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Stux posted:did they never find the fun and people who like it are apparently misguided in some way, or is it simply not a game for you. who can say. stop being such a stux AnEdgelord posted:Well paradox had never tackled a 4x before, making a MOO clone is still significantly more ambitious than putting out "EU: Space" or something similarly derivative of their own lineup A game that randomly generated new and interesting galaxy states might be interesting and unique, and meaningfully distinct from EU. But if we're getting that far into wishful thinking, I would also like a pony.
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Feb 5, 2021 23:41
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Cease to Hope posted:But if we're getting that far into wishful thinking, I would also like a pony. Yeah, but cavalry maintenance costs are way too high for it to be affordable.
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Feb 5, 2021 23:50
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EU4 in space was basically what I wanted when they announced Stellaris. 
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Feb 5, 2021 23:55
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it would be like me rolling in and saying ck2 never found the fun, despite it obviously having an audience that really likes the game. talking about stellaris as if its imperator and just flopped and no one liked it
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Feb 5, 2021 23:56
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Stux posted:it would be like me rolling in and saying ck2 never found the fun, despite it obviously having an audience that really likes the game. does the concept of people having opinions confuse and bewilder you
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Feb 5, 2021 23:59
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Cease to Hope posted:does the concept of people having opinions confuse and bewilder you strange, its like im being told this by someone who was unable to handle the opinion of "perhaps the game just isnt for you" not 2 seconds ago
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Feb 6, 2021 00:01
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Cease to Hope posted:does the concept of people having opinions confuse and bewilder you I mean there was a digression where people theorized that people are currently playing it because they have no other options
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Feb 6, 2021 00:04
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I guess I just don't really see the appeal of Stellaris because it lacks so much of its own unique flavor and doesn't even have the raw appeal of historical simulation to fall back on, which is the backbone of Paradox's other games. I think some games like Crusader Kings did manage to find a lot of unique flavor of its own on top of the historical simulation, but still it's the appeal of the history that most people are drawn in by, even if some people really enjoy the random worlds. Even the After the End mod draws in a lot of people more interested in the geography of America than it does people who are into the specific fiction of the mod.
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Feb 6, 2021 00:09
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The Chad Jihad posted:No 4x will ever be as good as that one you played at bunch at 13 MoO3 wasn't that bad once the Vanilla/Chocolate/Strawberry mods came out!
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Feb 6, 2021 00:29
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yikes! posted:Having an asymmetric start doesn’t make it a carbon copy of eu4 lol. Do you think Vicky 2 and eu4 are the same game because some starts are harder than others? SlothfulCobra posted:I guess I just don't really see the appeal of Stellaris because it lacks so much of its own unique flavor Aside from that, there's also the question of presentation. Stellaris, with its completely nonhistorical approach, is like the ideal setting for having Vicky style pops (except with more assimilation-pruning since you're going for big picture) because the whole idea of a space empire is that they rule uncountable masses, but instead the developers went for distinct individual pops which seems to go entirely against the fantasy. Like, what sells the idea of a highly populated sci-fi planet better: Population: XXXXX XYXXX XXYYX XYXYX XXXXX or Population: 1,040,130,53,431 81% human, 13% cephaloid, 6% assorted minorities You can still show off your cool portraits in the latter, hell, the fact that they're not just copied 20 times might actually let them shine more. Doing this also has the advantage of allowing for things like allowing wildly divergent body sizes/resource demands. The hamster people of the Kaytee Wheel being about 1/10th the size of your average human can be far more numerous than the latter, while the big-brained cephaloids have extremely high demands for basic sustenance which can't be supported to anywhere near the same degree. Something that would really sell the idea of more varied species than say, Star Trek aliens.
