So it is 2433 and my game has slowed down to the point where I can barely run it on normal speed. I am first place on score and I won a war against an awakened empire but no end-game crisis has spawned so far. I'm not sure if I want to slog through the remaining 75 years or just start a new game.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I tried a run today doing a fairly bog-standard Megacorp. I was placed in the ass-end of the galaxy; "that's okay," I thought, "you'll have some room to expand and get a decent economy going before selling your crap to everyone in the galaxy." Nope. First neighbors are a hive mind and not interested in trade. Next neighbors I meet are fanatical purifiers. Crap. Okay, let's check the other direction: hello fallen empire. Shit shit shit. Okay, so my expansion is basically blocked in at this point but I managed to get one science ship out before all borders were closed. My lone ship went halfway around the galaxy, and I met: 2 more fanatical purifiers, a pair of democratic crusaders who were more interested in freedom than free trade, and a xenophile spiritualist who I'm pretty sure was an uplifted species because they had 1 system and no economy to speak of. I had one last opportunity for expansion and managed to sneak a science ship past some crystalline entities to peek at the 5 or so systems behind it. Each one was filled with 10-15k worth of drones, or pirates, or more crystals.
So yeah, pretty terrible start but at least I got a feel for how all the new systems work. Maybe it was too early in the game and my bribery only managed to get the crusaders tolerant enough to let me plant them, but the branch offices felt fairly weak for all the investment required.
So after playing a few games... I don't think I like this xpac. At all.
I think it's the planet changes. I say that because I am not 100% sure exactly what is wrong. So far in every game I hit a point where my planets start going out of control. Either the population booms and I cannot physically build enough housing, or there aren't enough jobs, or there aren't enough amenities to keep everyone happy. I don't know exactly what triggers this, TBH, because things seem pretty balanced for a while and then suddenly all my stability tanks and I go from surplus resources to negative resources really damn quick. Nothing I do seems to help.
As for the Megacorp civ type itself, it seems pretty meh. I expected a bit more varied gameplay from them... but they feel just like a normal empire.
The long and the short of it is, the game has stopped being fun. I think I am gonna take a break until they fix things, or until I figure out what I am doing wrong.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
You can turn off pop growth on full planets with a decision at least.
But the new system currently is very swingy, since pops can do stuff like automatically moving from a job that produces a resource to one that consumes it, creating crazy swings in resource income.
You can turn off pop growth on full planets with a decision at least.
But the new system currently is very swingy, since pops can do stuff like automatically moving from a job that produces a resource to one that consumes it, creating crazy swings in resource income.
The job manager needs to actually create priorities rather than opening and closing job slots. I need to be able to prioritize extraction jobs higher than production jobs, so that my miners don't run off to become foundry workers or artisans; and I need to be able to change the priority of already built buildings, so that my crucial production buildings don't fall into ruin when someone on the planet high tails it to the other side of the empire.
If you're getting wild swings in mineral/energy income, I can almost guarantee that one of those things has happened to you at a crucial planet.
I feel like you're supposed to be balancing having some unemployed workers vs planet stability, so when you add new buildings, you don't immediately lose a bunch of workers to the newer jobs. This also means waiting to upgrade or build things until you have said pool.
It's a stark difference to the prior game where it felt like you're supposed build and upgrade as much as possible until you run out of minerals.
One thing that can really help is running Social Welfare as your economic policy. It does increase the consumer goods you spend, but not by much (Workers take double what they did, everyone else is the same), but everyone is a: Happier, and b: Unemployed people stay happy and make unity, rather than tanking your stability. So that SIGNIFICANTLY eases the pressure on things, at least in my experiences. Hoenstly, it's probably too good as a one-stop-fix-your-issues button.
Combing that with Consumer Benefits (you produce consumer good equal to 25% of your trade value, at the cost of 50% of your trade value's energy. Well worth it given what it saves you in needing to building consumer good buildings, and the resulting savings in minerals).
For housing booms - past a certain point i tend to start transitioning planets away from normal districts and into city districts. Or turning spare building slots into Luxuy Residences (and later on, Paradise Domes).
Some other notes: Domination and Prosperity are very strong trees now. I've actually been going Exploration -> Domination -> Prosperity for early trees (usually with a dip into diplomacy, to combine with Fanatic Xenophile for Free diplomatic action shennagins). Seems to be working incredibly well.
