Paradox Grand Strat meets Sci-Fi 4X; Boners Explode

Jazaen · Post by **Jazaen** » Sun Apr 09, 2017 5:55 pm #278781

Bottom post of the previous page:

Anonmare wrote:>Be robot empire
>No psionics
>Can't end the Galaxy by ripping it a new orifice for Demons to stick their metaphysical schlongs through.
ISHYGDDT

Silly organics fucked reality again.

Spoiler:

ColonicAcid · Post by **ColonicAcid** » Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:08 pm #278828

XSI wrote:I´ve got the DLC and so far, I've found there to be essentially no difference
Civ 5 tradition stuff is nice I suppose, but it doesn't seem to actually do shit worth 20bux

whalecum to paradox dlc.

you'll always look in retrospect at the fact that "wow i've wasted a shit ton of money on this" but if you try and play without all the stupid dlc shit you just can't

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 5:00 am #279079

This is why I don't buy EU4 DLC

Most of it is 20bux and yet it has maybe 5$ worth of content.
But hey, before these DLC thingies I'd have said Stellaris is just a content-free tech demo you can technically play if you want to. and have nothing else to do
Now it's roughly equivalent to early access alpha instead. Progress!

Incomptinence · Mon Apr 10, 2017 6:19 am

Eh I am pretty happy with it.

Post by **Armhulen** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 2:27 pm #279185

Always agree to end of the cycle.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 3:44 pm #279192

Composer of Strands = Nurgle
Eater of Worlds = Khorne
Whispers in the Void = Tzeentch
Instrument of Desire = Slaanesh
End of the Cycle = ???

Maybe they're meant to be Malal

Jazaen · Post by **Jazaen** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 9:05 pm #279258

Undivided maybe? Back when it was a bit more distinct, rather than just "confused or delusional".

Also, if you are psionic, you can kind of communicate with the Scourge. It seems they are running away from something.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:20 pm #279281

Jazaen wrote:they are running away from something.

what if it catches up

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:47 pm #279290

Anonmare wrote:Composer of Strands = Nurgle
Eater of Worlds = Khorne
Whispers in the Void = Tzeentch
Instrument of Desire = Slaanesh
End of the Cycle = ???

Maybe they're meant to be Malal

Jazaen wrote:Undivided maybe? Back when it was a bit more distinct, rather than just "confused or delusional".

Also, if you are psionic, you can kind of communicate with the Scourge. It seems they are running away from something.

>Tyranids in WH40k are rumoured to just be running away from something worse
>Similar strategies

Stellaris really tries to turn into WH40k later on, shame it doesn't manage to bring the same grandness and instead it mostly just seems to be 'Just throw your fleet at it'

Incomptinence · Tue Apr 11, 2017 7:30 am

I tried out the new missiles and had a bit of fun doing a panicked doctrine change to avoid 10 or so dets with pd in support wiping out my composition. Then I didn't realise that dodge was a thing again and got caught in an infinite battle with fucking troop ships forcing me to seek an early peace or emergency ftl my ships. Then the unbidden showed to be too lethal forcing me to adopt corvettes again as a screen for my battleships. Found cruisers to be the worst of all worlds along the way focused down before battleships and destroyers.

Most of the my fun last game stemmed from mistakes and recovery shame most of that was due to broken or near broken interactions and there is an optimal build out there to kill it all. With utopia there could at least be a megastructure plans within the first century but likely you will still be filtering through tech for the requirement like mad well into the second-third before you even start building anything around the point the game is generally won/stagnant with federations. Crisis events need more bug fixes still.

