Am I missing something critical with 2.2

[Shadrack]

Hi
Havent played Stellaris in a while but thought I would give it another go.

I'm finding myself doing and incredible amount of micro management in this patch. Trying to balance jobs and housing especially on habitats seems such a chore.
Then theres the whack-a-mole resource management where I'm constantly having to juggle the many more resources than there used to be. I've tried handing planets over to governors but either dont build anything or build completely the wrong thing that I need.

I used to play this game on insane difficulty with a 50-50 win rate. Now I'm completely lost.

Regards

 

[Askorti]

Well, you just have to re-learn the game. Play around more and you will figure out which buildings to build when and where. It just takes some time and practice. One important tip is to not build buildings just because you can, as they mostly provide specialist jobs, which will take away your workers, who will abandon the mines and fields, thus lowering your energy/mineral/food income.

 

[Jamey]

You're not missing anything. In its current state, the micro is (surprisingly) more than it was when we had to build buildings on every planet square. I'm hopeful that at some point soon the point releases will improve that.

I'm willing (even happy) to accept a save game breaking patch to reduce micro and improve late game performance.

 

[AlanC9]

Building on Askorti's advice, I find that it's helpful to put the basic goods (energy, minerals, food) into a comfortable surplus before working on upgrading anything. Its OK to be a bit sloppy if you've given yourself room for error. (Except that you might want to build an alloy building early if your galaxy's crowded enough for an early war to be at all probable.)

As for micro, this is a problem a lot of players make for themselves. Efficiency is good, but one of the things you need to be efficient with is your own time. If you're constantly juggling pops, you're doing something wrong. (Unless you like constantly jugging pops, that is.)

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I quite enjoyed the added decision-making and need for attention in the early game (and even into the mid-game). But late game it just became a lot of tedium for little to no pay-off. Even trying to use the automation doesn't help because it routinely requires me to go in and fix things (like massive unemployment leading to high crime). I actually preferred the old (require) Sector system where I only managed a small subset of my planets and everything else was handed to off to (albeit inefficient) governors.

I don't feel that the current Sector system allows that (due to the problems that have to be sorted manually) and in any case, it now feels like you're actively sacrificing since you CAN do it all manually if you can stand the micro.

 

[AlanC9]

You were actively sacrificing before too; it's not like the old governors were any good.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Hi
Havent played Stellaris in a while but thought I would give it another go.

I'm finding myself doing and incredible amount of micro management in this patch. Trying to balance jobs and housing especially on habitats seems such a chore.
Then theres the whack-a-mole resource management where I'm constantly having to juggle the many more resources than there used to be. I've tried handing planets over to governors but either dont build anything or build completely the wrong thing that I need.

I used to play this game on insane difficulty with a 50-50 win rate. Now I'm completely lost.

Regards

If you don't like micromanagement maybe play in a smaller galaxy so that there's less to manage? Or a large galaxy with less planets?

 

[Blurb]

If you don't like micromanagement maybe play in a smaller galaxy so that there's less to manage? Or a large galaxy with less planets?

I imagine you as a salesman pitching stellaris:
"Grand Strategy in a small galaxy with gameplay focused on micromanagement of a thousand tiny details".
Too inconsistent. I'll stick to one copy, thanks.

How about putting the GRAND into grand strategy, and let the player feel more like a detached general than an embattled bureaucrat?

 

[redrum68]

There does tend to be more micromanagement now in 2.2 and depends how large your empire is. But 2.2 is a very different game then pre-2.0 versions and I wrote a basic beginners guide to 2.2 to explain how to get started in understanding the various systems: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/beginners-guide-to-2-2.1149412/

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

People create micromanagement for themselves by overthinking and overbuilding, as a poster above said. I do agree that late-game, you do have to still work on your planets, which you didn't have to do before. But honestly, it's better that you can't just queue up a planet and forget about it. That's just poor gameplay. You need to actually run your empire.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I imagine you as a salesman pitching stellaris:
"Grand Strategy in a small galaxy with gameplay focused on micromanagement of a thousand tiny details".
Too inconsistent. I'll stick to one copy, thanks.

How about putting the GRAND into grand strategy, and let the player feel more like a detached general than an embattled bureaucrat?

Well a modern general has more in common with an embattled bureaucrat of the past than an actual generals of the past, so it's not a bad comparison.

If you don't want to micromanage things, then you'll have to let the ai decide things. If you don't like how the ai manages things, then you'll have to micromanage things.
There's not much way around it. There may be a few quality of life improvements to be made, but with the mega-corp update we have more pops and more buildings in each empire than ever before, which means more things that can be micromanaged. Such is life, like Sisyphus and his boulder.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

You were actively sacrificing before too; it's not like the old governors were any good.

