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(Sorry I know this is hugely offtopic for the a spaceman thread) I can appreciate them trying to add more nuance into levie composition as you had almost zippo control of your blobs in ck2 - three flanks or one, it made little difference. But yea instant full-strength raises sounds like a step back, the old system was good in that regard and needed no touching. Ontopic, I still think there's not much excuse for Stellaris having blobs mashing into each other in a dps fest. It seems like they had no idea how to reconciliate real-time fleet movements with very fast fleet speeds. Honestly ES2 ditched real-time, despite having actual simultaneous turns, and having combat stagger once two fleets bump into each other is just A-ok. It's not like you need to -or are even allowed to- give orders once a fight breaks out in Stellaris, so just let the drat thing play out via steps or phases or whatever so there can be more structure and nuance to things instead of instant blobbing.
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Nov 29, 2020 06:36
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It'd be nice if commander limit mattered. Make it more like Army Width in EU4? Also maybe make combat less lethal, to borrow from that game, but fleets take a while to recover. Basically just make advancing a system like sieges a province in EU4, it takes time to establish your control but also means it's harder to back flip. I don't know war in this game is just really unfun for a variety of reasons I'm not sure I could articulate more than how fast combat is, how long wars against the AI take to actually win, and how lethal losing is.
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Nov 29, 2020 06:43
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Yeah CK3 is really well built, but the warfare system means it is extremely easy after your first one or two familiarization games. It needs a bunch of work to make it more historical too, there's not really any system that performs well in that regard.
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Nov 29, 2020 07:02
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Wait so I can get crushed as a portuguese lord even faster now that the moors can just insta teleport their 70k+ stacks right at the border?
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Nov 29, 2020 07:15
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Leal posted:Wait so I can get crushed as a portuguese lord even faster now that the moors can just insta teleport their 70k+ stacks right at the border? It's mostly you abusing it. The AI doesn't change it's rally points, but what it will do is sail everything it has to your capital asap. The instant teleporting bullshit is what you do to defend yourself and make war a joke.
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Nov 29, 2020 07:20
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Yeah the AI always raises at their capital I think, and then marches off to wherever. They also raise all of their (completely useless) levies for every fight, thereby bankrupting themselves each time they or an ally go to war. Meanwhile you as the player just raise a nice compact Men at Arms stack and wipe armies 6-7 times it's size as the AI suicides into you over and over, generally paying next to nothing for the privilege. Teleporting makes war easier for sure, but it generally doesn't change the outcome, just makes it faster.
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Nov 29, 2020 07:41
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It's broken but at least it's broken in a way that expedites gameplay. I can't say the same for Stellaris, where warfare is such a drat grind because even up to now, fleet movement is just too drat slow (and the whole ground warfare thing.)
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Nov 29, 2020 07:47
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A bad simple system is better than a bad complex system, but a good system is better than either.
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Nov 29, 2020 08:50
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toasterwarrior posted:It's broken but at least it's broken in a way that expedites gameplay. I can't say the same for Stellaris, where warfare is such a drat grind because even up to now, fleet movement is just too drat slow (and the whole ground warfare thing.) I'm actually of the opinion that despite everything else, fleet speeds in regards to empire size is the one thing Stellaris nailed on the head (likewise for construction speeds). Fleets will always take a bit of time to walk across your empire, time that can be sped up a small bit with procedural techs, or leaps and bounds by wormholes/jumps/etc. But for the time it takes to raise a fleet with good infrastructure in reponce to something? "Feels" about right for battleships and smaller being mass produced and rallied somewhere. A weird knock-on of this is the comical sublight speeds everything has, since such things are balanced for empire-traversal instead of a tactical sense. A RTS would have veeery slow units, as the their speed vs range vs fragility would allow for meaningful tactics. Sins of a Solar Empire is a good comparison; fleets are slow as poo poo so you can micro things, but they also take for-loving-ever to get anywhere, to such a degree that you're much faster building new shipyard when the mood hits you rather than waiting for reinforcements to walk in from your capital. Different game, different oddities. Stellaris isn't an RTS, so I'll give the devs credit in prioritizing weightiness of their empire over other things.
