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Stellaris |OT| Imperium Universalis

I thought the same. The mid-game (and the Empire differentiation) are both things they think are "good enough" despite being extremely lacking and needing a lot more work. It's like they've set the bar extremely low for what's satisfactory.

This crisis change also seems to be a bad thing. They're changing it to be in line with the others because apparently it was bad because it was different...so now we'll have 3 end-game crisis that are basically the same but in slightly different flavours.

Wiz even said in that thread that they can't do incremental crisis stuff where it starts off fairly insignificant and gets bigger, because players would just deal with it right away...even though there are many ways to get around that being problem, i think that's a pretty poor attitude for a game designer to have, it suggests a lack of imagination. There are so many different and varied crisis types they could go for that didn't revolve around attacking one doomfleet with another - galaxy-wide research projects, searching for a solution, megastructures etc.

Not to mention it's also been 3 weeks since the last devblog and this it all they have to show.

I'm just hoping the newest patch/update is priming a huge diplo change.

End game is fine as it is, it's supposed to mostly be mega-blobs fighting it out to be king of the blobs. Late early and Mid are DYING for something, defensive pacts and federations don't have nearly enough depth and stagnate the playing field because you're basically just fighting wars of attrition the whole way if you want to expand.

Utopia was a good groundwork and helped make it a proper 4x RTS instead of the half assed attempt it initially was, but most of it's additions were ALSO late game. There needs to be several patches and updates to mid.
 
Anyone here bite on Endless Space 2 yet? Got any comparison impressions?

Really, really good. It has bugs, but they are being fixed very rapidly. It's a proper 4X game unlike Stellaris which is part 4X, part grand strategy, but it does it really well. Each race is extremely unique, the AI seems okay, and the music and graphics are absolutely top notch for a strategy game.

It really makes a difference having totally different races to play - be it an alien robotic race that lives off energy, likes sterile barren and doesn't consume food, to a ship based religious faction that grows by converting other races with giant space borne arcs. Each race has its own storyline, and *feels* different.
 
The Endless Space UI is phenomenal as always. With only a fe minor nitpicks, mostly to do with not emphasizing some actionable button enough in a few cases. Just starting a Sophon campaign now, and presentaiotn is beautiful, as expected.
 
I thought the same. The mid-game (and the Empire differentiation) are both things they think are "good enough" despite being extremely lacking and needing a lot more work. It's like they've set the bar extremely low for what's satisfactory.

This crisis change also seems to be a bad thing. They're changing it to be in line with the others because apparently it was bad because it was different...so now we'll have 3 end-game crisis that are basically the same but in slightly different flavours.

Wiz even said in that thread that they can't do incremental crisis stuff where it starts off fairly insignificant and gets bigger, because players would just deal with it right away...even though there are many ways to get around that being problem, i think that's a pretty poor attitude for a game designer to have, it suggests a lack of imagination. There are so many different and varied crisis types they could go for that didn't revolve around attacking one doomfleet with another - galaxy-wide research projects, searching for a solution, megastructures etc.

Not to mention it's also been 3 weeks since the last devblog and this it all they have to show.

AI rebellion is getting changed because it's broken to the point where it's not a crisis at all if you do get sorted that one, not because "it's bad because it's different"

Even without player intervention the rebelled planets (if the spawns even gets that far seeing how the AI likes to spam armies) just sort of sits there for a while and bleeds out as it fails to get a foothold even against the AI on it's own.

AI rebellion needed to be changed even if you don't agree with the route they're taking for doing so. They do state they plan to keep the old concept of an uprising in the game, but as a midgame event.
 
AI rebellion is getting changed because it's broken to the point where it's not a crisis at all if you do get sorted that one, not because "it's bad because it's different"

Even without player intervention the rebelled planets (if the spawns even gets that far seeing how the AI likes to spam armies) just sort of sits there for a while and bleeds out as it fails to get a foothold even against the AI on it's own.

AI rebellion needed to be changed even if you don't agree with the route they're taking for doing so. They do state they plan to keep the old concept of an uprising in the game, but as a midgame event.

I'm not that bothered about the AI rebellion being changed as that it's being changed to make it pretty much the same event as the other 2 overall. There doesn't need to be yet another event with a doomfleet ending, there are plenty of things they could do that make use of research, exploration, diplomacy, megastructures etc instead, or at least as an alternative to just using combat to solve it.
 
The problem with the AI Rebellion is that I've only had it happen once in my many, many, MANY games of Stellaris. It just never procs, so I've never been able to judge it properly. That being said, they definitely would be well served by making the endgame events more interesting than fighting off doom fleets from the get-go. Like with the scourge they have a good opportunity to make the waves staggered by 50 years or so so the galaxy can get an idea of where they're coming from and build up a defensive line.

