If I'm not mistaken, Stellaris usually does a sale on older DLCs when they release a new one. So I'm trying to get a sense of what's most "worth it" since the Federations release. I've started to get back into the game and I'm thinking maybe I'll by Galactic Paragons along with a few older items. In my head, it's a) one $20 expac, b) 1-2 race packs, and c) Galactic Paragons.
So I'm curious with those limitations, what's most worth it's between
- Nemesis
- Overlord
And I don't have First Contact either, if that's something I should consider.
If I were to get the bundle it would be ~ $85, which... maybe, but I think it's a little more than I'd like to spend right now, and it also has some stuff I don't care about.
Edit: well nevermind, they just dropped some deep discounts on a bunch of the species packs as well as Nemesis, so I think those are my go-tos.
Just in case you haven't pulled the trigger yet, both DLC ranking videos I've watched have put Nemesis in the "F" tier of expansions as it doesn't have a lot of necessary goodies in it. Both recommend Distant Stars and Utopia as S tier.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I did, but it's all good. It has some stuff I want to try, like the spy networks and being horribly evil.
So I went ahead and made a leadership-focused xenophile test empire with a huge emphasis on unity and 40 years in I've already got a military federation and a vassal, a booming economy and the biggest fleets around. My research kind of sucks but I can focus on that now since the basics are in really good shape.
This is sort of after many hours the past couple weeks trying to get these basics in order with different kinds of empires.
For a fun time, watch a modern player try to play with NO DLCs; or even better, try playing the earliest rollback version available on Steam (v1.1 I think, actually I don't know, don't quote me on that.)
If I'm not mistaken, Stellaris usually does a sale on older DLCs when they release a new one. So I'm trying to get a sense of what's most "worth it" since the Federations release. I've started to get back into the game and I'm thinking maybe I'll by Galactic Paragons along with a few older items. In my head, it's a) one $20 expac, b) 1-2 race packs, and c) Galactic Paragons.
So I'm curious with those limitations, what's most worth it's between
- Nemesis
- Overlord
And I don't have First Contact either, if that's something I should consider.
If I were to get the bundle it would be ~ $85, which... maybe, but I think it's a little more than I'd like to spend right now, and it also has some stuff I don't care about.
Edit: well nevermind, they just dropped some deep discounts on a bunch of the species packs as well as Nemesis, so I think those are my go-tos.
Just in case you haven't pulled the trigger yet, both DLC ranking videos I've watched have put Nemesis in the "F" tier of expansions as it doesn't have a lot of necessary goodies in it. Both recommend Distant Stars and Utopia as S tier.
If I'm not mistaken, Stellaris usually does a sale on older DLCs when they release a new one. So I'm trying to get a sense of what's most "worth it" since the Federations release. I've started to get back into the game and I'm thinking maybe I'll by Galactic Paragons along with a few older items. In my head, it's a) one $20 expac, b) 1-2 race packs, and c) Galactic Paragons.
So I'm curious with those limitations, what's most worth it's between
- Nemesis
- Overlord
And I don't have First Contact either, if that's something I should consider.
If I were to get the bundle it would be ~ $85, which... maybe, but I think it's a little more than I'd like to spend right now, and it also has some stuff I don't care about.
Edit: well nevermind, they just dropped some deep discounts on a bunch of the species packs as well as Nemesis, so I think those are my go-tos.
Just in case you haven't pulled the trigger yet, both DLC ranking videos I've watched have put Nemesis in the "F" tier of expansions as it doesn't have a lot of necessary goodies in it. Both recommend Distant Stars and Utopia as S tier.
It's just adds stuff that is very, very specific for the most part. The espionage system is the most universal, but you still don't have to engage with it, and you get a stripped down free version anyway without the expansion, and the "Become the Crisis" and "Galactic Custodian/Emperor" are things that apply in very very specific scenerios. You might do them once or twice, but if they're showing up in every game, it's going to get boring, so that's a lot of content that really only works if used sparingly.
It's just overpriced for what you get and how often you're likely to use it.
THAT SAID: I feel aside from a few packs (Utopia and Distant Stars), ever person is going to have a different opinion on which ones are good or bad and what you should really do is just play some Stellaris, get a feel for the game, figure out what you like and then look at the features on the expansion and see which ones appeal to you. If you really like building Megastructures, focus on the expansions that add new megastructures. If you want more species portraits and maybe some different playstyles, try a species pack or Synthetic Dawn.
Find out what you like and use that to figure out what expansions you want.
If I'm not mistaken, Stellaris usually does a sale on older DLCs when they release a new one. So I'm trying to get a sense of what's most "worth it" since the Federations release. I've started to get back into the game and I'm thinking maybe I'll by Galactic Paragons along with a few older items. In my head, it's a) one $20 expac, b) 1-2 race packs, and c) Galactic Paragons.
So I'm curious with those limitations, what's most worth it's between
- Nemesis
- Overlord
And I don't have First Contact either, if that's something I should consider.
If I were to get the bundle it would be ~ $85, which... maybe, but I think it's a little more than I'd like to spend right now, and it also has some stuff I don't care about.
Edit: well nevermind, they just dropped some deep discounts on a bunch of the species packs as well as Nemesis, so I think those are my go-tos.
Just in case you haven't pulled the trigger yet, both DLC ranking videos I've watched have put Nemesis in the "F" tier of expansions as it doesn't have a lot of necessary goodies in it. Both recommend Distant Stars and Utopia as S tier.
Seconding that Nemesis is bad, like I actually was motivated to go and write a steam review recommending against it bad.
Hm. Having had it for all of 5 minutes, I’m curious what makes it bad?
(I have Distant Stars and Utopia).
Mind you I haven't played with it enabled in some time, but I doubt they bothered to change much because that's not really their MO. But tldr espionage is just a recycle of the archaeology UI, not only requires you to dedicate envoys to it for needlessly long periods, the benefits are not impactful enough to justify it... or impactful at all, really. Your crisis ships are brokenly powerful in numerous ways, but they reuse the shitty npc pirate models instead of having unique models, the endgame doomsday mechanic is so cost prohibitive that it's basically just a self-congratulatory victory lap and you will basically never see the galactic custodian mechanic outside of multiplayer because the AI will not of their own volition become the nemesis crisis themselves. It's embarassingly little and non-interactive content for a DLC that released at the same price as Utopia - or twice the price of Synthetic Dawn, if you want to look at it that way.
For a fun time, watch a modern player try to play with NO DLCs; or even better, try playing the earliest rollback version available on Steam (v1.1 I think, actually I don't know, don't quote me on that.)
-You don't need a crisis to become custodian, it just makes the AI more willing to back a powerful nation becoming the custodian over other resolutions. The custodianship is the one feature that will see some regular use. If you're aren't going crisis or being genocidal, then there is a ton of value in going down and grabbing it in single player. Makes it easier to to deal with end game crisis or empires that become a crisis. Also let's you unlock a few other things that can be useful. Mostly, it gives you more ability to make the galactic community more useful in single player.
-Become the crisis is probably the most limited feature in stellaris because it's a one trick pony. As lackluster as espionage is, you'll find yourself using that more than becoming the crisis and you don't need Nemesis DLC to get the more worthwhile features of espionage. Blowing up the galaxy is only entertaining in sparring doses and unfortunately, the way things are setup, there really is only one way to go down this path. I tried the espionage route when it first came out, it's just not worth it and makes a long tedious process take even longer.
-Galactic Emperor, it can be fun and you'd go down this route more often than becoming the crisis. You probably don't want to do this every time and it also plays very poorly with federations because they all get disbanded. It's a factor in why federations have fallen behind vassal. If someone becomes the emperor, you still get to keep your vassals at least.
