How do you keep having fun while you're in the late game?

[DasSmach]

I play Stellaris very rarely but when I do it's always the same thought process:

-this is awesome, why did I ever stop?
-nice, I'm now really starting to grow
-uh.. there are soo many planets that need constant micro.. can the AI handle a few of them?
-my entire economy collapsed.. ok I have to micro every single one of my 50 planets
-my brain is melting.. maybe I should play something else

It doesn't make it easier that I love playing Void Dwellers where I avoid having my species setting foot on actual planets and let the robots do the resource gathering and want to become a real mega engineer. But that is probably the most micro intensive way you can play this game, since you constantly build new habitats and have to manually upgrade them twice and not right off the bat but only after you reach a certain population, because you need the upgraded capital buildings first, so I can't pre build everything. And then there's unemployement, robots that need resettleling, pops that constantly migrate to 0% habitability planets etc.

I don't even get to think about going to war with someone or engage in diplomacy or trade deals because all I'm doing is micromanaging.. So.. how do you enjoy the end game? What am I missing?

 

[Ryika]

If the problem is micromanagement, the general solution is to queue a bunch of extra stuff whenever a planet starts having problems so you don't need to care about it for a while.

When it comes to the rest... are you not playing with default values on the growth sliders? Even as a Void Dweller, there's a point where you shouldn't really need to upgrade your habitats anymore, because your pops won't grow fast enough to fill upgraded habitats before the next bunch of habitats comes online.

Synths auto resettle if they have Citizen Rights (and I replace Assembly Plants in the Midgame if I'm not going Synth Ascension), and 0% Habitability planets shouldn't really exist anymore thanks to base Habitability from techs and other effects. If your baseline is somewhere around 40%, habitability can just be ignored and it'll be good enough.

Overall, I find that the only way for me to stay sane in the late game is to accept large amounts of inefficiency and just "care less". At that point, the important snowballing is over anyway, and you just need to carry your momentum to the finishing line.

Still doesn't make the late game fun though. It's easily the weakest part of Stellaris, and everything just feels like a chore at that point.

 

[DasSmach]

If the problem is micromanagement, the general solution is to queue a bunch of extra stuff whenever a planet starts having problems so you don't need to care about it for a while.

When it comes to the rest... are you not playing with default values on the growth sliders? Even as a Void Dweller, there's a point where you shouldn't really need to upgrade your habitats anymore, because your pops won't grow fast enough to fill upgraded habitats before the next bunch of habitats comes online.

Synths auto resettle if they have Citizen Rights (and I replace Assembly Plants in the Midgame if I'm not going Synth Ascension), and 0% Habitability planets shouldn't really exist anymore thanks to base Habitability from techs and other effects. If your baseline is somewhere around 40%, habitability can just be ignored and it'll be good enough.

Overall, I find that the only way for me to stay sane in the late game is to accept large amounts of inefficiency and just "care less". At that point, the important snowballing is over anyway, and you just need to carry your momentum to the finishing line.

Still doesn't make the late game fun though. It's easily the weakest part of Stellaris, and everything just feels like a chore at that point

I think I just avoid habitats all together.. Since my idea of a race living on space stations doesn't really work in this game. It pushes me to get back to habitating planets ASAP which makes me ask why the Void Dweller origin even exists if I'm not supposed to stay on habitats. It's just a handicap.

Queing stuff up doesn't really work with habitats since research opens new building slots and you have to expand them constantly and build new ones. You have to come back to them over and over again and because your resources are so limited they have to run well so that you can keep up. There just isn't a way to manage all of them without going insane.

And no.. I deactivated the growth sliders because in a previous game my developement just stopped because of it and I was left with nothing else to do.. I thought the whole idea of this game was to grow and develop.

I didn't want Synths because I wanted to keep them as mining androids.. But I feel like it's just creating more problems.


