this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
If there's nothing to do, you've won the game. If you haven't won the game - by whatever metric you consider winning - then there's still something to do, and a better way to do it than sinking all your resources into a megastructure.
Not sure who you're responding to, but I run up against my cap between wars, the game is hardly over, but it's a mandatory time-out on conquerin'. The excess minerals aren't a problem because I can always spend them, or stuff them in the sector bank.
Megastructures cost roughly 10,000 minerals per year with the fast construction perk, 5,000 without; half that for the sentry. You can afford it if you can afford to keep your fleet reinforced in a war. Why is it better to not build a sentry array?
Why is it better to micromanage the creation of a few dozen habitats than build a Sphere and a Nexus? Because it's faster? Influence isn't typically something I have in the volumes necessary to make it so. At 2 or 3 a month, I can't build them in parallel. There is something to be said of the incremental gains over the shorter build period, but if I can't afford the influence to build more than 1 every five years, thats a longer timeline. Dropping 1500+ influence on hab modules seems crazy decadent to me.
Because they cost less minerals? Only in the short term.
Even short term, if the primary metric for better is mineral cost, the value is derived from mineral scarcity, and that is something you have a lot of control over; and so I tend to focus on it as it seems the most useful of the three. I can turn every planet into a mine and buy a dyson sphere (or a habitat). I can't turn them into batteries and create minerals, and if you're a terminally unsociable civ you can't trade to make up the difference. You need them all, but minerals have the most flexibility if habs/megas are in play.
Since every pop you devote to a resource drags down the rest, every pop on those powerplant habs runs you a negative balance on minerals and food. 15 hab modules devoted to power cost you -180 minerals. You're bleeding yourself and inflating the value of minerals in the process.
Assuming you could stand them up in parallel, over the accelerated build time of a Dyson, 27.5 years, that's 134,000 minerals counting build cost. Your cost savings: 126,000. But you've ruined your research.
Assuming 6 worlds worlds with 110 pop for base research malus of 150%:
29 habs with a 4/7 research/energy split match a dyson, but run 85% slower than just a nexus; it's not great, but I'll take it, because the 5/6 split breaks even at an unweildy 39 habs, and it's still far better than your reference colonies. These 29 cost you 312k over 40 years. Cost savings: 38k, and you'll be underwater in 15 years.
Alternatively, those 348 pops on ~20 size 16 worlds, l3 mines, l2 processor, planetary capital (=81.5, assuming no tile bonuses at all) nets you 683,000 minerals (still subtracting 1/pop for their goods) over the same period, and penalize your research less.
The break even on mineral worlds to fund the megastructures is 12x16, yielding 377k. This buys you the Dyson, the Nexus, a research output exceeding the modules, 17k walking around money, and a +786 monthly cashflow.
So this seems better unless you consider Unity, where, I believe, Habs shine. Unless you use Idyll, where your farmworlds shine. Unless you gene mod for energy and research. Or genemod for Minerals. Or halve your consumer goods with a Hive. Or be robots. Or build both.
Or or or.
Stellaris has layers on layers of ways to optimize. One could argue Gestalts aren't optimal because they get no faction or happiness benefits. Or peacenicks aren't viable if your neighbors are all agressive. Unless you add an arbitrary measure like time to win, turtle strategies are just as successful as aggressive strategies. They could certainly be made more broadly useful, but there are absolutely playstyles in which Megastructures shine brightly and functionally.
(Which is why I tend to only endorse them as QoL luxuries, because in most cases their main benefit is they cut through the micro and detailed analysis, and just present those who can afford them with big shiny buttons labeled +ENERGY, +RESEARCH, and +COLONY.)
-"You can afford it" is not the metric. There are a lot of things you can afford. The issue is 'is it a worthwhile investment', which is largely unrelated to 'can you afford it'
-Influence is much more abundant than 2 or 3 a month unless you're playing a hivemind; by the time megastructures are on the table you can pretty easily be getting 6-8 a month or more if you're playing anything with factions, and another 250 per 10 years if you're democratic (which you should be if you're pursuing an influence-heavy strategy like Habitats). That's enough to build anywhere from 2-5 habs in parallel, plus the 6 you had banked when you unlocked the perk. 29 habs is a pretty arbitrary amount to look at, since you don't actually need to match the energy output of a dyson sphere, but if that's the number we're looking at you can have that many built in about 30 years, which is half the time it takes to build the sphere before accounting for the fact that you can also start that project 30-50 years earlier. If two players attempted to each generate an arbitrary 1000 energy by these two strategies, the hab player would be done before the sphere player could start their sphere, and would be generating a bunch of science as well, and would have spent fewer minerals on the construction.
-This 'every pop is a resource drag' bit is incorrect. Every pop is a net gain in resources, which is why empires with more pops are generally stronger (and why there's a pop-based research malus at all - to weaken the clear resource advantage of having more pops and throw a bone to tall play).
- "But you've ruined your research" No, you haven't, because by your own math we're now also generating a percentage of the research of a science nexus on top of our ostentatiously large energy production, whereas the megastructure player is still trying to build phase 1 of his dyson sphere and won't even be able to start on his science nexus for decades, on top of which you have to contend with the fact that the marginal value of research has dropped dramatically by the time we're looking at habs/megastructures, because you've unlocked all the ship hulls and building techs and are now likely spending most of your research on repeatables - which matter, but matter a lot less than E.G. unlocking battleships or T3 power plants.
-"unless you add an arbitrary measure like time to win, turtle strategies are just as successful as aggressive strategies" Yes, unless you measure a strategy's success by its objective ability to achieve its goal (whatever your personally-defined victory condition may be), all strategies are equally successful always because there's no metric by which to compare them. This is simultaneously true and meaningless.
