Or is it just me, finally trying something different?
My very first game since Megacorps went absolutely amazing - the amount of trade I had was making everything easy. Now I've restarted a few more games, and somehow I get myself into game-states where my expansion is stuttering / I get my economy into a tailspin / decades of low growth / expansion slowing down unintentionally without external event etc.
I always thought / felt, that the game was easy enough to be able to play around with different playstyles, bonuses (/boni), government ethics and civics, species traits, policy options, ascension perks etc.: I would always find a way to make it work - or so I remember the good times: the flavour was plenty, and you could try everything out, just the way you wanted, without worrying too much about sinking dozens of hours into a game, that would finally run into the ground / hit a wall.
Sure, some strategies worked slightly better, others just fit my playstyle better, or I just liked one flavor better than the other. - Sometimes I would restart after a while, when I didn't like the hand I was dealt: silly starting position, or unreasonable mix of empire-personalities that I was not willing to deal with etc. - or I would get thoughts: "I absolutely have to try this or that in my next game! - Oh, I guess I just abandon this game and start a new one."
- typical syndrome of a good "sandbox"-game.
Recently the reasons that make me decide to abandon a game and restart anew seem to be of a more serious nature:
Somehow I manage to get my economy in untenable situations: overbuilding driving upkeep costs too high; expanding too fast with new planets and ending up without minerals to expand on their buildings / districts at the same time; not being able to afford governors for all sectors; having my best leaders die 20 or 30 years early, because I didn't research / choose the leader-livespan stuff in the same way as I did in my fllawless playthrough etc.
I simply screw up more often! No more easy sailing. Harsh decisions to be made, to be able to recover at all. - Looking the ugly truth in the eye: I'm simply not good enough at this game anymore!
(Not as bad as I am at playing EU IV: There I can't get things done, because I haven't mastered the game systems: I would have to watch 40h of "Let's play!" again, to even start to be able to achieve things. - But still: Stellaris used to be a "feel-good-game": start your own space empire and do some outrageous stuff and still win the game.)
Sure: I've also seen screenshots of how badly AI manages its planets - these things would never happen to a human player. - Or would they? - It seems I get too greedy on one aspect of the game which makes me screw up another aspect.
The game feels less "self-balancing". You really can run things into the ground. - Which is not a bad thing, it just feels a bit as if I had unlearned how to play: somewhat like the feeling I would get if I started playing World of Warships again, after pausing for 6 months...
My very first game since Megacorps went absolutely amazing - the amount of trade I had was making everything easy. Now I've restarted a few more games, and somehow I get myself into game-states where my expansion is stuttering / I get my economy into a tailspin / decades of low growth / expansion slowing down unintentionally without external event etc.
I always thought / felt, that the game was easy enough to be able to play around with different playstyles, bonuses (/boni), government ethics and civics, species traits, policy options, ascension perks etc.: I would always find a way to make it work - or so I remember the good times: the flavour was plenty, and you could try everything out, just the way you wanted, without worrying too much about sinking dozens of hours into a game, that would finally run into the ground / hit a wall.
Sure, some strategies worked slightly better, others just fit my playstyle better, or I just liked one flavor better than the other. - Sometimes I would restart after a while, when I didn't like the hand I was dealt: silly starting position, or unreasonable mix of empire-personalities that I was not willing to deal with etc. - or I would get thoughts: "I absolutely have to try this or that in my next game! - Oh, I guess I just abandon this game and start a new one."
- typical syndrome of a good "sandbox"-game.
Recently the reasons that make me decide to abandon a game and restart anew seem to be of a more serious nature:
Somehow I manage to get my economy in untenable situations: overbuilding driving upkeep costs too high; expanding too fast with new planets and ending up without minerals to expand on their buildings / districts at the same time; not being able to afford governors for all sectors; having my best leaders die 20 or 30 years early, because I didn't research / choose the leader-livespan stuff in the same way as I did in my fllawless playthrough etc.
I simply screw up more often! No more easy sailing. Harsh decisions to be made, to be able to recover at all. - Looking the ugly truth in the eye: I'm simply not good enough at this game anymore!
(Not as bad as I am at playing EU IV: There I can't get things done, because I haven't mastered the game systems: I would have to watch 40h of "Let's play!" again, to even start to be able to achieve things. - But still: Stellaris used to be a "feel-good-game": start your own space empire and do some outrageous stuff and still win the game.)
Sure: I've also seen screenshots of how badly AI manages its planets - these things would never happen to a human player. - Or would they? - It seems I get too greedy on one aspect of the game which makes me screw up another aspect.
The game feels less "self-balancing". You really can run things into the ground. - Which is not a bad thing, it just feels a bit as if I had unlearned how to play: somewhat like the feeling I would get if I started playing World of Warships again, after pausing for 6 months...
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