Spirualists's can now get Consecrated World whcih is incredibly strong too - It now works by letting you pick an uncolonized planet (Up to 3 different ones), and bless it. This can be barren or otherwise uncolonized planets too
- Profane World: +5% Unity, +1% Amenities, +5% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet
- Respected World: +7% Unity, +2% Amenities, +7% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet
- Venerated World: +9% Unity, +3% Amenities, +9% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet
- Holy World: +11% Unity, +4% Amenities, +11% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet (seems to only appear on gaia worlds). Bonus benefits if it's a FE Holy World, and +Happyness to the Spirualist faction
Big barren planets, or ones with moons/rings seem to be easy enough to find, and tend to get you Venerated - so an Acension perk + 150 influence gets you +27% unity and +9% Amenities empire wide. More bonuses if you manage to find a FE Holy World to bless (Since any other Gaia world you'll be colonising, almost certainly). For a first ascension pick, that's really strong. (And avian, extra amenities helps you stretch things further and longer).
Beyond that - Pop growth is king, and the more pop growth you have, the easier it is to sort out any economic issues. My early game strategy tends to invovle just grabbing as many planets as i possibly can and colonising them asap. Systems are only taken if they're a choke point, or have planets, or stategic resources. (or they lead to any of those three). Later in i might start to fill them in to deal with derpy traders (Ah yes, let's route our trade throguh the slightly shorter Space Amoeba Hunting Grounds, as opposed to the Colonized Highway). Planets = Pop growth, basically.
I feel like you're supposed to be balancing having some unemployed workers vs planet stability, so when you add new buildings, you don't immediately lose a bunch of workers to the newer jobs. This also means waiting to upgrade or build things until you have said pool.
It's a stark difference to the prior game where it felt like you're supposed build and upgrade as much as possible until you run out of minerals.
True, but the rates seem off at present. Once you're pretty well-established and have some migration going with a non-Xenophobe / faster growth empire, it's not that hard to maintain near-full employment. The difficulty arises primarily because of the job-providing building upgrades' scaling in terms of number of jobs and the tendency everyone's been noticing for your pops to migrate off basic resource production jobs into consumption / resource-processing jobs. They've actually got the top-tier processors' jobs cut down to 8 on the test branch right now!
I actually do like the new system, but it's pretty apparent that it needs tuning and maybe a few revisions before it'll run smoothly.
As long as you don't go crazy it's not a big deal. New pops will fill back in worker jobs over time. Even large deficits can be handled using the market. Just don't upgrade every alloy foundry in your empire at once
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
As long as you don't go crazy it's not a big deal. New pops will fill back in worker jobs over time. Even large deficits can be handled using the market. Just don't upgrade every alloy foundry in your empire at once
Sure, but the game or two where you haven't realized that "Upgrade my alloy factory," actually means "initiate a lemming-rush of upwards mobility that will leave me running a deficit," is still a problem - whatever the flaws of the old system, what you saw was what you got as far as planets went. The added volatility due to the new systems occurring mostly out-of-sight is an issue they'll need to work on some. Which, to their credit, they are!
I feel like you're supposed to be balancing having some unemployed workers vs planet stability, so when you add new buildings, you don't immediately lose a bunch of workers to the newer jobs. This also means waiting to upgrade or build things until you have said pool.
It's a stark difference to the prior game where it felt like you're supposed build and upgrade as much as possible until you run out of minerals.
True, but the rates seem off at present. Once you're pretty well-established and have some migration going with a non-Xenophobe / faster growth empire, it's not that hard to maintain near-full employment. The difficulty arises primarily because of the job-providing building upgrades' scaling in terms of number of jobs and the tendency everyone's been noticing for your pops to migrate off basic resource production jobs into consumption / resource-processing jobs. They've actually got the top-tier processors' jobs cut down to 8 on the test branch right now!
I actually do like the new system, but it's pretty apparent that it needs tuning and maybe a few revisions before it'll run smoothly.
The reason for that isn't to stop too many pops from migrating to those jobs - it's that when the Tier 1 building is 2 jobs/no mote upkeep, the Tier 2 is 5 jobs/1 mote, and the Tier 3 is 10 jobs/2 motes, the math on the upkeep rate for Tier 2 buildings is bad - Tier 2 makes you pay 1 mote for 3 jobs slots, while Tier 3 gets you 4 job slots per mote. Since motes/crystals/gas are typically the limiting factor in your vertical growth, this puts you in a situation where you often don't want to upgrade your Tier 1 buildings until you can jump them straight to Tier 3.
Dropping Tier 3 buildings to 8 jobs makes the advanced resource upkeep rate a linear 3 jobs per resource across the board so you don't end up with so many counterintuitive 'upgrading your building was actually wrong and made it worse' situations.
