|
Thyrork posted:Just to throw my voice into the chorus (again), I agree that chances for certain significant events (similar to AI Rebellions) leading to empires breaking apart into insane variants or embracing fanatical purifier mindsets would be neat.
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 16:29
|
|
And the option to take control of that rising fanatical purifier empire or beat its face in before it murders you all? Even sweeter.
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 03:20 |
|
|
I would just like more ways to shape my empire as the game progresses to reflect on how I have been playing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 16:32
|
|
|
AG3 posted:I'm pretty sure Wiz already said that empire breaking is something everyone asks for, but they always hate it when it happens to them and not just someone else. lol half your empire just emancipated itself because RNG - bad Expanded unrest and faction mechanics requiring you to occasionally murder sympathisers, pay attention to whatever is making the faction unhappy, nerve staple everyone etc, or ignore them and let unrest build until a well telegraphed rebellion or just telling them yeah just gently caress off and make your own empire whatever, followed by choosing which side to play as - good and fun Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 16:38
|
|
|
AG3 posted:I'm pretty sure Wiz already said that empire breaking is something everyone asks for, but they always hate it when it happens to them and not just someone else. Splicer posted:Depends how it's done. I mean yeah, I'd want it to be a consequence of actions. Handle your factions badly and they centralize enough on one world because you let people freely migrate? They're going to stir rebellion on that world. You oppress that faction and that world? End of the problem. You don't? Event chain might start where one of their leaders gets turned into a martyr, their faction grows. That chain of events spirals out of control as you continue to neglect a very real rot in your empire, eventually a handful of worlds break away, spawning a navy. Now you need to brutally put them down before more worlds join them. Like I said, similar to AI enslavement rebellion. You put the pieces together and have a chance for the event line to fire, and even then you can navigate it carefully enough for the rebellion to not explode into a full scale disaster. Oh, and you want to avoid it entirely? Run the police state civic. Suppress factions. Be authoritarian or a gestalt consciousness. Thyrork fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 16:54
|
|
|
AG3 posted:I'm pretty sure Wiz already said that empire breaking is something everyone asks for, but they always hate it when it happens to them and not just someone else. I think that the issues that people have with this is that they feel as though they don't have any agency in that situation, and that they don't have a clear route forward once a setback does happen. In my past games there have been plenty of situations where my fleets have been beaten, my planets occupied and the general situation seems pretty bleak. I don't mind that, because even in a lovely situation I can usually figure out a way to outmaneuver the AI and crawl my way back. The games and wars where things go very, very wrong are a lot more fun than the games where I've just steamrolled everything. On the other hand, it really sucks when I'm fighting a losing battle with a lot of key worlds occupied and the AI decides that no, gently caress you I have 100% war score and you're out of influence so I lose half my empire for what feels like an entirely arbitrary reason. Even that wouldn't be so bad if the game gave you more tools to work with if you lost a lot of territory. Unfortunately nerds voted for war instead of politics and diplomacy, so I guess we'll have to wait for stuff like that to be added. turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 17:16
|
|
|
I think a really good way of doing empire splits is giving you choices as to which part you want to play as, that way it's an opportunity to change your empire a lot if you want to.turn off the TV posted:On the other hand, it really sucks when I'm fighting a losing battle with a lot of key worlds occupied and the AI decides that no, gently caress you I have 100% war score and you're out of influence so I lose half my empire for what feels like an entirely arbitrary reason. Even that wouldn't be so bad if the game gave you more tools to work with if you lost a lot of territory. I mean that specifically is being addressed in the war patch.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
empire splits was one of the most annoying game mechanics in the total war series and i do not miss it in stellaris
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 17:58
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I mean that specifically is being addressed in the war patch. The claim system is, but not so much the aftermath of losing a big war. Bohemian Nights posted:empire splits was one of the most annoying game mechanics in the total war series and i do not miss it in stellaris It was implemented like trash in Rome 2 at release, but was reworked in a patch just this past November. Regions you capture and characters/general you recruit are assigned political parties or dynasties. Faction affiliation will slowly homogenize into distinct population blocs controlling specific regions. If you piss off one faction enough their characters and controlled provinces will revolt and switch sides, but you can avoid this by preventing their characters from becoming too powerful in ways that are integrated fully with the other mechanics (a general of an opposition party that wins lots of battles will generate them clout, etc.) and by interacting with a CYOA style event system. If you keep factions loyal to you they will never rebel, and alternatively you can intentionally weaken opposing factions by giving their aligned generals crappy armies and dumpstering them in a civil war. When one of my factions was on the verge of rebellion I was actually able to think back about what I had done to put myself in that situation and realize that I had been too careless in relying too much on generals belonging to the opposition party. However, I was able to fund various politician's public works belonging to my own party and a second smaller one, pay off members of the senate, and call back the opposition generals from the front lines and have them command defensive garrisons in favor of generals belonging to my own or neutral parties. As a result I did not have a civil war, and the political situation eventually stabilized enough to stop being much of an issue for the rest of the century. That is the kind of empire splitting that I like.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 18:26
