First-time player to Stellaris experience with (apparently) 2.2... just saying

[cscx]

So..a couple of days ago I bought Stellaris with all major DLCs except MegaCorp. I am not new to 4X games etc.
I played a bit and sort of understood everything (got 4 planets surveyed, built stations etc) but hit a brick wall on the "planet" screen. I had to fix lack of energy and lack of minerals, apparently.
WTF?, I thought to myself, having spent 30 mins on the screen. Makes absolutely zero sense, as it is. I read some wikis, but nothing became any clearer. Eventually I ended up watching this video and I was, like, hey - this is really simple and straight forward - I have got to find the button that opens up the tiles screen.
Then I looked at the follow up, explaining the changes in (apparently) 2.2 and my heart sank. You have got to be kidding me, right ?
Let me sum it up. Every time I want to make a change to a planet's output OR fix a planet output, I have to consider a causal chain of events where one building with one pop makes one thing that goes to another building with another pop, BUT you might loose the first thing if you move a pop to the second building, and you can't really experiment about with all combinations and permutations to get the right output, cause you can't demote pops or change buildings quickly.

This is not "depth". This is arcane meaningless complications that don't have intuitive answers, and can't have intuitive answers because a player cannot iterate quickly enough between possible solutions and check the output/end results and learn from experience - you can't just shuffle things about till you get what you want (eg. try new buildings, changing buildings, changing pops). Am expected to consider "chains of events" every time I micromanage a planet without even having the ability to quickly and intuitively understand what does what and what the actual chains are? And on top of this, the "correct" answer is sometimes 'planet specific', i.e. I would have to spend a lot of time on individual planets just considering how to achieve things? And not only that, but there are feedback loops within the chains of events? This is not fun, sci-fi, contributing to immersion, a narrative, or any of the other things that may make a PC game fun.

Here is what it is, in simple gaming terms: it is like making a unit, for an RTS game, which shoots like a tank, looks like an airplane, moves underground, but only if you hold the right combinations of keys (and you thought it was a flimsy airplane, silly you). And you don't know how to target things, and you only get one try per 30mins of gameplay, but the results depend on what you have tried to do 1 hour ago. Yay!
(not intuitive, fundamentally slow to pick up and learn, taking away from immersion, effectively ends up reducing player control)

The practically kills the game for me - it's a huge early game turn off, to realize I would have spend a small eternity learning how to achieve what I want on planets, and, like 5-10 failed first games. Is this why I bought Stellaris? To figure out how to make little furniture icons efficiently OR ELSE the alien overlords roll over me?

I will of course revert to 2.1.3 and start again (checked how to do this).
I could be wrong about all of the above. First impressions and all that. But I will never find out now, would I :/
(maybe try 2.2 again in another few months).

 

[Ag3nt49]

When you're looking at a planet, the planet summary tab only really matters for choosing what sort of jobs are available on that planet.

It also has a total resource production summary under the buildings section.

When you're looking at the population tab, you can expand each strata (rulers, specialists, workers, etc) to show what pops are working what jobs, how much of what resource(s) they are using and how much they are producing.

If you don't want pops moving up into higher stratas you can disable those jobs before they are filled

 

[Leon12]

The practically kills the game for me - it's a huge early game turn off, to realize I would have spend a small eternity learning how to achieve what I want on planets, and, like 5-10 failed first games. Is this why I bought Stellaris? To figure out how to make little furniture icons efficiently OR ELSE the alien overlords roll over me?

I hate to say it, but yep. Welcome to PDX grand strategy games. There's a reason people in the Crusader Kings 2 subreddit post screenshots of having played the game for 1000+ hours with the caption "finally finished the tutorial guys!"

I can usually run a decent economy in the new patch and my one word of advice to you is: plan, don't react. If you're always putting out fires it means your economy is a teetering wreck ready to keel over. Figure out what you think you'll need, what you want to be producing, which worlds to specialise in doing what, and then try and execute that plan (with situational modifications).

For example: if I know I want to focus on a massive fleet buildup, I designate the world in my empire with the best mineral deposits as a mining world, specialise it to produce minerals, then designate a larger world that will have plenty of infrastructure due to housing districts as a foundry world (for making alloys), then I find a good location to build a massive shipyard (ideally in a nebula for concealment and ideally quite centrally located so the fleet stationed there can respond effectively to threats) and build/station my Combined Fleet there. Simultaneously I ensure I have enough food to feed all these people (agri-worlds!) and energy + consumer goods to keep the whole thing running (mixture of trade value, domestic production, and resource sales on the market).

The only real way to learn how to do any of this (and a thousand other things) semi-effectively is by failing repeatedly, however. Welcome to grand strategy gaming!

 

[mammothhunter]

Learning curve of this game went up considerably a week ago - I went from playing on highest difficulty highest crisis setting to lower diff and 1.0 setting, started and deleted 3 games until am finally satisfied with how it runs, and even then made mistakes that almost spoiled it. You are expected to spend time balancing the economy and it will take time to learn the process too.