Yea, pop growth is king now. Id say its almost a requisite to have agrarian and some rapid breeder perk as a starter for organics. Miner guilds and robot build speed for synths.
Which is a shame, because my assimilators were pretty powerful in 2.1. Being introspective and science oriented meant I could get star fortresses by 2270 as well as cruisers and a host of other engineering boosts and have super castles sit on my chokeholds as I went on wars. And I had cruisers, coupled with the strike_craft_fix mod meant cruiser carriers were viable alternatives to gun boats.
I opened up a hivemind play through with agrarian, rapid breeders, then gestalt, divided attention and... Forget the other civic, not devoured, though tempting.
First tradition was expansion so at 2250 I have an admin cap of 70, which means I suffered no big empire bloat on the 30 systems, and 4 planets I've colonized. I'm on a run to get 100 pops before 2300 rolls around.
+30 energy +60mineral +50 food a month. Alloys at +20, but I'm in motion to flip towards war production in the next 10years. I have breathing room against the white AI. If it was players, I'd have flipped earlier.
By the way, expansion trait and stellar dominion, only costs... 51ish influence to claim a system. So you can *almost* cover 2 constructors star base build times. Only losing a month or two, but you can set one to go back and build your mining stations to rebuild your influence bank.
The recent update broke my game. Steam forums seem to have a significant minority with my issue (5-10 new blank text boxes spam every day without end). So I can't even tell if I like the new update or not, since the entire thing is just unplayable for me. Fortunately, by the time they fix that, they'll probably get some of the balance issues sorted out, but still..... annoying when an update breaks the whole thing.
Man, machine uprisings are no joke now. Even though they only held my worlds for a year or less, they basically destroyed ALL of the residential districts and a bunch of the buildings on the planet, so when I got them back I basically had massive homelessness and unemployement and my economy started to tank. Thank god I got the matter extracting megastructure done before that so I could sell minerals en masse.
So after playing a few games... I don't think I like this xpac. At all.
I think it's the planet changes. I say that because I am not 100% sure exactly what is wrong. So far in every game I hit a point where my planets start going out of control. Either the population booms and I cannot physically build enough housing, or there aren't enough jobs, or there aren't enough amenities to keep everyone happy. I don't know exactly what triggers this, TBH, because things seem pretty balanced for a while and then suddenly all my stability tanks and I go from surplus resources to negative resources really damn quick. Nothing I do seems to help.
As for the Megacorp civ type itself, it seems pretty meh. I expected a bit more varied gameplay from them... but they feel just like a normal empire.
The long and the short of it is, the game has stopped being fun. I think I am gonna take a break until they fix things, or until I figure out what I am doing wrong.
So, in my experience playing so far there are 3 things you should absolutely be aware of to avoid "sudden swings" in your economy.
First is that pops will leave lower strata jobs to take any higher strata jobs that are open, any they don't have the decency to let the pops that have the least important jobs go first.
Second is that the warning for running a deficit only shows up when you are in eminent danger (~12 months from what I can tell) of actually running out, not when your income first goes negative. I bet you on more than one occasion that "sudden" change to the red was actually going on for a while and you just failed to notice it when you could have easily corrected it.
Third is that the "Land Appropriation" policy doesn't simply clear some space for your pops, It also moves 5 primary pops per planet conquered to those planets. Needless to say, this can be a "massive" disruption on your supply chain, especially if you aren't going to enslave them (and therefore force them into the worker jobs the new migrants just left)
For Stability/amenities/housing. I find that putting down Holo-Theaters as your 5th or 6th building will leave you worry-free on most amenities issues until you're close to the point where you couldn't fit more housing on that planet even if you wanted to. Unemployment and overcrowding are only a significant problem if you can't deal with the stability and crime effects, and can actually be a good thing in some cases. After all, those are both very strong reasons for getting people to emigrate and start heading for your colonies that need pop growth the most.
Getting used to juggling Districts and Buildings on planets nearing their caps has been a very interesting exercise. I'm probably doing it inefficiently, but so far I'm able to manage it on my oldest planets.
However, I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to setup and manage Habitats. So far I've only made a single one to experiment with, but I'm really not sure what districts or combination of districts to use. The fact that certain buildings aren't available compounds my confusion because methods that work on planets don't work here.
Anyone have any guidelines they want to share on building/managing new Habitats?
Havent touched habs yet. I'm actually curious where I go to terraform. I have the first terraforming tech, but there is no button in the prospective planet window or expansion tab for terraforming options.
Getting used to juggling Districts and Buildings on planets nearing their caps has been a very interesting exercise. I'm probably doing it inefficiently, but so far I'm able to manage it on my oldest planets.
