My eternal struggle with Pdox games is whether to play a game now or wait till the next patch+DLC to have fun with the new features they inevitably add.
Yeah I think I'm gonna wait for the next update before playing, what with all the new achievements they're adding.
"So Factions might be changing a bit in @StellarisGame 1.5 'Banks'... (interface is WIP)"
So, based on that pic I'm guessing the plan for factions and ethics in 1.5 is instead of ethics divergence, you have factions that represent specific ethos that pops can join. Supporting their issues will give you benefits (namely influence) but doing so will also tilt your empire('s pops) towards that faction's ethics.
I've started up a new game as a despotic hegemony modeled after the crew of Space Station 13.
My favorite diplomatic moment so far was when I discovered some text of significant importance to a rival empire. I hailed them to let them know that I had found it. They were ecstatic because they had presumed it lost forever and requested that I return it to them at once. However I told them that I wouldn't return it and the that the only reason that I had called them was because I thought that their precious document was shit.
I've brutally expanded my territory towards the galactic core. At one point, one of my xeno infiltration agents fell in love with an alien and betrayed my empire. My response was to hunt that race to extinction.
After that incident, most of my other aliens in my empire started rioting. So they were purged to extinction too. In fact, now that I think about it, probably a good 30% of my territory can be attributed to a series of covert infiltrations followed by supplanting the indigenous population with loyalists from the homeworld and then purging the locals. You really shouldn't trust the crew of SS13 around non-humans.
Surprisingly, I'm not hated by everyone in the galaxy. More surprisingly is that my strongest ally is a pacifistic nation next door that has a deeply positive diplomatic bond with me despite my repeated genocides. I suppose it's because of our defensive pact and a handful of defensive wars that I helped him win.
Surprisingly, I'm not hated by everyone in the galaxy. More surprisingly is that my strongest ally is a pacifistic nation next door that has a deeply positive diplomatic bond with me despite my repeated genocides. I suppose it's because of our defensive pact and a handful of defensive wars that I helped him win.
Decided to go with some scientist lizard people who think they're better than everyone else.
Starting planet was next door to Sol, humans were in the nuclear age, so naturally I invaded and took them over, lizard people style.
And now I have xeno slaves to satisfy my decent tendencies.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Surprisingly, I'm not hated by everyone in the galaxy. More surprisingly is that my strongest ally is a pacifistic nation next door that has a deeply positive diplomatic bond with me despite my repeated genocides. I suppose it's because of our defensive pact and a handful of defensive wars that I helped him win.
"He's kind of an asshole, but he's our asshole!"
To continue the story, war were declared.
While my fleets were half the galaxy away murdering sentient gas clouds that were older than time for the sole purpose of accruing combat experience, basically everyone in the neighborhood declared war on me.
Aggressors to my east, west, and south. The pacifist still likes me and we're both still honoring our defensive pact. He kept the southern front stable while my forces removed the western front. At the sight of my fleets consolidating on the eastern front and six of my ground armies besting ~20 of their defensive armies with no losses (Despotic hegemony elite guards with military academy and virtual combat center bonuses are very robust ), the eastern coalition lost their nerve and tried to negotiate a white peace...
That's just not going to happen. Bellow was pretty much my face at the negotiating table.
For context, I created a race of bunny people for my last playthrough known as the Bun. They started out as collectivist spiritualists, but I scrapped that and changed them to materialist pacifists. Turns out that if you don't delete them though, your old races can show up in your newer playthroughs. I'm now playing as the United Earth Empire from Star Citizen (using the proper UEE logo curtosy of the "Flags: Emblems & backgrounds' mod) as an Individualist Xenophile Materialist, and I had the collectivist spiritualist version of my Bunnymen show up. They hate me (opposite ethics), and their rapid breeding has allowed them to carve out a pretty big empire. Not only that, but they've federated themselves with my rival next door, and formed the "Bunstar Axis" to oppose me.
I love this game.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
So my current empire are a bunch of War Turtles.
Between the Venerable trait, various techs, finding the Tree of Life and a few other odds and ends I'm at the point in my game where FEs have awakened and the galactic threat has arrived and I'm just now starting to replace my original leaders. My Empress died over the age of 200. She was the first of the original leaders to go. I still have all my original Governors and Scientists (apart from the ones serving on the science ships I lost) from the start of the game/early expanse era.
Not having to spend influence every 10 seconds is super nice. Though there are better ways to spend those trait points I suppose. :razz:
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I wouldn't underestimate the benefits of not having to replace your leaders, I found that "Fleeting" was pretty crippling for the opposite reason; I was constantly having to spend 50 influence to replace my scientists who'd drop dead in their 50s, and considering most of them start aged 30-40 that's a lot of influence down the toilet. And early on you really need that influence to expand.
However, every once in a while I'll be reminded about some ancient racist career politician still in office, and the idea that my little rodent people would have potentially another hundred years of dealing with them more than we have as it is makes me think that just Logan's Running them every once in a while just to send a message isn't a terrible idea.
