I found that diplomacy is of no concern any more. The AI is so incompetent that soon I can just walk over them. But I think the crises seems more balanced now. They can be terrifying. To bad making alliances counbt for nothing.
Alloy costs need to be reduced to save the war economy
- Thread starter Blodo
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I found that diplomacy is of no concern any more. The AI is so incompetent that soon I can just walk over them. But I think the crises seems more balanced now. They can be terrifying. To bad making alliances counbt for nothing.
Well, I meant diplomacy is more relevant because trade is actually useful now, whereas historically there was little reason to engage with it because who cares. The AI issue is a different beast that I'm hoping will be tackled, and I agree with your comments in that case.
I feel Diplomacy does not have any great real interaction with the trade system. Commercial Pact just gives you a small flat sum that can be ignored. Trade is more what you are doing in your own Empire and thats somehow wrong. Trading with others should be much more beneficial. Theres no Space India/America to my SpaceBritsEmpire.
It really depends. Take the market stations that sell strategic resources: 10 energy per is usually less than the base market value of 13, thanks to the 30% market cut, and there is no fluctuation. The downfall is the ten year re-negotiations, as they only trade with you if you have a sufficient energy credit pool (which you may not if you recently spent a lot). Trade with another Empire can bring that cost down even more: strategic resources at < 10 per is a huge bonus, and you can even trade for thirty years. Not to mention even if the price is higher, you can trade your resources without that 30% cut. That requires a cost investment in terms of trust and treaties, but I disagree: trade has an interesting place now, and the economic benefits make diplomacy far more engaging. You can even go so far as to trade resources from one Empire to another at a profit if you can swing it right.
The biggest issue with Stellaris has historically been the lack of reasons to interact with your neighbors outside of animosity. With the economy overhaul, selfish diplomacy and taking advantage of a shifting stellar landscape is brand new world of possibilities. If you are ignoring it, you are missing out on one of the best sleeper features in the patch.
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I think this may be slightly overstated, though I do see the potential. If the value of commercial pacts depended somehow on the total trade value of the empire you're signing the pact with, that would make them a bit more interesting than now. As of right now it's just a modifier boosting exercise, which I guess is fine but it probably shouldn't be as binary as either "sign them with everyone" or "don't sign them ever to save the influence". It should be more of a situation where if you're trade focused, everyone wants to sign the agreement with you because it will boost their own eco. All of a sudden you trade embargoing somebody makes a big difference if your trade economy is strong. Then you can be essentially space america.
On the other hand research agreements not being a trade deal any more means that xenophiles get a big research boost in the right circumstances, so that's nice.
This fits my own experience quite well. There is no problem in achieving late game battleship spam like before. In my current playthrough I am around 2400ish, crushed one FE. While crushing a second one, 2 others awoke. Those two awoken FEs have a bit more fleet power but my economy is easily able to replace lost ships with an 800+ alloy production.I'm on Grand Admiral and 2x Crisis Strength and the scourge has ~80k main fleets and ~40k scout fleets. I (medium-sized fanatic authoritarian militarist, no slaves) have 3 fleets at about 80k as well.
At this point in the game (~2450) I have about 700 gross alloy income and I don't feel that I optimized my economy much beyond building an ecumenopolis. Corvettes make it look pretty expensive but the absolute lategame battleships are around 1,5k to the ~4k minerals I remember them costing. Lategame alloy production cost is closer to 3:2 too, it's just the early game that's gotten disproportionally expensive.
Based on an earlier game and this one I can say that the economy starts to snowball when you've more or less filled your early planets and gotten enough techs in the early 2300s. Before that I had trouble matching the AI's fleets and as a consequence was unable to expand, I was in a corner and was cut off pretty early, had maybe 15-20 systems. Throughout the mid to late 2200s I really just focused on having my economy growing and after allying with a friendly neighbor I was able to win a war that my other 2 neighbors never recovered from.
The growth is geometric: you get more pops and you also get more out of your pops, whereas early game you struggle just to maintain a positive income in all resources. The AI is the problem, they struggle with the late game. My then ally, now federation partner has about a 40k fleet and has put about 60k in the federation fleet and he's probably the second strongest empire in the galaxy.
TLR Early game expensive, late game more or less as before, AI can't handle economy.
