Conquer a few planets, economy crashes-- 2.2 in a nutshell

[calen]

Since 2.2.2 is now live I thought I would give the game another try, unfortunately, while there where far less bugs, the core issue I had with the update remains. That being the economy. It still feels like I'm a one legged man trying to walk a tightrope.

During the early game my economy was going up and down but I managed to stabilize it and build a nice fleet to attack my neighbor with. I won the war and took 3 planets, added to the planets I own for a total of 7, and as the titles says it crashed my economy to the point where I'm red in everything. I tried various things to fix it but it only delayed the fall. By year 2300 I had zero resources in everything. At that point I quit the game, there was no point in continuing.

I just don't know what to think about this game anymore. I like the idea that the economy overhaul presents, but it's implemented so poorly that I can no longer play it. You know I never quite understood the controversy over the 2.0 FTL removal but I think I get it now, because this is not the game I bought. I don't want to play an economy simulator. I really hope something is done about this because you shouldn't need to have OCD to keep your economy from crashing on you.

Note: Please refrain from the worthless comments of "You are not playing right, you have to do X, Y, Z" If you have to play Stellaris like a game of connect the dots than 2.2 has failed in more ways than just the economy.

"You can go back to X version," This is a band aid fix at best and should not be the go to solution.

 

[Jorrhast]

Note: Please refrain from the worthless comments of "You are not playing right, you have to do X, Y, Z" If you have to play Stellaris like a game of connect the dots than 2.2 has failed in more ways than just the economy.

"You can go back to X version," This is a band aid fix at best and should not be the go to solution.

You forgot to make a pre-answer to "git gud"

 

[Dalwin]

<insert worthless comments here>

It really isn't all that hard. Most people are managing.

 

[Elordis]

Well, all this conquering business id pretty hard actually. Otherwise the wouldn't be 200 countries on Earth now.
You've fallen into a slightly advanced version of a "specialist trap", one I would call "lebensraum trap". What basically happens is your pops are migrating into newly conquered planets and due to auto-promotion it effectively converts a lot of your workers into rulers and specialists sinking you basic resource production. It is more deadly if you start purging or conquered pops were hiveminded.
Solutions are pretty easy actually:
0) Build solid economy. Can't stress that enough. You MUST have large basic resource production base before adding more advanced production buildings. Old 2.1 mindset where you no-brain fill every building slot with something doesn't work anymore.
1) Avoid purging for purging sake. Population is THE most important resource up until late game.
2) Limit ruler/specialist job slots on a newly conquered planets to avoid leaking workers.
3) Take a note from nazis. They were bastards for sure, but they knew their shit. Resettle conquered pops from their planets back to your core worlds to fill job slots.

So, yes, "You are not playing right, you have to do X, Y, Z". Thing is, X, Y, Z are not that hard if you stop for a moment and consider that there is more to GSGs than painting map with your chosen color.

 

[calen]

Well, all this conquering business id pretty hard actually. Otherwise the wouldn't be 200 countries on Earth now.
You've fallen into a slightly advanced version of a "specialist trap", one I would call "lebensraum trap". What basically happens is your pops are migrating into newly conquered planets and due to auto-promotion it effectively converts a lot of your workers into rulers and specialists sinking you basic resource production. It is more deadly if you start purging or conquered pops were hiveminded.
Solutions are pretty easy actually:
0) Build solid economy. Can't stress that enough. You MUST have large basic resource production base before adding more advanced production buildings. Old 2.1 mindset where you no-brain fill every building slot with something doesn't work anymore.
1) Avoid purging for purging sake. Population is THE most important resource up until late game.
2) Limit ruler/specialist job slots on a newly conquered planets to avoid leaking workers.
3) Take a note from nazis. They were bastards for sure, but they knew their shit. Resettle conquered pops from their planets back to your core worlds to fill job slots.

So, yes, "You are not playing right, you have to do X, Y, Z". Thing is, X, Y, Z are not that hard if you stop for a moment and consider that there is more to GSGs than painting map with your chosen color.

I forgot that your pops like to migrate to new worlds. I would only build distrects/building when I had unemployment to try and control where my pops went, but I think the migrate is what killed me, like you said.
I don't disagree with what you say, but it's hard to build a solid economy when A, there are hardly any planets to find anymore. And B, so little control over your pops.
I'm just going to have to step away from the game for awhile, because while the game isn't "broken" this system is highly restrictive. The sad part is that letting us just drag and drop the pops would fix a lot of the problems I was running into. Sure it would add a bit of micro into the game, but IMO it's worth the trade off. Unfortunately the Devs have this stigma against letting players have control over their own game.

 

[Etrutian]

Having gone from the ability to rapidly conquer everything in site with only a bonus, to needing an economy able to support newfound conquest is a new and interesting twist on the formula.

I think its fair to be annoyed that old techniques no longer work; but I would like to argue that discovering the best routes or necessary preparations for any undertaking is more or less a staple of PDX games.





With all of that, Stellaris is so successful because of its former accessibility. I wonder what changed they will make in the future to expand their appeal to the wider audience. The economy fix is 'true to form', but notably slower and more difficult to manage than the previous version.

