Where does your attention go in Stellaris? Why and how does this reward you in your gaming experience?
It's not an easy question to answer. It's even harder subject to make dev theory from, just because everyone has personal preferences.
But I made a log based from my experience. It's not catching the core issue of why do I enjoy Stellaris at its current state and when do I fall off from this flow, but is an attempt to vector towards it, be the eventual goal managing my gameplay better in means of production orders and gamesense or whatever.
I can answer some cases, where I start the game, but lose the flow, off the bat. It's true that these observations are possibly about mostly personal preferences. However, I consider myself fallible to general human bias, like the bias of self-competence. (This is known in science as Dunning-Kruger effect.) There are also positive psychological effects that work in pc games and make the games fun.
I'll start with my log. (Stellaris 1.4)
To be honest, when I open this page it looks like gibberish. But I'll go through it.
I've paid attention to what I'm focused on when I play Stellaris. I've logged my status every 5 years of the gameplay.
This can be very biased. I've written four sentences to every log entry for every 4 elements, which are fact, feeling, action and prediction. I've also expressed their relative strenght against each other, which seems without basis and very random.
Compared to other posts I've read on this forum I'm now placing my critical thinking not to an object but to myself as a subject of the game, trying to view the game through my experience, not through the game's workings towards myself as it's unclear wheter I like this game or not, compared to a few other games I play more frequently, but that's another topic. I excuse if I open up some of the apparent "compressions" like in the first log entry
The Attention Measure Log
2220, Orbital farm + power plant when energy on the planet
Later uncompression:
(In this ironman save by the year 2220 I noticed that it's working towards my goal to gain foothold in my region of space in the beginning, control of which I find a rewarding goal, control of opening strategy and control in each individual game beginning, especially in this one that I'm logging.
By 2220 I found out that from the base of a friend's notice, I paid more attention to orbital farming and found out it seems like extremely useful, as my population is not growing fast enough to gain resources from a colony.
I noticed that if I have orbital farms built immideately with surplus minerals I can boost the colony's resource output for the empire to gain more economical shock effect at start. I used orbital farms to gather a high energy yield tile (ranging from 2-4) with a worker and a basic power plant, which doubles the rate. (after that energy tile I can extract high yield mineral tiles the same way, thus skipping the colony's need for planetary administration to be productive enough.
This is in line with the strategy of building spaceport in all colonies asap to protect them from invasion in early wars and to shock produce corvettes when mineral production hits target.
Okay uncompressed I've given estimates for the four factors this log entry meant for me on a scale of 1-10. Action indicates what I was doing while this came up and prediction means actions to take in the future from the base of this observation.
Raw log entry: (inside brackets marks a later comments added to unravel further meaning from my perspective)
2220, Orbital farm + power plant when energy on the planet
fact value 4: I learned, thought, felt, that it was useful
action value 2: I did continue mineral + home in the sky style
feeling value 1: it was nice (not impressed)
prediction value 2: will be useful (uncertain)
2225, I was worried about my neighboring payers (AI)
fact value 5: if they would cause trouble
action value 5: time scheduled checks
feeling value 2: I felt anxious
prediction value 1: I will intervene (to this emotion, because it's Attention Measurement, not Power Gaming log)
--> crossed +100 minerals per month (year 2228)
2230, I realized I could trade with the ascended empire (I remember I had taken huge happiness penalties on all colonies for this option)
fact value 4
action value 4: (I looked for new options to solve energy crisis?) I desperately needed this I thought. I will now build a navy.
feeling value: 3: I was amazed
prediction value 5: (This) was really going to work out (but... something unpredictable always happens)
2235,
fact value 3: I didn't declare war soon enough. Target allied (after the very first window of attack passed, but the navy wasn't fully produced)
action value 6: I cancelled attack. (that could have been a success before a defensive pact/alliance)
feeling value: 3: annoyed
prediction value 3: Nothing will occur anytime soon (but when it occurs... I don't know)
2240,
fact value 1: J'Vorok civilization moved their fleet [massive] past my capital.
action value 1: looked. (observed the fleet)
feeling value 3: I felt excited
prediction value 3: they will rek foes
(a mystery entry? with no reference to a year or game on this page)
fact value 1 I changed government
action value 3: I changed gamestyle now
feeling value: 3: I feel empowered
prediction value 3: future is full of edicts (??? did I change gov to divine mandate?)
From the base of this study of personal gameplay, I'd say my feelings were quite serene about the game. Minor annoyances and disappointments about own actions, those culminating in declaring war against an AI at a critical time window... Maybe I would have been more captivated in the game if there was event feeds around what was going on and some hints about some alliance(s) being soon made by some empires near to mine.
My other few logs seem to be about how to generate +100 monthly mineral production before the year 2230, as I think in year 2220 many empires have 40-50 minerals per month and in 2230 70-80. I don't think this is really what I should pay the extreme amount of attention to though. I recall I did some differing value target playing after this too and found it quite rewarding in the end, as taking care of the numbers and actions they require eventually led into more power over the sandbox and more meaningful consequences like my pacifist empire going on strike because of an offensive war, which became a galactic stalemate when won would have balanced the galaxy greatly, ready for a galactic peace or facing of an external threat. I changed my government in that save too, in this breaking point, that gave meaning to the game and made me put the save on the shelf.
I must admit, that I enjoyed to temporarily retire both of these ironman games by handing out my divine mandate or by moving the government to divine mandate, so that I have a new situation when I load the saves next time. One other improvement I have to especially compliment the dev team is the new more versatile space combat. It's really good. 1,5k high tech specialised fleets composed of only corvettes, some destroyers against half larger in fleet power early cruiser fleets... Just makes my day.
edit: there was something that didn't make sense at all when I reread after post.