Like, no matter what your playstyle is and whether or not you value 'getting the victory screen' you still have an objective and a victory condition. You are trying to do something, whether it's 'get the victory screen' or 'get everyone into my federation' or 'survive the crisis' or 'terraform every planet into a gaia world' or or 'eat all other lifeforms' or 'get the victory screen with only one planet' or whatever. There is a condition under which you will look at the game and go 'well, I think I won' and then stop playing. No matter what that condition is, megastructures will never get you there faster or easier than a different mechanic (tautological 'build a bunch of ringworlds' goals notwithstanding). They're objectively not a powerful strategy. If you have a goal and you can achieve that goal in 200 years with megastructures but in only 150 years without them, megastructures are not a good way of achieving that goal. Maybe you don't care about that and want to use them anyway, and that's fine and a perfectly valid way to play. Go nuts! Build as many dyson spheres as you want in your endless six hundred year game! But they still won't be a powerful way of achieving that goal compared to the faster, more effective alternative, "but I like them" does not change that, and you should be able to recognize that the silly shit you do for fun against helpless low-difficulty AIs in your single-player game does not define the objective power level of a game piece.
If someone showed up in the thread and said "Hey, I've started to play on Hard with High AI aggression because I want the game to be challenging, but I'm having trouble surviving on that difficulty once the FEs start to awaken, do you guys have any advice that can help me win?" and you said "Oh, build ringworlds, they're really powerful", you would be clearly wrong, and no amount of "well, I like them for getting more value of out of my limited space when I'm playing my single-planet no-frontier-outpost imperial authority fanatic pacifist/xenophobe race that doesn't do war OR diplomacy, and they're basically free if you don't build anything else and let your minerals cap for a hundred years" will make your advice a helpful answer to the question being asked, because 'what things are powerful' is not really the subjective opinion-based question we're trying really hard to turn it into.
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
It'd be pretty neat to have stellaris eventually set up so that you can have advance start civs who aren't all jerks, and the ones that are jerks are busy having conflicts with the non-jerk ones. The friendly ones will like, nurture your young civilisation and gift you tech or help you advance in ways that they think are promising, if you agree.
something like Star Trek's Vulcans and earth, except maybe not so standoffish
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
It'd be pretty neat to have stellaris eventually set up so that you can have advance start civs who aren't all jerks, and the ones that are jerks are busy having conflicts with the non-jerk ones. The friendly ones will like, nurture your young civilisation and gift you tech or help you advance in ways that they think are promising, if you agree.
something like Star Trek's Vulcans and earth, except maybe not so standoffish
Isn't the ideology of advanced start civs random already?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I really like the idea of junior versions of the science nexus, sentry station and dyson sphere being accessible earlier and built on over more time. Maybe habitats too. Maybe combine them all into megastations that start as small habitats, and can have science nexus parts and big solar panels added on to them. Maybe make them mobile, Death Star style.
Having smaller mega structures in play in the earlier game would also add legit military targets other than going fleet hunting and invading worlds. Right now, destroying space stations or defense stations is kind of an annoyance since they aren't hard to rebuild and aren't game changers for the empire that owns them. But a station that has 5-10 pops on it and is putting out 15 of each science and 15 energy? It might be worth making a run at those with small fleets, or keeping some fleets back to defend your own from cheap shots.
I really like the idea of junior versions of the science nexus, sentry station and dyson sphere being accessible earlier and built on over more time. Maybe habitats too. Maybe combine them all into megastations that start as small habitats, and can have science nexus parts and big solar panels added on to them. Maybe make them mobile, Death Star style.
Having smaller mega structures in play in the earlier game would also add legit military targets other than going fleet hunting and invading worlds. Right now, destroying space stations or defense stations is kind of an annoyance since they aren't hard to rebuild and aren't game changers for the empire that owns them. But a station that has 5-10 pops on it and is putting out 15 of each science and 15 energy? It might be worth making a run at those with small fleets, or keeping some fleets back to defend your own from cheap shots.
Isn't this just the new starbases in 2.0?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
This 'every pop is a resource drag' bit is incorrect. Every pop is a net gain in resources, which is why empires with more pops are generally stronger (and why there's a pop-based research malus at all - to weaken the clear resource advantage of having more pops and throw a bone to tall play).
Pops are a net gain on the resource they produce, they consume the others.
All pops consume minerals and food, and, with the exception of Power, shield, and silo workers, all employed pops use power.
Though I was using a completely wrong formulation for consumer good cost, which is apparently:
"0.5 + 0.01x(planets-1)"
Not: "One?"
So it apparently doubles @50 planets; which is the sort of oddly subtle malus/bonus I'm interesting in mapping.
And then, I'mma Superman 2 all those hundredths of a mineral and retire a happy fungus.
This 'every pop is a resource drag' bit is incorrect. Every pop is a net gain in resources, which is why empires with more pops are generally stronger (and why there's a pop-based research malus at all - to weaken the clear resource advantage of having more pops and throw a bone to tall play).
Pops are a net gain on the resource they produce, they consume the others.
All pops consume minerals and food, and, with the exception of Power, shield, and silo workers, all employed pops use power.
Though I was using a completely wrong formulation for consumer good cost, which is apparently:
"0.5 + 0.01x(planets-1)"
Not: "One?"
So it apparently doubles @50 planets; which is the sort of oddly subtle malus/bonus I'm interesting in mapping.
And then, I'mma Superman 2 all those hundredths of a mineral and retire a happy fungus.