That being said, I took the "Good enough" definition for midgame from them as just saying that they did enough to work on some other things for a bit and come back to it later.
 
The problem with the AI Rebellion is that I've only had it happen once in my many, many, MANY games of Stellaris. It just never procs, so I've never been able to judge it properly. That being said, they definitely would be well served by making the endgame events more interesting than fighting off doom fleets from the get-go. Like with the scourge they have a good opportunity to make the waves staggered by 50 years or so so the galaxy can get an idea of where they're coming from and build up a defensive line.

That being said, I took the "Good enough" definition for midgame from them as just saying that they did enough to work on some other things for a bit and come back to it later.

When i think of the sort of thing i want from End-game crisis, i think of the Tyranids from W40K, or the Replicators and Ori from Stargate.

The Tyranids are a galaxy-devouring alien swarm that just cannot be stopped, meaning victory against them is basically just holding them back a little longer, hoping that eventually some way of stopping them for good will be found. Until then it's just throwing everything at them and slowing them down through great sacrifice.

The replicators were a self-replicator swarm of spider robots that would wipe out races to build more replicators. They were eventually only stopped by modifying a superweapon to disassemble them at a molecular level while simultaneously finding a way to have it spread across the entire galaxy to get them all at once.

The Ori were a religious civilization that had been given super advanced technologically by their 'gods' and believed that everyone should submit to their will or be destroyed. Multiple races banded together (even enemies) temporary to try to stop them gaining a foothold in the galaxy, but failed. The Ori were eventually defeated by a mix of technological advancements allowing ships to take on theirs, and by finding a way to undermine their entire religion.

Those are the sort of things i want more of from Stellaris. Throwing one doomfleet against others until someone wins is not interesting in the long run. Research along with a megastructure to force the Unbidden back to their dimension and seal them there, or finding way to disrupt the prethoryn Hive Mind, or a way to understand and turn off the new Contingency thing etc
 
The problem with these Endgame crises is that they're all the same now. Massive fleet invades. There's the biological themed one, the extradimensional one, and now the robot one.

They don't need 3 sudden massive invasions. The awakened Fallen Empires are a better alternative endgame crisis than the three stock ones. Robot infiltration had potential in theory but it almost never happened and wasn't fun. So they did need to overhaul it.

Some other possibilities:

  • Galactic superplague
  • An experiment gone wrong creates an expanding cosmic threat (ala Schild's Ladder) which takes a long time to get going but requires serious cooperation to solve.
 
I feel that the endgame crisis is just a result of a lack of interesting mechanics other than combat. If the political and economic mechanics are more interesting, then we can get more interesting endgame crisis.
 
I'm curious, has there been any discussion in this thread about the problem of the naked corvette?

Edit:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...erstand-the-naked-corvette-conundrum.1026731/

Only recently found out about it, but it sounds like a serious problem & an overall design flaw with the game. The excuses of "Well just don't use it" completely miss the point. By upgrading your ships, you're making them less effective when it should have the opposite effect. You can choose not to use them yourself, but that doesn't change that it's a serious flaw to have one of the core elements in the game not work as intended and not be worth doing.

You don't get any proper tactical choices. It's either use the best strategy of spamming corvettes, or pretty much role-play and go for a sub-optimal fleet knowing that you're going to be less efficient because that part of game was designed poorly.
 
New Stellaris dev diary names the next big update and gives some info on what's to come, mainly concerning terraforming and habitability:

Stellaris Dev Diary #73: The Čapek Update
Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Now that the 1.7.2 update is out, we can officially start talking about the next update, which has been named 1.8 'Čapek'. This update will include the reworked AI crisis and other changes to crises outlined in Dev Diary #72. More information will be forthcoming in future dev diaries on the exact nature and release date of 1.8, but for today we'll be going over some changes and improvements to Habitability and Terraforming coming in 1.8.

Habitability Changes
Ever since the changes to the habitable planet classes and habitability back in Heinlein we have continued to discuss habitability, and in particular, the frequency of habitable worlds in the galaxy. A general feeling among the designers has been that habitable planets are too common and do not feel special enough, but that reducing the base number of habitable worlds wasn't really feasible while most empires only had access to colonizing a third of them at the start. We also felt that the sheer abundance of habitable worlds that become available to you when you do achieve the ability to colonize/terraform other climate types also meant that there is little pressure to expand your borders - not when you can triple your planet count simply by utilizing the planets already inside your borders.
There's more, but basically, the default number of habitable planets in a galaxy will be cut in half, inhabitable planets will only require 20% habitability, and happiness is now modified by habitability, rather than capped by it (reduced by 2.5% per 10 habitability below 100, max of -20% happiness).