|
|
|
turn off the TV posted:The claim system is, but not so much the aftermath of losing a big war.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 18:37
|
|
|
AG3 posted:I'm pretty sure Wiz already said that empire breaking is something everyone asks for, but they always hate it when it happens to them and not just someone else.  Ideally, an empire split would only be triggered by something major, like Alderaaning a planet, Mass starvation, or massive ethics shifts for example. Add options to lessen (or heighten) the chance of a split occurring for doing or letting those things happen.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 19:04
|
|
|
turn off the TV posted:The claim system is, but not so much the aftermath of losing a big war. Well if I understand right, the enemy can only claim what they actually take, so it should be possible to completely lose poorly defended areas but core worlds with good defences, including your main shipyards, might be untouchable. Also the fleet stances and fleet size penalties might facilitate fighting on the defensive which, combined with the lack of claims, should make "not winning" a different thing from "losing". It seems a lot more practical with the new system to have key systems with the bulk of your infrastructure in them which can't be taken except by actually, well, taking them, so that fixes a lot of the stupidity in wars.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 19:21
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Huh. Is this in the other Total Wars or just Rome 2? I'd be interested in Total Warhammer: Orc Politics Edition. Just Rome 2 because it's effectively a brand new system that only got patched into the game a few months ago. Before then politics was a Byzantine and arcane system that had little to no effect on the game and was best ignored altogether.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 19:32
|
|
|
Kalos posted:Just Rome 2 because it's effectively a brand new system that only got patched into the game a few months ago. Before then politics was a Byzantine and arcane system that had little to no effect on the game and was best ignored altogether.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 19:41
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Huh. Is this in the other Total Wars or just Rome 2? I'd be interested in Total Warhammer: Orc Politics Edition. Just Rome 2, it was revamped in the Power and Politics patch. I think that Thrones of Britannia might have something similar and I think that the Rome update was used as an experiment for it. A few of the Warhammer 2 races also have loyalty mechanics, but they're tied to individual lords rather than whole factions in a political system. Kalos posted:Just Rome 2 because it's effectively a brand new system that only got patched into the game a few months ago. Before then politics was a Byzantine and arcane system that had little to no effect on the game and was best ignored altogether. Your empire having a civil war was also based entirely off of its size, because that sounds like fun. e: And of course I googled the Rome 2 patch and one of the first results was someone on TWC upset that isn't there any reward for not having a civil war beyond not having a civil war. 
turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 19:42
|
|
|
1) I think rebellions should totally be a thing. I like the idea of it being tied to factions, so you got to keep them happy (or suppressed) to prevent breaking off. 2) It shouldn't be too difficult to prevent a rebellion from happening if you don't want it. And you should at least be able to see it coming soon if it is about to happen. Larger empires means more factions that have to be dealt with, which means more influence/resources are spent to keep them all pacified. 3) Allow us to customize the new faction a bit if the player decides to switch sides!!!!! Change its name, colors, civics, etc. Randomizing everything and THEN asking if we want it is backwards. Edit- post polishing. Ass_Burgerer fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:03
|
|
|
I harp on CK2 comparisons a lot and while I really don't want Stellaris to just be CK2 In Space, I do think that this kind of thing is something it does well. But it's also got a lot more gameplay mechanics invested into managing people as a method of managing the internal politics of the empire. It doesn't really gel well with the way Stellaris has factions, leaders, and internal territorial divisions as somewhat overlapping but not integrated systems.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:11
|
|
|
GunnerJ posted:I harp on CK2 comparisons a lot and while I really don't want Stellaris to just be CK2 In Space, I do think that this kind of thing is something it does well. But it's also got a lot more gameplay mechanics invested into managing people as a method of managing the internal politics of the empire. It doesn't really gel well with the way Stellaris has factions, leaders, and internal territorial divisions as somewhat overlapping but not integrated systems. I've said it before, but what stellaris really needs to become completely spectacular is a properly-synthesized political system. Connecting up factions, leaders and sectors into a cohesive whole would really just make things amazing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:24
|
|
|
