Hello internet ^^
I had some extra time this morning to be exceptionally nerdy so I thought I'd impart some wisdom on what I've learned about using galaxy settings with the latest version of the game as of this writing (note that this almost certainly applies to 3.9.3+ I'm just working off of the latest version of the game I've hosted in with the settings so far for multiplayer play-throughs.
Over the past year I've been playing group games with friends having 4-8 players participating at a time on a weekly basis so crafting a galaxy setting that makes it challenging, interesting but also not lob-sided for any one play-style has been the focus for how we wanted to go about it. Note that you can also use these settings or similar ones for single player games too, its ofc your prerogative on how you personally like to craft your own games but since I did some searching around to get an idea on what settings others use I thought I would share my insights from the dozens of games I've hosted over time more recently.
Often for multiplayer games performance, version control and flexibility in game-play are key areas to consider so I often stick with the medium galaxy settings (sometimes large if there's a lot of people playing in a session to allow for some expansion without having players step on each others' toes too much). You'll have to use your own intuition but what I've learned is that players often get more stressed in a pvp situation than it would be facing off with other ai empires - that's not to say it doesn't happen but its more pleasant when you can have some buffer space. The fourth factor to consider and bear in mind is that in the games I've hosted there tends to be a little game-play meta mixed with rp so keeping it flexible and open-ended for players discretion seems to be the best fit for a fun round - I'm often playing with friends anyways so I trust their judgement in striking that balance, perhaps for more public lobbies having some house rules can help. (As a minor side note with group games like this we also set up several other temporary use channels for groups that want to discuss matters within their war-party/federation to keep things interesting as far as the information warfare is concerned - something I recommend if you have 4+ player games.)
Given the wider breath of variability in settings I've shared below, this will mean that some players do get annihilated during the course of the game - often they can choose to rejoin as another empire of their choosing should they wish to stick with the game. Its also been a format that has allowed players to join mid-game too so playing the game to win is not as strong of a consideration since some players will over the course of the game have a strong start in their play through or struggle all the same - the focus is emphasized more over the story of the galaxy rather than winning necessarily (though some players do enjoy that aspect as well - and that's fine too ^^)
So ensuring performance and version control over the course of one game are easy factors what makes the game tricky is finding ways to make it feel just random enough without feeling too hard or uneven for everyone's diverse play-styles. The trick I've found is to enable the potential for a busy or slightly emptier galaxy with all the settings and pop growth. The randomness of the settings will allow players to examine their expansion area and build their empire to adapt to that over the course of the game. Dense interstellar neighborhood? Perhaps you want to play tall then as a peaceful empire, or go on conquests as a warlike culture, or perhaps you can negotiate a federation or personal domain over your new underlings - it adds to the variety of the game play that I've observed makes everyone's experience more engaging since we're never sure what we're faced with right off the bat.
The pop settings will usually be pretty harsh, I've found that 0.75 Growth Required Scaling (up from 0.25 in the standard settings) often mitigates many challenges the games will face in the mid to late game. I do soften the blow of this with a stronger Logistic Growth Ceiling value of 1.75 (up from 1.5 in the standard settings) this basically means that planets will grow faster when they hit their peak growth in the ideal conditions while still ensuring most empires tend to average between 500-1500 pops for an empire, this changes game play in the way that encourages a few worlds to be developed industrial/specialist worlds while leaving several more around as less developed rural worlds. Each supplementing resources respective to their roles but often challenging the player in deciding how many worlds they want to develop and where they want to consolidate their pops (especially when mega-structures like the rings come into play), its also worth noting that the penalty to growth can be mitigated with techs, edicts and other measures to help growth - something you can put energy into overcoming if you wish. All of this makes pops far more valuable during the mid- and especially late-game stages. Pop stealing or conquest becomes more viable instead of simply spamming your own pops at the same rate.
