Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A friend and I are playing this with a 40k mod, Dawn of the Imperium IIRC. I'm going full Greater Good, and he is Chaos, and we're currently gearing up to take down another Tau empire that is getting a little too pushy. They also have a Rak'gol empire south of them that is keeping their fleets relatively busy.

I like the game... but a few complaints..

The Sectors system sucks. Arbitrarily taking control away from the player for no benefit to the player (it's not really even much less micromanagement, because of the Factions crap that goes on).

There's no commercial trade system. It's completely and utterly absent from the game. Just... what?

The game is a poorly balanced mess. Just looking at government and ethos types alone, there's clear losers, and that should never be the case.

There's no non-conquest victory. You gotta own 40% of planets or destroy all other civilizations. THere's no other way to win.

Honestly it feels like I'm beta-testing or even late-alpha testing, not playing a released game.

 Melissia wrote:
The Sectors system sucks. Arbitrarily taking control away from the player for no benefit to the player (it's not really even much less micromanagement, because of the Factions crap that goes on).

This is a core Paradox gameplay mechanic, I personally don't have a problem with it. Factions are never something that I have had an issue with either, I have only had factions develop when I colonised unsuitable worlds (although my colonists did subsequently form a new subspecies adapted to those worlds) or when I have conquered another species.

 Melissia wrote:
There's no commercial trade system. It's completely and utterly absent from the game. Just... what?

Definite DLC material. Diplomacy in general doesn't work very well either. In CK 2 you are always aware of your neighbours and what they are doing but in Stellaris it is much harder to keep track (mostly due to the names being gibberish and not very distinguishable) and also because it doesn't really matter given how passive the AI is at the moment.

 Melissia wrote:
Just looking at government and ethos types alone, there's clear losers, and that should never be the case.

Which ones?

They all seem fairly balanced to me, depending on your playstyle of course.

 Melissia wrote:
There's no non-conquest victory. You gotta own 40% of planets or destroy all other civilizations. There's no other way to win.

Pre-set victory conditions in Paradox games are never very relevant, you are really supposed to set up your own goals and aims. No one is going to conquer the 400 systems that would be required to 'win' a large galaxy...

 Melissia wrote:
Honestly it feels like I'm beta-testing or even late-alpha testing, not playing a released game.

It could certainly do with a lot of polish.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
They all seem fairly balanced to me, depending on your playstyle of course.

For example:
Direct Democracy gives you +2 (advanced +4) core worlds.
Theocratic Republic gives you +2 core worlds (advanced +4), AND -10% ethics divergence (-20 advanced).
Individualist has a weak bonus (a small boost to energy) for harsh drawbacks (slavery acceptance penalty when slavery is an extremely powerful mechanic with almost no drawbacks, and +ethics divergence, meaning you'll get more rebellions), and its buildings and techs are underperforming compared to other ethos.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Pre-set victory conditions in Paradox games are never very relevant, you are really supposed to set up your own goals and aims. No one is going to conquer the 400 systems that would be required to 'win' a large galaxy...

So, bad game design is standard for Paradox, then?

I mean ffs, Dwarf Fortress has no victory condition, but the thing is, it doesn't PRETEND to. This game does-- it has a separate tab for victory conditions like it was pretending to be GalCivs or something, and yet it only has two variants on "be a warmongering conquerer" as a condition.

I kind of think they should just remove victory conditions from games like this. They aren't needed.

 Melissia wrote:

Direct Democracy gives you +2 (advanced +4) core worlds.

Core worlds aren't all that important as you get full access to starports, army recruitment, research and strategic resources from sectors (and outposts in sectors don't cost influence). You do miss out on some energy and minerals but as these are by far the easiest resources to get its not that important, especially as you can max out the tax that sectors pay.

Slavery has quite harsh draw backs, its only really good for minerals and food. It has significant penalties to energy and research; it tends to annoy your neighbours and it makes revolts a lot more likely. Direct democracy has very frequent elections and has irritating mandates.

Everything has its uses and the worth of government type/ethos very much depends on your playstyle.

 Melissia wrote:
So, bad game design is standard for Paradox, then?

How is that bad game design? If anything the inclusion of victory conditions is a sop to mainstream 4x fans as Paradox doesn't tend to include them.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

Direct Democracy gives you +2 (advanced +4) core worlds.

Core worlds aren't all that important

You're dodging the point...

The two government types both give the same amount of core worlds, BUT, one of them gives extra on top of that and the other one gives nothing.