 

[meertn]

Having gone from the ability to rapidly conquer everything in site with only a bonus, to needing an economy able to support newfound conquest is a new and interesting twist on the formula.

I think its fair to be annoyed that old techniques no longer work; but I would like to argue that discovering the best routes or necessary preparations for any undertaking is more or less a staple of PDX games.

I realised this in my first driven assimilator game in 2.2. I was used to just conquering any odd primitive world I encountered, so was very happy to run into a 25 pop machine age world a few years in. So I built a couple of armies, and the planet was mine. With 25 pops, none of them assimilated yet. So no production, but a big drain on my economy. And also, no buildings I could use, so even the pops that got assimilated were unemployed. Took me about 10 years to get that planet up and running, limiting any other expansion. So, big lesson learned.

 

[AndyScull]

Well yeah, I got the same result in my first 2-3 games of 2.2.
You conquer more than one planet, your workers migrate on them and take ruler/specialist jobs, no one works on your farms anymore and you're in red for a 5-10 years.
From that I learned to:
1. play as xenophobe and displace all alien species by default. Immediately after end of war (do not unpause) select each conquered planet, destroy all buildings and districts (I think there will be less immigrated pops due to less jobs). You'll still lose some pops on your core planets but at least their upkeep would be <10. Also it helps to NOT build anything while you're still warring - you'll have few unemployed pops by the end of war. Also if you have spare energy relocate few alien pops to your planets (1-2 to each), that way they'll decline faster.
2. playing a slaver, also relocate as may slaves as you can afford to your planets, or you'll get a rebellion from 40-50 slaves on single planet
3. xenophile... I didn't play one yet. Read about inconsistent pop growth and job selection and decided to avoid it for now.
Overall, I try to have +(conquered pops) income of each resource before I start a conquest war, just to have a safe margin.
Also, I think the Galaxy Market would be very OP if not for this very problem - quite often resource exchange was the only thing that saved my economy after a big conquest war.

 

[SynthsAreBalanced]

Since 2.2.2 is now live I thought I would give the game another try, unfortunately, while there where far less bugs, the core issue I had with the update remains. That being the economy. It still feels like I'm a one legged man trying to walk a tightrope.

During the early game my economy was going up and down but I managed to stabilize it and build a nice fleet to attack my neighbor with. I won the war and took 3 planets, added to the planets I own for a total of 7, and as the titles says it crashed my economy to the point where I'm red in everything. I tried various things to fix it but it only delayed the fall. By year 2300 I had zero resources in everything. At that point I quit the game, there was no point in continuing.

I just don't know what to think about this game anymore. I like the idea that the economy overhaul presents, but it's implemented so poorly that I can no longer play it. You know I never quite understood the controversy over the 2.0 FTL removal but I think I get it now, because this is not the game I bought. I don't want to play an economy simulator. I really hope something is done about this because you shouldn't need to have OCD to keep your economy from crashing on you.

Note: Please refrain from the worthless comments of "You are not playing right, you have to do X, Y, Z" If you have to play Stellaris like a game of connect the dots than 2.2 has failed in more ways than just the economy.

"You can go back to X version," This is a band aid fix at best and should not be the go to solution.

Trick is actualy simple(almost failed my first le guin run cz of this but i figute it out). Give them best living standart and food and start building amentities production. Even destroy some buildings if you need, but make amentities in plus. Nearly all AI planets i conquer have minus amentities and thus low happiness, cz game give insane buffs to AI and they simply dont need amentiti production but the moment planet comes too your hands... When happiness debuff due to conquer will end you can reverse all changes. Marshall law i dont recomend at all cz you just cripple production from stability buff. Usually planet still rebell and still dont give resource cz stupid penalties from marshall law.

 

[Olterin]

The "finesse" with conquest amounts to pretty much this: have enough of a stockpile to survive a temporary downturn to your economy of 5-10 years before going to war. Now, of course you can reduce the impact of conquest by optimizing how you distribute the pops (if you have control over it due to ethos), but it's pretty much this. You have to have an economy that can accommodate all the new population, or a plan on how to get it there within the means of your stockpiles, before going to war. Otherwise you're likely to crash and burn.

What does not at all help things, is that the AI in a vanilla game, at present, is absolutely braindead with regards to economy. As an example, I watched a one-planet vassal build allllll the districts they could, even though they didn't have the supporting population for it, and fill all the building slots, even though, again they didn't have the population to utilize it. Now imagine what such a planet will do to your empire once you annex it. And now imagine what 3 planets like that will do. Land appropriation policy, by the way, is the one that moves your pops around upon a successful conquest.

 

[HappyLizardMan]

Playing tall is the way to go it seems. All your pops concentrated on a few densely populated planets with developed economies. Piling up resources and building matter decomposers until late game, finish that ringworld and only then proceed to conquest everything around you. With that formula I never ran out of resources, newely conqured pops got resettled to ringworlds to fuel my economy even more. Year 2400+ I had so much energy and minerals income I didnt know what to do with it.