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Feb 6, 2021 07:06
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Koramei posted:For civilization-defining traits I agree small bonuses are bland as hell, but I think you're kind of mischaracterizing it in the exploration phase, ilitarist. You're not dealing with 270 mineral production until the mid game, at which point exploration has already taken a backseat; in the early game those 14 minerals can be a huge chunk. The thing is they've prolonged the exploration phase into midgame. The last big game I had till the end had me exhaust all the non-numbered techs and all the civics (or whatever unity upgrades are called) before I've run out of explorable/colonizeable space, and back then I haven't owned that archaeology DLC which would extend this period even further. Those 14 minerals in the beginning mean your development graphs are a little better at this point of your playthrough even if you get it on day 1. I don't feel like this exploration result really affects anything. In a game like Endless Space 2 a system with planets and anomalies suitable for production means I can think of an early rush, research techs allowing for production buildings and bigger hulls earlier. This will affect my strategy. In Stellaris I don't feel like any discovery will ever affect what I'm doing. Maybe that black hole worm but I never got it. I totally get how the sum of small bonuses can form your strategy. But in Stellaris it always feels too random and never feels meaningful enough. Whatever my bonuses are I will build starbases till the endgame, and then I conquer those who are weaker. Release version of Stellaris tried to spice it up with faster expansion and inherent weapon/engine differences, but now all I see are blobs. I don't feel great when I discover a good node cause I'll very soon forget it. Perhaps if I were more into roleplaying and painting a detailed map of my realm in my head I'd feel better about it. Maybe I could be lured by something easy like better naming a la Alpha Centauri so that my rocket ship design got a name like "Rocket boat" and when I discover a sciencish system my people call it Rocks of Knowledge or something. Clearly it's a popular game so it must be something to it.
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Feb 6, 2021 07:51
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I think something that would help stellaris would be to put more hard limits into expansion. It is clear the exploration stage is supposed to mimic star trek, and in star trek they are exploring their local sector not the rear end end of the galaxy. There should be more star systems that you cant colonize, and they should have things that can happen in there multiple times. There is no way to simulate a 'neutral zone', except maybe with the fanatic isolationists fallen empire, where they war dec you for settling next to them. ST:TNG takes place almost entirely in a slice of the galaxy somewhere between 1/16 to 1/8 of milky way. Usually there are no open stars 50-75 years into the game.
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Feb 6, 2021 19:47
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SlothfulCobra posted:I guess I just don't really see the appeal of Stellaris because it lacks so much of its own unique flavor and doesn't even have the raw appeal of historical simulation to fall back on, which is the backbone of Paradox's other games. And that would be fine! If we weren't talking about a game that sells itself as a grand strategy game IN SPACE and yet released a recent DLC to expand diplomacy that doesn't even include an option to tell two feuding empires to stop pissing about and get along you fucks. *unless you value interesting combat **seriously nobody likes the current building unlock implementation and it's taken them two and a half years to admit it and finally replace it with a system nearly identical to the system that originally got scrapped in testing due to idiot beta testers Splicer fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 20:44
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Grevlek posted:I think something that would help stellaris would be to put more hard limits into expansion. I had one neat game where another empire and I absolutely hated each other but there was an expanse of worthless systems with no planets in them in between us so neither of us wanted to waste a starbase to bridge the gap. We just stared across this big deadzone of nearly empty space quietly hating each other until the crisis hit.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:35
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ilitarist posted:The thing is they've prolonged the exploration phase into midgame. The last big game I had till the end had me exhaust all the non-numbered techs and all the civics (or whatever unity upgrades are called) before I've run out of explorable/colonizeable space, and back then I haven't owned that archaeology DLC which would extend this period even further. Those 14 minerals in the beginning mean your development graphs are a little better at this point of your playthrough even if you get it on day 1. I don't feel like this exploration result really affects anything. In a game like Endless Space 2 a system with planets and anomalies suitable for production means I can think of an early rush, research techs allowing for production buildings and bigger hulls earlier. This will affect my strategy. In Stellaris I don't feel like any discovery will ever affect what I'm doing. Maybe that black hole worm but I never got it. The exploration phase lasts as long as you want it to last. If you're getting into repeatable techs and still colonizing then you are playing on too large of a galaxy and/or with too few empires on the map.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:52
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Splicer posted:I had one neat game where another empire and I absolutely hated each other but there was an expanse of worthless systems with no planets in them in between us so neither of us wanted to waste a starbase to bridge the gap. We just stared across this big deadzone of nearly empty space quietly hating each other until the crisis hit. Gadzuko posted:The exploration phase lasts as long as you want it to last. If you're getting into repeatable techs and still colonizing then you are playing on too large of a galaxy and/or with too few empires on the map.