Well I've reached the point where everyone hates me (except the conclaves. I do good business with them).
However I've also reached the point where I don't really need friends. I have most of the techs that I want, so I'm going full colonization spam for resource income now. My people are extremely adaptative and have both +habitability techs which give them +30% habitability right out of the gate. With frontier hospitals, my loyalist pops can colonize essentially everywhere there is oxygen. I have droids coming online to colonize tomb world, but I think I'm a random event or strategic resource or two short from my loyalist pops being able to establish tomb world colonies on their own. My core 5 colonies have a total of 9 shipyards between them and I'm in the process of upgrading them to full capacity and supplementing them with orbital fortresses to ward off any sucker punches towards my core.
My position isn't unassailable. A fallen empire could wipe me off the map if they wanted to (they still sleep, and the xenophobic one would probably approve of my actions if it was awake). However my important worlds are dug in pretty good.
The Enigmatic fortress is adjacent to my homeworld. I might be able to try to retrieve its secrets soon...
edit:
I took the enigmatic fortress.
I probably could have taken it much earlier. I sent a 14k fleet, but a recent campaign of mine reverse engineered tier 4 armor and regenerative hull plating. Combined with living metal, my battleships and cruisers have 90% damage reduction and regenerate 6% health per month. The pure ballistic armament of the fortress couldn't scratch me.
However, I didn't realize that I'd actually have to research these goodies. If I had realized that, I might have delayed my expansionism wave that has doubled my population....
My next step is to augment my research capabilities by pushing the big red button and researching Sentient AI. I have ~5 droids total within my core systems, so I'm not too worried. My most recent wave of expansion netted a few dozen droids added to my most peripheral sector, which suggests that my adversaries are using robots WAY more heavily than me. On the one hand, I stand to get a big research boost. On the other, the federations standing against me are poised to become embroiled in a war with skynet. That's a Win/win.
General_Armchair on
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
I've seen the end of days.
My empire was one dedicated to the pursuit of pure science. We researched everything. No advancement was out of our reach. But we delved too deep. Blind to the risks, our scientists unlocked the secrets of PSI jump drives. As we sped across the stars, sowing the seeds of hatred between the other empires, they made war upon each other while we sat and watched.
When they were weak, we unleashed the awesome might of our fleet and began carving up their alien territory. Just as the empire proclaimed victory, stripping away two colonies from one union and vassalizing another, the heavens opened up and
the Unbidden flooded the galaxy. Ours was the only fleet of any significance, at a mere 25k strength, and it quickly fell to the first wave of Unbidden vessels. Each of their fleets was over 50k and they made short work of what I had. After rebuilding the fleet up to 30k, their territory now engulfed all of my soon-to-be integrated vassal. They now had several fleets over 50k strong and there was no one left in the galaxy strong enough to stop them.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
My eternal struggle with Pdox games is whether to play a game now or wait till the next patch+DLC to have fun with the new features they inevitably add.
Yeah I think I'm gonna wait for the next update before playing, what with all the new achievements they're adding.
Seriously, with how wildly they're changing the game with every update I feel like I'm perpetually waiting for the next one to "fix" things that I didn't quite realize were broken to begin with
I think when the next update drops I'm just going to start playing day-of, so I don't get wrapped in "but the NEXT patch will add EVEN MORE things"
I was all about getting back into the game when Leviathans was released but the fact that it takes a while to build up to where you can actually deal with those creatures, combined with the lack of achievements to provide other sorts of motivations to work towards, meant that the game still hadn't really alleviated the problem I had where the beginning was way more compelling than the middle/end game.
But I mean, y'know, next patch drops I'm probably going to throw a few dozen more hours at it.
I'm starting to reach the part of the game that grates on my nerves.
Declaring war on federation members is BS. To take ~3 worlds I need to occupy every world they have and half a dozen of their allies' worlds. Then, when they finally capitulate, I relinquish 90% of the territory that I've captured. Frequently my fleets need to dive so deep into enemy territory that I'm forced to relinquish that they're stranded there because all my wormhole stations were auto destroyed. We really need a more total war option to cut out that endgame slog.
I'm starting to reach the part of the game that grates on my nerves.
Declaring war on federation members is BS. To take ~3 worlds I need to occupy every world they have and half a dozen of their allies' worlds. Then, when they finally capitulate, I relinquish 90% of the territory that I've captured. Frequently my fleets need to dive so deep into enemy territory that I'm forced to relinquish that they're stranded there because all my wormhole stations were auto destroyed. We really need a more total war option to cut out that endgame slog.
Or at least make the actual occupation of wargoal objectives worth enough on their own that you don't have to utterly destroy their navy and bomb/invade every world just to get them to give up 3 planets at a time.