An empire split is already in game but there isn’t really anything you can do to prevent it. It can fire even if you don’t have any robots built and halves your empire no matter what. Really what we want is branching story chains that can do radical things to your empire like the worm. Just got your rear end handed to you? Well you rolled a xenophobe faction event chain and anything from changing into a fanatic purifier to becoming pacifist xenophiles could be based on your choices in the chain. I assume an entire expansion would have to be dedicated to writing these things.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:28
|
|
|
NewMars posted:I've said it before, but what stellaris really needs to become completely spectacular is a properly-synthesized political system. Connecting up factions, leaders and sectors into a cohesive whole would really just make things amazing. Yeah, pops, factions, sectors, governors/leaders, happiness, the current rebellion system. None of them really link up together to create a nice unified and interesting whole. They've all been fiddled with so much since release but I'd so love a 2.0-level re-look at the general idea of internal politics to better link everything together.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:29
|
|
|
NewMars posted:I've said it before, but what stellaris really needs to become completely spectacular is a properly-synthesized political system. Connecting up factions, leaders and sectors into a cohesive whole would really just make things amazing. Also actual trade routes. Especially now that we're all being forced into hyperlanes you really should be able to hold the choke points and tax the poo poo out of trade between the spiral arms and then have your entire economy collapse when they crack open a wormhole that perfectly bypasses your empire.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:33
|
|
|
I honestly haven't played Stellaris in a while, and I'm just tickled pink by the fact that running an egalitarian empire that maintained friendly relations with various forms of autocrats and juntas would over time cause political shifts in their nation until they became steadily more democratic. My best friend and federation ally ended up going from honorbound warriors to federation builders, a ruthless capitalist megacorp became a peaceful trade league and most of the rest of the galaxy that I wasn't hostile to made slow shifts in that direction. It's the little touches like that which make Stellaris unique, and if it could be expanded on in a future DLC that would be fantastic.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:35
|
|
|
Tomn posted:I honestly haven't played Stellaris in a while, and I'm just tickled pink by the fact that running an egalitarian empire that maintained friendly relations with various forms of autocrats and juntas would over time cause political shifts in their nation until they became steadily more democratic. My best friend and federation ally ended up going from honorbound warriors to federation builders, a ruthless capitalist megacorp became a peaceful trade league and most of the rest of the galaxy that I wasn't hostile to made slow shifts in that direction. That stuff is neet but it's all too hidden in the background. There should be ways of better seeing/measuring these effects and even managing them. Pay influence or something to bump up your egalitarian pressure on your slaver neighbour, or piss off your domestic egalitarian faction by turning "off" that pressure because to make your slaver neighbour and ally happier. Interesting little political choices, soft power, that sort of thing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:40
|
|
|
Sectrors and trade routes could tie in well with the idea of galactic terrain too, having sub-sections of your empire with different political effects and have how you set them up create different fast travel routes through your empire could be quite interesting. One thing I liked with Civ 6 was how cities and trade routes set up roads and districts to change how the tiles worked in combat, you could do something similar with sectors having different levels of investment into maintaining their space, different degrees of sensor coverage and different levels of traffic producing different speeds in system, and possibly the chance of having patrol fleets help out in combat or more chance of pirate attacks tying up a fleet to maintain security in the sector. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:44
|
|
|
A planet rebelled as I was invading it and it sent my fleet MIA and I think the armies were just gone. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 21:01
|
|
|
Comrayn posted:A planet rebelled as I was invading it and it sent my fleet MIA and I think the armies were just gone. Once I had a group of dropships get trapped midwarp. I could click on them but I couldn't disband them or do anything else. Poor souls, lost to the Warp.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 21:23
|
|
|
There is a bug where armies can vanish if they land on allied planets at the same time as an AI is doing so, and stop existing except in the sidebar. I assume Comrayn's invasion thing is related. I have no idea what happened to Artificer's guys though, lost to the Warp is the best guess 
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 22:18
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Sectrors and trade routes could tie in well with the idea of galactic terrain too, having sub-sections of your empire with different political effects and have how you set them up create different fast travel routes through your empire could be quite interesting. I remember before release they were talking about how the game had 3 'phases'. Exploration, Colonization, Empire. It'd be cool if the game locked you in a little more to an early game progression where you can't make sectors until the late game. Every colony you make early on becomes a vassal state of its own until you get to the midgame where you can control more planets. Core sector planets become a hard cap, etc. The game desperately needs more content before that's viable though. Right now planet tiles is the only thing to do besides exploration in the early game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 22:45
