A THREAD FOR FIRST THOUGHTS (NO DEBATES, PERHAPS?)
- Thread starter DanielPrates
- Start date
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-Actually, like how first contact works.
-Not sure if it's a bug or working as intended, but I did notice that it seems special projects aren't grinding current research to a halt. Don't recall seeing anything in the patch notes about it and I'm not paying enough attention to see if it's significantly slowing progress down. IMO if it is indeed not halting research progress and that is a bug. Rather than fix it back to how it use to work, I do actually like the idea that research continues despite special projects and maybe it should just be slowed.
-I see they've added deeper secrets to precursor secrets -Wish we could setup spy networks in marauder empires.
-I'm okay with the pop changes thus far, growth seems rather quick early on and as your worlds get full, it slows.
-Wish I had more envoys.
I'll have additional thoughts later, but need more play time for that.
-Not sure if it's a bug or working as intended, but I did notice that it seems special projects aren't grinding current research to a halt. Don't recall seeing anything in the patch notes about it and I'm not paying enough attention to see if it's significantly slowing progress down. IMO if it is indeed not halting research progress and that is a bug. Rather than fix it back to how it use to work, I do actually like the idea that research continues despite special projects and maybe it should just be slowed.
-I see they've added deeper secrets to precursor secrets -Wish we could setup spy networks in marauder empires.
-I'm okay with the pop changes thus far, growth seems rather quick early on and as your worlds get full, it slows.
-Wish I had more envoys.
I'll have additional thoughts later, but need more play time for that.
First impressions.
- I like the new industrial districts on first glance, but will need to play more to properly figure out how I want to build my economy, and if they make it better or not.
- On that note not sure about the building limit, but I'm blaming that on me not being used to it yet.
- New pop growth seems okay, maybe a bit too slow early on, was quite a while with nothing to do in the early game.
- Not sure what the idea is with espionage, it seems so expensive early on, but building up the intel levels and getting more information is nice. Seriously though, what is the point of espionage? I'm not sure yet, maybe in the mid-late game when you have more energy income it starts making sense, but for now, no way I'm paying for them.
-AI seems better, but again will need to play more to get a better idea of how much, but they are certainly better.
-Automation seems to work fine, not perfect, but if I wanted it to be perfect I would have to manage everything myself, so this seems fine.
-I have though seen some odd job prioritization, have noticed months with huge swings in my income, as pops gets moved from clerk jobs to agricultural jobs for example, and was very disappointed when I saw pops working clerk jobs, while there still were open technician jobs and I was running a small energy deficit.
- I like the new industrial districts on first glance, but will need to play more to properly figure out how I want to build my economy, and if they make it better or not.
- On that note not sure about the building limit, but I'm blaming that on me not being used to it yet.
- New pop growth seems okay, maybe a bit too slow early on, was quite a while with nothing to do in the early game.
- Not sure what the idea is with espionage, it seems so expensive early on, but building up the intel levels and getting more information is nice. Seriously though, what is the point of espionage? I'm not sure yet, maybe in the mid-late game when you have more energy income it starts making sense, but for now, no way I'm paying for them.
-AI seems better, but again will need to play more to get a better idea of how much, but they are certainly better.
-Automation seems to work fine, not perfect, but if I wanted it to be perfect I would have to manage everything myself, so this seems fine.
-I have though seen some odd job prioritization, have noticed months with huge swings in my income, as pops gets moved from clerk jobs to agricultural jobs for example, and was very disappointed when I saw pops working clerk jobs, while there still were open technician jobs and I was running a small energy deficit.
Played a few decades, fun.
Yes, I think immersion from the "unknown" extent of encountered aliens is the simgle best part of the patch.
It seems easier to build a reasonable fleet earlier on without hard choices on other things (because of the new Industry District so alloys and consumer goods get produced without using up building slots). I like this a lot, and with fewer difficult choices to make no doubt the AI will perform better in the long run.
There seems to be a soft cap now on edicts, break it and sprawl explodes. I like that but so far my cap is 1. If that's down to my choice of civics etc, or there are techs around to increase it, fair enough. If it's a global, then maybe it's a bit low?
I seem to be swimming in influence - despite expanding as fast as I can I've not once had to wait to save any up, and now using claims as a sink to avoid the cap. Can't use edicts as a sink any more (see above). Then again, normally I play with mods, which tend to eat influence more than vanilla, so perhaps I've just conditioned myself to maximize income and minimize expenditure. Or perhaps I just haven't yet hit new espionage or diplomacy issues to chew it up?