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
The fanatic Xenophile fallen empire has awoken, and seems to be very aggressive about its whole "Be excellent to each other OR FUCKING DIE!" thing. The first empire it took over were imperialist dicks who nobody would have missed much, but now they've just declared war on the biggest empire out there, and they're democratic crusaders so I'm not sure exactly what they could have done to piss them off in the first place. Seems like they're just declaring war at random now. So I've been pulled into that war thanks to a big web of defensive alliances, and it looks pretty hopeless. In theory we might be able to beat them if the AI weren't retarded, but we all know how that goes. I'm hoping to at least pick off one of their smaller fleets and salvage the remains, then I might actually have a chance of fighting them when they inevitably come for me.
What's irritating is that Awakened Empires don't seem to follow the normal Warscore rules when setting demands. Usually you can only pick off 2-3 planets at once when you declare a war, but if the AE wins this war they get nearly a dozen planets ceded in one go, which isn't even remotely fair. Give them a ridiculous tech advantage sure, but don't fundamentally alter the rules that everybody else plays by just because.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
For one thing, at some point in the game, you should be able to shift wargoals from planets to systems. Systems with multiple inhabited planets should cost more, but by mid-late game, taking a system that happens to have 2 or 3 inhabited planets probably shouldn't be the entirety of the outcome of a war.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I'm starting to reach the part of the game that grates on my nerves.
Declaring war on federation members is BS. To take ~3 worlds I need to occupy every world they have and half a dozen of their allies' worlds. Then, when they finally capitulate, I relinquish 90% of the territory that I've captured. Frequently my fleets need to dive so deep into enemy territory that I'm forced to relinquish that they're stranded there because all my wormhole stations were auto destroyed. We really need a more total war option to cut out that endgame slog.
My empire is an economic powerhouse, but in each offensive war it goes bankrupt from paying to maintain all the worlds that must be occupied
Feels like an obnoxious design oversight every time it happens
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
The fanatic Xenophile fallen empire has awoken, and seems to be very aggressive about its whole "Be excellent to each other OR FUCKING DIE!" thing. The first empire it took over were imperialist dicks who nobody would have missed much, but now they've just declared war on the biggest empire out there, and they're democratic crusaders so I'm not sure exactly what they could have done to piss them off in the first place. Seems like they're just declaring war at random now. So I've been pulled into that war thanks to a big web of defensive alliances, and it looks pretty hopeless. In theory we might be able to beat them if the AI weren't retarded, but we all know how that goes. I'm hoping to at least pick off one of their smaller fleets and salvage the remains, then I might actually have a chance of fighting them when they inevitably come for me.
What's irritating is that Awakened Empires don't seem to follow the normal Warscore rules when setting demands. Usually you can only pick off 2-3 planets at once when you declare a war, but if the AE wins this war they get nearly a dozen planets ceded in one go, which isn't even remotely fair. Give them a ridiculous tech advantage sure, but don't fundamentally alter the rules that everybody else plays by just because.
Last time I had an awakened FE, I declared war on *them*, and there was a wargoal called "Total Victory" or somesuch that basically said I'd take all the FE's worlds, and getting a few more from their vassals was not off the table.
Not sure if it really works that way (didn't go quite as well as planned...) but it does suggest it might be possible to play that game with them as well.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Someone on another forum once suggested that you should be able to "mothball" old ships to save on energy and mineral costs so you don't have to keep paying huge upkeep even if your fleet is sitting around twiddling their thumbs, and increasingly I agree. I think you should be able to set fleets to "stand-by" mode, where you can't give them orders or upgrade them, but they would have a vastly reduced upkeep cost, and it would take a fairly considerable amount of time to bring them back to active service and then you'd likely have to upgrade them again since they would be out of date by a fair degree. I can see reasons not to add something like that but I think it could be a workable solution to some of the economy problems that crop up as a result of trying to get a fleet worth anything for when you need it.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
if you're not using your fleet stick it in orbit around a space station with crew quarters. if you can't support that then you really can't support it during wartime and will go broke very quickly.
if you're not using your fleet stick it in orbit around a space station with crew quarters. if you can't support that then you really can't support it during wartime and will go broke very quickly.
Crew quarters and engineering facility preferably, they both reduce upkeep so I try to keep a few stations with both and make them rally points.
The fanatic Xenophile fallen empire has awoken, and seems to be very aggressive about its whole "Be excellent to each other OR FUCKING DIE!" thing. The first empire it took over were imperialist dicks who nobody would have missed much, but now they've just declared war on the biggest empire out there, and they're democratic crusaders so I'm not sure exactly what they could have done to piss them off in the first place. Seems like they're just declaring war at random now. So I've been pulled into that war thanks to a big web of defensive alliances, and it looks pretty hopeless. In theory we might be able to beat them if the AI weren't retarded, but we all know how that goes. I'm hoping to at least pick off one of their smaller fleets and salvage the remains, then I might actually have a chance of fighting them when they inevitably come for me.