 

[fizikus]

this is not the game I bought

You can always roll back to the patch which was live when you bought the game. You clearly have a different vision of the game than the developers. This won't change, all pdx games including this will become more complex with each patch.

Btw you can play a hive mind devourer swarm, it is great to introduce you to the 2.2 changes. No migration, you can demote pops, no xenos on your planets etc.

 

[SynthsAreBalanced]

You can always roll back to the patch which was live when you bought the game. You clearly have a different vision of the game than the developers. This won't change, all pdx games including this will become more complex with each patch.

Apocalypse-from 3 space travel types to 1. Yeah we all can feel complexety of that. And Le guin is not complex, it have illusion of complexity. But you are right in policy illusion-of-complexity>actual-complexity.

 

[Madzai]

Solutions are pretty easy actually:
0) Build solid economy. Can't stress that enough. You MUST have large basic resource production base before adding more advanced production buildings. Old 2.1 mindset where you no-brain fill every building slot with something doesn't work anymore.
...

All those advises are solid, but there is a logic issue that probably confuse some players. Especially new. "If i have a solid economy, why i should go in a war at all? If i already have all i need and actually not struggling?" And at the same time "If i'm already struggling economically and try to wage a war as much last resort, even if i won, it will kill my economy even further". I understand that's just how Stellaris works, but at the same time i understand why it can confuse you.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

You had an economy that you barely managed to be stabilized, then almost doubled your planets overnight without even the slightest preparation.

Yeah, you dun'goofed and it's not the game's fault. You, just like thousands others, faceplanted into 2.2 without really trying to understand it. The UI and bugs sure as hall don't help, but it's not like the economy is actually hard to understand. It's fairly simple; the problem is the amount of micromanaging, that isn't the "oh i have to click the upgrade button on 156 identical buildings on 10 planets" anymore. It's meaningful. It requires thinking and planning in advance.

The only thing you are right about it's that 2.2 is almost another game entirely when it comes to the economy so you can very well feel that the game it's not for you anymore. Your call, entirely legitimate. But in that case the only reasonable answer is "revert to 2.1" and if you refuse it well the world won't stop for you. Deal with it.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

All those advises are solid, but there is a logic issue that probably confuse some players. Especially new. "If i have a solid economy, why i should go in a war at all? If i already have all i need and actually not struggling?" And at the same time "If i'm already struggling economically and try to wage a war as much last resort, even if i won, it will kill my economy even further". I understand that's just how Stellaris works, but at the same time i understand why it can confuse you.

Conquest kills your economy only if you are underprepared or chew too big of a bit at once. Once you absorb the initial hit, it's still the most effective way to go.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

For the record, you under no circumstances, gotta hand it to the nazis.

My doom cult that nuked itself into oblivion with the wurm is drowning in resources in a galaxy that hates them. It can be done, but it does take some learning (as with any paradox game tbh). If you want advice on how to build your economy in the new system or manage pops, I see there are already some good replies in this thread.

If you can't figure out how to have a huge war chest saved up initially to soften the blow of taking several planets at once, then it may be best to set the sector as a vassal and integrate them later if you aren't a megacorp. If you are a megacorp, then that subsidy will constantly compliment your economy and as long as it is now a gestalt conciousness or megacorp itself, provide you with a constant base for new branch offices.

 

[Elordis]

All those advises are solid, but there is a logic issue that probably confuse some players. Especially new. "If i have a solid economy, why i should go in a war at all? If i already have all i need and actually not struggling?" And at the same time "If i'm already struggling economically and try to wage a war as much last resort, even if i won, it will kill my economy even further". I understand that's just how Stellaris works, but at the same time i understand why it can confuse you.

a) Economics quality and it's size are different things. You may have the most balanced economy ever, but there is only so much you can get from a handful of planets. Not to mention that we playing 4X and painting map with your color is still core part of gameplay.
b) Conquest done right will not have any negative consequences.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

I mean, this game does give you alternative ways to play that don't require painting the map. In fact, wiz did remark that a large number of games from Paradox' data suggests there's many players that do federation/ xenophile playthrus where they just unite the galaxy a la star trek.

 

[Slynx]

During the early game my economy was going up and down but I managed to stabilize it and build a nice fleet to attack my neighbor with. I won the war and took 3 planets, added to the planets I own for a total of 7, and as the titles says it crashed my economy to the point where I'm red in everything. I tried various things to fix it but it only delayed the fall. By year 2300 I had zero resources in everything. At that point I quit the game, there was no point in continuing.

but you're really not playing it right.
if you wanna wage a war - you should be prepared to the consequences.

either by having a planetary limit and ability to deal with 0 stability and high crime. (building few precinct houses, having enough food\consumer and etc)

or by utilizing slaves and resettlement. (in my last game I conquered 6 worlds and then I just resettle everyone to my newly build ecumenopolis as slaves (and be everyone I meant everyone, the planets were gone). then I just disassembled all the starbases\outposts in captured systems).

in the worst case you can return planets back, or release them as your vassal