I don't know.. I got really exited by the Victoria 3 AAR's and hoped to find a similar experience in Stellaris but it just doesn't work.
It feels to me like every interesting way of how you could play this game other then being Space-Hitler hits some kind of roadblock. Either you drown in micro or it's just not possible..
Wanna focus on building a tall economic powerhouse? Too bad, either you accept that at some point you just don't develop at all anymore or you drown in micro.
Wanna unite the United Nations of Earth and Commenwealth of Men trough diplomacy? Well no, just not possible. Either conquest or partnership.
Wanna live on space stations? Well good for you but your Inhabitants want to get of them ASAP no matter how terrible it is down there.

And it wouldn't annoy me so much if it weren't for so many great mechanics that I love in this game. The space UN is awesome, I love the economic gameplay and the political system has so much potential.. This is the only paradox game where I can make bilateral trade agreements with other nations to squeeze every little bit out of my nation. This game could be great as a pacifist but it just breaks apart because it can't handle its own scale..
And that makes every peaceful way of playing meaningless..

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

The problem is for me 2 fold
For properly Epic SF, the game's timespan is no where long enough for the kind of scale or late game that is seen in something like the Machine Culture (where a battle between 2 state-of-the-art ships resolves at 50 light years away, in 18 hotly contested piko seconds)

and as a result, the tech tree tops out at something around starwarsish.

I mean, thanks to the L Cluster Nanotech is apparently inscrutable unknowable rare resoce tech? The stable cliché of every firmish scifi book in the 90s?

All the interesting choices stop after you get your second ascension perk in your path. IE, some time around mid game.

 

[MordridBlack]

"That's the amazing thing, you don't."

Most of us end up downloading mods to help with issues in game or to make things more interesting

sure it can add more onto the pile, but it is usually worth it

sees Thomas the Tank Engine ships take down an Awoken Empire


ignore that

 

[jwk4heels]

To be fair, this isn’t an issue unique to Stellaris. Most 4X games kind of turn into a slog after a certain amount of time in a single campaign. Out of every game I play to at least 2400, I only make it 2500 in perhaps 10% or less of them. That’s probably in line with my Total War or Civ habits, too, for example.

It’s not as much the micro for me, as I actually enjoy administration tedium. It’s more the sameness of the motions I find myself going through. There’s a lot more variables in the early game to make things unique or interesting, the sense of progression, etc. By the late game, things have generally evened out and the playthrough feels much like any other. Borders are settled, fleet comps are set and replicated ad infinitum, etc. I will say though, I really enjoyed my become the crisis last playthrough. The end goal really made it fun. I was racing against the clock as an awakened empire was eating me from one side and I was eating stars on the other side while stacking fleets in my home system to protect my aetherophasic engine. It made me not care about management and the tedium was nonexistent, because I was going to blow up the galaxy anyways!

I think it’s partially because we always tend towards optimization that things get stale. Something that encourages other behavior, like becoming the crisis, can go a long way to making a campaign feel fresh or exciting. Something that really changes the paradigm, which doesn’t, in my view, necessarily include the tedium of normal crises, though it can in some cases.

Oddly enough, I find I stick with my playthroughs long term more often when I don’t use mods or only a very light mod set. Not sure why, but it’s been pretty consistently that way for me since around 2.0 or so.

 

[Strangedane]

For me the endgame at this point is all about the x25 at earlier and earlier dates in smaller and smaller galaxies.
The latest endgame setting I use is 2375 at 1.0 tech/unity costs, and that's if i'm playing something meme-ish.

For me the campaign ends when I clear the crisis or die trying as there is usually nothing else left after that point.

I'd wish the AI was somewhat capable without mods, at least on the higher difficulties, but apparantly GA has to be beatable by a blind monkeys fleas.

 

[Zagreb 887]

The only "solution" I've find to aliviate the micro hell burden is playing tall+vassals with OP mods like Giga and ACOT, each planet/habitats/whatever produce so much that you don't need more than 20 planets to swim in ressources. So you can use your time to more intresting thing like fighting over-the-top crisis or trying to fix the atrocious garbage of species tab.

 

[Maethendias]

sectors dont work, dont try to make the ai manage your planets
it literally doesnt do anything

 

[MordridBlack]

sectors dont work, dont try to make the ai manage your planets
it literally doesnt do anything

i remember a time when sectors did work, and planetary ai management was at least viable

neither were perfect mind you, they both had issues, but they functioned


that is more than we have now

 

[MagnusDux]

I heavily recommend everyone who wants to reduce micro to play with the 0.25 habitable planets setting. It drastically reduces micro, especially in the late-game, while also slightly increasing the level of challenge late-game without increasing it early-game.