...yes, and the amount they produce is substantially larger than the amount they consume, which is what a 'net gain' is.
Like, if you have 1 pop producing 5 food, 1 pop producing 5 minerals, and 1 pop producing 5 energy, and you grow until you have two pops on each type of yield, you now have more net food, more net minerals, and more net energy than the guy with only 3 total pops. Please tell me we have not yet reached the point where this, too, is a controversial claim.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited February 2018
Y’know I’d be down for a HoI-esque Lend Lease system for Stellaris.
Being able to basically rent or rent out military designs to other Empires would add a pretty neat layer to things I think.
Would also be a nice boon to more economy focused Empires. It’d also be a boon to the more militarily focused Empires too.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
It'd be pretty neat to have stellaris eventually set up so that you can have advance start civs who aren't all jerks, and the ones that are jerks are busy having conflicts with the non-jerk ones. The friendly ones will like, nurture your young civilisation and gift you tech or help you advance in ways that they think are promising, if you agree.
something like Star Trek's Vulcans and earth, except maybe not so standoffish
Isn't the ideology of advanced start civs random already?
yeah it's random but that means you could start off next to an awful aggressive advanced start AI with no nice ones nearby and you're possibly fucked, might as well restart. it obviously makes sense that that could actually happen, but it's not so fun in a game (most of the time)
something like spawning advanced start AIs in pairs, close-ish to each other, one that is more aggressive and one that is more likely to help younger races and defend them from the big aggressor.
I've been rewatching some of Star Trek Enterprise lately (yes I know it's not great but I still like parts of it) and the relationship of the Vulcans with Starfleet is the sort of thing I'm thinking of, especially since the Vulcans help them against the Klingons a few times etc
I really like the idea of junior versions of the science nexus, sentry station and dyson sphere being accessible earlier and built on over more time. Maybe habitats too. Maybe combine them all into megastations that start as small habitats, and can have science nexus parts and big solar panels added on to them. Maybe make them mobile, Death Star style.
Having smaller mega structures in play in the earlier game would also add legit military targets other than going fleet hunting and invading worlds. Right now, destroying space stations or defense stations is kind of an annoyance since they aren't hard to rebuild and aren't game changers for the empire that owns them. But a station that has 5-10 pops on it and is putting out 15 of each science and 15 energy? It might be worth making a run at those with small fleets, or keeping some fleets back to defend your own from cheap shots.
Isn't this just the new starbases in 2.0?
I wamt to say I remember some vague reference to that, but I can't recall if it was just a musing.
I am pretty sure they're pushing the megastructure tech back further, ZP to 4 and ME to 5, so that would seem needlessly cruel if they didn't add something earlier in the tech pipe.
But, they're also removing pop malus and reducing planet malus to Unity and research, greatly improving Habitats; so that will easily balance out (though further marginalize them as novelties).
Edit: Are they changing the effects of the MS to be empire wide % boosts? I found grumblings on the forum about it, but couldn't find the dev diary.
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
It'd be pretty neat to have stellaris eventually set up so that you can have advance start civs who aren't all jerks, and the ones that are jerks are busy having conflicts with the non-jerk ones. The friendly ones will like, nurture your young civilisation and gift you tech or help you advance in ways that they think are promising, if you agree.
something like Star Trek's Vulcans and earth, except maybe not so standoffish
Isn't the ideology of advanced start civs random already?
yeah it's random but that means you could start off next to an awful aggressive advanced start AI with no nice ones nearby and you're possibly fucked, might as well restart. it obviously makes sense that that could actually happen, but it's not so fun in a game (most of the time)
something like spawning advanced start AIs in pairs, close-ish to each other, one that is more aggressive and one that is more likely to help younger races and defend them from the big aggressor.
I've been rewatching some of Star Trek Enterprise lately (yes I know it's not great but I still like parts of it) and the relationship of the Vulcans with Starfleet is the sort of thing I'm thinking of, especially since the Vulcans help them against the Klingons a few times etc
or you could go with the vorlon/shadow ideology from Babylon-5.
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
It'd be pretty neat to have stellaris eventually set up so that you can have advance start civs who aren't all jerks, and the ones that are jerks are busy having conflicts with the non-jerk ones. The friendly ones will like, nurture your young civilisation and gift you tech or help you advance in ways that they think are promising, if you agree.
something like Star Trek's Vulcans and earth, except maybe not so standoffish
Isn't the ideology of advanced start civs random already?
yeah it's random but that means you could start off next to an awful aggressive advanced start AI with no nice ones nearby and you're possibly fucked, might as well restart. it obviously makes sense that that could actually happen, but it's not so fun in a game (most of the time)
something like spawning advanced start AIs in pairs, close-ish to each other, one that is more aggressive and one that is more likely to help younger races and defend them from the big aggressor.
I've been rewatching some of Star Trek Enterprise lately (yes I know it's not great but I still like parts of it) and the relationship of the Vulcans with Starfleet is the sort of thing I'm thinking of, especially since the Vulcans help them against the Klingons a few times etc
or you could go with the vorlon/shadow ideology from Babylon-5.
oh heck yeah
that would be a pretty funny reference to put in there too. sometimes you get two AI civs who offer you loads of tech and ships but in exchange you must destroy their rival
one of them keeps asking you who you are, the other keeps asking what you want
I really like the idea of junior versions of the science nexus, sentry station and dyson sphere being accessible earlier and built on over more time. Maybe habitats too. Maybe combine them all into megastations that start as small habitats, and can have science nexus parts and big solar panels added on to them. Maybe make them mobile, Death Star style.
