After probably 10 hours of binge-gaming, I've hit the point where several frustrating issues in Utopia appeared, some of which I can't solve even after some time using google and the wiki..
I tried two other species first, but what really kept me playing for several hours without break were my fanatic spiritualist space elves. Of course, being space elves, they needed some strong proles to do the manual work, so I choose the approrpriate civic at the start. It turned out, I need to give them full citizenship rights, to make the egalitarian faction happy. And I could probably have spent the civic point on smth else, as only 5 systems away from my homeworld I found the Sol system with Maschine Age humans that could be conquered easily. As space elves and humans both prefer continental worlds, I already had 3 species, and I soon got one more, as some space potatoes with continental preference in the next spiral arm suggested a migration treaty.
As my only close neighbour was busy warring his other neighbour, the early game was quote peaceful. These space elves being spiritual people, I went for an initial 'building tall' strategy and maximized unity production, to get the transcendce perk as fast as I could, and then I expanded steadily, mainly by using terraforming to create continental worlds.
I didn't go to war once.. the only confrontation resulted when the hegemonic imperialists from two spiral arms away expanded into my spiral arm! The speed of their expansion actually surprised me. I rushed to build frontier outposts, which resulted in some bordergore, but managed to cut of their newly found colonies.
The navy was far stronger then mine, but after the aforementioned space potatoes,who had an even larger navy, agreed to a defensive pact, I could continued to spent my minerals and energy on expansion, rather then on a fleet.
However, these defensive pacts resulted in the first frustrating issue.. my expansive neighbour got some defensive pacts, too, so now, after I've build up my economy, I would have to attack 4 empires at the same time.. I'm probably going to do that, because after 100 or so years of a cold war, I'm getting bored. There isn't anything else I can do to get these two colonies, but to sent large interstellar armadas into battle. No espionage, no option to attempt a coup on a planet, no cultural assimilation.. I can't even offer to buy these planets.
Also, I'm having difficulties in managing the labour force on my homeworld. Somehow, the pops keep migrating to other colonies or even into the territory of the space potatoes. If I just resettle them, I need to spend influence and the egalitarian faction is unhappy; for the later reason, I didn't even try the limit their migration. They should be as happy on any planet, as by now my consumer goods are set to utopian abundance.. maybe I need to build a visitor centre on my homeworld, too, but this didn't occur to me until now..
More importantly, I can't seem to get the tech for psi jump drives. This is probably the most important reason for going psionic, but, although I'm fanatic spiritualist and have a scientist with expertise
sionics working in biology, I get neither the precognition interface nor the psi jump drives technology. But wait, am I probably supposed to get this tech through the shroud, now? Turns out, I can't try that, as the option to access the shroud has disappeared from the situation log. I only had it in there once, but after the first access, it never appeared again. I suspect this to be a bug.
So what now? AFAIK, one of the rules of good game design, is to give the player MEANINGFUL challenges. These challenges can be tough, the important thing is to make sure, that the player always has at least one idea on how to try to overcome them. Here are 3-4 challenges where I am rather lost, and probably would have to make a forum post anyway to figure out what to do.. so I though I might as well point this out in case one of the developers reads this post.
Stellaris and the Utopia expanision are probably worth their money (a game with a randomly generated galaxy which gives the option to conquer earth and integrate it into an interstellar republic is great), but my playing experience the last 1 1/2 day wasn't as good as it could have been.
I tried two other species first, but what really kept me playing for several hours without break were my fanatic spiritualist space elves. Of course, being space elves, they needed some strong proles to do the manual work, so I choose the approrpriate civic at the start. It turned out, I need to give them full citizenship rights, to make the egalitarian faction happy. And I could probably have spent the civic point on smth else, as only 5 systems away from my homeworld I found the Sol system with Maschine Age humans that could be conquered easily. As space elves and humans both prefer continental worlds, I already had 3 species, and I soon got one more, as some space potatoes with continental preference in the next spiral arm suggested a migration treaty.
As my only close neighbour was busy warring his other neighbour, the early game was quote peaceful. These space elves being spiritual people, I went for an initial 'building tall' strategy and maximized unity production, to get the transcendce perk as fast as I could, and then I expanded steadily, mainly by using terraforming to create continental worlds.
I didn't go to war once.. the only confrontation resulted when the hegemonic imperialists from two spiral arms away expanded into my spiral arm! The speed of their expansion actually surprised me. I rushed to build frontier outposts, which resulted in some bordergore, but managed to cut of their newly found colonies.
The navy was far stronger then mine, but after the aforementioned space potatoes,who had an even larger navy, agreed to a defensive pact, I could continued to spent my minerals and energy on expansion, rather then on a fleet.
However, these defensive pacts resulted in the first frustrating issue.. my expansive neighbour got some defensive pacts, too, so now, after I've build up my economy, I would have to attack 4 empires at the same time.. I'm probably going to do that, because after 100 or so years of a cold war, I'm getting bored. There isn't anything else I can do to get these two colonies, but to sent large interstellar armadas into battle. No espionage, no option to attempt a coup on a planet, no cultural assimilation.. I can't even offer to buy these planets.
Also, I'm having difficulties in managing the labour force on my homeworld. Somehow, the pops keep migrating to other colonies or even into the territory of the space potatoes. If I just resettle them, I need to spend influence and the egalitarian faction is unhappy; for the later reason, I didn't even try the limit their migration. They should be as happy on any planet, as by now my consumer goods are set to utopian abundance.. maybe I need to build a visitor centre on my homeworld, too, but this didn't occur to me until now..
More importantly, I can't seem to get the tech for psi jump drives. This is probably the most important reason for going psionic, but, although I'm fanatic spiritualist and have a scientist with expertise
sionics working in biology, I get neither the precognition interface nor the psi jump drives technology. But wait, am I probably supposed to get this tech through the shroud, now? Turns out, I can't try that, as the option to access the shroud has disappeared from the situation log. I only had it in there once, but after the first access, it never appeared again. I suspect this to be a bug.So what now? AFAIK, one of the rules of good game design, is to give the player MEANINGFUL challenges. These challenges can be tough, the important thing is to make sure, that the player always has at least one idea on how to try to overcome them. Here are 3-4 challenges where I am rather lost, and probably would have to make a forum post anyway to figure out what to do.. so I though I might as well point this out in case one of the developers reads this post.
Stellaris and the Utopia expanision are probably worth their money (a game with a randomly generated galaxy which gives the option to conquer earth and integrate it into an interstellar republic is great), but my playing experience the last 1 1/2 day wasn't as good as it could have been.
