Stellaris

[Drury]

https://i.imgur.com/EekVpZc.png

https://imgur.com/a/wAJgu

Leaked Steam page and screenshots for a new Paradox game.

[Chrill]

Hmm... Might be worth a look. I rarely enjoy space strategy but if the game runs sort of like "Europa Universalis in space", then maybe I can wrap my head around it.

[Pyoro]

Unrelated to this topic but related to Stellaris - I went back to play some Distant Worlds; set tech costs insanely high, used a huuuge galaxy and normal pirraaates. Didn't really think about it, but since pirraaaates start with better tech they had (still have ... ) such a huge headstart it's the most pirrrrraaate-infected DW game I've played so far. They're crazy powerful ^^;
On a side-note, I also found the Death Ray technology, so one-hit-killer-Capital Ships ... if I ever manage to reach the point of the game were I can build Capital Ships. Thinks go slooooow

Also - Life is Strange Episode 4. Started a bit too "drama now plz" - to the point were I had trouble taking it seriously, but got much better later on. Good episode, some tense moments, and what an evil cliffhanger at the end Not much on the gameplay-side, unfortunately, but as someone who's playing games like Distant Worlds I can afford to take the occasional break and play some pretentious hipster non-game drama/coming-of-age/are-they-lesbians-or-not thing

[Chrill]

Anyone who has ever played Europa Universalis, or probably some of their other games too, will know that meteors are bad. "It's an omen, the end is nigh. The economy, fools!", et cetera. Well, not in Stellaris!!

[te_lanus]

release date announced: 09 may 2016 =)

http://steamcommunity.com/games/281990/ ... 2697391059

[Pyoro]

At first I was like "well, it's like DG:U, but with less start options" but by now I'm reasonably hyped. Of course, at release it'll be bugged, and there'll be a dozen DLC, some of which will improve things and some that will make things worse, but no doubt this is going to be a fantastic game

[Chrill]

It actually looks amazing. I love it.

[Redirect Left]

I find games like this look good on paper, but are often executed poorly. I can't see this replacing EVE Online for me.

[Pyoro]

Should it? In my eyes grand strategy is a completely different genre than a grand-space-MMO. Combat is (like all Paradox games) pretty passive; this is about steering entire nations, not just single people.

Of course, I love EU3, I love CK2, I love Vicky2, I like EUIV, so there's really little reason for me to be skeptical. ^^;

[Chrill]

This is still outside the Paradox comfort zone. Instead of playing in history, you are creating history by playing in the future. We have a 2 hour showcase coming up tomorrow with the Blorg in their search for friends!



If you have 60 minutes to spare, this above video from last week was really fun and shows a lot of the game too.

[Pyoro]

Next Stream is going on right now. Unfortunately for my taste they're playing way too slowly ^^; Watching HoI was/is more fun ...

[Chrill]

My problem is I can't pause the Twitch and continue where I left off - I'm at work!! Will watch the whole thing on YouTube tonight or tomorrow.

[Chrill]

THEY FOUND FRIENDS!!! Sort of. A few bugs appeared but I guess the game is still being polished up. I REALLY WANT TO PLAY IT.

[Chrill]

10 years is a long time to eat.
... hey, he did it on my 17th birthday!

Also: Stellaris is out. It's good, but not stellar. No pun intended.

I struggle a bit with the mechanics. I'm still in a sort of early-to-midgame stage. I've INVADED one poor alien race and taken their systems for my own. Also having problems with Influence simply not building up fast enough. I left an Alliance and deleted two outposts just to get it into positive again.

The Northeastern Bloc is the sector of "St. Christopher" and the Western Bloc is the sector of "Jaggo", the poor aliens I decided to usurp. In total, we occupy 9 planets - 4 controlled by me, 3 by Jaggo and 2 by St. Christopher.

[Pyoro]

I haven't even played that much yet.
But yeah, it takes a bit getting used to, like the balancing between energy and minerals ...

And I still have too much Distant Worlds in my mind, and I have to play this differently. So I'll probably take a few games to get comfortable with it (really hate that you can't seamlessly zoom to the galaxy map).

[Chrill]

(really hate that you can't seamlessly zoom to the galaxy map).

This.