Also - first contact is good, but (SO far!) too quick and too deterministic for my taste. The events are well paced, but each sequence finishes way too quickly, it'd be nicer to have longer sequences (I like the choices presented, but it'd be better to have every chapter ending with a choice rather than just "keep digging", as most do).
[I've started off playing pure nice on first contact, and I (honestly!) expected and hoped the occasional contact would misinterpret my niceness as vicious aggression
. Never mind, I guess the benchmark is plain sailing. So I'll mix it up a bit next time and see how hard I get bitten!]My feeling on espionage and first contact being added to diplomacy, three envoys might be a better starting position than two, because players will be able to get more (and more interesting!) things done at the same time - for example, conducting positive diplomacy (which I find I don't I really do on top of regular first contact and enough espionage just to keep abreast. Better for peacetime play. Then again, perhaps the "shortage" is WAD?
Or perhaps (HINT!) someone is contemplating an espionage-related civic [say the NKVD origin?] with an extra envoy and espionage bonuses, perhaps even a unique origin-specific action or two (which imo every origin should have)?Better stop there, I'm getting way too OT.
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Damn your AI is brilliant! It even knows when the player can't retaliate!!! No bug report can defeat that!
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Insofar I think the actual ops are the least interesting part of espionage/intel. The "slightly inconvenience starbase" operation is useless. Steal tech, gather intel, recruit asset are things I use quite a lot though. Hope the scope and nature of operations get a facelift someday.
However, as a whole it is very good, it ties nicely with the geopolitical side of the game. It is DAMN GOOD GAME DESIGN that:
1. you are constantly on your toes not knowing how strong your neighbours are, what they think .... even where they are exactly;
2. You have limited envoys, so you have to choose the focus of your intel;
3. Intel is a subproduct of other game mechanics such as relations, sprawl etc.
Overall I think the ops need some improvement but I am 100% glad with the new intel system, 90% with the intel gathering methods and ....hmmm say 65% happy with the ops.
However, as a whole it is very good, it ties nicely with the geopolitical side of the game. It is DAMN GOOD GAME DESIGN that:
1. you are constantly on your toes not knowing how strong your neighbours are, what they think .... even where they are exactly;
2. You have limited envoys, so you have to choose the focus of your intel;
3. Intel is a subproduct of other game mechanics such as relations, sprawl etc.
Overall I think the ops need some improvement but I am 100% glad with the new intel system, 90% with the intel gathering methods and ....hmmm say 65% happy with the ops.
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There needs to be an adjusted pop growth curve for habitats and/or the communal trait and/or instead of basing it on pops base it on housing usage.
Planets get like 60+ capacity right off the bat and my habitats are at like 30 making me get a -2ish to pop growth when I reach 20-24.
The game doesn't take into account the communal trait making -10% housing usage useless because it'll feel impossible to fill up anything to begin with. A habitat with 30 housing usage should comfortably fit 33 pops with communal but it is damn near impossible to do it.
Planets get like 60+ capacity right off the bat and my habitats are at like 30 making me get a -2ish to pop growth when I reach 20-24.
The game doesn't take into account the communal trait making -10% housing usage useless because it'll feel impossible to fill up anything to begin with. A habitat with 30 housing usage should comfortably fit 33 pops with communal but it is damn near impossible to do it.
Just leaver your habitats at 15 jobs and let the excess resettle out. x2 pop growth for free.
Not a fan of the growth boost from logistical growth curve being capped at x2 multiplier. This makes it so even the biggest planets don't really grow that fast ... well, kind of. Thing is, if a size 15 ecu grows population at the same rate as a size 25 ecu (both having the same amount of industry, only housing districts being different), something just feels off.
Pop assembly is still too strong - I think it needs to apply a negative to "natural" pop growth when both happen at the same time. Just universally so. Synths are still best here, even though bio ascension gets +3 pop assembly, there's just no way to boost that, compared to anything between +5 and +10 pop assembly for synths. Both still get bio growth if you manage it right. Granted, it doesn't matter as much since at that point of the game growth already slows to a crawl, but still.