Nemesis is probably the most optional big DLC. Hell, I'd say First Contact is going to give people more value, since it makes primitive empires much more useful. Some of the insight technologies are extremely good. Also Solar Punk Empire can be really fun if you are the first to find them and claim the system they are in.
Further thoughts on Paragons.
Spent the better part of the day playing. Decided to run the new origin and go all in on leaders.
-It seems like they did something that has improved system performance. I'm not sure if the change to make AI only adjust opinion stuff monthly helped a ton or if the leader rework just resulted in less crap that bogs things down.
-Seems like a heavy leader build is viable and it does seem like it shakes things up in regards to traits. I'm not kidding when I say, I went all in on leaders. Species traits are unruly, enduring, talented and quick learners, plus the origin specific trait. Civics were heroic past and philosopher king, and I did pick up vaults of knowledge as my third civic. Probably should consider dropping some of the leader exp stuff because it only helps so much, but outside of a very early death at an archaeology site, I've yet to lose leaders and all my leaders are pretty stacked at this point.
-The RNG isn't as bad. Where it's gone down mostly is that it's much, much easier to avoid getting stuck with useless ass traits. That said, you'll still get traits you don't benefit from because the options presented to you aren't great and you do sometimes get RNG and event traits where you don't want them. That said, you also have more control to tailor your leaders to be better suited for what you want them to do. Where some RNG does come back in is that you get some traits where your leader generates a small amount of resources each month and stellaris being a snowball game, you can see how getting a leader that has like say +3 alloys a month, can be significant.
-The council stuff is broken. I'm not sure gestalts are at a huge disadvantage in the early and midgame. Really depends on if they have all nodes unlocked at start or if they have to unlock them. The expand the council agenda takes a while to get revving and then you have to wait a few decades before you can fire it again. So I'll be a bit before a regular empire can have a 6 member council with all the benefits.
-Exploration feels very different now. The leader change means that both you and the AI are running far less scientists on exploration at the start and it slows things down. I'm not paying enough attention to my really good exploration scientist to see if she is find anomalies in already explored systems or not. Definitely, saw the exploration phase not only last longer, but still finding anomalies. I will say some of the exploration traits are a bit frustrating, like there is one that let's you find more deposits, but if you're done expanding, it's annoying to get notified of bonus resources found on shit you aren't going to be claiming.
-Tech is a bit slower at the start, but not by much; especially, once you start stacking research boosts on council members. I know when Aspec interviewed one of the devs earlier this week, said dev did mention they felt that science was still faster than they'd like, so they'll probably nerf it further.
-I'm still trying to figure out the renowned paragons. Not sure if I had bad luck or not because I've only gotten two of them and I'm almost into year 80. It does seem like they make non-fanatical empires better, given there are two for each ethic, which means those empires have a shot at getting 6 of the renowned leaders, while a fanatical only has a shot at 4. Curious if they bail, should your ethics no longer match.
-Still getting use to the new interface. It's nice to have techs at range of a hotkey. I do think it needs some polish because you do have to track leaders down to select their traits.
Ultimately, while I agree with the game design idea of making it so that people aren't forced to buy multiple DLCs to get to a feature. We've hit a point where the Paradox really should consider folding Utopia and Synthetic Dawn into the base purchase. With Utopia being month older than 6 years and Synthetic Dawn being half a year younger than Utopia, I have doubts that Paradox is going to lose much or any money making such a move. If anything it probably stands to make them more money because once Gestalts are baseline things that people can get, that opens to the door to add more gestalt content to the game and probably means a ton of gestalt mains are going to have reason to buy new DLCs and gives the custodian team the option to make some non-gestalt heavy DLCs that gestalt mains usually skip, into something they'd might want to have for a change.
Biological Hive Minds weren't the point of Utopia, so I can see how they should be unlocked for everyone, the same way as basic Ascension perks now are.
Machines... well, playing as Machines was the whole point of Synthetic Dawn, so perhaps unlocking them for everyone would make that DLC totally obsolete. Maybe just make 'standard' Machines available (with only the basic Robot portrait), and let the special Machine empires still be locked behind the DLC.
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Granted I have been pretty out of the loop for the past couple years, but Paragons seems really strong.
I've just been going over the leader cap and it honestly doesn't matter much. I can see them increasing the penalties for doing so in the future. In one game I was at 17 of 9 leaders and I was still getting like 300 unity per month. The council agendas and some leader bonuses are absolutely mad. I can see them jacking the cap penalties as well as toning down
The thing I have been struggling with is getting alloys production really going in the early game. I had thought they buffed it with the districts, but they don't seem that great to me, and of course there is a restriction of one alloy plant per planet. So with only 3 habitable worlds for a long while, it can become a lot to expand AND build a reasonably navy so I don't get stomped by the purifiers next store.
(No lie, I had one recent start where, within the first 40 years, I had fanatic purifiers on one of my boarders, and driven assimilators on another.)
I think I need a "this is how you start the first 50 years of Stellaris" refresher that was made pretty recently.
Granted I have been pretty out of the loop for the past couple years, but Paragons seems really strong.
I've just been going over the leader cap and it honestly doesn't matter much. I can see them increasing the penalties for doing so in the future. In one game I was at 17 of 9 leaders and I was still getting like 300 unity per month. The council agendas and some leader bonuses are absolutely mad. I can see them jacking the cap penalties as well as toning down
The thing I have been struggling with is getting alloys production really going in the early game. I had thought they buffed it with the districts, but they don't seem that great to me, and of course there is a restriction of one alloy plant per planet. So with only 3 habitable worlds for a long while, it can become a lot to expand AND build a reasonably navy so I don't get stomped by the purifiers next store.
(No lie, I had one recent start where, within the first 40 years, I had fanatic purifiers on one of my boarders, and driven assimilators on another.)
I think I need a "this is how you start the first 50 years of Stellaris" refresher that was made pretty recently.
So decided to put my current bio empire on hold to give gestalts a try with the new leader setup. Ran a leader heavy rogue servitor, sorry but it's my favorite gestalt.
I'm comfortable saying the new DLC is very optional for them; especially, with dev confirmation that paragons aren't things that the AI can every get. So in a single player game, the only things that machines get out of the DLC is the gestalt civics, I want say that is two civics each for machine and hive. You also get the better leader leveling setup where they get a trait every level and I think there are a bunch of traits locked to the DLC.
Not sure they are getting screwed power wise. Yes, they don't get any of the new paragon leaders that are tied to traits and I'm not entirely clear on how it works with the legendary ones. Yes, non-gestalts get six instead of five for their ruling council thing and yes, three of those get a bonus based on civics. Also, yes, they don't get stuck essentially with a general leader that results in them having some army specific traits. Finally, yes, they might have an easier time creating a setup where they have more choices for traits on their ruling council and part of that is the destiny traits.
The thing is gestalt get all 5 of their rulers out the gate, the ruler and the four nodes. Non-gestalts have to unlock the next three council positions. Also worth noting that those council positions are based on civics, so once you unlock the entire council, you don't get to choose which civics are represented, unless your using a mode gives multiple you additional civics because each civic only gives you one type of councilor.
Gestalts also get an agenda that lets them purge negative traits on the nodal consciousness and you only lose 300 exp per negative trait purged. Don't know if that fucks you out of a trait, I'll be running that agenda in my gestalt game either later tonight or during the weekend to see what happens, since the node associated with naval power picked up a negative trait. Your nodes are obviously immortal, so even if you can't get destiny traits, you do have a better shot at getting them all to max level regardless of how much you go in on leaders.
