Early game boost with monthly trades
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If you have duelists, definitely holotheatres, otherwise less clear, but I would start with holotheatre to get extra amenities to raise stability. Second one being a monument is an option. I think the choice is between holotheatre+monument, holotheatre*2 or holotheatre*3.
honestly the game is so easy at the moment that i see little point in trivializing it any further, there is such a thing as too easy.
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Nah, I call bullshit on that.
How does an economy based on that perform in the first ten years?
Sure, you get the first couple of traditions earlier, but tha not that big of a deal.
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I'd argue that building a Temple first as Spiritualist is a good investment, because without GEA, there's a good chance you'll end up with every faction popping up in the early game, and Spiritualists REALLY hate competing with other factions and makes your empire perform even worse than Spiritualists already do.
Ok, i feel like I should have understood what, but I don't.
What do you mean by GEA?
Why does that mean everyone popping up early?
How do spiritualists hate competing? Do you mean spiritualis empires or factions?
And how does that make your empire perfom worse?
GEA= Governing Ethics Attraction. Since they reworked it, pops flip ethics like an indecisive eater looking at a menu. Normally, this isn't a huge deal, since most factions are pretty easy to please, at least early in the game and even then, pop happiness isn't as big a deal as it used to be.
The one ethos that DOES suffer from it, however, is Spiritualists. They are even worse than Xenophobes when it comes to appeasing them, and they're the one faction you HATE to see if you aren't already playing Spiritualist. Most factions give you some flexibility, but Spiritualists are very much "My way or the Highway". Not only is the ethos ALREADY weaker than other playstyles, but the faction associated even further hampers your game experience, since you're forced into a subobtimal playstyle to appease them.
The reason I bring this up as an issue specifically for Spiritualists is because of all the penalties associated with them. One of which is they get upset when a certain percentage of your pops don't follow Spiritualism. Without GEA, it's not uncommon for you to get 5 different factions pop up at once in the early game, and if you're playing a Spiritualist Empire, this means all your Spiritualist pops are going to get upset, resulting in lower planet stability and less resource output, on top of already crippling yourself from not using robots.
Literally every single other faction in the game does not hurt your empire as much as the Spiritualist faction does in the early game. Egalitarian vs Authoritarian is never an issue (simply having certain government types creates draw), Xenophile only get mad if you are mean to Xenos (and you can literally make them happy by outlawing certain policies and never having xenos in your empire), Xenophobes only care about having free Xenos on the planet (you don't have them in the early game unless you went Syncretic Evolution), Militarists only get mad at you for being a coward (and you can make them happier by uplifting a species, making them your vassal, no war required), Pacifists can be placated by playing Sim City until you're ready to steamroll the galaxy, Materialists are made happy by playing the game optimally.
It's not uncommon for the Spiritualist ethos to be permanently at 20% if you didn't pick Spiritualism as a starting ethic, THAT'S how terrible the faction is. It seems like they are designed to cripple the player.
Want to colonize or even Terraform a Tomb World? PENALTY (unless Survivor Origin). Want to use Robots to increase the amount of pops on the planet? PENALTY! Want to have 3 ethos instead of a Fanatic one? You'd best believe there's a PENALTY for that. Not having Spiritualism ethics in your government? PENALTY!
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thanks, that makes much more sense to me now.
I admit I never bothered looking deeper into factions. To me they are just an adjustable pont of influence income. check a box to get more or less.
For me it's usually too expensive manipulating them ... or do anything with them at all.
I admit I never bothered looking deeper into factions. To me they are just an adjustable pont of influence income. check a box to get more or less.
For me it's usually too expensive manipulating them ... or do anything with them at all.
It doesn't help with the economy in the first ten years - it's a bit of gaining larger benefit later instead of getting a small benefit sooner. Finishing supremacy is very important (particularly assuming advanced GA), even more so if you got fanatic purifiers or such for neighbours. Adding another couple of planets and 50-70 pops in 2210-2211 instead of 2214-2215 is worth sacrificing some small amount of research (or resources) you could have acquired otherwise. This is also important because the sooner you finish supremacy the smaller AI fleet you'll face
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Not too sure when I first started playing Stellaris again, but I was definitely not active on these forums when this thread was going on, and you folks seem to have a solid grasp on an aspect of this game that I know nothing about. Even though this thread is like 10 months old, I felt that asking for help here might be better than making a totally new thread.
This thread, seems like it revolves around making use of the games built in trade deals, and the various ways folks are going about doing that, and then I get totally lost when other things I know nothing about get brought into the discussion.
For a point of reference, back when my old windows 95/98/XP computers were still up and running, I played another Paradox game, called HoI2, and I remember having Doomsday/Armageddon installed, as well. Back in those days, I played as Germany (because of the David and goliath nature of their struggle), and I learned to make a trade deal right off the back, where I traded Supplies for Oil with, IIRC, Venezuela or somebody. Some folks called me out on that, not in a bad or mean way mind you, but as my limited understanding of the game had led me to realize, Germany needed Oil, and could easily trade something they could make in abundance for it, so I set up that trade deal in Jan, 1936 and by the time war cut me off, I had a stockpile that would last the whole game.