If you can pick between direct democracy and theocratic republic, there's literally no reason to pick the former in regards to game mechanics because the latter does everything the former does, plus some extra bonus on the side.

It's very poorly thought out. And like I mentioned, this isn't the only example.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
How is that bad game design? If anything the inclusion of victory conditions is a sop to mainstream 4x fans as Paradox doesn't tend to include them.

THen they shouldn't have included them in the first place. If you include a feature like this and yet basically do nothing with it, that's bad game design.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Slavery has quite harsh draw backs

Most of which can be canceled out by metagaming the nation creation.

 Melissia wrote:
You're dodging the point...

I'm not. the ethos you chose determines the governments that are available. If you are going for a tech heavy play style you aren't going to be making a theocratic republic but that may be a decent option if you are going for a high production route, especially as divergent ethoses don't seem to have any meaningful impact if you don't have slaves. I had a huge empire in my first game with 7 different races with all kinds of ethos variations and I had no non-loyalist factions at all.
As I keep saying, different play styles will get the most of out different options and none of the options look particularly weak when taken as a whole.

 Melissia wrote:
Most of which can be canceled out by metagaming the nation creation.

50% can and you are still stuck with the hefty penalty to energy production and a huge penalty to science from enslaved pops. You are better off just making robots, unless they turn evil of course.

 Melissia wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

Direct Democracy gives you +2 (advanced +4) core worlds.

Core worlds aren't all that important

You're dodging the point...

The two government types both give the same amount of core worlds, BUT, one of them gives extra on top of that and the other one gives nothing.

If you can pick between direct democracy and theocratic republic, there's literally no reason to pick the former in regards to game mechanics because the latter does everything the former does, plus some extra bonus on the side.

It's very poorly thought out. And like I mentioned, this isn't the only example.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
How is that bad game design? If anything the inclusion of victory conditions is a sop to mainstream 4x fans as Paradox doesn't tend to include them.

THen they shouldn't have included them in the first place. If you include a feature like this and yet basically do nothing with it, that's bad game design.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Slavery has quite harsh draw backs

Most of which can be canceled out by metagaming the nation creation.

Why the hell should government types be balanced? It's not a competitive game. Theocratic has a very simple drawback, you have to be spiritualist. And as stated before, core planets isn't all that important, plus you can get more core planets through research later on anyway.

Out of curiosity, is this your first Paradox strategy game?

They don't have to be perfectly balanced. But they should at least be differentiated. You can't honestly argue "well, it's just different playstyles" when one is literally objectively the same as the other one with an additional bonus on top. No one is pretending that the advanced, upgraded versions are just "different playstyles", are they? Cause they're not. They're upgrades.

They are literally saying "theocratic democracy is like direct democracy, except entirely better!", and it boggles the mind that you are defending such bad game design choices.

 Soladrin wrote:
Out of curiosity, is this your first Paradox strategy game?

It's the first one I put any real effort in to, thus the question "is this normal for this company". I played CK2 over the course of a free weekend, but its god-awful user interface made me want to force-feed the developers broken shards of CDs containing examples of games with interfaces that didn't suck, so obviously I didn't buy it.

I will say, they definitely improved on their UIs for this game.

It should be noted it'll never be a choice between Direct Democracy and Theocratic Republic as they require opposing Ethics. The reason TR gives an additional bonus is to make up for the fact that +5/10% Happiness isn't as powerful all game long as +5/10% Physics/Society/Engineering.

That's also why the government types that require Pacifism give more bonuses than other government types; it's to counteract the fact that Pasifism has many downsides for few inherent bonuses.

 Melissia wrote:
They don't have to be perfectly balanced. But they should at least be differentiated. You can't honestly argue "well, it's just different playstyles" when one is literally objectively the same as the other one with an additional bonus on top. No one is pretending that the advanced, upgraded versions are just "different playstyles", are they? Cause they're not. They're upgrades.

They are literally saying "theocratic democracy is like direct democracy, except entirely better!", and it boggles the mind that you are defending such bad game design choices.

 Soladrin wrote:
Out of curiosity, is this your first Paradox strategy game?

It's the first one I put any real effort in to, thus the question "is this normal for this company". I played CK2 over the course of a free weekend, but its god-awful user interface made me want to force-feed the developers broken shards of CDs containing examples of games with interfaces that didn't suck, so obviously I didn't buy it.

I will say, they definitely improved on their UIs for this game.

I suppose that's enough of an anwser for me. I see nothing wrong with the CK2 interface.

