Stellaris

Ive got my time down to winning in 90 years against normal AI, 120 against hard. Impossible AI still takes a little longer, you can be twice the size and they will still have a bigger fleet.

The dev diaries for the upcoming patch/xpac are pretty solid improvements. I am looking forward to them, but I'm still waiting for my core interest to be targeted. Likely going to be a bit of a wait. I do like the ability to classify whole species as livestock for consumption though. The game has been a little too star trek so far, and going deeper into hard/exotic sci-fi is welcome.

The next major DLC is coming April 6th...

Along with the ability to build megastructures (orbital habitats to ringworlds to dyson spheres) they're expanding the ideological ethics metagame, which is already probably the most in-depth out there right now. They're adding ascension unity traits which sounds like an expansion on HOI4 National Foci for things like going deep into a machine singularity civilization or a biological hivemind swarm.

I've got over 1000 hours in stellaris according to steam, which is now more than EU4.

The teasers for Utopia have killed my desire to play this game (until Utopia is out). I used to play three or four games a month. Now I just sit and stare at the icon, waiting. Praying.

I'm so pumped for this DLC. Apparently you can feed other races to your race, which sounds awesome as hell. Why enslave when you can just consume?!

Slavery is absolutely OP in the game is why. Even the milquetoast versions of slavery (regulated, xenoslavery) are way waaaay overvalued versus their downsides. Every time I played as fanatic xenophobes for the galactic purge achievement I always had to phase out the genocides in waves because my entire economy would go into collapse even if I purge more than a few slave planets at the same time.

I'm sure they're gonna do some kind of energy payout for turning the alien races into food, but that would be pretty OP too. Basically if it turns out to be anything as productive as slavery in the game now, it would be pretty disruptive.

I haven't played since update like 1.2 or so, but the Utopia expansion is out now and between that and all the other huge free updates, think I'm going to take another swing at actually finishing a whole game. Join the Federation or.... go about your business peacefully in your own territory!

Yeah pretty hyped about it. Won't be able to play for a couple weeks but I'll poopsocking that shit for sure.

That said, they've mentioned during their dev diaries and even during their let's play streams that "building tall" isn't really viable except with the very narrowest of win conditions (the psionic transcendance or the postphysical existence-type unity conditions) and even then you would have to drive pretty aggressively towards those conditions to make it work.

That's actually a good thing IMO.

Yea I'm fine with that, although I don't know what their definition of "tall" is either. It gives all players a chance to develop more without mandating expansion constantly so that's neat, plus who doesn't love building a preposterously-sized structure to plunk some people in and make your system look swankier. Being able to achieve all kinds of victories via tall would be too strong probably, since I was playing pretty wide and still managing to avoid much conflict except for neutral stuff that was in my way.

I'm really interested in playing with the new win conditions, Stellaris 1.0 felt very limited in how to actually close the game out.

BrotherWu said:

I've been looking for something to play while I wait for M&B:Bannerlord, which is the first game I have been excited about it a while. I tried RimWorld but I couldn't get into it for some reason. How has this one been coming along? A good buy? I tend to like 4x games but I didn't buy Civ VI due to the lukewarm reception.

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Have you ever played EU4 or Victoria? The clausewitz games have a pretty steep learning curve. Although stellaris is TECHNICALLY supposed to be the most accessible, it's still pretty daunting if you've never tried their other games.

That said, Stellaris actually has their most comprehensive political simulation oddly enough.

Stellaris is the first game of theirs I'd played and I found it pretty accessible. My only problem was since I wasn't going for an overtly military win, I wasn't really sure what my goals were supposed to be to win. After the patches and this expansion it looks like that might be more obvious now.

Amzin said:

Stellaris is the first game of theirs I'd played and I found it pretty accessible. My only problem was since I wasn't going for an overtly military win, I wasn't really sure what my goals were supposed to be to win. After the patches and this expansion it looks like that might be more obvious now.

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Most people would go for a domination win, just control (via direct or vassalage / protectorate status) 60% of the inhabited planets in the galaxy. Alternatively as of the heinlein patch you've been able to get an Alliance win, just need to get 75% of the inhabited planets under your alliance.

The "inhabited" planets definition is key. You can either colonize all the planets in your space or destroy/vassalize/conquer the ones that arent. I've actually won a game after the the interdimensionals killed enough colonies to tip the balance of inhabited planets into my favor.

The Alliance victory condition is actually the easier of the two, especially if you build a diplomatic civilization, but the caveat is that the victory condition will only be met by the count of planets under YOUR current rule, so even if your alliance has all the necessary planets to win, you won't meet the conditions for a win until your turn as alliance president comes around. This could take forever if you have tons of species in the alliance.

BrotherWu said:

I've not played either one, although I was looking at EU4. Had not heard of Victoria prior to your post.

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I'd say give it a shot, but it's a demanding game style that doesn't have the most spoonfed UI. It's pausable realtime, that's prolly the biggest thing a civ gamer would have to adapt to.

It's easily the best 4X strategy game out there though, and yes I've kickstarted Endless Space 2 and played the shit out of ES1 and Endless Legend.

EDIT: missed the new release trailer

So far so good with Utopia. I made a Hivemind Fungoid race that is Repugnant - I started out with the 5 core systems civic and am working towards a game where I don't make any sectors - just continue to increase my core systems and then go for higher science rate. Also, I'm playing with 2x habitable planets, so that way I can grab systems where there are multiple planets to colonize. I also took Extremely Adaptive (+20% Habitability) which makes it a lot easier to pick off good systems.

Trying to see if this strategy actually works as a tall strategy.

Yeah I installed it last night and started a new game... but fffuuuuu I can't afford to poopsock on this now lol. I get lost in this game for DAYS and I have to ship out tonight. I'll be fiending for this game for weeks.

Zajeer said:

So far so good with Utopia. I made a Hivemind Fungoid race that is Repugnant - I started out with the 5 core systems civic and am working towards a game where I don't make any sectors - just continue to increase my core systems and then go for higher science rate. Also, I'm playing with 2x habitable planets, so that way I can grab systems where there are multiple planets to colonize. I also took Extremely Adaptive (+20% Habitability) which makes it a lot easier to pick off good systems.

Trying to see if this strategy actually works as a tall strategy.

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Apparently hiveminds are pretty OP in muliplayer games because players would metagame their nonaggression pacts anyway.

I'm actually wondering if its possible to have hivemind Fallen Empires. That might make for a pretty short game.