Having smaller mega structures in play in the earlier game would also add legit military targets other than going fleet hunting and invading worlds. Right now, destroying space stations or defense stations is kind of an annoyance since they aren't hard to rebuild and aren't game changers for the empire that owns them. But a station that has 5-10 pops on it and is putting out 15 of each science and 15 energy? It might be worth making a run at those with small fleets, or keeping some fleets back to defend your own from cheap shots.
Isn't this just the new starbases in 2.0?
I guess? Hadn't read up on that yet, sounds awesome.
Moving stations would still be a cool Nomad feature though.
This 'every pop is a resource drag' bit is incorrect. Every pop is a net gain in resources, which is why empires with more pops are generally stronger (and why there's a pop-based research malus at all - to weaken the clear resource advantage of having more pops and throw a bone to tall play).
Pops are a net gain on the resource they produce, they consume the others.
All pops consume minerals and food, and, with the exception of Power, shield, and silo workers, all employed pops use power.
Though I was using a completely wrong formulation for consumer good cost, which is apparently:
"0.5 + 0.01x(planets-1)"
Not: "One?"
So it apparently doubles @50 planets; which is the sort of oddly subtle malus/bonus I'm interesting in mapping.
And then, I'mma Superman 2 all those hundredths of a mineral and retire a happy fungus.
...yes, and the amount they produce is substantially larger than the amount they consume, which is what a 'net gain' is.
Like, if you have 1 pop producing 5 food, 1 pop producing 5 minerals, and 1 pop producing 5 energy, and you grow until you have two pops on each type of yield, you now have more net food, more net minerals, and more net energy than the guy with only 3 total pops. Please tell me we have not yet reached the point where this, too, is a controversial claim.
I don't see where our statements conflict?
-Employed pops consume food, minerals, and (usually) power (technically the building does that).
-Pops produce a net gain of the resource to which they are assigned.
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
I think the best way to balance this might be to make it so that shared techs still need to be fully researched, but they always show up on the list like they'd been found in wreckage or something. So, like, you couldn't dump the "Free Ascension Perk" tech on some newly uplifted empire without crushing their society research for ninety years. Oh, and require that prerequisites still be met so you don't get empires that know about battlecruisers but not destroyers.
this may have been mentioned before but in multiplayer games there really needs to be "a way" to share a specific technology. If i partner up with someone there shouldn't be a reason i can't teach them a particular tech. I don't mind if there are credit/mineral/personnel costs but something. Especially if joined into a federation.
I think the best way to balance this might be to make it so that shared techs still need to be fully researched, but they always show up on the list like they'd been found in wreckage or something. So, like, you couldn't dump the "Free Ascension Perk" tech on some newly uplifted empire without crushing their society research for ninety years. Oh, and require that prerequisites still be met so you don't get empires that know about battlecruisers but not destroyers.
maybe, although that list could get long...i think the higher tech civ should have to "send" the tech for a cost and the receiving civ should have a cost to learn it, but there needs to be some way to do it.
Alternately, deals similar to the subject status you can take with awakened materialists could be made available to players - paying (or gifting, if you're trying to bootstrap an ally) a percentage of your research output to another empire the same way you can trade or gift monthly credits and minerals.
Set it up like a trade deal. The parameters should be specifying a technology known by the donor whose prerequisites are met by the recipient and a number quantifying how many beakers should be devoted by the donor towards research assistance.
Merely opening a research trade agreement should grant the recipient a research project for the tech similar to what they'd get from salvaging technology from wreckage. Perhaps give them a good head start since they've got a working example to study rather than a burnt out husk. The recipient needs to learn the technology themselves.
The research assistance beakers should be a commitment from the donor to dedicate a certain number of research beakers towards assisting with the research project over a given time period. This investment should not directly assist with the research progress, instead it should provide a research multiplier for magnifying the recipient's research efforts. Zero assistance beakers would be the equivalent of sending the recipient a working copy of the device in question alongside a memo that says "Good luck :^)", while a large commitment of beakers represents granting access to experts in the field to tutor the recipient researchers.
Set it up like a trade deal. The parameters should be specifying a technology known by the donor whose prerequisites are met by the recipient and a number quantifying how many beakers should be devoted by the donor towards research assistance.
Merely opening a research trade agreement should grant the recipient a research project for the tech similar to what they'd get from salvaging technology from wreckage. Perhaps give them a good head start since they've got a working example to study rather than a burnt out husk. The recipient needs to learn the technology themselves.
The research assistance beakers should be a commitment from the donor to dedicate a certain number of research beakers towards assisting with the research project over a given time period. This investment should not directly assist with the research progress, instead it should provide a research multiplier for magnifying the recipient's research efforts. Zero assistance beakers would be the equivalent of sending the recipient a working copy of the device in question alongside a memo that says "Good luck :^)", while a large commitment of beakers represents granting access to experts in the field to tutor the recipient researchers.
This strikes a nice balance on the trope of swapping tech like trading cards and Stellaris's black-box research agreement. If you want to go simpler, I would like just a compartmentalized research agreement. Pick the tech you're willing to assist on, that tech can be chosen at will by the partner who gets the bonus. A requestor could just choose from a list of all unlocked tech for them, so they can't just have a look at the trade window to see what your situation is.
That's one aspect of the classic way that bugs me, "Hey, I see your skunkworks just wrapped up Project [REDACTED], wanna trade for this marginally better fertilizer we phased out a decade ago?"
No, and if you'll excuse me, I have some executions to schedule.
Alternately, deals similar to the subject status you can take with awakened materialists could be made available to players - paying (or gifting, if you're trying to bootstrap an ally) a percentage of your research output to another empire the same way you can trade or gift monthly credits and minerals.
