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My Cthulian empire is slowly spreading. Got 5 planets under my belt, along with a frontier outpost to nab some good resources and an osbervation post from which to abduct the populace and mutilate the cattle of a desert planet inhabited by Hanar-esque primitives

A nearby rival empire looks suspiciously like Deep Ones, so they will make fitting slaves...

The are some elements that seem pretty broken at the moment.
Diplomacy doesn't seem to work very well. My empire started out with surrounded by races with opposed philosophies to mine so they all didn't like me and would do little more than trade minerals with me. The only positive diplomatic relationships I have are a couple of races I uplifted (and one of them hates me).
I went to war with one of them that I had rivalled and smashed them in the ensuing war which made the entire galaxy hate me as apparently I had become threatening even though the war dec had no noticeable effect on my faction standing.

The empire I fought also apparently has an equivalent navy to mine although I only ever saw a small 1k stack when I had stacks totalling 10k.

Its a decent game but elements of it need some polish and some elements are a little too basic.

Having started with a xenophobic species, I couldn't really delve into diplomacy. Instead, I'm just trying to get a good navy to crush my neighbors with.

I have had some basic tech not turn up in the research queue. I have tier 4 weapons but I only have tier 1 generators so I can't use them and have only recently acquired basic ship armour because I reverse engineered it.

So as someone who never could get into Crusader Kings II, but love Civ V, would this game be accessible to me or is it another huge pile of figure-it-out-yourself by Paradox?

It actually has a nice tutorial and pop up help.

Had a few more hours to play. I feel like I spend half the time waiting for resources to build up so I can buy something. Note to self for my next game, build a bigger fleet immediately to take on the heretics that show up soon after the start, and then the more powerful pirates not long after. Is this scripted or just coincidence it has happened to me twice now?

I really dislike the whole, unknown species in the same system so everyone runs and hides or gets away. Makes it really hard to explore when your science ship heads for the hills the first time it so much as glimpses another fleet.

Isn't there a stance setting to make it more aggressive, ad in it will stay in the same system as hostile ships?

Never had heretics (and I'm a religious civ), but I had pirates.

And there should be an icon you can toggle so your ships don't run away at first contact. Or it might be an edict. You can change it somewhere though.

Col. Dash wrote:
Is this scripted or just coincidence it has happened to me twice now?

The pirates are scripted, around 200 fleet strength will see them off though.

The resource system seems a little off. I seem to be starved of resources in the early game but by mid game I have so many that they essentially become an irreverence.

Col. Dash wrote:
I really dislike the whole, unknown species in the same system so everyone runs and hides or gets away. Makes it really hard to explore when your science ship heads for the hills the first time it so much as glimpses another fleet.

You can turn that off (but be prepared to lose a few science vessels if you do).

Everyone still hates me but I have discovered a cunning plan to make friends. As a war goal stipulate that conquered races are released by their conqueror; this makes them very happy and they will fall over themselves to ally with you (its just a shame that they are generally rather pathetic).

I found Snake Man pre-sentients. Of course my Cthulian empire needs Snake Men, so I proceed to uplift their species and tailor it genetically and (im)morally to suit my plans for them. They will be my front-line super soldiers in the forthcoming war against the Deep One wannabes to my galactic west

 Nostromodamus wrote:
I found Snake Man pre-sentients. Of course my Cthulian empire needs Snake Men, so I proceed to uplift their species and tailor it genetically and (im)morally to suit my plans for them. They will be my front-line super soldiers in the forthcoming war against the Deep One wannabes to my galactic west

I did exactly the same thing although be warned, if you change their traits their portraits also change. I uplifted some bear/cat looking beasties to use as the glorious cannon fodder for my massively brained but cripplingly weedy weasel things but once I altered their traits they became humans. There are 4 separate human looking races in my game that I have found so far.

I now have 7-8 different species in my wondrous technocratic wonderland and I am quite disappointing that, so far, they haven't tried to kill each other.

I also found a space age race called 'human' on the planet Sol who are now part of my glorious utopia but are also right next door to a fanatic isolationist fallen empire. It will be fine.....

Apparently if you aggressively study atomic/space age races they can effectively form XCOM and start shooting down your ships, killing your science teams and (presumably) eventually sending a team of crack soldiers to take out the alien base orbiting their planet....

I'm in a long term relation with sentient gas clouds who constantly ask me to help them with trivial stuff, they even had communist rebels at one point. It's hilarious.

