Gameplay Questions (Trading AI, Pop Growth, Research, Stack of Doom)

[Kordanor]

Hey there,

I watched quite a few of the stellaris videos but I still have some open questions and maybe some of you can answer them. Also I have never played any of the paradox grand strategy games (lots of 4X games though) so maybe you can answer from your knowledge from other games.

Trading AI
Did they say anything about the AI in trade? I think in the stream the AI programmer mentioned once that the AI might demand some things more than others. But I fear that the game has the same problem as many others. Will the AI accept any trade deals as long as it's within the mechanical threshold even if it is of no use for them? Other games made this pretty problematic. Like in Civ you could just trade 10 gold for 10 turns for 100 gold, getting a nice credit. Or you could sell the AI any material they don't need and get money for it. Also how easy is it to make them do what you want? In Civ 5 a tiny amount of gold was enough to let an AI attack an opponent. When I played with AI AND other players we had the house-rule to not use gold in asking AI to attack someone.

Focusing on Research Type
I know that there are 3 research types and 3 resources for it. But how can you focus on one of them? Right now I don't quite see the point of having 3 different ones if they have more or less the same value anyways (speaking about the resources in the bar on the top, not the scientists).

Gaining a Pop
In a stream it was mentioned that Food is generation population and that it's not realistic (more people->more offspring) but the opposite like in Civilization (less peple->more offspring). And if that's necessary to keep it's balanced and not have to micromanage pop transfers all the time (as in the new MOO), that's a neccessary evil though I don't think it's necessary to have it, if you actually have migration settings anyways.
But that aside: If you have two races on your planet and have a food surplus it apparently is split between both races, so basically 2 pops are "growing".
1. Is there a way to deny growth to other aliens via policies?
2. How is the growth split up? Proportionally? 50-50?

Stack of Doom
In the Stream the AI programmer mentioned that he mostly only uses one fleet to do everything.
This seems to be very problematic in my eyes and much similar to the "stack of doom" of Civ4 and other games.
Once you have one huge army of a certain power, it is basically unstoppable and just rolls over everything else.
The issue here: If you have like 100 Strength and the enemy has 50 Strength they don't reduce your strength by 50 but more like 10 or 20.
This is why lots of games have a mechanic to limit it with command points (One fleet can only consist of units worth 50 command points or so). That's not the total unit cap, but a "stack" or "fleet" cap.
And from what I heared even Europa Universalis had one mechanic called attrition, which damages big stacks.
So...can anyone tell me if there is some kind of counter mechanic to the stack of doom problematic?

Difficulty
It seems like there is no difficulty setting within the game or did I miss it?
In the stream the game seems to be pretty easy and they are basically rushing through it. If I'd pause a lot and maximize every situation it doesn't seem to be very challenging (haven't watched all episodes yet though). Did I miss something here?

 

[TomBombadil]

It's been said many times, but try to avoid pronouncing judgement on these things before it is released. We don't know a whole lot, and they're still tweaking things.

That out of the way, some of your points:

Difficulty

can be set to normal, hard or insane. Wiz said as much.

Doomstacks

Watch the rest of the streams and you'll see he has to split his fleets in a war with multiple enemies. Wiz hasn't played particularly well, probably due to trying to keep the pace of the game going and avoiding pausing too much, so a doom stack is easier for him to use. Also, the wormhole aliens run rings around his unnecessarily large fleet stack when if he split them he'd actually be able to catch them. Again this is a level of micromanagement difficult to do in streams, so not blaming him. Point is, with different FTL types, there's a good need to use your fleets more creatively than just sending doomstacks around the place.

Fleet composition is also important. Wiz's fleet got wrecked in one war because his fleet had the wrong weapons and not enough armour to shields to counter the enemy fleet. So it's not just "build doomstack and win", your doomstack needs careful planning, too. A smart player would have different fleets of different composition to counter varying threats.

Trading AI

No idea really, wait for the game to be released

Research

Wiz has been trying to balance research, and building research labs to compensate. In between videos, and often during the videos themselves, while quickly clicking building projects on planets, he's been balancing his research output. You'll need to wait until game release to see how much you can specialise if that floats your boat.

Pops

No idea. I doubt they've added extra intricacy beyond splitting food between them though.