Granted, but it was a requirement at that point (I don't think I played the versions where you could actively override the sector AIs). So yeah, you were sacrificing but then so were all of the other empires. Now you can eek a lot more efficiency out of your empire if you can stand the micro (which is just another leg-up on the AI).

 

[morangias]

I think the reason micro is more noticable in 2.2 is that it has to be done in smaller, more frequent increments. In the previous meta, by the midgame at most, I could get away with colonizing a planet, queuing up the buildings on all its slots, then forgetting about it altogether - any and all cost accrued by unused buildings was negligible and would sort itself out soon enough. Try building too much ahead in 2.2 and your economy will tank hard. To avoid this, you gotta keep revisiting your planets and expanding them by small increments - a district here, a building there... I'm not saying the amount of micro in 2.2 hasn't objectively increased from previous versions, but it might feel like more than there actually is because you have to keep doing it almost constantly.

Personally, I don't mind the new micro, I actually like doing it in small increments and at this point it's practically something I do in the background in between making more interesting decisions. But I'm a control freak who in previous versions fought tooth and nail to maintain direct control over as many planets as I could, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

 

[PeterPancake]

You do have quite a lot of leeway - 2 unemployed pops (that's 3-4 years) can't destroy your planet or your economy. The same for housing, amenities. Even negative income on EC, Minerals, Food, Consumer Goods, Alloys are not problematic with a market and this button monthly trade. Fast reaction micromanagement does help in efficiency but is not important.

And mid-late game is almost the same. You can fully build up your districts and w8 until the planet has filled all these slots and voila enough resources (maybe 1 amenities building and the necessary pop 10 administration building). Building slots are only necessary for more specific reasons. You can easily do that for up to 8 years without looking at a planet. Clearly it depends on how much planets you have.

The whack-a-mole resource management is more like to understand that jobs make a lot of resources or need a lot of them. Just an Alloy foundry uses 12 Minerals or a farm producing 12 Food. So a more erratic +/- monthly number can easily happen.

An example: I replace my Paradise Dome (+6 Housing, no jobs) with an advanced Research Center (8 Researcher Jobs). That is a swing of -12 Housing.

As a rule of thumb up to 2350 I don't even bother with min-max planets. Either it is an Alloy, CG, Research planet (8 planets = 2 research ones). Mostly one 1-2 amenities/stability/unity buildings are enough to get up to 60 pops. Try to think how to reduce your micro.

 

[Mastikator]

You were actively sacrificing before too; it's not like the old governors were any good.

They weren't good but you could turn off redevelopment and just plan everything, the governor handled upgrades which was the only boring micro.

Still I do like the new system, I do wish there was a way to keep "finished" planets from exploding without intervention.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

They weren't good but you could turn off redevelopment and just plan everything, the governor handled upgrades which was the only boring micro.

Still I do like the new system, I do wish there was a way to keep "finished" planets from exploding without intervention.

Theoretically you could just turn off the Population Growth and everything would stand pat, correct? Of course that is a sub-optimal choice anyways because extra pop is always good if you just move it where it's needed. I really don't understand why the Decision to avoid pop growth comes with a Stability hit...it's already it's own penalty (but one I accept late game just to avoid the micro lol).

 

[The Founder]

I'm finding myself doing and incredible amount of micro management in this patch. Trying to balance jobs and housing especially on habitats seems such a chore.

How???

You build a new Housing district only if you reach the cap.
And you can easily wait until you got 2+ out of work pops before you build a new district/building. And the only reason that limit exists is due to teh Criminal Event if you got 3+ (10+ with Unemployment Benefits) unemployed pops.

 

[Mastikator]

Theoretically you could just turn off the Population Growth and everything would stand pat, correct? Of course that is a sub-optimal choice anyways because extra pop is always good if you just move it where it's needed. I really don't understand why the Decision to avoid pop growth comes with a Stability hit...it's already it's own penalty (but one I accept late game just to avoid the micro lol).

I don't mind a small stability loss, the last and ONLY time I ever turned population controls on however my pops immediately went into decline, decline which was not matched by emigration. They were just being purged. I have three terrible options and I wish there was a fourth good one.

 

[Nox Eterna]

Learning the new economy is the only challenge 2.2 can provide, whatever the difficulty you select. 2 months after release, and the AI of empires and crises is still completely gutted. I recommend not bothering with this version until at least the next major patch, though I no longer have high hopes like I used to.