Jazaen · Post by **Jazaen** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:07 pm #279495

Well, they are either running away from The Unbidden (the whole "hunter" thing matches), or Paradox could make each crisis evolve (much like The Unbidden do, with The Aberrant and The Vehement), with Prethoryn followed by The Hunters, and AI rebellion doing... Something. Giving void clouds bodies of Living Metal, maybe? Or forcefully converting other empires into robots.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:31 pm #279609

>Forcefully converting other empires into robutts
Like people aren't going to go robutt ascension anyway

It's either that or psionic, I'm finding biological to be a huge disappointment and not worth it. Sure, you can make your species have amazing bonus traits, but at that stage of the game you won't need them and the whole thing is nothing more than a novelty
And I'm finding the megastructures to be very 'meh' as well, by the time you can make the things you can end the game already- My fleet is 50k in strength and my neighbours are at ~7k each. Now imagine if I didn't piss about and put those megastructure resources to work on more navies instead. Not that minerals is the limiting factor, for some reason these things cost a shitton of influence, which I also then need to colonise the resulting station/ring world after it has been build
Space stations can't make a spaceport so you can't even move entirely into space and leave the planets behind
Not that you will need to at that point, I've got a good 20 planets terraforming to gaia worlds and I'm just looking for things to do and spend my resources on that isn't throwing more military at my neighbours

Apparently there has been some work on internal factions and your population joins those now though.
Shame that it sucks and doesn't actually do anything, I've minimised the faction thing on the right side toolbar and never paid any more attention to it. Why does this even exist if it does nothing? Not that I'm asking for a similar experience as Victoria 2 Russia with fucking communists everywhere, but at least some form of interaction with factions in your own empire would be nice
Not to mention that it STILL misses what I'd say is important tools such as being able to see the build queue for your planets or a way to decide per planet/station what pops get to go there.

Or military that is anything other than "Just throw everything at the target and hope that works"
(If it doesn't work, rebuild and try step 1 again)

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 10:01 pm #279634

The Sentry Array is the best megastructure.

It's one of the cheapest but once its fully complete - you get radar coverage of the whole galaxy. Great for seeing what someone else's ship designs are or where all the Unbidden/Prethoryan/Machine ships are centred around

I got a mod that let me have every crisis at once and found my fleet stretched between dealing with Unbidden and putting down rogue robots that took over my robot-pop focused planets. When I had finally turned the tide - the Prethoryan's showed up right at my front door step and my ships were all still specced for dealing with Unbidden.
It was a struggle to keep them off my important planets while I was re-building my navy and some of the opportunistic xenos I hadn't quarantined decided now was a good time to take some slices out of me while my back was turned.

I won though. I always win.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:03 am #279671

Oh yeah, and they fucked up achievements
>Set game to ironman because I may as well
>Huge green text "This game will be eligible for achievements"
>Never get achievements despite achieving them

Small gripe because they're really simple to get achievements(Nothing in this game seems to be hard unless its multiplayer), but this still annoyed me

Post by **Armhulen** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:42 am #279682

Gee Willy another game where every other AI race is superior and destroys me in research

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:58 am #279686

Research becomes exponentially harder the more planets and pops you have, planets especially.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 4:10 am #279726

I really dont see how you could ever end up falling behind on research
Make sure 1/4th or if you have nothing else going on 1/3rd of your pop does science and you'll pretty much always be in the lead for science, and also for credits and minerals
I'm not sure what the AI even does when left alone, every single planet I conquer is hot garbage and they never seem to be able to even make an effort for resistance

Post by **Armhulen** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 5:37 am #279748

XSI wrote:I really dont see how you could ever end up falling behind on research
Make sure 1/4th or if you have nothing else going on 1/3rd of your pop does science and you'll pretty much always be in the lead for science, and also for credits and minerals
I'm not sure what the AI even does when left alone, every single planet I conquer is hot garbage and they never seem to be able to even make an effort for resistance

More planets, military and research than me. What am I missing here!?

Incomptinence · Wed Apr 12, 2017 6:49 am

Unless they are into late game repeatable research don't worry about it what is researched is usually more important so just use a meta doctrine to hold the line then steal their technology from wrecks and upgrade.