It's not an easy question to answer. It's even harder subject to make dev theory from, just because everyone has personal preferences.
But I made a log based from my experience. It's not catching the core issue of why do I enjoy Stellaris at its current state and when do I fall off from this flow, but is an attempt to vector towards it, be the eventual goal managing my gameplay better in means of production orders and gamesense or whatever.
I can answer some cases, where I start the game, but lose the flow, off the bat. It's true that these observations are possibly about mostly personal preferences. However, I consider myself fallible to general human bias, like the bias of self-competence. (This is known in science as Dunning-Kruger effect.) There are also positive psychological effects that work in pc games and make the games fun.
I'll start with my log. (Stellaris 1.4)
To be honest, when I open this page it looks like gibberish. But I'll go through it.
I've paid attention to what I'm focused on when I play Stellaris. I've logged my status every 5 years of the gameplay.
This can be very biased. I've written four sentences to every log entry for every 4 elements, which are fact, feeling, action and prediction. I've also expressed their relative strenght against each other, which seems without basis and very random.
Compared to other posts I've read on this forum I'm now placing my critical thinking not to an object but to myself as a subject of the game, trying to view the game through my experience, not through the game's workings towards myself as it's unclear wheter I like this game or not, compared to a few other games I play more frequently, but that's another topic. I excuse if I open up some of the apparent "compressions" like in the first log entry
The Attention Measure Log
2220, Orbital farm + power plant when energy on the planet
Later uncompression:
(In this ironman save by the year 2220 I noticed that it's working towards my goal to gain foothold in my region of space in the beginning, control of which I find a rewarding goal, control of opening strategy and control in each individual game beginning, especially in this one that I'm logging.
By 2220 I found out that from the base of a friend's notice, I paid more attention to orbital farming and found out it seems like extremely useful, as my population is not growing fast enough to gain resources from a colony.
I noticed that if I have orbital farms built immideately with surplus minerals I can boost the colony's resource output for the empire to gain more economical shock effect at start. I used orbital farms to gather a high energy yield tile (ranging from 2-4) with a worker and a basic power plant, which doubles the rate. (after that energy tile I can extract high yield mineral tiles the same way, thus skipping the colony's need for planetary administration to be productive enough.
This is in line with the strategy of building spaceport in all colonies asap to protect them from invasion in early wars and to shock produce corvettes when mineral production hits target.
Okay uncompressed I've given estimates for the four factors this log entry meant for me on a scale of 1-10. Action indicates what I was doing while this came up and prediction means actions to take in the future from the base of this observation.
Raw log entry: (inside brackets marks a later comments added to unravel further meaning from my perspective)
2220, Orbital farm + power plant when energy on the planet
fact value 4: I learned, thought, felt, that it was useful
action value 2: I did continue mineral + home in the sky style
feeling value 1: it was nice (not impressed)
prediction value 2: will be useful (uncertain)
2225, I was worried about my neighboring payers (AI)
fact value 5: if they would cause trouble
action value 5: time scheduled checks
feeling value 2: I felt anxious
prediction value 1: I will intervene (to this emotion, because it's Attention Measurement, not Power Gaming log)
--> crossed +100 minerals per month (year 2228)
2230, I realized I could trade with the ascended empire (I remember I had taken huge happiness penalties on all colonies for this option)
fact value 4
action value 4: (I looked for new options to solve energy crisis?) I desperately needed this I thought. I will now build a navy.
feeling value: 3: I was amazed
prediction value 5: (This) was really going to work out (but... something unpredictable always happens)
2235,
fact value 3: I didn't declare war soon enough. Target allied (after the very first window of attack passed, but the navy wasn't fully produced)
action value 6: I cancelled attack. (that could have been a success before a defensive pact/alliance)
feeling value: 3: annoyed
prediction value 3: Nothing will occur anytime soon (but when it occurs... I don't know)
2240,
fact value 1: J'Vorok civilization moved their fleet [massive] past my capital.
action value 1: looked. (observed the fleet)
feeling value 3: I felt excited
prediction value 3: they will rek foes
(a mystery entry? with no reference to a year or game on this page)
fact value 1 I changed government
action value 3: I changed gamestyle now
feeling value: 3: I feel empowered
prediction value 3: future is full of edicts (??? did I change gov to divine mandate?)
From the base of this study of personal gameplay, I'd say my feelings were quite serene about the game. Minor annoyances and disappointments about own actions, those culminating in declaring war against an AI at a critical time window... Maybe I would have been more captivated in the game if there was event feeds around what was going on and some hints about some alliance(s) being soon made by some empires near to mine.
My other few logs seem to be about how to generate +100 monthly mineral production before the year 2230, as I think in year 2220 many empires have 40-50 minerals per month and in 2230 70-80. I don't think this is really what I should pay the extreme amount of attention to though. I recall I did some differing value target playing after this too and found it quite rewarding in the end, as taking care of the numbers and actions they require eventually led into more power over the sandbox and more meaningful consequences like my pacifist empire going on strike because of an offensive war, which became a galactic stalemate when won would have balanced the galaxy greatly, ready for a galactic peace or facing of an external threat. I changed my government in that save too, in this breaking point, that gave meaning to the game and made me put the save on the shelf.
I must admit, that I enjoyed to temporarily retire both of these ironman games by handing out my divine mandate or by moving the government to divine mandate, so that I have a new situation when I load the saves next time. One other improvement I have to especially compliment the dev team is the new more versatile space combat. It's really good. 1,5k high tech specialised fleets composed of only corvettes, some destroyers against half larger in fleet power early cruiser fleets... Just makes my day.
edit: there was something that didn't make sense at all when I reread after post.
Last edited:
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