However, I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to setup and manage Habitats. So far I've only made a single one to experiment with, but I'm really not sure what districts or combination of districts to use. The fact that certain buildings aren't available compounds my confusion because methods that work on planets don't work here.
Anyone have any guidelines they want to share on building/managing new Habitats?
Max out housing districts. Build a shit load of finished goods producing buildings (alloys, consumer goods, etc). Let other places worry about raw resource extraction. The value of Habitats is their building slots and easily housing a large population.
Havent touched habs yet. I'm actually curious where I go to terraform. I have the first terraforming tech, but there is no button in the prospective planet window or expansion tab for terraforming options.
It's hidden next to the planetary blocker button. Two small buttons to the left hand side there.
Getting used to juggling Districts and Buildings on planets nearing their caps has been a very interesting exercise. I'm probably doing it inefficiently, but so far I'm able to manage it on my oldest planets.
However, I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to setup and manage Habitats. So far I've only made a single one to experiment with, but I'm really not sure what districts or combination of districts to use. The fact that certain buildings aren't available compounds my confusion because methods that work on planets don't work here.
Anyone have any guidelines they want to share on building/managing new Habitats?
Max out housing districts. Build a shit load of finished goods producing buildings (alloys, consumer goods, etc). Let other places worry about raw resource extraction. The value of Habitats is their building slots and easily housing a large population.
That’s pretty much how you Habitat.
Also Commercial buildings. I hear that habitats in your home system (to not have to worry about piracy) with maxed housing and trade buildings to employ them all as clerks can produce tons of trade value.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Havent touched habs yet. I'm actually curious where I go to terraform. I have the first terraforming tech, but there is no button in the prospective planet window or expansion tab for terraforming options.
It's hidden next to the planetary blocker button. Two small buttons to the left hand side there.
I can see why they did it, but not very helpful. Put it next to the colonize button where it belongs. Both options have menus or confirmations after them that you can back out from so its not like dire game changing issues would occur from one misclick
What I've discovered playing as Free Haven Xenophile Empire with Xeno-Compatibility is that once you've unlocked the Biological Ascension perks, you suddenly have a lot of different species in need of genetic tinkering.
And, sure, you could make one template for each species and apply it to the original species and the mixed offshoots alike, but if you do that then what is even the point?
Yeah, Biological Ascension is sort of odd in that if you take it you're probably going for All The Growth (since it gets you Clone Vats which are ridiculous), but that means you probably also have Xeno-Compatibility and tons of immigration and now you have a hundred species in your empire and no possible way to actually modify them all.
It's worth noting that you can pretty easily modify most of your pops, and the thing that makes it hard to get them all is just immigration (which introduce new pops from other empires who haven't been modified).
All the half-whatever races in your empire end up as templates for one of their parent races, and you can modify the parent race and all its half-whatevers into a single template at the same time.
In fact, if you base your genemodded template off of one of the hybrid races, your template will inherit the +1 trait point/+1 trait selection modifier from Xenocompatibility, letting you make a better template with a bigger budget than you could normally get and then backwards-apply that boosted template to the parent race, too.
Bio ascension+xenocompatibility makes the interface ugly to manage but it's actually really good - the extra trait point+selection means I've got a bunch of pops in my current empire with Fertile and Robust and Erudite with a point left over for another 1-point perk and the 0-point Limited Regeneration event trait that one of them managed to inherit from my primary species.
Now I just need something like the Assimilation species right that will let me genemod incoming immigrants as they show up without needing a whole new project for it.
So I don't know if you guys watch the dev clash, but today's was probably the best so far.
Chirpy Khan (the Great Khan, named for having the portrait that looks like City Skyline's Chirpy) began the day by wiping out the remaining bit of a player empire (REMEMBER STEVE) and the UNG was getting their tail kicked by the machine uprising that spawned right at the end of the last stream. Still, even with a third of the players submiting to the Khan, it looked like she was about to be contained.
...but then someone opened the L-Gate. No, it wasn't the Grey Tempest. It was the Dessanu.
...whom the Khan invaded...
...took out the fleet near the L-Gate...
...and is now using access to the L-Gate to attack pretty much everyone in the galaxy that happens to have one in their borders.
Much to the joy of the UNG, who quickly submitted to save themselves from the machines.
Unfortunatly, there won't be another clash until Jan. 17th, so have to wait until then before we get to see what finally happens to Chirpy Khan.
I've been catching the edited recaps they put out a week later. They cut out a lot of the downtown and add in some of the graphics and posts that get put on twitter or on, I'm assuming, the paradox forums.