But this release version also has poor balance - Paradox saves on playtesting by releasing betas as expansions. Maybe if you come back in a week or two and after an official patch it will become more manageable.

 

[Xeorm]

Really surprised you ran into that problem. The system really is stupidly simple. Perhaps you're overcomplicating it? If you want more of a resource, build buildings/districts that correspond to that resource as you get more pops. Don't build if you don't have available pops, and don't worry about what resources a specific planet produces. Worry about the requirements of that planet (amenities/housing/etc) and your total incomes.

 

[SirL]

Majority of this "planning ahead" comes from a bad economy system overall. Food is op, credits suck. You better make food and sell it on the market, because that way you get more creds as opposed to actually making credits on generator districts. Your economy runs very nice with only clerk buildings, they give too much amenities, no need for entertainers. Just build only clerk buildings and sell food, that's how I play this game...

 

[AlanC9]

I've seen plenty of people say that clerks suck because you don't really need that many amenities. I've taken over some AI-built planets with tons of clerks, and they don't seem to be all that great.

 

[Badesumofu]

Steep learning curve is generally a given for Paradox games. It wasn't for Stellaris until a week ago, though. That said, it's really not that hard to build farms, generators, and mines to get basic resources, then once you have enough of those and some new pops about to grow, build some alloy and consumer good factories.

But really if learning how to play a game doesn't appeal to you, then Paradox games may not be for you.

 

[Losttruppen]

But really if learning how to play a game doesn't appeal to you, then Paradox games may not be for you.

We finally had one that did appeal to people who don't like the other pdx grand strategy games, and now its gone.

 

[Delthor]

This is not "depth". This is arcane meaningless complications that don't have intuitive answers, and can't have intuitive answers because a player cannot iterate quickly enough between possible solutions

Once you get past the initial learning curve, things feel a lot more comfortable. Many genres of games require you to play multiple times and fail multiple times to learn. The entire roguelike genre is built around doing this over and over. Grand strategy is pretty similar, where each game you improve your mastery to get better. I think Leon12 summarized it best:

plan, don't react. If you're always putting out fires it means your economy is a teetering wreck ready to keel over.

I think this is the single biggest piece of advice everyone struggling with the new economy system needs. It does mean you need to understand the basics of the economic system. But once you understand it and start planning, then you can start to do much better. Once you start anticipating that building a bunch of consumer goods factories will tank your minerals, you can plan around it.

One important thing to do is to maintain a decent stockpile of energy, food, and consumer goods, and to actually leverage them to some extent. Don't just sell off all your spare consumer goods; let them build up to one or two thousand and as your empire expands, let them dip negative. You'll have plenty of time to react. That time means you can consider where best to build a new consumer goods factory, whether you have the minerals and pops for it, and if you don't, to actually build those things up before plopping down the building, and when you do, it'll go more smoothly.

So the most important advice I'd say boils down to three things:
1. Stockpile important important resources like energy, food, and consumer goods.
2. Be disciplined, not casual, when building things.
3. Plan; don't react.

Knowing important mechanics and gotchas like "workers move up to fill specialist slots when buildings are built" are definitely important, but if you do these three things, especially #1, you should have a much easier time figuring things out as you go along.

 

[Sergei Andropov]

It was definitely a good idea to roll back to the earlier version while you're learning, since the current one is very much a work in progress. Once you get the hang of it, though, it has a lot more depth and life than the previous one. It makes it so rich planets actually feel rich, and poor planets actually feel like the middle of Nebraska. Give it time, and you'll fall in love with it.

 

[kolpo]

I suggest you play a hive mind to learn 2.2. Civics who boost resource output can also help with balancing your economy.

The economy in my first victoria 1 game was horrible, but once i eventually understood the gqme was it the best game ever. Give it some time.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

If its any help, I have like 1700 hours in this game and it still took me more than a few games to get the rough hang of it and I doubt I'm doing things optimaly.

a few simple guides: Only workers produce things in 3 types. Food, energy, minerals Trade value

Specalists turn things into other things. For example minerals into alloys or consumer goods, or consumer goods into reserch, unity, or ameanities.

Leaders are same as specalists but are rarer and per pop more potent.

Now as a rule pops want to fill the higher tier jobs fisrt( think about it, if you get to choose between working as a moovie star, or in an open cast mine, which are you choosing?)

Also as a rule people are reluctant to trade down, and suddenly surplus moovie stars will malinger about avoiding work a while before accepting the inevitable.

Lastly, people need certain amounts of housing, consumer goods, and ameanities to be happy and productave.

So, build slow, lay a little track ahead but try to think in small chunks say 5 pops worth at a time. THAT way if you are creating specalists you wont be stealing too many pops from your feeder industries. There will be a temptation to fill a world and move on, but pops move gaster than they are created and I've crashed things that way.