On which note ... AI needs an update to economy plans or something. And it needs to be taught how to deal with low stability. Badly. Across two test games I ran there were so many one-planet rebellions it's not funny. No real outside pressure that I could discern, just suddenly new empire on the map. When I turned over all my planets to the automation I saw a possible reason - when at really low population, with non-ideal living standards, happiness just tanks (because the automation doesn't care to keep amenities or housing in the positives), causing stability to plummet, yadda-yadda. Now granted, this was on ensign (I wanted to get a good grip on how the economy works now before playing against actual opponent AIs), but still.
On the plus side: AIs do wage war with each other now.
On the minus side: Awakened Empires are too effective at dealing with an x1 crisis. Really. I had the Unbidden spawn three systems over from the Awakened Xenophiles (who weren't Galactic Guardians), and before I could even mobilize my fleet to get there I got a popup that yay, the Unbidden have been purged from our galaxy! I look over and sure enough, there's two Awakened Xenophile fleets worth 180k each in that one system. Unbidden never stood a chance (They tried expanding, but they weren't fast enough to escape the determined Awakened Xenophiles)
... Really not a fan of the cap on the pop growth multiplier from planet capacity. Essentially what this means is that as soon as you've passed the mark of 200 pop growth cost, it's only ever going to get slower and slower and slower and slower and slower and slower, no matter what you do. Build a full-size housing ringworld? Nah, nobody wants to reproduce there either. I get why it was done, but the degree to which it was done feels awful, a real kneecap.
Now, why does it feel awful? Because it leads to there being vast number of empty jobs even by the endgame. One way to maybe mitigate this would be to introduce something like "automated jobs", as it were, i.e. jobs that no longer need pops to produce anything, at a high tech level. Incidentally this would also let us naturally progress towards the state that we find Fallen Empires in, so bonus points there.
And a final thing: the combination of there being an absolute glut of job openings and the fact that free pops automatically resettle to where they have a job means that any bonus to pop growth from migration is entirely pointless. Yes, that means you, Nomadic pops and Free Haven civic, you're all but useless now.
Pop assembly is still too strong - I think it needs to apply a negative to "natural" pop growth when both happen at the same time. Just universally so. Synths are still best here, even though bio ascension gets +3 pop assembly, there's just no way to boost that, compared to anything between +5 and +10 pop assembly for synths. Both still get bio growth if you manage it right. Granted, it doesn't matter as much since at that point of the game growth already slows to a crawl, but still.
On which note ... AI needs an update to economy plans or something. And it needs to be taught how to deal with low stability. Badly. Across two test games I ran there were so many one-planet rebellions it's not funny. No real outside pressure that I could discern, just suddenly new empire on the map. When I turned over all my planets to the automation I saw a possible reason - when at really low population, with non-ideal living standards, happiness just tanks (because the automation doesn't care to keep amenities or housing in the positives), causing stability to plummet, yadda-yadda. Now granted, this was on ensign (I wanted to get a good grip on how the economy works now before playing against actual opponent AIs), but still.
On the plus side: AIs do wage war with each other now.
On the minus side: Awakened Empires are too effective at dealing with an x1 crisis. Really. I had the Unbidden spawn three systems over from the Awakened Xenophiles (who weren't Galactic Guardians), and before I could even mobilize my fleet to get there I got a popup that yay, the Unbidden have been purged from our galaxy! I look over and sure enough, there's two Awakened Xenophile fleets worth 180k each in that one system. Unbidden never stood a chance
(They tried expanding, but they weren't fast enough to escape the determined Awakened Xenophiles)... Really not a fan of the cap on the pop growth multiplier from planet capacity. Essentially what this means is that as soon as you've passed the mark of 200 pop growth cost, it's only ever going to get slower and slower and slower and slower and slower and slower, no matter what you do. Build a full-size housing ringworld? Nah, nobody wants to reproduce there either. I get why it was done, but the degree to which it was done feels awful, a real kneecap.
Now, why does it feel awful? Because it leads to there being vast number of empty jobs even by the endgame. One way to maybe mitigate this would be to introduce something like "automated jobs", as it were, i.e. jobs that no longer need pops to produce anything, at a high tech level. Incidentally this would also let us naturally progress towards the state that we find Fallen Empires in, so bonus points there.
And a final thing: the combination of there being an absolute glut of job openings and the fact that free pops automatically resettle to where they have a job means that any bonus to pop growth from migration is entirely pointless. Yes, that means you, Nomadic pops and Free Haven civic, you're all but useless now.