In fact, if you base your genemodded template off of one of the hybrid races, your template will inherit the +1 trait point/+1 trait selection modifier from Xenocompatibility, letting you make a better template with a bigger budget than you could normally get and then backwards-apply that boosted template to the parent race, too.
Can I make my Half-whatevers the better template, and then get Half-Half-whatevers for more points?
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
In fact, if you base your genemodded template off of one of the hybrid races, your template will inherit the +1 trait point/+1 trait selection modifier from Xenocompatibility, letting you make a better template with a bigger budget than you could normally get and then backwards-apply that boosted template to the parent race, too.
Can I make my Half-whatevers the better template, and then get Half-Half-whatevers for more points?
You might be able to - I've definitely got some weirdness with what appears to be double-half's spawning, and sometimes half X spawning as an entirely new species.
In fact, if you base your genemodded template off of one of the hybrid races, your template will inherit the +1 trait point/+1 trait selection modifier from Xenocompatibility, letting you make a better template with a bigger budget than you could normally get and then backwards-apply that boosted template to the parent race, too.
Can I make my Half-whatevers the better template, and then get Half-Half-whatevers for more points?
Answer seems to be no - they'll still interbreed and mix their traits around, but the new subspecies will still be at the same 6 picks/x points. No stacking.
Also something real odd is still going on with hive minds in the test branch - I killed off a determined exterminator that never expanded beyond its first planet in spite of having a bunch of colonizable planets in its borders, and have boxed in a biological hive mind which also never seems to have expanded past its original planet, but did build a bunch of habitats in its little six-system bottlenecked bubble, which it never colonized, but is now somehow having repeated rebellions in the uninhabited systems which are creating non-hivemind rebel empires, which immediately 'colonize' some of those habitats, but do so with 60-odd hivemind drones that immediately start being purged in spite of the non-hivemind empire they're in having no 'real' pops. And the 'parent' race of the rebel empire is a new race with apparently random traits and a leader, but no actual pops anywhere in the galaxy.
I did manage to get one of them to like me enough to sign a migration treaty, which finally caused them to start growing pops of their own (but only of species that exist in my empire).
Pushed off the end-game crisis by like 50 years to give me more time to get used to the mechanics.
If you value your sanity, do not do this: I built this machine last year and the videocard is a 2070 I bought last month and still the game is running so slow that, even set to the fastest speed, days are taking multiple seconds to go by.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Pushed off the end-game crisis by like 50 years to give me more time to get used to the mechanics.
If you value your sanity, do not do this: I built this machine last year and the videocard is a 2070 I bought last month and still the game is running so slow that, even set to the fastest speed, days are taking multiple seconds to go by.
They've made some noise about video driver issues slowing things down, but clearly not solved them yet, fwiw.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
I was having some issues playing a Hive Mind but I think I identified the problem, though I'm not entirely sure if I understand it. But I think what was happening was that Drones who don't have a job don't count as Unemployed. They count as Scavenger Drones. And Scavenger Drones count as workers when you look at the little tooltip to see if everyone has a job or not. So I had planets with large surplus populations and I was constantly getting the "unemployed scavenger drone" event thing that makes them cost extra food and they weren't producing anything.
One thing I'm wondering if it's a viable strategy is making a species with high reproduction and adaptability, and then getting migration treaties with your neighbors and having your pops move into their territory and slowly shift their ethics towards yours.
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
Pushed off the end-game crisis by like 50 years to give me more time to get used to the mechanics.
If you value your sanity, do not do this: I built this machine last year and the videocard is a 2070 I bought last month and still the game is running so slow that, even set to the fastest speed, days are taking multiple seconds to go by.
They've made some noise about video driver issues slowing things down, but clearly not solved them yet, fwiw.
There have been some improvement with the beta patch. Still not as smooth as 2.1 at the endgame but at least you aren't hanging for a couple seconds every few days.
I guess putting someone in charge of a sector doesn’t mean I can ignore it? All the buildings are starting to get a bit tedious.
There is an auto-build button in the sectors screen. With how quickly a single bad building can crash an entire empire's economy and stability, I haven't been eager to test it out.
I guess putting someone in charge of a sector doesn’t mean I can ignore it? All the buildings are starting to get a bit tedious.
There is an auto-build button in the sectors screen. With how quickly a single bad building can crash an entire empire's economy and stability, I haven't been eager to test it out.
Where exactly? I know I can change sector settings but that still doesn't result in planets managing their own buildings and districts.
Does it not do that?
There’s a circle crossed-out icon to the left of Sector Settings that says “Disabled - Sector auto build disabled.” If you choose a setting with the Sector Settings button, the circle x changes to the setting.