So, I got a mission to gather various xenos critters for a zoo. The problem is, the critters are in other empires' territory. I tried trading for access to their lands, but can't find a way to get them to give me the access. In other words, I have options to give them something, but there isn't anything showing an option to ask for something in the trade.

At the very bottom of the trade window (below the options you have to offer) is a tab/button that allows to to switch to ask stuff from the other participant.

Ah, the fact that it's labeled 'demands' threw me off. I've spent too much time playing Civ, I guess. Thanks for the help, I was worried my screen resolution was bugging out or something, haha.

No worries.

I had trouble finding it, too. It seems like such an awkward spot for it and little attention is drawn to it.

Hmm, between this and total warhammer, I'm struggling. I really like both pretty much equally as potential time sinks, but probably am favoring this just purely for cost reasons...

There is a bug that prevents troopships from appearing in the ship upgrade window so you can't upgrade their jump drives. The way around this is to tick the auto design box.

After a setback, I'm now becoming one of the strongest Empires in my corner of the galaxy. Once I make a few friends, I'll be cleaning up my western border. Plenty of warmongers over there that no one really likes.

So many bugs....

The 'Tyranid' end game event is bugged so that their planets are uncapturable and invincible. Which is annoying as they have 6-7 planets on my borders which need constant babysitting to prevent never ending waves of deathstacks,

If you haven't bought the game yet its probably a good idea to wait until at least the first DLC as the many, many bugs will hopefully be dead by then.

Welcome to a paradox game release.

So far I'm having fun. Not a fan of sectors and I'm unsure if research is affected by pop size and how many research labs you need to offset it, but having the biggest empire means I have fleet superiority but tech inferiority even with 3 tech sectors. Playing Thousand Sons, invading with psy troopers and slowly purging the galaxy.

Yeah Research is more expensive based on pop size. The formula is [Base Cost] * (1+ 0.02*[Total Population of Empire-10]) = Cost. For the cheapest tech in the game, that alone is ~5 research points per pop over 10. Basically unless you have a lot of orbital research stations you can't easily offset it, because even the highest tier research building only produce 6 of their main research resource and 1 each of the other 2.



I wish there was more than 1 technology that increased the number of colonies you can have at one time. The current maximum of 10 (5 base + 4 from direct democracy +1 from the random tech) is way to small. I really don't want to heavily rely on sectors at all, as it gives me little control as I continue expanding. No doubt this'll be coming in the future, though.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Yeah Research is more expensive based on pop size. The formula is [Base Cost] * (1+ 0.02*[Total Population of Empire-10]) = Cost. For the cheapest tech in the game, that alone is ~5 research points per pop over 10. Basically unless you have a lot of orbital research stations you can't easily offset it, because even the highest tier research building only produce 6 of their main research resource and 1 each of the other 2.



I wish there was more than 1 technology that increased the number of colonies you can have at one time. The current maximum of 10 (5 base + 4 from direct democracy +1 from the random tech) is way to small. I really don't want to heavily rely on sectors at all, as it gives me little control as I continue expanding. No doubt this'll be coming in the future, though.

Yeah it sucks having +200 science output and the +10% science racial trait and still being too slow to keep up with 3 planet empires. I get that they cant just let big empire=big science for balance, but going at the same pace should be doable. Colonizing good worlds and preventing enemy expansion is also part of a strategy game and early expansion should be important. But what's the use of good expansion if your enemy can just team up with one or two other smaller ones to spank the crap out of you? Having a bigger fleet doesn't help if you need to split it up for multiple fronts and the tech difference is murder.

What I do regarding sectors is take away their power to replace buildings and build out new colonies fully before giving them to sectors, so I had control over what was build and what it now has, but yes, the lack of control is annoying, I get that some people don't want to micromanage, but I don't think controlling 20 planets is a big deal personally.

I don't have a problem with sectors given that you can direct their production priorities and even build stuff on the surface of sector worlds and most importantly make full use of their space ports.

I find them pretty useful to be honest. I'm sure I have had the +core planet cap tech pop twice.

In other news I have managed to create X-Com

Well this was just disappointing, I had one of the end-game events, spoilered for those who want a surprise.

If that's the 'Tyranid' one I have just had it pop in my game and I can't be bothered even trying to fight it due to various bugged events associated with the invasion.

That's 2 late game empires ruined by that invasion (the first time I encountered it I wiped out all their space assets as well).

No, its extra dimensional ghost/crystal people? Was not bugged and from what I have read Nids and the ones I had are different.

Yeah the Unbidden are nasty if you aren't able to destroy them fast like you did.



I didn't realise the +1 Core Planet tech was one of the repeatable ones. That's nice then.