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Nov 29, 2020 09:54
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Sins gets so much right with that emphasis on slower fleet travel than Stellaris though. In Stellaris you have slow travel but insanely fast battles. In SIns even overwhelmingly one sided battles still take some time to play out. This is good both for you to notice what's happening, and to prepare a response. As well, you can't smash and grab systems like you can in Stellaris. If you want to take the planet it's VERY slow and lengthy, or you have a special siege fleet to detach while your combat fleet moves on, if you aren't capital heavy. Copying that pace, and allowing a citadel to actually be a powerful defensive setback, even if all it buys is lots and lots and lots of time would only be the for better.
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Nov 29, 2020 10:13
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I don't know if I'd call battles lasting months "fast", but I guess if you compare it to fleet travel times in Stellaris, it counts as faster than that, at least
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Nov 29, 2020 10:43
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The secret to Rogue Servitors is to grab primitive civilizations. You generate a solid amount of unity even with small amounts of pops. Conquering all if your neighbours murders your economy.
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Nov 29, 2020 12:50
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Trip report: Playing as an evil empire for the fist time as the Pasharti Absorbers. Things were going well. I was picking off my weakling neighbours one by one. Then an awakened empire says "we're declaring war bc you're a huge bastard  "Eh, I've fought awakened empires before. Long war of attrition, I'll lose some territory and gain it back later. Say, these guys are expanding rather quickly...  Oh god  They're expanding on every front simultaneously. There are 100k fleets that outnumber my whole navy, but also hundreds of 3k fleets everywhere. What can you even do to counter that?  We're only 6 years into the war at this point  Oh well.  
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Nov 29, 2020 18:43
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Looks like they improved Awakened Empires like they said they did.  In similar hosed up news, I found an hilarious oversight: When you're a standard machine empire and create a federation with organics in it, you can then eventually unlock free migration treaties for all. And now I have organics immigrating into my machine hivemind, automatically amalgating into my energy grid whenever they show up. And it seems like I have to do something eventually, because all those weirdos entering my realm full of deadly machine planets create more and more "xenophage"-penalties with my other federation members. I get the feeling, at some point something is gonna explode Edit: Ah, welp can't change that law for 5 years yet. I guess I just have to watch and endure the suicidal idiots kramering into my planets  Edit: At the same time, the underground empire event chain is also unrolling on one of my planets. Seems the game missed the memo here too on my status as non-organic empire with a hivemind. I was sorely tempted to just take in the refugees knowing they would immediately be turned into batteries, but I instead send them back underground. Though at some point these people will probably notice that they are LARPing the free humans from the Matrix-movies? Libluini fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 21:19
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Oh my god, it gets even dumber: Now that one of our wars has gifted me a planet with lots of now integrated organic batteries, my federation members decided to do something: They are improving our relations to prevent our federation from breaking apart.  Looks like I can just keep letting my organic friends stumble into my crushing arms, Realpolitik wins again
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Nov 29, 2020 21:38
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Libluini posted:Oh my god, it gets even dumber: Now that one of our wars has gifted me a planet with lots of now integrated organic batteries, my federation members decided to do something: They are improving our relations to prevent our federation from breaking apart. Don't forget to help them out by sending some energy credits their way.
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Nov 29, 2020 22:04
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Is there a good recommended quickstart guide / tutorial for the game? I bought it long ago and played it a good bit a few years back but have heard much has been revamped. Probably best to start at square 1 again.
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Nov 29, 2020 22:12
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That Works posted:Is there a good recommended quickstart guide / tutorial for the game? I bought it long ago and played it a good bit a few years back but have heard much has been revamped. Probably best to start at square 1 again. ASpec's beginner/getting started videos on YouTube are pretty good, if lengthy. He seems to take more of a playthrough-to-learn approach, but I've enjoyed watching a few of them. Note that many of them are from 2.7, but the changes from 2.7 --> 2.8 aren't so drastic that you'll be missing out on anything.