Like I said, I’ve been afraid to use it. But I assumed that was where the old auto-build went.
aspec reviews 2.2 le guin
he's happy for it, but he's voiced the same concerns I had, regarding QA and pushing it out a bit early.
also, best part of the video at 7:26
I guess putting someone in charge of a sector doesn’t mean I can ignore it? All the buildings are starting to get a bit tedious.
There is an auto-build button in the sectors screen. With how quickly a single bad building can crash an entire empire's economy and stability, I haven't been eager to test it out.
Phillishere
Where exactly? I know I can change sector settings but that still doesn't result in planets managing their own buildings and districts.
Does it not do that?
There’s a circle crossed-out icon to the left of Sector Settings that says “Disabled - Sector auto build disabled.” If you choose a setting with the Sector Settings button, the circle x changes to the setting.
Like I said, I’ve been afraid to use it. But I assumed that was where the old auto-build went.
I think it just emphasizes certain jobs as planets populate. I have different focuses selected and still have to manage their districts and buildings.
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So yeah, pretty terrible start but at least I got a feel for how all the new systems work. Maybe it was too early in the game and my bribery only managed to get the crusaders tolerant enough to let me plant them, but the branch offices felt fairly weak for all the investment required.
I think it's the planet changes. I say that because I am not 100% sure exactly what is wrong. So far in every game I hit a point where my planets start going out of control. Either the population booms and I cannot physically build enough housing, or there aren't enough jobs, or there aren't enough amenities to keep everyone happy. I don't know exactly what triggers this, TBH, because things seem pretty balanced for a while and then suddenly all my stability tanks and I go from surplus resources to negative resources really damn quick. Nothing I do seems to help.
As for the Megacorp civ type itself, it seems pretty meh. I expected a bit more varied gameplay from them... but they feel just like a normal empire.
The long and the short of it is, the game has stopped being fun. I think I am gonna take a break until they fix things, or until I figure out what I am doing wrong.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
But the new system currently is very swingy, since pops can do stuff like automatically moving from a job that produces a resource to one that consumes it, creating crazy swings in resource income.
If you're getting wild swings in mineral/energy income, I can almost guarantee that one of those things has happened to you at a crucial planet.
It's a stark difference to the prior game where it felt like you're supposed build and upgrade as much as possible until you run out of minerals.
Combing that with Consumer Benefits (you produce consumer good equal to 25% of your trade value, at the cost of 50% of your trade value's energy. Well worth it given what it saves you in needing to building consumer good buildings, and the resulting savings in minerals).
For housing booms - past a certain point i tend to start transitioning planets away from normal districts and into city districts. Or turning spare building slots into Luxuy Residences (and later on, Paradise Domes).
Some other notes: Domination and Prosperity are very strong trees now. I've actually been going Exploration -> Domination -> Prosperity for early trees (usually with a dip into diplomacy, to combine with Fanatic Xenophile for Free diplomatic action shennagins). Seems to be working incredibly well.
Spirualists's can now get Consecrated World whcih is incredibly strong too - It now works by letting you pick an uncolonized planet (Up to 3 different ones), and bless it. This can be barren or otherwise uncolonized planets too
- Profane World: +5% Unity, +1% Amenities, +5% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet
- Respected World: +7% Unity, +2% Amenities, +7% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet
- Venerated World: +9% Unity, +3% Amenities, +9% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet
- Holy World: +11% Unity, +4% Amenities, +11% Spiritualist Attraction per a planet (seems to only appear on gaia worlds). Bonus benefits if it's a FE Holy World, and +Happyness to the Spirualist faction
Big barren planets, or ones with moons/rings seem to be easy enough to find, and tend to get you Venerated - so an Acension perk + 150 influence gets you +27% unity and +9% Amenities empire wide. More bonuses if you manage to find a FE Holy World to bless (Since any other Gaia world you'll be colonising, almost certainly). For a first ascension pick, that's really strong. (And avian, extra amenities helps you stretch things further and longer).
Beyond that - Pop growth is king, and the more pop growth you have, the easier it is to sort out any economic issues. My early game strategy tends to invovle just grabbing as many planets as i possibly can and colonising them asap. Systems are only taken if they're a choke point, or have planets, or stategic resources. (or they lead to any of those three). Later in i might start to fill them in to deal with derpy traders (Ah yes, let's route our trade throguh the slightly shorter Space Amoeba Hunting Grounds, as opposed to the Colonized Highway). Planets = Pop growth, basically.
Hope this all helps.