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Feb 7, 2021 03:32
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The Neutral Zone
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Feb 7, 2021 11:15
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Good fences make good neighbors.
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Feb 7, 2021 11:41
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Splicer posted:The big loss of the switch to hyperlane only was the old territory system. It used to be that you didn't take star systems individually, you'd either colonise a planet or drop an (expensive) outpost and that would project a sphere of ownership around it taking in several systems at once. If you had overlapping spheres with another empire then the spheres would fight a bit and the border would be somewhere down the middle. It had its flaws, and you could game the AI a bit with it, but it resulted in much more interesting situations including "owning" territories you'd never even sent a ship into. I wish they'd tried to keep some of that in the switch to hyperlanes. It's been so long that I forgot that's how it used to be. I really think the "problem" with stellaris is that it was designed for three drastically different movement types, and then that was tossed out for hyperlanes. It'd be like making Victoria 3, and then a year later you take out pop management and replace it with the pop system for stellaris. Sure it's similar enough in scope, but all the systems you've built that rely on it have to be reworked and that's usually a dumbing down
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Feb 7, 2021 16:40
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This is why I'm interested in what a theoretical Stellaris 2 would look like if they could build the game they want now without the baggage of old design failures
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Feb 7, 2021 16:46
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I play the long game and assume Stellaris 4 will be my favorite video game of all time.
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Feb 7, 2021 16:48
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Grevlek posted:I play the long game and assume Stellaris 4 will be my favorite video game of all time.
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Feb 7, 2021 16:52
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Paradox games peak at either 2 or 3. That's just facts. Only a real sicko would prefer Stellaris 4. I've not touched EU3 since 2011 and I probably logged 4k hours plus in EU3. Also, hahaha, YES
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Feb 7, 2021 16:57
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I have fond memories of EU3 but it was kind of a garbage fire. RIP Czechotataristan. Since "start at any day" is dead and wiz works at Paradox now I wouldn't mind if EU5 revived the old EU3+ alternate starts though. Playing Badajoz turned Al-Andalus and muslim Qasim Khanate Russia equivalent in the muslim-dominant start were some of my all time favourite paradox runs. e: the Hearts of Iron peak was Darkest Hour, what number does that count as? Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 17:16
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EU5 would be fun if it had selection of start dates centered around particular events like what they do for the Crusader Kings series Give me the Standard 1444 start, French Revolution and Mughal Conquest bookmarks in the style of 1099 and 867 starts in CK3
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Feb 7, 2021 17:25
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I think EU3 to EU4 is the greatest leap forward in any series, better than CK2 to CK3.
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Feb 7, 2021 17:37
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Grevlek posted:I think EU3 to EU4 is the greatest leap forward in any series, better than CK2 to CK3. Admittedly I might have a slight bias from how Paradox kept loving up my attempts at modding EU4 though, most egregiously by changing the code so my half-finished high resolution historically accurate terrain/climate map mod simply couldn't work anymore. Please Paradox, just enforce a ratio and let modders have their fun, maybe pull a bunch of stuff about how the map is actually rendered into some map_defines file so people can go hog wild.