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Nov 29, 2020 22:51
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gently caress off Batman posted:Don't forget to help them out by sending some energy credits their way. I actually had to do this because building a Dyson Sphere made one of them upset! Either a new event or an event added by one of my mods caused my fanatical materialist science neighbors to complain the star I was using had some important religious meaning to them. One of the options was to send them 1k energy together with your sincere apology. They accepted and now all is good between us. They graciously accept their religious symbol disappearing inside my Dyson Sphere, and occasionally having their pops turned into batteries. They're perfectly fine with this development. At this point my economy is so obscene I'm leading the galaxy even before the awakened empire and our federation holds over 50% of the entire galaxy. Everything I'm doing from now on is basically just a victory lap
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Nov 30, 2020 00:21
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Libluini posted:I actually had to do this because building a Dyson Sphere made one of them upset! Either a new event or an event added by one of my mods caused my fanatical materialist science neighbors to complain the star I was using had some important religious meaning to them. That's always been there
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Nov 30, 2020 00:38
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Apologies for asking probably an eternal question at this point but is Federations worth picking up? I haven't really touched Stellaris since 2019 so I am unsure what state of actual quality the game is currently in at this point. Going by the last page or two it still has problems it seems but has it also really improved at all?
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Nov 30, 2020 00:45
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Libluini posted:I actually had to do this because building a Dyson Sphere made one of them upset! Either a new event or an event added by one of my mods caused my fanatical materialist science neighbors to complain the star I was using had some important religious meaning to them.
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Nov 30, 2020 00:46
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Splicer posted:That's a default event and I'm picturing your nervous neighbours as, well, nervous neighbours. "Martha, they're eating a star now" "Oh for... which star? One of the nice ones?" "It's uh it's betelgeuse" "Oh come on. You march right over there and have a word with them. But don't be rude about it" *later* "They gave me some energy." "Is it star energy or" "I DIDN'T ASK" An even better event happened just a little bit later, when my vassals demanded to be shown my ringworld build site because they thought we were building a "world-destroying super-weapon" on it. I then allowed them to inspect the site and my construction was halted for 20 days while my vassals nervously inspected every inch and wrench to make sure there was no hidden weapon anywhere. Meanwhile, my Colossus was busy shielding devouring swarm planets on the other side of the galaxy. 
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Nov 30, 2020 00:57
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Libluini posted:An even better event happened just a little bit later, when my vassals demanded to be shown my ringworld build site because they thought we were building a "world-destroying super-weapon" on it. I then allowed them to inspect the site and my construction was halted for 20 days while my vassals nervously inspected every inch and wrench to make sure there was no hidden weapon anywhere.
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Nov 30, 2020 01:22
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SkySteak posted:Apologies for asking probably an eternal question at this point but is Federations worth picking up? I haven't really touched Stellaris since 2019 so I am unsure what state of actual quality the game is currently in at this point. Going by the last page or two it still has problems it seems but has it also really improved at all? Depends why you didn't like it so much. Some things are better, some things aren't. However, for the first time I'm optimistic about a post-Wiz dev team's ideas, so that's something.
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Nov 30, 2020 01:26
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bitterandtwisted posted:Trip report: You're bleeding crazy amounts of research/unity to empire sprawl in all of those pictures. Assuming you hadn't already lost a bureaucrat planet in the first screenshot, that's really bad. Past something like 300 empire sprawl you really need to keep your admin cap above sprawl. Being over cap by 600+ points like in the first screenshot gives you (more than) +240% tech cost, which is basically equivalent to -58.33% science. Getting 60 more bureaucrats (about 4% of your population) would more than double your research rate. You could almost certainly just replace research labs with admin offices and come out ahead. Basically you want 0 bureaucrats early game (you should probably disable the starting admin office before unpausing), and enough to keep your admin cap above sprawl later on (somewhere between 250-400 sprawl I think?). It's really not very intuitive.
