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Stellaris |OT| Imperium Universalis

I was just thinking last night how it was silly it's been a year since the game released and it still has the pre-order content locked. Look at that.

For the next update I hope they add more colors to flag backgrounds and let us change the flag icon color.
 
Well holy shit this is a game-changer if you do it right and are willing to take the consequences.

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

This seems powerful enough that they'll patch out the ability to easily give away planets.

I always find myself dealing with larger empires in the late game that have to be grinded down slowly, multiple wars over a long period of time to take over their empire. With this trick, it's only a matter of picking the right planets in the first war and the stagnet empire does most of the work for you.
 
This seems powerful enough that they'll patch out the ability to easily give away planets.

I always find myself dealing with larger empires in the late game that have to be grinded down slowly, multiple wars over a long period of time to take over their empire. With this trick, it's only a matter of picking the right planets in the first war and the stagnet empire does most of the work for you.

I don't know about completely patching out giving away planets, but they could at least patch out that Xenophobic empires will gladly trade your planets. It doesn't really make much sense for Xenophobes to appove of some foreign empire giving them a planet filled with filthy xenos.
 
I don't know about completely patching out giving away planets, but they could at least patch out that Xenophobic empires will gladly trade your planets. It doesn't really make much sense for Xenophobes to appove of some foreign empire giving them a planet filled with filthy xenos.

To clarify, I don't think they should patch out the ability to give away planets but to make the conditions for an empire to accept a planet more strict.
 
So what are people's evaluations/opinions on the Ascension Perks? I used to go for the more long-term ones like research speed but now that I've experimented with some of the early-mid game focused ones I feel like they're just too good to pass up.

Mastery of Nature in particular has become my go to #1 because of how much it can help you snowball. It not only saves you thousands of minerals and energy that you would otherwise have to spend cleaning planets, but it also saves you an enormous amount of research time (it effectively gives you +1 society research alternative for 50 years). Plus, it helps make the AI more willing to sign research agreements because you have a comparative advantage over them.

But where the snowball element really comes in to play is how quickly it lets you move new colonies into sectors. Normally you have to hold onto your new colonies forever as you slowly research how to clear tiles, clear them, and then build the desired infrastructure for the AI to upgrade (beltharian stone locked behind volcano for example).

With mastery of nature, I can quickly build 4 basic buildings for growing/migration/resettlement pops and then I just queue up the removal of every single tile blocker. By the time the tile clearing is done the planet should have 5 pops and be ready for upgrade to planetary capital. After that, I just queue up construction of every building I want on the planet and then hand it off to my sector. This helps eliminate the need to expand your core planets limit early or be stuck over-capacity because you can't hand off a planet to a sector yet.

I also really like Interstellar Dominion but it depends on the game's situation. Obviously it's useless if you're already boxed in, but it's seriously hilarious to see how far a completely new colony can reach if you stack all the border bonuses (25% from perk, 30% from fanatic xenophobe, 10% from nationalist zeal, 20% galactic ambitions).
 
What are some ways to convince empires with high opinions of me to join my federation? I'm doing everything right and they still won't join. Have similar policy goals, give great trade deals/gifts, maxed out the diplomacy tree and still many won't even have open migration or association status, let alone member status.

Also I'm salty, my first game is at ironman and I think I'm doing pretty well but for some reason I'm still not getting any achievements. Must have been a bug or a setting I enabled besides ironman that changed it.
 
What are some ways to convince empires with high opinions of me to join my federation? I'm doing everything right and they still won't join. Have similar policy goals, give great trade deals/gifts, maxed out the diplomacy tree and still many won't even have open migration or association status, let alone member status.

Also I'm salty, my first game is at ironman and I think I'm doing pretty well but for some reason I'm still not getting any achievements. Must have been a bug or a setting I enabled besides ironman that changed it.

Bug from the 1.6 update per the Stellaris forums.
 
So what are people's evaluations/opinions on the Ascension Perks?

I'm with you that I almost always take Mastery of Nature first unless I am doing a very specific build. The free research, plus the free tile clearing, plus the ability to optimise colony construction much sooner make it vital for me. I honestly wonder if it is perhaps a little overpowered compared to the other starter perks.
 