The nodes are essentially four leaders that do not count towards you cap. Yes, this is somewhat offset by the fact that council members can hold for lack of better words field positions (governing a planet, commanding a ship or leading an army), but on the other hand you don't get a dilemma where you have to pick and choose between improving a leader's ruling abilities or improving their field positions. This also means you can keep what is essentially your ruling admiral and general out of combat because they can't get into it and that also means no risk of losing them unless you lose the game and generals do seem to still die rather easily.
Finally, no only are gestalt rulers getting traits beyond just being immortal. They also get access to agendas, which they didn't get either because all they got was being immortal.
So it's really hard to say if they are shafted too badly power wise. I think it depends on whether it's feasible for normal empires to quickly unlock council positions. I can't remember if you have to use the agenda or if unity is an option, but it just gets cost prohibitive. Even if you can rush unlocking those, I'm not sure it really gives bio empires more power, given what gestalts have. Worse case, it's looking like the power is just mostly being you have more flexibility, which makes it easier to pivot in a different direction if something comes up that warrants a shift in macro tactics. You can for instance switch out scientists on the council to greatly boost naval ability at the expense of science and then switch back to having a scientist in each position that allows it to boost your research or swap in governors for bigger economic boosts. It's just you have to unlock those council positions and depending on a number of things those leaders might be dead before they get stacked enough. Also you have to pay an opportunity cost in slower level ups and agenda firing if you want to try this little trick.*
*I know the leader cap has been a divisive change; especially, with it being a general pool. Honestly, I was already in favor of the change. First, it's a soft cap and apparently the malus to exp caps out 50%, haven't looked to see where that caps for prepping agendas to fire. So there is nothing stopping people from having all the leaders, it just means they greatly reduce the odds of getting stacked ones by end game. I like this because it favors tall and gives tall an advantage in that they can get more leaders.
Second the smaller pool means that leader choices are going to be more meaningfully. You not just deciding what trade offs you will make in regards to economy, naval ability, research ability and whatever stuff generals are in charge of, but also how good your leaders will be overall. The issue I see with separate pools for each category, is that people will just fill those up to the soft cap because outside of the upfront cost and leader upkeep, there is not penalty and being able to hire leader is one of the easiest to solve things. You might struggle with unity gain to get the next tradition, planetary ascension or getting the ambition edicts on line, but you hit a point where hiring leaders becomes trivial. This then pouts gestalts at a disadvantage because they don't a way to restructure their ruling body, where non-gestalts could in theory raise up a bunch of scientists that go all in on councilor traits that boost research, governors that boost overall economy & ship building and admirals that boost naval capability. So go research heavy on your council to outpace your numbers, then swap out everyone you can for the fleet build up and then when you declare war, you shift in all the admirals. Sure you could still do it, but there is enough of an opportunity cost in slower agendas and leader level gains, that it's probably not worth doing. I suspect this is a huge reason why the devs were upfront about this being a better change because I'm big on finding exploits and if I can arrive at this conclusion, well every min/maxer that loves to math this shit out probably arrived at wanting to do the math for this the moment the idea of leader council were announced and every min/maxer beyond that was probably wondering if it would be worth it and the devs probably hated the whole concept of it.
Also I feel like the devs have hinted pretty hard that we probably get a warfare overhaul in the next update. Part of that is going to include changes that mean we field less ships, which means less incentive to have as many admirals. Honestly, of the big systems that leave much to be desired. It seems like warfare and internal politics are the only two left that are broken in detrimental ways. I'll not an internal politics rework could also lessen the incentive to go super wide and thus want more governors. So if both are in the works behind the scenes, then I can see that making the devs really not want to raise the leader soft cap anytime soon. Given how polarizing the change is right now, they don't want to raise it when they might implement changes that are going to impact on how much that number needs to stay the same or if it does need to go up, by how much.
Only other minor feature that needs reworking is espionage, but that isn't broken in the way that warfare and internal politics are. It's very much optional and when you do interact with it, it doesn't end up annoying you in the way that warfare and internal politics can. Mind you internal politics are pretty non-existent and the annoyance mostly comes from crime/deviancy and piracy. Espionage is mostly disappointing and underwhelming. On the other hand, it has avenues that could easily be leveraged to make it relevant in internal politics and warfare.
As for internal politics in general. I suspect it might be the last major system to get touch. Other than the annoyance of crime/deviancy and piracy mechanics, there really isn't much there. So it doesn't break things in the way that warfare and other systems have. Also it's probably going to generate controversy, so they likely want to to tackle the stuff first. So I disagree with the theory that they don't want to touch internal politics. I think it'[s they concluded that it was in the back on the existing system overhaul list and nonexistent enough, that they wanted to get other tropes in first. Also warfare, espionage, diplomacy, situations and leaders are all things that can play into an internal politics system, so it makes a decent bit of sense to get those polished first.
Like I would love to get both a warfare overhaul and an internal politics in the next major patch, but we probably only get one and if I had to choose. I'd probably say warfare because wars are pretty fucking tedious in their current iteration.
Okay, so gestalt agenda to purge negative traits on nodes doesn't give you the option to pick a replacement trait. So you're out the additional trait. Not sure how I feel about this because with some effort non-gestalts can load their ruling body up with lvl 10 leaders that have no negative traits and not be missing out. On the other hand, to do that they'd need to be a leader focused build and that requires a fair bit of RNG.
Another thing that could be in the favor of gestalts if that you can get a special trait for your cogitative node from the curators, which is an additional trait they can get. Can also offset cases where you get screwed by that node getting a negative trait.
I mean, if they fall behind because of all the stuff that non-gestalts get on their councils. It could be an option to let gestalts reclaim those lost trait points. Other option is maybe have more of the enclaves do what the curators do for gestalts. I'm surprised they didn't have it so that the rackett do something similar, given that they offer governors to gestalts.
Void dwellers is well and truly busted if you focus on leaders. Specifically governors. You can assign separate leaders to govern individual planets within a sector, so they gain the bonus directly from that leader instead of the sector governor. Where it gets absolutely gross is that these bonuses stack within a system since you've got three governors working in unison around your homeworld.
And when each of those governors are on your council with 'retired fleet officer' and 'shipwright' traits, well... shit gets nuts.
Corvettes at an alloy cost of 27 with a build time of 22 ticks each. Cruisers cheaper than the base cost of corvettes.
I had a 30k fleet by year 20 that nothing could stand in the way of. It's gloriously busted.
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
so, I played Stellaris a ton at launch, and then again on the console release, and you all weren't kidding about the changes from launch to now. I really miss the planetary system with pops that you can drag and drop; now there's districts or something? it's pretty confusing to me, pop management isn't a thing now I guess?
so, I played Stellaris a ton at launch, and then again on the console release, and you all weren't kidding about the changes from launch to now. I really miss the planetary system with pops that you can drag and drop; now there's districts or something? it's pretty confusing to me, pop management isn't a thing now I guess?
lot of relearning to be done I suppose
Pop management is absolutely still a thing, moreso actually.
Buildings act more as a force multiplier for your basic resources gained from districts, i.e: energy grid increasing the output of each of your technicians in generator districts.
You also want to manage, especially early game, what jobs your pops are in. You don't want them wasted in crappy clerk jobs when they could be elsewhere and 2 entertainers in a holotheatre outpacing 5 clerks in a city district in amenities output.
If you see me around online on Steam feel free to drop me a line and I'll host a co-op game so you can see the same screens and stuff that I do while going about empire management. 3.8 co-op is great for learning the game with someone more experienced.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I have hundreds of hours on this game and I still feel like I get maybe 10% of it. Shit like seeing other people with 100K fleet power 50 years into the game. Massive economies and thousands of research points. Meanwhile I get stuck on 3-4 planets, a few hundred research, and maybe one of my fleets at 12K. And a lot of times that comes at the expense of my economy.