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Nov 30, 2020 02:26
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SkySteak posted:Apologies for asking probably an eternal question at this point but is Federations worth picking up? I haven't really touched Stellaris since 2019 so I am unsure what state of actual quality the game is currently in at this point. Going by the last page or two it still has problems it seems but has it also really improved at all? We whine about it because we love it and want it to be the best it can be. But to answer your question imo yes Federations is worth scooping up.
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Nov 30, 2020 02:48
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I just finished my first full game since before Lithoids came out. I got all the new expansions and decided to take it easy with a 2400 endgame start so I could get a feel for all the changes. Had a pretty blessed start in a huge galaxy, playing as a post-apocalyptic fanatic egalitarian, militarist democracy. It would have been nice to have someone close by to pick on early, but what I did get was the baol precursur chain in addition to an unusual number of planets with good habitability. I ended up opening my borders to all immigration treaties early on so they can come settle on one of my many gaia worlds. I ran pretty badly over my admin cap for a little while trying to grab as much of that open space as possible since my corner of the galaxy was relatively quiet. I reigned it in when I moved out of the expansion phase and settled in for midgame stuff... which ended up being pretty dull. I was next door to a marauder empire, but no Khan ever appeared. I smashed them eventually when it was trivial and there was little else to do. The only real tipping point came when I attacked my closest neighbor to grab the uncolonized size 26 (!?) relic world he had along with a couple of systems surrounding it, while I was at equal strength and slightly inferior tech. I was able to take it by status quo peace because I waited until they were engaged in another war to go in. After that I snowballed predictably with a few surprises here and there. I was caught off guard when a bunch of lithoid pops that immigrated ended up eating all my rocks, but I solved that problem by getting more rocks. I didn't join any federation, but I did pretty much always get my way in the galactic community. I blitzed the L-gate, conquered the nearby Observer FE in one go, fortified my position in Terminal Egress in preparation for one of the crises and ended up having to wait through another 30 years of twiddling knobs, building megastructures, and amassing my forces. An FE awakened, but they didn't do anything. The Contingency was crushed by a planetcracker with a juggernaut and 750k worth of ships set to aggressive following it around. And now it's 2476 and I'm calling it cuz come on, poo poo's over and I don't need to see the win screen. One thing that was consistently annoying though- in the late mid game, the strongest non FE other than myself was a criminal syndicate, and after trying to deal with their bullshit with precints/edicts/whatever the gently caress, I ended up fighting two successful expropriation wars, since they kept moving back in and raising hell every 10-15 years. Just about the last thing that I did before the Contingency showed up was vassalize them. It was a long, obnoxious war, but I won it. Trouble is, it seems like they're still able to set up criminal buildings on your planets even when they're vassalized by you, and you can't fight expropriation wars with your own vassals. I was still having issues with it when I called the game. Is there some other solution I'm not seeing here, or is it just a choice between periodic expropriation wars and extermination if you want to solve the problem for good?
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Nov 30, 2020 04:34
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Depends why you didn't like it so much. Some things are better, some things aren't. However, for the first time I'm optimistic about a post-Wiz dev team's ideas, so that's something. Oh I like the game but the pop management, whilst a cool idea, became extremely tiresome when your Empire got to any real size. Additionally the AI's complete inability to manage the system, whilst completely expected me, left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
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Nov 30, 2020 04:45
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THE loving MOON posted:One thing that was consistently annoying though- in the late mid game, the strongest non FE other than myself was a criminal syndicate, and after trying to deal with their bullshit with precints/edicts/whatever the gently caress, I ended up fighting two successful expropriation wars, since they kept moving back in and raising hell every 10-15 years. Just about the last thing that I did before the Contingency showed up was vassalize them. It was a long, obnoxious war, but I won it. Trouble is, it seems like they're still able to set up criminal buildings on your planets even when they're vassalized by you, and you can't fight expropriation wars with your own vassals. I was still having issues with it when I called the game. Is there some other solution I'm not seeing here, or is it just a choice between periodic expropriation wars and extermination if you want to solve the problem for good? Vassalize, integrate, give the planets to another, less obnoxious, vassal.