What are some ways to convince empires with high opinions of me to join my federation? I'm doing everything right and they still won't join. Have similar policy goals, give great trade deals/gifts, maxed out the diplomacy tree and still many won't even have open migration or association status, let alone member status.

Also I'm salty, my first game is at ironman and I think I'm doing pretty well but for some reason I'm still not getting any achievements. Must have been a bug or a setting I enabled besides ironman that changed it.

Haha, I have this exact same problem in my game. My closest neighbor who I had near maximal approval/trust with (and who had the exact same ethics/government) kept declining my invitations to form a federation until about 5 years later when they turned around and asked me to join a federation with them.

The problem is now I can't get any other members to join. A bunch of people asked for associate status immediately but 50 years later and no one else wants to actually join so it's just me and this other guy O_o

I'm with you that I almost always take Mastery of Nature first unless I am doing a very specific build. The free research, plus the free tile clearing, plus the ability to optimise colony construction much sooner make it vital for me. I honestly wonder if it is perhaps a little overpowered compared to the other starter perks.

I'd like to see it changed so that it gets you all the research but doesn't remove the cost of clearing the tile. I think that's probably a fair trade-off, because right now I feel like I handicap myself by not taking it.
 
Haha robots are considered xeno slaves in 1.6 haha

This is some Adams level of absurdity. Well, it fits the patch name.
Man and I've got robots. I was just destined to be screwed.

I guess I'll wait to play more until the hot fix but even beyond that I wish there were more ways to just get a faction to like you more. I've got a ton of excess food, minerals, ships and energy credits but it doesn't matter much.
 
Holy... they broke achievements AGAIN after fixing the problem in 1.5.1? Jesus Paradox :lol

HTisMpC.jpg
 
So is this worth finally jumping into Humble Monthly for?

No. Badly bugged and the feature set still feels notably incomplete. It's got potential, but currently the execution is just wrong.
 
So is this worth finally jumping into Humble Monthly for?

Yeah, it's definitely a lot more fleshed out now. However, it's more of a 4X game than grand strategy. I mean yeah it's still a grand strategy game, but there are a lot more 4x elements in it compared to other Paradox games.
 
Holy... they broke achievements AGAIN after fixing the problem in 1.5.1? Jesus Paradox :lol

Yeah I was right about that too, my initial playthrough couldn't have been more buggy if they tried. Really disappointing as I was enjoying it too but no wars, federation joining being bugged, robots counting as zeno slaves and no achievements is basically going against everything I planned to do in this empire.

The game is over a year old and still has game-ruining bugs being introduced in free patches... not a good look.
 
Hotfix news, Paradox have put out a beta patch which, looking at its description, does address most of the new problems introduced with Adams. Don't know how effective it is of course, but if you plan on starting a new game it looks like it is worth getting.
 
Hotfix news, Paradox have put out a beta patch which, looking at its description, does address most of the new problems introduced with Adams. Don't know how effective it is of course, but if you plan on starting a new game it looks like it is worth getting.

Does it apply to games already started?
 
Does it apply to games already started?

This is what the project lead said on the Stellaris forums:

As with every update, due to the size and complexity and sheer number of possible interactions in our games, the answer is "...maybe?". With wanting to get these critical fixes to you fast we couldn't wait for weeks to check every possible case of save compatibility. Worth a try though, do let us know your results.

So nether good or bad news really annoying. Although sadly the achievement fix won't effect current games and will only kick into new games. They were pretty definite about that in another post.
 
this fucking game


love it, warts and all

unrelated, in the biggest blunder of the 24th century, I moved a giant cutting-edge fleet across the entire galaxy to take down a rival, shot down their ships, destroyed their mining stations, ravaged their research stations, burned their military outposts to the ground and destroyed their planetary fortifications.... and didn't realize I had to bring ground forces to occupy a city. Oops.

my game went to shit though once the hotfix was downloaded because then a fallen empire wrecked my energy output for colonizing their gaia world so I've just been fucking around and trying out new things in preparation for my 2nd run through


also the federation fleet UI stuff is a bit confusing but damn does it feel good when an AI federation fleet warps in to a system where a battle is already taking to turn the tide


or, in this case when some reptilian motherfuckers think they're getting an easy skirmish against scattered federation fleets until the bulk of my species' ships warp in to flank them and send them back in to the nothingness of space
 
So I started playing the game last night and I feel like I kinda don't know what to do next?