Grazyn · Post by **Grazyn** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 6:52 am #279759

Is sector AI still not removing tile blockers? Come the fuck on

Incomptinence · Wed Apr 12, 2017 7:23 am

my sector ai removes them make sure it has minerals and energy

I do find it peters out then keeps working but sits on a bank of 20-30 thousand minerals but blockers are cleared by then.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 10:16 am #279776

I dont trust sector AI for good reason

I gave the thing a bunch of space stations and loaded it up with 4000 minerals. What does it do? Lets pops sit idle on those stations instead of building the cheap buildings on it that would provide it a massive load of science and credits. Fucks sake, I have to build the entire station for them before giving it to the sector AI or it's just going to stay a drain on my empire for all eternity
Exact same shit with planets I'm pretty sure, which is why I build every tile of a planet before passing it to the sector AI. Then I tell it to NEVER replace any structures. The one good thing about this update is the ascension thing for +5 core systems, it means I can actually build my shit without having to trust the absolutely retarded AI with it

K-64 · Post by **K-64** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:26 pm #279809

Armhulen wrote:More planets, military and research than me. What am I missing here!?

Research stations and buildings, apparently.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:59 pm #279815

Another neighbour declared war on me, another neighbour got annexed.

What makes this even funnier is that he already had cruisers when I could still only build destroyers and his fleet power was greater than mine, yet the Holy Starfleet wiped the floor with him. 1/3rd of my fleet consisted of destroyers with M- and L-sized missile launchers.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 4:50 pm #279873

This was a good update and I can't stop playing. The perk tree is nice and helps empires who are a bit behind to catch up. It surprised me how much better empire food is. The internal politics and per-species rights makes interacting with your pops much more interesting.

It's around mid-game, I'm going fanatic spiritualist, my pops are all at 100% happiness (90% spiritualist), making a shitton of Unity and influence, started becoming psionic, and I'm very quickly becoming a dominating force despite only having 3 planets for the first 200 years. I'm glad you aren't forced to always be aggressively expanding or get left behind as much any more.

The arthropods in this game are super cute, too.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 5:37 pm #279888

I'm tempted to get this just so I can make fake Chozo.

Jazaen · Post by **Jazaen** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 5:38 pm #279891

We should have another tg game, with blac... I mean, with psionics and Federation Builders!

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 6:52 pm #279930

actually going to play games in the discord again?

Jazaen · Post by **Jazaen** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 6:54 pm #279931

Madness!

But yes, that would be great.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:26 pm #280004

if this is actually gonna end up happening, invite me back to the channel

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 12:54 pm #280235

>third neighbour declares war on me

I have 14/12 core planets now and that's after turning six unfinished systems into a sector and deliberately researched additional techs that give me more core planets. I am racking up planets faster than I can develop them, without even colonizing anything. And this asshole grabbed every fucking planet he could get his grubby xeno hands on so half of them are too tiny to be interesting.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 1:37 pm #280239

yeah I left, the only game you guys ever played anymore was the one with the sub and it didn't run properly on my PC

Grazyn · Post by **Grazyn** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 1:58 pm #280243

Biological ascendance is good, as hive mind it's the only one I can do but it's quite powerful. I can't use other species for colonization because they're automatically processed into food (until I unlock advanced genetic to add them to the hive mind), but I can still exploit Gaia planets for that.

>have desert trait
>colonize Gaia planet
>genetically modify the pops in there to have Tundra trait
>use them to colonize all those juicy glacial planets
>repeat for every other biome

Who needs terraforming?

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:34 pm #280271

>Saturday
Well I'm out then, got Shadowrun. Shame, because the only way this game can be interesting in my opinion is in multiplayer. The AI is absolute garbage and not really worth playing against.

Also that is the only time biological ascendance is good, literally everyone else can just
1. Use robutts
2. Use an uplifted species
3. Friendly species
4. Terraform the thing
5. Do exactly the same without bio ascendance, still costing them almost nothing

A few of the traits you can add are nice, but entirely honest here. They're not really that big a deal and by the time you can put them on your guys you would already have been able to uplift some species as specialists if you can stand the micromanagement or you'll have advanced to the point where you stopped caring and just upgrade all the buildings on your planets to the highest level and 1 or 2 minerals per month don't matter

Grazyn · Post by **Grazyn** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:23 pm #280291

The biome trait thing unlocks pretty early in the game, I didn't even have the tech to terraform that planet type yet, modifying the pops on the gaia gave me a pretty decent boost into a snowball of colonization.