Also:
* Opening up an empire should be as easy as clicking their logo when zoomed out. Now, you either have to click the icon by a planet or open the Communications Tab.
* Sectors? The tutorial is not brilliant in explaining them.
* Land Armies? The tutorial ignores them. I only figured it out thanks to watching the Blorg stream.
* Alliances? Why do they decrease influence? If anything, they should increase it thanks to us being a bigger power. That should make us more influential.

Funny little thing is I set up my Humans with a few traits and decisions of my own, namely:
* Fanatic Materalist
* Militant
* Longevity (+30years)

This gives me a powerful naval force, an advantage in developing technology and allows my scientists and leaders to live longer. The current ruler is 106 years old. One of my scientists is 114.

[Pyoro]

My humans are quick learners, intelligent and slow breeders. Oh, and xenophobe, militarist, materialist; in a despotic Empire. Basically the elite is human while the aliens can work as slaves.
...
It's only realistic


And yeah, there's a few of those minor annoyances. The designer could do with a component comparison feature as well. Things like that.
Land armies I haven't really gotten yet. So difficult to judge how many are needed ^^;
€: I already sucked at that in Distant Worlds. Don't know how many times I basically took out an AI and then didn't have enough ground troops to actually get their planets x.x

[Chrill]

Merged with the existing topic. Which resulted in... TRIPLE POSTING CHRILL!! Ban me.

In an attempt to learn the mechanics better, I cheated myself some influence (or rather, I modified the "Fanatic Materialist" trait to give me lots of Influence bonuses) and got building me some more.

Also, I am currently uplifting a primitive civilization, which could take a while, see here:

2016_05_10_4.png

The Bakturians, a Molluscoid people, are being uplifted by the humans. In a matter of approximately 5 years, they have advanced technologically in a way that took humans 300 years. It is our goal to help these Bakturians become a space faring civilization.

(997.22 KiB) Not downloaded yet

I have also come across the "Sol" system. Sol III is a good planet to settle on, it seems.

(..)xenophobe, militarist, materialist

So we seem to be quite agreeing, then. We are both rocking the military and the materialism. I skipped xenophobic/xenophile traits in order to go fanatic on materialism though. My pops have developed xenophile traits on several planets, and I have 4 different species in my civilization. See some of the stats in the screens below!

The Ox'Braxi are a species of reptile from an allied empire. We have migration access to each other's nations. The Ess'Jaggon were invaded by humans in the year 2237 and ended up surrendering their independence. They have grown to become an integral part of our Empire.

2016_05_10_2.png (311.37 KiB) Viewed 641 times

President Sienna Irwin was elected in 2223, at the age of 61. Today, aged 107, she is still actively leading our Empire.

2016_05_10_3.png (398.13 KiB) Viewed 641 times

EDIT: Gathering all the dates and information for this post wasn't easy. Stellaris could surely do with a History Tab, similar to EU:IV, which simply tells you the wars you were in and which years a ruler held office etc.

[Pyoro]

Well, I kept playing, and it still feels a bit bland. In EU or CK I always kinda play "historical", and that's not really possible in Stellaris, so basically all you can do is conquer your neighbors. Which is OK, if the game is like Distant Galaxies, where everyone is culling the weak and so Empires get bigger and bigger and wars crazier and crazier until you throw hundreds of ships against each other ...
... but Stellaris doesn't feel like that; the AI is too passive, and there's (at least so far) nothing that stops me from going after the weak guys one after another. And I don't think I'm playing particularly well (especially the sector mechanic is a pain in the ... ). Not sure about the happiness mechanic either. Aliens don't really seem to be especially bothered by being human slaves (and I don't get what the advantage of slaves is either, but hey ... ^^).

Knowing that Paradox always will create DLC I'm still positive, and it's not like it's not fun, but it desperately needs a bit of extra spice. DW does it with crazy wars, civilian ship traffic (love that one. Galaxy just feels a thousand times more alive if there's tons of civilians passenger and transport ships cruising around the planets, transporting stuff), fuel constraints, and such, and Stellaris needs to think of something, too.

[Chrill]

Stellaris is massively lacking in Trade, but that will surely be a DLC. I'd quite like a DLC that goes in-depth and lets you play a pre-space age civilization.

Adding to that, I have been struggling with lag quite a lot. They released a hotfix meant to improve that but it didn't get much better. Here's hoping it will continue to improve as updates are released. It makes the game slightly unplayable once my navies start growing bigger.