I've been surveying a bunch of system around my start point and I've built everything I could build within my borders.... So huh.... Now I just wait for my borders to expand until I can build into more systems?
 
I've been surveying a bunch of system around my start point and I've built everything I could build within my borders.... So huh.... Now I just wait for my borders to expand until I can build into more systems?

Build frontier outposts and colonies to expand your borders, find other alien species, murder the shit out of them.

my game went to shit though once the hotfix was downloaded because then a fallen empire wrecked my energy output for colonizing their gaia world so I've just been fucking around and trying out new things in preparation for my 2nd run through

Yeah, you gotta watch out for those gaia planets. Do not colonize them if they have the 'holy world' modifier.
 
So I started playing the game last night and I feel like I kinda don't know what to do next?

I've been surveying a bunch of system around my start point and I've built everything I could build within my borders.... So huh.... Now I just wait for my borders to expand until I can build into more systems?

You can colonise systems outside of your borders, which is a principle way of expanding. Also you can build frontier outposts outside your borders to expand them - although don't build many, they eat into your influence a lot.
 
Just started my first run at megastructures. Built 8 habitats but now I finally gotten Ringworlds. Just started my first one, excited to see how it turns out :D
 
just got this game thanks to that humble monthly. Looking forward to giving this a go. Been wanting this game for quite awhile. was just waiting on a good sale
 
just got this game thanks to that humble monthly. Looking forward to giving this a go. Been wanting this game for quite awhile. was just waiting on a good sale

Make sure you're runnign the 1.6.1 hot fix patch.

I'm having a lot of fun with it actually, started a new playthrough with my now favorite race: Quarians.
 
I think taking stockpiled energy from sectors is bugged. I hit the button and got +minerals, -influence, but my energy didn't budge; that sucks.

Is there a way to convert a non-federation fleet into a federation fleet?
 
So, new game on 1.6.1 and it was going... okay... nearby neighbors were fucking with my border expansion, terrain screwed me over pretty hard, but I had a massive (and growing) tech edge on everyone so I could live with it. I hit the point where I managed to come into contact with basically everybody, and I stopped to check some stuff out and... only 2 enclaves (both mercantile), no Fallen Empires at all! Man that's a bummer. Really wanted to check out the War in Heaven stuff. Ah well.

Also, I was looking at the Ascension traits, and this popped out at me:


Prethryon I know, Unbidden I know, AI Rebels I know... Vehement and Aberrant?
 
Prethryon I know, Unbidden I know, AI Rebels I know... Vehement and Aberrant?

They are a 2nd and 3rd wave of invaders that can enter the galaxy if the Unbidden crisis is going on. All three factions are hostile to you and each other, although I don't know how effective a strategy it is to let them take each other out.
 
They are a 2nd and 3rd wave of invaders that can enter the galaxy if the Unbidden crisis is going on. All three factions are hostile to you and each other, although I don't know how effective a strategy it is to let them take each other out.

It's not effective. Since Aberrant and Vehement are pretty much the same as the Unbidden, the survivor of that battle is still going to have multiple free >50K fleets and will destroy everything in their way. It's best to take out the Unbidden ASAP to prevent the Aberrant and/or Vehement ever showing up.
 
Is there any way to change FTL method once the game has started? Like through a special research or something?

I'm currently using the hyperlane method (whatever the actual name is) and while I like it overall, a bad luck of the draw wiht the map kinda cornered me in tough spot lol... Basically I want to go to war with my neighbor but I'm force of taking the long way around the whole galaxy to get to his capital which is actually like 3 systems away from mine lol
 
Is there any way to change FTL method once the game has started? Like through a special research or something?

I'm currently using the hyperlane method (whatever the actual name is) and while I like it overall, a bad luck of the draw wiht the map kinda cornered me in tough spot lol... Basically I want to go to war with my neighbor but I'm force of taking the long way around the whole galaxy to get to his capital which is actually like 3 systems away from mine lol

If you're lucky, you can eventually get jump drives.
 
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