Some other game I liked does this.. DW:U? Star Ruler?
Can't remember, but it's a nice, easy way to give some trade leverage to Science empires without having to give the farm away for every 10 years to their trade partners.
I think I'm on the verge of winning my first game of Stellaris. Was able to exterminate the FE to my SW, and I've just completely snowballed since. Thanks to everyone for all the advice you've given. At this point I'm way stronger than anything on the map provided an endgame crisis doesn't pop up, but I have an open ascendancy slot just in case one does.
Trying a new game, this time with inward perfectionist xenophobe/pacifist. I think I'm doing well so far! I've taken two hyperdrive choke points so now there is a massive chunk of galaxy that no one can get to but me, filled with all the planets I'm going to colonize. In this blocked off chunk is the Cybrex Ringworld which I recently uncovered, so that will be mine too. My fleet is strong, my science is advanced, and apparently the diplomacy tradition is completely removed on inward perfectionist and replaced with Adaptability, making colonizing things easier.
Sure, everyone hates me, but they normally do that anyway. But I'm really liking all the bonuses the inward things gives me.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Trying a new game, this time with inward perfectionist xenophobe/pacifist. I think I'm doing well so far! I've taken two hyperdrive choke points so now there is a massive chunk of galaxy that no one can get to but me, filled with all the planets I'm going to colonize. In this blocked off chunk is the Cybrex Ringworld which I recently uncovered, so that will be mine too. My fleet is strong, my science is advanced, and apparently the diplomacy tradition is completely removed on inward perfectionist and replaced with Adaptability, making colonizing things easier.
Sure, everyone hates me, but they normally do that anyway. But I'm really liking all the bonuses the inward things gives me.
It's so good for sprawling across the galaxy. Get agrarian idyll to make farms generate unity (and later with your adaptability tradition you'll get minerals from them, too!) and rush the expansion tradition.
I have an unstoppably huge empire now, that's never traded or dealt with any alien empire, and none of them have dared mess with me because my fleet is overwhelmingly powerful in comparison. Shame the political faction's bonus mood to peace caps at 50 years. I've had 130 years of no conflict so far.
I had the amazing good fortune to be spawned near the galactic core, so my initial frontier outposts covered a lot more stars with greater yields than I would've gotten out on the fringe. Also had a gaia planet protected by a measly 4k strong fleet, so that became my new capital as soon as I had the fleet strength to take it.
I'm up against the galactic rim, but its nor so bad. Means I could block off a huge chunk of real estate that no one can colonize without going through me, and no one can go through me. So I can expand upwards into the area other people can actually reach until its all filled, and still have shitloads of open space to expand into.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Trying a new game, this time with inward perfectionist xenophobe/pacifist. I think I'm doing well so far! I've taken two hyperdrive choke points so now there is a massive chunk of galaxy that no one can get to but me, filled with all the planets I'm going to colonize. In this blocked off chunk is the Cybrex Ringworld which I recently uncovered, so that will be mine too. My fleet is strong, my science is advanced, and apparently the diplomacy tradition is completely removed on inward perfectionist and replaced with Adaptability, making colonizing things easier.
Sure, everyone hates me, but they normally do that anyway. But I'm really liking all the bonuses the inward things gives me.
It's so good for sprawling across the galaxy. Get agrarian idyll to make farms generate unity (and later with your adaptability tradition you'll get minerals from them, too!) and rush the expansion tradition.
I have an unstoppably huge empire now, that's never traded or dealt with any alien empire, and none of them have dared mess with me because my fleet is overwhelmingly powerful in comparison. Shame the political faction's bonus mood to peace caps at 50 years. I've had 130 years of no conflict so far.
I had the amazing good fortune to be spawned near the galactic core, so my initial frontier outposts covered a lot more stars with greater yields than I would've gotten out on the fringe. Also had a gaia planet protected by a measly 4k strong fleet, so that became my new capital as soon as I had the fleet strength to take it.
that build rushes through unity so damn quick is feels like cheating.
of course you can never actually go to war ever unless you want to tank your empire for decades.
Trying a new game, this time with inward perfectionist xenophobe/pacifist. I think I'm doing well so far! I've taken two hyperdrive choke points so now there is a massive chunk of galaxy that no one can get to but me, filled with all the planets I'm going to colonize. In this blocked off chunk is the Cybrex Ringworld which I recently uncovered, so that will be mine too. My fleet is strong, my science is advanced, and apparently the diplomacy tradition is completely removed on inward perfectionist and replaced with Adaptability, making colonizing things easier.
Sure, everyone hates me, but they normally do that anyway. But I'm really liking all the bonuses the inward things gives me.
It's so good for sprawling across the galaxy. Get agrarian idyll to make farms generate unity (and later with your adaptability tradition you'll get minerals from them, too!) and rush the expansion tradition.
I have an unstoppably huge empire now, that's never traded or dealt with any alien empire, and none of them have dared mess with me because my fleet is overwhelmingly powerful in comparison. Shame the political faction's bonus mood to peace caps at 50 years. I've had 130 years of no conflict so far.
I had the amazing good fortune to be spawned near the galactic core, so my initial frontier outposts covered a lot more stars with greater yields than I would've gotten out on the fringe. Also had a gaia planet protected by a measly 4k strong fleet, so that became my new capital as soon as I had the fleet strength to take it.
that build rushes through unity so damn quick is feels like cheating.
of course you can never actually go to war ever unless you want to tank your empire for decades.