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Setting up a save game to mess with turning empire growth modifiers off with it part of the way and see what happens - planetary changes should still be in effect and will report back later.
Edict caps were introduced in 2.8 I think?
Edicts - Stellaris Wiki
* Note * Dictatorial government no longer boosts edict cap
Yeah, edict caps are a 2.8 thing.
On first contact and envoys. I do think we need more with this new system. I don't think it needs to be many. Perhaps a bonus of our very first contact happening could be getting one more envoy. Wouldn't even mind if it generated a special project like the universal translator. The base two are just a tad too few when you want to improve relations, spy and make first contact. I will say, that this does put xenophile empires in a really good spot to better compete with xenophobes and slave builds because those extra envoys are going to be even bigger boons.
The new districts are great. That said, perhaps we need some new planetary designations to account for the fact that we are going to have more mixed planets. I need to fill those building slots with something on my forge world. Also I know as of 2.8 we didn't have a designation for unity focused worlds and wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case because I don't recall seeing that in the patch notes.
One concern I have with pop growth is that once you figure out how to game it. Get lots of housing, it can result in a really awkward min/max approach and will make complaints about habitats likely louder, namely that their should be a cap. There should not be a cap, but the devs might want to consider a setup where the player & AI wants to develop all their colonies, instead of having a few or a ton of low development habitats that exist solely to boost pop growth. I will say this might have changed up the trait tier list because I'm not sure it results in pop growth traits being nearly as powerful as they once were, which is a nice thing if that's how the math works out.
On first contact and envoys. I do think we need more with this new system. I don't think it needs to be many. Perhaps a bonus of our very first contact happening could be getting one more envoy. Wouldn't even mind if it generated a special project like the universal translator. The base two are just a tad too few when you want to improve relations, spy and make first contact. I will say, that this does put xenophile empires in a really good spot to better compete with xenophobes and slave builds because those extra envoys are going to be even bigger boons.
The new districts are great. That said, perhaps we need some new planetary designations to account for the fact that we are going to have more mixed planets. I need to fill those building slots with something on my forge world. Also I know as of 2.8 we didn't have a designation for unity focused worlds and wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case because I don't recall seeing that in the patch notes.
One concern I have with pop growth is that once you figure out how to game it. Get lots of housing, it can result in a really awkward min/max approach and will make complaints about habitats likely louder, namely that their should be a cap. There should not be a cap, but the devs might want to consider a setup where the player & AI wants to develop all their colonies, instead of having a few or a ton of low development habitats that exist solely to boost pop growth. I will say this might have changed up the trait tier list because I'm not sure it results in pop growth traits being nearly as powerful as they once were, which is a nice thing if that's how the math works out.
Game feels super slow, planets do not fill. Pops are even more important that before, when it was supposed to be the opposite. The S curve they sold us is fake, that part is irrelevant when you need hundreds of growth per pop. Creating colonies is useless.
Playing as a big empire is not viable, game favours vassal swarm or federation. Only viable gameplay for militaristic seems to be necrophage ( steal their pops but give them back their planets to farm them, keep only the planets you can develop by stealing, kill robots so there are more organics).
Colonising planets makes you weaker.
Playing as a big empire is not viable, game favours vassal swarm or federation. Only viable gameplay for militaristic seems to be necrophage ( steal their pops but give them back their planets to farm them, keep only the planets you can develop by stealing, kill robots so there are more organics).
Colonising planets makes you weaker.
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I'm finding that the game is going faster than it was - although I am perhaps making less apparent progress per yeat.
My planets are broadly "full" to the extent that most of them have similar numbers of pops to jobs.
I've not done the analysis to look at the S-curve, but there does seem to be a change in pace as the planets gain population.
Colonies are doing fine for me, and seem to get up to speed faster now that the building slots are not tied to the population (so robot factories / clone vats can be built immediately).
I'm finding that militaristic is working fine in my current game, although I need to get a handle on ways to make my federation go to war with the people I want them to, and I need to get my alloy balance working again, and I need to go back up a difficulty level once I've got the hang of the early game with the new patch. (Since I'm 2 for 3 on being surrounded by hostile xenophobe/militarists on "higher" difficulty starts... Could be bad placement/bad luck, could be some weird interactions in the randomisation of AI nations.)
Interestingly there was another set of posts where someone was saying necrophage doesn't work at all well, so it looks like there's some playstyle variation going on.
So - just finished my first game as the crisis.
