It takes a specific amount of influence based on the size of the vassal (don't know if there are other factors) and it ticks every month for 3 and I think that that 3 doesn't actually depend on anything and it is fixed.
 
Volodja said:
It takes a specific amount of influence based on the size of the vassal (don't know if there are other factors) and it ticks every month for 3 and I think that that 3 doesn't actually depend on anything and it is fixed.
Click to expand...

Was hoping there was a tech or edict I'd missed, 7600 at 3 a month is going to take forever
 
Uthred said:
Was hoping there was a tech or edict I'd missed, 7600 at 3 a month is going to take forever
Click to expand...
There may be some tech that rises that number, but I haven't met it yet and the number doesn't actually derive from your current influence per month or anything like that, it seems.

I think it's there to encourage taking big empires apart bit by bit instead of just going for the easy vassal route which is a really low hanging fruit.
I just went the vassal route myself because the micromanaging involved in taking everything piece by piece was a pain in the ass.
Kinda regretting it now, though.
Relatively early in the game and it's gonna take me 40 years to integrate 1 vassal with about 8 planets.
And that's on top of the 10 years required to even start the process.

At least I was taking huge amounts of influence before, so I can actually afford to spend it.
 
Volodja said:
There may be some tech that rises that number, but I haven't met it yet and the number doesn't actually derive from your current influence per month or anything like that, it seems.

I think it's there to encourage taking big empires apart bit by bit instead of just going for the easy vassal route which is a really low hanging fruit.
I just went the vassal route myself because the micromanaging involved in taking everything piece by piece was a pain in the ass.
Kinda regretting it now, though.
Relatively early in the game and it's gonna take me 40 years to integrate 1 vassal with about 8 planets.
And that's on top of the 10 years required to even start the process.

At least I was taking huge amounts of influence before, so I can actually afford to spend it.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

Probably better off taking two strategically located planets, then integrating the population.
 
Nete said:
Pro-Tip: explore the surroundings of a possible location for a colony before you colonize it. Don't be me.



GAF, fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire. Fanatic xenophobic Fallen Empire, GAF.
Click to expand...

That empire border looks like Pac-Man. Bad news is that you are the pill.
 
Grief.exe said:
Interesting.

Probably better off taking two strategically located planets, then integrating the population.
Click to expand...
I mean, let's be clear, I'm basing this off of what is my experience and what I've read around, everyone cites the 3 per month regardless of the size of the empires which lines up with my experience, so I just assumed that it's a fixed number.
Now, wether or not good a good relationship can speed up the process by making the total influence required lower, or similar ethics for that matter, I can't say. All my vassals fucking hate me. Everyone in the galaxy fucking hates me.

The vassal route does, however, take out immediately some possible threats that may equal you in strenght but showed a weak side for a moment. Instead of taking their border planets that may suck, you just vassalize them entirely and win yourself a forced ally while they are in a war with someone else.
I'll have to see how likely they are to rebel, but for now everything's gone well.
 
I think the only Vassals I'd bother pissing around with would be some early civilisations that only just reached space. They are small and you can integrate quickly by comparison.

Everyone else can go hang.
 
DBT85 said:
I think the only Vassals I'd bother pissing around with would be some early civilisations that only just reached space. They are small and you can integrate quickly by comparison.

Everyone else can go hang.
Click to expand...
The issue is, when I'm surrounded by 10 empires as big as me and all hate me, instead of taking 1 or 2 very bad border planets, I jump in on a war that just started between two of them and vassalize one, so I cancel a threat entirely and, if I do it fast enough, I nearly double my fleet without having to pay for it.
My vassals are both at about -300 to -400 relationship, so it seems you can go quite low without them rebelling, probably because right now they have an inferior fleet.

Also, consider that I'm saying this in a Hard more perspective, where gaining allies can be pretty difficult.
 
Wes said:
Do you automatically get the resources of the tile you land your colony ship on or are they "obliterated"?
Click to expand...

The ship becomes a building with upgrades, so if the building produces the same resources as the tile you'll get them. The first level of government building only food but the future levels give food and minerals.
 
Volodja said:
The issue is, when I'm surrounded by 10 empires as big as me and all hate me, instead of taking 1 or 2 very bad border planets, I jump in on a war that just started between two of them and vassalize one, so I cancel a threat entirely and, if I do it fast enough, I nearly double my fleet without having to pay for it.
My vassals are both at about -300 to -400 relationship, so it seems you can go quite low without them rebelling, probably because right now they have an inferior fleet.

Also, consider that I'm saying this in a Hard more perspective, where gaining allies can be pretty difficult.
Click to expand...

Enslave the lot ;)

Only playing in Normal so far and nobody has even looked at me. The two nearest my starting location were quite timid though. Only just declared 2 rivals and I'm like 30 years in I think!
 
DBT85 said:
Enslave the lot ;)

Only playing in Normal so far and nobody has even looked at me. The two nearest my starting location were quite timid though. Only just declared 2 rivals and I'm like 30 years in I think!
Click to expand...
Oh, I enslave everything I see and touch, slaves everywhere, purges like it rains, entire cultures devastated and replaced by literal roaches.
Gotta truly wonder why everyone hates my empire.
 
Ideally, alliances and Federations would be the preferred method of teaming up with other decent-sized civs rather than enslaving or vassalizing them, but because the AI is dumb as rocks that ends up... less than idea.
 
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