Yeah, I've already got the science one, the expansion one, and the adaptation one completed, working on prosperity now and it's not even halfway through the early game yet.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
It'd be an interesting rolepaying playthorugh to play xenophobic isolationists who get annoyed and go full exterminator on the galaxy
Horizon Signal spoilers:
Or a peacful species of monks who peers too long into the void and remembers that their claws are for shedding the blood their enemies, not drawing in sand.
The worm event chain will flip you to militant at some point, I was tempted to go with that, but I was specifically testing out the whole "Don't kill everyone" concept.
So of course that was the first and only time that event chain popped up.
In my one planet challenge game, I finally had to break the one planet rule and settle some worlds. The galaxy is organised into 3 main blocks: My federation, and two more groups of three allied empires. I'm not sure why those empire haven't formed federations, maybe they didn't take the tradition. One of the empires has almost half the map and is our main rival, but we just beat them pretty soundly in a war where I occupied all of their core world with my super android troops. I am the strongest non-FE empire but I think some of them still have bigger fleets than me (I haven't hit my fleet cap yet). But one of the FE's just woke up. I'm trying to fight a quick war to vassalize one of the bigger empires to get more fleet capacity before we have to fight the FE. I have a complete science nexus and my Dyson sphere is about to finally start producing energy, so I'll be in business and ready to smack that FE around soon enough. But I need more space ports for faster fleet production, so the colony ships finally went out.
there is so much stuff coming from the update i can hardly wait...fleet management, borders, planet upgrade icons, new perks, /weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I'm having a real hard time keeping myself from playing before the expansion. On the one hand I want to wait because these changes are what I've wanted from the start. On the other I really miss Stellaris!
Maybe I should play a really non-military campaign to tide myself over. Play a Ferengi like race that's all about economy and subterfuge instead of actually fighting. Hrm I wonder if that's possible in Stellaris actually?
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I'm having a real hard time keeping myself from playing before the expansion. On the one hand I want to wait because these changes are what I've wanted from the start. On the other I really miss Stellaris!
Maybe I should play a really non-military campaign to tide myself over. Play a Ferengi like race that's all about economy and subterfuge instead of actually fighting. Hrm I wonder if that's possible in Stellaris actually?
It'd be pretty hard
these always some empires who hate everything and no amount of bribery will keep them off you
I'm having a real hard time keeping myself from playing before the expansion. On the one hand I want to wait because these changes are what I've wanted from the start. On the other I really miss Stellaris!
Maybe I should play a really non-military campaign to tide myself over. Play a Ferengi like race that's all about economy and subterfuge instead of actually fighting. Hrm I wonder if that's possible in Stellaris actually?
Well not normally because eventually you will run into someone who will just declare war on you, so you need either lots of allies or a bigger fleet
Could you not just agree to become vassals and then plot your inevitable betrayal of them? I guess some will just outright want to annihilate you. Might still be fun to see how far I can get heh.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
I'm having a real hard time keeping myself from playing before the expansion. On the one hand I want to wait because these changes are what I've wanted from the start. On the other I really miss Stellaris!
Maybe I should play a really non-military campaign to tide myself over. Play a Ferengi like race that's all about economy and subterfuge instead of actually fighting. Hrm I wonder if that's possible in Stellaris actually?
Well not normally because eventually you will run into someone who will just declare war on you, so you need either lots of allies or a bigger fleet
It's also super hard to influence relations between third parties, which I would consider essential to subterfuge.
You can, at best, get them a little friendlier if they join your federation (but they already need to not hate one another). And the only way I can think to degrade relations is to give them a system that abuts the empire you want them to fight and hope the border tension effect gets it rolling.
Could you not just agree to become vassals and then plot your inevitable betrayal of them? I guess some will just outright want to annihilate you. Might still be fun to see how far I can get heh.
Request is only accepted by empires holding a Protective or Domineering attitude, which both require inferior relative power.
Reroll your starts until you land near an Advanced Start empire, and throw yourself at their feet. You'll be playing Tall with an 80% research boost as a Protectorate until you hit 50% of their tech level.
You can't expand your borders once protected, so plan accordingly. I have seen AIs in my federations throw war spoils (systems) to vassals, so you may still get to expand a bit. You can probably gift them to your benevolent overlord if you don't want to.
It would be hard to play as space merchants considering Stellaris has no trading-as-moneymaking or trade routes system right now. You could make diplomatic deals where you give things for monthly income, but the AI is really stingy about trading its resources so it's not likely to work. The hard caps on your resources also make becoming space billionaires kind of pointless.
Endless Space 2 has a powerful trading system. Or just play EUIV if you have it.
Well the point is to find a no-combat playthrough idea for Stellaris to mess around with until the new stuff hits in a couple of weeks, but I don't think that's really sounding viable or particularly interesting so far as it has been discussed. It seems best to wait. Stellaris is awesome and has many strengths, but this perhaps is not one of them.
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Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
-"You can afford it" is not the metric. There are a lot of things you can afford. The issue is 'is it a worthwhile investment', which is largely unrelated to 'can you afford it'
-Influence is much more abundant than 2 or 3 a month unless you're playing a hivemind; by the time megastructures are on the table you can pretty easily be getting 6-8 a month or more if you're playing anything with factions, and another 250 per 10 years if you're democratic (which you should be if you're pursuing an influence-heavy strategy like Habitats). That's enough to build anywhere from 2-5 habs in parallel, plus the 6 you had banked when you unlocked the perk. 29 habs is a pretty arbitrary amount to look at, since you don't actually need to match the energy output of a dyson sphere, but if that's the number we're looking at you can have that many built in about 30 years, which is half the time it takes to build the sphere before accounting for the fact that you can also start that project 30-50 years earlier. If two players attempted to each generate an arbitrary 1000 energy by these two strategies, the hab player would be done before the sphere player could start their sphere, and would be generating a bunch of science as well, and would have spent fewer minerals on the construction.