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Nov 30, 2020 04:54
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Eimi posted:Sins gets so much right with that emphasis on slower fleet travel than Stellaris though. In Stellaris you have slow travel but insanely fast battles. In SIns even overwhelmingly one sided battles still take some time to play out. This is good both for you to notice what's happening, and to prepare a response. As well, you can't smash and grab systems like you can in Stellaris. If you want to take the planet it's VERY slow and lengthy, or you have a special siege fleet to detach while your combat fleet moves on, if you aren't capital heavy. Copying that pace, and allowing a citadel to actually be a powerful defensive setback, even if all it buys is lots and lots and lots of time would only be the for better. My favourite part of Sins is a game I had where my space had two routes into it so an enemy AI would send literally every ship they had to one entrance of my space and I had to respond with my entire fleet, and as soon as my fleet got there the AI would take their doomstack and fly over to the other entrance to my space and there was no way to catch them and this went on back and forth until I decided to just quit. There was also doubly no way to catch them because a fleet can just jump into the starlane your ships are traveling along and thus be safe from harm. There was, in fact, two AI empires at war literally just flying their fleets back and forth through a starlane trying to catch each other in an endless loop.
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Nov 30, 2020 05:50
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Complications posted:Vassalize, integrate, give the planets to another, less obnoxious, vassal. Yeah, that seems fairly obvious now that you've said it. If it had happened earlier on I might have done that.
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Nov 30, 2020 06:36
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I usually vassalize fringe sectors when micro starts to become a chore.
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Nov 30, 2020 06:45
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I really wish sectors would act more like mini-vassals vs what we have now, especially for feudal empires.
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Nov 30, 2020 09:31
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NewMars posted:I really wish sectors would act more like mini-vassals vs what we have now, especially for feudal empires. Can't you release sectors as vassals? Pretty sure you can. Suppose a "vassal light" would be nicer with some more control but still autonomous.
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Nov 30, 2020 11:08
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Staltran posted:You're bleeding crazy amounts of research/unity to empire sprawl in all of those pictures. Assuming you hadn't already lost a bureaucrat planet in the first screenshot, that's really bad. Past something like 300 empire sprawl you really need to keep your admin cap above sprawl. Being over cap by 600+ points like in the first screenshot gives you (more than) +240% tech cost, which is basically equivalent to -58.33% science. Getting 60 more bureaucrats (about 4% of your population) would more than double your research rate. You could almost certainly just replace research labs with admin offices and come out ahead. Basically you want 0 bureaucrats early game (you should probably disable the starting admin office before unpausing), and enough to keep your admin cap above sprawl later on (somewhere between 250-400 sprawl I think?). It's really not very intuitive. Yeah this was the first time I'd played as a big sprawling empire since they introduced the admin mechanic. I was building what felt like a huge amount of admin centres, but it wasn't nearly enough. If I do it again, I suppose I need to go bureaucracy crazy and conquer the galaxy as the Vogons.
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Nov 30, 2020 11:22
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bitterandtwisted posted:Yeah this was the first time I'd played as a big sprawling empire since they introduced the admin mechanic. I was building what felt like a huge amount of admin centres, but it wasn't nearly enough. If I do it again, I suppose I need to go bureaucracy crazy and conquer the galaxy as the Vogons. It helps if you go hog wild on improving your admin centers. Unlock some of those advanced admin techs and the better buildings will sooner or later flood you with admin cap.
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Nov 30, 2020 11:27
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Stacking the upgraded buildings on a planet with the designation helps a lot.
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Nov 30, 2020 11:35
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I just got eaten by the great khan for the first time. I was getting ready to start eating my neighbours when it popped, quickly ran straight through them, and started tearing down my space. Good times!
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Nov 30, 2020 13:19
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Phosphine posted:I just got eaten by the great khan for the first time. I was getting ready to start eating my neighbours when it popped, quickly ran straight through them, and started tearing down my space. Good times! Just submit to them. I don't know how the Khan behaves currently, since that seems to change every drat patch, but last I know they just doomstacked from hell and there's like no way you can fight it back at that point.
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Nov 30, 2020 13:21
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