What's irritating is that Awakened Empires don't seem to follow the normal Warscore rules when setting demands. Usually you can only pick off 2-3 planets at once when you declare a war, but if the AE wins this war they get nearly a dozen planets ceded in one go, which isn't even remotely fair. Give them a ridiculous tech advantage sure, but don't fundamentally alter the rules that everybody else plays by just because.
Last time I had an awakened FE, I declared war on *them*, and there was a wargoal called "Total Victory" or somesuch that basically said I'd take all the FE's worlds, and getting a few more from their vassals was not off the table.
Not sure if it really works that way (didn't go quite as well as planned...) but it does suggest it might be possible to play that game with them as well.
Its dumb though, because the whole point of the warscore system and only being able to take a few planets every 10 years is to prevent one empire from completely steamrolling another in one go; the victim has 10 years to build their forces back up, gather allies or make themselves the vassal of someone bigger and stronger before the next war. But one awakened empires show up that's all turned on its head and you can lose everything in one go, and there's every chance that you're woefully underprepared to actually defend against them.
I feel like the forces fallen empires are able to marshal are wildly out of proportion to the size and effectiveness of fleets since the habitable worlds nerf.
This game is probably still salvageable though; I can make the AE get off my back at any time by just signing their damn galactic peace treaty, if the awakened empire had been a xenophobe I'd be completely fucked. I wouldn't be able to do any more diplomacy or declare any more wars, but I'd be able to peacefully build up my empire until I'm ready to take them on, and I've got a lot of colonizable worlds to back-fill especially once I get the tomb world terraforming tech. I'm just worried that they might already be unstoppable; once they win this war they'll have about 1/5th of the galaxy, about as much territory as me plus their insane tech advantage. I'm sort of hoping for an endgame crisis to hit them in the face at this point to soften them up, failing that I might have to declare war on one of the two still sleeping FEs to steal their tech.
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
I think I'd like to see warscore bleed for achieving occupation of a wargoal world. Capturing the world wouldn't be that impactful, but maintaining occupation for a year would accrue a much larger chunk of wargoal points.
You'd probably need to implement some kind of upper limit for each wargoal world that's proportional to the number of worlds you're demanding so that you can't win every war by just holding one wargoal world. For example, if the wargoal cost of the world is 30% of your war demands, maintaining occupation of the world could never be worth more than 30% of war progress no matter how long you hold it.
Always think before rivaling someone. while it is very tempting (especially if your Fanatical Militarist) to rival everyone you plan to conquer for that sweet, sweet influence, there are consequences to that act. Namely, Empires you have rivaled now have reason to seek deeper diplomatic ties, namely Defensive Pacts and forming Federations. What might have been an easy target can become a difficult proposition thanks to the web of Pacts and alliances that may have formed because you had to wave your reproductive organ(s) in the faces of your neighbors.
Yeah, that bonus influence can be a big boost, especially if you're militarist/xenophobe, but a good way to make friends it ain't. On the other hand, those Fanatical Purifiers were never going to be friends with your materialist ass so fuck 'em.
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
Did you find many of your pops moved to more pleasant climes, thus making it harder to fill these lower habitability planets?
I swear it used to be that the cost of each planet in warscore was inversely proportional to the size of the empires taking part in the war. That seemed to go away with the latest patch.
Some combination of that old way of doing things and a better way of actually gaining warscore (named planets worth more, bleeding warscore from holding them etc) would make late game conquests far more enjoyable and in my mind more "realistic".
I also reckon that the threshold for vassalising should be way lower. In my current game I myself cover a good third of the galaxy, with my federation accounting for way over half. However I'm unable to vassalise through war an "empire" that barely spans a few systems. Perhaps this is because they're part of a larger federation, but I don't think that should count either.
I just feel like the late game in stellaris is just so incredibly laboring. The main obstacle now is a awakened Fe with 400k fleet power compared to my 125k. It just takes forever to conquer/colonize planets which then need to be built up, after which point I need to save up for fleets.
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
Did you find many of your pops moved to more pleasant climes, thus making it harder to fill these lower habitability planets?
Not in my game. Generally happiness is pretty constant over my worlds and monuments to purity keep happiness up. You just need to queue up a frontier clinic to boost habitablity and the happiness cap up and hold off on colonizing the most extremely different worlds until after you have a few techs /events that boost habitablity.
Still weaker than all powerful gene modding though.
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
Did you find many of your pops moved to more pleasant climes, thus making it harder to fill these lower habitability planets?
No, but I've also been playing with ethics that leave migration turned off by default - could be a concern with migration active, although there's still a definite advantage to grabbing high-value space early even if you can't leverage it until later.
I think 'both' would probably be the ideal solution - occupation of wargoal should count for significantly more than it does, and there should probably be more techs (including one or more repeatable techs) that reduce war demand costs so that you're able to demand more per war in the late game without upsetting the way the early and mid-game function. Taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 6-12 planets is a reasonable way of making war objective-based rather than a campaign of obliteration; taking 3-5 planets in a war where your opponent has 50 is an unnecessary boring grind that makes meaningful conquest all but impossible.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
Did you find many of your pops moved to more pleasant climes, thus making it harder to fill these lower habitability planets?