|
|
|
Tomn posted:I honestly haven't played Stellaris in a while, and I'm just tickled pink by the fact that running an egalitarian empire that maintained friendly relations with various forms of autocrats and juntas would over time cause political shifts in their nation until they became steadily more democratic. My best friend and federation ally ended up going from honorbound warriors to federation builders, a ruthless capitalist megacorp became a peaceful trade league and most of the rest of the galaxy that I wasn't hostile to made slow shifts in that direction. I had the opposite happen. My materialist bird-dragons got friendly with some actual and strongly religious birds and they caused several of my pops to become spiritualists themselves. Then those new pops formed a new faction. Which is now constantly unhappy. At first because they were spiritualists trapped inside a deeply materialist science republic, now it's because I've decided since the last three elections all went to the most materialist faction of them all they should now be suppressed. To annoy them even more I started to build robots on their colony, too. For some reason they also hate that. I'm getting the feeling all this alien pacifism and religion-crap is slowly causing a deep rift inside our empire. Too bad we also accidentally insulted the Humans to our west by prying one of their space coffins open. Luckily it seems the determined exterminators from the galactic rim are on their way to save us from our own bad political decisions. They showed up just in time to prevent war between our awesome democratic republic and our imperialist Human neighbors. Now we just have to find out how to deal with those killer-robots before they reach our borders!
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 22:48
|
|
|
unfortunately, sector-based politics arn't really practical when sectors are highly and dynamically mutable... when we did have sector politics and planetary independence movements, it was easy to mess both up by taking planets into and out of sectors. the biggest problem with empire splits is not seeing them in optimal play; good players are essentially rewarded with boredom, cuz all the interesting stuff only results from screwing up. But the converse is essentially unavoidable problems and possibly sameyness between games; it's a tough thing to balance. quote:I would just like more ways to shape my empire as the game progresses to reflect on how I have been playing. What's lacking? You can change your governing ethics, and your pops ethics shift based on their circumstances and empire modifiers over the course of the game. The main thing you can't do is go Full Dalek midgame. E: Although i do think its a bit easy to 'coast' in your ethics. IMO events in general should be tougher choices with deeper impacts on your empire, such that in order to get the optimal +5% EC you might have to really piss off one of your factions, at least temporarily; essentially events that encourage you to choose between realpolitik and your ideology. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 22:52
|
|
|
TheDeadlyShoe posted:unfortunately, sector-based politics arn't really practical when sectors are highly and dynamically mutable... when we did have sector politics and planetary independence movements, it was easy to mess both up by taking planets into and out of sectors. It would accompany sectors being more immutable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 22:57
|
|
|
That's something they've explicitly moved away from though. You could still do a mechanic that works similarly, like having the game create a region associated with a political movement that you have no direct control over - seperate from the sector mechanic.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 22:59
|
|
|
TheDeadlyShoe posted:unfortunately, sector-based politics arn't really practical when sectors are highly and dynamically mutable... when we did have sector politics and planetary independence movements, it was easy to mess both up by taking planets into and out of sectors. 1) Robot them up anyway. gently caress 'em, you know what's good for them. Result: Increased unrest, negative opinion modifiers from egalitarian and spiritual empires and your own egalitarian pops, maybe an angry faction, but you gain a bunch of influence and/or unity for sticking to your guns. 2) Tell them if they don't like it they can leave. Result: Some pops refugee away to another empire, that empire likes you less because you were dicks to their new subjects and/or flooded them with refugees. 3a) Give them a few planets and tell them to go be luddites on their own. Result: Egalitarian and spiritual empires like you better, as do your own egalitarian pops, but you're down some planets and you have a new neighbour to deal with. 3b) Give them a few planets and tell them to go be luddites on their own. Result: You start playing as the tiny empire, and your old empire turns into an FE with a protective attitude toward you. Your story is now about forging your own path to escape their shadow. The player doesn't avoid this crossroads by "playing good", still has control over the ultimate outcome, and there's no "right" answer other than what best suits the game the player wants to play. Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Feb 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 23:55
|
|
|