First though - I managed to win in Ironman, but didn't get the Big Red Button achievement - shame on you Paradox. The game was actually a fairly good rollercoaster.
I was playing on ensign as your friendly neighbour xenophobe (but not fanatic purifier, just a normal xenophobe, I even got along with a couple other nations), so early game was fairly easy - the closest nation attempted to close me in as usual, I didn't let him, we ended in war, I did not finish him out because I was already eyeing the crisis perk, and knew it was related to attacking empires.
Once I got the perk, first thing I was wondering is what was special about the menacing corvettes. Then found out they are built with minerals. And have far cheaper maintenance costs. The hype was real. So I proceed to clean up that empire I mentioned before, along with a couple neighbouring fanatic purifiers, because of course you gonna get spawned side by side with two fanatic purifiers. After that I was still short about 4000 menace points to complete the initial steps of becoming the crisis.
Side point, but it was ironic using the containment casus beli against the FP as the crisis - your own private crisis casus beli destroys outposts, rather than conquering them, so using containment allowed me to get plenty of land.
I got the last few points by attacking the biggest alliance, which, by this point is just a bunch of chumps. whose biggest fleet is about 3k while I'm swimming on 30K stacks. Fun times.
Then I properly become the crisis. I get the star devourers (first though: they are cubes? couldn't they be a bit cooler? second though, when seeing one destroy a star: holy cow, that's awesome), and the whole galactic community declares on me. This time as containment - which sucks - now I have to take care of the hundred stations increasing my station count and empire cap. Also, they are fairly good at being hugely annoying - they send minimum sized units everywhere to take as much terrain as possible. Still, not like it matters too much - I send my devourers to do their job while focusing on swatting the attacks that come from everywhere.
Then the fun part begins. On 2400 on the dot I get the notification that the Unbidden is coming. Urgh - I don't have the time to deal with them. They appear on the other side of the galaxy, with stacks of 80K approx - by then my stacks are about 40K, but I can support about 5-6 of them, but most of them are busy dealing with the galactic community armies, and my stacks have no chance on a 1-vs-1 against the unbidden, so I start to build a dedicated corvette model for them.
Then hell is left loose. The Observers empire declares himself guardian of the galaxy. Uh oh. For now he focuses on the unbidden, so I do my own thing and try to reinforce my armies as much as possible. The Observers end the crisis, ironically giving me the Rift Sealed achievement (I've never gotten the unbidden before in an ironman game, surprisingly, on my near 1000 hours of game). For a couple years they respect me until suddenly they declare on me. By this time, my stacks are about 75K each for corvettes, 45K for destroyers/cruisers, while his stacks are anywhere between 80K and 150K. Crap.
The inital war is fairly straightforward - I generally die a lot but manage to outlast his fleets through sheer numbers, and quickly I have the upper hand in total power. He starts an strategy where he sends a ton of min-sized stacks everywhere (which are still able to beat my fortresses on their own) and send single carriers to conquer my planets everywhere. It becomes an attrition war where I still am the one with the most power, but the Observer AE manages to steal a lot of territory for himself - this while the galactic is also using a similar approach and I have to fight a war in too many fronts while also protecting my star devourers. Have I mentioned that the Holy guardians suddenly declare on me to force me to ban AI? to be fair, by then my empire is so large that they gain attrition quicker just by staying at war than me - even if I let them conquer half a dozen planets. Eventually they get too close to my capital, and I have to send a couple stacks to deal with their 110K stacks.
By the way - after a long war with the Observer AE in which things mostly end as a wash (he got a lot of territory from me, but it's the territory I won against the galactic community - most of it was actually giving me trouble due to wrong habitability and were poorly developed) - I ended suing for peace to have time to build my aetherophasic engine and re-re-re-re-build my armies.
This repeated itself 2 times more, but the Observers went directly for the skirmishing strategy on the following rounds. It was honestly really tough - by then I had about 15 stacks of 90-60Ks each all around the map, but they were still giving me a hard time, and they managed to get land dangerously close to my capital - damned wormholes. But FINALLY, after a 4th stage of the Aetherophasic Engine that I was not expecting, I finished it and the rest is story. By then 1/4 or so of the galaxy had already been turned to blackholes.
The ending left me feeling kind of empty. In more than one sense.
It's been loads of fun, if a bit frustrating. I did not expect to have such a hard time on Ensign, but tbh, I did not expect the Unbidden to appear so soon, which triggered the awakening of the observers way too early.