To add another layer to all this, and for practical reasons of group games, I tend to make our play period shorter, something like a 25% reduction on the time scale (2275, 2350, 2425). This change helps a lot in making things feel a bit snappy, busy and challenging with what choices you make (something akin to a mutually exclusive path based on where you put your focus.) This also addresses mid-game crisis appearing potentially earlier when empires are still developing fleets that could take on these threats so they will feel very present in the ebb and flow of game play - I also tend to lean on scaling the AI to Commodore to mid-game and 3.0x crisis - this enables players to make big forays in the early game but also provide the AI a means to be challenging while offering an avenue of overcoming them - while realism is fun, having some mechanics allow for wins to occur with enough effort is really fun and encouraging for players too (this difficulty level is something to consider especially if you're playing with a group of players with a wide range of skills in the game.) The crisis multiplier we settled with was in tandem with the difficulty so 3x/4x feels strong enough to overcome a fallen empire on its own, it'll still require some form of collective effort to repel unless an exceptionally strong empire decides to focus on it in the right circumstances and still allows some breathing room so that this event isn't all encompassing for everyone if there are some players that want to take advantage of the chaos and diverge from this expectation (or if other major events like a war in heaven kicks off) Most other settings can then be kept relatively vanilla (barring some like tech which is scaled with the reduced time frame to allow people to build mega structures and other things in the late game to enjoy and utilize.)
Because I tend to keep to a medium sized galaxy it means influence can be used more readily between expansion, espionage and diplomacy more evenly which makes for a generally satisfying experience it also means crisis spawning on these map sizes makes the threat more relevant.
Settings like the one below have been very successful for a majority of the games we've played, having tinkered with each calibration here and there to see what works. Its really fun when everyone at some point becomes a superpower or opens the l-gate first or has their own story developing in their corner of the galaxy with each play-through. This dynamic is what makes Stellaris fun for us so its been a very workable model. Other alternatives to make interesting games is to take the settings below and scale up advanced starts from 1-3 to 3-6 but scaling up to commodore by late game that way the AI's bonuses and build up is more gradual. Its also worth noting that the Marauder Empires setting does not randomize in multiplayer games (that would be a nice qol feature tho!) Additionally you can reduce the habitable worlds and increase pre-ftl empires proportionally (usually .5x and 2x respectively works well and doesn't' take away from the availability of play-styles for it. You can even reduce hyper-lanes/wormholes/gateways if you wish to make the interactions more localized. Sometimes we've disabled l-gates, often we'll keep xeno-compatibility since this will also help with the heavier penalty of pop growth. The Aggressive AI setting just makes things interesting when empires are more willing to fight it out if they have the means to much like human players.
I hope you found this useful to think about for your own games and if you have any questions I'd be happy to discuss the finer points in further detail! Def feel free to share your own observations, I'm always keen to hear what works for others too ^^
I had some extra time this morning to be exceptionally nerdy so I thought I'd impart some wisdom on what I've learned about using galaxy settings with the latest version of the game as of this writing (note that this almost certainly applies to 3.9.3+ I'm just working off of the latest version of the game I've hosted in with the settings so far for multiplayer play-throughs.
Over the past year I've been playing group games with friends having 4-8 players participating at a time on a weekly basis so crafting a galaxy setting that makes it challenging, interesting but also not lob-sided for any one play-style has been the focus for how we wanted to go about it. Note that you can also use these settings or similar ones for single player games too, its ofc your prerogative on how you personally like to craft your own games but since I did some searching around to get an idea on what settings others use I thought I would share my insights from the dozens of games I've hosted over time more recently.
Often for multiplayer games performance, version control and flexibility in game-play are key areas to consider so I often stick with the medium galaxy settings (sometimes large if there's a lot of people playing in a session to allow for some expansion without having players step on each others' toes too much). You'll have to use your own intuition but what I've learned is that players often get more stressed in a pvp situation than it would be facing off with other ai empires - that's not to say it doesn't happen but its more pleasant when you can have some buffer space. The fourth factor to consider and bear in mind is that in the games I've hosted there tends to be a little game-play meta mixed with rp so keeping it flexible and open-ended for players discretion seems to be the best fit for a fun round - I'm often playing with friends anyways so I trust their judgement in striking that balance, perhaps for more public lobbies having some house rules can help. (As a minor side note with group games like this we also set up several other temporary use channels for groups that want to discuss matters within their war-party/federation to keep things interesting as far as the information warfare is concerned - something I recommend if you have 4+ player games.)
