Currently struggling to play past early-mid game

[NEXUS12]

Firstly, before people reply with the usual ''Go play COD if you don't like this'' lines, I wanna say that I really like Stellaris, and have high hopes for it in the future when it is more fleshed out. I am not here just to whine, but I am curious as to how other people view my issue.

I have sunk over 100 hours into the game in a few short weeks, and I have been hooked. Yet I can't seem to play past a mid-game scenario. I have started again about eight times, and each time I get really pumped for playing, colonise a few planets, eat a few neighbours, do a few quest lines.... then I get bored.

1) Colonise planets
2) Build same buildings fifteen times
3) Declare war on a local xeno and chase his fleet around until I catch it
4) Land on a planet to take it over
5) Land on another planet to take it over
6) Make peace and repeat

It just seems to me right now that once you get your empire set up, finish the precursors chain and whatever else you find at the beginning, and colonise a few planets, things just become repetitive. I struggle to find anything to keep me interested in playing beyond this point.

Maybe this is just because the game is yet to be fleshed out? I think I might give the game a few weeks break until Utopia is released and see if that adds more meat on to the bones. I am really looking forward to trying out some of the things I have seen in dev diaries.

Anyway, I am just wondering if anyone else gets bored mid game? And if so, what do you do differently to keep you interesting in continuing that campaign?

 

[Kat Tsun]

At the moment that is about all there is. Once the initial exploratory phase is done, it's about painting the map $colour and blobbing up before the AI blobs. Crisis almost make it fully engaging, but it is a bit tedious if you aren't getting curbstomped by them because they generally get smushed by powerful AIs.

Have you look at Steam Workshop? I'm not sure what mods are there, but there may be things that change the mid-game around a bit. I personally haven't looked so I don't know what is on the Workshop lists. I also agree that the weakest part of the game is the mid- and late-game (mostly late), I'd think that the game will be better in the future. If PDS puts in a DLC that changes diplomacy on a scale of what Banks is doing for internal politics, it will be fun in a year or so in mid-game. PDS games generally have a gestation period measured in years anyway.

 

[Cagliostro]

Aside from the end game crises and fighting fallen (or awakened) empires, that is pretty much it at present. Though I also believe it will be improved over time.

 

[TerrBear]

I have never finished a game, I get to the point i'm the big boy on the block and get bored and/or the game speed goes to a crawl and/or an awakened empire bugs out and can't beat its tiny neighbours and/or the end game crises arrives and all the ai ignore it.

 

[joak]

I've finally had time to play a good bit the last few weeks and feel I have a handle on the mechanics, and finished a game (on a tiny map.)

I came to make almost exactly the post Nexus12 did. There's so much to like in this but by mid game things are boring for me. I'm having trouble imagining finishing on a standard map.

I think a lot could be better and will be. More event chains, better triggers to make sure fun stuff happens, better diplomacy, better end game conditions. Will probably get Utopia upon release despite my reservations.

But the biggest thing I think might not change and that is the battle system (including, or maybe even mostly, the feedback from the battle system) needs to be changed. I love the EU games but in this context the very similar approach isn't working for me. This is science fiction and there's an actual tech tree in this game and different weapons ranges and ship vulnerabilities and all that but it's not translating to "feeling" that way when a war starts. I'm off to try and find a thread where that's being discussed on more depth (rather than derail this one.)

 

[Neocv]

I never passed 250 years ingame, usually quit around 200 years. I don't like the current style of war(as many other people), so I rarelly engage in any war, mostly focussing in empire management and achieving any goal that I've set.

One of the things that are more fun to me are the events, but the problem with events is that they are either extremelly repetitive(like those strange montains formations that appear 10 times each playthrough), or are extremelly rare.
In my last game, I've found a really fun anomaly in a colony, it had several buidings with some really cool bonus, and appear to be haunted, since it said that my pops had seen shadows and sounds in the buiding and after a while one of my pops even disappeared without a trace. But the thing is that it was the first time I've ever seen this event and I have 180 hours in the game. This diference between the rate which the events appear makes the game too repetitive.

I'm currently waiting for the patch/expansion to return to play, since I think it will give a revival in the game, at least to me.
I'm with 4 diferent playstyles for Utopia, very likely being Fanatical Materialis/Egalitarian, Fanatical Spiritualis/Xenophobic or Fanatical Spiritualis/Authoritarian, Fanatical Pacifist/Xenophile and Hive Mind. So I think that these playstyles will give it to me at least 80 hours or more of gameplay.

I really like Stellaris, but currently the game still is bland in the mid-late game, and the devs know this, but we still have quite a road ahead until this is completely fixed.