Has anyone else experienced a FE/AE surrender without much of a fight? In my most recent campaign, I occupied most of their worlds without ever fighting their fleet which was easily three times stronger than mine, and they just full surrendered.

Otherwise, I'm looking for something new to try in my next game, are Federations worth it? Either in terms of gameplay or roleplaying, are they enjoyable or just limiting?

 

I mean... if you took most of their worlds, yeah, eventually anyone gives up. There's a warscore point where it force surrenders the enemy I think.

You can actually kind of cheese FE's this way by occupying their worlds while you distract their fleet elsewhere.

Federations... well, you can roleplay them, but depending on how you view the AI, they can be really bad, or... almost good.

I've seen some AI pull awesome stuff in Federations, and some really greedy BS stuff.

 

Right, current game, spawned next to the two bad FEs (relatively, I did sprawl a lot), and eventually, the Xenophobes awakened. Or, to be more accurate, finally decided to stop hitting the snooze button because they'd been at war on and off for at least 60 years due to the regular AI being entirely too 'gib clay'. (One particularly greedy federation actually decced on them. The FE lost about 12k fleet power, if nothing else.) I'm hoping they just expand in the other direction - not because I can't take them (fleets are equal, fortress flowers are ready and I have the anti-FE perk), but because I want to see War in Heaven.

Oh, and the Unbidden dropped by not even a year later. This time, at the other end of the galaxy, thankfully. Might actually have a threat on my hands now. I was kind of hoping to see another crisis, but the Unbidden are hilariously common atm, so... Eh. At least I can now research Jump Drive in peace.

As for the galaxy burning? Eh, good odds of it. At least it'll be fun.

 

1.6 patch is out. Some interesting changes.

Also a new free Anniversary Species pack, with the pre-order one also being free to download.

Edit: Anniversary contains the pre-order cosmetic pack (Hydra, Porcupine, etc.), and adds a Peacock alien, 'Fairy Dragon', and a Larvae portrait.


Habitat energy/research nerfed a little, mineral production buffed slightly.

Can now find ruined megastructures and repair them.

Hive minds can have the 'Devouring Swarm' civic. (Essentially fanatical purifier)

Most importantly, Fanatic Xenophobe/Spiritualist's can now be Fanatical Purifier's.



Full patch notes here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/6a1k76/the_16_patch_notes_in_case_you_are_too_lazy_to/

 

Been testing all of the changes. Habitat energy buildings were nerfed from 10 to 8, which is pretty reasonable. Despite the patch notes saying so, Research buildings weren't touched. Mines buffed from 3 to 4, but you just can't polish a poo apparently. They're so bad that you're better off building energy Habs and trading the energy credits for minerals via Trader Enclaves.

Other than that, the Research Megastructure is actually strong now. Less yields than building Habs or making Research planets, but it more than makes up for it by virtue of not increasing your tech costs. That being said, it has the same issue it's always had: it's a bunch of research yields after you've basically finished the tech tree. I'd like to see either repeatable techs made more impactful, or a 5% bonus while researching repeatable techs at stages two and three, for a total of 10% per megastructure. This would make them a legitimate concern if someone spends a hundred years building them and have a massive amount of repeatable techs over you.

The Master Builders perk was changed from a build speed increase + cost reduction to a much larger build speed increase (+100%.) This makes Ring Worlds pretty damn good, in my opinion. You get a size 25 Gaia world every 7.5 years, which is more growth than you can reasonably ask for.

Dyson Spheres are still bad and they should feel bad.

Bio Ascension got absolutely butt blasted by the Growth changes. I feel I should take some responsibility for this, on account of the fact that I wrote the Reddit post explaining how to achieve -100% Growth Time. I actually agree that the system needed to change, but Fertile is so undertuned that it's almost worthless. This leaves Bio with almost no strong suits and a lot of weaknesses.

Synths got some nice pop build speed, but the fact that they can't migrate still is a big boner kill. Losing Share the Burden sucks a bit too.

Terraforming is now hella strong if you're lucky enough to start near Terraforming Gases and Liquids. My modus operandi was to colonize a planet with Droids while terraforming and let migration take over after then. World Shaper now grants the Atmospheric Manipulation tech (which lets you change it to any base type) on top of the terraforming speed, so it's totally worth it.