I discovered I wasn't playing aggressively enough.
Colonize every planet you can; planets means pops and pops mean resources. Make migration pacts (if its something your empire would do) to get new species to colonize planets you normally wouldn't want to inhabit. The quicker you colonize the easier it is to snowball.
Also the meta right now are vassels. Empires are way too willing to get vasselized, so it's really easy to get a whole host of the little buggers under your control. (And you kind of have to, towards the midgame nearly everyone becomes either a vassel or an overlord.) I have a feeling that's going to get fixed eventually though.
I have seen utterly stupid, broken, idiot builds that were viable because of the vassel system.
Yeah, they've mentioned that they plan to address that.
I still maintain that they need to do the following to break up the vassal meta
-Put a cap on how many vassals we can have. I know that people white about hard caps being arbitrary, but sometimes you just need them to make game balance work and it seems like vassals really need. The two civics and the perk that give you no trust penalties for multiple vassals raise your vassal cap. Also if they have the whole thing where your vassals get jealous, aka the trust malus for having than one if you don't spec into it, then we should have an option to pick our favored vassals. Like if I'm a machine and decide I don't want to eat a diplomatic malus for purging some hive that became an FTL civilization in a system I use to won and I already have a vassal. Well I'm not going to give a shit if they are unhappy because I favor my older vassal over them; especially, if older vassal just gives better benefits.
-We probably should inherit a percent of the empire size from our vassals. Right now it pretty much exists as a way to mostly get around the sprawl penalties.
-We should benefit from any of the modifiers that AI vassals get. The general consensus amongst many is that the grand admiral AI as a swarm of vassals is just cheese. You get them as a vassal when they are too weak to resist and then you get massive bonuses indirectly.
-Having vassals be disloyal should have a penalty. For starters, it should result in getting less resources from them. If they are looking to rebel, they aren't going to want to pay their taxes. General, treating your vassal like shit should also result in consequences that makes them less valuable as a subject. Right now it's "you treat us like dogshit, take all our resources and we're very unhappy, but we won't do a thing against you!"
-Feels like the domination tree should be required to get the most out of vassal. Obviously, don't lock the specializations behind it or having vassal behind it. That's dumb, but going down it should make it so you can get more out of vassals and have an easier time managing them. At the same time diplomacy should be made mutually exclusive from domination and should be the federation tree. Make it so there is a choice between going heavy on being able to benefit from a federation, at the cost of what you can get from vassals or getting very little from a federation, but benefiting greatly from having vassals.
-Being able to form a federation shouldn't be locked behind diplomacy and should play better with other systems. Vassals currently don't get ruined if someone becomes the galactic empire (almost always you in single player) or if you get a war in heaven. Galactic empires just nuke all the federations from existence and while I can appreciate that makes custodians less likely to go full authoritarian emperor, I wish we had another dynamic to discourage that, while also retaining them in some form. The federation you get from war in heaven just doesn't work that well. It really should function as something similar to the GalCom, but doesn't allow those that grovel to the arrogant FEs in.
I discovered I wasn't playing aggressively enough.
Colonize every planet you can; planets means pops and pops mean resources. Make migration pacts (if its something your empire would do) to get new species to colonize planets you normally wouldn't want to inhabit. The quicker you colonize the easier it is to snowball.
Also the meta right now are vassels. Empires are way too willing to get vasselized, so it's really easy to get a whole host of the little buggers under your control. (And you kind of have to, towards the midgame nearly everyone becomes either a vassel or an overlord.) I have a feeling that's going to get fixed eventually though.
I have seen utterly stupid, broken, idiot builds that were viable because of the vassel system.
The bold is still a thing? I remember back in the day you used to just colonize red and yellow planets and then resettle back on your habitable ones, but I thought that became prohibitively expensive, and/or they introduced some weird penalties. If I'm creating just straight up colonies on those planets, they tend to be such a mess to manage and it never seems like it's worth it. Maybe I'm wrong, though?
Re: vassals, that's another thing that feels like a crapshoot. The only way I'm getting a vassal is if I have huge fleet power by the time I meet my first empire, or shortly thereafter. And that's if they aren't already vassals before I get there.
Anyway, the best luck I've had so far is with a Driven Assimilator. I'm like 60-70 years in and have almost half the map. But I really want to try something a little less... singular?
By "that you can" I meant planets you can get up to acceptable habitability, whether that's through getting new species, increasing general habitablility or through genetic modification.
Don't forget robots too. It's still viable to say have basic robots that can do worker strata jobs, while you have a singular pop making new ones on a planet with 0% habitability. Yeah, that pop will be expensive to upkeep, but that's easily offset if you've got enough bots.
Also there are a number of jobs that aren't impacted by pop happiness. The most famous one is trade, you're pops can be absolutely miserable, but they will produce the same amount of trade as a pop on a 100% habitable world with 100% happiness.
So there are some cheese strategies where you either directly power through the negatives, like the above mentioned machinist on a 0% habitable world. Also gets easier if those pops don't have consumer good upkeep. Probably why the dystopian society living standard will get hit with a nerf because again, while those ruling pops on a 0% habitable world will be pricy as fuck, with dystopian society living standards they are the only ones using amenities and the lion's share of consumer goods, while also having the most political power. So as long as you keep them super happy, it won't matter that the rest of your pops are miserable.
Then there are slightly less cheese strategies that don't completely ignore the malus for bypass low habitability, but extend the range you have to work with. This comes back to trade. The 50% habitable world might not be great for most resource production, but it is fantastic for a trade world; especially, if you either went down the mercantile tree or are in a trade league, since that let's you offset the increased consumer good and amenity needs more easily, while still making it worth your while. Also the growth speed isn't too bad, but really in this game, turning a 0% growth world into one that produces 0.001% growth can often be a massive gain, if the costs are too bad.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
So I tried the thing where you play is Voidborne and put a Governor on every habitat who reduces ship building costs and hoo boy that is busted. Paying 60 for a cruiser is hilarious. And with the resulting massive fleet power I had two vassals propping up my economy very quickly. But I lucked out because I happened to find them early enough that I could bully them before someone else did.
I don’t think I’m a fan of the AI’s mad dash for vassals and tributaries. It feels really dependent on finding other factions early enough to vassalize, otherwise if I want to fight a subjugation war, I’m not fighting one faction, but 2-3.
I feel like this wasn’t quite the same problem when federations released.
Yep, they are working on the weighting and adding other conditions in. I know one thing they are doing, is if the AI has no reason to trust someone, it will have no reason to agree to be their vassal. I think they wanted this for 3.8, but it got pushed back.
They also need to balance out the weapons better because one cheese strategy to get lots of vassals is to research autocannons and throw those up on all your ships to massively inflate your fleet power because in actual combat, autocannons suck. I want to say the fleet power they give though is like almost twice what you get from any other equivalent tier of weapon tech. It's an oversight that's been around for awhile that still continues to floor me that it happen, let alone that it is still in game.
Yep, they are working on the weighting and adding other conditions in. I know one thing they are doing, is if the AI has no reason to trust someone, it will have no reason to agree to be their vassal. I think they wanted this for 3.8, but it got pushed back.
They also need to balance out the weapons better because one cheese strategy to get lots of vassals is to research autocannons and throw those up on all your ships to massively inflate your fleet power because in actual combat, autocannons suck. I want to say the fleet power they give though is like almost twice what you get from any other equivalent tier of weapon tech. It's an oversight that's been around for awhile that still continues to floor me that it happen, let alone that it is still in game.
This has already been corrected in the latest patch, I believe there was a line in there saying "corrected military power projection value from autocannons"
If you mean the one that they announced will be dropped sometime at the end of the month, then yes. Didn't see that until after I posted.