No, but I've also been playing with ethics that leave migration turned off by default - could be a concern with migration active, although there's still a definite advantage to grabbing high-value space early even if you can't leverage it until later.
There is also the fact you could colonize with your highly adapatble pop, and then start building robots to work all the mineral tiles and hold the place down until you get some pops that prefer that kind of planet.
I just feel like the late game in stellaris is just so incredibly laboring. The main obstacle now is a awakened Fe with 400k fleet power compared to my 125k. It just takes forever to conquer/colonize planets which then need to be built up, after which point I need to save up for fleets.
It would really help if the sector AI weren't so completely brain-dead and you could just leave them to do the back-filling for you. In theory you should be able to tick "colonise", put the planets you want in a sector and let them handle the rest, but in practice they only seem to be able to handle doing one thing at a time across an entire sector with screwed-up priorities. "Sure there's two empty tiles on this planet, but I think what we really need is to upgrade a power plant on this fully developed planet instead! What? Do both at the same time?? Ugh, that sounds like effort, no thanks."
I haven't had issues with people abandoning worlds as long as the locals can maintain above 50% happiness. So you just need a frontier clinic and some other modifier from a tech /event/strategic resource to make them lukewarm to any world. Stack some more and they can be happy anywhere.
In my current game my people have both of the +5% habitability modifier techs on top of extremely adaptive and I can readily colonize everything with home world loyalist pops. While less happy, my loyalists are living on tomb worlds once droids make planet fall and setup frontier clinics in advance.
It is nice being able to plant your flag on literally any world though. Especially if the world is huge or is in a strategically advantageous situation. The question is whether or is worth the cost of all the negative modifiers you need to make to use of the trait. I'm keeping it on my ss13 faction simply because it is too fitting since the space station is usually split between a mix of vacuum, plasma fire, and alien infestations. That's just Scratching the surface of how ss13 isn't up to space OSHA code. They litterally live in a death trap where medbay spends more time cloning people from genetic backups than applying first aid.
I'm going to replace the solitary negative trait though. While fitting due to the extreme paranoia of the crew, that happiness penalty just led to too much dissent in stellaris. If it weren't for that - 5% baseline happiness, I'm pretty sure almost all of my people would be in ethical lockstep with the homeworld.
What's the ideal ratio of ships for a fleet. I had 300 supply but had no idea how to distribute it.
The ai also always seems to put fight me. 25k fleet (20k mine and 5k of the Federations) versus 20k of theirs and I barely won. Don't know what I did wrong, their ships don't seem that superior to mine.
And how do you rebuild your fleet late game. After that defeat I spend at least 30 years just getting it back up to strength again! That's a long time doing nothing. Is it better to save up and order your fleet all at once?
Is there a down side to becoming an AE's dominion? I couldn't beat them in the war that came so that ended my current game.
If you only have 300 fleet cap lategame you need to expand more. This also gives you more income, which eventually lets you produce from 3-5 planets at a time.
What's the ideal ratio of ships for a fleet. I had 300 supply but had no idea how to distribute it.
The ai also always seems to put fight me. 25k fleet (20k mine and 5k of the Federations) versus 20k of theirs and I barely won. Don't know what I did wrong, their ships don't seem that superior to mine.
And how do you rebuild your fleet late game. After that defeat I spend at least 30 years just getting it back up to strength again! That's a long time doing nothing. Is it better to save up and order your fleet all at once?
Is there a down side to becoming an AE's dominion? I couldn't beat them in the war that came so that ended my current game.
I used this guide mostly, but I found that late-game Corvettes and Battleships are the way to go, though I do have a lot of Destroyers for artillery/flak PD. I think in general Plasma is really good late-game, but if you can get your hands on Matter Disintegrators (from Unbidden or FEs) they are better. I'm also not sure that bombers and fighters are at all effective due to PD on AI fleets being numerous. Overall though I would try to scan AI ships with a corvette scout so that you can see what types of weapons they're using and outfit your fleet accordingly.
AFE's exact different kinds of penalties depending on what type they are. Check the wiki here (http://www.stellariswiki.com/Fallen_empire#Fallen_Empire_AI_Personality). I think Doctrinal Enforcers and Jingoistic Reclaimers require you pay 25% of mineral/energy income, while Watchful Regulators require 25% of your research income. You can't declare war if you're become a signatory to a Benevolent Interventionist, but you don't pay any resource costs.
And yeah, you need to have a fleet cap of >1000 by end-game, and much higher if you want to challenge an awakened FE.
