Sounds like some great changes on the FTL/terrain/starbase front. I played around with Stellaris on release, and a bit more when Utopia came out, but haven't really got into it properly - mostly because every time I decide what to play, EU4 always looks like the better option. But with these changes I can see myself switching to Stellaris more (and that's just the patch features, never mind the expansion). The problem with Stellaris was always that exploration was fun but actually interacting with other empires/fighting wars etc was an incredible chore and not fun at all. But with changes I can see war being more fun.

 

Not gonna lie, I had the idea (inspired by HFY reddit, and a few Mass Effect fics) where when an empire has had one of their planets destroyed by the new mega weapons that empire has a chance to get an event where their Ethos/Government change to something akin to Fanatical Purifier's.

So, Imagine Empire A uses a mega weapon on Empire B.

Empire B than ends up getting an event wherein their government, inspired by the populace's calls for blood and vengeance, swears to destroy Empire A.

To give Empire B even more of a chance (assuming they're militarily weaker than Empire A) they could potentially also receive 'deserters' from nearby empires who are sympathetic to their cause. (Read: Nearby empires who don't like Empire A using a mega weapon, covertly send reinforcements via event troops to Empire B.)

 

Stellaris has been a huge disappointment for me; as have a lot of other video games recently. The tendency for game developers to release half-baked games and then charge you 120$+ for various expansion and DLC is a plague upon the industry and Paradox is at the forefront of this kind of content. I'm tired of buying a game in 2015 but having to wait until 2018 for it to be anywhere close to what it should've been. Stellaris:Apocalypse is just going to be another iteration of this problem.

 

Eh, while I agree with you in principle, Stellaris could hardly be called expensive by any stretch of the imagination. The game costs $30, the expansions $15. Story packs $10. By the time this expansion comes out, the cost of the game will be the same as a triple A title.

Not to mention, I've enjoyed playing the game so far, and I'd rather have had it in it's current version, than waiting another year or two till it got up to this standard.

 

Yeah, there's a fundamental difference between the Paradox strategy and the EA one. Paradox games are complete enough on release to give you hundreds of hours of playtime and could be left alone without any DLC and stand on their own. That the DLCs later seem essential, core parts of the game is a testament to Paradox providing substantial expansions rather than using it as a cash cow.

 

So I just bought a new gaming laptop, I'm going to get divinity 2, I've got cities skyline. Would you recommend this, with utopia and synthetic dawn, or TW warhammer 2?

 

Completely different games tbh. If you like managing your forces in real time battles then go for TWWH2, if that is not a big draw for you, then Stellaris is probably more to your liking. Both are pretty good games though.

 

Well, I've started playing a few days ago. It's quite addictive, that much I can already tell. It's also frustrating though. I play with AI on normal difficulty, and most of my games end with them overrunning me. They always have larger fleets except at the very beginning, and even if my tech is theoretically superior, they smash right through my empire.

What bugs me the most is that even if our fleets have the same amount of attack points, they steamroll me just the same. I tried playing with different load outs for my fleet, mixing ship types too, but nothing seems to really work.

I guess I'm still learning the ropes. There's a lot I'm doing differently than even two games ago.

As a side question that will out me as the total beginner that I am: how important is creating sectors? I usually try to keep increasing my upper limit of controllable core systems so that I can micro manage my planets. Is that good? Bad? Should I use the sector function more often? If so, what does it actually do?

 

How many core systems you have is entirely personal preference. I tend to stick with 3-5 core systems and then dump the rest in sectors. It just gets too much for me after that and I fail to manage my empire as effectively as I could. The sectors do need a bit of upkeep though, so keep an eye on what they're building (hover over the little speech box symbol on the sector screen after you've created one) and dump some minerals/energy in if they need it. Start them off on 0% or 25% tax as well, to let them get off the ground.

Your main goal in the early game, however, should be to amass as many minerals as possible in as short a time as possible. Research isn't as important in this game as it is in other 4X types. You can quite easily get by on just space-based research stations in the early game, as long as you keep your planets on track for mining and energy. That'll let you build a larger fleet (side note - pay no attention to the fleet cap, it's not a hard cap and you can keep building until you start running low on energy without any adverse effects), which will let you onto the conquest train earlier, which lets you snowball harder.