Plus
Planetary Deposits
Along with the change to habitability, we have also changed the way resource deposits are generated on habitable worlds. Rather than all habitable worlds having the exact same chance to generate the different kind of resource deposits, we have now broken it up a bit by climate as follows:

Wet Climate planets (Continental, Ocean, Tropical) are more likely to generate food and society research deposits.
Frozen Climate planets (Arctic, Tundra, Alpine) are more likely to generate mineral and engineering research deposits.
Dry Climate planets (Desert, Arid, Savanna) are more likely to generate energy and physics research deposits.
Gaia planets are more likely to generate mixed deposits and strategic resources.
Note that it doesn't mean they only produce said resource, only that they're more likely to.

I like this, because it will potentially allow empires fall into their own niches in terms of production and infrastructure.

They also mention terraforming UI changes, which are better viewed from the dev diary itself.

Lastly, the tease:
That's all for now! Next week we'll be talking about some significant changes coming in the area of genetic modification.
 
I'm slightly speechless that the planet resource thing wasn't already in the game. That seems a huge oversight - I've always assumed it was there because its a fundamental basic concept that I think every other space strategy game ever has used.

If the planet climate was literally nothing other than a happiness modifier depending upon your race up until now that's fairly dumb - really glad they are changing it!
 
I'm slightly speechless that the planet resource thing wasn't already in the game. That seems a huge oversight - I've always assumed it was there because its a fundamental basic concept that I think every other space strategy game ever has used.

If the planet climate was literally nothing other than a happiness modifier depending upon your race up until now that's fairly dumb - really glad they are changing it!

It also affected growth rate. I think it still does with these changes.
 
Anything that increases empire differentiation is almost certainly a good add, but every time they post an update that doesn't deal with combat or diplomacy I get a little peeved off 'cause those're the major problem areas.
 
Anything that increases empire differentiation is almost certainly a good add, but every time they post an update that doesn't deal with combat or diplomacy I get a little peeved off 'cause those're the major problem areas.

Posted by Wiz:

Something being posted in a dev diary doesn't mean it's higher priority than anything coming in dev diaries after it. Combat balancing is a major priority but it's also a huge, ongoing undertaking and isn't something we're gonna throw together in a week and then be ready to post about. We're working on it, and we'll talk about it when we're ready to talk about it. Please keep this thread on topic, there's at least a dozen other threads to discuss combat balance in.

I guess a lot of other people are salty about this, too :lol
 
I wonder if they'll eventually do something like alter planetary or spacefaring infrastructure based on ethos or planet type. Particularly now that they're making planet type a mechanic beyond habitability.

...I'm dying for Hive Minds to go full-on Zerg with organic buildings. (The regenerating hull for Devouring Swarms kinda simulates this, but we need unique art!)


I also wonder if they'll ever have a researched planet type--sort of like Zerg creep or something, that overtakes a planet (assimilates planteary tiles) and converts it into something uniquely suitable for the empire, perhaps with its own buildings, and worthless to an enemy.

Like Arctic World --> (research Planetary Assimilation) Cultivated World --> (if conquered by someone without this ability) --> Barren World

Then add some tertiary global buff to encourage amassing these kinds of planets, and we have Zerg!
It also affected growth rate. I think it still does with these changes.

It does, growth is affected by habitability in the same way as before.

Should have mentioned that.
 
I'd already been playing on 75% habitability. Tried 50% once but it was a bit too much (or I'm just bad). Should be interesting after a mechanics tweak to support the smaller numbers.
 
I'd already been playing on 75% habitability. Tried 50% once but it was a bit too much (or I'm just bad). Should be interesting after a mechanics tweak to support the smaller numbers.

Yeah I always play on 75% habitability too. Also play with the planet mod that adds like 20 planet types.
 
I would much prefer if End Game Crisis weren't for the End Game.

That more galactic scale events could take place over the game. Plagues, Ideological Movements, Disasters... All of it would make the early and mid game better. It does get to a point in the game where the biggest powers will remain pretty stable without any issues.
 
I would much prefer if End Game Crisis weren't for the End Game.

That more galactic scale events could take place over the game. Plagues, Ideological Movements, Disasters... All of it would make the early and mid game better. It does get to a point in the game where the biggest powers will remain pretty stable without any issues.
I would say that the mid game being a period of CO solidarity and relative stability is how it should be. The problem right now is that its dreadfully uninteractive. If Federations worked as intended and diplomacy had some teeth to it and war was interesting, that'd be fine.