AI are useless though. Still sitting and max 15k fleet power. Quite disappointing.
2350 I have a fleet capacity of 900 with 3 x 70K fleets, easy enough to take down a FE or 3x crisis. Grand Admiral non scaling, Aggressive AI, Medium Map, default settings. I had 2 forge world with a grand total of 8 mega forges. I not only went solo in the war in heaven I also took on the end game crisis solo. On top of all this I still managed to get 6 gateways, ring world and a dyson sphere built. NOTHING IS WRONG WITH ALLOYS.
Hey, what's the threshold for actually getting someplace flagged as a forge world? I still haven't seen one.
What I take from this is simple. Pre 2.2 it was no problem playing with 25 % habitable planets. Now it doesn't work anymore but playing with 100 % habitable planets poses no issues at all.
This makes the new economy system suck pretty hard compared to the old one. Pre 2.2 playing on 25 % habitable planets didn't produce the issues I am facing now.
What did you expect from the update? Everything like it used to be? Of course things change. So adapt. That's the cause of life.
This is precisely what I mean. People focus on this, but trade, actual trade, of resources both monthly and instant is possible. A economy at war might just trade for your alloys at full cost, nothing lost to generic trades on the market.
Same goes for food: buying it from your neighbors is cheaper than from the market.
I expected the update to not break game features that still are part of the game after said update.
It does not break it. Only the rules have changed. You can still perfectly settle a 25% habitable world.
What? No, you are getting this wrong. The number of habitable worlds set to 25 % just doesn't let the AI build up enough fleet power to fight any midgame crisis.
That wasn't the case pre 2.2 hence I say the new system doesn't work in circumstances it worked before.
That wasn't the case pre 2.2 hence I say the new system doesn't work in circumstances it worked before.
Not quite true.
A 25% habitable world will need 75% more amenities and housing compared to 100% habitable world.
IE 10 housing on 100% will give you 10 population. Then 10 housing on 25% will give you roughly ~6 population.
Assuming normal 1 house usage * 75% for 1.75. Then divide 10 by 1.75 yield roughly 5.7 or so. Since we can't have partial population I rounded it up to 6.
Same goes double true for amenities.
so where is the break? Just build more housing and provide more ameneties and you can still use that world. efficiency is reduced, and that was still the case before if I remember correctly.
Housing from district and building are limited and have to compete with other build and farm/mine/energy districts.
If you want a 50 population on a 100% you would only need roughly 8 city district (without upgrades). Then on a 25% world you would need 15 city district. That means you need 7 extra city districts.
I don't know what is the max amount of housing you can get per districts which is why I used 6 as an example. But 7 extra housing means you have to suffer more empire size penalty. Multiple that by how many 25% worlds you have with 50 population or more the research/unity/campaign/leader penalty get ugly pretty quick. Keep in mind I am not even counting what you need with respect to amenities so it is actually worse than present earlier in this post.
You are generally better off with keeping 25% worlds strictly rural only and use the extra building slot dedicate to housing/amenities make up the difference between mine/farm/energy district lack of housing.
If you are already at resource max capacity and don't need more mineral/food/energy then you are better off with habitat or ringworld instead of another rural 25%. You will have to figure where the breakeven point is as it is pretty situational depending on too many factor for me to figure it out.
For example, Argarian Idyll civic's city district is actually worse as they are stuck at 5 housing or so each. Instead the city district research benefit goes toward generator/mining/farm district which make those 25% world bit easier on housing needs.
It also change the entire equation depending on if you are playing on .25x or 5x habitable world. If you are playing on a crowded or sparse galaxy. Etc... All those determine how many worlds you have access to and their average habitable.
Generally if you have access to more worlds then you can afford to have one or two rural worlds but no more than that. But if you only have access to 4 worlds and 3 are 25%. Then you have no choice but to eat the 75% housing/amenities penalty if you want more specialist.
There is one way to side-step this. That is to use robot/synth to colonization worlds that sub-optimal habitable rating. Since they have 100% habitable rate everywhere and you may be missing out on one or two ruler jobs at the most if you do it right.
Or maybe we should play the game a little bit more before jumping into such harsh criticism. I don't see any problems with alloys being more rare. Makes everything more tense and decisions more meaningful.