I'm hoping they can find time to get some tweaks in regarding the AI and diplomatic vassalization because that can be a huge buzzkill right now. It's really annoying to go down the diplomacy tree to get a federation going in like year 23 and then see a egalitarian fanatic xenophobe empire get a pacifist fanatic materialist empire as a vassal less than a year later because I know that AI did jack shit to justify that. Probably not that far ahead of the other empire, assuming it didn't RNG into auto cannon cheese and it has probably don't everything it can to make the other empire not trust it. Unfortunately, the way things are coded the AI only considers fleet power and nothing else and is very eager to become someone's lackey if they are perceived to the be a touch more powerful.
Oh what, if you join someone else's war to get rid of criminal office branches, it doesn't also get rid of the ones in YOUR territory, and now I have a ten year truce. What a crock.
Yeah, there are a number of aspects of warfare that really need to be reworked because it's just absolutely stupid and it really does make the game unplayable. It's why I'm pretty sure warfare is the next major update, since it's really the last system that breaks the game currently.
I'm so glad to see that a fleet commanded by an Admiral leader can explore unknown systems, because waiting on a science ship to explore one friggin' system in a nebula while at war was the most annoying thing that made me lose interest in my campaign of conquest.
Similarly, it's a shame that fleet size cap will no longer be expanded by the Admiral level. I quite liked having 500k of military power in one giant doomfleet.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I don't like that change at all. If they want leaders to be unique and powerful, let admirals command bigger fleets than normal. They're basically changing it because fleets would break up when the admiral died and players didn't like that.
A ton of people didn't like it when their admiral died or got promoted to ruler and their fleet then fragmented into smaller ones.
What they probably need to do is revisit the fleet size capacity mechanic. If it were me, I'd figure out what the maximum number of ships I'm willing to tolerate in a fleet and set that as the hard cap that you could rich theoretically on day one if you had the means to get the ships for it. From there I'd introduce a soft cap that can be increased with admiral level and research certain techs. Probably have it so that the only way you can make the soft cap and hard cap equal, would be to either have a max level admiral with all the techs researched or maybe a level 8 or 9 one, if you grab certain civics, traditions and perks. As for the soft cap, when above it:
-Ship speed is decreased
-upkeep of ships would be increased
-rate of fire would be decreased
The idea being this reflects how a higher level admiral can better organize their fleet. Minimizing ship speed when over the cap shows how a less experienced admiral might struggle keeping their fleet in formation and reducing delays, once the fleet exceeds a certain size. The upkeep would reflect how an admiral with a fleet size above their ability to command might not make sure resources are allotted efficiently, might order more than they need and might also struggle ensuring that people are just stealing the supplies. I'll admit the fire rate is a little jank, I'd say it's more about how once the fleet size exceeds their ability, they start to struggle to make sure orders go out quickly on combat maneuvers and prioritizing targets. Kind of need some sort of in combat malus, other than ship speed because then people would absolutely go above the cap if they had the resources.
Cap should probably be something where the malus early on easy too bad and it gets exponentially worse as you get further above what an admiral can handle. So you make it an option to go above the soft cap because a fleet that is a few ships above it's cap isn't going to be too bad, but want people to have to make a hard choice on whether they want to eat the malus to have a max fleet commanded by their sole admiral, who is only level 5.
Probably set things up where the fleet planner lets you set the fleet size manual and if things are left on auto, the game will try to avoid going over the soft cap by much, but won't split a fleet in the event of an admiral death.
I'd probably also combine the naval capacity and fleet size increasing techs. They have really decluttered engineering enough and society is actually started to get a bit too cluttered now. Plus, the current setup seems dated and it kind of feels meh to research either tech by itself. Yes, you get bigger fleet capacity or more naval capacity, but currently the penalty for going over naval cap is higher upkeep and you can't do that with fleet sizes.
Seems like a good way to make everyone happy. Gives higher level generals something that makes them valuable outside of being council members that boost your overall navy. Let's people have bigger and fewer fleets. Cuts down some complaints about the leader cap because you'll have less fleets that need a leader.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
So what are everyone's "pet" empires they made? I have a few I've made that I really like.
- One of the alien portraits is a really colorful preying mantis looking thing. One of my favorite animals is the mantis shrimp. A lot of times when people are out in the ocean getting rocks and coral for an "authentic" aquariums, they can get scooped up in there. So I took that portrait and made a Void Dweller Fanatic Materialist / Xenophobe empire that I keep coming back to.
- A Driven Assimilator called The Tessellation. As you all probably know, tessellation is the formation of patterns that fit together neatly without gaps. Seemed like an interesting theme for a species that wants everyone to be like them.
- A criminal enterprise Fanatic Spiritualist Megacorp called the Mo Muhnee Acolytes. This one is just kinda stupid, and uses the fox-people portrait, I just found the idea of a bunch of money-grubbing space-bound Southern Baptists. I went with the Shattered Ring origin because I liked it, without realizing at first that it's quite good for a trade-based empire.
- A raptor-bird-man crusader empire that is all about converting everyone to Fanatic Militarist Xenophiles. I'm still testing this one but I'd like it to be my federation builder. I may have to go back to the drawing board on this one because I put a big focus on admirals and if they are nerfing fleet size I think they're going to be less interesting to me.
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Just in case you haven't pulled the trigger yet, both DLC ranking videos I've watched have put Nemesis in the "F" tier of expansions as it doesn't have a lot of necessary goodies in it. Both recommend Distant Stars and Utopia as S tier.
So I went ahead and made a leadership-focused xenophile test empire with a huge emphasis on unity and 40 years in I've already got a military federation and a vassal, a booming economy and the biggest fleets around. My research kind of sucks but I can focus on that now since the basics are in really good shape.
This is sort of after many hours the past couple weeks trying to get these basics in order with different kinds of empires.
Like, the "pick your FTL method" era.
Seconding that Nemesis is bad, like I actually was motivated to go and write a steam review recommending against it bad.
Hm. Having had it for all of 5 minutes, I’m curious what makes it bad?
(I have Distant Stars and Utopia).
It's just overpriced for what you get and how often you're likely to use it.
THAT SAID: I feel aside from a few packs (Utopia and Distant Stars), ever person is going to have a different opinion on which ones are good or bad and what you should really do is just play some Stellaris, get a feel for the game, figure out what you like and then look at the features on the expansion and see which ones appeal to you. If you really like building Megastructures, focus on the expansions that add new megastructures. If you want more species portraits and maybe some different playstyles, try a species pack or Synthetic Dawn.
Find out what you like and use that to figure out what expansions you want.
Mind you I haven't played with it enabled in some time, but I doubt they bothered to change much because that's not really their MO. But tldr espionage is just a recycle of the archaeology UI, not only requires you to dedicate envoys to it for needlessly long periods, the benefits are not impactful enough to justify it... or impactful at all, really. Your crisis ships are brokenly powerful in numerous ways, but they reuse the shitty npc pirate models instead of having unique models, the endgame doomsday mechanic is so cost prohibitive that it's basically just a self-congratulatory victory lap and you will basically never see the galactic custodian mechanic outside of multiplayer because the AI will not of their own volition become the nemesis crisis themselves. It's embarassingly little and non-interactive content for a DLC that released at the same price as Utopia - or twice the price of Synthetic Dawn, if you want to look at it that way.
i still miss the FTL options
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Also the AI will absolutely become the crisis now. I saw it happen in a youtubers game last week.