As for the fleet power thing; it's more of a guideline for how powerful fleets are rather than a definite 'I will win this confrontation' thing. What you want to do is find out what your enemies' fleets are made of and try to directly counter it. It doesn't work as well if you're facing multiple different enemies, but it's a good idea nonetheless. Missiles/Torpedoes are countered by Point Defence, strikecraft by Flak, Lasers by shields, kinetics by armour. If they've got a fairly balanced fleet, look at what their ship loadout is like. If they tend towards cruisers and battleships, use lots of armour piercing weapons with some missiles mixed in to deal with the corvettes. If they tend towards small ships, go for high tracking weapons.

The current meta, as well, tends towards using cruisers and battleships more than anything else. Sticking Plasma + Kinetic Artillery on battleships is a very powerful combination, as is just filling up your entire fleet with missiles/torpedoes/strikecraft (and swarm missiles for the M sized slots). That number of missiles is enough to delete most fleets as long as they're not twice your size, as the PD just can't keep up.

 

A lot of information that. I'll try it out, thanks.

 

I started playing this again. It's probably been over a year since I last played, so there are quite a few changes, but not so much as to be a completely different game. In no particular order:

* With ai aggression and difficult on the lowest setting, I've been rushed 3 times in under an hour, once in 45 minutes. I'm not sure what causes it, though I think one of them was agreeing to a non-aggression pact and then immediately getting attacked. I had one game that went on about 6 hours and managed to have one successful war, only to be immediately attacked once that one was over. I'm currently playing a 4-arm spiral galaxy in hopes of being able to get out of the early game due to seclusion. TBH, this isn't really any different than when I last played, but I still don't know how to prevent it.

*Ship composition. Seems a bit more important now. I've lost a 16k stack against a 10k stack, where in the past all that really mattered was the number.

*Factions. Kind of interesting I guess, in only that I managed to get one to increase my purple stuff by like 2, which seemed pretty strong.

*Traditions. I like this a lot. I don't know what the ideal trees are, but I've been going discovery first, because the scientist rush is pretty good for tech, and the last slot makes it so assist research gives upwards of like +15 unity, which means I can plow through some of the other traditions pretty fast.

*Diplomacy. Still doesn't make sense to me. Still seems impossible to change other nation's opinion of you, and I'm sure I'm getting invaded because of border friction. Like, empire makes an outpost right next to me and immediately goes to war because we now border... great. Anyways, not sure how to get open borders either.

*Sectors. Still annoying, but at least now you can directly build stuff in them and upgrade the buildings. One of them kept building robots though, which was annoying since there was only like 1 mine.

 

You can build stuff in sectors? I know about ships and things like that, but I thought buildings aren't possible once a planet falls into a sector.

I agree on the diplomacy part. Either they like you, or they hate you. I haven't yet had anyone change their opinion of me, since many diplomatic options get the -1000 value if they already dislike you. The only thing that changed it so far was going to war with a rival of theirs, but that's not viable all the time.

As for survival: I can only recommend @Aekiel's post farther up.

I've been playing my longest game yet and I'm in a solid position with two won wars, and no fleet but that of a fallen empire superior to mine. The trick was really focusing on resources and military at first instead of going the hard tech route which I had done before. It's much easier and safer to get research to a good level once enemies are too afraid to fuck with you.

 

Pretty sure that this (building robots)is actually something you can disable in the sector management screen.

 

So I went for stellaris in the end and I'm just coming to the end of my first game.

I played as a machine intelligence, so I feel like there's quite a few features I didn't experience but it was still very addictive and a lot of fun.

I started right on the edge of a galaxy and I was focused on science somewhat foolishly, thinking if I could just obtain a technological advantage I'd be able to roll out harder, which didn't happen. The au was pretty friendly compared to what you all seem to be getting. The spiritualists were all on the opposite side of the Galaxy and I was surrounded by materialists who thought I was bitchin' as a sophisticated machine.

Anyway, I got hemmed in eventually with quite a small empire once the whole galaxy was taken up and as it all started to get heated, the one fallen empire awoke and were fanatic xenophiles who forbid war. And they directly bordered me, so I became a signatory and they protected me until I reached big fleet sizes and the top of my tech lines and it was quite a boring section of the game.

The contingency happened, I got a science nexus repaired in my own space and eventually built one of my own and so was able to research the signal blocking quite quickly. Aggressively attacked it as it was all I was allowed to fight, beat it, got its tech and then most of the Galaxy attacked the weakened empire.