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Feb 7, 2021 17:55
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Grevlek posted:It's been so long that I forgot that's how it used to be. Other than the territory system, another thing ditching the three travel types killed was empire differentiation. With the way the tech system works everyone ends up very samey with regards to weapons and defences, and you don't really care about an empire's internal workings outside of the badboy civics or being a megacorp. Interacting with a hyperlane empire felt different to interacting with a wormhole empire on a map level and nothing has really replaced that for "normal" empires. Which to be clear is not me saying they shouldn't have done the hyperlane switch, just that they didn't do the followup required to replace what warp and wormholes took with them. Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 18:05
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Another thing that made Stellaris hosed up was the Devs balancing everything for multi + symmetric starts. And making sure that no set of starting traits would mean that you could outrush / murder your neighbor. In EU4 you can play an OPM and have a very challenging game, or you can play the Ottomans and have a much easier time. It's very hard for small AI tags near major powers to stay alive, they don't have the tools to do it. The idea that some racial traits would be equally decisive in the Stellaris early / mid / late game was somehow anathema to the Stellaris design team. Like there was this implicit premise of "You shouldn't be able to lose to traits at the start if you are playing correctly" which is very odd. To me this is kinda like saying the Shaka rush in Civ shouldn't be possible because that's just too good compared to what other empires get. If I spawn next to Shaka at the start and don't have any way of dealing with him, yeah, rip? Who cares. That's the end of that game, either in single or multi. I'd rather have actual loss conditions than "everyone plays the same." Civ 5 deity runs were fun because you could actually lose, despite how tightly you had to play. Something about the symmetric starts + multi demands that no start blows out any other start of the water led to a very underwhelming strategy experience.
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Feb 7, 2021 18:12
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You know how EU, CK or any other Paradox title have a world map already prepopulated with various nations of varying strength according to history? Also known as normal non-EU fantasia game mode? Stellaris should also have something similar, besides the normal symmetrical start. Of course, since Trump never released the UFO files, this mode would be total fantasy made in-house, so they can go hog wild. And also, bring back fantasia for EU5.
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Feb 7, 2021 18:32
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EU3+ had the cool semi-fantasia start where Europe was decimated by the black plague and there were a few european remnants clinging on in places like Scotland and Lappland plus arab and persian colonial OPMs setting up shop in the uninhabited plague wastelands. That was fun.
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Feb 7, 2021 18:43
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:EU3+ had the cool semi-fantasia start where Europe was decimated by the black plague and there were a few european remnants clinging on in places like Scotland and Lappland plus arab and persian colonial OPMs setting up shop in the uninhabited plague wastelands. That was fun. Dark Continent! Amazing scenario. I ported it to EU4 but gave up trying to keep it updated with every patch and DLC years and years ago
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Feb 7, 2021 19:02
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its sort of hosed that nobody else tried to make that scenario either. e: actually someone brought back all of brainmeats scenarios https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2151155009&searchtext=miscmod
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Feb 7, 2021 19:21
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Another thing that made Stellaris hosed up was the Devs balancing everything for multi Stellaris isn't balanced for multiplayer
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Feb 7, 2021 19:48
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I feel like maybe I just don't gel with the 4X formula. I've enjoyed exploring in games, I've enjoyed games where you have to build up a society economically, I've enjoyed expanding, and I've enjoyed some strategic war games, but I've never enjoyed any game that tries to do them all at the same time (or even in phases like a lot of 4X games try). In a lot of games, a world that has been reduced to easily understandable statistics without details that get in the way isn't often that interesting to explore (or the games that do put effort into their flavor are too old and janky for me to get into). Civilization's production system has always felt too obtuse for me, which may just be because there's no visual or spatial aspect compared to something like Tropico or Frostpunk. If I ever do get invested in building up, I'll never have time or interest to deal with starting a war, and it's a similar thing with exploration in Europa Universalis, if I'm building up or managing diplomacy or war in Europe, I'll never have the time or mental energy to spare for micromanaging the exploration and colonization of the new world (which actually really mirrors how historically most of that was heavily delegated or just done without the involvement of leaders). And then really if you have specific tactical concerns while building your society from the ground up, odds are you can just avoid most of the circumstances that would make complex fights happen from the start and snip out possibilities in the bud. You can just smother France in its crib, or choose to let yourself be geographically isolated at some infinitely defensible border instead of having some lurking supervillain threat to deal with or getting ridiculously entangled.
