1.8 Teasers

[yiome]

New in 1.9: Nomadic civic. Can't settle planets, or construct habitats. Or research tech, as you have no research. No new mechanics. You just fly around in your starting ships. Flavourful! Roleplaying!

That would actually be a really cool civic, if there is enough interesting upside to keep it fun. Can be a peaceful race for trading/space mining or hostile race that can loot and raze every planet they come across.

If I can live and develop my empire inside enormous nomadic ships in exchange for these hard limitations, that could be a really cool awesome civic that I would be more than willing to take, yes

EDIT: That being said, that version of Inwards perfection needs a huge border bonus in order to make it work so we can expand while minding our own business. Still, loving the idea.

Wiz mentioned Inward Perfection is going to get special Tradition, maybe one of those is going to be a border bonus (replacing the supremacy I would guess).

 

[Dunaedine]

New in 1.9: Nomadic civic. Can't settle planets, or construct habitats. Or research tech, as you have no research. No new mechanics. You just fly around in your starting ships. Flavourful! Roleplaying!

Nomadic space civilization would have massive opportunity to do research and would be probably one of the best type of civilisation for this, by opportunity and by necessity. They will have to construct massive space ships (so habitats), capacity to quickly take ressource in systems (have some miners drone doing the work for them?), etc. So, even if I don't think we ever see them playable in Stellaris because this would need too many new and specific mechanics, yours assumptions seems to be a little off.

About the Inward Perfection, some human civilizations had a behavior very near this civics. Even if this only for some period of time. So it seems to be a viable style of gameplay, particularly if you play by switching between great expansion phase and consolidation phase.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

A spiritualist-pacifist-xenophobe Celestial Empire can turn into a spiritualist Fanatic Purifier Blood Court rather quickly, can't it? It's almost like your own FE Awakening!

Can it, though? Long periods of peace tend to make pacifist attraction fairly overwhelming. I'd say it's almost guaranteed to have stronger attraction than xenophobe (very hard to keep up without alien slaves), which should make it very difficult to flip to fanatic xenophobe spiritualist.

Now, if you're playing pacifist fanatic xenophobes with the very strong trait, then it's easy to drum up militarist attraction and then flip from pacifist to militarist in one step so you can become a purifier. I played a game like that and it was pretty fun.

 

[Edopardo]

Say "Hello" to Space Ming.

Hello.

 

[iniudan]

If I can live and develop my empire inside enormous nomadic ships in exchange for these hard limitations, that could be a really cool awesome civic that I would be more than willing to take, yes

EDIT: That being said, that version of Inwards perfection needs a huge border bonus in order to make it work so we can expand while minding our own business. Still, loving the idea.

Well they might have a special tradition tree, like hivemind and fanatic purifier are getting, as they don't have much use for most of the diplomacy, supremacy and domination tree.

 

[Ikael]

Well they might have a special tradition tree, like hivemind and fanatic purifier are getting, as they don't have much use for most of the diplomacy, supremacy and domination tree.

It would be great to see certain civics granting access to entirely ethics-unique tradition trees! Sounds like a good evolution / expansion of the unique traditions for hiveminds concept. Which other possible civics do you guys see receiving this treatment? A unique tradition tree for "Warrior culture" sounds like a fitting thing to do, too!

 

[Dunaedine]

Traditions are permanent, not civics. So I don't think special traditions connected to civics are a good idea. If you change civics, what about the status of the connected traditions?

 

[Ikael]

Traditions are permanent, not civics. So I don't think special traditions connected to civics are a good idea. If you change civics, what about the status of the connected traditions?

Well, some civics, such as convergent evolution or machinist are permanent. Also, perhaps dynamic traditions replace tradition trees, rather than add them. In that case, it would be relatively easy to revert civic specific traditions back into regular ones.

 

[Vanhal]

New in 1.9: Nomadic civic. Can't settle planets, or construct habitats. Or research tech, as you have no research. No new mechanics. You just fly around in your starting ships. Flavourful! Roleplaying!

TFW when you trying to do sarcastic reductio ad absurdum and it fail.

But don't worry, i'm fairly sure there would always be some +0,5% numbers to minmax and then call the rest of the playstyles "trash" because of it.

 

[Tim_Ward]

TFW when you trying to do sarcastic reductio ad absurdum and it fail.

But don't worry, i'm fairly sure there would always be some +0,5% numbers to minmax and then call the rest of the playstyles "trash" because of it.

Hey, not my fault people completely missed the point.

 

[Dunaedine]

Hey, not my fault people completely missed the point.

May be because your point is due to a very narrow view on the gameplay? You neglict the RP possibility, the capacity to switch civics and the fact that this civics can add flavors for some IA? The sarcasms don't make better any argument...

 

[Tim_Ward]

May be because your point is due to a very narrow view on the gameplay? You neglict the RP possibility, the capacity to switch civics and the fact that this civics can add flavors for some IA? The sarcasms don't make better any argument...

'RP' and 'flavour' are supposed to be on top of solid, compelling game play, not instead of.

 

[Dodge]

the Culture as I recall is quite nomadic and the main action happens on ships. They have ringworlds, but they are regarded as rustic outposts. Planet dwelling is positively seen as barbaric

 

[Ari54x]

'RP' and 'flavour' are supposed to be on top of solid, compelling game play, not instead of.

Except a lot of those different empire playstyles do add compelling gameplay when the AI chooses them even if they're not ones you'd personally want to play, and putting restrictions on a certain playthrough is a classic way of adding extra depth to an existing game, just like we saw with Purifiers/Swarms. Honestly, just because this feature isn't for you doesn't mean you need to go on a crusade about it. If there's something else you want added/fixed maybe post about that rather than wasting your time talking about a feature that, judging from the reactions to your post, is pretty clearly going to be appreciated by some people and may even be quite popular for people who like to play tall pacifist empires for at least part of their game.