What else... uhh... Portraits? I totally look at those instead of constantly number crunching and making strats...

Guess that's all for now.

 

tbf, the Bio Ascension path is decent if you like to minmax the output of various worlds. IE have worlds purpose built for minerals, energy, research, army production, etc.

 

Yeah, this is how I use it too. The problem is that happy Synths do everything better than Bio except for minerals (to a very small degree, and only if you're a slaver), on top of having better Leaders which are immortal. Sadly, Bio does armies better than anyone, but armies are kind of shit.

 

I had fun with one Bio ascension just spamming armies to take colonies.


I'm loving the new ruined megastructures though. Started a MP game with my brother last night, I've found a ringworld, dyson sphere, and got the Cybrex System to spawn for another ringworld.

It's pretty awesome tbh.

That said, I'm amused by how buggy Devouring Swarm seems to be... you get science penalties for slave xenos (Read: Food), and you can talk to Enclaves still.

Granted, I'm kind of glad they can talk to enclaves, as that's the worst part about FP, is not being able to get the damage bonuses against the Leviathans/etc.

 

Latest patch is very buggy, AI doesn't declare war, sector AI still terraforming wrong planets, happiness trouble with xeno slaves etc.

But hey, they hotfixed achievements!

 

Kinda sad when 1.6 was hyped as a bugfix patch.

 

They rushed the hell out of it for the sake of meeting the target release date - the one year anniversary of the game release.

That was dumb as shit.

 

In my current democratic save, the only option for leadership is the curator scientist I hired since the update. Which would have been great, if he didn't have the most useless bonuses possible (Bonuses to building defence stations).

 

There is actual use to that, mind. High-end fortress flowers go for about 10k minerals per bunch, needing a not-insignificant amount of upkeep as well (One full Energy habitat paid for 4 of those flowers pre-1.6.) It beats the crap out of Resilient, the +food bonus, and maybe a few of the fleet bonuses as well. (I'm looking at Naval Capacity and Battleship builder).

Of course, those are low bars to clear, but in the lategame, it's less useless than you think.

 

Apparently a lot of the time AI are ethics-shifting to pacifist simply because they don't go to war often, so that the faction that enjoys peace pops up even in Fanatical Purifier's.

 

Ok wait, how do I repair the cybrex ring world? there is no option for it for me. Just says irreparably damaged. :/

 

Well, A you have to have Utopia.

And B you need 20k minerals per section + the tech to do it.

 

Yes, I have mega-engineering and Utopia. But I can't seem to find an option anywhere to actually do it. I thought I needed the mega structures perk. But no. Do I need voidborn and circle of life? Really? :/

I was really hoping it got me out of having to get those two perks.

 

Well, they put out a beta patch to fix some of the bugs created by the bugfix patch. Early reports are that it's helped tone down the biggest problems, but as is to be expected from a beta they haven't gotten everything.

 

I think you need the megastructures technology, not the ascension perk... not sure though. If you click on the ruined mega structure, there should be a thing to repair it, and it tells you what you're missing.

---------- Post automerged 05-12-2017 at 01:21 AM ---------- Previous post was 05-11-2017 at 08:37 PM ----------

So I just scared the crap out of my brother, we're 'allied' in our current game, because we spawned near each other and there's a lot of douchebag empires around us.

Anyways, we're at war with one of them to get him some new territory, in a hyperlane only game. My fleet is cut off.

Now, he's a Hive Mind. Expands stupid fast etc.

Me? I went pacifist/egalitarian/spiritualist just to play something different to my norm (fanatic xenophobe/spiritualist->militarist)

Turns out, my race is stupid good at getting unity/science... so he's working on his 3rd tradition tree, I'm working on my LAST tradition tree. (Year is about 2330~ish)

I've got the Shroud unlocked, and decide to reach in mid-war for funzies. My reward? A Psionic Avatar. It's got Psi Jump Drives. Ohboy!


Jumped it over to his territory and then into a battle his fleet was fighting, he outnumbered the enemy but they had tech advantage... and suddenly my big purple blob thing showed up and rekt that enemy fleet from behind.


Tl;dr: I dabbled with Chaos, and Chaos rewarded me with a purple ball of Doom.

 

After you win a game through Domination Victory, if you continue playing on, will the end-game crises (Unbidden, Prethoryn Scourge, AI Rebellion) still spawn later on?