TheDeadlyShoe posted:That's something they've explicitly moved away from though. Eh, sectors being just "you have to put stuff under AI control for no particular reason" means that them being more concrete doesn't make a lot of sense. They're basically an enforced convenience feature and thus it makes sense to make them fixable without cost to the player. If you made sectors into a more fleshed out mechanic, somewhere between a vassal and a type of terrain within an empire, then it would make more sense to make them harder to modify freely. Sectors as a purely AI helper mechanic which is what they more or less are currently, aren't very compelling, I think. Making them more like provinces / proper semi-autonomous entities more in line with fed members or vassals could be a way to make them more interesting. I use them currently because I have to, I would like to have more reason to use them because I want to. I'd suggest that sectors could function as a more integrated tier of vassal, basically. They stay in your empire and have controls like the current sectors, but they also have an internal diplomatic system, where different sectors have different opinions of the central government and can be at risk of wanting to become more independent if you don't look after them/drain them for resources a lot. Sectors could then potentially actually downgrade into vassals or your empire might actually become a literal federation. You also have a lot of possibilities for different political systems whereby imperial governments have to watch out for sector disloyalty as breaks would be more likely to be violent and result in sectors actually really splitting from you or starting a civil war, but loyal sectors have a lot of control under the central government, whereas less hierarchical forms of government might have less strong control over their sectors but they are more likely to see peaceful transitions to federations and also have the possibility of integrating alien fed members into full sector status. The plus side to sectors could vary with their/your politics, megacorps could leverage extra energy from sectors and use them as an energy bank, militaristic empires might have sectors be very good at supplying fleets above and beyond your normal fleet cap but are subject to diplomacy as to whether they will answer when called, spiritualist sectors can contribute happiness and unity to the empire and have options a bit like the artisan troupe in internal diplomacy. There's a huge amount you could do with internal empire diplomacy that I think could really build on Stellaris' existing ability to have people actually coexisting together and have autonomous allies be something that actually benefits you/something you want to manage. And you could have a dichotomy between wanting to keep their ethics in line with yours for loyalty but also wanting access to the different benefits facilitated by different ethics in sectors. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 00:07
|
|
|
Yeah I'd love for sectors to just go away and in their place heavily push empires to create vassals, obviously along with a whole overhauled subject system with a bunch of different levels and types of autonomy ranging from pretty much a vanilla sector to a loose alliance. A more feudal empire might have a large number of quite independent empires that all contribute a small percentage of their income but pool their fleets in time of war. Or maybe you're a federation of democratic subjects that all get to vote on empire-level matters. Or maybe you're an authoritarian dictatorship and rule a vast empire more or less directly, with your subjects having little autonomy but at the cost of needing a large military and security apparatus to keep everything in check.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 00:16
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Yeah I'd love for sectors to just go away and in their place heavily push empires to create vassals, obviously along with a whole overhauled subject system with a bunch of different levels and types of autonomy ranging from pretty much a vanilla sector to a loose alliance. Yeah totally, I really enjoy playing vassal empires at the moment and that's with the limited number of diplomatic options we already have. Sectors/vassals/federation members all blurring together and becoming interlinked would be something I would really enjoy I think.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 00:19
|
|
|
Oh, I think I'll do an exterminator run. Oh, I'll turn clustered start back on to make it interesting. What could possibly go wrong?  I am an exterminator sandwich.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 05:33
|
|
|
So, when can I play the game again because everything is going to change? Even beta, even if I won't have apoc until the 22nd (not buying off Paradox store because of exchange rate, want to save that $2)
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 05:37
|
|
|
IAmTheRad posted:So, when can I play the game again because everything is going to change? Even beta, even if I won't have apoc until the 22nd (not buying off Paradox store because of exchange rate, want to save that $2) Date and time with Apoc.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 05:41
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Eh, sectors being just "you have to put stuff under AI control for no particular reason" The reason is "Micromanaging literally every planet that finds its way into your empire isn't fun".
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 05:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 03:20 |
|
|
Shadowlyger posted:The reason is "Micromanaging literally every planet that finds its way into your empire isn't fun". If the planet management mechanics are that un-fun, then they should be completely reworked instead of slapping a band-aid over the problem by forcing you to hand it off to the AI. This is my biggest problem with the empire management aspects of the game at the moment. The pop-and-tile system turns every planet into a puzzle game that incentivizes the player to spent time and effort min-maxing their building layouts. But doing this with more than a handful of planets is tedious and time-consuming, distracting the player from other aspects of the game. The solution to this problem was to inflict the player with debilitating resource penalties until they allow the AI to do it for them. Of course, the AI isn't actually very good at it, so most players don't actually want to give it control over anything. The game effectively encourages you to min-max planets, but then punishes you for actually trying to do it. VirtualStranger fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Feb 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2018 08:16
|
|