Given the wider breath of variability in settings I've shared below, this will mean that some players do get annihilated during the course of the game - often they can choose to rejoin as another empire of their choosing should they wish to stick with the game. Its also been a format that has allowed players to join mid-game too so playing the game to win is not as strong of a consideration since some players will over the course of the game have a strong start in their play through or struggle all the same - the focus is emphasized more over the story of the galaxy rather than winning necessarily (though some players do enjoy that aspect as well - and that's fine too ^^)
So ensuring performance and version control over the course of one game are easy factors what makes the game tricky is finding ways to make it feel just random enough without feeling too hard or uneven for everyone's diverse play-styles. The trick I've found is to enable the potential for a busy or slightly emptier galaxy with all the settings and pop growth. The randomness of the settings will allow players to examine their expansion area and build their empire to adapt to that over the course of the game. Dense interstellar neighborhood? Perhaps you want to play tall then as a peaceful empire, or go on conquests as a warlike culture, or perhaps you can negotiate a federation or personal domain over your new underlings - it adds to the variety of the game play that I've observed makes everyone's experience more engaging since we're never sure what we're faced with right off the bat.
The pop settings will usually be pretty harsh, I've found that 0.75 Growth Required Scaling (up from 0.25 in the standard settings) often mitigates many challenges the games will face in the mid to late game. I do soften the blow of this with a stronger Logistic Growth Ceiling value of 1.75 (up from 1.5 in the standard settings) this basically means that planets will grow faster when they hit their peak growth in the ideal conditions while still ensuring most empires tend to average between 500-1500 pops for an empire, this changes game play in the way that encourages a few worlds to be developed industrial/specialist worlds while leaving several more around as less developed rural worlds. Each supplementing resources respective to their roles but often challenging the player in deciding how many worlds they want to develop and where they want to consolidate their pops (especially when mega-structures like the rings come into play), its also worth noting that the penalty to growth can be mitigated with techs, edicts and other measures to help growth - something you can put energy into overcoming if you wish. All of this makes pops far more valuable during the mid- and especially late-game stages. Pop stealing or conquest becomes more viable instead of simply spamming your own pops at the same rate.
To add another layer to all this, and for practical reasons of group games, I tend to make our play period shorter, something like a 25% reduction on the time scale (2275, 2350, 2425). This change helps a lot in making things feel a bit snappy, busy and challenging with what choices you make (something akin to a mutually exclusive path based on where you put your focus.) This also addresses mid-game crisis appearing potentially earlier when empires are still developing fleets that could take on these threats so they will feel very present in the ebb and flow of game play - I also tend to lean on scaling the AI to Commodore to mid-game and 3.0x crisis - this enables players to make big forays in the early game but also provide the AI a means to be challenging while offering an avenue of overcoming them - while realism is fun, having some mechanics allow for wins to occur with enough effort is really fun and encouraging for players too (this difficulty level is something to consider especially if you're playing with a group of players with a wide range of skills in the game.) The crisis multiplier we settled with was in tandem with the difficulty so 3x/4x feels strong enough to overcome a fallen empire on its own, it'll still require some form of collective effort to repel unless an exceptionally strong empire decides to focus on it in the right circumstances and still allows some breathing room so that this event isn't all encompassing for everyone if there are some players that want to take advantage of the chaos and diverge from this expectation (or if other major events like a war in heaven kicks off) Most other settings can then be kept relatively vanilla (barring some like tech which is scaled with the reduced time frame to allow people to build mega structures and other things in the late game to enjoy and utilize.)
Because I tend to keep to a medium sized galaxy it means influence can be used more readily between expansion, espionage and diplomacy more evenly which makes for a generally satisfying experience it also means crisis spawning on these map sizes makes the threat more relevant.
Settings like the one below have been very successful for a majority of the games we've played, having tinkered with each calibration here and there to see what works. Its really fun when everyone at some point becomes a superpower or opens the l-gate first or has their own story developing in their corner of the galaxy with each play-through. This dynamic is what makes Stellaris fun for us so its been a very workable model. Other alternatives to make interesting games is to take the settings below and scale up advanced starts from 1-3 to 3-6 but scaling up to commodore by late game that way the AI's bonuses and build up is more gradual. Its also worth noting that the Marauder Empires setting does not randomize in multiplayer games (that would be a nice qol feature tho!) Additionally you can reduce the habitable worlds and increase pre-ftl empires proportionally (usually .5x and 2x respectively works well and doesn't' take away from the availability of play-styles for it. You can even reduce hyper-lanes/wormholes/gateways if you wish to make the interactions more localized. Sometimes we've disabled l-gates, often we'll keep xeno-compatibility since this will also help with the heavier penalty of pop growth. The Aggressive AI setting just makes things interesting when empires are more willing to fight it out if they have the means to much like human players.
I hope you found this useful to think about for your own games and if you have any questions I'd be happy to discuss the finer points in further detail! Def feel free to share your own observations, I'm always keen to hear what works for others too ^^
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