OMG...just started playing this.
I’m gonna read all these pages now.
OMG...just started playing this.
I’m gonna read all these pages now.
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I do find the game intoxicating. Right up my alley of resource management, slow pacing, and exploration.
Has anyone been able to form a federation yet? Twice I’ve taken the Diplomacy tradition, to get to Federation, but no races are willing.
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I dislike the federation mechanics so I avoid them, but generally it's down to the personality of the AI empires, plus I think you need to have a compatible war policy in some instances. The 'reasons' mouseover should tell you more.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Generally you can only get friendly, bordering (or very close) empires into your empire. You should have other treaties with them first to build trust. If the mouse-over shows them as close to accepting, you can push them over with gifts: make an overly generous trade deal with them like dumping a bunch of excess minerals/energy and asking for nothing in return. That'll give a short-term relations boost which can be enough to turn things around.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
I generally avoid them, but at some point they improved them a bit so that the human isn't put at the mercy of dumb ally AI. The military AI has in general improved too, I think. I play with that Glavius AI mod though, and only sporadically play at all anymore, so not sure how much of the improvement is from the mod and how much is from Paradox.
The vanilla AI is acceptable in war as of recent versions, but it's still very weak on the economy. Glavius makes improvements in that department, and the Starnet AI is an absolute monster.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Hmm if I ever go back I can check it out. Did they ever make planetary management less tedious? I remember it was a huge timesuck when empires got large enough.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
When did you last play? The planetary economy has been completely reworked as of 2.2.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
The new system ditches tiles and introduces a whole new jobs system for pops. It's still quite intensive on micromanagement in larger empires (and vanilla AI is bad at it) but the decisions you make are more complex.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
I’m playing the console version.
The ability to create self managing sectors takes care of the micromanagement.
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The game is delightfully frustrating.
Trying to get the right combo of government, civic points, and racial traits that fit my play style is part of the fun.
My last attempt was going well. My empire was the largest, and while the religious zealot empire was failing badly on its second attempt to attack me, the Fallen Empire that had been on my border since the beginning decided to come out swinging...
I was prepping for such a confrontation. I had set up 3 defense fortress at the 2 choke points of hyper lanes between our space. 3.2k for each fortress. I figured between that and the space station there as well worth 2k of defense, they would be enough of a speed bump to bring my 30k fletcher to bear, and have reinforcements constantly generating nearby.
They rolled in with a 233k fleet.
Well that game is over.
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IIRC static defenses were pretty useless against anything other than pirates unless you had a really solid chokepoint backed up by a shitload of ships. The defense/offense buffs you could get from bases would really help out a fleet, though.
You can generally optimize your fleet to work well against a given superior competitor, though (it's essentially an RPS system), to blunt the effect of massive power. It helps if you know what to expect in opposition ship design.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Losing a war to a fallen empire isn't game-ending. They'll enforce whatever their demands were, and then back off.
Apparently the console version is still on 1.7, so quite different from newest Stellaris.
For example, I don't know exactly when this was introduced but Fallen Empire ships have dark matter shields, reactors and engines which don't come up in research, you can only get them from salvaging fallen empire ships. If you find yourself in trouble with a fallen empire, it's worth attempting at least one battle with them to see if you can at least destroy one of their ships and get your hands on those technologies.
But I can't remember if that had that in 1.7.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
I have the game saved and may return to it. I hate giving up...just their demands were easily 1/3 of my empire and my zealot neighbor on the other border was already a pain.
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New game..
Doing really well, had a Federation, ended slavery in a rival empire, liberated territory they took from another empire...was kicking ass.
Then the Unbidden arrived, in the star system right next to my capital with 4 fleets of 100 to 250k each.
That will learn me to research Jump Drive.
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The end game crisis comes whatever you do, the form it takes just differs.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
It just changes which one you get.
It should just roll which one you're getting at the start and have the respective dangerous tech speed up the arrival, but it doesn't.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
In the version Veldan's playing, I think it changes the timeline too. IIRC, 1.8 is the version that first added the caps to how early they could come.
Either way, JumpDrive = unbidden, Sentient AI = AI Uprising. NPC research of those techs counts too. Both of them start the dice rolling each month to see whether that crisis is triggered, and if neither are triggered before a secret timer expires, you'll get the Prethoryn invasion.
Been a long time since I played this and I've never gotten that far, there's always an end-game crisis then?
Reminds me of Colonization from DOS days where doing well resulted in war with Europe and an overwhelming fleet attacking, but then it was the same end-game crisis every time and you could prepare for it. Guessing you don't win if you beat the crisis though? Do you get another crisis or is there not much more challenging after that?
There is always one end game crisis, and if you're playing on the default rules once you've survived the end game crisis you've basically won, provided you have the highest score.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Once you get past the crisis and all the crises it spawns. The crisis usually causes the fallen empires to start waking up, which can lead to the war in heaven. There can also be things like multiple warring Unbidden incursions, or the Guardians waking up to help with the crisis and then deciding that the galaxy needs to be brought under their control to prevent recurrence. There's also the L-gate swarms if you have that dlc. And you could always trigger the End of the Cycle if you went down the psionic ascension path.
Diplomacy expansion. I'm looking forward to the space UN part.