-You don't need a crisis to become custodian, it just makes the AI more willing to back a powerful nation becoming the custodian over other resolutions. The custodianship is the one feature that will see some regular use. If you're aren't going crisis or being genocidal, then there is a ton of value in going down and grabbing it in single player. Makes it easier to to deal with end game crisis or empires that become a crisis. Also let's you unlock a few other things that can be useful. Mostly, it gives you more ability to make the galactic community more useful in single player.
-Become the crisis is probably the most limited feature in stellaris because it's a one trick pony. As lackluster as espionage is, you'll find yourself using that more than becoming the crisis and you don't need Nemesis DLC to get the more worthwhile features of espionage. Blowing up the galaxy is only entertaining in sparring doses and unfortunately, the way things are setup, there really is only one way to go down this path. I tried the espionage route when it first came out, it's just not worth it and makes a long tedious process take even longer.
-Galactic Emperor, it can be fun and you'd go down this route more often than becoming the crisis. You probably don't want to do this every time and it also plays very poorly with federations because they all get disbanded. It's a factor in why federations have fallen behind vassal. If someone becomes the emperor, you still get to keep your vassals at least.
Nemesis is probably the most optional big DLC. Hell, I'd say First Contact is going to give people more value, since it makes primitive empires much more useful. Some of the insight technologies are extremely good. Also Solar Punk Empire can be really fun if you are the first to find them and claim the system they are in.
Further thoughts on Paragons.
Spent the better part of the day playing. Decided to run the new origin and go all in on leaders.
-It seems like they did something that has improved system performance. I'm not sure if the change to make AI only adjust opinion stuff monthly helped a ton or if the leader rework just resulted in less crap that bogs things down.
-Seems like a heavy leader build is viable and it does seem like it shakes things up in regards to traits. I'm not kidding when I say, I went all in on leaders. Species traits are unruly, enduring, talented and quick learners, plus the origin specific trait. Civics were heroic past and philosopher king, and I did pick up vaults of knowledge as my third civic. Probably should consider dropping some of the leader exp stuff because it only helps so much, but outside of a very early death at an archaeology site, I've yet to lose leaders and all my leaders are pretty stacked at this point.
-The RNG isn't as bad. Where it's gone down mostly is that it's much, much easier to avoid getting stuck with useless ass traits. That said, you'll still get traits you don't benefit from because the options presented to you aren't great and you do sometimes get RNG and event traits where you don't want them. That said, you also have more control to tailor your leaders to be better suited for what you want them to do. Where some RNG does come back in is that you get some traits where your leader generates a small amount of resources each month and stellaris being a snowball game, you can see how getting a leader that has like say +3 alloys a month, can be significant.
-The council stuff is broken. I'm not sure gestalts are at a huge disadvantage in the early and midgame. Really depends on if they have all nodes unlocked at start or if they have to unlock them. The expand the council agenda takes a while to get revving and then you have to wait a few decades before you can fire it again. So I'll be a bit before a regular empire can have a 6 member council with all the benefits.
-Exploration feels very different now. The leader change means that both you and the AI are running far less scientists on exploration at the start and it slows things down. I'm not paying enough attention to my really good exploration scientist to see if she is find anomalies in already explored systems or not. Definitely, saw the exploration phase not only last longer, but still finding anomalies. I will say some of the exploration traits are a bit frustrating, like there is one that let's you find more deposits, but if you're done expanding, it's annoying to get notified of bonus resources found on shit you aren't going to be claiming.
-Tech is a bit slower at the start, but not by much; especially, once you start stacking research boosts on council members. I know when Aspec interviewed one of the devs earlier this week, said dev did mention they felt that science was still faster than they'd like, so they'll probably nerf it further.
-I'm still trying to figure out the renowned paragons. Not sure if I had bad luck or not because I've only gotten two of them and I'm almost into year 80. It does seem like they make non-fanatical empires better, given there are two for each ethic, which means those empires have a shot at getting 6 of the renowned leaders, while a fanatical only has a shot at 4. Curious if they bail, should your ethics no longer match.
-Still getting use to the new interface. It's nice to have techs at range of a hotkey. I do think it needs some polish because you do have to track leaders down to select their traits.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Biological Hive Minds weren't the point of Utopia, so I can see how they should be unlocked for everyone, the same way as basic Ascension perks now are.
Machines... well, playing as Machines was the whole point of Synthetic Dawn, so perhaps unlocking them for everyone would make that DLC totally obsolete. Maybe just make 'standard' Machines available (with only the basic Robot portrait), and let the special Machine empires still be locked behind the DLC.
I've just been going over the leader cap and it honestly doesn't matter much. I can see them increasing the penalties for doing so in the future. In one game I was at 17 of 9 leaders and I was still getting like 300 unity per month. The council agendas and some leader bonuses are absolutely mad. I can see them jacking the cap penalties as well as toning down
The thing I have been struggling with is getting alloys production really going in the early game. I had thought they buffed it with the districts, but they don't seem that great to me, and of course there is a restriction of one alloy plant per planet. So with only 3 habitable worlds for a long while, it can become a lot to expand AND build a reasonably navy so I don't get stomped by the purifiers next store.
(No lie, I had one recent start where, within the first 40 years, I had fanatic purifiers on one of my boarders, and driven assimilators on another.)
I think I need a "this is how you start the first 50 years of Stellaris" refresher that was made pretty recently.
Maybe this will help.
I'm comfortable saying the new DLC is very optional for them; especially, with dev confirmation that paragons aren't things that the AI can every get. So in a single player game, the only things that machines get out of the DLC is the gestalt civics, I want say that is two civics each for machine and hive. You also get the better leader leveling setup where they get a trait every level and I think there are a bunch of traits locked to the DLC.
Not sure they are getting screwed power wise. Yes, they don't get any of the new paragon leaders that are tied to traits and I'm not entirely clear on how it works with the legendary ones. Yes, non-gestalts get six instead of five for their ruling council thing and yes, three of those get a bonus based on civics. Also, yes, they don't get stuck essentially with a general leader that results in them having some army specific traits. Finally, yes, they might have an easier time creating a setup where they have more choices for traits on their ruling council and part of that is the destiny traits.
The thing is gestalt get all 5 of their rulers out the gate, the ruler and the four nodes. Non-gestalts have to unlock the next three council positions. Also worth noting that those council positions are based on civics, so once you unlock the entire council, you don't get to choose which civics are represented, unless your using a mode gives multiple you additional civics because each civic only gives you one type of councilor.
Gestalts also get an agenda that lets them purge negative traits on the nodal consciousness and you only lose 300 exp per negative trait purged. Don't know if that fucks you out of a trait, I'll be running that agenda in my gestalt game either later tonight or during the weekend to see what happens, since the node associated with naval power picked up a negative trait. Your nodes are obviously immortal, so even if you can't get destiny traits, you do have a better shot at getting them all to max level regardless of how much you go in on leaders.
The nodes are essentially four leaders that do not count towards you cap. Yes, this is somewhat offset by the fact that council members can hold for lack of better words field positions (governing a planet, commanding a ship or leading an army), but on the other hand you don't get a dilemma where you have to pick and choose between improving a leader's ruling abilities or improving their field positions. This also means you can keep what is essentially your ruling admiral and general out of combat because they can't get into it and that also means no risk of losing them unless you lose the game and generals do seem to still die rather easily.
Finally, no only are gestalt rulers getting traits beyond just being immortal. They also get access to agendas, which they didn't get either because all they got was being immortal.