Got free, managed to work my way around the rim of the Galaxy until I was heading back in from the opposite side and got domination with a hundred planets by aggressively colonising. Was awesome and a big time sink .

However I never progressed beyond federation associate before the empire awoke, had no use for food or diplomacy or vassals, so I'll have to roll a mammalian species or something soon.

 

Having a sufficient fleet strength can be a large mitigating factor on whether you will get declared war upon. Being the type to focus on infrastructure first, myself, I'm keenly aware of this. Generally, I can pop out a fleet/reinforcements in time, as a result of said infrastructure, though. Temporarily losing income from a planet or two doesn't lose the war, after all. The expansion making it so you don't have to rebuild space stations will be nice.

[The following is filled with personal bias.]

As for Traditions, I personally tend to go for Expansion/Prosperity/Harmony(first, third and fourth), in no particular order.
Harmony for that nice empire-wide growth, then later also happiness, boost(upon completion), and early boost to leader lifespan(20 years is essentially + 50%, if you don't have any other boosts), and the Paradise Dome. I usually unlock Harmony first, but finish it second.

Expansion for the opener is really nice if it comes in right as you are colonizing your first place. Alternately, if you find a place a bit farther away, getting Expansion first, then the right side half-cost-based-on-distance selection, it can really help to get that early territory claiming going. Fill in the middle later. Of course, reducing the cost-multiplier for having colonies from 25 to 20% also saves a bunch of unity over time if you're playing, well, expansionist. The extra colonies multiplier is by far the largest source of increase. Heck, having multiple tradition paths are only worth 5% per path.
Even the half upkeep on Frontier outposts can pay dividends in territorial expansion. I've got five critically-located outposts running, mostly strategically, but also bringing in an appreciable amount of systems at about twenty-three between them, seven being from a single outpost, but only costing me 2.5 influence, for example.

Prosperity I like to usually pick the opener after I've got reduced cost-by-distance for colonies and increased leader lifespan, because that's right around the time that I might actually have minerals to spare for building lots of things, or have researched upgrades to build in the first place. The rest of the stuff in there is just handy multiplier boosts, more or less.
I've only used the Private Colony Ship a few times, due to cost factors, and colony ships costing so much relative upkeep early only exacerbates it. Generally I don't have a major surplus of energy income for the first 10~20 years of expansion, due to focusing on mineral stations first(and 2+ value research stations), and just enough energy to stay positive.

I like to take the Supremacy opener for +20% border range alone, although the first row first pick is nice, and the second pick on the second row I like, but it takes the other first row selections as pre-reqs.

I have only really used Domination in one game, where I was going for a specific theme.

I've never used Diplomacy, even if I've almost considered taking it just to get the 10% Habitability boost.

I've also never used Discovery, despite usually being all about research in most similar games. I just generally feel that the bonuses from Expansion/Prosperity/Harmony end up helping me more for my playstyle, even when it comes to research output. Even the unity gain on assist research(1/level, later 2/level) just doesn't work for me, due to my science ships constantly surveying(Medium or Large maps, in the donut format, so there are a lot of systems, and only limited blockage due to map shape, such as spiral arm does). I get the unity out of Paradise Dome and Energy Grid anyway. That and I like Spiritualist, which comes with a better version of the monument as a side bonus, and thus more unity. Again, just my own most frequent style of play.

 

One of the biggest advantages to Discovery is the increased chance of finding Anomalies though. Also, I believe Paradox has stated you can only find anomalies in unclaimed/your own systems, it's pointless to survey planets in other empires, so having them give research/extra unity is really helpful.

 

I hate it so much when the parts of the precursor quest line are in the territory of another empire. (Or any other goal for a quest.) They just always close their borders on principle and the only way to complete these missions is to wage war.

The quests are also quite repetitive in nature, but that's neither here nor there.

 

I’ve played this game for about 200 hours now, and this is pretty much the exact conclusion I’ve come to as well.

 

Personally I’ll grab Expansion and Discovery as my first two 9/10 times, I really enjoy anomalies, and getting + anomaly chance is pretty hard. I also probably just have nostalgia from pre-nerf Discovery. Expansion practically speaks for itself in what it does, faster better cheaper colonies and some free core sector systems, sign me up.

 

Yeah, pre-nerf I went discovery more often than not. It's just not worth it compared to prosperity and harmony though, these days.