My very much more limited experience with Stellaris, coming as it is many years later on (other than my initial introduction, way back in the day), I had managed to forget the whole exploitative trade deals, and have been trying to just build what I need from within my own empires boarders instead. I was totally unprepared for other playstyles that didn't feature building massive numbers of foundries on the homeworld, in order to get the Alloys production increased as fast as possible, the better to expand my outpost/orbital station construction and mass survey fleets, with military fleets either totally ignored, or just mostly ignored, and heaven forbid that I should "waste" time (and precious Alloys) on defensive constructs on my upgraded StarBase's in the choke points.
I've already decided that Stellaris has way to many mistakes in it to really engage me long term, but the game is fun, and as long as I am enjoying the experience I'll continue to play it until a better game comes along, and as I tend to stick to one game at a time (mostly) this means that I'll be playing a lot of Stellaris, for some considerable time, and I am interested in learning as much about this game as I can, in order to have fun learning, and then being able to point out the things that don't work for me, in a polite and very clear way, so that maybe, just maybe, Paradox can write a future game that will be more to my liking, but more on that after I learn Stellaris as it is in v 2.2, and then the latest version.
If I figure out enough, can I ask some questions about the game I am currently playing, using Version 2.2? I realize that there will be differences from v 2.2 and whatever versions you folks are doing, but right now I am clueless about so many aspects of the game, I end up stuck in a rut and just restarting over and over again in mostly the first 10-40 years of the game.
So, is this thread a good place for me to get 'schooled' in how to play with trades?
This thread, seems like it revolves around making use of the games built in trade deals, and the various ways folks are going about doing that, and then I get totally lost when other things I know nothing about get brought into the discussion.
For a point of reference, back when my old windows 95/98/XP computers were still up and running, I played another Paradox game, called HoI2, and I remember having Doomsday/Armageddon installed, as well. Back in those days, I played as Germany (because of the David and goliath nature of their struggle), and I learned to make a trade deal right off the back, where I traded Supplies for Oil with, IIRC, Venezuela or somebody. Some folks called me out on that, not in a bad or mean way mind you, but as my limited understanding of the game had led me to realize, Germany needed Oil, and could easily trade something they could make in abundance for it, so I set up that trade deal in Jan, 1936 and by the time war cut me off, I had a stockpile that would last the whole game.
My very much more limited experience with Stellaris, coming as it is many years later on (other than my initial introduction, way back in the day), I had managed to forget the whole exploitative trade deals, and have been trying to just build what I need from within my own empires boarders instead. I was totally unprepared for other playstyles that didn't feature building massive numbers of foundries on the homeworld, in order to get the Alloys production increased as fast as possible, the better to expand my outpost/orbital station construction and mass survey fleets, with military fleets either totally ignored, or just mostly ignored, and heaven forbid that I should "waste" time (and precious Alloys) on defensive constructs on my upgraded StarBase's in the choke points.
I've already decided that Stellaris has way to many mistakes in it to really engage me long term, but the game is fun, and as long as I am enjoying the experience I'll continue to play it until a better game comes along, and as I tend to stick to one game at a time (mostly) this means that I'll be playing a lot of Stellaris, for some considerable time, and I am interested in learning as much about this game as I can, in order to have fun learning, and then being able to point out the things that don't work for me, in a polite and very clear way, so that maybe, just maybe, Paradox can write a future game that will be more to my liking, but more on that after I learn Stellaris as it is in v 2.2, and then the latest version.
If I figure out enough, can I ask some questions about the game I am currently playing, using Version 2.2? I realize that there will be differences from v 2.2 and whatever versions you folks are doing, but right now I am clueless about so many aspects of the game, I end up stuck in a rut and just restarting over and over again in mostly the first 10-40 years of the game.
So, is this thread a good place for me to get 'schooled' in how to play with trades?
I think the trade mechanics are not very fleshed out, to be honest. You don't trade with another economy - you trade with an algorithm (the internal/galactic market) and a couple of stores (AI empires).
The internal market is as barebones as it comes: A resource has a base price and you buy/sell at it plus the market fee of 30% (or lower with certain events/techs). After each deal, the price adjusts according to a simulated surplus/shortage formula. The resources are unlimited.
The AI trades with you at the resource's market price adjusted by it's trade willingness value, which typically ranges between 70% to 110% (the higher, the better for you). The AI can't trade more than it has stockpiled.
The way to use trade is of course to sell stuff you don't need for stuff you do - no surprise there - but you can totally abuse the AI because it doesn't look beyond the market value. So you could trade 1000 food neither of you need for e.g. Alloys both of you need without a problem.
And then you can screw them over by trading monthly resources for favors, then empty your stockpiles and thus cancel the trade deal while keeping the favors. They'll be angry at you but that repairs itself at a rate of +1 opinion per month.
Or you trade away favors for their resources just before declaring war against them. Btw. I have never noticed the AI making use of favors, so it's probably safe to trade favors away regardless.
In the early game, trading away food or consumer goods will give you a very large advantage, although trade impact will decline the longer you play.