So it's really hard to say if they are shafted too badly power wise. I think it depends on whether it's feasible for normal empires to quickly unlock council positions. I can't remember if you have to use the agenda or if unity is an option, but it just gets cost prohibitive. Even if you can rush unlocking those, I'm not sure it really gives bio empires more power, given what gestalts have. Worse case, it's looking like the power is just mostly being you have more flexibility, which makes it easier to pivot in a different direction if something comes up that warrants a shift in macro tactics. You can for instance switch out scientists on the council to greatly boost naval ability at the expense of science and then switch back to having a scientist in each position that allows it to boost your research or swap in governors for bigger economic boosts. It's just you have to unlock those council positions and depending on a number of things those leaders might be dead before they get stacked enough. Also you have to pay an opportunity cost in slower level ups and agenda firing if you want to try this little trick.*
*I know the leader cap has been a divisive change; especially, with it being a general pool. Honestly, I was already in favor of the change. First, it's a soft cap and apparently the malus to exp caps out 50%, haven't looked to see where that caps for prepping agendas to fire. So there is nothing stopping people from having all the leaders, it just means they greatly reduce the odds of getting stacked ones by end game. I like this because it favors tall and gives tall an advantage in that they can get more leaders.
Second the smaller pool means that leader choices are going to be more meaningfully. You not just deciding what trade offs you will make in regards to economy, naval ability, research ability and whatever stuff generals are in charge of, but also how good your leaders will be overall. The issue I see with separate pools for each category, is that people will just fill those up to the soft cap because outside of the upfront cost and leader upkeep, there is not penalty and being able to hire leader is one of the easiest to solve things. You might struggle with unity gain to get the next tradition, planetary ascension or getting the ambition edicts on line, but you hit a point where hiring leaders becomes trivial. This then pouts gestalts at a disadvantage because they don't a way to restructure their ruling body, where non-gestalts could in theory raise up a bunch of scientists that go all in on councilor traits that boost research, governors that boost overall economy & ship building and admirals that boost naval capability. So go research heavy on your council to outpace your numbers, then swap out everyone you can for the fleet build up and then when you declare war, you shift in all the admirals. Sure you could still do it, but there is enough of an opportunity cost in slower agendas and leader level gains, that it's probably not worth doing. I suspect this is a huge reason why the devs were upfront about this being a better change because I'm big on finding exploits and if I can arrive at this conclusion, well every min/maxer that loves to math this shit out probably arrived at wanting to do the math for this the moment the idea of leader council were announced and every min/maxer beyond that was probably wondering if it would be worth it and the devs probably hated the whole concept of it.
Also I feel like the devs have hinted pretty hard that we probably get a warfare overhaul in the next update. Part of that is going to include changes that mean we field less ships, which means less incentive to have as many admirals. Honestly, of the big systems that leave much to be desired. It seems like warfare and internal politics are the only two left that are broken in detrimental ways. I'll not an internal politics rework could also lessen the incentive to go super wide and thus want more governors. So if both are in the works behind the scenes, then I can see that making the devs really not want to raise the leader soft cap anytime soon. Given how polarizing the change is right now, they don't want to raise it when they might implement changes that are going to impact on how much that number needs to stay the same or if it does need to go up, by how much.
Only other minor feature that needs reworking is espionage, but that isn't broken in the way that warfare and internal politics are. It's very much optional and when you do interact with it, it doesn't end up annoying you in the way that warfare and internal politics can. Mind you internal politics are pretty non-existent and the annoyance mostly comes from crime/deviancy and piracy. Espionage is mostly disappointing and underwhelming. On the other hand, it has avenues that could easily be leveraged to make it relevant in internal politics and warfare.
As for internal politics in general. I suspect it might be the last major system to get touch. Other than the annoyance of crime/deviancy and piracy mechanics, there really isn't much there. So it doesn't break things in the way that warfare and other systems have. Also it's probably going to generate controversy, so they likely want to to tackle the stuff first. So I disagree with the theory that they don't want to touch internal politics. I think it'[s they concluded that it was in the back on the existing system overhaul list and nonexistent enough, that they wanted to get other tropes in first. Also warfare, espionage, diplomacy, situations and leaders are all things that can play into an internal politics system, so it makes a decent bit of sense to get those polished first.
Like I would love to get both a warfare overhaul and an internal politics in the next major patch, but we probably only get one and if I had to choose. I'd probably say warfare because wars are pretty fucking tedious in their current iteration.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Another thing that could be in the favor of gestalts if that you can get a special trait for your cogitative node from the curators, which is an additional trait they can get. Can also offset cases where you get screwed by that node getting a negative trait.
I mean, if they fall behind because of all the stuff that non-gestalts get on their councils. It could be an option to let gestalts reclaim those lost trait points. Other option is maybe have more of the enclaves do what the curators do for gestalts. I'm surprised they didn't have it so that the rackett do something similar, given that they offer governors to gestalts.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
And when each of those governors are on your council with 'retired fleet officer' and 'shipwright' traits, well... shit gets nuts.
Corvettes at an alloy cost of 27 with a build time of 22 ticks each. Cruisers cheaper than the base cost of corvettes.
I had a 30k fleet by year 20 that nothing could stand in the way of. It's gloriously busted.
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lot of relearning to be done I suppose
Pop management is absolutely still a thing, moreso actually.
Buildings act more as a force multiplier for your basic resources gained from districts, i.e: energy grid increasing the output of each of your technicians in generator districts.
You also want to manage, especially early game, what jobs your pops are in. You don't want them wasted in crappy clerk jobs when they could be elsewhere and 2 entertainers in a holotheatre outpacing 5 clerks in a city district in amenities output.
If you see me around online on Steam feel free to drop me a line and I'll host a co-op game so you can see the same screens and stuff that I do while going about empire management. 3.8 co-op is great for learning the game with someone more experienced.
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Colonize every planet you can; planets means pops and pops mean resources. Make migration pacts (if its something your empire would do) to get new species to colonize planets you normally wouldn't want to inhabit. The quicker you colonize the easier it is to snowball.
Also the meta right now are vassels. Empires are way too willing to get vasselized, so it's really easy to get a whole host of the little buggers under your control. (And you kind of have to, towards the midgame nearly everyone becomes either a vassel or an overlord.) I have a feeling that's going to get fixed eventually though.
I have seen utterly stupid, broken, idiot builds that were viable because of the vassel system.
I still maintain that they need to do the following to break up the vassal meta
-Put a cap on how many vassals we can have. I know that people white about hard caps being arbitrary, but sometimes you just need them to make game balance work and it seems like vassals really need. The two civics and the perk that give you no trust penalties for multiple vassals raise your vassal cap. Also if they have the whole thing where your vassals get jealous, aka the trust malus for having than one if you don't spec into it, then we should have an option to pick our favored vassals. Like if I'm a machine and decide I don't want to eat a diplomatic malus for purging some hive that became an FTL civilization in a system I use to won and I already have a vassal. Well I'm not going to give a shit if they are unhappy because I favor my older vassal over them; especially, if older vassal just gives better benefits.
-We probably should inherit a percent of the empire size from our vassals. Right now it pretty much exists as a way to mostly get around the sprawl penalties.
-We should benefit from any of the modifiers that AI vassals get. The general consensus amongst many is that the grand admiral AI as a swarm of vassals is just cheese. You get them as a vassal when they are too weak to resist and then you get massive bonuses indirectly.
-Having vassals be disloyal should have a penalty. For starters, it should result in getting less resources from them. If they are looking to rebel, they aren't going to want to pay their taxes. General, treating your vassal like shit should also result in consequences that makes them less valuable as a subject. Right now it's "you treat us like dogshit, take all our resources and we're very unhappy, but we won't do a thing against you!"
-Feels like the domination tree should be required to get the most out of vassal. Obviously, don't lock the specializations behind it or having vassal behind it. That's dumb, but going down it should make it so you can get more out of vassals and have an easier time managing them. At the same time diplomacy should be made mutually exclusive from domination and should be the federation tree. Make it so there is a choice between going heavy on being able to benefit from a federation, at the cost of what you can get from vassals or getting very little from a federation, but benefiting greatly from having vassals.