I must say I'm not really into micromanaging tiles, and I can't be bothered to play the placement game with silos and stuff for the adiacency boost.

Also, there seems to be a bug where you can't modify a species unless you control all the planets with that species. Which means you can't hivemind conquered pops unless you conquer their whole empire(s)

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:26 pm #280297

Silos are terrible, literally worse than just placing a mine on the tile except in incredibly early game where you can in theory get +4 out of it(But realistically you won't)

Shat out a quick review for it as well. I am not impressed with it, but I guess it's content that the game was lacking. And still is lacking.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/553280/
http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2017/04/s ... eview.html

Spoiler:

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 12:43 am #280411

Some of the Ascension Perks are generally pretty useless.

Galactic Contender and Galactic Defender are too specialised and only have one use; once the Fallen/Awakened Empries/Crisis Events are gone it's a wasted slot.
Shaper of Worlds is okay, it's better with mods that let you terraform barren planets.
Galactic Force Projection looks nice at first, but then you realise that it's only 200 corvettes/100 destroyers/50 cruisers/25 battleships and would only be worth your time if it was a percentile bonus instead of a flat bonus.
Mastery of Nature is decent but it's not worth your time unless you are really unlucky with tile blockers.
Imperial Prerogative is nice and makes sure you don't have to rely on the sector AI for a while and extra core systems is never not useful if you're smart with colonising
The perk that increases your border range is alright but I'd say you're better off with getting it through repeatable tech unless you're really compressed by your neighbours.
Galactic Wonders is cool but I think the Science Nexus needs a much bigger boost to its research output because it doesn't compare to having a large planet with loads of labs on it - The Sentry Array and Dyson Sphere are fine I think, a fully completed sphere produces 400 EC a month which could fund your empire's maintenance costs by itself I think.
Circle of Life I think should be rolled into Galactic Wonders because to be honest it's really not that great by itself mechanically.
Voidborne habitats are decent but truthfully I only ever used them for their solar power processors. 10 ECs per tile is really good.

DrPillzRedux · Fri Apr 14, 2017 1:49 am

I finally got this and 10 minutes into my human game human pirates somehow became a thing, got a space ship force, and took out half my starting fleet.

How the fuck do I have fun in this early on? It's just click here to scan system, remember to click research, and wait.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:44 am #280467

Anonmare wrote: Galactic Wonders is cool but I think the Science Nexus needs a much bigger boost to its research output because it doesn't compare to having a large planet with loads of labs on it - The Sentry Array and Dyson Sphere are fine I think, a fully completed sphere produces 400 EC a month which could fund your empire's maintenance costs by itself I think.
Circle of Life I think should be rolled into Galactic Wonders because to be honest it's really not that great by itself mechanically.
Voidborne habitats are decent but truthfully I only ever used them for their solar power processors. 10 ECs per tile is really good.

Science nexus is okay but really not worth the investment if you have other uses for the minerals. It doesn't compare to having a planet full of labs, but it also doesn't make research take longer like owning an extra planet(Or habitat) does. Only thing you're going to research with it is repeatable techs because of how late it comes, and you really shouldn't have any problems with research at that stage

Dyson Spheres are actually alright, but only because you start getting credits from them partway through the construction. If it didn't start paying until the end of construction it would never be viable in anything other than the longest stalemate of a multiplayer game and even then it would still be pretty bad

Sentry array is the reason to pick that perk, being able to see everything in the galaxy is nice and has pretty good stategical and tactical aplications

Ringworlds are jokes, and will never bring you anything resembling a return on your investment. Not in resources and not in time
But it is a thing you can technically build in otherwise completely empty and useless systems to put something there, and they're a better choice than 2-3 habitats, though they take much longer to build.