 

[Mr Thursday]

These new Civics make the game more Sci-Fi than "FPS in Space". Now if only there was a special project to get a non-violent solution for the Space Dragon...

 

[Salje]

These new Civics make the game more Sci-Fi than "FPS in Space". Now if only there was a special project to get a non-violent solution for the Space Dragon...

>[Leave it alone]
>[Attempt to feed science ships to it]
>[If we bribe it, maybe it wont eat us?]

 

[SgtHydra]

>[Leave it alone]
>[Attempt to feed science ships to it]
>[If we bribe it, maybe it wont eat us?]

Feed it?

Heck, maybe you could build some sort of observation base nearby. It's big enough to see with a telescope from a nearby system, probably. Just a silly thought, really.

 

[Tim_Ward]

Except a lot of those different empire playstyles do add compelling gameplay when the AI chooses them even if they're not ones you'd personally want to play, and putting restrictions on a certain playthrough is a classic way of adding extra depth to an existing game, just like we saw with Purifiers/Swarms.

The purifier civics work because war is a core part of the gameplay, so if you take out the ability to use alliances or diplomacy, there's still plenty for you, the player, to actually do. Whereas if you take away the ability to use diplomacy and the ability to start wars, then what you're left with is an empty shell of a game because the economy of Stellaris is so painfully underdeveloped.

I've actually tried to play this way in the past, as it's sort of my default method of playing 4x games but fuck me is it boring in Stellaris. The game simply doesn't have the mechanics support this type of play. Waiting for the game to come to you is the one way guaranteed to give you an absolutely terrible Stellaris experience. What you get is the exact experience that very negative Quater to Three described - waiting around for something, anything, to happen

Honestly, just because this feature isn't for you doesn't mean you need to go on a crusade about it.

Four posts is a crusade now? OK!

If there's something else you want added/fixed maybe post about that rather than wasting your time talking about a feature that, judging from the reactions to your post, is pretty clearly going to be appreciated by some people and may even be quite popular for people who like to play tall pacifist empires for at least part of their game.

I dunno, maybe make it so playing tall isn't heartbreakingly tedious and unrewarding? Maybe make the planet management actually has some depth to it, so the thing you'll spend most of your time doing as a pacifist hermit kingdom is actually fun? It's not rocket science.

Now, personally I'd make it so that instead of saying you *can't* start wars or form alliances, you can but you pay a heavy price for it - maybe 2 influence for an alliance and a massive unity/unrest hit from starting wars so you can sort of do if you really have to, but it's really hard to pull off. But that's not the main thing, the main thing is to make internally focused gameplay actually fun, until then making a civic that requires you to focus on the least interesting part of the game seems like the height of madness.

 

[Ari54x]

The purifier civics work because war is a core part of the gameplay, so if you take out the ability to use alliances or diplomacy, there's still plenty for you, the player, to actually do. Whereas if you take away the ability to use diplomacy and the ability to start wars, then what you're left with is an empty shell of a game because the economy of Stellaris is so painfully underdeveloped.

I've actually tried to play this way in the past, as it's sort of my default method of playing 4x games but fuck me is it boring in Stellaris. The game simply doesn't have the mechanics support this type of play. Waiting for the game to come to you is the one way guaranteed to give you an absolutely terrible Stellaris experience. What you get is the exact experience that very negative Quater to Three described - waiting around for something, anything, to happen



Four posts is a crusade now? OK!



I dunno, maybe make it so playing tall isn't heartbreakingly tedious and unrewarding? Maybe make the play management actually has some depth to it, so the thing you'll spend most of your time doing as a pacifist hermit kingdom is actually fun? It's not rocket science.

Now, personally I'd make it so that instead of saying you *can't* start wars or form alliances, you can but you pay a heavy price for it - maybe 2 influence for an alliance and a massive unity/unrest hit from starting wars so you can sort of do if you really have to, but it's really hard to pull off. But that's not the main thing, the main thing is to make internally focused gameplay actually fun, until then making a civic that requires you to focus on the least interesting part of the game seems like the height of madness.

Yes, I would consider four posts full of emotive feedback of your particular reaction to a feature with no particular discussion of mechanics relevant to the game itself "a crusade" rather than simply anything useful either to the discussion itself or to any developers reading the thread.

At this point however you're actually getting into your problem- you don't like the economic game, or playing tall, and think playing as a defensive non-diplomatic empire would be boring because of it, and giving some useful feedback about what your real problem is rather than attacking the feature without justifying why. That's a perfectly valid opinion to have, and I would suggest you talk about what your specific problems are or head on over to the suggestions forum to talk about how they might be fixed, because the problem, if there is one, might not even be in the civic as proposed, but rather that peacetime mechanics could be improved and made to feel less micro-managey. (Personally, I don't think Stellaris is much better or worse than other 4Xs in that regard, but that's not to say it couldn't be improved)

I've generally found going tall pretty rewarding, the real challenge is that it's gated behind technology so it's a late-game strategy only, and concentrated power before habs or megastructures relies on having a severe unity or tech advantage, but if you didn't like planet management, I can certainly see why you'd dislike habs and megastructures too.

 

[Tim_Ward]

I can certainly see why you'd dislike habs and megastructures too.

I think habs are probably the least problematic aspect of the internal aspects of the game, because they have only one tier of structure the micromanagement isn't quite so ridiculously bad*. The problem with megastructures is unconnected to planet management, the problem is that they simply aren't worth the resources and time you spend on them, and that they come far too late in the game to make a difference.

Except the sentinel array. The sentinel array is cool.

* but still bad