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Feb 7, 2021 19:50
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gently caress off Batman posted:You know how EU, CK or any other Paradox title have a world map already prepopulated with various nations of varying strength according to history? Also known as normal non-EU fantasia game mode? Stellaris should also have something similar, besides the normal symmetrical start. Of course, since Trump never released the UFO files, this mode would be total fantasy made in-house, so they can go hog wild. The game comes with between 9 and 23 preset empires depending on the number of expansions. So you have everything needed in the game to have a set of "standard" Stellaris empires, seeing the same friends and enemies pop up etc etc. But. You can't set the default empires to always spawn. You can't set them to never spawn. They're hardlocked to "allow". The "standard" game is a whole bunch of randomly generated empires and a very small quantity of preset empires showing up infrequently enough that you probably won't even realise they're presets. But you also can't actually disable them, so if there's one you're sick of the sight of it will still occasionally show up to annoy you and there's nothing you can do about it without modding. It is the dumbest possible way of doing the thing. Also, let's say you are playing, and you do run into a random empire that you battle it out or ally with or in some way go "yes, I like these guys, I want more of them". There's no "save empire" button. The only way to carry those randomly generated hated enemies/comrades in arms into another game is to screenshot their empire page and recreate them manually. Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 21:02
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Splicer posted:Here's a weird thing: You can save empires, then set them to always spawn, never spawn, or allowed to spawn. If you have no always spawn empires then it will mix it up between randomly generated empires and allowed to spawn empires. If you have some always spawn empires it will always spawn them and then move to the random/allowed empires. If you have a lot of always spawn empires it will grab a random selection of always spawn empires. Package these two changes in with a fallen empire designer and I'd buy that as a  dlc
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Feb 7, 2021 22:59
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It's not just the characteristics of the tag that help the other titles though, it's that some countries start big and strong, some suck, some start weak but get thicc buffs if they can survive, etc. Stellaris falls apart because regardless of anything else, everyone starts at the same power level. There's no equivalent choice of playing France vs playing Dithmarschen.
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Feb 7, 2021 23:19
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Splicer posted:Here's a weird thing: You can save empires, then set them to always spawn, never spawn, or allowed to spawn. If you have no always spawn empires then it will mix it up between randomly generated empires and allowed to spawn empires. If you have some always spawn empires it will always spawn them and then move to the random/allowed empires. If you have a lot of always spawn empires it will grab a random selection of always spawn empires. I agree, but I was talking about something else. You know how in that Star Trek mod New Horizons you can choose an epoch that you start in. If you choose to play as humans in the earliest start, Earth is a small and unimportant backwater, while the Dominion is already an Empire. And if you take TNG start, Earth is a capitol of a big fat Federation. The galaxy map is always the same depending on a start date, with all the races in play depending on the previous star trek lore. Now of course, star trek is half a century old show so it's got a considerable head start, but I think Paradox can find some good sci-fi writers and make something similar with their Stellaris universe.
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Feb 7, 2021 23:42
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gently caress off Batman posted:I agree, but I was talking about something else. You know how in that Star Trek mod New Horizons you can choose an epoch that you start in. If you choose to play as humans in the earliest start, Earth is a small and unimportant backwater, while the Dominion is already an Empire. And if you take TNG start, Earth is a capitol of a big fat Federation. The galaxy map is always the same depending on a start date, with all the races in play depending on the previous star trek lore. Now of course, star trek is half a century old show so it's got a considerable head start, but I think Paradox can find some good sci-fi writers and make something similar with their Stellaris universe. To specifically address your post there's a novel (own it due to a bundle, should really read it) and a bunch of implied lore from release trailers so they wouldn't even be starting from scratch. Grevlek posted:Package these two changes in with a fallen empire designer and I'd buy that as a Edgar Allen Ho posted:It's not just the characteristics of the tag that help the other titles though, it's that some countries start big and strong, some suck, some start weak but get thicc buffs if they can survive, etc. Stellaris falls apart because regardless of anything else, everyone starts at the same power level. There's no equivalent choice of playing France vs playing Dithmarschen. Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 8, 2021 |
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Feb 8, 2021 00:54
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