 Melissia wrote:

They are literally saying "theocratic democracy is like direct democracy, except entirely better!".

Exact of course it isn't because:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
The reason TR gives an additional bonus is to make up for the fact that +5/10% Happiness isn't as powerful all game long as +5/10% Physics/Society/Engineering.

Balance!

Probably not perfect balance but its certainly close enough.

What are these sectors you guys are talking about? Been playing a bit, currently have 3 planets before I have gotten boxed in by other empires, I have quite a few outpost systems, there just wasn't many habitable planets near my home system.

What determines what technology you get access to? I played another game where I got star port access fairly early on and was able to get up to cruiser level fairly quick. My current game has been going on twice as long and I haven't even seen anything to upgrade my ports and am still rocking basic corvettes with no way to upgrade. Is there a way to look at a tech tree to sort of map out advancements?

Tech is random, although some are weighted differently (depending on the year, previously researched techs, how rare the tech is meant to be, etc).

There's a simplified tech tree here, and a larger, more detailed (3.61 MB) one here. Both are fan made.

Sector are AI (as in game AI, not AI or Robot techs in game) controlled portions of you empire that can be formed from colonies. They control the surrounding systems and colonies and pay the maintenance are develop them for you, for a cost of the minerals and energy they produce.

You can only directly control a handful of planets before taking penalties. To avoid the penalties, you can assign planets to a "sector" and assign a governor to control the sector, conferring his benefits to all the planets within it and limiting the direct control you have.

Tech is "drawn" from a "deck" when you have the option to research something new. After choosing a tech, the rest get "shuffled back" and you draw a new "hand" next time. There is no tech tree as such.

Wow so random tech draws can really screw you like they have me then? At least it isn't something I did that I know of.

My current biggest handicap is influence. I am at +1 and I cant figure out how to increase it and I have people constantly dying of old age preventing me from building outposts. Grrr.

You can increase it with certain technologies and by giving systems with outposts in them to sectors.

Also certain leader traits gives additional influence.

And yeah, tech draws can sometimes screw you. In my second campaign I started (I decided I didn't like the first race I created) I got screwed over hard. I started next to 2 Xenophopic, Individualist empires (and my race was a Xenophic Collectivist) and got basically no weapon or ship tech draws for the first 3 years or so. Both races reached the 'Superior' fleet threshhold and then called war on me within months of each other RIP that campaign.

I was looking at this the other day .. Looks cool.. far as I can tell it's a single player game? Or is it an online game where people can attack you and stuff?

You can play it single player, or do multiplayer ganes as well. It's similar to Civ games for mp/sp setup, if that helps at all. But no, there isn't raiding players from another galaxy, like something from dark souls, or anything like that.

Here you go guys, the future plans!

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-33-the-maiden-voyage.932668/

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
It should be noted it'll never be a choice between Direct Democracy and Theocratic Republic as they require opposing Ethics. The reason TR gives an additional bonus is to make up for the fact that +5/10% Happiness isn't as powerful all game long as +5/10% Physics/Society/Engineering.

Then maybe they should better balance the Ethos while they're at it. Saying "this government type is the same, but better, but you can choose the other one if you really want, but you know, this type is still better" is still bad game design that sends a political message they probably don't want to send.

Individualist is in the same boat as Spiritualist, btw. It is objectively weaker than the other Ethos, and forces you towards what are often weaker government types. A good example of this? The Individualist happiness building has a maintenance cost of 6 for +15% happiness to one planet. Other ethos' happiness buildings are maintenance-free, or low maintenance, and many of the authorarian governments get happiness buildings that are maintenance free in addition to the ethos bonuses.

And from playtesting it out myself, I assure you, that +10/+20% energy bonus from indivudalism is NOWHERE near enough to cover the excessive cost of 6 energy upkeep per planet-- it just doesn't make a noticable difference, I'm not even sure it's working at all.

Hell, one of the Ethos has a building that gives a galaxy-wide benefit for 6 energy, at least you only have to build one of those, where with Indivudalism you have to build one for each planet htat needs the boost.

 Melissia wrote:
Saying "this government type is the same, but better, but you can choose the other one if you really want, but you know, this type is still better".

Not better, different. It has already been explained to you repeatedly why they are different.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

And yeah, tech draws can sometimes screw you.