 

[Zorromorph]

But how can you focus on one of them? Right now I don't quite see the point of having 3 different ones if they have more or less the same value anyways (speaking about the resources in the bar on the top, not the scientists).

They are roughly equal in importance, or so says Wiz. But there are specialized buildings you can have which produce a lot more of one type than the others(like 1 Society, 1 Physics, 4 Engineering for example) if you wanted to focus on one, or are behind in one, and so forth.

This is why lots of games have a mechanic to limit it with command points (One fleet can only consist of units worth 50 command points or so). That's not the total unit cap, but a "stack" or "fleet" cap.

This has been discussed basically to death on the forums in multiple places. They tried a limit on fleets but it worked badly since people just split their ships into multiple fleets and sent them to the same place anyway. One fleet is less effective as your empire grows because it can only be in one place at a time: putting all the eggs in one basket so to speak leaves other areas vulnerable. Whether this is enough to counter the 'Stack of Doom' issue is a matter of some debate, but I've found the official statements to be at least reasonable. Others have disagreed.

It seems like there is no difficulty setting within the game or did I miss it?

There are three: Normal, Hard, and Insane. The harder difficulties give artificial bonuses to the AI. In terms of not being challenging, that comes with a stream that is just a work in progress, there have been a lot of AI adjustments and so on. How challenging the game is won't be something we really know until release, or at the very least until youtubers start uploading stuff later this weekend.

 

[Dr_Creeptor]

Trading AI:
It seems that the AI will only accept things useful to them, but will gladly oblige anything you offer to them, so long as they want it or need it.

Focusing on Research Type:
Their values will always vary, either very little or a lot. And if I understand the rest of your question properly, it wouldn't make sense for a physics scientist to study society or something like that. And having 3 different studies makes the game more interesting and you can advancefaster.

Gaining a Pop
1. Can't say, but I doubt there would be a "food embargo" for races.
2. Really can't say

Stack of Doom
Wiz (The AI programmer) had one fleet at the start, making it easier to manage and to control. Later he did split them up, to fight various other fleets in the universe. As for damage, a 1K strength can defeat a 5K fleet, just so long as the 1K has proper weapons. (Various weapon types are stronger against different ships, so big ass ships can be destroyed by smaller ones.)

Difficulty
There is a Normal, Hard and Insane mode. And an Iron Man mode, though no idea what that does.

 

[lemmox]

And an Iron Man mode, though no idea what that does.

Unless they've changed it from their previous games, it disables the console (cheating), locks you to a single save file which is automatically overwritten anytime anything happens, and allows you to unlock steam achievements.

 

[Kordanor]

Thanks guys for all the constructive answers
!
Glad to hear there are more difficulty levels!

That different traveling mechanics force you to split out would be a good thing. Will have to watch the other episodes before release. But the troop movement seems to be extremely fast in this game. Just worrying that, if you lost "the fight", you are basically floating dead in the water until you are picked apart. But when you mention that it was discussed to death already I am not going to open a new discussion here. Just seemed to be an obvious issue after watching the first 6 videos of the stream.

@lemmox
Haven't played other paradox games before, but yeah, that would be pretty much what is considered ironman in most other games as well.

 

[apoc527]

IME, Paradox AI empires are harder to abuse than in other games. Remember, Paradox's bread and butter is "grand strategy," not so much "4X." As such, they have traditionally had a much larger focus on diplomacy. I find that, generally speaking, because of the level of detail in diplomacy and relations, it's hard to cheese things like you can do in other games. Does Paradox have smarter AI? No, of course not, none of these game AIs is actually intelligent. But with more things to compute, it's harder to break it. Plus, even if you do figure out the algorithm, the mechanics are complex enough to not seem abusive.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a hardcore or particularly skilled player. It's quite possible that masters of these games can abuse the AI--but that's true in all games.)

As for your other questions, the Doomstack issue has been well-argued. Basically, the jury is still out, but it seems like the strategic picture will do a better job of limiting doomstacks than in other games.

 

[lemmox]

Just seemed to be an obvious issue after watching the first 6 videos of the stream.