Posts
Yeah I think I'm gonna wait for the next update before playing, what with all the new achievements they're adding.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
i am totes ok with Tropico in space.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
My favorite diplomatic moment so far was when I discovered some text of significant importance to a rival empire. I hailed them to let them know that I had found it. They were ecstatic because they had presumed it lost forever and requested that I return it to them at once. However I told them that I wouldn't return it and the that the only reason that I had called them was because I thought that their precious document was shit.
I've brutally expanded my territory towards the galactic core. At one point, one of my xeno infiltration agents fell in love with an alien and betrayed my empire. My response was to hunt that race to extinction.
After that incident, most of my other aliens in my empire started rioting. So they were purged to extinction too. In fact, now that I think about it, probably a good 30% of my territory can be attributed to a series of covert infiltrations followed by supplanting the indigenous population with loyalists from the homeworld and then purging the locals. You really shouldn't trust the crew of SS13 around non-humans.
Surprisingly, I'm not hated by everyone in the galaxy. More surprisingly is that my strongest ally is a pacifistic nation next door that has a deeply positive diplomatic bond with me despite my repeated genocides. I suppose it's because of our defensive pact and a handful of defensive wars that I helped him win.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
"He's kind of an asshole, but he's our asshole!"
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Decided to go with some scientist lizard people who think they're better than everyone else.
Starting planet was next door to Sol, humans were in the nuclear age, so naturally I invaded and took them over, lizard people style.
And now I have xeno slaves to satisfy my decent tendencies.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
To continue the story, war were declared.
While my fleets were half the galaxy away murdering sentient gas clouds that were older than time for the sole purpose of accruing combat experience, basically everyone in the neighborhood declared war on me.
Aggressors to my east, west, and south. The pacifist still likes me and we're both still honoring our defensive pact. He kept the southern front stable while my forces removed the western front. At the sight of my fleets consolidating on the eastern front and six of my ground armies besting ~20 of their defensive armies with no losses (Despotic hegemony elite guards with military academy and virtual combat center bonuses are very robust ), the eastern coalition lost their nerve and tried to negotiate a white peace...
That's just not going to happen. Bellow was pretty much my face at the negotiating table.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
For context, I created a race of bunny people for my last playthrough known as the Bun. They started out as collectivist spiritualists, but I scrapped that and changed them to materialist pacifists. Turns out that if you don't delete them though, your old races can show up in your newer playthroughs. I'm now playing as the United Earth Empire from Star Citizen (using the proper UEE logo curtosy of the "Flags: Emblems & backgrounds' mod) as an Individualist Xenophile Materialist, and I had the collectivist spiritualist version of my Bunnymen show up. They hate me (opposite ethics), and their rapid breeding has allowed them to carve out a pretty big empire. Not only that, but they've federated themselves with my rival next door, and formed the "Bunstar Axis" to oppose me.
I love this game.
Between the Venerable trait, various techs, finding the Tree of Life and a few other odds and ends I'm at the point in my game where FEs have awakened and the galactic threat has arrived and I'm just now starting to replace my original leaders. My Empress died over the age of 200. She was the first of the original leaders to go. I still have all my original Governors and Scientists (apart from the ones serving on the science ships I lost) from the start of the game/early expanse era.
Not having to spend influence every 10 seconds is super nice. Though there are better ways to spend those trait points I suppose. :razz:
However I've also reached the point where I don't really need friends. I have most of the techs that I want, so I'm going full colonization spam for resource income now. My people are extremely adaptative and have both +habitability techs which give them +30% habitability right out of the gate. With frontier hospitals, my loyalist pops can colonize essentially everywhere there is oxygen. I have droids coming online to colonize tomb world, but I think I'm a random event or strategic resource or two short from my loyalist pops being able to establish tomb world colonies on their own. My core 5 colonies have a total of 9 shipyards between them and I'm in the process of upgrading them to full capacity and supplementing them with orbital fortresses to ward off any sucker punches towards my core.
My position isn't unassailable. A fallen empire could wipe me off the map if they wanted to (they still sleep, and the xenophobic one would probably approve of my actions if it was awake). However my important worlds are dug in pretty good.
The Enigmatic fortress is adjacent to my homeworld. I might be able to try to retrieve its secrets soon...
edit:
I took the enigmatic fortress.
However, I didn't realize that I'd actually have to research these goodies. If I had realized that, I might have delayed my expansionism wave that has doubled my population....
My next step is to augment my research capabilities by pushing the big red button and researching Sentient AI. I have ~5 droids total within my core systems, so I'm not too worried. My most recent wave of expansion netted a few dozen droids added to my most peripheral sector, which suggests that my adversaries are using robots WAY more heavily than me. On the one hand, I stand to get a big research boost. On the other, the federations standing against me are poised to become embroiled in a war with skynet. That's a Win/win.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
My empire was one dedicated to the pursuit of pure science. We researched everything. No advancement was out of our reach. But we delved too deep. Blind to the risks, our scientists unlocked the secrets of PSI jump drives. As we sped across the stars, sowing the seeds of hatred between the other empires, they made war upon each other while we sat and watched.