In my first game I had tier 3 weapons for all 3 main classes, I think one may even have been tier 4, before I managed to get tier 2 power core tech (and I had to reverse engineer it). Not a winning combination

 Melissia wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
It should be noted it'll never be a choice between Direct Democracy and Theocratic Republic as they require opposing Ethics. The reason TR gives an additional bonus is to make up for the fact that +5/10% Happiness isn't as powerful all game long as +5/10% Physics/Society/Engineering.

Then maybe they should better balance the Ethos while they're at it. Saying "this government type is the same, but better, but you can choose the other one if you really want, but you know, this type is still better" is still bad game design that sends a political message they probably don't want to send.


And from playtesting it out myself, I assure you, that +10/+20% energy bonus from indivudalism is NOWHERE near enough to cover the excessive cost of 6 energy upkeep per planet-- it just doesn't make a noticable difference, I'm not even sure it's working at all.
.

Well that's just nonsense. That +10% was giving me over 70 energy by the time I needed to build happiness structures to keep some sectors in line.

Are there any army attachments other than the fortification one and the death swarm thing that are available at the start? I have unlocked lots of weird and wonderful army types from giant beasties to superhumans but not a single attachment.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Are there any army attachments other than the fortification one and the death swarm thing that are available at the start? I have unlocked lots of weird and wonderful army types from giant beasties to superhumans but not a single attachment.

Yep, Commissar squads, PSI warriors, Xeno cavalry and clone commando's I think.

 Soladrin wrote:
Well that's just nonsense. That +10% was giving me over 70 energy by the time I needed to build happiness structures to keep some sectors in line.

Even with numerous energy producing plants on each world and using up all of the advanced power plant material I could find, it wasn't enough for me.

And I was using the +20% bonus for Fanatic. Granted, I got unlucky and never got the tech for anything beyond power plant level 2 and power hub level 1 (I was careful to make use of Hubs on each planet to maximize energy production), so that may have been why. Still, the most I had on a normal basis was a +10 income. To get all of my planets that needed happiness boosting one of them, I'd have had to pay somewhere between 36 and 48 each turn (had nine core worlds at the time, no sector worlds). And i took all of the energy mines I could, too...

It just was never enough.

That's just being unlucky.

Mel, if you were playing a non-Individualist race you almost definitely would have felt the difference as you'd have to build more power stations to even get the +10 balance. And yeah, that's an example of tech rolls being a bit screwing again if you still have yet to get a T3+ Station and T2+ Hub.


I'm still not getting you on the whole Government issue. It isn't a "You can choose this one or this Superior one", it's "You can choose this more powerful Ethos and get this weaker government type or pick a slightly weaker Ethos and get a slightly more powerful Government". After you've picked your Ethos you will never get a choice between those two types of Government as you can never be a Spiritualist Materialist.

The Individualist happiness building has a maintenance cost of 6 for +15% happiness to one planet. Other ethos' happiness buildings are maintenance-free, or low maintenance, and many of the authorarian governments get happiness buildings that are maintenance free in addition to the ethos bonuses

I assume you're talking about the Royal Gardens and Paradise Dome? Both require Pacifism and give a smaller bonus. Royals Gardens can only be built once per ruler (so you have to wait for the current ruler to die before you can build another one) and the Paradise Dome is +10% (rather than +15%) while also giving +5% Habitability (which is useless in many cases) for 2 Energy. Considering both require Pasifism, you'd expect them to be good as it's one part of the balancing act. Plus Pacifists get screwed over in wars Happiness-wise so these 2 buildings are there to make sure they don't implode as soon as someone declares war on them.
Oh, there's also the Monument for Purity, which basically requires you to venture out into the universe with no allies (or allies who you hate and who hate you in return).
Admittedly though, the Hyper-Entertainment Forum has an insane maintenance cost.

The Galaxy-wide building you're talking about is the Collectivist's -15% Ethics Divergence building, which cost 7, not 6. It's nice, but it's also the only unique building inherently available from being Collectivist.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Mel, if you were playing a non-Individualist race you almost definitely would have felt the difference as you'd have to build more power stations to even get the +10 balance.

My first race played was Fanatic Materialist + Militarist, Scientific Directorate (with Intelligent, Weak, and Natural Sociologists traits).

Game was just as long. I noticed no substantial difference in energy production when I started this race (Fanatic Individualist + Materialist, Conformist).

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
I assume you're talking about the Royal Gardens and Paradise Dome? Both require Pacifism and give a smaller bonus.

So you're saying a 5% bonus to happiness is equivalent to 6 maintenance?

You're not doing a good job convincing me that this is in any way sanely balanced.