My ideal arc is something like expansion-stabilization-disruption. Dropping a plague or the Unbidden or whatever on the galaxy is way cooler I'd it's done right as things are fully solidified and the map is full with the lines firmly drawn.
 
I was watching the latest Stellaris stream and I couldn't help but notice that they've tinkered with hive mind ethos and renamed it gestalt conscious with hive mind now being an authority. And now their is a 2nd new authority for the g-con races which they don't talk about at all but judging from the picture I predict it is gonna be a synthetic networked mind,
 
I was watching the latest Stellaris stream and I couldn't help but notice that they've tinkered with hive mind ethos and renamed it gestalt conscious with hive mind now being an authority. And now their is a 2nd new authority for the g-con races which they don't talk about at all but judging from the picture I predict it is gonna be a synthetic networked mind,

Yes! YESSS!!

Great observation, I assume this is from one of their Twich streams?
 
Yes! YESSS!!

Great observation, I assume this is from one of their Twich streams?

It was on their devouring swarm stream. If you go to their YouTube channel (just search for paradox extra) they have the first part archived and during race creation you can see the new mystery authority, sadly without highlighting it or anything so can't say anything about the specific mechanics yet. It might not even be synthetic race, but the picture is if a boxy
robot brain so unsure what else it could be.
 
I must confess, I haven't played Stellaris since I found out about it. I hope Paradox addresses the problem soon.

This is where I am. I didn't discover it myself, I just assumed it would make sense to upgrade your ships and never looked into the costs of doing it vs. the meager gains. In hindsight, it explained much of my confusion on the outcome of fleet battles and wars.
 
This is where I am. I didn't discover it myself, I just assumed it would make sense to upgrade your ships and never looked into the costs of doing it vs. the meager gains. In hindsight, it explained much of my confusion on the outcome of fleet battles and wars.
Come try the New Horizons mod. Our ships and components don't suffer from the naked corvette issue. ;)
 
So... I've only played Ironman vanilla Stellaris and my current campaign is going kind of well, but I'd appreciate some advice from players who have actually won games. This is the galaxy's current state:

-The United Nations of Earth: My empire, currently holding around half of the galactic space. Huge population and navy, but slightly behind the research curve.
-A federation of (six?) small non-aligned powers who probably have a combined fleet similar to my empire.
-Two sleeping fallen empires, who keep to their business.
-An Awakened Benevolent Interventionist, who is currently trying to forcefully stop all wars. To save ourselves from a neighboring Awakened Militant Isolationist we felt the need to become a signatory of their galactic peace treaty. This worked out well since we indeed were attacked and it led to a War in Heaven, which we won... but at what cost?

This Awakened Empire has a fleet between 3 and 5 times more powerful than ours. I'm guessing that if I request to become independent again they may not take it well? I'm also worried that starting a war against them will provide the perfect chance for the federation to jump in and raid our planets while we focus on the AE.

My other option is to bid my time, catch up on research and keep growing stronger through megastructures (which I just started building). After all, the Federation would not dare attack me while I'm under the protection of the AE... so I'd only have to fear one of the endgame crisis.
 
Come try the New Horizons mod. Our ships and components don't suffer from the naked corvette issue. ;)

I'll do that. Thanks for the suggestion.

I have been playing Endless Space 2 and it just seams soulless. Even less happening midgame and lategame than Stellaris. I am sure it will get better though considering that Endless Legend after all expansions ended up being one of the best 4X ever.

Edit. Also, are the Unbidden just way more likely to occur? I always research the AI tech and the jump drive tech but I have only ever gotten the Unbidden. Like 10 games in a row. I am guessing I never get the 3rd crisis because I research those techs.
 
Edit. Also, are the Unbidden just way more likely to occur? I always research the AI tech and the jump drive tech but I have only ever gotten the Unbidden. Like 10 games in a row. I am guessing I never get the 3rd crisis because I research those techs.

Yep. The AI Rebellion is currently getting reworked, but has a pretty low chance of triggering (and is very easily countered when you get the warnings that it may occur) and the Prethoryn has a big 25% chance of never happening. Meanwhile, the Unbidden are just on a timer, which is accelerated by either a random event or the Jump Drive tech, which is such a vital tech that everybody will research it even if you try to ignore it.

They actually specifically heightened the MTTH for the Unbidden last patch because the Unbidden would literally always show up (which is funny, because at launch only the Prethoryn showed up for me). The AI Rebellion has never, ever triggered for me. I actually got pretty close in my last game, but like a month before it triggered the Unbidden showed up to ruin the party (and achievement).
 