Depending on whether you're referring to the YouTube episodes or the full twitch streams that represents a small slice of very old code. But in any case since the beginning of the streams the balance of the game has changed dramatically due to constant tweaks and last minute but fixes. I'd avoid using that footage for anything more concrete than a general feel for the game.

If I bought the game and it played like it did in the first Blorg stream I'd demand a refund, but they also know that and it's why the game isn't out yet.

 

[Kordanor]

Depending on whether you're referring to the YouTube episodes or the full twitch streams that represents a small slice of very old code. But in any case since the beginning of the streams the balance of the game has changed dramatically due to constant tweaks and last minute but fixes. I'd avoid using that footage for anything more concrete than a general feel for the game.

If I bought the game and it played like it did in the first Blorg stream I'd demand a refund, but they also know that and it's why the game isn't out yet.

Sure, but you can only change so much in such a short time.
The flaws of Civ5 were already visible in the streams before release (not in all it's glory though) and were hardly fixed in the months after release, the balancing Issues of Galciv3 already existed in early beta stages and were not fixed till release (as they were a design decision), same goes for the horrible mechanics of Lords of the Black sun, which were obvious in the first alpha I played and were still present at release, years later.

So I bring a fair bit of scepticism. Little tweaks and obvious fixes, sure. But changing game mechanics deeply in the system is a different story.

 

[lemmox]

So I bring a fair bit of scepticism. Little tweaks and obvious fixes, sure. But changing game mechanics deeply in the system is a different story.

You can change a helluva lot by modifying a single variable. The core mechanics look great, the only issues I've seen - or that you've cited - are generally balance issues.

 

[apoc527]

This isn't Paradox's first rodeo with AI design. While the game itself is technically something new for the studio, there's a reason that Paradox is considered to be the master of grand strategy and largely responsible for the existence of the genre associated with their games. They've been at it a long time.

As lemmox says, these are balance issues that require tweaking of small numbers of variables, not major design flaws.

 

[Ramiel]

Few more comments to add to what's already been said

Research Focus - Like said, you can construct different buildings to focus more on different types of research. There's other ways as well - species can have traits that make them natural experts in certain fields, boosting research gained from that species' pops. There are also edicts that can be enacted that will boost one research field empire-wide to the detriment of the other two. Even within the three fields there are sub-fields, and having scientists who specialize in those sub-fields will make those technologies appear faster, letting you jump ahead in that sub-field.

Pop growth - I have no idea if you can restrict a species' growth in general; however, you can set empire policy to forbid slaves from growing new pops, if you're going the slavery route. And there's always purging of course.

Stack of Doom - Discussed in depth already, I'd highly recommend going and reviewing some of the other discussions of the topic if you have the time. What Wiz said in the streams was that in the early game he keeps a stack of doom, but later on splits it up once needed. It seems that the biggest limiting factor on Stack of Doom is the size of an empire and the travel time involved - once you grow to any decent size, it simply becomes impossible to effectively protect your nation with only a single stack.

Highly recommend you keep watching the Blorg streams, there's a lot of great info in them that'll probably answer most of your questions.

 

[TheBromgrev]

Sure, but you can only change so much in such a short time.
The flaws of Civ5 were already visible in the streams before release (not in all it's glory though) and were hardly fixed in the months after release, the balancing Issues of Galciv3 already existed in early beta stages and were not fixed till release (as they were a design decision), same goes for the horrible mechanics of Lords of the Black sun, which were obvious in the first alpha I played and were still present at release, years later.

So I bring a fair bit of scepticism. Little tweaks and obvious fixes, sure. But changing game mechanics deeply in the system is a different story.

Paradox used to be like you describe, but after the abysmal release that was HOI3 they've gotten much better at fixing bugs prior to release. Vicky 2, CK2, and EU4 were largely free of gamebreaking bugs on release, while it took 4 patches over 3 months for HOI3 to run for more than 5 minutes on my computer. Starting with CK2, it seems as though Paradox has adopted a model where every 6 months or so they release an expansion pack (think mega-DLC) that makes changes to the core gameplay, and in between each expansion they have a bug-fixing patch. With EU4, there are typically one or two hotfixes within a week of a patch's release to correct the biggest bugs that managed to slip past QA.

I expect Stellaris to follow the same patching model that is used for EU4.