-This 'every pop is a resource drag' bit is incorrect. Every pop is a net gain in resources, which is why empires with more pops are generally stronger (and why there's a pop-based research malus at all - to weaken the clear resource advantage of having more pops and throw a bone to tall play).
- "But you've ruined your research" No, you haven't, because by your own math we're now also generating a percentage of the research of a science nexus on top of our ostentatiously large energy production, whereas the megastructure player is still trying to build phase 1 of his dyson sphere and won't even be able to start on his science nexus for decades, on top of which you have to contend with the fact that the marginal value of research has dropped dramatically by the time we're looking at habs/megastructures, because you've unlocked all the ship hulls and building techs and are now likely spending most of your research on repeatables - which matter, but matter a lot less than E.G. unlocking battleships or T3 power plants.
-"unless you add an arbitrary measure like time to win, turtle strategies are just as successful as aggressive strategies" Yes, unless you measure a strategy's success by its objective ability to achieve its goal (whatever your personally-defined victory condition may be), all strategies are equally successful always because there's no metric by which to compare them. This is simultaneously true and meaningless.
Like, no matter what your playstyle is and whether or not you value 'getting the victory screen' you still have an objective and a victory condition. You are trying to do something, whether it's 'get the victory screen' or 'get everyone into my federation' or 'survive the crisis' or 'terraform every planet into a gaia world' or or 'eat all other lifeforms' or 'get the victory screen with only one planet' or whatever. There is a condition under which you will look at the game and go 'well, I think I won' and then stop playing. No matter what that condition is, megastructures will never get you there faster or easier than a different mechanic (tautological 'build a bunch of ringworlds' goals notwithstanding). They're objectively not a powerful strategy. If you have a goal and you can achieve that goal in 200 years with megastructures but in only 150 years without them, megastructures are not a good way of achieving that goal. Maybe you don't care about that and want to use them anyway, and that's fine and a perfectly valid way to play. Go nuts! Build as many dyson spheres as you want in your endless six hundred year game! But they still won't be a powerful way of achieving that goal compared to the faster, more effective alternative, "but I like them" does not change that, and you should be able to recognize that the silly shit you do for fun against helpless low-difficulty AIs in your single-player game does not define the objective power level of a game piece.
If someone showed up in the thread and said "Hey, I've started to play on Hard with High AI aggression because I want the game to be challenging, but I'm having trouble surviving on that difficulty once the FEs start to awaken, do you guys have any advice that can help me win?" and you said "Oh, build ringworlds, they're really powerful", you would be clearly wrong, and no amount of "well, I like them for getting more value of out of my limited space when I'm playing my single-planet no-frontier-outpost imperial authority fanatic pacifist/xenophobe race that doesn't do war OR diplomacy, and they're basically free if you don't build anything else and let your minerals cap for a hundred years" will make your advice a helpful answer to the question being asked, because 'what things are powerful' is not really the subjective opinion-based question we're trying really hard to turn it into.
It'd be pretty neat to have stellaris eventually set up so that you can have advance start civs who aren't all jerks, and the ones that are jerks are busy having conflicts with the non-jerk ones. The friendly ones will like, nurture your young civilisation and gift you tech or help you advance in ways that they think are promising, if you agree.
something like Star Trek's Vulcans and earth, except maybe not so standoffish
Isn't the ideology of advanced start civs random already?
Having smaller mega structures in play in the earlier game would also add legit military targets other than going fleet hunting and invading worlds. Right now, destroying space stations or defense stations is kind of an annoyance since they aren't hard to rebuild and aren't game changers for the empire that owns them. But a station that has 5-10 pops on it and is putting out 15 of each science and 15 energy? It might be worth making a run at those with small fleets, or keeping some fleets back to defend your own from cheap shots.
Isn't this just the new starbases in 2.0?
Pops are a net gain on the resource they produce, they consume the others.
All pops consume minerals and food, and, with the exception of Power, shield, and silo workers, all employed pops use power.
Though I was using a completely wrong formulation for consumer good cost, which is apparently:
"0.5 + 0.01x(planets-1)"
Not: "One?"
So it apparently doubles @50 planets; which is the sort of oddly subtle malus/bonus I'm interesting in mapping.
And then, I'mma Superman 2 all those hundredths of a mineral and retire a happy fungus.
...yes, and the amount they produce is substantially larger than the amount they consume, which is what a 'net gain' is.
Like, if you have 1 pop producing 5 food, 1 pop producing 5 minerals, and 1 pop producing 5 energy, and you grow until you have two pops on each type of yield, you now have more net food, more net minerals, and more net energy than the guy with only 3 total pops. Please tell me we have not yet reached the point where this, too, is a controversial claim.
Being able to basically rent or rent out military designs to other Empires would add a pretty neat layer to things I think.
Would also be a nice boon to more economy focused Empires. It’d also be a boon to the more militarily focused Empires too.
yeah it's random but that means you could start off next to an awful aggressive advanced start AI with no nice ones nearby and you're possibly fucked, might as well restart. it obviously makes sense that that could actually happen, but it's not so fun in a game (most of the time)
something like spawning advanced start AIs in pairs, close-ish to each other, one that is more aggressive and one that is more likely to help younger races and defend them from the big aggressor.
I've been rewatching some of Star Trek Enterprise lately (yes I know it's not great but I still like parts of it) and the relationship of the Vulcans with Starfleet is the sort of thing I'm thinking of, especially since the Vulcans help them against the Klingons a few times etc
I wamt to say I remember some vague reference to that, but I can't recall if it was just a musing.