Let's see how are things on the other side next time around
First though - I managed to win in Ironman, but didn't get the Big Red Button achievement - shame on you Paradox. The game was actually a fairly good rollercoaster.
I was playing on ensign as your friendly neighbour xenophobe (but not fanatic purifier, just a normal xenophobe, I even got along with a couple other nations), so early game was fairly easy - the closest nation attempted to close me in as usual, I didn't let him, we ended in war, I did not finish him out because I was already eyeing the crisis perk, and knew it was related to attacking empires.
Once I got the perk, first thing I was wondering is what was special about the menacing corvettes. Then found out they are built with minerals. And have far cheaper maintenance costs. The hype was real. So I proceed to clean up that empire I mentioned before, along with a couple neighbouring fanatic purifiers, because of course you gonna get spawned side by side with two fanatic purifiers. After that I was still short about 4000 menace points to complete the initial steps of becoming the crisis.
Side point, but it was ironic using the containment casus beli against the FP as the crisis - your own private crisis casus beli destroys outposts, rather than conquering them, so using containment allowed me to get plenty of land.
I got the last few points by attacking the biggest alliance, which, by this point is just a bunch of chumps. whose biggest fleet is about 3k while I'm swimming on 30K stacks. Fun times.
Then I properly become the crisis. I get the star devourers (first though: they are cubes? couldn't they be a bit cooler? second though, when seeing one destroy a star: holy cow, that's awesome), and the whole galactic community declares on me. This time as containment - which sucks - now I have to take care of the hundred stations increasing my station count and empire cap. Also, they are fairly good at being hugely annoying - they send minimum sized units everywhere to take as much terrain as possible. Still, not like it matters too much - I send my devourers to do their job while focusing on swatting the attacks that come from everywhere.
Then the fun part begins. On 2400 on the dot I get the notification that the Unbidden is coming. Urgh - I don't have the time to deal with them. They appear on the other side of the galaxy, with stacks of 80K approx - by then my stacks are about 40K, but I can support about 5-6 of them, but most of them are busy dealing with the galactic community armies, and my stacks have no chance on a 1-vs-1 against the unbidden, so I start to build a dedicated corvette model for them.
Then hell is left loose. The Observers empire declares himself guardian of the galaxy. Uh oh. For now he focuses on the unbidden, so I do my own thing and try to reinforce my armies as much as possible. The Observers end the crisis, ironically giving me the Rift Sealed achievement (I've never gotten the unbidden before in an ironman game, surprisingly, on my near 1000 hours of game). For a couple years they respect me until suddenly they declare on me. By this time, my stacks are about 75K each for corvettes, 45K for destroyers/cruisers, while his stacks are anywhere between 80K and 150K. Crap.
The inital war is fairly straightforward - I generally die a lot but manage to outlast his fleets through sheer numbers, and quickly I have the upper hand in total power. He starts an strategy where he sends a ton of min-sized stacks everywhere (which are still able to beat my fortresses on their own) and send single carriers to conquer my planets everywhere. It becomes an attrition war where I still am the one with the most power, but the Observer AE manages to steal a lot of territory for himself - this while the galactic is also using a similar approach and I have to fight a war in too many fronts while also protecting my star devourers. Have I mentioned that the Holy guardians suddenly declare on me to force me to ban AI? to be fair, by then my empire is so large that they gain attrition quicker just by staying at war than me - even if I let them conquer half a dozen planets. Eventually they get too close to my capital, and I have to send a couple stacks to deal with their 110K stacks.
By the way - after a long war with the Observer AE in which things mostly end as a wash (he got a lot of territory from me, but it's the territory I won against the galactic community - most of it was actually giving me trouble due to wrong habitability and were poorly developed) - I ended suing for peace to have time to build my aetherophasic engine and re-re-re-re-build my armies.
This repeated itself 2 times more, but the Observers went directly for the skirmishing strategy on the following rounds. It was honestly really tough - by then I had about 15 stacks of 90-60Ks each all around the map, but they were still giving me a hard time, and they managed to get land dangerously close to my capital - damned wormholes. But FINALLY, after a 4th stage of the Aetherophasic Engine that I was not expecting, I finished it and the rest is story. By then 1/4 or so of the galaxy had already been turned to blackholes.
The ending left me feeling kind of empty. In more than one sense.