 

[Mastikator]

Win the game. Start over, try something else.

Stellaris is not some MMORPG you can keep playing forever.

 

[hart30]

I usually micro my planets until they reach around 20 with help of the tiny outliner mod. Once it gets past that i usually allow automatic sector management, as at that point the ai cannot break my stable economy. Sure, my eco growth gets inefficient so i have to rely on monthly trades of overflowing ressources at the galactic market, but its still better than losing urself in the microhell and ending the game. I basically stop caring about planetary management and focus more outside my empire. At that time the galaxy is usually divided by a few giant federations. So i play around with the galactic senate and get them to declare on randon empire of the biggest federation to the crisis via resolution. This ends in one half of the galaxy fighting the other half to the death as the whole federation basically gets declared the crisis. Its incredible fun and keeps me occupied even in the very late game. I usually play with the biggest galaxies and lots of empires, while keeping my empire really compact, not conquering too many of my neighbours. Its quite boring if u already own half the galaxy and all u have left to do is to prepare for the crisis, which is then immeadely smashed, because u leave it no time to expand. Its better not to be overly prepared and overly efficient in eco. Being deliberately weaker and maybe forcespawn a few genocidals at gamestart guarantees a interesting game.
You could also try relying completely on the automatic sector/planet management and not bothering with micro at all, in order for ur game to stay interesting.

 

[Strangedane]

I heavily recommend everyone who wants to reduce micro to play with the 0.25 habitable planets setting. It drastically reduces micro, especially in the late-game, while also slightly increasing the level of challenge late-game without increasing it early-game.

The problem with with 0.25 habitables is that the already incapable AI dies even harder when it can't expand.

So while it reduces micromanagement it also reduces the already marginal challenge the AI can muster.

 

[MagnusDux]

The problem with with 0.25 habitables is that the already incapable AI dies even harder when it can't expand.

Why? The AI has less planets to expand but so does the player. The player's advantage comes from distributing production very efficiently by specializing every planet, something that the AI doesn't do as well. With less planets specializing is less effective so i'd expect the gap between the player and the AI to be reduced, but maybe i'm missing something.

 

[Strangedane]

Why? The AI has less planets to expand but so does the player. The player's advantage comes from distributing production very efficiently by specializing every planet, something that the AI doesn't do as well. With less planets specializing is less effective so i'd expect the gap between the player and the AI to be reduced, but maybe i'm missing something.

The AI is set up to get to some specific numbers of income before shifting to their midgame plan, and they won't get to it at 0.25 habs.
This means they pretty much won't be building labs and will fall even more horribly behind in tech than they already do.

 

[MagnusDux]

The AI is set up to get to some specific numbers of income before shifting to their midgame plan, and they won't get to it at 0.25 habs.
This means they pretty much won't be building labs and will fall even more horribly behind in tech than they already do.

I see. I haven't noticed this but i always play on GA so maybe the AI in my games manages to hit those income levels due to the bonuses it gets.

 

[Strangedane]

I see. I haven't noticed this but i always play on GA so maybe the AI in my games manages to hit those income levels due to the bonuses it gets.

I also play exclusively GA without scaling.
Everything is pathetic in 40-45 years with advanced starts.

The ai is a joke at best.

 

[Mastikator]

I also play exclusively GA without scaling.
Everything is pathetic in 40-45 years with advanced starts.

The ai is a joke at best.

Have you tried Starnet AI? On ensign the AI plays better with Starnet than on GA without. Starnet Grand Admiral AI will often wipe out fallen empires.

 

[Strangedane]

Have you tried Starnet AI? On ensign the AI plays better with Starnet than on GA without. Starnet Grand Admiral AI will often wipe out fallen empires.

I use it once in a while and I like it a lot.
The AI actually plays to win and behave much more convincingly than the base game.

But I'd much rather have the actual game work, as I dislike using mods in general.