I'll do that. Thanks for the suggestion.

I have been playing Endless Space 2 and it just seams soulless. Even less happening midgame and lategame than Stellaris. I am sure it will get better though considering that Endless Legend after all expansions ended up being one of the best 4X ever.

Edit. Also, are the Unbidden just way more likely to occur? I always research the AI tech and the jump drive tech but I have only ever gotten the Unbidden. Like 10 games in a row. I am guessing I never get the 3rd crisis because I research those techs.

Weird, it's the opposite way round for me re Endless Space 2. Because of the way systems work I care much more about a good system than I do in Stellaris, and the techs and racial attributes make much bigger differences than the +1% bonuses you accumulate over time with Stellaris. Particularly in the mid game, Stellaris still just becomes a turgid exercise in setting up planets with buildings in the right spots before handing them over to the AI and hoping they don't shit the bed when in sectors...
 
I have been playing Endless Space 2 and it just seams soulless. Even less happening midgame and lategame than Stellaris. I am sure it will get better though considering that Endless Legend after all expansions ended up being one of the best 4X ever.

I've got about 50 hours across 1 completed campaign, and 2 campaigns to around turn 150(which I quit/restarted as I was learning). I feel completely opposite about it being soulless, ES2 has the best universe building among the wildly different factions, all of the events, the Academy backstory, and of course, the whole history of the Endless.

I have to disagree wholeheartedly that the midgame/lategame has nothing happening. There's a primary faction quest, competitive quests/races, a very robust trade/economy system, internal politics, and then all the typical 4x stuff on top of that. I feel like there's an overwhelming about of stuff to do and track, that for my next game I'm disabling the competitive quests just to make it more manageable.

I've been playing ES2 and Stellaris alternating every few days. The games are very very different.
 
To explain my opinion, soulless is a bad description. I described it that way because the RPG and story elements aren't as developed as the final state of Endless Legend (which took several expansions to be fair) and the battle management is very basic. My bigger complaint is actually that in the games I have played so far whether I am going to dominate or be a weak player is determined fairly early on, and the remaining chunk of the game is just executing the inevitable. I probably should up the difficulty level and see if that helps.
 
I actually have to agree with ES2 feeling soulless. The lore is great, but the mechanics don't play into it as they should, and the main story quest is too short and has anti-climatic endings. There seems much less opportunity for stories to emerge from gameplay than there is in Stellaris. To make things worse, the different empires grow more and more similar as the game goes on. Only in the early game do they feel distinct and different. Once you reach the mid or late game you will mostly be doing the same things with the same techs and same improvements as any other faction in the game.
 
Scored a fairly major win in terms of figuring out how to add multiple maps with unique empire placements. E.g. an Alpha/Beta quadrant map, Delta and Gamma maps for the Trek mod.

Game is definitely not built to handle static maps, but can be tweaked into it!

I still think scenarios with stories etc. would work for Stellaris.
 
How essential is Utopia? Still havent picked it up because I'm very inconsistent with my Stellaris play, but looking to dive in a bit more. The price tag seems hefty.
 
I still think scenarios with stories etc. would work for Stellaris.

That has to be the direction of a future expansion. I just find Stellaris so lacking without a static map to learn and explore in pieces like their other games.

How essential is Utopia? Still havent picked it up because I'm very inconsistent with my Stellaris play, but looking to dive in a bit more. The price tag seems hefty.

It definitely provides some much needed fleshing out to parts of the game. You could still enjoy the game without it though.
 
Nothing about this new ex-pac seems really... necessary or useful.

Out of everything that needs re-working and balancing, was fucking planet habitability really concern number 1? It's cool that it's looking like they're finally adding some new FE's and adding in synthetic races and race portraits but not even a HINT of a diplo or combat overhaul?

People have been complaining about these two things being broken since the game launched last year and they still aren't fixed. The game is dying for more timely re-works and dear fucking lord, diplomacy, ANY kind of fucking diplomacy. I need some form of mid-game
 
Nothing about this new ex-pac seems really... necessary or useful.

Out of everything that needs re-working and balancing, was fucking planet habitability really concern number 1? It's cool that it's looking like they're finally adding some new FE's and adding in synthetic races and race portraits but not even a HINT of a diplo or combat overhaul?

People have been complaining about these two things being broken since the game launched last year and they still aren't fixed. The game is dying for more timely re-works and dear fucking lord, diplomacy, ANY kind of fucking diplomacy. I need some form of mid-game

They are probably ripping diplomacy/combat down to its guts and redoing all of it, and what we've been getting the past year is to hold us over.

Remember that the game switched lead designers not very long before release.
 
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