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I finally started playing this last weekend and put 20 hours in already somehow. The mix of strategy and story reminds me of King of Dragon Pass (also how the strategy and story parts sometimes seem like they're running independently and not feeding into each other that much). Anyway I'm playing as boring humans and was able to form a federation with my southern and northern neighbors (...eventually. The Neborites didn't want to play nice with the Tendra-Zuhn so the T-Z had to stay associates for a while until I could change enough of the laws to force them in). Along the way I got the event where you can restore a wrecked war machine with a damaged hard drive. A few decades of hanging out at Sol Station later that robot became the head of the largest political party and was then elected leader of Earth and president of this side of space, so that's fun.  He got pushed out pretty quick, but kept coming back and got re-elected. It turns out being an ageless machine intelligence is a pretty big electoral advantage when your rivals are (for now) meatbag humans (and a few mushroom and insect people). 
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Sep 4, 2020 05:23
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 10:38 |
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Oh god, for my second game I turned the crisis strength up to 3x because I pretty much stomped the Aberrant in my first game, and it's more of a mess than I was expecting. I got the Contingency this time. They spawned a base two jumps from my capitol with about 700k fleet power, a base in the north (the, you know, galactic north) and two bases in the south. I was able to destroy the base in my territory by waiting until they spread out a little and then attacking them with my ~500k fleet power, but I took huge losses. Then the northern contingency found a wormhole that led to the center of my territory and wiped out the rest of my fleet (I honestly totally forgot about that wormhole since it's right next to an awakened spiritualist FE in their vassal's territory. Their vassal was almost totally destroyed, incidentally, and they haven't moved their fleets an inch to respond, nor has the robot FE that woke up to defend us against these invaders.) Then the southern contingency fleets that drilled straight through to my border arrived. Now I've got a 600k fleet squatting on my capitol, a 250k fleet rampaging around in my eastern empire, and about 700k coming up through my southern border. My trade routes all disappeared when my capitol starbase was destroyed and I'm netting -2k energy per month, and I'm rebuilding my fleet from scratch.  Luckily help finally arrived from my federation allies in the form of a construction ship that's moving behind the contingency fleets and claiming my systems after they're destroyed. 
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Sep 17, 2020 20:32
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What's wrong with ecumenopolises? Just not worth the perk? I usually end up making a bunch of them late-game.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:01
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Played my first campaign in a couple years. The research automation toggle is nice for the back half of the game (I don't think that was in last time I played) but there are so many other things that could be semi-automated to reduce thoughtless upkeep tasks when they don't need to be personally managed. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir but why not just let me choose all the buildings I want when a colony is founded, then add housing blocks whenever the pop cap is reached and add the planned buildings into the build queue when a new square opens up? It feels like Pdox doesn't want you to be able to go hands-off for too long without having to respond to something, but it honestly doesn't bother me to just let the game run for a while as long as everything is set up the way I want it. On the plus side it does feel like the AI gets better every time I come back. I actually saw an AI empire beat a fallen empire by themselves and they rolled right over the Khanate when it spawned. I wasn't able to pull ridiculously ahead until pretty late. Randallteal fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 04:53
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Jack Trades posted:The planet automation actually works very well now, with a bunch of settings to customize it. This is going to make me sound real dumb but I honestly never looked at the settings because I figured it wouldn't be this customizable, but I am definitely going to take advantage of at least the auto-housing and auto-upgrade boxes going forward. Good looking out!
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Oct 29, 2023 05:14
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Cimber posted:Also, cybernetics seems to be the best ascension perk so far. Doesn't piss of the spiritualists like Synths, is much easier to manage than genetics and isn't as random as psionics. Psionic's really strong if you take the shroud teachers origin (gives you latent psionic trait, shroud beacon, guaranteed access to the first psionic tech, contact w/ the shroud teachers enclave) and pump unity early on. You can zip through the ascension tree and get the psychic trait, shroud covenant and other bonuses super quick if you focus on it.
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Dec 3, 2023 21:04
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I like it, but your mileage may vary on whether it's worth $20. The rifts are ultimately just more self-contained mini-stories but they feel substantial and there are a lot of them. Definitely helps to fill up the midgame. I like the choose your own adventure gimmick too. They hide some neat rewards down different branches of the stories so there are incentives to go through them again, although there's the problem all Stellaris story add-ons have where after you've played it once and seen 50%+ of the content, you're going to end up skipping or missing some of the new content on subsequent replays because you're skipping past so many that you've seen before. Ultimately the Stellaris combo of grand strategy and interactive fiction still doesn't quite work for me.
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Dec 13, 2023 21:10
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That option might actually work out for me if I was on top of only turning it on when I need it since I usually dip into Paradox games intensely for a few weeks and then put them down for multiple years before coming back.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:38
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 10:38 |
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Psionic is very strong in the current game if you pick the shroud teachers origin and optimize hard for unity. Starting with the latent psionic trait is strong by itself (+10% research +5% unity) but permanent guaranteed access to the required psionic techs and shroud minor faction lets you get all the toys early. It's not just the species and leader traits. The PSI corps building, unique techs, and soldiers are also quite good, and there's still a lot more unique content locked behind the shroud than any of the other paths. It's definitely weaker if you try to pick it up midgame without the origin though.
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Mar 22, 2024 00:33
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