When they were weak, we unleashed the awesome might of our fleet and began carving up their alien territory. Just as the empire proclaimed victory, stripping away two colonies from one union and vassalizing another, the heavens opened up and
Seriously, with how wildly they're changing the game with every update I feel like I'm perpetually waiting for the next one to "fix" things that I didn't quite realize were broken to begin with
I think when the next update drops I'm just going to start playing day-of, so I don't get wrapped in "but the NEXT patch will add EVEN MORE things"
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
But I mean, y'know, next patch drops I'm probably going to throw a few dozen more hours at it.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Declaring war on federation members is BS. To take ~3 worlds I need to occupy every world they have and half a dozen of their allies' worlds. Then, when they finally capitulate, I relinquish 90% of the territory that I've captured. Frequently my fleets need to dive so deep into enemy territory that I'm forced to relinquish that they're stranded there because all my wormhole stations were auto destroyed. We really need a more total war option to cut out that endgame slog.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Or at least make the actual occupation of wargoal objectives worth enough on their own that you don't have to utterly destroy their navy and bomb/invade every world just to get them to give up 3 planets at a time.
Edit: In non-complaint news, the changes to colonization and habitability seem like they've made Highly Adaptable really effective. Highly Adaptable puts you at minimum 40% habitability for all planet types except Tomb Worlds, which is the threshold at which they're colonizable - meaning you can pick up all those sweet size 20+ worlds early on regardless of habitability. You're dealing with a little bit of a happiness penalty (at least in theory - doesn't seem to be working correctly at the moment) but it's not severe and it can be erased fairly early with frontier clinics and any habitability tech.
The fanatic Xenophile fallen empire has awoken, and seems to be very aggressive about its whole "Be excellent to each other OR FUCKING DIE!" thing. The first empire it took over were imperialist dicks who nobody would have missed much, but now they've just declared war on the biggest empire out there, and they're democratic crusaders so I'm not sure exactly what they could have done to piss them off in the first place. Seems like they're just declaring war at random now. So I've been pulled into that war thanks to a big web of defensive alliances, and it looks pretty hopeless. In theory we might be able to beat them if the AI weren't retarded, but we all know how that goes. I'm hoping to at least pick off one of their smaller fleets and salvage the remains, then I might actually have a chance of fighting them when they inevitably come for me.
What's irritating is that Awakened Empires don't seem to follow the normal Warscore rules when setting demands. Usually you can only pick off 2-3 planets at once when you declare a war, but if the AE wins this war they get nearly a dozen planets ceded in one go, which isn't even remotely fair. Give them a ridiculous tech advantage sure, but don't fundamentally alter the rules that everybody else plays by just because.
For one thing, at some point in the game, you should be able to shift wargoals from planets to systems. Systems with multiple inhabited planets should cost more, but by mid-late game, taking a system that happens to have 2 or 3 inhabited planets probably shouldn't be the entirety of the outcome of a war.
My empire is an economic powerhouse, but in each offensive war it goes bankrupt from paying to maintain all the worlds that must be occupied
Feels like an obnoxious design oversight every time it happens
Last time I had an awakened FE, I declared war on *them*, and there was a wargoal called "Total Victory" or somesuch that basically said I'd take all the FE's worlds, and getting a few more from their vassals was not off the table.
Not sure if it really works that way (didn't go quite as well as planned...) but it does suggest it might be possible to play that game with them as well.
Crew quarters and engineering facility preferably, they both reduce upkeep so I try to keep a few stations with both and make them rally points.
Its dumb though, because the whole point of the warscore system and only being able to take a few planets every 10 years is to prevent one empire from completely steamrolling another in one go; the victim has 10 years to build their forces back up, gather allies or make themselves the vassal of someone bigger and stronger before the next war. But one awakened empires show up that's all turned on its head and you can lose everything in one go, and there's every chance that you're woefully underprepared to actually defend against them.
This game is probably still salvageable though; I can make the AE get off my back at any time by just signing their damn galactic peace treaty, if the awakened empire had been a xenophobe I'd be completely fucked. I wouldn't be able to do any more diplomacy or declare any more wars, but I'd be able to peacefully build up my empire until I'm ready to take them on, and I've got a lot of colonizable worlds to back-fill especially once I get the tomb world terraforming tech. I'm just worried that they might already be unstoppable; once they win this war they'll have about 1/5th of the galaxy, about as much territory as me plus their insane tech advantage. I'm sort of hoping for an endgame crisis to hit them in the face at this point to soften them up, failing that I might have to declare war on one of the two still sleeping FEs to steal their tech.
I think I'd like to see warscore bleed for achieving occupation of a wargoal world. Capturing the world wouldn't be that impactful, but maintaining occupation for a year would accrue a much larger chunk of wargoal points.