-Being able to form a federation shouldn't be locked behind diplomacy and should play better with other systems. Vassals currently don't get ruined if someone becomes the galactic empire (almost always you in single player) or if you get a war in heaven. Galactic empires just nuke all the federations from existence and while I can appreciate that makes custodians less likely to go full authoritarian emperor, I wish we had another dynamic to discourage that, while also retaining them in some form. The federation you get from war in heaven just doesn't work that well. It really should function as something similar to the GalCom, but doesn't allow those that grovel to the arrogant FEs in.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
The bold is still a thing? I remember back in the day you used to just colonize red and yellow planets and then resettle back on your habitable ones, but I thought that became prohibitively expensive, and/or they introduced some weird penalties. If I'm creating just straight up colonies on those planets, they tend to be such a mess to manage and it never seems like it's worth it. Maybe I'm wrong, though?
Re: vassals, that's another thing that feels like a crapshoot. The only way I'm getting a vassal is if I have huge fleet power by the time I meet my first empire, or shortly thereafter. And that's if they aren't already vassals before I get there.
Anyway, the best luck I've had so far is with a Driven Assimilator. I'm like 60-70 years in and have almost half the map. But I really want to try something a little less... singular?
Also there are a number of jobs that aren't impacted by pop happiness. The most famous one is trade, you're pops can be absolutely miserable, but they will produce the same amount of trade as a pop on a 100% habitable world with 100% happiness.
So there are some cheese strategies where you either directly power through the negatives, like the above mentioned machinist on a 0% habitable world. Also gets easier if those pops don't have consumer good upkeep. Probably why the dystopian society living standard will get hit with a nerf because again, while those ruling pops on a 0% habitable world will be pricy as fuck, with dystopian society living standards they are the only ones using amenities and the lion's share of consumer goods, while also having the most political power. So as long as you keep them super happy, it won't matter that the rest of your pops are miserable.
Then there are slightly less cheese strategies that don't completely ignore the malus for bypass low habitability, but extend the range you have to work with. This comes back to trade. The 50% habitable world might not be great for most resource production, but it is fantastic for a trade world; especially, if you either went down the mercantile tree or are in a trade league, since that let's you offset the increased consumer good and amenity needs more easily, while still making it worth your while. Also the growth speed isn't too bad, but really in this game, turning a 0% growth world into one that produces 0.001% growth can often be a massive gain, if the costs are too bad.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I don’t think I’m a fan of the AI’s mad dash for vassals and tributaries. It feels really dependent on finding other factions early enough to vassalize, otherwise if I want to fight a subjugation war, I’m not fighting one faction, but 2-3.
I feel like this wasn’t quite the same problem when federations released.
They also need to balance out the weapons better because one cheese strategy to get lots of vassals is to research autocannons and throw those up on all your ships to massively inflate your fleet power because in actual combat, autocannons suck. I want to say the fleet power they give though is like almost twice what you get from any other equivalent tier of weapon tech. It's an oversight that's been around for awhile that still continues to floor me that it happen, let alone that it is still in game.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
"Why am I doing almost no dama-- oh."
This has already been corrected in the latest patch, I believe there was a line in there saying "corrected military power projection value from autocannons"
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I'm hoping they can find time to get some tweaks in regarding the AI and diplomatic vassalization because that can be a huge buzzkill right now. It's really annoying to go down the diplomacy tree to get a federation going in like year 23 and then see a egalitarian fanatic xenophobe empire get a pacifist fanatic materialist empire as a vassal less than a year later because I know that AI did jack shit to justify that. Probably not that far ahead of the other empire, assuming it didn't RNG into auto cannon cheese and it has probably don't everything it can to make the other empire not trust it. Unfortunately, the way things are coded the AI only considers fleet power and nothing else and is very eager to become someone's lackey if they are perceived to the be a touch more powerful.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Also other patch notes
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-302-leaders-and-3-8-3-balance-changes.1586776/
Similarly, it's a shame that fleet size cap will no longer be expanded by the Admiral level. I quite liked having 500k of military power in one giant doomfleet.
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What they probably need to do is revisit the fleet size capacity mechanic. If it were me, I'd figure out what the maximum number of ships I'm willing to tolerate in a fleet and set that as the hard cap that you could rich theoretically on day one if you had the means to get the ships for it. From there I'd introduce a soft cap that can be increased with admiral level and research certain techs. Probably have it so that the only way you can make the soft cap and hard cap equal, would be to either have a max level admiral with all the techs researched or maybe a level 8 or 9 one, if you grab certain civics, traditions and perks. As for the soft cap, when above it:
-Ship speed is decreased
-upkeep of ships would be increased
-rate of fire would be decreased
The idea being this reflects how a higher level admiral can better organize their fleet. Minimizing ship speed when over the cap shows how a less experienced admiral might struggle keeping their fleet in formation and reducing delays, once the fleet exceeds a certain size. The upkeep would reflect how an admiral with a fleet size above their ability to command might not make sure resources are allotted efficiently, might order more than they need and might also struggle ensuring that people are just stealing the supplies. I'll admit the fire rate is a little jank, I'd say it's more about how once the fleet size exceeds their ability, they start to struggle to make sure orders go out quickly on combat maneuvers and prioritizing targets. Kind of need some sort of in combat malus, other than ship speed because then people would absolutely go above the cap if they had the resources.
Cap should probably be something where the malus early on easy too bad and it gets exponentially worse as you get further above what an admiral can handle. So you make it an option to go above the soft cap because a fleet that is a few ships above it's cap isn't going to be too bad, but want people to have to make a hard choice on whether they want to eat the malus to have a max fleet commanded by their sole admiral, who is only level 5.
Probably set things up where the fleet planner lets you set the fleet size manual and if things are left on auto, the game will try to avoid going over the soft cap by much, but won't split a fleet in the event of an admiral death.
I'd probably also combine the naval capacity and fleet size increasing techs. They have really decluttered engineering enough and society is actually started to get a bit too cluttered now. Plus, the current setup seems dated and it kind of feels meh to research either tech by itself. Yes, you get bigger fleet capacity or more naval capacity, but currently the penalty for going over naval cap is higher upkeep and you can't do that with fleet sizes.
Seems like a good way to make everyone happy. Gives higher level generals something that makes them valuable outside of being council members that boost your overall navy. Let's people have bigger and fewer fleets. Cuts down some complaints about the leader cap because you'll have less fleets that need a leader.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
- One of the alien portraits is a really colorful preying mantis looking thing. One of my favorite animals is the mantis shrimp. A lot of times when people are out in the ocean getting rocks and coral for an "authentic" aquariums, they can get scooped up in there. So I took that portrait and made a Void Dweller Fanatic Materialist / Xenophobe empire that I keep coming back to.
- A Driven Assimilator called The Tessellation. As you all probably know, tessellation is the formation of patterns that fit together neatly without gaps. Seemed like an interesting theme for a species that wants everyone to be like them.
- A criminal enterprise Fanatic Spiritualist Megacorp called the Mo Muhnee Acolytes. This one is just kinda stupid, and uses the fox-people portrait, I just found the idea of a bunch of money-grubbing space-bound Southern Baptists. I went with the Shattered Ring origin because I liked it, without realizing at first that it's quite good for a trade-based empire.
- A raptor-bird-man crusader empire that is all about converting everyone to Fanatic Militarist Xenophiles. I'm still testing this one but I'd like it to be my federation builder. I may have to go back to the drawing board on this one because I put a big focus on admirals and if they are nerfing fleet size I think they're going to be less interesting to me.