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True, but the rates seem off at present. Once you're pretty well-established and have some migration going with a non-Xenophobe / faster growth empire, it's not that hard to maintain near-full employment. The difficulty arises primarily because of the job-providing building upgrades' scaling in terms of number of jobs and the tendency everyone's been noticing for your pops to migrate off basic resource production jobs into consumption / resource-processing jobs. They've actually got the top-tier processors' jobs cut down to 8 on the test branch right now!
I actually do like the new system, but it's pretty apparent that it needs tuning and maybe a few revisions before it'll run smoothly.
Sure, but the game or two where you haven't realized that "Upgrade my alloy factory," actually means "initiate a lemming-rush of upwards mobility that will leave me running a deficit," is still a problem - whatever the flaws of the old system, what you saw was what you got as far as planets went. The added volatility due to the new systems occurring mostly out-of-sight is an issue they'll need to work on some. Which, to their credit, they are!
The reason for that isn't to stop too many pops from migrating to those jobs - it's that when the Tier 1 building is 2 jobs/no mote upkeep, the Tier 2 is 5 jobs/1 mote, and the Tier 3 is 10 jobs/2 motes, the math on the upkeep rate for Tier 2 buildings is bad - Tier 2 makes you pay 1 mote for 3 jobs slots, while Tier 3 gets you 4 job slots per mote. Since motes/crystals/gas are typically the limiting factor in your vertical growth, this puts you in a situation where you often don't want to upgrade your Tier 1 buildings until you can jump them straight to Tier 3.
Dropping Tier 3 buildings to 8 jobs makes the advanced resource upkeep rate a linear 3 jobs per resource across the board so you don't end up with so many counterintuitive 'upgrading your building was actually wrong and made it worse' situations.
Which is a shame, because my assimilators were pretty powerful in 2.1. Being introspective and science oriented meant I could get star fortresses by 2270 as well as cruisers and a host of other engineering boosts and have super castles sit on my chokeholds as I went on wars. And I had cruisers, coupled with the strike_craft_fix mod meant cruiser carriers were viable alternatives to gun boats.
I opened up a hivemind play through with agrarian, rapid breeders, then gestalt, divided attention and... Forget the other civic, not devoured, though tempting.
First tradition was expansion so at 2250 I have an admin cap of 70, which means I suffered no big empire bloat on the 30 systems, and 4 planets I've colonized. I'm on a run to get 100 pops before 2300 rolls around.
+30 energy +60mineral +50 food a month. Alloys at +20, but I'm in motion to flip towards war production in the next 10years. I have breathing room against the white AI. If it was players, I'd have flipped earlier.
By the way, expansion trait and stellar dominion, only costs... 51ish influence to claim a system. So you can *almost* cover 2 constructors star base build times. Only losing a month or two, but you can set one to go back and build your mining stations to rebuild your influence bank.
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So, in my experience playing so far there are 3 things you should absolutely be aware of to avoid "sudden swings" in your economy.
First is that pops will leave lower strata jobs to take any higher strata jobs that are open, any they don't have the decency to let the pops that have the least important jobs go first.
Second is that the warning for running a deficit only shows up when you are in eminent danger (~12 months from what I can tell) of actually running out, not when your income first goes negative. I bet you on more than one occasion that "sudden" change to the red was actually going on for a while and you just failed to notice it when you could have easily corrected it.
Third is that the "Land Appropriation" policy doesn't simply clear some space for your pops, It also moves 5 primary pops per planet conquered to those planets. Needless to say, this can be a "massive" disruption on your supply chain, especially if you aren't going to enslave them (and therefore force them into the worker jobs the new migrants just left)
For Stability/amenities/housing. I find that putting down Holo-Theaters as your 5th or 6th building will leave you worry-free on most amenities issues until you're close to the point where you couldn't fit more housing on that planet even if you wanted to. Unemployment and overcrowding are only a significant problem if you can't deal with the stability and crime effects, and can actually be a good thing in some cases. After all, those are both very strong reasons for getting people to emigrate and start heading for your colonies that need pop growth the most.
However, I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to setup and manage Habitats. So far I've only made a single one to experiment with, but I'm really not sure what districts or combination of districts to use. The fact that certain buildings aren't available compounds my confusion because methods that work on planets don't work here.
Anyone have any guidelines they want to share on building/managing new Habitats?
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Max out housing districts. Build a shit load of finished goods producing buildings (alloys, consumer goods, etc). Let other places worry about raw resource extraction. The value of Habitats is their building slots and easily housing a large population.
That’s pretty much how you Habitat.