I think trade didn't change much from 2.2 onwards, but with patch 2.6 you get Origins, which would let you start with 2 direct neighbours to trade with when picking Hegemon or Common Ground.
You should really really update your game ... you have no idea how much free new cool stuff you are missing out on.
The internal market is as barebones as it comes: A resource has a base price and you buy/sell at it plus the market fee of 30% (or lower with certain events/techs). After each deal, the price adjusts according to a simulated surplus/shortage formula. The resources are unlimited.
The AI trades with you at the resource's market price adjusted by it's trade willingness value, which typically ranges between 70% to 110% (the higher, the better for you). The AI can't trade more than it has stockpiled.
The way to use trade is of course to sell stuff you don't need for stuff you do - no surprise there - but you can totally abuse the AI because it doesn't look beyond the market value. So you could trade 1000 food neither of you need for e.g. Alloys both of you need without a problem.
And then you can screw them over by trading monthly resources for favors, then empty your stockpiles and thus cancel the trade deal while keeping the favors. They'll be angry at you but that repairs itself at a rate of +1 opinion per month.
Or you trade away favors for their resources just before declaring war against them. Btw. I have never noticed the AI making use of favors, so it's probably safe to trade favors away regardless.
In the early game, trading away food or consumer goods will give you a very large advantage, although trade impact will decline the longer you play.
I think trade didn't change much from 2.2 onwards, but with patch 2.6 you get Origins, which would let you start with 2 direct neighbours to trade with when picking Hegemon or Common Ground.
You should really really update your game ... you have no idea how much free new cool stuff you are missing out on.
Generally speaking, you can effectively have infinite alloys put to use without breaking your economy. While building ships, just check your shipyard and shift everything to the bottom of the queue when it comes close to completion. If you're building expensive ships like mono battleship fleets, you'll basically never have to worry about ships coming online before you want them to, since they take a year or so to build and you get enough alloys in a year to keep adding new battleships to the queue. This lets you construct a massive fleet while not paying maintenance on it until you NEED the fleet. When the war comes, just stop adding ships to the top and finish the last few days on all your ships one after another until suddenly you have a gigantic fleet your enemy didn't expect.
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Yes trading with AI is pretty broken, and also incredibly annoying to micro. The worst of both worlds.
You can easily get like 15,000 alloys over time in a populated galaxy just by giving away your favors.
You can easily get like 15,000 alloys over time in a populated galaxy just by giving away your favors.
This sounds very useful but i doubt i will ever use since it involves way too much micro and i will inevitably forget to check in on it, making all the annoyance pointless as the system only works if constantly maintained. You can accomplish the same thing(pretty much, there's still a little bit of upkeep) by building most of your fleet blank and upgrading them when needed, the upgrade process is quick enough for it to not be an issue, and there is much reduced micro. this is what i use in the early game before i have enough alloys to not care.
This idea is definitely more efficient, but the added micro is not worth it in my mind.
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That's a perfectly valid perspective, it just depends on how much micro you're willing to do for the sake of min-maxing.
honestly that's not a bad descriptor for a good half of the game. how well managed your empire is usually has more to do with your micro tolerance than any level of skill. it all comes down to how much time and patience are you willing to spend to get 1% more of X resource.
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This is true, but generally it takes a lot of skill to be able to micro well. You have to know about strategies to be able to use them, and you need the skill to be able to pull them off without making mistakes or forgetting things. There are so many things to keep track of in a game like Stellaris that it's easy to forget things and mess up your micro. For example, I min-max pretty efficiently most games but recently I forgot to turn on capacity subsidies until a few years after I researched the tech for it. That's a lack of skill on my part because I forgot to do something that's pretty important for early game economy.
Or for a void dweller technocracy, the optimal play is to resettle a pop from your 2nd habitat to your third one so you can get it to 10 pops for the capital building upgrade, then do it in reverse for the other habitat once you finish upgrading the third, in order to quickly get your science directors going. It's easy enough to do and provides a very large benefit (two very early science directors), but a lot of people don't like resettlement micro and even if you know about the strat (I didn't until recently, credit goes to @Meebleborp who wrote a guide on the build), it's easy to forget to do it if you haven't played the build in a while.
After you've played enough good micro generally becomes second nature, but to someone who doesn't have the experience it looks like a massive wall of learning which is discouraging to try to learn. But learning to micro well is very rewarding.
That void dweller technocracy built wont work that easy anymore in the Lem update as it basically doubles the consumer goods upkeep of your researcher pops (and that independent from the pops living standard. It will always be +1 CG per pop). A lot of builts have to be reinvented and new discovered with all the changes to most common metas. Only Ressource consolidation will stay the same.
All that really does is effectively increase the job upkeep by one. It's going to mean you have to build one extra CG building/district in the early game, that's about it. 1 artisan produces 6 CGs base, so you'll need an extra artisan for every 6 researchers, less if you have bonuses to specialist output. It's hardly a crippling debuff. Sure resource consolidation will still be strong, but that build also can't make efficient use of conquered pops later on (unless it's an assimilator build) so it has its downsides as well.