You'd probably need to implement some kind of upper limit for each wargoal world that's proportional to the number of worlds you're demanding so that you can't win every war by just holding one wargoal world. For example, if the wargoal cost of the world is 30% of your war demands, maintaining occupation of the world could never be worth more than 30% of war progress no matter how long you hold it.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Always think before rivaling someone. while it is very tempting (especially if your Fanatical Militarist) to rival everyone you plan to conquer for that sweet, sweet influence, there are consequences to that act. Namely, Empires you have rivaled now have reason to seek deeper diplomatic ties, namely Defensive Pacts and forming Federations. What might have been an easy target can become a difficult proposition thanks to the web of Pacts and alliances that may have formed because you had to wave your reproductive organ(s) in the faces of your neighbors.
Did you find many of your pops moved to more pleasant climes, thus making it harder to fill these lower habitability planets?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Some combination of that old way of doing things and a better way of actually gaining warscore (named planets worth more, bleeding warscore from holding them etc) would make late game conquests far more enjoyable and in my mind more "realistic".
I also reckon that the threshold for vassalising should be way lower. In my current game I myself cover a good third of the galaxy, with my federation accounting for way over half. However I'm unable to vassalise through war an "empire" that barely spans a few systems. Perhaps this is because they're part of a larger federation, but I don't think that should count either.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Steam: CavilatRest
Not in my game. Generally happiness is pretty constant over my worlds and monuments to purity keep happiness up. You just need to queue up a frontier clinic to boost habitablity and the happiness cap up and hold off on colonizing the most extremely different worlds until after you have a few techs /events that boost habitablity.
Still weaker than all powerful gene modding though.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
No, but I've also been playing with ethics that leave migration turned off by default - could be a concern with migration active, although there's still a definite advantage to grabbing high-value space early even if you can't leverage it until later.
There is also the fact you could colonize with your highly adapatble pop, and then start building robots to work all the mineral tiles and hold the place down until you get some pops that prefer that kind of planet.
It would really help if the sector AI weren't so completely brain-dead and you could just leave them to do the back-filling for you. In theory you should be able to tick "colonise", put the planets you want in a sector and let them handle the rest, but in practice they only seem to be able to handle doing one thing at a time across an entire sector with screwed-up priorities. "Sure there's two empty tiles on this planet, but I think what we really need is to upgrade a power plant on this fully developed planet instead! What? Do both at the same time?? Ugh, that sounds like effort, no thanks."
In my current game my people have both of the +5% habitability modifier techs on top of extremely adaptive and I can readily colonize everything with home world loyalist pops. While less happy, my loyalists are living on tomb worlds once droids make planet fall and setup frontier clinics in advance.
It is nice being able to plant your flag on literally any world though. Especially if the world is huge or is in a strategically advantageous situation. The question is whether or is worth the cost of all the negative modifiers you need to make to use of the trait. I'm keeping it on my ss13 faction simply because it is too fitting since the space station is usually split between a mix of vacuum, plasma fire, and alien infestations. That's just Scratching the surface of how ss13 isn't up to space OSHA code. They litterally live in a death trap where medbay spends more time cloning people from genetic backups than applying first aid.
I'm going to replace the solitary negative trait though. While fitting due to the extreme paranoia of the crew, that happiness penalty just led to too much dissent in stellaris. If it weren't for that - 5% baseline happiness, I'm pretty sure almost all of my people would be in ethical lockstep with the homeworld.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
What's the ideal ratio of ships for a fleet. I had 300 supply but had no idea how to distribute it.
The ai also always seems to put fight me. 25k fleet (20k mine and 5k of the Federations) versus 20k of theirs and I barely won. Don't know what I did wrong, their ships don't seem that superior to mine.
And how do you rebuild your fleet late game. After that defeat I spend at least 30 years just getting it back up to strength again! That's a long time doing nothing. Is it better to save up and order your fleet all at once?
Is there a down side to becoming an AE's dominion? I couldn't beat them in the war that came so that ended my current game.
I used this guide mostly, but I found that late-game Corvettes and Battleships are the way to go, though I do have a lot of Destroyers for artillery/flak PD. I think in general Plasma is really good late-game, but if you can get your hands on Matter Disintegrators (from Unbidden or FEs) they are better. I'm also not sure that bombers and fighters are at all effective due to PD on AI fleets being numerous. Overall though I would try to scan AI ships with a corvette scout so that you can see what types of weapons they're using and outfit your fleet accordingly.
AFE's exact different kinds of penalties depending on what type they are. Check the wiki here (http://www.stellariswiki.com/Fallen_empire#Fallen_Empire_AI_Personality). I think Doctrinal Enforcers and Jingoistic Reclaimers require you pay 25% of mineral/energy income, while Watchful Regulators require 25% of your research income. You can't declare war if you're become a signatory to a Benevolent Interventionist, but you don't pay any resource costs.
And yeah, you need to have a fleet cap of >1000 by end-game, and much higher if you want to challenge an awakened FE.
Steam: CavilatRest