I am pretty sure they're pushing the megastructure tech back further, ZP to 4 and ME to 5, so that would seem needlessly cruel if they didn't add something earlier in the tech pipe.
But, they're also removing pop malus and reducing planet malus to Unity and research, greatly improving Habitats; so that will easily balance out (though further marginalize them as novelties).
Edit: Are they changing the effects of the MS to be empire wide % boosts? I found grumblings on the forum about it, but couldn't find the dev diary.
or you could go with the vorlon/shadow ideology from Babylon-5.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
oh heck yeah
that would be a pretty funny reference to put in there too. sometimes you get two AI civs who offer you loads of tech and ships but in exchange you must destroy their rival
one of them keeps asking you who you are, the other keeps asking what you want
I guess? Hadn't read up on that yet, sounds awesome.
Moving stations would still be a cool Nomad feature though.
I don't see where our statements conflict?
-Employed pops consume food, minerals, and (usually) power (technically the building does that).
-Pops produce a net gain of the resource to which they are assigned.
I think the best way to balance this might be to make it so that shared techs still need to be fully researched, but they always show up on the list like they'd been found in wreckage or something. So, like, you couldn't dump the "Free Ascension Perk" tech on some newly uplifted empire without crushing their society research for ninety years. Oh, and require that prerequisites still be met so you don't get empires that know about battlecruisers but not destroyers.
maybe, although that list could get long...i think the higher tech civ should have to "send" the tech for a cost and the receiving civ should have a cost to learn it, but there needs to be some way to do it.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Merely opening a research trade agreement should grant the recipient a research project for the tech similar to what they'd get from salvaging technology from wreckage. Perhaps give them a good head start since they've got a working example to study rather than a burnt out husk. The recipient needs to learn the technology themselves.
The research assistance beakers should be a commitment from the donor to dedicate a certain number of research beakers towards assisting with the research project over a given time period. This investment should not directly assist with the research progress, instead it should provide a research multiplier for magnifying the recipient's research efforts. Zero assistance beakers would be the equivalent of sending the recipient a working copy of the device in question alongside a memo that says "Good luck :^)", while a large commitment of beakers represents granting access to experts in the field to tutor the recipient researchers.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
This strikes a nice balance on the trope of swapping tech like trading cards and Stellaris's black-box research agreement. If you want to go simpler, I would like just a compartmentalized research agreement. Pick the tech you're willing to assist on, that tech can be chosen at will by the partner who gets the bonus. A requestor could just choose from a list of all unlocked tech for them, so they can't just have a look at the trade window to see what your situation is.
That's one aspect of the classic way that bugs me, "Hey, I see your skunkworks just wrapped up Project [REDACTED], wanna trade for this marginally better fertilizer we phased out a decade ago?"
No, and if you'll excuse me, I have some executions to schedule.
Some other game I liked does this.. DW:U? Star Ruler?
Can't remember, but it's a nice, easy way to give some trade leverage to Science empires without having to give the farm away for every 10 years to their trade partners.
Sure, everyone hates me, but they normally do that anyway. But I'm really liking all the bonuses the inward things gives me.
It's so good for sprawling across the galaxy. Get agrarian idyll to make farms generate unity (and later with your adaptability tradition you'll get minerals from them, too!) and rush the expansion tradition.
I have an unstoppably huge empire now, that's never traded or dealt with any alien empire, and none of them have dared mess with me because my fleet is overwhelmingly powerful in comparison. Shame the political faction's bonus mood to peace caps at 50 years. I've had 130 years of no conflict so far.
I had the amazing good fortune to be spawned near the galactic core, so my initial frontier outposts covered a lot more stars with greater yields than I would've gotten out on the fringe. Also had a gaia planet protected by a measly 4k strong fleet, so that became my new capital as soon as I had the fleet strength to take it.
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that build rushes through unity so damn quick is feels like cheating.
of course you can never actually go to war ever unless you want to tank your empire for decades.
Yeah, I've already got the science one, the expansion one, and the adaptation one completed, working on prosperity now and it's not even halfway through the early game yet.
Horizon Signal spoilers:
The worm event chain will flip you to militant at some point, I was tempted to go with that, but I was specifically testing out the whole "Don't kill everyone" concept.
So of course that was the first and only time that event chain popped up.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Maybe I should play a really non-military campaign to tide myself over. Play a Ferengi like race that's all about economy and subterfuge instead of actually fighting. Hrm I wonder if that's possible in Stellaris actually?
It'd be pretty hard
these always some empires who hate everything and no amount of bribery will keep them off you
Well not normally because eventually you will run into someone who will just declare war on you, so you need either lots of allies or a bigger fleet
It's also super hard to influence relations between third parties, which I would consider essential to subterfuge.
You can, at best, get them a little friendlier if they join your federation (but they already need to not hate one another). And the only way I can think to degrade relations is to give them a system that abuts the empire you want them to fight and hope the border tension effect gets it rolling.
I think you can do that.
Reroll your starts until you land near an Advanced Start empire, and throw yourself at their feet. You'll be playing Tall with an 80% research boost as a Protectorate until you hit 50% of their tech level.
You can't expand your borders once protected, so plan accordingly. I have seen AIs in my federations throw war spoils (systems) to vassals, so you may still get to expand a bit. You can probably gift them to your benevolent overlord if you don't want to.
Endless Space 2 has a powerful trading system. Or just play EUIV if you have it.
I just have a fleet so goddamned large that nobody dares invade me.
Also every planet has ~20 armies of psi-warriors.
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