It's been loads of fun, if a bit frustrating. I did not expect to have such a hard time on Ensign, but tbh, I did not expect the Unbidden to appear so soon, which triggered the awakening of the observers way too early.
Let's see how are things on the other side next time around
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Side point - but I absolutely love the new migration mechanic. Once I had my planets mostly developed they were getting filled in nearly automatically. Which was really cool
Espionage - like it a lot, agree the UI could be much improved
First contact - like, would prefer it take 5-10x longer
Economy - seems like an improvement but haven't played enough to be certain
AI - seems more aggressive and stronger - great if this holds once I figure out the economy better
Pop - concerned about the caps but haven't run into it myself yet
First contact - like, would prefer it take 5-10x longer
Economy - seems like an improvement but haven't played enough to be certain
AI - seems more aggressive and stronger - great if this holds once I figure out the economy better
Pop - concerned about the caps but haven't run into it myself yet
My thought on the new first contact system:
Firstly, I really like how much immersion a more fleshed-out system adds to the game. It reminds me of playing X-Com in my childhood, gradually learning more and more about the aliens in the game. The way you don't even know what the aliens look like in the beginning, letting even this be a reveal for later, is a nice touch. I also like how your initial greeting to the other empire feels a lot more meaningful now, and that the game spells out the actual effects.
Having to gradually learn how large, powerful, and advanced the other empire was after establishing contacts was incredibly immersion-building, too, and actually a bit tense and eerie, even in the early game when species are roughly evenly matched, because you never know if you're sharing borders with an AI empire with an advanced start.
It does make communications sharing even more immersion-breaking, though. First you spend a long time even learning the language of the first species you encounter, then it's just "oh hai, we're the Sfiopczsc, what's cooking?" from someone you've never even heard of before. Fair enough, the other aliens would have translated their language and sent you a dictionary, but both for immersion and gameplay reasons, I dislike the ability to just receive contact and diplomatic relations with other aliens. One particularly friendly empire also offered to build an embassy on my homeworld and form a research and commercial agreements, almost immediately after learning of our existence.
Also, I'm surprised that there still isn't more of an effect on your species from your first contact with alien life. This should be an earth-shattering (no pun intended) experience for your empire, possibly with a whole event chain of its own.
Actually, I wonder if both the length of the first contact period, and whether you have the ability to share communications, could be settings when creating a new game.
Edit: my preferred solution: implement wild space ("oceans" of jump points no player can colonize) and remove communications trading altogether. Make players have to actually discover (or be discovered by) a species to achieve contact with them. And, I guess, reveal every species when the galactic community is formed.
Firstly, I really like how much immersion a more fleshed-out system adds to the game. It reminds me of playing X-Com in my childhood, gradually learning more and more about the aliens in the game. The way you don't even know what the aliens look like in the beginning, letting even this be a reveal for later, is a nice touch. I also like how your initial greeting to the other empire feels a lot more meaningful now, and that the game spells out the actual effects.
Having to gradually learn how large, powerful, and advanced the other empire was after establishing contacts was incredibly immersion-building, too, and actually a bit tense and eerie, even in the early game when species are roughly evenly matched, because you never know if you're sharing borders with an AI empire with an advanced start.
It does make communications sharing even more immersion-breaking, though. First you spend a long time even learning the language of the first species you encounter, then it's just "oh hai, we're the Sfiopczsc, what's cooking?" from someone you've never even heard of before. Fair enough, the other aliens would have translated their language and sent you a dictionary, but both for immersion and gameplay reasons, I dislike the ability to just receive contact and diplomatic relations with other aliens. One particularly friendly empire also offered to build an embassy on my homeworld and form a research and commercial agreements, almost immediately after learning of our existence.
Also, I'm surprised that there still isn't more of an effect on your species from your first contact with alien life. This should be an earth-shattering (no pun intended) experience for your empire, possibly with a whole event chain of its own.
Actually, I wonder if both the length of the first contact period, and whether you have the ability to share communications, could be settings when creating a new game.
Edit: my preferred solution: implement wild space ("oceans" of jump points no player can colonize) and remove communications trading altogether. Make players have to actually discover (or be discovered by) a species to achieve contact with them. And, I guess, reveal every species when the galactic community is formed.
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I do like how information is hidden about your neighbours at the beginning of the game and as the galactic community is formed, you gradually learn more about everyone. It enhances the exploration element of the game.
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