Only reason to build those habitats is the solar processors. Everything else does better on a planet. Research maybe does about as well as a fully upgraded planet so I suppose that is worthwhile. Food and minerals are a joke and you shouldn't put those on there ever. Especially minerals, that's like building a level 1 mine that cant be upgraded when you could be putting down a top level power plant
On the rest of those, yeah. Thats about right.
You're going to just end up picking the same things and then deciding whether to go robotic or psionic

DrPillzRedux wrote:I finally got this and 10 minutes into my human game human pirates somehow became a thing, got a space ship force, and took out half my starting fleet.

How the fuck do I have fun in this early on? It's just click here to scan system, remember to click research, and wait.

The game practically forces you to pick a militarist ethos so that you can actually research weaponry early on, because you will get pirates and you will need to go kill them.
And it's a huge pain to fight them without having some tech to equip your ships. Too big of a pain if you're still early on and have to really optimise your mineral use to get ahead

Incomptinence · Fri Apr 14, 2017 4:15 am

What ringworlds enable is the things habitats are terrible at. They are simply are dogshit on minerals and fleet capacity.

I put the problem with megas down to the retarded rare technology needed to take the perk they would have a far bigger influence if they came into play as quickly as full ascension paths. This far out of reach I feel they should uncork how many you can make at a time.

XSI · Post by **XSI** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 4:35 am #280489

Yeah, but see
You will need several thousand years to get your mineral investment into the ringworlds back out of them if you try to get minerals from them.
They're not even good for that, it's never going to be economically viable for producing anything other than dick waving rights

Post by **Armhulen** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:14 am #280496

XSI wrote:Yeah, but see
You will need several thousand years to get your mineral investment into the ringworlds back out of them if you try to get minerals from them.
They're not even good for that, it's never going to be economically viable for producing anything other than dick waving rights

Which, to be fair, is pitty nice

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 6:47 am #280522

I started my game completely with pre-made empires I built up since the game's launch. I actually had more than what the game could put in with the maximum number of AIs so not all of them got in.

It's much more fun to play with than the randomly generated ones. With a thematic build and personality, they feel a lot closer to actual characters instead of a hodgepodge of random traits.

ColonicAcid · Post by **ColonicAcid** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 9:54 am #280542

Uh all the games I've played I've never had pirate troubles. They're super easy to beat considering they don't even have a commander. Just build a couple of frigates early on instead of spending money on tile blockers or mining stations or whatever. They're usually in the mid 100's in terms of military strength so a fleet of 200 should easily dispatch them.

I've never lost my fleet to pirates in all my playthroughs and I've pretty much played every single ethos by now.

Jazaen · Post by **Jazaen** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 10:28 am #280548

Science Nexus is nice if you are determined to stay a small-size empire, in theory, since it doesn't give you pop-penalty to tech cost, or tradition cost.
Also, it would be good if your primary species is terrible at science, and you haven't gone for either genetic modification or Synthetic Ascension.

DrPillzRedux · Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:23 am

Alright I'm finally having some fun thanks to mods. I'm the leader of a massively powerful space federation. I basically get to play god in a galaxy. Everyone is too afraid to fuck with me and my boys. Now I just need a ring world to gloat.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:28 am #280888

I got the Utopia Expanded mod, one of the things that it lets you do is upgrade ringworlds you build to have 8 habitable sections and removes their restrictions on being buildable in systems with uninhabitable planets.

Makes ringworlds a lot more valuable as is hard to turn down the equivalent of 8 max size gaia worlds in one system

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 5:45 am #280930

Awakened empires are annoying as hell. In my case, it was a Military Isolationist-turned-conquerer that also happened to be my direct neighbor.

Thankfully I had a lot of defensive pacts with other galactic superpowers, but even when we all pooled our resources together, the best we could achieve was a stalemate.

I probably should have paused and took my time taking a screenshot but here is the climatic battle in all it's bloomy goodness.

Post by **Armhulen** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 6:19 am #280936

What would you respond with?

Spoiler:

DrPillzRedux · Sat Apr 15, 2017 6:52 am

Is that an actual mod?

Post by **Armhulen** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 7:00 am #280951

DrPillzRedux wrote:Is that an actual mod?

I can upload it if you want\

I was also playing around with the idea of replacing robot pop with borgs