Also it pays to specalise. Planets have only so many districts, and can only support certain number sof each type City (Provides housing) Generator ( energy) mines (minerals) and farms (food). and you get small but signifigant bonuses to production for focusing on one.

 

[Hapchazzard]

Am expected to consider "chains of events" every time I micromanage a planet without even having the ability to quickly and intuitively understand what does what and what the actual chains are?

What are these elaborate, arcane chains of events that you speak of, since I don't really see them in my game? Literally almost every building is just 'this makes X [Profession] jobs, which produce Y resource, which is used for [insert use]'

And on top of this, the "correct" answer is sometimes 'planet specific', i.e. I would have to spend a lot of time on individual planets just considering how to achieve things?

Why is this a bad thing? It sure beats every planet being the exact same, which is the alternative.

This is not fun, sci-fi, contributing to immersion, a narrative, or any of the other things that may make a PC game fun.

I don't follow. How is a system that simulates social hierarchies; the infrastructure, amenity and law-enforcement needs of a futuristic society; and where planets are actually distinct in terms of resources "sci fi and immersion breaking" compared to a system where there are no social hierarchies, your population exists in a vacuum with no need for any kind of infrastructure whatsoever and where your entire economy is based on minerals and energy?

Here is what it is, in simple gaming terms: it is like making a unit, for an RTS game, which shoots like a tank, looks like an airplane, moves underground, but only if you hold the right combinations of keys (and you thought it was a flimsy airplane, silly you). And you don't know how to target things, and you only get one try per 30mins of gameplay, but the results depend on what you have tried to do 1 hour ago. Yay!
(not intuitive, fundamentally slow to pick up and learn, taking away from immersion, effectively ends up reducing player control)

I don't quite think you share the same criteria for "immersion" as most people on this forum (me included) do if you think that the new system is less immersive than the old one. And I don't see how it is not intuitive - buildings relatively clearly say what they do (and places where the text isn't clear will be corrected with new patches). Planetary values should be obvious even without any text - low stability and high crime are obviously bad, you need housing for housing POPs, high amenities is good, more trade value = more cash, etc.

 

[cscx]

I have tried 2.1.3 now, and it's fun - definitely feels better.
I suppose my major gripe with 2.2 is not so much the complexity, which is or should be OK in 4x games, but complexity coupled with mechanics that make single decisions "final" and potentially fatal, which makes for an unnecessarily steeper learning curve. I supposed I could always save-reload games until I get it right in a specific case, but, again, this takes away from the joy of a first time play-through.

 

[AlanC9]

What sort of fatal decisions are you talking about?

 

[Raph]

Welcome to PDS games, cscx! I know the learning curve can be steep (and Stellaris has now joined its sibling games in that) but if you make it through that it makes for an experience unlike any other strategy game. There's a reason PDS games lasts for hundreds or thousands of hours. And if you come at it with an open mind and ask questions instead of making demands, the community will be happy to help you learn.

 

[cscx]

What buildings to build and how to set pop priorities. I can't get my head round the proper balancing act on districts and 6 different interdependent resources. I mean, just by looking in at it or trying things out for 30-60 mins (bar save-reload).
Fatal in the sense that credits and minerals became negative, and that was the end of that on more than one level. Maybe it's not "truly" fatal, from the point of view of having more experience and knowing what actually is going on; but it wasn't easy to find out what went wrong. It was just a turn-off.
2.1.3 is all I need at the moment- I may give 2.2 a spin again after I know the rest of the game better.

 

[Porompo]

What buildings to build and how to set pop priorities. I can't get my head round the proper balancing act on districts and 6 different interdependent resources. I mean, just by looking in at it or trying things out for 30-60 mins (bar save-reload).
Fatal in the sense that credits and minerals became negative, and that was the end of that on more than one level. Maybe it's not "truly" fatal, from the point of view of having more experience and knowing what actually is going on; but it wasn't easy to find out what went wrong. It was just a turn-off.
2.1.3 is all I need at the moment- I may give 2.2 a spin again after I know the rest of the game better.

That might be your best bet. You are getting in at a bad time because the wiki is not updated. If you don't mind playing with the previous patch you should, then once you are familiar with the other game mechanics and the wiki has been updated you can just try the new patch again and I'm sure it will be a lot easier.

 

[Delthor]

What buildings to build and how to set pop priorities. I can't get my head round the proper balancing act on districts and 6 different interdependent resources. I mean, just by looking in at it or trying things out for 30-60 mins (bar save-reload).
Fatal in the sense that credits and minerals became negative, and that was the end of that on more than one level. Maybe it's not "truly" fatal, from the point of view of having more experience and knowing what actually is going on; but it wasn't easy to find out what went wrong. It was just a turn-off.
2.1.3 is all I need at the moment- I may give 2.2 a spin again after I know the rest of the game better.

2.1 will familiarize you with war, the basics of expansion, most technologies, and ascension perks.

However, it won't gett you too much with the new economy because it's so different. Only playing and learning 2.2 will really help you get past the initial learning curve.