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It's hidden next to the planetary blocker button. Two small buttons to the left hand side there.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Also Commercial buildings. I hear that habitats in your home system (to not have to worry about piracy) with maxed housing and trade buildings to employ them all as clerks can produce tons of trade value.
I can see why they did it, but not very helpful. Put it next to the colonize button where it belongs. Both options have menus or confirmations after them that you can back out from so its not like dire game changing issues would occur from one misclick
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Wonder what this means for the future of the game.
Probably not a great deal? Moregard has been working with Martin on fixing Stellaris since the start.
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It's worth noting that you can pretty easily modify most of your pops, and the thing that makes it hard to get them all is just immigration (which introduce new pops from other empires who haven't been modified).
All the half-whatever races in your empire end up as templates for one of their parent races, and you can modify the parent race and all its half-whatevers into a single template at the same time.
In fact, if you base your genemodded template off of one of the hybrid races, your template will inherit the +1 trait point/+1 trait selection modifier from Xenocompatibility, letting you make a better template with a bigger budget than you could normally get and then backwards-apply that boosted template to the parent race, too.
Bio ascension+xenocompatibility makes the interface ugly to manage but it's actually really good - the extra trait point+selection means I've got a bunch of pops in my current empire with Fertile and Robust and Erudite with a point left over for another 1-point perk and the 0-point Limited Regeneration event trait that one of them managed to inherit from my primary species.
Now I just need something like the Assimilation species right that will let me genemod incoming immigrants as they show up without needing a whole new project for it.
Chirpy Khan (the Great Khan, named for having the portrait that looks like City Skyline's Chirpy) began the day by wiping out the remaining bit of a player empire (REMEMBER STEVE) and the UNG was getting their tail kicked by the machine uprising that spawned right at the end of the last stream. Still, even with a third of the players submiting to the Khan, it looked like she was about to be contained.
...but then someone opened the L-Gate. No, it wasn't the Grey Tempest. It was the Dessanu.
...whom the Khan invaded...
...took out the fleet near the L-Gate...
...and is now using access to the L-Gate to attack pretty much everyone in the galaxy that happens to have one in their borders.
Much to the joy of the UNG, who quickly submitted to save themselves from the machines.
Unfortunatly, there won't be another clash until Jan. 17th, so have to wait until then before we get to see what finally happens to Chirpy Khan.
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You might be able to - I've definitely got some weirdness with what appears to be double-half's spawning, and sometimes half X spawning as an entirely new species.
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The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Answer seems to be no - they'll still interbreed and mix their traits around, but the new subspecies will still be at the same 6 picks/x points. No stacking.
Also something real odd is still going on with hive minds in the test branch - I killed off a determined exterminator that never expanded beyond its first planet in spite of having a bunch of colonizable planets in its borders, and have boxed in a biological hive mind which also never seems to have expanded past its original planet, but did build a bunch of habitats in its little six-system bottlenecked bubble, which it never colonized, but is now somehow having repeated rebellions in the uninhabited systems which are creating non-hivemind rebel empires, which immediately 'colonize' some of those habitats, but do so with 60-odd hivemind drones that immediately start being purged in spite of the non-hivemind empire they're in having no 'real' pops. And the 'parent' race of the rebel empire is a new race with apparently random traits and a leader, but no actual pops anywhere in the galaxy.
I did manage to get one of them to like me enough to sign a migration treaty, which finally caused them to start growing pops of their own (but only of species that exist in my empire).
If you value your sanity, do not do this: I built this machine last year and the videocard is a 2070 I bought last month and still the game is running so slow that, even set to the fastest speed, days are taking multiple seconds to go by.
They've made some noise about video driver issues slowing things down, but clearly not solved them yet, fwiw.
One thing I'm wondering if it's a viable strategy is making a species with high reproduction and adaptability, and then getting migration treaties with your neighbors and having your pops move into their territory and slowly shift their ethics towards yours.
There have been some improvement with the beta patch. Still not as smooth as 2.1 at the endgame but at least you aren't hanging for a couple seconds every few days.
@Phillishere
Where exactly? I know I can change sector settings but that still doesn't result in planets managing their own buildings and districts.
Does it not do that?
There’s a circle crossed-out icon to the left of Sector Settings that says “Disabled - Sector auto build disabled.” If you choose a setting with the Sector Settings button, the circle x changes to the setting.
Like I said, I’ve been afraid to use it. But I assumed that was where the old auto-build went.
he's happy for it, but he's voiced the same concerns I had, regarding QA and pushing it out a bit early.
also, best part of the video at 7:26
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I think it just emphasizes certain jobs as planets populate. I have different focuses selected and still have to manage their districts and buildings.