Stellaris

Weird. I was thinking about this 10 minutes ago.

GET HYPE.

I've watched some twitch videos where the AI Dev plays on camera with some dreadlocked viking dude. I don't think it will have the depth at first -- it doesn't actually look all that terribly complete. I mean, it looks complete -- but compared to EU or CK it's not at all.

But... DLC fest. They'll spend the next 5 years completing the game.

While it does look bare bones, it also looks like it will be relatively fun.

Just some observations/points from the twitch I watched:

• The combat is actually more complicated than it is in EU or CK, but it's still pretty far behind the curve of what could make it really interesting. It's the 10 years ago standard of "ships have capacity, you fill that capacity with weapons / defenses / modules (I think they only have 3 modules)". Your fleets just blob up and there's no actual involvement once combat is engaged.

• The Diplomacy is more complex than Civ diplomacy, but less involved than EU diplomacy.

• The eXplore portion of the 4x-- it's hard to say. They were playing a small crowded map to highlight certain game mechanics, and made a point of pointing that out -- even still there was a lot of exploration to be done with the science vessels. On a larger sparser map you can probably spend a significant portion of the game on Xplore Xpand before bothering with Xploit Xterminate.

• Rather than a tech tree they've gone Alpha Centari with it -- they have tech paths and random techs along those paths. Which is good, I always liked that mechanic, and it will add a fair RNG component to replace "race for bronze working, smash your enemies in the face with chop-rushed axemen"

• They have a max cap on worlds you can directly control, and force you to farm out autonomous sectors. You can set goals for those sectors, but you don't micromanage them. You gain tax off them and have to manage their dispositions against each other -- it looks like it could be an interesting mechanic or else it could be completely ass broken.

I think I want to like this game but every time I have played the most recent 4X games I always get turned off by how overly complicated and obnoxious they are.

I like the idea of the games but the execution has gotten so complex it's a simulation instead of a game now. Just looking at the screenshots it seems like that might still be the case here, unfortunately.

I'm ridiculously excited for this game. I'm a huge EU4 player and this looks great - I love scifi grand strategies too, and none of the good ones that are out have multiplayer. It probably won't be as in depth as EU4 is, but EU4 has had years of DLC to get where it is today. It still looks like it'll be great at launch and will be a first day buy for me. I also can't wait for the 40k conversion mod that's already being worked on.

I love Paradox Grand Strategy (except hearts of iron cause that shit hurts my head with the amount of micro and complexity), and I love space 4X, so this seems like a win all around.

And yeah, the let's play with the dev and cknoor playing as the Blorg is awesome and hilarious. Been following it as they upload to youtube.

Imo Paradox hasn't done any wrong with EU4 and CK2, and even their published titles have been really solid. I'm very hyped for Stellaris as well.

I just found out about this and will be looking into it.

Anyone have a good play through video that goes over the components of the game?

Fuck yes. Preordered this with the 20% off voucher on greenmangaming. I probably put 1000 hours into EU4, hopefully this is just as good.

CyrusReij_sl said:

I love Paradox Grand Strategy (except hearts of iron cause that shit hurts my head with the amount of micro and complexity), and I love space 4X, so this seems like a win all around.

And yeah, the let's play with the dev and cknoor playing as the Blorg is awesome and hilarious. Been following it as they upload to youtube.

Click to expand...

Check out HoI4. It's entire objective was to be more approachable.

Yea, HoI4's development has a huge focus on attracting at least the EU/CK audience to the game, if not more. I hope they update Rome this decade.

I'm super hyped for Stellaris. I don't know what made them decide to go for a space game, but I speculate it's Gal Civ 3 being very weak. Paradox will sort out the 4X space genre given the time to iterate on it. There has been such weak design and innovation in the genre for years, and Paradox is well suited to conquer the disarray.

Looks like another Steam-only game?

First game I've pre-ordered in a long time. Only because it's Paradox and they deserve all the help they can get.

Wouldn't surprise me if it has a few problems out of the door, but given time, as Agraza said, Paradox will do something special.

Palum_sl said:

Anyone have a good play through video that goes over the components of the game?

Click to expand...

This is the series mentioned above:Stellaris - All hail Blorg, Space Friends #01 - YouTube

I find the guys kind of annoying to be honest (far too silly) but it's so damn interesting it's now 4:30 am and I just finished part 4. This game is going to kick MoO4's ass big time unless they pull a miracle out of their ass. Someone above mentioned it looks kinda bare bones, but it has as many or more features as any other space 4x game I've seen. And that's without any Spying in the game (unsure if this is planned or not). It even has a novel idea regarding the space lanes vs open travel debate - include them both. When you create your race, you choose what movement tech you have - hyperlanes, warp, or stargate. As a map option you can also decide if everyone in the game will be limited to one of those types of movement - so you can literally play the game either way you want. The dev mentioned a game he played where one player choose hyperlanes and another chose warp, so the warp guy was able to bottle up the hyperlane guy in a turtle system while being able to go straight for any of his worlds. (Not sure I like this, I think choosing a movement type for the entire map may be better, but to each their own)

This wiki is a good bulletpoint list of features:Features - Stellaris Wiki

My only concern thus far is how the empire management works regarding the number of worlds you can personally control - I want to see how the directed automation works for controlling the rest of your empire. Seeing as the max map size is 1000 systems, this seems like a real make or break feature.

This game was only vaguely in my awareness, but damn, now I can't wait for it. Even if I gotta DL Steam.

Not sure exactly what you mean, Faille, as I never played EU4, but you do have the option of starting some NPCs out stronger than the rest, if you're looking for that kind of challenge.

Just finished episode 13 of the series above. Not sure the last time I was this excited about a game (which means of course I'll be here bitching in 3 weeks haha) Everything looks solid. Even the empire management with Sectors look fairly easy to use. There's really something to be said about not controlling the production on 400 worlds.